Along the way I realised there is a story to be told about where older gay people go, because the gay “community” is largely pub- and club-based, which is really not ideal. I believe there are many older LGBT people who feel excluded and isolated.

In the light of President Mary McAleese’s admirable project to encourage old men to feel more included in Irish society, I think we should begin to put our own shop in order, and follow her example as a community. For example, the Irish gay rugby and soccer teams could follow the GAA’s example and reach out to older gay people specifically.

So I am happy to publish this press release here, and can’t wait to see the final product, as I missed it the first time around.

Critically Acclaimed Show Returns!
Silver Stars
Now Auditioning

“Silver Stars”, an innovative song cycle based on stories from older gay Irish men, is now casting.

Performers with passion required.
There are at least 4 central roles and places in the choir. Seniors and first-time performers are especially welcome.

Open casting session will be held on the following day:
Wednesday July 15th; 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Casting Venue: The Abbey Studio (TEAM Building), 4 Marlborough Place, Dublin 1

The Workshops will take place on Monday the 20th and Tuesday the 21st of July.
Times to be confirmed.

Rehearsals: 3 evenings a week from August the 24th through to September the 26th.
Time; 7.00 to 9.30 pm

Songwriter Sean Millar has been gathering stories of honour, exile, spirit, survival and love from older gay Irish men and transforming them into powerful and evocative songs. Theatre innovators Brokentalkers have created settings for each song.

The original run of the show was part of the spring 2009 Bealtaine festival. The show was a great success, playing to full houses every night. This current production is in association with the Abbey Theatre and the Dublin Theatre Festival.

The show will be performed in the Cube at the Project Arts Centre and will run from Tuesday the 29th of September through to Sunday the 4th of October, 2009.
SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!

Important
If you are interested then let us know!
Pre-register your details by emailing us at brokentalkers@gmail.com

Here’s the little film that I directed. Please click through and rate it if you like it, it’s part of the Dublin Pride Film Shorts Awards, and on Sunday the highest rated gets a gold star or something. All nine films are here.

For more info on how we made the film, please take a look at the film’s blog. Thanks to everyone involved, it was fun. It’s showing in the Galway Film Fleadh on Saturday 11th July, at 10pm in Cinemobile, before the superb Identities.

The accusation that Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an exploitative sex-tourist is a lie. This is the conclusion drawn at the end of a twenty-minute film, The Truth about Kathmandu, which will be shown as part of Féile na Gréine: the Solstice Arts Festival, which runs in Waterville, Co. Kerry from Sunday 21st to Tuesday 23rd June. The film consists of interviews that the poet Paddy Bushe conducted with many of those who played important parts in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu. “What I heard in Kathmandu raises huge questions for both Vinegar Hill Productions and RTÉ”, Bushe says. “The young people to whom I spoke felt extremely angry at being exploited. They were angry, however, not at Ó Searcaigh, but at the way they felt used, abused and exploited by the film. These are the Nepalese young people a joint RTÉ/Vinegar Hill statement dismissed as being peripheral subjects, whose permission was not needed.”

Naryan Pant was the young man who was central to accusations made by Fairytale of Kathmandu. In an interview with Bushe, he makes very specific claims of intimidation, bribery and rehearsed answers in relation to his interview in the Vinegar Hill film. He also says that he contacted the film-maker soon after that interview was done, and requested that the interview should not be used, an interview for which he did not sign a permission form. A student leader says he was offered money to give an interview critical of Ó Searcaigh, an offer he declined. The young man in the advertising poster for the film, still on the film website, expresses his anger at how he was manipulated into something “false”. He signed no permission form, and says he would never give permission to be used in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu became. “Would young Westerners have been treated like this?” asks Bushe at the end of the film.

It was in the context of this filmed material that Cathal Ó Searcaigh agreed to go on the Late Late Show earlier this year. The show’s production team had seen some of the material, and it was to have been background material for the interview. RTÉ management’s subsequent insistence on a pre-recorded interview, with pre-conditions and with an RTÉ lawyer present, caused Ó Searcaigh to withdraw from what, in effect, would have been an appearance censored by RTÉ’s corporate management..

The film will be shown in Tech Amergin, Waterville, Co. Kerry on Monday 22nd June at 2.30 pm. See www.feilenagreine.com for full programme.

Street corners: theatres, boulevards of chic,
hanging around, impressing the chicks, slagging each
other, slagging the chicks,
impressing each other

but why is it in dear old Ireland
men despise attention from other men?
Scowl, grit their teeth, a sneer

In no other country,
“Who are you lookin’ a’?”
Is a threat

Any time I look at a man on a street
my street, inner city dub,
a lad with a swagger, bandy legs and atti-chewed
I catch his eye, and he
automatically – instinctively –
hawks and spits

He hawks and spits.

Tough man. Don’t be looking at me or you’ll get a dig.

“The only honourable thing for us to do” he said, “is to acknowledge that it is our fault. We are sorry. It is our encouragement of the property sector, over the past ten years in particular, that created the catastrophic downturn we now face. Our foolish tax-cutting and abandonment of domestic rates, for populist reasons, has left us without enough income to cover even the bare essentials necessary to keep a civilized Western society functioning. We allowed the banks to gamble with our money to line their own pockets, and they failed in their primary purpose: to keep our money safe.

“We will immediately nationalize all Irish banks. Their sole purpose from now on will be to safeguard our savings and invest in indigenous businesses and education. All banks in Ireland are to become non-profit corporations. We no longer recognise banking to be an industry that requires any component of wild speculation, and with that in mind we are introducing new laws which curtail the services that banks can offer, to savings and loans, and prudential investments in businesses. No more can the hard-earned cash of our people be used to fund anything but the most sensible and careful investments. Any institution that wishes to engage in risky financial market speculation shall have the same status as betting shops and casinos, and shall not be permitted to accept deposits.”

“We are abandoning all mortgage tax relief. The European model is one we will adopt, where most people are happy to rent. Those who suffer because their mortgage relief has been abolished will benefit from a fund to enable owners (of one property only) to re-mortgage over a longer, interest free period. Property owners will be subject to strict regulation, imposing high standards in insulation and tenant protection. It is nonsense that taxpayer’s money should go to further the acquisition of private property. Those individuals or corporations that own more than three properties will be required to offer their tenants the opportunity to part-own their homes. Owning property in Ireland will no longer be the cash cow it used to be, it will come with heavy responsibilities. In particular, a new, fast-track transparent system of fair rent review will be introduced, where property owners will have to defend the rents they are charging and demonstrate how they are spending the rental income on the properties.”

“Social housing that is occupied by tenants whose earnings are above the average wage will be required to obtain a mortgage, partial or full, on their home. The money raised from these purchases will be invested in new housing for those in need.”

“We have decided to embark on a radical 5-year plan to invest in our children’s welfare, and to protect the vulnerable in our society. Those who are working and in good health will have to tighten our belts and pay for this. We envisage that, in five years, the world recession will be over, and by that time, we will have a new generation ready to enter the workplace who are well-educated and well-resourced, and ready to take on the challenges of ensuring that Ireland is self-sufficient and content with itself in the 21st Century”

“We are abolishing the notion of unemployment benefit. Those who do not work will, like everyone else, receive a minimum income that is not subject to tax. They will be expected to take part in a National Community Service programme to build schools, community centres, green power plants, and essential infrastructure projects, for the next five years. Those who wish to attend third-level education during this recession will benefit from interest-free loans from the banks. We firmly believe that the most effective way of riding out a recession is in college or apprenticeship. When our crisis is over, the government may choose to reinstate more traditional social welfare payment, but until that time, only those who are infirm or disabled or full-time carers will be exempt from the requirement to take part. No longer will unemployment be a grim sentence to months or years of idleness and despair. Instead, it will be a challenge, with the possibility of doing something valuable and meaningful for our society.”

“National Community Service will be operated on a local level. The skills in a particular community will be assessed and evaluated, and managers of these schemes will be chosen by local suffrage. Credit Unions may serve as a model for such projects. All such NCS schemes will devote a proportion of their talent and income into a national pool, which will be redistributed to poorer areas. These NCS schemes will prioritise education and healthcare above all others, as well as domestic insulation schemes and other sustainable development projects. Teachers will have classroom assistants drawn from this pool, and nurses will have care assistants, administrative help, and extra cleaners too. Elderly people in the local area will be assigned care-workers. Creches will be assigned extra staff. Pre-school parenting and support groups will be established for all. Everyone will receive the appropriate training. In particular this will free teachers and nurses to be more effective and productive in their work. Mentoring and apprenticeship schemes for adolescents will be sponsored, encouraging a transfer of skills and crafts from one generation to the next. Those who are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol will be offered counselling and support to enable them to participate in the NCS schemes. We recognize that neglecting them results in a disproportionate level of social exclusion and crime in our society.”

“As everyone knows, the black economy thrives during a recession. Any earnings above the minimum income will be taxed fairly, so as not to create a poverty trap. We will encourage the development of local bartering schemes or LETS, to be administered by each NCS council, in association with local Credit Unions and/or Post Offices. Subject to a reasonable upper limit, all benefit-in-kind generated by someone participating in such a scheme will not be taxed. This is to encourage a culture of vibrant local enterprise, in particular the areas of adult education, horticulture, agriculture, childcare, the arts, and care assistance for the elderly. If an individual does well out of such a scheme, they will be encouraged through low-interest loans to become one of the many SMEs that this country will need to thrive in the future.”

“All tax loopholes for the wealthy are to be abolished, without exception. Those who are very wealthy will have to accept that for five years they are going to carry a substantial tax burden.”

“We are imposing a severe carbon tax in urban areas, and the money raised from this tax will go towards the doubling of local transport services. In rural areas, carbon tax will be structured to encourage the acquisition of greener vehicles.”

“The only way we will survive this emergency is if we all pull together and sacrifice something, in the knowledge that Ireland in ten years’ time will be the richer for it, and be proud of what she has achieved. To this end, all donations to local NCS schemes will be subject to tax relief. This money is to be dedicated specifically to pay for the services of state-employed professional planners, accountants, architects, agriculturalists, educationalists, business people, doctors and social workers, who will guide each local area’s projects and provide appropriate training, in accordance with this government’s intentions. These professionals will take one day per week of unpaid leave to enable them to advise their local NCS scheme. The larger this NCS expertise fund is, the smaller the wage bill for the civil service. NCS fees won’t be as high as Civil Service wages, but each civil servant will have the satisfaction of engaging in a worthwhile local constructive project for one day a week. We want to ensure that all that effort and money over the next five years is used efficiently and with an eye to the future. All accounts and decisions are to be presented annually to the local community for scrutiny and approval, and each NCS scheme will be strictly monitored by an ombudsman, who will have the power to raise standards and ensure transparency in all its workings.”

“To those who question the notion of offering tax relief for such investments, the comparison has to be made: either we invest in the private ownership of bricks and mortar, or we invest in our people. The choice is yours.”

“We are reversing our decision to abolish the medical card for the over-seventies. However, in return, all those over seventy will be required to partake in a national health screening scheme, with regular compulsory checkups and tests. Prevention rather than cure will be the byword for care for the elderly. Anyone who wishes to avoid this intrusive regime of care may go private. GPs will be paid to keep their patients well, with bonuses paid to those surgeries that introduce health promotion schemes.”

“This government will establish a commission to study the possibility of inviting the UK’s National Health Service to take over the HSE, to improve efficiency and eliminate bureaucracy. This will result in an all-Ireland approach to healthcare on this island, allowing greater economies of scale. British consultant and GP contracts will be introduced as a result, and no longer will Irish health professionals enjoy some of the highest incomes in Europe, in a country that simply cannot afford them.”

“After these difficult five years are over, we will be in the enviable position of having bright, modern school rooms for all our children, who have been well taught and supervised, mentored and apprenticed. Our homes will require much less energy from abroad, having been insulated properly. We will not have to pay anything under the Kyoto protocol. Local economies, based on LETS schemes, will be enjoying a new sense of productivity and self-esteem, instead of a sense of shame and deprivation. We will have fostered a new sense of community in those who have helped improve the primary and secondary educational and health facilities in their local area, helped in the care of the young, the infirm, and the elderly, as well as invested in their own third-level education. Local food production, in particular organic foods from allotments, will be at record levels. A new system of local food distribution will be established, which will keep costs low. Food available on LETS schemes will ensure that no one goes hungry, and insulated homes will mean that no one is cold in the winter.”

“To regain competitiveness in the world market, all companies that sell products or services abroad will avail of a new scheme. Instead of paying high wages and high taxes, these companies will be able to pay lower wages, but with their employees’ take-home pay being subject to a temporary lower rate of tax. In return, these companies will be obliged to take on people from the local NCS schemes and provide them with work experience and on-the-job training. The bigger the company, the more sophisticated the training is to be. This scheme will effectively be revenue-neutral, because these companies will pay the minimum income to those they employ from the NCS team. It is, in essence, privatising social welfare payments. But the advantage of it is that, after the five years, the investment in the local community will be producing social and material dividends, and the companies will be in better shape to compete on world markets, benefiting from employing a larger workforce for the same wage bill.”

“We have the imagination and the resources to change our society fundamentally, to bring back a sense of local involvement and community, to eliminate the despair that idleness and poverty brings, to care for our children and the elderly, to instigate a new culture of local entrepreneurship and enterprise, and to become more resourceful and self-sufficient as a people, so we will never again be so vulnerable to the hurricanes that can assail the world markets.”

When Mr Lenihan sat down, he was greeted with a stunned silence from the house.

Anyway, I have been using team blogs to keep people informed of a couple of creative projects I’m planning. They’re a remarkably simple and effective way of keeping a team of people involved, generating interest and enthusiasm, brainstorming and networking.

One of them is about a five-minute documentary I’m going to be making, as part of the excellent Filmbase Documentary Filmmaking course. It’s about adolescence, memory, and emerging gay identity across the generations. When our little team of five have something to show for ourselves, the blog can go public, and so people will be able to read about the gestation process behind the end product, the final film.

I am happy to say I’ve no problem finding young people to take part in the film. But what I’ve come across is the sad fact that elderly gay people are really hard to find. Of course, they exist, but they are not in contact with younger gay people, or even middle-aged gay people. They are disconnected from the gay community, which makes me really question our claim to call it a community. President Mary McAleese asked the question “Where are all the old men?” last year, and has successfully begun to address that question by piloting an outreach programme for old men in Ireland. So, I’m asking, where are all the old gay men and women?

Naturally, the pub and club scene is not for them. But I’m surprised there isn’t a social group for them somewhere, at least in Dublin. In general, gay old people aren’t grandparents, so the chances are that they are much more isolated than their heterosexual counterparts. Are they back in the closet, living in old people’s homes dotted around the country? Who is remembering them? Who is looking after them?

Trailer

Mercifully, I had a fun diversion to avoid Valentine’s nonsense last night. One of the first films to sell out in the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival was I Sell The Dead, a comic horror flick that is the debut feature from writer/director/editor Glenn McQuaid.

It’s not a genre I’m familiar with, at all, so I wouldn’t dream of claiming that this is an informed review. I’m just so impressed that a low-budget first feature could (a) look so darkly atmospheric and haunting (b) poke fun at itself with such gleeful mischievous charm and (c) lightly bring in elements of Gilliam-like surrealism and not flog them to death.

Some really playful performances abound, Eileen Colgan is a delight, Ron Perlman’s lugubrious presence dominates the screen, and the zany double-act of Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fessenden (who also produced the film) is at its gory core. But what’s most evident is the confident playfulness of Dubliner McQuaid, who secured funding on the basis of his script alone, which is always an inspiration.

7th February 2009 Dublin

Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s first extended English-language interview, since the scandal generated by the film Fairytale of Kathmandu broke a year ago, has hit the stands today in the current issue of Hot Press.  You can read a statement about it here.

If you are a subscriber to Hot Press’s website, you can read the full interview here. Subscription costs €20 for a year.

If you are in Nepal, Hot Press have tried to make it possible that anyone reading the article online there should be able to read it for free, without having to subscribe. If there are any problems with this, please get in touch with Hot Press here.

In addition, anyone from Nepal may order a copy of the magazine for free, and just pay the postage, here.

For a limited period, the film is available for free download here.

Incidentally, not that it is necessarily a marker of tolerance in any society, Nepal’s Supreme Court instructed the government to introduce gay marriage in November 2008, deeming the ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.  The Nepalese may be more advanced than the Irish, before the year is out, when it comes to gay rights.

I could look on the bright side, and list the number of sweet and kind people I love, declaring love is not reserved for couples; or I could go dark and twisted, and find clever ways of blaming everyone else, while secretly thinking it’s my fault. I could go on about loneliness blah blah the exclusivity of couples blah blah the search for Mr Right blah blah. Men’s incompetence in relationships, our poor emotional literacy, how we have to be enticed into being intimate and vulnerable, how we won’t be the ones to do it first, because we feel weak when we do, unmanly, not how we are supposed to be. How most men resist losing control over their own lives (which is one way of describing entering into a loving relationship) and are incredibly protective of their sense of freedom and independence, holding out as long as they can, unless it’s advantageous to them. How, despite ourselves, when men look to each other for sexual romantic relationships, the sweetest of gentlefolk, the sweet-hearted carers, the ones our female friends say are so perfect for us, aren’t lover material. If we wanted effeminacy, we’d have chosen women, say the worst offenders. Cold men are hot. Damn Eros.

Ach, I’ve been there, wrote the book, printed the T-shirt. I neither want to apologise for being single, nor explain it, justify it or defend it any more. It is what it is, I am living the life I have and it’s fine, thanks very much.

See, the defensiveness has crept in already. Even if, in the recent Men Today poll for the Irish Times, a full third of men declare themselves to be single. That’s a heck of a minority. And, of course, it follows that there’s a similar proportion of women who are single, too. It’s a large enough proportion of human beans. We shouldn’t be defensive, should we?

Do I fly the flag for “Single Pride”? Do I challenge the heteronormative orthodoxy and agitate for the dissolution of the nuclear family unit in order to liberate the individual from suffocating conformity and repression? Do I go all queer-anarcho-syndicalist and agitate for the destruction of the institution of marriage? Do I picket churches yelling “down with that sort of thing” as the confetti is being thrown on couples getting into their white limos? How about spreading hippy-dippy-free-love from the sixties, and going for polyamory? Or do I go the hedonistic route and argue for the return of the ideologically-driven promiscuous gay lifestyle of the seventies, when paradise moved to earth for a few years, promising lots of cake and eating it too, until cake made us sick?

Do I heck.

Do I start waxing on about the many kinds of love, how we need to expand our consciousness and stop thinking we’re missing something because we don’t have a wife or husband? Do I talk about the multi-faceted aspect of love, how arranged marriages work very well, how one can love a perfect stranger, how one can love our friends deeply, how there is love in a child’s giggle, a rabbit’s fluffy tail, a kitten…

Oh god. I mentioned kittens.

Do I take the spiritual route? The one that says that carnal love is impure, that we are never truly alone, that the godhead/Jahweh/Higher Power/Allah/Aphrodite/Elvis is always with us, guiding us, and as long as we live a good life and devote ourselves to Him/Her/Them, Brides of Christ, we can find contentment like no other. There are a lot of people in Ireland, and across the world, who live that sort of life, or aspire to it. It’s not for me. In some ways, if I wasn’t queer, I might have ended up a priest. But then, if I wasn’t queer, I mightn’t have any spiritual inclinations whatsoever. Queer as both cause and effect of spirituality.

Bless me, father.

Do I take the psychoanalytic route? Fall in love with my analyst, use him like romantic training wheels on a bike? And after I’ve polished all my rough edges, practised being mean and angry and coy and seductive, do I thank him and promptly go out and find a real person to love? Life’s too short to waste time paying someone to love. Especially when they don’t love you back.

A friend of mine told me, when she was single, that she believed it was “none of her business” when she’d find someone to be in her life. It was a helpful thing to say – because she, rightly, placed the mechanism of fate outside her control, where it belongs. There are too many people out there who believe it’s their fault that they are single – that they aren’t good-looking enough, or therapized enough, or masculine/feminine enough. They’re too fat, too thin. Too tall, too short. They’re too needy/depressive/controlling/clingy – as if by erasing these traits then the right person would then come along and sweep them off their feet, as if on cue. There is no right to relationship, love does not come to everyone.

If only.

Love is luck. But, like luck, one can make one’s own.

Romance and rage are but two sides of the same coin. The romantic love of fantasy is that someone will be there for them and match all their needs. It’s impossible, and rage that our needs aren’t fully met inevitably follows. Romantic obsession is not a pretty sight.

But real love is a decision, a choice to be loving is one that we can make at any time. If you’re lucky, and some of us are, we can get over the disappointment of not having a partner and just get on with things. And even smile as couples gaze into each other’s eyes all around them.

Happy Valentine’s. You lucky, lucky bastards.

Cathal Ó Searcaigh was invited to appear on the Late Late Show tonight. However, this morning they appeared to get cold feet about allowing him to speak live, and, perhaps under legal pressure from Vinegar Hill, the production company behind the controversial film Fairytale of Kathmandu, informed him that they would only proceed if his  interview was pre-recorded.  Believing that this amounted to censorship, Ó Searcaigh declined to participate. However, he believes the original invitation was made in good faith.

My exclusive interview with him will be published in next Thursday’s Hot Press, which will be the first proper English-language interview he’s done since the scandal broke last year. (An English translation of his interview on RnaG is here.)

Previously, I’ve written about the film in Hot Press here and here. A blog post about the DVD that his friends in Nepal made in his defence is here. My Irish Times article is here. A comprehensive list of links relating to the scandal is here. Some worthwhile commentary on the affair is here and here.

For a limited period, the film itself is available for free download here.

Update: As per her comment below, Neasa Ní Chianán denies that Vinegar Hill put pressure on RTÉ to pre-record the interview.