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theholmwoodfoundation · 2 months ago

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THE HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION PILOT EPISODE CAST/CREW - PART ONE

REBECCA ROOT - MADDIE TOWNSEND/MINA HARKER

Rebecca trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the National Theatre (UK and Ireland tour); Rathmines Road for Fishamble at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin; Trans Scripts at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Bear / The Proposal at the Young Vic; and Hamlet at the Gielgud Theatre and Athens International Festival. TV, Film and Video Game credits include Monsieur Spade, This Is Christmas, Irvine Welsh’s Crime, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Heartstopper, Annika, The Rising, Sex Education, The Gallery, The Queen’s Gambit, Finding Alice, Creation Stories, Last Christmas, The Sisters Brothers, Colette, The Danish Girl, Flack, The Romanoffs, Moominvalley, Hank Zipzer, Boy Meets Girl, Doctors, Casualty, The Detectives, and Keeping Up Appearances. Radio credits include Clare In The Community, Life Lines, The Hotel, and 1977 for BBC Radio 4. Guest appearances include Woman’s Hour, Front Row, Loose Ends, Saturday Live, and A Good Read. She plays Tania Bell in the award-winning Doctor Who: Stranded audio dramas. Rebecca has also recorded numerous documentary narrations, audiobooks, and voice-overs. Rebecca is also a voice and speech coach, holding the MA in Voice Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

SEAN CARLSEN - JEREMY LARKIN/ JONATHAN HARKER

Born in South Wales, Seán trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. He has worked extensively in audio drama, television, theatre and film. Seán is perhaps best known to Doctor Who fans as Narvin in the Doctor Who audio series Gallifrey and has appeared on TV in Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion and Torchwood. Recent TV credits include Mudtown (BBCiplayer/S4C), Dal y Mellt (Netflix), His Dark Materials (BBC1), All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5), A Mother's Love (Channel 4) and Series 5 of Stella (Sky1). Films include supporting leads in Boudica - Rise of the Warrior Queen, cult horror The Cleansing, the lead in Forgotten Journeys and John Sheedy’s forthcoming film ‘Never Never Never’

SAM CLEMENS - ARTHUR JONES

Samuel Clemens trained at the Drama Centre London and is an award-winning director with over twenty years’ experience. Samuel has recently written and directed his debut feature film ‘The Waterhouse’ with Take The Shot Films & Featuristic Films and represented by Raven Banner Entertainment, which is due for release this coming year. In addition, he has directed fourteen short films, winning awards all over the world including shorts ‘Surgery (multi-award winning), A Bad Day To Propose (Straight 8 winner 2021), Say No & Dress Rehearsal’. Samuel also directs critically acclaimed number one UK stage tours and fringe shows (Rose Theatre Kingston, Swansea Grand, Eastbourne, Yvonne Arnaud, Waterloo East Theatre) and commercials include clients JD Sports, Shell and Space NK. Samuel is also a regular producer and director for Big Finish Productions & Anderson Entertainment. He has cast, directed, produced and post supervised numerous productions of ‘Doctor Who – (BBC), The Avengers (Studio Canal), Thunderbirds, Stingray (Anderson Entertainment), Callan, Missy, Gallifrey’& Shilling & Sixpence Investigate’ and many more. Samuel has directed world class talent such as, Sir Roger Moore, Ben Miles, Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Alex Kingston, Frank Skinner, Rita Ora, Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley, Rufus Hound, David Warner, Celia Imrie, Samuel West, Youssef Kerkour, Sophie Aldred, Ian McNiece, Colin Baker, Olivia Poulet, Stephen Wight, Jade Anouka, Mimi Ndwendi, Michelle Gomez, Peter Davidson, Paul O’Grady and many more. Samuel is one of the founding members and directors at Take The Shot Films Ltd and is Head of Artistic Creation and Direction. Lastly, Samuel is a regular tutor at The London Film Academy, The Giles Foreman Centre for Acting & The Rose Youth Theatre and is a member of The Directors Guild UK. As for upcoming projects, Sam is currently in pre-production on his next feature film “On The Edge of Darkness”, which is based on his dad’s stage play “Strictly Murder”.

ATTILA PUSKAS - DRACULA

Attila Puskás is a native Hungarian Voice Actor born in Transylvania – Romania, so Romanian is in his bag of tricks too, but most of his work is done in English, in a Transatlantic Eastern European Accent, but is quite capable of Hungarian, Romanian and International Eastern European accents, plus Standard American. His voice range is Adult to Middle Aged (30-40+) due to his deep voice. Vocal styles can range from authoritive, brooding to calming and reassuring and much more. He’s most experienced in character work, like Animations and Games, but his skills encompass Commercials to Narration as well. He’s received training through classes and workshops, pushing him to the next level to achieve higher standards. Now on a journey to perfect these skills and put them to good use!

PART TWO: HERE

PART THREE: HERE

#A lengthier look at our cast and crew!#The Holmwood Foundation #the holmwood foundation podcast #jeremy larkin #maddie townsend #Rebecca Root #Sean Carlsen #arthur f jones #production updates #Dracula #Sam Clemens #Attila Puskas #cast announcement #podcast #horror fiction podcast #fiction podcast #Q

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denimbex1986 · 1 year ago

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'If Peaky Blinders made the Irish actor a household name, will Christopher Nolan’s nuclear blockbuster send him into the stratosphere? He talks about extreme weight loss, hating school and why his next character won’t be a smoker.

Cillian Murphy is struggling with what he can and can’t say about his title role in Oppenheimer, the latest Christopher Nolan epic, such is the secrecy surrounding this film. Murphy is under “strict instructions” not to talk about the content. Which is awkward when you’ve flown to his home in Ireland to interview him specifically about playing the physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb, later detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s not clear who issued these instructions. Nolan? The studio? The US government? All I know is that as well as Murphy being gagged by hefty NDAs, I am not allowed to see it (“bit unfortunate”, he concedes).

So, yes, here we sit in an empty upstairs room of a restaurant near his house in Monkstown, Dublin, working out how to do this. The room is dark, the sun shining through a solitary Velux lighting his features like a Géricault. The only background noise is the low hum of a wine refrigerator. Murphy loathes interviews, looks visibly tortured at points. But he relaxes when I ask if he’s pleased with Oppenheimer. “I am, yeah,” he says. “I don’t like watching myself – it’s like, ‘Oh, fucking hell’ – but it’s an extraordinary piece of work. Very provocative and powerful. It feels sometimes like a biopic, sometimes like a thriller, sometimes like a horror. It’s going to knock people out,” he adds. “What [Nolan] does with film, it fucks you up a little bit.”

Nolan wouldn’t disagree. The director recently told Wired magazine that some of those who’d seen it were left “absolutely devastated … they can’t speak”. Which sounds like a bad thing, but is related perhaps to the thought of the 214,000 Japanese people, overwhelmingly civilians, who lost their lives when the bombs were dropped. Kai Bird, the historian who co-authored American Prometheus, the 2008 biography of J Robert Oppenheimer upon which the film is based, said he was still “emotionally recovering” from seeing the film, clarifying that it was “a stunning artistic achievement”.

Murphy’s portrayal is said to be astonishing (“Oscar-worthy” is the buzz). This is not unbelievable. While Hollywood might not know him as a leading man, this quietly intense actor has long been celebrated in the UK and Ireland, most notably for his nine-year stint as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. When he first appeared on our screens, looking like a renaissance painting of Saint Sebastian – chiselled head contrasting with translucent blue eyes – it was impossible not to be distracted. He appeared first on stage in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, then the screen adaptation. Then 28 Days Later; Intermission; Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Previous collaborations with Nolan include the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk, “significant milestones in my career,” he says, adding that Nolan “might be the perfect director”.

It was Nolan’s wife, the producer Emma Thomas, who called Murphy one afternoon at the home he shares with his wife, artist Yvonne McGuinness, and two teenage sons. Nolan doesn’t actually have a telephone, or an email, or computer for that matter: “He’s the most analogue individual you could possibly encounter.” So, Emma said Chris would like a word and passed the receiver, then the director came on the line. “Cillian, I’d love you to play the lead in this new thing,” he said. Murphy tries to recreate his response to this news. “I was lost for words. But thrilled. Like beyond thrilled.” It is characteristic of Murphy that the modulation of his voice barely changes as he expresses this. He was so stunned, he had to sit down. “Your mind explodes.”

In the absence of the three-hour feature, I scrutinise Oppenheimer’s three-minute trailer. It’s a rush of snapshots against the crackling of a Geiger counter. There’s Murphy, short back and sides, lifting 1940s eye goggles; blue and red atoms coming at him fast; orange light; white light; blackout; silence. Massive explosion against the backdrop of space. Overlaid is Murphy’s narration, “We’re in a race against the Nazis / and I know what it means / if the Nazis have a bomb.” There’s Matt Damon looking porky as army general Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project: “They have a 12-month head start.” Murphy, pointing with cigarette: “18.”

He has put back on some of the weight he lost for the part, I’m relieved to see; his skin isn’t quite so taut over his skull and there are freckles over those eagle-wing cheekbones. He was determined to nail the scientist’s silhouette “with the porkpie hat and the pipe”, testing himself to see how little he could eat. “You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.” He won’t say how many kilograms he lost, or what food the nutritionist told him to cut out. NDA? “Ach, no. I don’t want it to be, ‘Cillian lost x weight for the part’.”

Then again, the hurtling speed at which Nolan worked, crisscrossing the US, made it easy to skip meals. Murphy began to forget about food in the same way he began to forget about sleep. “It’s like you’re on this fucking train that’s just bombing. It’s bang, bang, bang, bang. You sleep for a few hours, get up, bang it again. I was running on crazy energy; I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything. I was so in it, a state of hyper …” he gropes for the word, “hyper something. But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.” Oppenheimer subsisted on little more than Chesterfield cigarettes and double-strength martinis, rims dipped in lime. “Cigarettes and pipes. He would alternate between the two. That’s what did for him in the end,” Murphy adds, a nod to the scientist’s death from cancer in 1967. “I’ve smoked so many fake cigarettes for Peaky and this. My next character will not be a smoker. They can’t be good for you. Even herbal cigarettes have health warnings now.”

I raise method acting and Murphy tilts his head and frowns. “Method acting is a sort of … No,” he says, firm but with a half smile. Oppenheimer had many defining characteristics, not least walking on the balls of his feet and a vocal tic that sounded like nim-nim-nim, but Murphy didn’t want to do an impression. Nolan was obsessed with the Brillo-texture hair, so they spent “a long time working on hair”. And the voice. The real question for Murphy was what combination – ambition, madness, delusion, deep hatred of the Nazi regime? – allowed this theoretical physicist to agree to an experiment he knew could obliterate humankind. “He was dancing between the raindrops morally. He was complex, contradictory, polymathic; incredibly attractive intellectually and charismatic, but,” he decides, “ultimately unknowable.

“Listen, it’s not like a spoiler,” he says, checking himself before he leans in, “but there are incidents in his early life that were quite worrying; very erratic.” They are in the film and the book, he steers. I suspect he is referring to Oppenheimer’s postgrad at Cambridge in 1926, when he placed a poisoned apple on the desk of a tutor towards whom he harboured complicated feelings of inadequacy and jealousy. Arguably, this was attempted murder. But Oppenheimer’s rich New York parents rushed in to bundle him into psychoanalysis. He was diagnosed with “dementia praecox”, a term describing symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

Murphy likes these complex characters; they’re his meat. People that don’t necessarily follow the – yawn – traditional transformative arc of storytelling. Not villains, exactly (although he’s played a few, including Scarecrow in Dark Knight and Jackson Rippner in Red Eye): “Villains are good if they’re well written, but if it’s one note or a trope, then they are dull.” He likes a script to stretch leisurely into all corners of the human condition, “all the shades”. At the same time, you have to understand his exceptional ability to portray interiority, physically manifesting intense human emotion without a word, radiating fierce, consuming energy. Which he does today, actually, when I stray off track.

Although Nolan is usually, shall we say, antiseptic in his approach to romance, Oppenheimer represents a significant shift. He told Wired the love story aspect “is as strong as I’ve ever done”. It features prolonged full nudity for Murphy and Florence Pugh, who plays Oppenheimer’s ex-fiancee, as well as sex, and there are complicated scenes with Emily Blunt, who plays his wife, “that were pretty heavy”. Murphy turns coy: “I’m under strict instructions not to give away anything.”

He asks if I’ve heard of chemistry tests. “They put two actors in a room to see if there’s any spark, and have all the producers and director at a table watching. I don’t know what metric they use, and it seems so outrageously silly, but sometimes you get a chemistry and nobody knows why.” This is a roundabout way of saying his scenes with Blunt and Pugh conjure this magic. His established bond with Blunt (they co-starred in A Quiet Place II) meant “the audience gets something for free”, he says. “You can be immediately vulnerable and open, and try stuff. There were moments where I remember saying, ‘I couldn’t have done that if it wasn’t with you.’”

Murphy, 47, grew up the eldest of four in Cork. His father was a civil servant, his mother a French teacher. They were a middle-class family, musical; his father “can pick up any instrument”, his brother played piano, and they regularly got stuck into “traditional Irish sessions”. Bookshelves were stuffed with literature, the radio often on, the “shitty” TV set not so much. Home life was busy but his parents taught him French and Irish, and sent him to an all-boys academic, rugby-playing private school. “I got all the education” he says, drily.

The story of how much he disliked the Presentation Brothers College, the hard-drinking masculine emphasis, how he found solace playing guitar in a band, is much rehearsed and he says today he doesn’t want “to slag the school off. I hear it’s great now.” Something about this experience seems nonetheless unsettling. He had one friend, who is still his best friend, “so I wasn’t, like, an outcast”. He played rugby for the first couple of years, but abandoned it “because everyone was all of a sudden towering over me.” Was it an unhappy time? He shifts. “It was OK. I was a bit of a messer, like I’d get in trouble and say nothing. It wasn’t the ideal school for me.”

He enrolled in and dropped out of a law degree at University College Cork, which created some friction with his parents (when I ask if his own sons will go to university in Dublin, he says, “Whatever they want”). He continued with the band, his first creative love but the one that got away. When they were offered a contract with Acid Jazz records, he turned it down for a number of reasons, he says, crucially that he didn’t feel good enough. He still writes and plays at home but, no, you won’t be hearing any of his recordings, ever, he says.

It’s a funny thing talking to Murphy. He’s at once garrulous (on the craft, or literature, or ideas) and reticent (pretty much anything else). I sense in previous interviews that he skates over issues close to his heart – such as the expression of emotion in Ireland and the need to teach empathy in schools. But when I try to drill in to these topics, get to the root, he clams shut, emitting energy like a nuclear reactor.

Later, in a different context, he will tell me a truth: “I’m stubborn and lacking in confidence, which is a terrible combination. I don’t want to put anything out that I don’t think is excellent.” But he clearly hates the pantomime of publicity, asking why I am returning to certain topics and repeating lines I’ve read elsewhere. I can almost see him at home with its views towards the Irish Sea, complaining to his wife as they tuck into supper: “Another one, asking the same fucking questions.”

If he could get out of going to Cannes, of standing on red carpets, dressed as is his habit for a funeral, hair shellacked, hands in pockets; if he could turn his back on the coloured-foam mics thrust in his face, he would. He really would. No, it dawns on him now, there’s something even worse than the red carpet; there’s the talkshow rounds. The very word “talkshow” comes out of him like a pain from his ribcage, as if the parcelling out of amuse-bouche anecdotes, offering them up to the forced laughter of that false god of show business, the studio audience, is in itself the most cheapening experience known to mankind.

“I do them because you’re contractually obliged to. I just endure them. I’ve always found it difficult. I’ve said this so many, many times.” Then there’s the double wince of realising that, yes, he’s done it again. He’s laid into the industry that feeds him. His hands raise slowly in surrender. “I want to just caveat this by saying, I’m so privileged. I’m so happy to be doing what I love. I’m really lucky. But I don’t enjoy the personality side of being an actor. I don’t understand why I should be entertaining and scintillating on a talkshow. I don’t know why all of a sudden that’s expected of me. Why?”

There’s an awkward silence. I say that he reminds me of Naomi Osaka, the tennis player who refused to talk to journalists after the French Open in 2021. He says he feels “100%” sympathy with her, “because why should she have to perform?” Then he relents. “But I get it. I get it’s a kind of ecosystem where the film feeds the publicity which feeds the talkshows which goes back and feeds the film, so, like, that’s how it works. I suppose I’m just not good at it. At interviews, at this stuff,” he gestures at me. He says after he leaves me today he’ll be going down the stairs thinking of all the things he’s said and worrying it’s come across all wrong. “Do you know what Sam Beckett said? ‘I have no views to inter.’ I love that. That should be the interview.”

We return to his art, the tension falls away and he’s back to his charming self, charged air evaporating. Since Oppenheimer, he’s also wrapped Small Things Like These, an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s brilliant novella set in 1985 in a small Irish town on the edge of which is a convent and “laundry”. Murphy is a huge fan of Keegan. He remembers reading her 2010 novel Foster on a train and having to pull his hoodie over his face because he was crying so hard. Anyway, he’d wanted to work with the Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants and they were throwing ideas around in his sitting room when Murphy’s wife suggested Small Things. “No, there’s no way,” Murphy said. “That’s going to be gone already.” But when he called the agent, he found it was available. “I went, ‘No, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.’” Murphy pitched the idea to Matt Damon, who has set up a studio with Ben Affleck. “From there it all just happened really quickly.”

Murphy plays Bill Furlong who, funnily enough, is a man of few words. Keegan’s light-touch writing is everything he loves in art – the sense that you are not being bashed over the head by an idea. That’s how he tries to act, he adds. “I’m always trying to cut lines in scenes, because I feel like you can transmit it. Like when you see a person on a train thinking, or driving a car, and you are purely observing someone and feeling the energy that is vibrating from them. That’s the sort of acting I love. In a lot of film and television, they want to cut those bits to go to the action. I like films that pose the big questions and then leave it to the audience.” Perhaps this is at the heart of his reticence in interviews? That he doesn’t feel the need to explain.

He still finds it “nuts” that the last of the Magdalene laundries closed in 1996, that it was illegal to buy condoms in Ireland until 1985, that divorce was made legal only in 1996. He remembers vividly thousands of people still going to see moving statues in Cork when he was growing up. “Crazy. But, like, how far the country has come since then, we’re so socially advanced now compared with where we were. But you must look back. And art is a better way of doing that than reading all these reports [into the laundries].” (Afterwards, he emails me: “The nation is actually dealing with an unresolved collective trauma. Who knows how long this will take to heal, but I feel strongly that art, film and literature can help with that process. It’s a kinder and gentler sort of therapy. I hope that our movie can help with that in its own little way.”)

Because he’s a nice man, because he doesn’t want me to feel bad about our encounter, and because he’s generous and hospitable, Murphy finishes by telling me some of the best places to visit in Ireland. He and his family are staying here for the summer. They’ve had it with air travel and his home town of Cork is only a couple of hours away. He supplies me with other recommendations: a great book he’s just read, Brian, by Jeremy Cooper, oh, and there’s the Francis Bacon studio exhibition I should catch on my way out.

But before I go, what has he learned from playing Oppenheimer? Foremost, he says, that scientists think differently. He knew this already from playing physicist Robert Capa in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and hanging out in Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, for research. “I had dinner with all these geniuses. I’ll never understand quantum mechanics, but I was interested in what science does to their perspective.” He sought their opinions on subjects that matter – love, politics, our place in the universe, “infinity, or whatever the fuck. Because they have a completely different way of taking in information than we do. I remember one scientist saying, ‘I don’t believe in love. It’s a biological phenomenon, the exchange of hormones between the female and the male. That’s all. Love is a nonsense.’” Murphy taps the table with his hand. “I couldn’t go along with that, obviously.”

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thepaintedroom · 11 months ago

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John Lavery (British, Irish – 1856-1941) • The Artist's Studio • 1910-1913 • National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

#art #fine art #painting #art history #john lavery #british #Irish artist #irish painter #paintings of interiors #paintings of artists' studios #the painted room blog #art blog #artist #artwork

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burlveneer-music · 4 months ago

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ContaQt + Evan Ziporyn + Friends - Poppy 88 - Terry Riley's "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band" interpreted in real-time by "88 individuals, spread across 60 locations in 23 countries and 6 continents" for his 88th birthday last year

(And I hate that usage of 88 for purely numeric purposes requires an explanation/disclaimer)

On June 24th, 2023, to celebrate Terry Riley's 88th birthday, ContaQt and MIT Sounding presented a global telematic event that resonated – literally - worldwide. At the stroke of midnight EDT, a diverse community of 88 individuals, spread across 60 locations in 23 countries and 6 continents came together online to play music with one another, live and in real-time. With no pre-recorded material, no click tracks, no safety nets or contingency plans, together they performed Poppy 88, a collective composition arranged by Evan Ziporyn, inspired by - and based on - Riley's 1968 recording, Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band The livestreamed concert pushed the boundaries of virtual telematic performance, showcasing the transformative power of artistic collaboration combined with smart technology to transcend structural and geographical barriers. While previous live telematic performances have involved larger ensembles, with groups of musicians clustered in 2-12 transmitting stations, this performance distinguished itself by originating from a significantly larger number of locations, 60 in all. This creative repurposing of technology is very much in the spirit of Terry Riley’s original piece. In the 1960’s, Riley utilized tape loops – originally a DIY ‘hack’ of reel-to-reel - to create distant canonic layers of melody: his ‘Phantom Band.’ For this performance, in 2023, the ensemble similarly repurposed the inherent limitations of streaming audio – i.e., physical distance and varying data rates – to conjure similarly complex layered textures. This global virtual event brought together musicians from Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Istanbul, New York City, Pretoria, São Paulo, San Francisco, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw, and more. From Mallacoota, in southeast Australia, to Raufarhöfn, in northeast Iceland, and 58 other locations in between, musicians from a wide range of genres and backgrounds used Audiomovers’ ListenTo to stream their sound to Wawken, Saskatchewan, where Canadian composer/sound artist Jeff Morton mixed and retransmitted their sounds back to them – and the world – in real time. After watching the performance from Mito, Japan, Terry Riley himself joined the livestream to greet the musicians, expressing his profound appreciation: "It felt like the earth itself were singing. You are my community." Listening to the recording almost a year later, he added: “A year has gone by since I last heard it. It is an amazing journey through the sonic ethers of planet Earth. So many awesome musicians were involved. Also, the technical support was amazing without which it could never have happened.I am deeply honored and moved by the efforts of all my music brothers and sisters who contributed their efforts and artistry to make this almost impossible dream a success! ” Directed by Evan Ziporyn and Jerry Pergolesi Technical Production by Jeff Morton, Wawken Studio Additional Technical Assistance by Andrew Noseworthy

#Bandcamp #terry riley #minimalism #modern classical #evan ziporn #chamber music #2023 #2024

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hannahssimblr · 10 months ago

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Chapter One (Part 2)

Back at the house, Shane’s mother Caroline is pulling rocket out of the vegetable patch. She complains all the time about having planted it without realising how invasive it is and how it would choke and overcrowd her shallots. Beside her is a growing pile of herbs, some of which she will offer to me before I go home, and I’ll take it knowing that my parents don’t know how to cook with things like rocket.

“Well,” She says to me with the sun in her eyes. “How did you get on?”

“Horrible.” I say. “I thought I’d be sick.”

“Great to get back into the swing of things again.” She says. “Sure you’ll be flying up and down those fields again in no time.”

“I hope so.” Down the garden Claire is lying serenely in the sun next to a flourishing bed of summer flowers. When I go over to her she squints up at me and says “You’re a bit sweaty.”

“Yes I know.” I say, and I lie down beside her with my arms and legs spread eagle and close my eyes against the warmth of the sun.

“This is why I don’t do things like running.” She says. “I can’t stand the feeling of exertion.”

“I can’t imagine you sweating.”

“‘Cause I don’t do that.”

Shane is toeing a football around the grass nearby with Rosie snapping at his feet. I can’t fathom how he has the energy. “If I’d it my way you’d be out of bed at six, running up and down the park with me.” He tells her.

“I’d never do a thing like that in my life.”

“Evie will though, won’t you?”

I sigh. “I suppose.” We have a plan in place to get me fit again once we go back to college in a few weeks, and now that Shane is moving to Portobello it means he’ll only be a five minute cycle from our apartment. When it’s time for our run he can just come and get me. The thought is ominous, but not half as ominous as the thought of heading back to Dublin after the summer, even if I won’t be in the NCAD building much this year.

There isn’t much that stands out from second year. It passed me by in a haze, and all that I really did was work and study, eat and sleep. I chose to specialise in illustration, just like I said I would, and I enjoyed it, but it really just became my life, and once again I fell into the role of the quiet girl in the back of the classroom, never all that willing to participate in pub nights with the others. I went home and drew all evening instead, sometimes hanging out with Jaz and Serena when they were over, but apart from that it was quiet. I didn’t want any new people in my life.

Marnie specialised in graphic design, Dean in painting, and we never spoke except for the time that she said something to me in the canteen about liking my hair. I didn’t say anything back to her and then she never tried to talk to me again. They don’t talk to each other anymore either, but I don’t care about what happened. I saw Dean in the hallways once or twice, and out in the yard with some girl who I almost felt like warning about him, but then chose not to risk getting tangled up in his rotten web again. I hope that she will be smarter than I was. I decided to take an optional extra year and do an internship, but they did not, and so next May they will graduate without me and I’ll never have to see them again.

“Are you excited for your internship thingy?” Claire asks me, somehow following my train of thoughts to the same point, and I tell her that I am. “I’m scared too though.” I admit. “I feel like I wouldn’t know how to act in a real work place with professionals.”

“You’ll be grand. You worked in that café before.”

“Yeah but a café is very different from a screen printing studio, I think probably anybody can pour an americano and put a bun on a plate. The people at the studio are going to be actual paid artists who design things and sell them.”

“But you are an actual artist.”

“Not yet.” I shift up to lean back on my elbows and watch Caroline busy at the beds still, the soft buzz of the honeybees in her hives fill the air with a pleasant, comfortable sort of ambience. “When I get paid for something I’ve done, I think then I can say that I am.”

“Hm.” She says. “Well then you can say it after you’ve painted that window later on this week.”

“Oh yeah.” I say, remembering the promise I made to my former manager to do some typography on the front window of the café. It’s the kind of thing I haven’t done before, but the idea of it feels so exciting that I feel I’d probably do it for no money at all, but the fifty euro he’s offering sounds enticing too.

“Here, what’s the name of that printing place you’re going to work?” Shane wants to know, and I tell him. “Mezzotint.”

He nods. “I think I know one of the lads that works there.”

“Really?” This incredibly culchie man and the amount of alternative social circles he seems to have a finger in never ceases to surprise me. Since when is he randomly hanging out with screenprinters?

“Yeah.” He says, kicking the football into the back wall of the long garden with a thwack. “Simon something. He’s hung out with me and my friends a few times now. Nice lad.”

“Is he a single lad?” Claire asks for my benefit, and I lightly thump her on the arm. She’s only teasing. She knows I’m firmly settled into being entirely romantically unavailable again. Safe limbo, married to myself, never looking at any boys.

“Wouldn’t say so.” Shane says. “I think he’s going out with one of the girls.”

“Oh no.” I say sarcastically, and take my phone out of my bum bag to check the time. “Anyway, I think it’s time I head off.”

“Aw, stay.” Claire says, but I show her that it’s almost five and she understands immediately. Kelly works with her dad, the head chef at a local hotel, every weekday until five. She’ll be home in about ten minutes and I don’t want to be anywhere near this garden when she is.

“Don’t forget the rocket.” Caroline tells me, and I don’t. I grab a generous handful from her and let myself out over the stile ladder.

“Same time tomorrow.” Shane yells after me.

“Ugh!” I yell back, and take off over the fields that lead me back towards town.

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#lucky girl part 3 #summer vibes #bring me back i am so cold

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whileiamdying · 1 year ago

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Sinéad O’Connor, acclaimed Dublin singer, dies aged 56

The Irish musician found worldwide fame with hit single Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990

Sarah Burns Wed Jul 26 2023 - 18:31

Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56, her family has announced.

In a statement, the singer’s family said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”

The acclaimed Dublin performer released 10 studio albums, while her song Nothing Compares 2 U was named the number one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.

Her version of the ballad, written by musician Prince, topped the charts around the globe and earned her three Grammy nominations.

The accompanying music video, directed by English filmmaker John Maybury, consisted mostly of a close-up of O’Connor’s face as she sung the lyrics and became as famous as her recording of the song.

In 1991, O’Connor was named artist of the year by Rolling Stone magazine on the back of the song’s success.

Ms O’Connor was presented with the inaugural award for Classic Irish Album at the RTÉ Choice Music Awards earlier this year.

The singer received a standing ovation as she dedicated the award for the album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, to “each and every member of Ireland’s refugee community”.

“You’re very welcome in Ireland. I love you very much and I wish you happiness,” she said.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar led the tributes to O’Connor, expressing his sorrow at the death of the singer in a post on social media.

“Her music was loved around the world and her talent was unmatched and beyond compare. Condolences to her family, her friends and all who loved her music,” said Mr Varadkar.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin said he was “devastated” to learn of her death.

“One of our greatest musical icons, and someone deeply loved by the people of Ireland, and beyond. Our hearts goes out to her children, her family, friends and all who knew and loved her,” he said.

Ms O’Connor is survived by her three children. Her son, Shane, died last year aged 17.

She drew controversy and divided opinion during her long career in music and time in public life.

In 1992, Ms O’Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on US television programme Saturday Night Live in an act of protest against sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she later said of her protest. “But it was very traumatising,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.”

The year before that high-profile protest, she boycotted the Grammy Awards, the music industry’s answer to the Oscars, saying she did not want “to be part of a world that measures artistic ability by material success.”

She refused the playing of US national anthem before her concerts, drawing further public scorn.

In more recent years, O’Connor became better known for her spiritualism and activism, and spoke publicly about her mental health struggles.

In 2007, Ms O’Connor told US talkshow Oprah Winfrey that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years previously and that before her diagnosis she had struggled with thoughts of suicide and overwhelming fear.

She said at the time that medication had helped her find more balance, but “it’s a work in progress”.

Ms O’Connor had also voiced support for other young women performers facing intense public scrutiny, including Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus.

The singer converted to Islam in 2018 and changed her name to Shuhada Sadaqat, though continued to perform under the name Sinéad O’Connor. In 2021, Ms O’Connor released a memoir Rememberings, while last year a film on her life was directed by Kathryn Ferguson.

Broadcaster Dave Fanning said Ms O’Connor would be remembered for her music and her “fearlessness” and “in terms of how she went out there all the time, believed in everything she was doing, wasn’t always right and had absolutely no regrets at all”.

American rapper and actor Ice T has paid tribute to O’Connor, saying she “stood for something”, after her death at the age of 56.

In a Twitter post, he wrote: “Respect to Sinead….. She stood for something ... Unlike most people ... Rest Easy”.

Musician Tim Burgess of Northern Ireland band Ash said: “Sinead was the true embodiment of a punk spirit. She did not compromise and that made her life more of a struggle. Hoping that she has found peace.”

Penguin Books Ireland, which published her memoir ‘Rememberings’, said they were “so sorry” to hear of the death of the singer.

“Sinéad was a once in a generation talent and we were honoured to publish her memoir ‘Rememberings’,” they said. “We would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends.”

Sarah Burns is a reporter for The Irish Times.

#Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor #Sinéad O'Connor #Nothing Compares 2 U #Nothing Compares To You #Shuhada' Sadaqat #Magda Davitt #The Lion and the Cobra

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ocean-sailor · 2 months ago

Video

youtube

Coldplay - WE PRAY (TINI Version) (Official)

“Stream / download here: https://coldplay.lnk.to/WEPRAYTINI

WE PRAY is taken from Coldplay's tenth studio album Moon Music landing October 4, available to pre-order here: https://coldplay.lnk.to/MoonMusic 🌙

Filmed on 28 August, 2024 at Grafton Street, Dublin🇮🇪. Thanks to everyone who showed up, and to TikTok for helping to make it happen. “

Coldplay💙 featuring:

TINI x , BURNA BOY x , LITTLE SIMZ x , and ELYANNA x

“The band have just announced August 2025 shows at London’s Wembley Stadium and Hull’s Craven Park Stadium. These are the only UK/European cities where they will perform next year. (They have also) announced Music Of The Spheres World Tour shows for Abu Dhabi, Mumbai, Seoul and Hong Kong in 2025.

10% of the band’s proceeds from the Wembley and Hull shows will be donated to Music Venue Trust, to help fund their vital work supporting grassroots UK venues and upcoming artists.

In a world first for a stadium show, the band have also pledged to power the Wembley concerts’ production with 100% solar, wind and kinetic energy.🌲❤️

A limited number of Infinity Tickets, priced at £20 per ticket, will be made available for the shows via Ticketmaster at 12pm GMT on Friday, November 22.

Fifty percent of the tickets for the Hull shows – the band’s first ever concerts in the city – will go to local fans (with HU, YO, DN or LN postcodes), via Ticketmaster on Thursday, September 26 at 6pm BST.”

All tour info is on the Coldplay website here 💙

(bold and extra emojis mine ;)

#Coldplay💙#Tini #Burna Boy #Little Simz #Elyanna #Moon Music #why do I not live in Dublin or the UK ;)#this is amazing :)

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mybeingthere · 1 year ago

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Niall Naessens was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1961 and currently lives in Lios na Caolbhaí, Brandon in West Kerry. Naessens has been drawing all his life. He is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, Visual Communications 1983. He first engaged with printmaking at the Graphic Studio Dublin in 1990. He worked on the Visiting Artists Program at the studio was a director 2000-2004. In 2004 he set up Cló Cill Rialaig an etching workshop in Ballinskelligs and was master printmaker there until 2009. Naessens returned to N.C.A.D. graduating with an MFA in Fine Art Print in 2013.

"I make 3 and 4 plate colour etchings involving hard and soft grounds, aquatint, sugarlift, spitbititng, engraving, burnishing and erasing. My drawings are graphite printed over with flat ares of translucent etching ink and gouache. I employ my own particular drawing syntax which I have developed by moving between the two mediums. I capitalise on the limitations of a medium, finding in restrictions the freedom to create voice."

Niall Naessens

June 2019.

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intriguingpeoplebyangelafloyd · 4 months ago

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COURTNEY LOVE

9 July 1964

HOLE

Courtney Love is an American music artist and actress. She was a prominent figure in the alternative-grunge scene during the 1990s. She is the lead singer in the band Hole, which was formed in 1989. Hole had hits such as Malibu (1998), Awful (1998), and Gold Dust Woman (1996). She has appeared in: Sid and Nancy (1986), Basquiat (1996), Feeling Minnesota (1996), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996, Althea Leasure Flynt), Menendez: Blood Brothers (2017), The Osbournes (2003), and Kurt & Courtney (1998, documentary).

Love (Courtney Harrison) was born in San Francisco, California, US and brought up in Oregon. Her father was a road manager for the Grateful Dead. She has Cuban, English, German, Irish, Jewish and Welsh ancestry. Love was expelled from school for misbehaviour and ended up in juvenile hall for doing petty crime. She has lived in numerous locations such as Japan, Dublin, Liverpool, before returning to America. She attended a Faith No More concert and the band let her join the band as a singer but the band fired her. She travelled to Taiwan and Hong Kong, where she started using heroin. At 19, she worked at Paramount Studios cleaning the wardrope department of vintage clothes that were old and damaged and gained an interest in vintage fashion.

Love has been married twice and has one child. She is best known for being married to Nirvana lead singer, Kurt Cobain. Love on pregnancy: ‘I’m not into the whole feminine experience of pregnancy and birth. But it was a bad time to get pregnant and that appealed to me’.

#courtneylove #hole

#courtney love #courtneylove #hole #hole band

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seasurfacefullofclouds1 · 11 months ago

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I don’t know why he would still use it when he can easily set up another label entity // that’s my point. Louis parted ways with Sony and not amicably. He wouldn’t use a Sony imprint for a serious project, so it must be Sony. My guess is it’s probably poor Ava because of her ties to Syco. I hope they don’t screw her over too l badly. Whatever they do though. Louis will get the blame. It’s the same as what happened with Jack Walton or whatever his name was. Except they were too stupid to put money though before they wrote their articles.

Okay yeah. This is about the Triple Strings imprint signing an artist recently.

I looked up Ava Lily on Wikipedia and did you know she co-wrote Zayn’s Common? She also sang One Direction’s song Perfect on the 2018 X Factor UK. From Euphoria magazine:

You had the chance to co-write with Zayn on his track “Common” off his second album Icarus Falls, how did that opportunity come about and what was it like working with someone as big as he is?

I met Zayn in the studio when he first left [One Direction]. We had this beautiful duet together that we didn’t release. I was writing a lot with my producer friends MYKL and they were doing a lot of music with Zayn at the time so that’s how the whole thing came about.

Ava Lily is currently without a label (she left Naughty Boy’s label a while ago). Although she was on X Factor, she did not win the competition nor has had any ties with Sony, so she doesn’t have obligations to sign on. Whoever signs to Triple Strings will definitely work with Louis though, and he has shown definite interest in her work— liking many of her Instagram posts this year and having her open the FITF Dublin show.

#ava lily #louis tomlinson

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k00291639 · 9 months ago

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Movement ~ Artist Research

When I began my painting I was advised by Eoin to look at the art by Nick Miller. Nick Miller is a London born man who moved to Ireland in 1984 to pursue painting. He first worked in county Clare as well as county Dublin. Since 1992, he has been predominately based in county Sligo.

Nick Miller is a unique artist due to the fact that, for a time, he chose to use his van as a studio. He drove to locations and opened the back doors of his vans in order to paint beautiful landscapes. In his paintings the borders of his van doors can be seen. This adds a lot of depth to his paintings.

I think the way he adds the van interior to his paintings is quite similar to what I am trying to achieve with my bus painting. I also really enjoy the way he paints and would like to use a similar style for my landscape piece.

#movement #painting #acrylic painting #painter #landscape #landscape painting

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denimbex1986 · 1 year ago

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'Irish actors claim they have been treated like the poor relations in the film industry for decades despite big government tax breaks for major studios.

LA-based actor Alan Smyth revealed that Colin Farrell, Ruth Negga and Cillian Murphy have signed a petition for fair and equal pay for native performers and crew.

Over 2,500 people have added their signatures online.

It says the Irish diaspora in the US and worldwide strongly support the efforts of Irish Actors Equity, which is in talks with several government ministers to secure a guarantee “that Irish performers will not be subject to lesser terms and conditions regarding their intellectual property rights than international performers in similar roles”.

“This, unfortunately, has been the case for many years,” it states.

The petition is still open as Irish Equity plans to hold a solidarity rally with the striking SAG-AFTRA union and the Writers Guild of America today.

Smyth, who is from Dundalk, has first-hand experience of the set-up on both sides of the Atlantic. He has reaped the benefits of the American system where actors traditionally got residual cheques whenever their performances are aired.

The threat now, he says, is that the so-called “streamer” networks are imposing drastic cuts to the value of the residuals.

Hence, the strikes.

“It’s a lot worse in Ireland,” said the actor, who has starred in a number of big TV dramas, including CSI: NY and Criminal Minds.

“The system in Ireland is that the Irish cast and crew for the most part, unless it’s Colin or Cillian, are put on buyout contracts so don’t get residual payments.

“The awful thing about it is the Irish Government gives tax breaks to film and TV productions. Within the productions, the Irish cast and crew are paid far less than anyone brought over from England or the US. It’s 100pc discriminatory.

“Colin, Cillian and Ruth Negga have got behind the petition. They know how hard it is until you get to a point where you’re doing really, really well. I can really see how hurtful it is in Ireland.”

Actor Gerry O’Brien lodged a cheque for $800 (€735) yesterday for his role as an Irish man in Pirates of the Caribbean years ago. The payment covers just a quarter of the year.

He got a US contract for the job, rather than the typical Irish buyout one.

In contrast, he has earned just €54 in residuals in the last 20 years here. That was for an RTÉ TV series.

O’Brien said Equity wants a contract for Irish actors like that on offer to their British counterparts. The coveted UK contract sets out minimum pay rates, residual arrangements and other terms and conditions.

Irish production companies offer the buyout contracts on behalf of the major international studios when they are in town, he says.

A Dublin-based actor (27) did not want to be named for fear he would be “blacklisted” when going for jobs.

He has been following the Hollywood strike very closely.

“It shines a light on just how unfair the industry is,” he said.

“Those at the top are earning incredible amounts of money and profit. In a large part, it is due to those at the bottom scraping a living.

“I graduated from drama school in 2017. Last year, I made the most money I ever made working as an actor and that was €14,000. Obviously that is not sustainable.

“If you work on an Irish film, you get paid for the day of work and never see another penny. I routinely sign off my rights for €600 or €700 a day.

“I’m delighted that Cillian Murphy and Colm Meaney are coming out in support of small fry actors like myself.”

Actor Owen Roe has won many theatre awards during his career and his film appearances including Breakfast on Pluto, Intermission, Wide Open Spaces and Michael Collins.

He said actors here are “not prepared to go on strike” but it is an opportunity to inform younger ones of their rights.

“It’s far more competitive as well . There is AI and all those things. The whole buyout situation is not good for us.”

He was glad to see Cillian Murphy and other stars walk out of the Oppenheimer premiere in support of their US union.

“They don’t have to financially, I’d imagine,” he said. “It gives confidence to people who feel they are being exploited.

“I think it will be interesting to see what happens in America. If the whole thing of buyouts and residuals gets sorted. The attitude that we’re cheaper is offensive,” he said.'

#Cillian Murphy #Oppenheimer #Alan Smyth #Colin Farrell #Irish Equity #SAG-AFTRA #Ruth Negga #Owen Roe #Breakfast on Pluto #CSI: NY #Criminal Minds #Gerry O Brien #Pirates of the Caribbean #Colm Meaney #Intermission #Wide Open Spaces

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