Light at the End of the Tunnel

Backed by the Dublin Gospel Choir, the twin voices of Ellie and Louise Macnamara are booming around RTÉ Radio Broadcasting Centre. The chorus cry of Heathers’ ‘Forget Me Knots’ – “It’s alright not to feel okay” – perfectly sums up the sentiment of the new Simple Things project, which gathers 15 tracks to raise awareness of the annual Cycle Against Suicide.

Founded by Irish entrepreneur Jim Breen after his appearance on RTÉ’s The Secret Millionaire, the Cycle highlights the multiple support avenues available to those who are battling depression, self-harm, at risk of suicide or bereaved by it.
Down the hall, spoken word artist Michael Mulcahy is reciting his contribution to Simple Things, echoing and expanding Heathers’ sentiment. “Once you open up and talk to someone,” he raps, “you’ve got empathy, clarity, possibility, courage and might. Right now, the best you can do is take this moment in time to get to know you. Because it will pass, this feeling will pass. Just like it always does, just like time proves it will. And it’s okay not to feel okay and it’s absolutely okay to ask for help today.”
Today, Gavin James, Starsailor’s James Walsh and Royseven’s Paul Walsh are laying down the single and title track for 2fm broadcast.
There too is the indefatigable Bressie, flitting between people, organising everything and generally looking extremely focused. Taking a short breather in Colm Hayes’ studio with Hot Press, he opens up about his brainchild.
“It was an idea I probably wouldn’t have run with if everyone wasn’t so enthusiastic about it,” he admits. “All the artists were like ‘I’m in’, the studios were like ‘we’re in’, everything was free. At a time in the music industry when everything is absolutely fecked and people don’t value it, the first people to put their hands up to help were musicians and studios.
“Obviously we can’t put bells and whistles on mental health,” he continues. “It’s fucking hard to live with. But it’s deal–able with and that’s the message we’ve tried to put across.”
Of course, sometimes the message gets mixed.
“It’s difficult when it gets twisted,” he concedes. “Obviously Hot Press was the first interview I did to come out about it and I thought a lot about that. Unfortunately there were a couple of headlines that trivialised what I said. One of them was that I said ‘legalise drugs’ – that was the headline – and I got in a lot of trouble over that. I can deal with that. What headlines like that can do is scare people in the public eye who may be ready to open up about their issues. This isn’t a game. It’s not about selling papers. It’s not about good TV or good radio. It’s a very, very serious issue in this country.
“You don’t want to sound like you’re ‘overselling’ it,” he adds, “but the reality is that this can have a massive impact. This could genuinely save a lot of lives. It’s not ‘maybe it will, maybe it won’t’ – it will. That’s how strong this is.”
The singer hopes the album release will lead to the government pledging money to the cause. He cites the example of the support they’ve given the National Roads Authority, which has seen road deaths reduced from 600 to 160 annually. Meanwhile, the annual suicide rate has surpassed 600.
“One of my biggest examples is me. I tore my medial ligament on the cycle. I couldn’t walk and everyone was like ‘what’s wrong with your knee, you’re limping?’. I said, ‘I hurt my medial ligament’. If we can get to that point with mental health… Mental health doesn’t have a limp, you can’t see it, you can’t quantify it. That’s what scares people.”
And there isn’t a family in Ireland that hasn’t been affected by it in some way.
Much of Heathers’ second record, Kingdom, found them coming to terms with the death of one of their close friends.
“That whole album was written when we were both going through a lot of tough things,” says Louise. “One of our friends took her own life. At the same time, I was going through bad anxiety and panic attacks, which was a separate thing. That’s what ‘Forget Me Knots’ is about. In our circle of people, we’d never been affected by anything like that. When it happened, it was an eye opener.”
‘Forget Me Knots’ began as a ‘self-help’ ode.
“We were writing it for ourselves,” nods Louise. “It was a therapeutic thing.”
“But I don’t think we realised that it would affect people as it has,” continues Ellie. “We’ve gotten a lot of e-mails saying ‘this song really helped me through a tough time’. Really detailed, serious messages. Which is really positive.”
One of the major issues is how at risk young Irish men, between the ages of 18-24, are.
“I’m still called a pussy on Twitter and told to ‘man up’,” says Bressie. “The irony is that there’s a rugby player, Alan Quinlan, who is probably the toughest I’ve ever played against, and he came out recently about his depression. When I hear comments like that I think, ‘do you want to get into a room with him and tell him to ‘man up’?’
“I’m lucky in that, although I’ve had general anxiety and I still live with it – good days and bad days – I’ve never had suicidal tendencies. I think the reason I’ve never had them is because of the power of my family and my friends. There’s a lot of people who don’t have that. You’ve got to ask yourself, when I was breaking my own arm and self-harming, how far would I have been willing to go if I didn’t have that support? No matter what mental health disorder you live with, the first step is talking.”
For Paul Walsh of Royseven, finding a way to express yourself is key.
“I’ve been an ambassador for (youth charity) Think Big for the last three years. It’s about finding out what works for you. I’m not suggesting music is going to work for everybody but I see music as a form of expression. It’s my therapy, if you like. The whole message of today is about being able to articulate how you feel. And I think that’s what this project is about – encouraging people to develop their own coping strategies.”
As Bressie concludes: “There’s ways of helping it. It could be medication, it could be meditation. It could be sports, it could be talking. There’s hundreds of different avenues and that’s the message we want you to take away. You can deal with it. There’s no need to feel isolated. Teenagers love a lot of these artists, they’re their heroes. So if they know that these people themselves struggle, then they might realise it’s okay to feel like that. That’s what we’re trying to get across.”

Simple Things is available now on CD and to download via iTunes