There is a NEW SECRET MESSAGE through the door.
But I just wanted to say here publicly that I guess I’m locked in on finishing this story I started writing last week, after churning it in my brain for almost a decade.
I alluded that project obliquely the other week. And it’s gone pretty well since then. But here’s my advice: don’t churn on a story for years without writing it.
Do not, for example think of a scene where a character sings Jock Stuart and think: That’s good, I should write this story down some day! And then never do it.
And then you see the movie Banshees of Inesherin, and a character sings Jock Stuart and get your heart pulped. Because A) playwright/director actually did write his idea down, and B) he did it really really well. It’s a pretty heart-pulping movie in all.
If you don’t know, Jock Stewart is an old Irish/Scottish drinking song that’s better known as I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day.
And if you don’t know that, then you should immediately correct this situation now NOW. That’s Cait O’Riordan’s iconic performance of it on the Pogues’ first album, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.
I bet you’re listening to it again right now. I tend to listen to it over and over.
It’s a boast song. Jock Stewart is not merely a rover, he’s a liar, and the dream of wealth and influence he conjures is tuned to despair. And on the one hand, the fact that it’s a woman singing it in this case underscores that the narrator is not reliable.
But on the other hand, the boldness of the gender inversion makes the boast that much brasher: sparkling, charged, and seductive.
O’Riordan wasn’t the first woman to record the song. Leave that to JEANINE ROBINSON.
But I bet O’Riordan inspired McDonagh as much as me, because he and I are the same age, and when O’Riordan sings that she’s a man you don’t meet every day, you believe.
(My friend Ken Reid got to interview her for his really excellent TV GUIDANCE COUNSELOR podcast, and I am very very jealous. You can follow her HERE).
I obviously was thinking about the Pogues recently because Shane MacGowan died. I have no better words to express what his loss means to me and us than those already said by TED LEO and TOM WAITS even. It hurts.
And remembering how that song had pulped my heart in Banshees when I saw it last year, I put it in again.
Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleeson are longtime friends living on a small, barely populated Irish island in 1920.
They can hear the Irish Civil War booming on the mainland. But it doesn’t affect their routine, which is going to the pub together every day at 2PM.
Until one day, Colin Ferrell goes to pick up Brendan Gleeson at his house to walk to the pub, and Brendan Gleeson explains calmly, no thanks. We’re not friends anymore.
And Colin Ferrell is very sad and spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out why Gleeson has ended the friendship, when Gleeson already gave him the answer up front and right away: You’re dull. And I don’t ever want to drink with or talk to you again.
Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t make Colin Ferrell any less sad.
But it’s a small island, so they still go to the pub at 2PM every day. But now they sit on opposite sides of the room, bright sunlight completely filling the windows because, may I remind you, it’s TWO O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON!
And now the sun shines brightly on Brendan Gleeson and his new group of friends, some musicians from the mainland. And Colin Ferrell just watches them sadly. (No one does sad eyebrow acting like Ferrell).
And then a woman in Brendan Gleeson group sings, “I’m a man you don’t meet every day…” and I just want to say publicly, if my story ever becomes something (it probably won’t), and you see this scene, I didn’t rip Martin McDonagh off here.
But I will steal everything else I can from that movie as it is really really good. Like, not Oscar-nominated-do-your-homework good. Just GOOD-GOOD.
And it reminds you: even the people you think you know the best are still other people. Which is to say: unsolvable mysteries.
Like sometimes your grown son hands you a list of things he might like to receive for Christmas, and all of the things make sense to you, until you get to the entry that simply says:
“book on herbs and charms”
And you wonder, who is this person? When did my child become a warlock? Do I have to go on some kind of quest to find this book? Do I have to ascend a mountain and pry it from the hands of a dead mage? Could I get an author name at least?
But as luck (and charms) would have it, I did find the book, and I will tell you about it in the SECRET MESSAGE below.
But first, the holidays are here, and I hope you won’t mind if we all take a rest next week and kindle a light against the winter darkness.
It’s dark out there. I hope you find some peace and solace.
I hope you don’t break up with any friends, unless you absolutely have to.