Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Northern Irish former community worker and academic, kidnapped in Beirut and held hostage for over four years.
On the island
Eight records
The first one's uh a piece by James Galway, a very well-known Belfast man. And I've chosen that because I I remembered when when I was first taken by these men and locked up on my own for a long period. At the desperate time, uh in those periods of darkness in a very tiny, filthy cell, the main sort of contorts. We live in a a heightened reality and I remember back to th having these sort of half awake hallucinations which always for some reason. It was always birds in it.
It's written by a composer called Turlow or Caroline. It's played by the Chieftains, who I suppose now are the the classicists of Irish traditional music. I always did like traditional music. And this piece particularly. Marx, I suppose. a kind of deepening of of my interest in my own cultural background.
Sonny Boy Williamson and The Animals
I can remember at one time walking up and down on the end of my chin. Singing one of the songs from the animals, the three or four or five lines that I remember. Babel play um musical instrument. But I love the harmonica. And I always t told myself I'm gonna play that harmonica like Sonny Boy Williams.
I was working in Brussels when I first heard this L P. Takes me back to that first, I suppose. Mature or adult. love that I have for someone else.
Which makes mention. of Lebanon. Paul Brady's Career. And and ultimately what what he's doing now is a fine testament to taking hold of the talents that are in yourself uh and going it on your own.
Dweller on the ThresholdFavourite
I l love his music, it takes me back to the best of of my art lessons. Can I choose? dweller on the threshold, because even in those moments, in the dark, An aloom. when things were happening. To the mind and merry to the soul. One felt like a kind of dweller on the threshold of something.
The Playboy of the Western World
I chose the soundtrack because it's by Shawn O'Reda, who for me stands as the second great composer in the Irish canon. the the piece of music. It sort of presents us this place wherein lie the west of Ireland, with a tumour. It's tragedy. It's with its melodrama. And the music itself exactly captures the type and the quality of life that was lived in this island, in this part of the island, so many years ago.
Ceol an Aifrinn (The Irish Mass)
The Choir of St. Mary's Church, Cooley, County Cork
It's a mass and I'm not religious. It was one of those that that came back to me through that air vent.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:20How are you doing so far [with your plans to visit all the countries, drink all that drink, and make love to all the women]?
It's been the most unfortunate thing I ever said in my life. Because the consequence of making that statement has been that any time I would like to ask a woman out for dinner or to go to the theatre or something. They become very apprehensive about seeing with a man who's going to make love to all the women in the world. So it's mere my social life. extremely complicated and extremely difficult to pursue.
Presenter asks
8:33Why Beirut, of all the universities in the world that you might have chosen?
I saw myself as going for a year, perhaps two. I had a rough plan in my head then to go and spend some time in In Thailand. Maybe I just felt myself getting old and a time for change.
Presenter asks
12:21How stubborn were you with the people who held you, and did you argue with them?
Hm, yes, uh I don't cease to be a human being because they put chains on my hand, put a blindfold on me. Leave me naked in a corner. Yes, I did. Because I think it's desperately dangerous for for people to repress but they're hurt. Or the frustration.
The keepsakes
The book
W. B. Yeats
Between W. B. Yates and Turlow Carolyn's book, I would find it very hard to choose, I would accept gratefully any one of those.
The luxury
The one thing I did crave … it was a pencil. … I just wanted to fill those walls … And just a pencil can take you so far away from that place.
Presenter asks
16:40Did you remember things you'd forgotten you ever knew [during the times you were alone and blindfolded]?
He'll be sitting. thinking about something, looking at the wall and suddenly, from nowhere something we just burst open. And the mind. Of an incident. or a memory, or a person. Or something fair. Which was so incredible. How did it get there? And or was he more incredulous about it was the profound level at which you experienced that incident. Or that memory came so clear and such finite detail. You seem to understand one seem to understand. Much, much better. Much deeper. Than they have. When when the event happened.
Presenter asks
25:42Is there any way in which you can put that power [of the respect and adulation of people] to some kind of good and positive effect?
They took me away and they locked me up and it was such a shock. And then they let me go and I'm a public fighter or something, and that's even more shocking and frightening. Soon many people would in the most affectionate way will stop you in the street, shake hands and say welcome home. And then fail. talk about something I said and how high moves they were and how important it was for them or how important it was for so many people and that ki kinda frightens me, because I am not I know a saint.
“Singing was a kind of way of not only holding on to one's own sanity, and sometimes occasionally driving John McCarthy, even more insane, as he tried to listen to my very unmelodic uh singing.”
“I had an experience which very few of us will ever be fortunate or unfortunate to have. and in a strange way I kind of got more out of that experience then. Then perhaps I would have if I just stayed there for a year or two years teaching it. And moved on.”
“I firmly believe there is always an end. Uh uh and the beginning. Maybe there's a purpose in all things.”