By Jim Heffernan
I’ve been thinking a lot about the 1985 song, “The Island” by Delores Keane. If you’re not familiar with it, you can listen to it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvcxBT5Bx8Q . It was written at the height of the Northern Ireland “troubles” when Catholics and Protestants were killing each other to further their causes. Between 1966 and 1998, in a country with the population of 2 million, nearly 4000 people were killed and 50,000 wounded or injured in a tragic struggle that was ultimately resolved by a peaceful election.
I believe we are going through our own version of the “troubles” and the root cause is in the words of the song, “Still trying to reach the future thru’ the past”.
Much of what passes for political discourse these days is simply re-hashing what has gone wrong and assigning blame to the “other” and declaring innocence for ourselves. Assigning blame might be fine for history, but we go beyond mere history. We use blame to consign our brothers and sisters into an evil cabal of “the other” and make them our enemy. Having an enemy to blame is much easier than the actual work of progress. Having an enemy to blame inspires crazies in our midst to kill innocents like Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk.
I find a ray of hope in that an election in 1998 in Ireland, the “Good Friday Agreement” ended the violence and bloodshed. Differences of opinion remain, but the factions have destroyed their arsenals and rejected violence.
I doubt that the “Good Friday Agreement” would have ever happened without an energetic women’s movement to end the violence. Women simply tired of burying their husbands and sons and united to oppose the violence. It didn’t matter if they were Catholic or Protestant, loyalist or nationalist. For 5 years before the agreement, they repeatedly marched together peacefully in demonstration after demonstration until an agreement was reached.
If the Irish can do it, why can’t we?
Here’s the lyrics to “The Island”. It’s good poetry, but it hits hardest as a song. The lines that hit me the hardest are “Still trying to reach the future thru’ the past” and ”Up here we sacrifice our children To feed the worn out dreams of yesterday”
The Island
They say the skies of Lebanon are burning
Those mighty cedars bleeding in the heat
They’re showing pictures on the television
Women and children dying in the street
And we’re still at it in our own place
Still trying to reach the future thru’ the past
Still trying to care tomorrow from a tombstone.
But hey! Don’t listen to me!
Cos this wasn’t meant to be no sad song
We’ve heard too much of that before
Right now I only want to be here with you
Till the morning dew comes falling
I want to take you to the island
And trace your footprints in the sand
And in the evening when the sun goes down
We’ll make love to the sound of the ocean.
They’re raising banners over by the market
Whitewashing slogans on the shipyard walls
Witch doctors praying for a mighty showdown
No way our holy flag is gonna fall
Up here we sacrifice our children
To feed the worn out dreams of yesterday
And teach them dying will lead us into glory
But hey! Don’t listen to me!
Cos this wasn’t meant to be no sad song
We’ve heard too much of that before
Right now I only want to be here with you
Till the morning dew comes falling
I want to take you to the island
And trace your footprints in the sand
And in the evening when the sun goes down
We’ll make love to the sound of the ocean
Now I know us plain folks don’t see all the story
And I know this peace and love’s just copping out
And I guess these young boys dying in the ditches
Is just what being free is all about
And how this twisted wreckage down on Main Street
Will bring us all together in the end
And we’ll go marching down the road to freedom
Freedom
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com and feel free to share with others.
If you like the song, you’ll probably like the compilation album where I first heard it, “A Woman’s Heart”.