The Harp needs more than tuning. The single most important and useful change we should make to our Constitution is to remove the first paragraph of Article 45 which reads: Directive Principles of Social Policy The principles of social policy set forth in this article are intended for the general guidance of the Oireachtas. The application … Read more
Donald Trump’s former confidante Steve Bannon has been on a latter-day American Grand Tour around Europe. But rather than making his peace ‘With learned Italian things / And the proud stones of Greece’, he embarked on an ideological excursion through the newly constituted enclaves of extreme right wing Populism; spreading a gospel on behalf of … Read more
This piece came from a little sound I heard in my head, an atmosphere, which I wanted to explore. First, I made myself a soundbed to play in, and allowed two journeying violin lines to hatch out of my imagination; then I captured them in a digital suspension, wherein I gave one of them a … Read more
W.B. Yeats’s poem, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ retains an appeal more than a century after its publication in 1899. Musicians in particular – from Christy Moore to Mike Scott – have been drawn to its magical imagery and measured cadences. One cruel New Years’s morning a few years ago its opening lines: ‘I went … Read more
Interstitial space: a space between structures or objects, i.e the contiguous fluid-filled space existing between the skin and body organs. ******* It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there from ‘Asphodel, That Greeny Flower’, by William Carlos Williams. I … Read more
At the age of sixteen, in 2001, I took a job in a small factory which built appliances in Cardano al Campo, near Milan’s Malpensa airport. I worked there for four years. As with the majority of the manufacturing industries in the area, including the spring-making factory I had worked in the previous year, it … Read more
How to fathom the phenomenon of ‘fandom’? Certainly it is one of the most familiar, most recognisable, and common, of personality traits – yet oddly, one of the least analysed personality traits. We all have a tendency towards being a ‘fan’ of something or other. It is a near-universal inclination evident in everyone from tech … Read more
The great Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities imagines a conversation between the Mongolian emperor Kubla Khan and the legendary traveller Marco Polo. Kubla Khan asks Marco Polo to describe for him the great cities he has visited. After a number of vivid and enthralling accounts it becomes clear that Marco Polo is confining himself to … Read more
One trail runs dry, but a scent hangs in the air. Pursuant to Stephen Court’s Drivetime article for Cassandra Voices deconstructing the Irish media’s – including RTÉ ’s – relationship with the motor car sector, I lodged a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the national broadcaster. I sought records of payments, or payments-in-kind, from … Read more
In the previous edition of Cassandra Voices Eoin Tierney explored the extent to which data is routinely harvested in a variety of ways, some of which we cannot easily control. This extends to hardware used to measure one’s fitness. Fitbit, a company producing a famous activity tracker, is no exception. Data gleaned from these devices, … Read more
We can only imagine how poetry entered human consciousness. I intuit that its emergence was linked to the first use of fire, that most seminal of technologies, whose devouring mysteries transfix us with a spirit that endows our own. I see one among a band awakening from a dream, and entering a trance. She incants … Read more
When I first moved to Dublin, I thought there were a lot of out-of-shape athletes living in the city. I later learned that my misconception was the same as the basis of a joke that had been topical fifteen or twenty years before I got there. The joke was about a politician opening a shopping … Read more
95 While someone exhorts us In song to sing to God, I’ve looked askance and asked, is he Among us here or not? And found that question, off its no-man’s land Uptaken then in hand, Lies with sheep in shade, And takes its rest in space, Beneath a large-leafed chestnut, bright With burning candles, placed … Read more
I am made endless for your pleasure Again and again emptied and filled A frail vessel ever with fresh life And melodies eternally new Breathed through me As though a little reed flute Cast over the earth And at your hand’s immortal touch My small heart loses all limits of joy To create ineffable utterances … Read more
So you’re single. At least if you’re reading this, there is a good chance you are. Do you view being single positively or negatively? What stories do you tell yourself about why you are currently single, and about what your life may be like when you have a partner in it? Through my work as … Read more
All our biographies, if they went back far enough, would begin by explaining how our ancestors came to be more or less enslaved, and to what degree we have become free of this inheritance. Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity (London, 1995), p.7 We are facing a world in a state of perpetual conflict, … Read more
