#if you're an american with irish or otherwise celtic ancestry (like i am)

[bogunicorn]

Like, it's fine to relate songs you like to fiction you like. That's good and fun! Hozier's music is often political commentary, but it's also about love and emotion and has inspirations in other genres of music and fiction (esp Unreal Unearth, which is explicitly based on Dante's Inferno).

The trouble comes not with linking, you know, a love song to your favorite blorbo, it's when you reduce Hozier the person into a magical sad fairy man stereotype Too Good for This World in a way that both reduces the influence of black music and artists on his work AND fetishizes Irishness as a whole as if Ireland is a fantasy kingdom of the past and not a real place populated by real people.

[autisticdelinquent]

I'm sure this is a weird concept for people who haven't pondered it before but how is there not more non-European white people out there feeling soul crushing emptiness not knowing what it will ever feel like to know the physical land or the culture/people of the places their ancestors come from? I'm mixed Native and Caucasian with maybe a few stray Asian and Polynesian lines further in my ancestry. I am mostly white but am integrating with the local Native tribal community and have since I was a child. I'm currently in the adoption process. I am profoundly grateful to know them and to at least live on the ancestral territory of my Native side. I can't help but feel so lonely and alienated on a soul level though because I will likely never be able to patch that side of my family in the same way for my European ancestry. I recognize how much more important it is to focus on the culture more at risk of going extinct, I just wish I could explore them both with the same ease. I grew up without and still don't really have any friends but online I'd always find myself being most at home feeling when talking to Scandinavians but more so with English and even more than that with Irish and Scottish people specifically. Obviously I got along with tribal relations fine but I mean as far as relationships go like in school or otherwise white dominated areas. I am 21, never been kissed, and most of my relationships have been online/LDR. The best one ever actually was with a Scottish person and we were together for years but he dumped me out of nowhere one day without even a fight and he's never been back in contact with me since to my worst dismay. I truly feel like if my white ancestors never left hundreds of years ago I may honestly have had a better childhood with more of a chance of having a social life. Even if I didn't I would've at least had sacred wells and hills and ancient monuments to explore and meditate in to connect to my ancestors. I love my Native ancestry and by all means I agree with their values and relate harder to their culture on every level because of how close I was to it growing up, but I can't help but feel people who are completely white with absolutely no historical connection to their current lands should have at least a little feeling of unease never knowing where they come from? I understand if I was only white that I wouldn't be me and genetically I'd be a whole different person but I mean hypothetically if I were to be the same personality/consciousness I'd probably be a lot more well off socially and emotionally if I'd at least grown up in a more Celtic setting. I really hate when I see Americans trying to be all in people's faces when exploring Celtic and honestly European culture in general for "ancestry" reasons because I am fully aware of how objectifying and detached that comes off and I really don't want this to sound like something from one of those Americans. The feelings in my head and heart are just too big for my autistic ADHD brain to even begin to process in a way that words can do justice to. At the risk of sounding like a loser- I crave a deeper connection to the Earth around me and with people who are familiar with my ancestral cultures. I'm not saying they actually have to be from them, reincarnation exists in Celtic belief so just because you're not from that place in this life doesn't mean you weren't connected to it before. Idk. I'm rambling at this point. If you're a druid or otherwise passionate about Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Celtic Britain, Aisle of Man, Cornwall, Brittany, etc please DM me I'm begging. I've recently enrolled in the OBOD so I'm really hoping to find people to learn/talk about bards with and just general friendship ;-;