I’m angry because Sinéad O’Connor is dead.
I’m angry because she wasn’t looked after, when she should have been.
I’m angry because all the effort; the pain; the raising of her voice; the effort to keep looking at the pain of the world when looking away would be easier; it feels like none of it made a difference that was proportional to the effort and the suffering that speaking up cost her.
I’m angry because now the responsibility falls to us – when we should have been taking it all along. I didn’t want to grow up, but I have to now.
The retiring of our driven, fiery, caring and vulnerable representative has left the baton falling, in slow motion. Who will catch it? Can we even try? Is it worth trying?
It feels like she quit with no warning, but we just weren’t watching closely enough. The signs were there.
We just didn’t care enough for the ethical and broken heart on legs who we assumed would just keep on keeping on for us all. Standing in for our own activism that we can now feel has come up short.
I’m angry not at Sinéad, but at myself.
For not doing more in my 46 years on the planet. For not having the energy to do more. For being so naïve in my 20s as to think we could fix the world fast and then get on with our shinier, happier lives.
I’m angry because somehow in the style of the straight white man I’d delegated the job of caring and standing up and speaking out and now it’s mine again. Just like when I hand the job of folding the washing to my kids and they get mad.
I’m angry with myself because I expected a stranger whose ethics aligned with mine but whose courage was off the scale compared to mine – to somehow do the work of my activism for me. That’s an exchange she never agreed to and that I never paid her for. Talk about unequal.
Yes, her platform was huge and she used it (boy, did she ever use it!!). But did I ever send a message of support to her through her management or fan postbox? Money for a cause? Did I take up the subject in my own circles, write a letter to our local church to ask what they were doing about abuse in their ranks? No, no I did not. I bought CDs. I listened to them until they were worn out. But I didn’t take anything any further than finding meaning in her words, in her heartbreaking, soul-stirring voice.
Her albums were the soundtrack to my life, from joyous empowerment, enjoyment of my sexuality, to heartbreak and using her songs to communicate what I was feeling to partners. She articulated it all so I didn’t have to.
I’m ten years younger than Sinéad. I have a 17 year old son, lanky and goofy and still so utterly young but shining in every way. Losing him would break me on every single possible plane, so I can’t imagine how she kept on after losing her own. I don’t blame her at all for not being able to stay. (And this applies to my eldest who’s 20 years old too – it’s the fact of being mother to a gaping wound where a child should be that’s the point here.)
My anger is at myself for what I can now see are responsibilities I felt were mine, and which I delegated. Responsibilities towards myself, my community and the wider world.
The question now is: what will I do?
What will you do?
How will you catch the falling baton and hold it while you run at the structures and powers that exist to funnel power only to those who already wield it?
I don’t have the answers.
But I suspect that they involve raising our voices wherever and whenever we can.
x Tam
PS: Watch a poem to honour Sinéad O’Connor written and performed by Fleassy Malay, my poetry idol and mentor, here.
I feel some changes are afoot around how I do stuff and what I offer. I’ll keep you posted!
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