Special Happy St. Patricks Day shout-out to my first step-mother, Brenda Joyce Liebowitz (nee Seale). She introduced Ireland to our East Los Angeles apartment when I was ten. Her father, my grandpa Sam, enchanted me with that fiddle he loved to play for us in his country living room. Entertained me so strongly that I eventually played the heck out of that first violin he gave me. Some Dublin, Ireland memory highlights: 1) Best Pakistani food I ever ate was with Diane and my father in Dublin 2) Chowed down Indian food with the novelist Roddy Doyle, whod set up a splendid reading for me at his Fighting Words space 3) Delighted to French food and the Abbey theater with the gracious Irish actress, and sublime painter, Una Kavanagh. 4) And then there is that time when Diane jokingly asked if we might stalk Gabriel Byrne who walked past us near St. Stephens Green. Jonathan Swift taught me about smart satire when I was 13, but it was the novel Ulysses by my boy James Joyce that blew my mind in prison, and helped me see I could be subversive without ever picking up a gun again. I loved the nearness to Ireland I felt for a time in my Mexican Irish home. Those years created the occasion for me to feel half-Irish. (Also the reason I had solid Irish friends in prison when I served time outside of Boston.) Here is some nearness to Ireland for you, my friends, a clip from The Commitments, Roddys first novel adapted for the screen.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:48:23 +0000
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