At the Edge of Ireland (35 page)

“Well—I guess it's a case of define ‘very successfully,'” said Luka Bloom with a deep chuckle. Unlike his brother's burly bulldoglike appearance, Luka has a long, sensitive face, large open eyes, and just the hint of a perpetual grin around his mouth.

We'd met by pure happenstance in the kitchen of the center. I'd left it a bit late to sneak out to the bathroom before the opening act, and when I came back, a young female folksinger with a Judy Collins–style voice and maybe just a touch of Sheryl Crow had begun, and I was asked to slip in the back way through the kitchen when her song was complete and the applause started.

I nodded and smiled, remembering the days when Lynne and I sang together and there was nothing more off-putting in the middle of a song than when people started talking or moving around for drinks or bathroom trips. We liked our audiences serious and sensitive. And of course, here at the center, seriousness and sensitivity were the orders of the day. In everything.

So I crept quietly into the kitchen and went to stand by the door to the concert room, which was actually the meditation room with its spectacular cliff and ocean vistas we'd enjoyed so many times before. The applause seemed a long time coming. And then I heard this most discordant sound echoing out from the shadows of the kitchen back by the huge stove. I turned and saw someone apparently trying to tune a guitar.

“Oh, hi,” I said. “You playing tonight?”

A faint chuckle was followed by: “Well—I hope so. Otherwise I've come an awful long way for nothing…”

“Ah—so you're with Luka Bloom?” Sometimes I can be a little slow on the uptake.

Another soft chuckle. “Well—not exactly.” More strange tuning sounds that made me wonder if this guy could even play a guitar. “I
am
Luka Bloom.”

“Oh…I, ah…er…Sorry. I didn't recognize you. Probably because I don't even know what you look like!”

“Oh, I'm nothing much special really in the looks department…”

“Well…,” I said, wondering if I was about to make another faux pas, “good to meet you. Big fan of your brother.”

“Yeah—so are most people over here…”

“Not that…I mean…actually, I've only heard a few…But by the look of the crowd in there, you've got a heck of a following too…”

Luka Bloom

Finally he stepped out of the shadows and I was able to see him, stop rambling on, and shake his hand. And after that, our conversation flowed a little less erratically. It was all about Christy at first, of course, and the soft-spoken Luka was remarkably open and honest.

“M'brother's hard to quantify because well—he's not…when you meet him he doesn't really appear to be very…what you might call, charismatic. He's very ordinary, y'see—very quiet and he really likes to present himself to people in that way…One-on-one he can be quite shy…But once he gets on the stage, he carries the show like a real trouper…although there are many shows he carried that he doesn't ever remember at all. In fact, he often had to be hoisted onstage full of God knows what—booze, drugs—and then it was magic. He'd transform in a flash, becoming a different person—the real Christy—and hold his audience—galvanize them—for two, sometimes three hours solid, and then when he came off, he'd be just the way he was when he was carried on! He's an amazing man. Truly amazing. He couldn't—wouldn't—allow himself to be confined. I remember once an interviewer said to him: ‘You seem to have so many different personas.' And Christy was right back at him: ‘Well—I'd feel imprisoned, locked up, if I had to live with only one of them!'”

The kitchen door was suddenly flung back and someone (very serious and respectful) leaned in: “Ah…Mr. Bloom…the er, stage is yours whenever you're ready…sir…”

Luka seemed particularly amused by the “sir” bit, nodded, and kept on fiddling with his guitar tuning. It all sounded very discordant to me.

“You doing some special kind of open tuning or what?” I asked.

“Well—I guess you could call it that. It's something I've worked up over the years…”

He continued twiddling and then, having pronounced himself happy with what still sounded to me like some kind of Arabic quarter-tone disharmonic, shook my hand again, said, “Let's talk some more after the show,” and walked out of the kitchen and down the aisle to the stage.

The applause was sudden, deafening, and long. This was obviously a well-informed audience packed into every corner and crevice of the meditation room. They were obviously proud to have such a highly respected celebrity-singer in their midst. He acknowledged his reception with a broad, happy smile and then, with little in the way of introduction, launched himself into a spectacular two-hour performance that encompassed just about every mood and subject one could imagine in contemporary folk songs, most of which he'd written himself.

The audience relished every moment and demanded encore after encore. And as if to celebrate the power of his performance, the sun slowly began to sink behind the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the room and gave us one of the most spectacularly colorful eventides Anne and I had witnessed so far on Beara. The audience was bathed in a soft scarlet glow, and Luka sang his final song silhouetted against a golden sheen of light that seemed to make his whole body vibrate with the intensity of a mystical aura. And even after he'd finally left the stage and vanished back into the kitchen, his presence and the resonating intensity of his songs remained with us. And there was none of that mad scampering for the exits that usually characterizes the end of a concert. Instead, people seemed to be reluctant to leave. Some were looking around dreamily, as if waking from an enticing half sleep; others reached out to talk to friends quietly in nearby seats. Everywhere were smiles and hugs and expressions of deep satisfaction. It was as if we'd all experienced a mass meditation together and we didn't really want it to end.

I intended to join Luka back in the kitchen and congratulate him, but I too was having problems leaving my seat. Anne reached out and squeezed my hand and whispered—as she had done before and would do many times again on this amazing peninsula—“Magic! Absolute magic…”

A
ND HERE COMES MAGIC AGAIN—A
place of magic cocooned in one of the most beautiful spots on the Kerry side of Beara.

Alongside the road to Eyeries from Allihies, atop a rise above pastures and bosky hedgerows overlooking Coulagh Bay, sits what looks at first like a small neat bungalow. The grounds, sprawling languorously behind high bushes, are meticulously manicured. Velvety lawns are edged with profusions of flowers. There's a fountain and a duck pond, and it all seems a little decadently suburban. But then if you wander as I did on my first visit to the rear of the house, you'll find the land suddenly tumbling away down steep rocky clefts crammed with Tolkienesque tangles of hawthorn and stunted, twisted trees. Cascades and waterfalls have cut deep into the strata. Narrow paths weave their way through a permanent twilight of shadowy niches pierced by sudden laser-thin sun rays. The water chitters and chuckles, invisible birds chirp and twitter, and there are odd rustlings in the undergrowth. If you follow the path far enough you'll end up on one of the bay beaches.

The abrupt contrast between the neat roadside garden at the front of the house, and the primeval spirit of the tumbled land behind, is of course absolutely intentional.

In fact everything is intentional here at Anam Cara, a place recognized as one of the finest retreats for artists, writers, and poets in the whole of Ireland. And it has been a focal point of Beara's creative energies since 1998, when it was founded by one of the most altruistic and energetic “catalysts of change” on the peninsula. Her name is Susan Booth-Forbes and, following an extensive career as writer, editor, and communication director in Boston and “a significant change in marital status” (a divorce), she decided to follow her longtime dream to move to Ireland and create an environment where artists and writers could come together and “celebrate their muses.” And Sue is one of those lucky individuals who not only listens and responds to dream-directed urges but also knows how to turn them into inspiring realities.

Anam Cara translates from Gaelic as “Soul Friend,” and she dedicated her new “base” to John O'Donoghue, whose book on Celtic wisdom of the same name had long offered nurturing visions to Sue.

In her invitational Web site, she offers “an intimate residential retreat providing time, space, and creature comforts to support your focusing on your own projects and doing your best creative work.” Susan goes on to describe herself as “part friend, part editor, part travel guide, and part mid-wife in stimulating creative rebirths and helping participants to slow down enough inside to maximize their individual capabilities.” From what we'd heard locally, she'd helped many writers rediscover their muses and cease their languishing in unpublished purgatory.

When I first visited she greeted me with such mercurial warmth that I wondered if we'd known each other as friends in some past incarnation. And, as if to immediately confirm that odd sensation, she said, “You look familiar. I feel I've met you somewhere before.” I mumbled some inane reply about “wishing we had” as I was being led on a guided interior tour of the retreat.

What seemed a modest bungalow-styled structure from the road morphed into an intriguing array of spaces. Some were small and intimate niches ideal for sharing the challenges and joys of the creative process. Others included a delightful sunroom complete with grape arbor, a charming dining area and kitchen for her ten or so “guests,” a series of large central spaces that, on her popular “community evenings,” can host up to a hundred or more visitors for lectures, poetry readings (Leanne O'Sullivan, one of our favorite “creators” on Beara, had a star billing here in 2006), artist shows, and workshops—and even the occasional hullabaloo of a music, singing, and dancing
hooley
.

In addition to ensuring “lots of quiet creative time” for her guests, Sue also organizes an array of writing workshops and art sessions, field trips to nearby Eyeries and other key places around Beara, Celtic-flavored events, and yoga periods. “And to cap it all—I do fabulous breakfasts of omelets and homemade soda bread as top attractions!”

As she gave examples of literary and artistic “breakthrough moments” for which Anam Cara is apparently renowned, she projected a fascinating dual persona of enthusiasm wrapped in a cooler, gimlet-eyed, guru-tinged organizer-self. One of her recent “creative coups” was a workshop conducted by the Irish-American poet Billy Collins, once the poet laureate of the USA. Admirers of his power-packed works have described them as “full of quirky bends and heart-stopping imagery” and “like a plate of fat pancakes—lots of good stuff that will stick to your ribs for a long time.”

Eyeries Village

Apparently the workshop was a roaring success, with Billy in fine fettle offering “no mollycoddling,” criticizing the overuse of the thesaurus in certain works in progress, and “treating us like real poets,” according to one participant, who also described him as “a Peter Pan high on Ireland—and a fantastic dancer, inside the house, outside and, on one occasion, in the duck pond!”

“Listen,” said Sue as we sat sipping afternoon tea in the sunroom. “Maybe you'd like to join us next week. We're having a couple of Beara artists bring their works in and give us a talk. They're both well known here and on show at local galleries on the peninsula. It should be fun.”

“Most of the artists I know seem to hate describing their work habits and paintings,” I suggested, “except in the most esoteric of terms, which is usually not much fun at all!”

“Trust me. You'll love these two…”

And so I came and I did.