The Monthly Salon: March
Come and have your say
It’s Easter weekend in the West, though not for us Orthodox people in the West, who have to wait until May for our Paschal feast. But Easter has brought us cold sun and beautiful frost after weeks of what has seemed like endless rain. And the clocks are about to change. All of this taken together means the turning of the year. If we’re lucky, we might even get a summer. You never quite know around these parts.
The news here this week is that I have just delivered the first draft of my Machine book to the publisher, and am awaiting the verdict. In the meantime, I can begin to think of future essays I want to begin for the Abbey, and the general direction of things here. Watch this space.
If you’d like to listen to something in the meantime, I have just been interviewed for the Honestly podcast, which is run by Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press. It turns out that Bari is a longtime reader, and she used the conversation to try and paint a picture of my work and journey. You can listen to it here.
I enjoyed the conversation, but I always feel disappointed in myself when I come away from these things. I usually feel I have failed to get across what I actually think. It’s hard to talk about your life’s work in an hour and a bit - it would be hard enough to talk about it in a 500 page autobiography - and afterwards I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could have answered most of the questions better, and all the things I should have said instead. This is why I am a writer, not a broadcaster. Still, I hope that some people might get something from it. If I was satisfied with my work, I suppose it would be time to retire.
I plan to spend most of my Easter weekend working on the land. It’s the most reliable way I’ve found to get me out of my head. I hope you enjoy yours. In the meantime, as ever - the floor here belongs to you. Talk about anything you’d like.
I commend Russell Brand’s commentary on Ireland Votes No on both referendums to change the 1937 Irish constitution. A real gut punch to the nation’s elite chattering class.
Brand responds to a brilliant analysis published in Spiked, including this seasonally apropos gem:
“Even Easter 1916 is an embarrassment to a new elite that prefers to pool its sovereignty in the EU rather than stand up for the territorial sanctity of the republic.
That young men and women died in order that Ireland might govern itself is mortifying to these knowledge-industry elites who prefer to be governed from Brussels…they distance themselves even from the ideals of Irish independence…
To the rest of us, though, …it makes sense. People want to feel connected to history, to place, to their own part in the story of their community. The elite’s suggestion that we disavow all of this is ultimately a demand that we disavow ourselves.”
I thought it was a great interview. And as for Bari, if you listened to her in depth coverage of the war, you would hear her interviews of Palestinians as well as Israelis. She does really try to respect both sides of an argument. She is not a Christian and yet treated Paul with respect which says a lot in this day and age.