A Year Ago

The first signs of Fall, be they a cool sunset or that first morning breeze in late August, invariably bring about a most melodramatic mood in me.  It is one of great melancholy mixed with a nearly erotic sense of nostalgia.  Memories flood and overwhelm my person at once, causing extreme shifts of emotion.  

In this place the common becomes magic

 

Looking out the window that first time, I felt numbed.  The green pastures sectioned off by ancient walls were endless.  The other worldliness of Ireland's mist only further embellished the surreal nature of leaving my home in America to experience another land, one with magnetic magical currents and egregores thousands of years old.  

Arriving in Shannon airport I felt the comfort of a kindred spirit and a relaxed, human and nonjudgmental reception. The progression through several flights of empty stairs felt a bit like wandering through an industrial or corporate building's stairways on the weekend.  My gentle encounter with Customs was a truly foreign experience for me.  After securing a ticket from the machine with instructions in Gaelic, I walked outside.  It was raining with a chill in the air that was not yet present stateside in September.  Once the bus moved, I was mesmerized…frozen as I took in Ireland's Western country side in between towns marked by statues of Christ the King and Mother Mary.  A sense of ownership overcame me as I gazed across the cow spattered emerald pastures.  So much of my own identity was affirmed in this egregore of my ancestors.  

When I first touched down on the soil of Ireland, I was touched in a way that language fails me as a vehicle by which to articulate.  The weather of Connemara soothed me.  I found the mists comforting.  Unlike the low pressure systems in America which induced a lethargic sensation, the weather in Connemara energized me.  I could feel the streams beneath the ground.  I felt in tune with the flow of these vessels.  I have since come to realize just how important it is to know from whence I came.  My own eccentricities and ways always worked to make me aware of just how different I was from most of those around me, and so many of these traits were validated by what I came to observe in my Father and in my paternal family as a whole.

It was a year ago that my Father Thomas Lyden (O'Leydane) left for the ultimate separation, having completed his terrestrial journey, swallowed by all this beauty.  The Holy Paraclete descended to comfort those of us left behind.  

Tom Lyden, Falkeeragh 1974

Only days out of the hospital, having suffered what the Tufts Hospital Neurologist described as an irrecoverable, Hiramic blow in a terrible accident in New Jersey, I found myself throbbing with intracranial hemorrhage, ad orientem in St Joseph's Cathedral with my youngest sister, my dear Aunties, my Uncle and several hundred family members and friends of my Father's.  Stepping outside, I felt the cold wind pierce my head wound.  Amidst the downpour of the discomfort and disorientation of my concussion, I processed around Clifden town with my Father's casket, only to behold a phenomenon that the onlookers were sure was Thomas himself.  One of the neighbor's rams had gotten loose and run down into town (a fitting metaphor in itself) from the familial village of Falkeeragh just in time to step out in front of the procession carrying the coffin from the sidewalk by Des Moran's Butcher shop.

The ground was wet and sloped.  The jagged ruts and edges of ancient tomb stones twisted my stance.  The freshly severed veins in my forehead throbbed as the weight of my Father bore down upon my shoulder.  I was unnerved at my own instability.  I grabbed a shovel from one of my cousins and began to dig fervently from the mound to bury my Father until Mary Carey pulled me back, as I very nearly joined him in the grave. The dirt was wet and full of stones making it deceptively heavy.  My head was spinning as the misty rain showered down upon us.  The local priest led us in the rosary.  I lost myself in its magic.  The women began singing.  Or, were they keening?  I prayed the Sacramentary and tossed my rose.  

"I was a child full of intelligence, I received from god a good soul, and becoming better,

more and more, I came then in a pure body." (Wisdom, VII, 19,20.)

Thinking of you, Dad.

~ David

The Sky Road, Clifden

A Recap on the Memorial Salon for Thomas Lyden (O'Leydane)

Clifden Arts Festival 

Commemorative Salon

Thomas Lyden

Bard Poet of Falkeeragh, Sky Road & the North Beach, Inishbofin

Date:  Wednesday 21 September 2016

Writers, Artists and Musicians:

Carla Hunter Southwick

Olwen Fouéré

Mary O'Malley

Glen Hansard

John Dunne

Valerie Joyce

Carol-Ann Joyce

Noel King

John Durning

Ralph Lavelle

Gavin Lavelle

Deborah Watkins

Eoin Conneely

Sarah O’Toole

David Sheihan Hunter Lindez (Lyden)

Special Invited Guest:  

Valerie Stern

VIP Guests (Family)

John & Shirley Lyden

Joanne Lyden + Martin Morrissey & Ryan Lyden

Gabrielle & Felcia Munch

Carmel Lyden

Katie Lyden

Becca Henehan (Lily Alice, Jamie)

Joanne Mccloskey & Anna Mccloskey

John & Maureen King

Alice King

Maureen Lyden

Ann Prendergast

s

Alice O'Halloran

Cousin Martin (Sky Rd)

Aidan O'Halloran & family

Art Installation:

paintings by Thomas's son David Sheihan

photos by Thomas's sister, Carmel Lyden

Abject Art Installation- taking form in non-historically art material - old rickety heirloom chair, roses, any artifacts recovered from homestead (Fetishistic use of stone from abbey or castle or healing stream)

Agenda:

• MC’d by David Sheihan Hunter Lindez (Lyden)
• Mary O’Malley will launch the book

• Olwen Fourré
• video of Martin Finke performance
• video of Carla Hunter Southwick
• Digital Presentation by Thomas' son
• readings from family and friends

Mrs. Whelan & the poet Mary O'Malley

David Sheihan & Aidan O'Halloran, President of the Connacht Rugby Team

lights, sound and digital connection systems check

These lovely ladies worked the front door all evening & all proceeds went to Saint Francis Hospice in Dublin

The Irish poet Tony Curtis saying a tribute to the late poet Thomas Lyden

Irish media covering the event

Actor, Playwright & Director Sarah O'Toole

Salmon Poetry Publishers

The photographer, Carmel Lyden

David Sheihan with the actress Olwen Fourré

The poet Mary O'Malley reads her tribute to Tom

Brendan Flynn introducing Mary O'Malley

Grainne O'Malley of Connemara Community Radio with Thomas Lyden's son, David

Dancing on Top of a Broomstick by Thomas Lyden

Thomas Lyden's Magnum Opus is finally out.  You can order your copy online now at Salmon Poetry.

The poet Mary O'Malley's Tribute to the late poet Thomas Lyden

“These are the poems of a lover, and a liver. They rock with a Dylanesque profusion of images, and at their finest are reminiscent of the delicate, surreal poems of Lorca. With their weapons and witches they reach for the stars. Tom Lyden (O'Leydane/Lugh) was a troubadour and a seeker, after poetry and after #truth. His was the road less taken and these are the songs of that journey.” ~ Mary O’Malley

Lughnasa - The Bardic Return and Piercing the Veil in Connemara: Remembering Thomas Lyden

Thomas Lyden age 6 at the O'Halloran family homestead on the North Beach, Inishbofin

There's a point on the road from Galway City to Clifden where one officially comes into another realm called Connemara. It's marked by the first mountain range, and the locals have long referred to it as 'the veil'. I recall the first time I pierced the veil. It brought with it a sense of realization and connection that was not dissimilar to the formulaic scenes that have become so familiar in motion pictures when a character suffering from amnesia has his or her memory and identity restored. The onslaught of imagery and emotion is abrupt. I relived these feelings as I raced along in the early morning hours. The sun was just starting to rise as we pierced the veil. I rolled down my window to take in the salty, crisp air and to smell the turf.

piercing the veil

Way across the country where the hillside mountain glide

We buried my Father in the Streamstown cemetery looking Eastwards out to the islands sitting in the sea across the bay. As I stood there trying to comprehend the moment, I was reminded of a few lines he wrote 'in another time'...'in another place' in a poem titled
"A Paean to Clifden and the Sky Road"

Streamstown

"On the beach at Eyrephort the waves feel like they're pounding me into some kind of acceptance and forgiveness towards life. The water on the edge of the Atlantic pulls me to the hub of living and taunting me not to stay forever at the rim. 
 In the distance a farmer like a phantom mends a fence. In this place the common becomes magic. 
 On a hill I crouch into the fetal position and want to be swallowed by all this beauty. A dog howl from an island bringing me back to the here and now. 
 A heavy yearning evolves in me slowly as I meet so many people who stand so well on this ground. A place where egos don't paw the ground in some kind of pagan prance. 
 This land blesses us with its secrecy and gives itself slowly. I want to keep this sweetness within me forever and laud its power."

Thomas Lyden (29, Sept. 1949 - 8, Dec. 2015) was man whose presence was so much his own, it was said he brought his own weather system with him. Things changed when he entered a room, twisted a stone on the path or cast his laughter against the walls of the room. The Bard of Falkeeragh was the son of a midwife (known locally as a healer in leechcraft) and a stoic landowner (Errenagh) in a devout Roman Catholic household in the Wild West of Connemara in the Republic of Ireland. His charming eccentricity combined with his radiating intelligence to give him a certain power over his environment.

My Father's health slipped drastically into the ethers soon after our conversation in late November 2015. He was on his high-flyin' cloud, but he was lucid in his final weeks.  He answered questions that had burdened me for years, and let me know what he wanted me to do for him once he was wrapped up in his magic shroud as ecstasy found him. I played "Foreign Window" for him as he marveled at photos of his granddaughter Clarissa and his grandson, Adonijah. "They both take so much after my Mother's people from Bofin."  

He talked of his record collection in the condo in Dublin (every conversation eventually led to music) and wanted to see photos of my car to compare it alongside his BMW. I brought him car magazines and music magazines along with three daily papers every time I visited.  We joked about my genetic propensity for carrying around papers, books and notes under my arm just as he did.  He talked about having a Father and Son retreat back on his Mother's ancestral isle of Inishbofin, the family homestead being central to the entire mythos of this mystical island of the witch mounting a white cow in the mist.   He talked of how I should build a new place on our land there, and we could go there just to write and get our art out of us and onto a canvas.  He was adamant that I should accompany him to the Christmas Eve celebration on Grafton Street in Dublin with his friend Glen Hansard and Bono.  He would launch "the book then", he said.  

Then one Saturday, I was unable to reach him. He told me he would be having chemo. Monday morning, I called and found that he slipped and would likely pass soon. "He's talking with the angels" the voice said. In another time, in another place. He passed later on that evening in the presence of his little sister. He'd never make it to that busking session on Grafton Street, but at least he knew that his book, his Magnum Opus in fact, would indeed be coming out in the new year.

In 1932, Right Rev. Sir J. I. Wedgwood wrote that:

"It is not death, or the manner in which the death is brought about, that weighs most; it is the living of a life. For a deeply sensitive man of our own class and standing, life is often made difficult by the commonness, the coarseness, the vulgarity of much that confronts us.  A sensitive man suffers under unpleasant influences playing upon him.  But a great love for humanity, the keeping aflame within ourselves of great compassion for the suffering of others, and a strong determination to help and be an example of strength and radiant joy, all that tends to lessen difficulties caused by sensitivity and great refinement of body and temperament."

The locals called my Father the “Magic Bog Man”. He called me “Magic”.  I'm again reminded of the lyrics from one of his favorite Van Morrison albums:  "Wrapped up in your magic shroud as ecstasy surrounds you."  Dad, this time it's found you. ~ David Sheihan

saw you from a foreign window You were trying to find your way back home You were carrying your defects

Thus the spell was broken: the mist lifted, and they found themselves on the shingle between the sea and a lough on the north beach — "That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full."

An Haicléara Mánas [Manus the hackler] A Tale of the Irish Tradesmen on the West Coast

"There'll be no one at the party but tradespeople."  

Connemara Community Radio's program on the An Haicléara Mánas [Manus the hackler], a Gaelic manuscript detailing the Connemara folklore tale of a Journeyman's marriage in Errislanen, as recorded by Patrick Lyden (O'Leydane) of the village of Falkeeragh, Clifden in County Galway, Republic of Ireland.  This manuscript is singular for a number of linguistic and historical reasons related to its inclusion of South and Mid-Connaught Irish and its phonetic spelling as well as it having been written or recorded during the time when the Irish language had been proscribed by English authorities, thus its inclusion in Irish studies programs in academia.  Furthermore, it gives us a historical record and a social anthropological insight into how the expulsion of Roman Catholic Irish from the trade associations and the eventual dissolution of Irish guilds.   Thomas Lyden's commentary is included throughout the program and can be heard early on at the 0:29 second mark.

family fields in the scenic village of Falkeeragh