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, though I’ve always loved Dublin where I was born and raised.

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 first trip to Disney World, I managed to horrify my parents by telling a stern US immigration officer, “They’re American — I’m Irish!” His piercing stare and my parents’ mortified faces are seared in my memory.

That was the start of a life carved between Irish and American soil. Many of my heroes were Irish-American, not least Bobby Kennedy, whose yearning for justice and humanity inspired me to hold myself accountable to a higher standard I am still striving to meet.

But who was I? What had I done? What was my verse to contribute to the world?

Between Dublin and New York my life unfolded, and fate lent a kiss one summer night in 2003. After a poorly attended gig, I was rambling down North 7th Street in Brooklyn, asking myself what on earth I was doing there. God provided the answer instantly: the girl I had first fallen in love with in Connemara at age 13 walked right into me at midnight on North 7th Street.

That “chance” meeting in Brooklyn has always reminded me of a 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 thanked Him for that, and I still do.

Those early crossings between Dublin and New York set the stage for everything that followed.

— Paul Hourican