BOOK:WITHOUT PREJUDICE

The following is an excerpt from Paul’s upcoming book...

Prologue

‘We’re going to set you free on your artistic path’, came the line that hit me like a punch might feel from Mike Tyson.

It was late January 2014 and I was living in New York City; the greatest city in the world and I’m someone who loves Dublin which is where I was born and raised and where I live today with my wife Sue and our beautiful daughter Henrietta.

When I was maybe eight years old my father took my two sisters and I to the US Embassy in Dublin and made us US citizens saying, ‘one day you’re going to thank me for this’.

On our next excursion across the Atlantic in the days when the plane would take off from Dublin and land less than 30 minutes later in Shannon to go through US pre-clearance, I was told, ‘keep your mouth shut’ as we went up to the official at US Immigration who sternly assessed our suitably as candidates to enter the United States.

We were only going to Disney World.

‘So you’re all US citizens’? the man asked in a most serious and investigative manner. ‘No’! came the defiant and unwanted retort from me; a ‘young pup’ with a BIG MOUTH who never quite knew when to keep it shut. ‘They’re American’, I said; pointing my finger at my own family who were completely horrified, before clarifying, ‘I’m Irish’!

My parents were mortified and the officer did not take it lightly. I can still see his very piercing eyes today. My family backtracked and dismissed my defensive rebuke politely informing the Immigration official that, ‘he’s American’; with a look to say and he’s also not quite right in the head! I was disgusted and I was given ‘the look’, from my parents which I knew only too well to say; ‘shut the fuck up’!

Over the years we would crisscross the wide Atlantic many times and my path would be carved out between Irish and American soil. Not a bad combination one would think as so many of my heroes are Irish Americans, not least among them the fiery and feisty Bobby Kennedy; a great lover of humanity in all of our forms. His yearning for oneness for those who might appear different in the face of a world of indifference inspired me a lot to hold myself accountable to a higher level, that I am yet to live up to…

The tale over three generations from Wexford to The White House and the creation of an Irish American dynasty is a story that completely enthrals me and I am amazed it has not been brought to the silver screen, as yet.

Not that I was in Bobby’s league.

Who was I? What had I done? What was my verse to be contributed to this world? And what was it all about anyway? But between Dublin and New York my life unfolded and fate lent a kiss late one summer night in 2003 when I was rambling down North 7th Street in Brooklyn around midnight after a very poorly attended gig and I was asking myself ‘what on earth was I doing here’? When God provided the answer instantly and the girl I fell in love with in Connemara on the west coast of Ireland when we were just 13 years old walked right into me there at midnight on North 7th St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

Positively North 7th Street - it’s a long way from Carraroe!

God revealed to me the reason for my being there at that time whilst I had no clue and I asked for a sign…there she was standing right in front of me. Her eyes beaming; the girl from Bayside in north Dublin and the man from Malahide also in north Dublin; a ‘long distance’ relationship made untenable by the daily 20 minute 102 bus journey from Sutton to Malahide, too long for our love to survive or so it seemed at the time.

The ‘chance’ midnight meeting in Brooklyn that evening in the hot summer of 2003 has always reminded me of the Tom Waits lyric:

‘Outside another yellow moon / punched a hole in the nighttime mist / I climb to the window and down to your street / I’m shining’ like a new dime / the downtown trains are full / full of all those ‘Bayside’ girls / they try so hard to break out of their little worlds…’

I thanked Him for that and I still do…thank you!

Those are the words that my journal entries stretching back many years generally end with - if only I could apply that gratitude to the daily minutiae of everyday life.

But we were back again in NYC when Sue and I ‘ran away’ without the circus in the biggest snowstorm of the century and we got married on our own on 28th December 2010. It was magical to fly out of Dublin blanketed with snow and into Manhattan buried beneath an avalanche of white.

We stayed at The Plaza Hotel (not quite what it used to be!) but to look out over yellow taxi’s battling a snowstorm that covered Central Park before us was very romantic, if I do say so myself. We had our drinks in The Oak Bar, young, foolish and in love and completely naïve in the way that young lovers ought to be and often are.

On the morning of our wedding we battled the snow on Fifth Avenue to buy clothes for our wedding day. That’s literally the amount of preparation we put into it and I do recall standing outside the Rockefeller Centre in awe of the empire and worried; what empire could I offer my beautiful bride?

I was desperate to make my mark on the world and I was equally drawn to the empire business building tycoons of the past as I was to the new frontier of creative geniuses of the new world as I was the penniless but rich lives and writings of poets and artists such as Enda St. Vincent Millay or Charles Bukowski who summed up the dilemma (or lack thereof so eloquently below):

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

I was deeply conflicted and remain torn between the obligation of making a living and the wish to live freely a creative life of bohemian ways of creating a life through song, verse, melody, words, music, poetry.

It was very important to me and remains so that artistic and creative achievements are aligned with real world commercial and material success. For better or for worse that is how ‘the world keeps score’ so to speak and whilst I like to put my head in the clouds at times, I equally think you’ve got to keep your feet on the ground.

Otherwise this world going to trip you up and spit you out!

This is what I have always envisioned from the fruits of my creative work. Where I get the audacity to dream so BIG I do not know but I know it’s there; inside my head and it bothers me badly when I’m lying in bed.

It may be a cliche to say that; ‘it’s not about money’. But it’s not about the money. Rather it’s about what the money can attribute you in the time that you’re living and in your wish for those who you love and you want to take care of when you leave them behind.

For me this is simple; it about is security and freedom. And in that order.

I suspect I know where I got that from but it’s hard unlearn lessons of youth. I won’t deny these desires pull on my heart strings leaving a gaping yearning hole that I have not filled.

The artists I have been drawn to are those who lived in both worlds.

Seamus Heaney said it best...

‘There might be people out there who can sit in an ivory tower and write poetry twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. But I am certainly not one of them…At any one time we live in two worlds. There’s the world of poetry and the imagination and there’s the world of ‘get up and go’, put petrol in your car and drop the kids to school’

Heaney went on to say...

‘And if you find that you are living for too long and you are too far steeped in either one of these worlds; you’re off balance’.

To me that is sage advice from possibly the greatest grandfather that Ireland ever had. I once shared this Heaney observation with Bono when I happened to be invited to one day sail around Manhattan in his company through mutual friends and it was only a few weeks after Seamus Heaney’s passing.

I could tell that Bono was hurt by Heaney’s recent passing. He could tell more…

He said ‘I didn’t know he said that. He’s right. That’s why I do the work I do outside of the band’.

After that he looked at me with suspicion as I tried to convince the great man that I too am great! Alas therein lies the dichotomy of the ages in that; the great paradox of greatness is that one can never truly be great unless one is certain that one is not great.

And what a great shame that is!

Sue and I had no plan, no map to guide us for the whole rest of our lives ahead. In our minds I guess; I was going to be a famous rock star and Sue was going to be a fashion designer.

Perfect!

We believed we belonged in these creative worlds. And indeed we do but obtaining the success and recognition for your creative endeavours in the world is a different thing.

Our dreams landed on the harsh rocks of reality when we moved to New York in the summer of 2012. I had been offered a publishing deal for my songwriting with Round Hill Music on Madison Avenue. It wasn’t a huge deal but there was enough of a wind in my sail to signal another crossing of the Atlantic and so off we went...

The songs didn’t pay the rent so I got a job through a friend at a Start Up company called Neuehouse in the then emerging Co-Working sector. I started out as a ‘hired hand’ and I soon did well; leading my own team, working 70 - 100 hours per week; a trend I’ve continued ever since but wilfully. I have to say I loved it, but in my heart I was and I am an artist and I wanted to augment my works in the music and literary worlds.

I wasn’t then nor am I now a ‘team player’ and like my father I quickly learnt that I am genuinely unemployable (I say this without irony or for comic effect). The artist, similar to the entrepreneur is an interloper in that they are both a part of and apart from the community from which they emerge. They crave inclusion but ultimately must remain ‘strangers within the gates’.

‘You’re the square cube that doesn’t fit into the round hole’. Whack! That was it; jab, jab, knockout!

I was on the canvas. Fired, with no income and credit card debt and I had to sign onto US welfare. I was terrified. A couple months later my publisher Round Hill Music dropped me by email without notice and that was it.

The lights were out but not for long and this is where the story I’m about to tell begins...

Paul Hourican

(Somewhere over the Atlantic Wednesday 15th June 2022,
around five G&T’s in...)