Seeing Beneath the Surface

Dublin has a population of just below three million people, all of different colour, age, background and personality. During the time of our existence, we form a pool of just a few of those people from different aspects of our lives: from school and from college, from the workplace and from sports teams, from the coffee shop on the corner of South William and Wicklow Street, and from the clubs and bars we frequent every fortnight.

Every so often, a person comes into our lives that is more intriguing than the others. In September 2006, I met one of those people. A man who shall become known as John for the sake of his privacy. John and I did not have an immediate connection, it was one that rather grew and continued to grow further over a period of less than two years.

John was an articulate writer and a visionary. He had an interesting and somewhat mysterious background. I once commented that it would make for an interesting novel, but then, hadn’t I said the same of many of my friend’s lives? He was full of infectious ambition that made my temperature rise and was like a kick in the ass every time I was tempted to slack off.

My relationship with John was different than my relationships with all other friends. It was not necessarily better or worse, it was just entirely alternative. John and I could tell each other almost anything, at least that is how I felt. And then there were the things that we didn’t say: the things that were bubbling just beneath the surface of one of us which the other would then refer to.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was in the process of packing my suitcase for a trip that I would make to Portugal the next day on a visit to a good friend, Laura. My mobile rang…disturbances always pleased me--a visitor, an email, a phone call--anything to make the mundane tasks of everyday life less solitary.

It was John. “Can you talk?”, he queried in his antique Dublin tone. “Yes of course”, I responded. I always found that the activity I was undertaking happened so much faster whilst speaking on the phone, maybe it was the distraction of conversation. I had played a gig the night before to an extremely unsuccessful turnout, more so than normal circumstances even, I was disappointed to admit. “How was the gig?”, John continued, upbeat and genuinely interested as he almost always had been.

I tried to conceal my disappointment, and revealed the facts, such as those who had attended and the songs that had been performed. “You sound very down…”, John remarked, sounding concerned. It was one of those moments. So many people could have heard the facts and moved on to the next topic of conversation, but John was so tuned-in that he became instantly aware that there was something wrong despite the fact that I had not pointed towards the issue.

I was down. It was one slap in the face after another, I had thought. The music industry--I could go on for hours, and I have, much to the listener’s horror--was the kind of industry in which you could spend thousands of euros, hundreds of days and nights, and every drop of energy that your body will allow, all for nothing. It is not guaranteed that you will receive a cent in return, nor a record sale, and you certainly won’t be having that piece of time back.

The gig had been the last straw for me and I was just glad to be getting on a plane the next day. “Maybe this is the break you need”, said John, “to relax and to think about other things and to clear your head”, he added. Part of me agreed, but I had to wonder, were those who succeeded before me and those that would succeed after me in the music business, or in any business for that matter, those that didn’t run scared and disheartened after a poor-charting record or an empty venue gig?

I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know if they were true. I did know, however, that things were made slightly less difficult by those few people in my pool that understood and supported how I was feeling even when I didn’t speak about it. I may not be rich in terms of a career, I thought, but counting my pool of friends, I am a very wealthy man indeed.