[ Irish KC ]
Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

I like groups. At school in Dublin the Brothers took us to see Lord of The Flies to show us that man was not meant to live alone; he was meant to live on a remote island with a group of war-painted boys and a large seashell.

So I like groups as much as the next man. And the next man. And the next woman. And the woman after that. In fact we are all members of a group that likes groups as much as the next group.

But without individuality we are all out in front of our homes bouncing balls in synchronized courtship of our future Stepford wives. Without that variety we become mobs of routine lapping up hype.

So it’s no surprise that I struggle greatly with Hallmark and the holiday merchandising industry. And for me, the usurpation of tradition that is the greeting card industry puts me in mind of St Patrick’s Day in America. And vice versa.

-My father died last week
-That’s terrible. I’m sorry for your troubles. What age was he?
-84, and the thing that bothers me the most is that I never told him I loved him
-Not to worry, throughout his life you probably gave him in the region of two hundred mass-produced cards with a pretty picture on the front of somewhere he’s never been, taken by someone he’s never met, and a pre-printed message on the inside saying that you, or a complete stranger eighteen months earlier at a computer in a card company, loved him.

Hallmark, telling your loved ones you love them, so you don’t have to

Being an artist, I’m a hoarder. I have every card I’ve ever been given, even the nasty ones with things taped inside of them. Some I treasure because you gave me the time it took you to write what you wrote, and the time to choose the card. So the odd card is really nice. But why is the expression of sentiment, that cards facilitate, so formulaic, so narrowly defined in manner and timing?

Why do we love homemade cards from kids? Because they’re honest and they’re personal, without the need for the middlemen or brokers of sentiment such as shops and card companies. We put kids’ cards on our fridges and walls. Forever sometimes. We put their parents’ cards in boxes. With lids. If not the bin.

But why don’t grown-ups make home-made cards? Oh that’s easy for you to say, you’re an artist. But a post-it note with your own writing saying your own words shouldn’t be too difficult, and is worth far more than some rhyming mass-printed fancy script that I never read.

Can you not even draw a stick figure, indicate it’s you, and write the words I love you and I want to be your gardener on a blank card and then fold it over? But that’s so tacky Why, because it doesn’t cost 1.78 in some currency or other? When did personal become tacky, to be trumped by consumerism?

-I think she really likes me
-Why, did she say she really likes you?
-Well no, but she gave me a card from the Floppy Sandals Laughter range, and they’re not cheap, you know. And they’re a square design.
-No. Square cards mean she thinks you have poor taste; panoramas mean she really likes you
-But she gave it to me on I-Really-Like-You-Day

It’s the narrowness that makes no sense to me. The rules in social situations not just existing, which is bad enough, but being so limited and adhered to.

Mostly on Dublin’s roads, but sometimes on grass, I played football (soccer) almost every day for the first umpteen years of my life. Yet, like everyone else I knew, I was a teenager before I ever kicked what we called ‘a leather’ - a real actual football. Tennis balls, rubber balls, plastic balls, balloons, anything round was used before a leather.

Here in America I’ve witnessed kids under five being given full-size leather ’soccer balls’ because they are playing soccer. They cannot play football with any other round object because that does not meet the narrow perception of what soccer is, even if they can barely kick a leather.

And what does this have to do with Saint Patrick’s Day in the US? Because tradition has been surrendered to the hype and merchandising of the singular view. This is the way, the one way, and this is the time. Bounce.

Like people have to give Thank You cards - even for gifts that were Thank Yous - because human contact doesn’t count.

Like you give a card expressing love to your loved one on February 14 because you couldn’t possibly do it randomly on one of the other three hundred and sixty-odd days of the year; nor express that same love by digging up the words I Love You in your front garden, because love must be expressed by greeting card and not by shovel.

Like Olé Olé is seen in America as the only possible song to cheer the Irish national football team, with complete ignorance of hundreds of other options including my favourite, Rambo is a Provo (Rambo hasn’t gone away you know) or even a one-dimensional update to The Fields of Athenry

Like Danny Boy being the Irish song regardless of its English origins, or the existence of millions of actual Irish songs, including those by the Divine Comedy.

Like stout being the only Irish beer, as if porter never existed, and ales weren’t brewed first. And like Guinness being the only Irish stout, as if Cork really was independent.

Like beef being something you cannot put in Irish stew regardless of the dish’s origins like all peasant dishes, as being one of subsistence.

Like the shamrock being the only symbol that can convey Irishness despite 800 years of killing lots of English people so another symbol could be chosen as the official one.

And like Corned Beef & Cabbage being the Irish meal as if there weren’t a whole host of other vegetables still boiling in Ireland since 1973 and lowered to simmer in 1979. Not to mention Corned Beef & Cabbage never existing in Ireland in the first place. Even if it did originate as a substitute for the unobtainable bacon, did the Wright Brothers then popularize flight just so I could eat American foods in Ireland?

But most of all, just like everybody sends the same cards to the same people on the same days for the same reason, with no thought to vary any of those factors, everybody drinks on St Patrick’s Day. Somewhere somebody said the way to mark this day is to drink, not play sports, or go shopping, or walk in the woods, or hunt small aggressive birds; so drinking is the number one way the day is marked. Bounce, bounce, bounce.

It is quite some time since pubs back in Ireland were closed on St Patrick’s Day, so hordes of people in Ireland now too also get slaughtered on the day, but they’re mostly the same people who get ossified on dozens of other occasions throughout the year - and it’s as nothing compared to the US. Here, almost an entire population en masse goes on an orgy of drinking. It’s a quite spectacular event on an epic scale, a national frat party in the name of tradition.

This is all the more remarkable because unlike Britain or Ireland, and despite many fabulous negihbourhood bars, the middle of America does not have a pub culture. Going to the pub frequently is frowned upon by many people, and drinkers they - they just do their drinking at home.

Regular pub attendance for conversation on soft seats, while drinking from glasses, is something young people and irresponsible people do. Responsible people drink out of cans on porches and decks. Until a few short years ago the complete reverse was true in Ireland.

After losing my dignity my first two Paddy’s Days in KC, I then remembered that I had never been even close to drunk on a St Patrick’s Day in Ireland. Indeed among all the various ways I would have marked the day there, drink was not included in most of them.

So this coming Saturday I’ll be trying to do something different, like standing outside my house bouncing a ball. And then next week I’ll head out and massacre some brain cells, probably my own.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am and is filed under 1-eolai, Holidays, Ireland & USA: Differences, St Patrick's Day. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.