I am standing in my friends’ living room in my pajamas. Back in Vancouver, my second home, for the first time since January 2020, I am here for a theatre residency. I need to quickly respond to an Instagram message before going to bed. Deliriously tired, my eyes widen as I learn of Sinéad O'Connor’s passing. Post after commemorating post, tears are on my cheeks before I can take a breath, the disorientation of loss, a peach pit in my throat, slowly sinking to my stomach. I sit on the couch where I’ll sleep, and scroll news headlines. I stop myself, put in my earphones and listen to Mandinka. I have a hard time falling asleep.
At ten, I bought Universal Mother at HMV with birthday money. That night, I ran my nail along the cellophane, peeled it. Pressing my ear to the speaker of my tinny boombox, Germaine was the first track. It’s a clip of Greer speaking, and ends with, “The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity, yet I think it’s women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.”
I was fifteen when I learned Black Boys on Mopeds, the first song I could play on guitar. I spent hours singing it over and over in my basement bedroom, fingertips aching, mimicking O’Connor’s cadence and phrasing. Listening to the song on my Discman, and then trying to get it exactly right. In this emulation, I located a shimmer of truth in my voice, in the break between lower and upper register: a whale breach.
These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
Remember what I told you
If you were of the world they would love you1
The singular vulnerability in O’Connor’s songwriting and voice planted a seed2 of my becoming. Before now, I wouldn’t have charted it to her. But the grief I’ve felt since Wednesday reminds me that she is to thank; hers are the fingers that nestled that fire in, covered it with soil. I balk at how it’s too often after death that revolutionary artists are recognized for their profound impact, and yet here I am, doing exactly that. I had barely listened to O’Connor in the last decade. I’ve been guzzling her songs these last days, finding new enchantment in old companions.
Unafraid to be ugly, messy, O’Connor’s striking blend of fragility and strength underpinned each album. Women are not allowed to be messy, ugly, especially in the public eye. When they are, they are ostracized. She paid a devastating price, and, all the while, inspired a generation to be less afraid of being unpalatable. To rally and roar. Marrying protest and revelation, grief and praise in a single line, O’Connor did not hide behind poetics. She wrote straightforwardly, from the depths, a channel for the secular, the spiritual, and the gut-wrenching.
All of the lonely people
Where do they all come from?3
As I’ve revisited her discography, blaring Dancing Lessons and Troy, introducing my daughter to Hold Back The Night (I dare you not to goosebump at the 1:12 mark) I’m surprised to find that I know many of the words, singing along to whole verses. I feel the tunes in my muscles and beats in my bones. These songs live in, on, and with me.
I don't want to be no man's woman
I've other work I want to get done
I haven't traveled this far to become
No man's woman
No man's woman4
In 2005 I had the great fortune of seeing O’Connor live at the Kool Haus. I was nineteen, and my older sister, Layah, and I lined up in the cold December night. I felt at home in the crowd of misfit beauties, though I wasn't sure if I was one. O’Connor was touring her reggae album Throw Down Your Arms. “It was recorded at the Marley's Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, and produced by Sly & Robbie, one of the five or 10 most smoking rhythms sections ever, in or out of reggae… Her voice is the same as always, that ringing, lilting Irish clarity.”5 Standing in the packed room, I recall wondering why she wasn’t playing in a bigger venue. Being in her presence, hearing her voice live left me awe-struck and aching to create. When she left the stage I came-to from a trance, dropped back into my boots, changed.
Thank you Sinéad, for sharing your unflinching truth with us. I honour your bravery, your breaking, and how you boldly shared your grief, and your longing for a better world.
June’s five things
Celebrating: Queen Sinéad with a playlist of favourites.
Making: After weeks of feeling uninspired in the kitchen, I’m switching it up with meals from I Dream Of Dinner by Ali Slagle. The first two I’ve made (Olive Oil-Braised Chickpeas and Farro Carbonara) are both winners.
Learning: from Naomi Jackson on Code Switch.
Listening: to Katie Tupper’s EP. I can’t get enough.
Reading: How to Make Art at the End of the World by Natalie Loveless.
Thank you for reading! Nothing Compares 2 U (but really, though). Please consider sharing five things with someone you love (or who loves Sinéad). If you share a screenshot on Instagram, don’t forget to tag me @sasharsw.
Lyrics from Black Boys on Mopeds by Sinéad O’Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990).
O’Connor loved the quote, "They buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds." It was written by poet Dinos Christianopoulos.
Lyrics from Famine by Sinéad O’Connor, Universal Mother (1994).
Lyrics from No Man’s Woman by Sinéad O’Connor, Faith and Courage (2000).
Like many Catholics recovering from the abuse of dogmatic tyranny, Sinead turned her trauma into art. Your offering shows how it was certainly sustenance for many souls. And encourages us all to do the same, never knowing on what soil the seeds will fall.