Opinion
08 Dec 09

Reasons to be Cheerful

It’s all doom, gloom and flash floods at the moment. But amid the end of days depression, there are still plenty of things to smile about. You just have to know where to look.

At the time of writing, it’s November 26, 2009. Any other year I might have invoked William Burroughs’ great ‘Thanksgiving Prayer’, included on his and Hal Willner’s Dead City Radio album:

“Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shat out through wholesome American guts/Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot/Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through/Thanks for ‘Kill a Queer for Christ’ stickers/Thanks for laboratory AIDS/Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs/Thanks for a country where nobody’s allowed to mind the own business/Thanks for a nation of finks/Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.”
This year though, Burroughs’ bitter prayer doesn’t feel right. People have been through enough crap – from the Great Depression of last winter to the great floods of this one, from the squandering of the boom to the Murphy report. Most of us feel too sick in the soul to be caustic. Most of us just want to take stock what we’ve lost and thank god for what’s left.
So thanks for the work and the wages – those of us who still have ‘em. Thanks for Enniscorthy thrift shops and decent rent. Thanks for Trueloves Gutter by Richard Hawley and pages by Julie Feeney. Thanks for Miss Paula Flynn’s The C Word on 2XM, the greatest show on radio. Thanks for Richmond Fontaine and Jinx Lennon. Thanks for Neko Case’s ‘Hold On, Hold On’ at Electric Picnic and Leonard at the O2 and Emm Gryner doing ‘Straight To Hell’ in Whelan’s. Thanks for Ellroy’s Blood’s A Rover and Tom’s Glitter & Doom. Thanks for all the good stuff that happened with the book and the Revelator Orchestra. Thanks for three daughters and dozens of friends and thanks for what looks like an end to a whole load of bad shit that went on too long. Thanks for it all, the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.
Bill Hicks: “We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”
Happy Christmas.