Because…

after Jackson Wheeler

Because I was born amongst primal beasts in the wilderness of a Marble County loony bin. Because I was raised by Dylan, Thomas or Bob, once my father left home at four. Because my grandad painted demure Georgian houses. Because my grandma’s feline furiously clawed at annoying blackbirds (though both were of the same skin colour). Because my mother obsessed over her crystalline china or, approaching her slumber, shot the living room lights out at night leaving me with only my thoughts and the beam of a glorious white projector light displaying: Fellini, Leone, Coppola. Because I lived in a small-town Castledermot different to how I imagined it… until I reimagined it reading stories of truths, half-truths and untruths (though the locals declare “all is true”) in books that aren’t The Bible. Because I sang with raving boozers, stinkin’ hobos and malnourished junkies at Satan’s baptismal font preaching the fires that hell hath raised (though I loathe the bitter taste of beer myself, small doses of wine are fine by me)! Because I studied for a college degree unlike a person that worked. Because my aunt went to libraries studying Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hume. Because my uncle went to record shops listening to Radiohead, Chapin and Cohen. Because my mother’s pal was a high priest that baptised children and molested them in equal measure (truly the sum of our contradictions)! Because my father’s pal was a soldier who went to war as a man and came back a muttering vegetable cursed to suffer a long life on Earth. Because my mother’s people said they were British, from Cary Grant country; three cheers for the colonisation of India. Because my father’s people were brutish vikings from Norway, three cheers for the head of Brian Boru. Because my God is a ray of hope, a kindly old man, a child snatcher, a war criminal, a paedophile, Isaac’s nightmare, a whisper in Mary’s ear. Because their stories lie buried in unmarked graveyards, because their stories have been forgotten, because their stories have been misremembered. My friends think I know too much, don’t know enough. My family thinks I talk too much for company that I don’t talk enough. Three cheers – let’s hear it for the extended family, the unknown cousins, the petty griefs and regrets, the novels unwritten, the movies unconceived, the plays unproduced, the solace of getting drunk, the solace of smoking dope, the solace of loneliness of which there is plenty. All hail the poetic arts, and the art of film or music and those mediums that know us better than ourselves: Words bear witness.