TD 1
Damien is back on his list. This is his first tim
e doing one. He’s a pro. DD: “Did you ever think that the impassioned words that flow from your soul forging the pain and joy of life would end up being digested by millions on the biggest, most important, show in the UK? (he’s referring to David’s appearance on Jools Holland)” DB: “No, I didn’t and I’ve been very open and honest about this. When I made this, it was for my friends and my family and that was it. I never imagined it. When I was young working on other projects, I would have allowed myself fantasise - to create that world in my head where I am standing with my friends and we’re playing and there’s that public response. And you’re awake in bed as a 16-year-old playing it all out and the glory of it all…And you go through the whole thing, you shun it, you cast the media away but with this project I’d never thought about a public response. And I didn’t really engage with it until the lads wanted to put it out at a bigger level…to put some platform behind it and that’s when I was forced to reckon with it. That’s when you talk to the ma and you try and get that wisdom and it’s when you talk to your friends and you ask them how they feel about that, because there’s that sense of responsibility, these songs are about my friends, but I’m still not trying to put people’s business in the street. I had to battle with that responsibility and make peace with the idea of making this public. The only thing that has allowed me to break with some of the guilt around that is the public response to it, reading the messages and they come so fast and they are so rich with detail and pain and trauma but understanding that people are reaching out because this piece of music that’s been made in a shed has somehow allowed them to uncover something about themselves or allowed them to take steps in making peace with some pain that they have, it’s a tremendous weight… David trails off before switching focus back to Damien. DB: “Watching your film and seeing in the crowd all of these people having such an undoing of who they are in public, I wonder what sort of weight you feel looking at that and whether it is a cleansing thing or something that makes you feel more of a sense of responsibility, or whether there’s an indifference?” DD: “The travellers in Coolock call me the crying man so I’m just chuffed that I can make people cry. It’s not me, it’s coming through me from somewhere, a good place. DB: “What do you think that is? that place?” DD: “A great spirit, somewhere good anyway. That takes the responsibility off.” DB: “I’m going to have to start thinking about it that way (laughs) DD: “Listen to aul fucking master, listen to the elders…” We start talking about the pandemic and how it affected them. DD: “I tried to be philosophical about it. I was asked to write a one-man show for the Abbey so I just threw meself into that…The money thing, I was screwed. I was getting threatening The city is strange at the moment, It really is, the whole vibe of it is odd. I’m just excited to rebuild that relationship and it doesn’t go in one direction. I’m excited for Dublin to feel my presence in it again. letters off banks and stuff but me mother used to say if you owe a big financial institution money, let them worry about it, don’t destroy yourself…Me head was wrecked as well but I threw myself into the sea and walked up Howth Head a lot. You could see the mountains of Mourne, the Wicklow mountains and Tara hill. “My ancestors would fucking laugh at you if you were talking about this lockdown compared to what they went through. Some people are getting a terrible diagnosis today, struggling with money and going a bit mad but as long as you have your health. There were these little things that would snap me out of it and give me some headspace when I was getting a bit down. I’ve learned over the years.” DB: “I’ve been super lucky, I don’t know any different. This is my first time at the circus and I kept my job during all of it so have been hyper busy. I’ve even very very privileged in that I haven’t had to worry so much and I also haven’t had something taken away from me in terms of the performance because this is new to me. I don’t feel I can speak accurately to the difficulties a lot of artists are facing.” At this stage Damien realises he’s late for a lunch appointment and so stands up to make a call. I ask David about his relationship with the city at the moment. DB: “I feel like because I have spent so much time underground that Dublin’s become a little bit of a stranger to me and that breaks my heart a little bit because I had such a close relationship with Dublin beforehand. With that said, I have no urge whatsoever to leave. I never have. I have gone once before to Norway for six months…I missed Dublin every single day that I was there. I live with my partner who was in the high risk category so we were in…It was like Fort Knox and now I am starting to rediscover it…and the city is strange at the moment, it really is, the whole vibe of it is odd. I’m just excited to rebuild that relationship and it doesn’t go in one direction. I’m excited for Dublin to feel my presence in it again. Damien returns to the scene. DD: “The Olympia is going to be some gig.” DB: “Let’s see, yeah, let’s see…” DD: “What do you mean let’s fucking see.” It turns out that while Dublin was intended to be the first gig of his long-awaited tour, it will be Glasgow now with the date moving to November. It also turns out that Damien’s cousin Caroline will be doing the stage design for the show. She’s dropping over to David’s the following day to go through it. It’s time for David’s final question. DB: What do you want for young people now? DD: “I supposed I’d like them to be able get a roof over their head…If they hadn’t built those big corporation estates back in the day, my parents even though they were all working, they’d have all been fucking homeless. We had very little money, and massive depressions and all, but we were able to build so much social housing. I wish that for them. And I suppose to get back to nature a bit, touching the land. Even getting your bare feet into a river or a lake or the sea or the sand or the land, getting back to nature a bit would 24