At the Edge of Ireland (47 page)

Despite his brief stay, Danny's “Song of Beara” gained an enthusiastic following. Word had spread, even as far as Glengarriff. Despite the town's panoply of unique delights—including those world-renowned Italian-styled Garinish Gardens, created in the early twentieth century on an island in Bantry Bay barely a hundred yards out from the main street; the exotic Bamboo Park featuring an Edenic profusion of subtropical species; and a wonderworld of lush little enclaves in the old Glengarriff Valley (now a gorgeous National Park) reaching back into the mountains—we rarely spent much time here. In hindsight it was possibly our loss, but the little town seemed just a touch too complacent and touristically situated on the main Cork-to-Killarney highway. Maybe if our intended interviews with such renowned but elusive residents as Maureen O'Hara, Julia Roberts, and (a little farther south near Skibbereen) Jeremy Irons in his “pink castle” had materialized, we might have become more enamored of the place.

Certainly we were enamoured, though, when one evening Danny was invited to give an impromptu miniconcert here in the Hawthorn Bar to rousing applause (and free librations too). Then we all strolled across the road, entered the Blue Loo Bar, and found a traditional reel-and-jig
seisuin
in progress. And with a full retinue of participants too, featuring four fine fiddlers, three tin whistle exponents, two melodeon squeeze-box maestros, a
uilleann
pipes player (contributing intermittently from what appeared to be his permanent perch at the bar), and a bodhrán goatskin drum maestro thwacking away so rapidly with his little stick that his fingers were a wild blur.

It took a while to distinguish all the subtle variations in rhythm and notes between the tunes, but eventually we just kind of settled into the melodic mood of the place and stomped along with the rest of the enthusiastic hand-clapping audience.

“Oh yes—I know,” said Deirdre Donnchadhi, a celebrated whistle player in the group who chatted with me during a well-earned break in the
craic
. “The tunes can seem awful similar if you're not used to the music. But once you've played them a while, they're as different as chips and colcannon. And yes, I know, most are in the same key, which doesn't help. I usually only need a D whistle, although once in a while they'll switch keys and I'll have to fake it a bit by half-covering the holes and sort of bending the notes. Sliding. Some of the real traditionalists don't like that, but, as they say around here so often: ‘There's no right way. Only a wrong way!' Your ear will tell you if it's just not working—especially with a hard-core group like this one of ours tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You all seem to take it awfully seriously. There's not much laughing or smiling while you're playing.”

“Well, you've got to really focus when you've got three, sometimes four, people all playing the same tune on the same instruments. There's got to be exact precision, otherwise it sounds like a circus of cats. My mother's people were all great fiddle players from the Cork-Kerry border. My aunt Julia became quite famous and knew a lot of the older players, so we try and meet up like this—friends and family—every once in a while for a real good
seisuin
. We're still celebrating a tradition that goes back so far, no one really knows when it all began.”

Danny eased himself onto the bench beside me. He nodded and smiled at Deirdre: “Yeah,” he said. “That's part of the spirit here. Being part of an ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic culture that still resonates in modern-day Ireland. There's real power in this music—in your music tonight, especially.”

Deirdre smiled and whispered a quiet “thank you” just as the lead fiddler laughingly reminded the audience crammed into the small taproom of the bar that “the more you drink, the better we sound—and guaranteed—the better you look!” She returned to the group, and off they went on another half hour of full-blast, foot-tapping, full-speed-ahead Irish folk music.

A few nights later, quiet thank-yous were replaced by tears and cheers as Danny became the star attraction at the end of one of Michael Murphy's week-long Love, Loss and Forgiveness workshops held at Dzogchen Beara.

It began as a very spontaneous suggestion on the phone by Michael, who was looking for something to “end the session on a real upbeat note.”

“Michael—you're in luck! Synchronicity raises its beguiling head once again,” I said. “It just so happens that we have one of America's finest Irish folksingers staying at the cottage right now, and I'm pretty sure he'd be delighted to help out. Oh, and he'll possibly feature a brand-new composition—his beautiful ‘Song of Beara.' That do you?”

“Fantastic! Perfect! Listen—come early before the food. We have about an hour when all the individual participants are asked to summarize what this week has meant to them—sort of sharing their perceptions and breakthroughs.”

Céilí
Faces

“Michael—thanks, but I honestly don't think we'd feel comfortable…I mean, this is highly personal stuff for you all and I don't think they'd be too happy with us outsiders being present…”

Michael invariably gets his way. Through wile, guile, bloodymindedness, and gritty determination—oh, and charm too I guess—he has a knack of persuading all concerned that his way is indeed the best for everyone. So there we were on the final workshop evening, Anne and I, Rob and Celia, and maestro Danny, all sitting in a circle of workshop participants in a room with huge windows overlooking a magnificent sunset. In the far distance dark and ominously broken cliffs were bathed in gold. Their grassy tops had sheens of platinum playing across the undulations, and the ocean was ribbed in gossamer filaments of lemons, scarlets, and purples. The slow, deep rhythms of the foaming surf were hypnotic, soothing, and smoothing, conjuring up primal images and urges—maybe even “altered state” recollections of our aquatic origins in the womb, when water flowed through us and we existed in another fishlike form.

Michael suggested that we all spend a few minutes in silence watching the slow-changing light and celebrating that beguiling curl of time from sunset to dusk to dark.

It is in moments like these that hearts can expand and welcome the new.

Then began the whole ritual of summations from each of the twenty or so participants. It was a remarkable portrait of varied human dimensions as a “talking stick” was passed around, enabling each person to speak without interruption. A kaleidoscopic array of emotions filled the room. There were tears, muted cheers for particularly courageous participants who had obviously waged wars with themselves and apparently won, followed by laughter, applause, hugs, kisses—the whole gamut. We learned later that two couples had met and fallen in love, one married couple had agreed (amicably) to separate, another couple decided not to get married “just yet,” and almost everyone celebrated a great cleansing of spirits, a release from “anorexia of the soul” and reaffirmations of self.

I watched Danny as the time drew near for him to provide Michael's “real upbeat note.” For all his many years of experience as a folksinger par excellence in pubs, clubs, schools, and concert halls throughout the USA, Danny has always maintained a deep-seated modesty—almost a constant sense of surprise that audiences actually turn up in droves to hear and cheer him. So every event for him seems to be a new beginning coupled with a new determination both to please and move his listeners. And that evening he was entranced by the warmth and mutual love that rippled around the room. He knew this would be one of those special times when an empathetic, sensitive audience would listen to—and totally hear—every word of his songs.

And so it was. From that first E major thwack of a chord on his beloved Martin acoustic guitar he carried that small captivated audience through every nuance of Irish folk music—from bawdy ballards to tear-jerky melodies to songs of great battles (lost of course—the Irish always seem to prefer it that way), to one of the best a cappella versions of “Danny Boy” I've ever heard him sing. And finally to his brand-new “Song of Beara.” He'd only refined the verses a couple of days previously, but it already sounded like a permanent part of his repertoire.

The room exploded with applause. He had to play three encores before he could finally enjoy the buffet, and as we reluctantly left a couple of hours later, Danny laughed and spoke for all of us: “I'm so covered in love and good stuff, I'm not going to wash for a week!”

And as if to celebrate that “love-bath,” he decided a few months later to lead a magical mystery tour–type bus journey with sixty or so of his American fans, visiting key historical places through southwest Ireland, participating in nightly
seisuins
in pubs, and generally enjoying ten days of Irish-American
craic
, which led to the creation of two more Ireland-inspired songs.

In a recent chat, he hugged Anne and me, and said, “You know I want to thank you both again. Beara was my breakthrough. The echo of the whole experience is still here with me. And you two made that happen.”

It was either smile or weep, so I chose the former: “Oh no, no—it wasn't us at all, Danny—it was those gorgeous nubile muses. We saw the smile on your face as you kept going off across the meadows to finesse your verses!”

Danny's usually the one to make others blush with his raunchy jokes and whatnot, but we swear we both saw a rising pink flush on his face. And to think I never really believed much in the existence of those muses at all…

POSTSCRIPT

We certainly learned to believe in muses following a visit to our Allihies cottage by Theo Westenberger, a dear friend and celebrated award-winning New York photographer, who seemed to be able to conjure up her muses at will despite her ongoing battle with cancer. Whatever aspect of her photographic repertoire she focused on—travel, animals, ethnic peoples, celebrities of stage and screen, presidents, and top-league politicians—she always tackled her projects with unique vision, humor, love, and sincere empathetic interest. Her subjects came alive, brimming with life and energy. She was never patronizing or sycophantic. We loved to watch her work. She glowed with true human intensity and luminosity. She made people relax and give of themselves without artifice or angst. Tightly scheduled shoots with “sorry-gotta-go-now” celebrities turned into spontaneous fun fests. One of my favorite zany shots is of dainty, slim-limbed Theo sharing a foam-filled Jacuzzi tub with a grinning, muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger. (No, they were not naked—their swimsuits were hidden by the foam!) And we remember her last photo shots being made on Beara as she struggled with her illness to capture close-ups of dry stone walls, lichen patterns, cloudscapes, and abstracts of marsh plants reflected in still black peat water ponds.

Theo loved her projects for such magazines as
Life
,
People
,
Time
,
Sports Illustrated
,
Newsweek
, and
National Geographic Traveler
, where we'd both been contributing editors, but alas, we'd never worked together on a joint project. We kept promising ourselves we'd find something to lure our poor overworked editor in chief into giving us a lucrative round-the-world odyssey feature! We also started work together on a little book linking Theo's animal shots with humorous quotes from celebrated quippers. We had other ideas too…but they were not to be. A few brief months after her time with us on Beara, Theo passed away at her apartment in Manhattan's TriBeCa. We were there with her, along with many of her friends. We miss her deeply. This book's dedication to her is but a tiny token of our love and respect for this beautiful, multitalented human being. Thank you for your very special friendship, Theo—thanks for investing so much energy to join us on Beara—and thanks for all those great enduring memories…

The Season of Samhain

A
ND THEN, OF COURSE, COMES OUR
winter—brief, benevolently mild but with a few long dark and raw days, and a special majesty all of its own. The cream and amber rushes and dying reed grasses rustle in the winds across the barren wetlands below the Caha range. Carpets of green, spongelike mosses in the boglands turn bronze; lichens hang ghostlike in the chill mists. The light is thin and “shy,” and time creeps by slowly through to the “short dour days” of February, relieved only by the “fearsome
craic”
revelries of singing, dancing, and other amusements.

Despite the lack of travelers and blow-ins during this season, there's certainly no lack of music. Everywhere you hear the flute and fiddle, the goatskin
bodhrán
drum and the melancholy drones of the
uilleann
pipes. Unlike the visitors, whose appreciation of genuine Irish music and folk songs often lacks what one might call “informed selection” (overheard from one jaded and whiskery singer: “If I get one more request for that bleedin' ‘Danny Boy,' there'll be a dead body in here, and it definitely won't be mine!'), the locals applaud ancient time-honored ballads rarely sung during the summer
céilí seisuins.
Bonds are tightened during these colder months, old prides restored, and a more mellow pace of life adopted once again.