RADIO REVIEW:A TURBULENT year ended and a new one began with mind-bending political word games, non-sequitors, calls for a more spiritual society and a rejection of our superficial values. We don't seem to like ourselves very much these days, which is a shame.
Trusty old Morning Ireland (Radio One, weekdays) was one of the few shows with its usual cast of characters. Elsewhere, it was fill-ins, music and reviews of the year.
On Monday, Mark Little was all over Barack Obama. “What fascinates me is not necessarily the detailed conflicts that he might have to address but the sort of existential shift that he represents.” Oh boy.
“You can’t address Iran without addressing your relationship to Russia, you can’t address Russia without Nato expansion being addressed, Nato expansion also involves energy, you can’t address energy without. . .” We get it.
American author Michael Signer said eight years of ideological US foreign policy didn’t work. “What will work is what will make warring countries get closer to peace and what will make developing countries get closer to prosperity, and what will make tenuous bilateral and multilateral relationships get closer to stability. . .”
Tenuous, bilateral and multilateral? Oh my. Little then mused on “connectedness, everything is connected”.
But the best was yet to come. “And that brings me to the final point,” Little added, sounding like he was in a presidential debate. “Obama also knows that to have foreign policy change he has to bring his own people along and that for me is the difficult, uncertain part of this whole process.”
Richard Downes asked, “By his own people you mean the American people?” That could be the “shift” he was talking about.
There was a warm heart at the core of Soshin’s Story (Newstalk 106-108, Sunday). Maura “Soshin” O’Halloran trained as a Zen Monk in Japan for three years but in 1982, aged 27, was killed in a bus crash in Thailand as she travelled to Ireland where she wanted to start a Zen centre. Her late mother Ruth was one of the few voices to humanise Maura. Laughing, she said her daughter started out wanting to be an actuary.
A statue dedicated to Maura stands in the monastery, where she is known as having been an enlightened lady. She would walk the streets with a bowl and a bell with cloth wrapped around the handle, so her hands wouldn’t freeze. “When the snow melts and refreezes it’s like walking barefoot on crushed ice,” Maura wrote to her family. A collection of her letters and writing, Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, was published posthumously in 1994.
Maud Hand’s documentary gilded Maura’s memory even further as filmmakers and musicians who were in awe of the book’s “inspiration” and “gift”, and spoke of their desire to share it. That is, turn it into a song or film.
Alan Gilsenan said, “I suspect she would have been appalled by the sort of greed and avarice that we see around us.” He conceded that Maura would have been less judgemental. But there seems to be a desire for prophets or leaders.
An equally reverential Sally-Ann O’Reilly was consumed by a screenplay about Maura for seven years, having read Maura’s book of letters. “I don’t know where the seven years went to, you get lost, you get lost in your passion,” she said. Although she said that it was brought to the attention of Jane Campion, she added tactfully: “I never got to see the project on the screen.”
Luka Bloom and Colm O’Snodaigh were moved to make music. “We have to go back to before the madness of money took over,” O’Snodaigh said.
Maura’s memory had “sparked a tune” on a visit to Japan, the last part of which he wrote on the Blaskets. Where else?
“She could have become the President of Ireland. She could have become a 20th Century Brigid,” Bloom suggested. Yikes. That would make the humblest of Buddhist monks blush.
There was more of the same from our current President, Mary McAleese, who thanked “the legendary” Joe Duffy at the end of Tuesday’s Presidential lecture, The Ireland of Tomorrow (Radio One, Wed, Thur, Fri) recorded at Áras an Uachtaráin. Joe genuflected at the President, she genuflected back and the reverberations were felt in China, as Mark Little might say.
The lectures were delivered by Martin O’Neill, a friend of the president who candidly recalled his difficulties with the GAA as a young soccer player; Louise Richardson, a political scientist who spoke about Ireland’s role in the world, and Pádraig Ó Céidigh, managing director of Aer Arann, whose Friday lecture was entitled “Ireland: Economy Or Society?”
Is it terribly unenlightened or shallow to say it would be nice to have both?
McAleese, never one to use five words when 500 will do, asked, “What’s going to be the character and identity of tomorrow’s Ireland? What kind of community experience and values, and spirit do we want to build for the future?”
These are big philosophical questions even for our President. We weren’t going to answer them, even with gurus like Duffy hovering over the proceedings. Best to start now by recycling our wrapping paper.
qfottrell@irishtimes.com