Tommy Tiernan

On the joy of Carlow

Certain places have certain energies about them. There’s a road I ride between Portlaoise and Tullamore, and I’d swear to God, part of it is haunted. Every time I drive it — and it always seems to be at night that I’m on it. Maybe the place doesn’t exist during the day; it only blooms into being when the sun sinks — I always feel the weight of the sorrowful and invisible dead observing me. Some awful crime was committed there, I’m sure of it. Likewise, I always look forward to going to Cork. There’s a buoyancy in that city that you cannot trap or photograph, but ’tis as palpable as grass.

Recently, I happened to be in Carlow, and I’m only just getting over it now. It’s a county under pressure from no one. It’s just left alone to do whatever it wants. It never comes up in the national discourse, or gets a day out in Croke Park. If you were on the run in some other part of the world, I’d say you could disappear into Carlow and no one would even think of looking for you there. And this quare calm produces conversations that just aren’t possible in other counties.

Now, I tour with three other fellas. We’d be a normal enough bunch, ranging in height from six foot two to five foot nine, and we were in the hotel lobby, just thrown down on a couch and breathing. That’s all you have to do when you’re in Carlow — breathe, and things change. It was getting into us. A natural intoxicant that can lead the imagination down some righteous roads. I’d like to put it into me pipe and smoke it.

Insights into life can happen in Carlow that don’t happen anywhere else. But, by Jaysus, keep this to yourself. If the Department of Health ever get wind of it, they’d ban it — into the bin with it, like the St John’s Wort and the mushrooms.

“I’ve been thinking…” I said to the lads. I could sense them settling in for a bit of thinking themselves.

“Everything is caused by something else, isn’t that right? There is nothing that we know of that exists of its own accord. The sun, this table, ourselves and the cutlery was all brought into being because of other energies and objects, which, in themselves, were also brought into being by other forces and so on and so on...”

The boys nodded in agreement. Encouraged by this, I went on. Out of the corner of me eye I could see other people flopped out on settees and comfortable armchairs, each of them having wild, high discussions with each other.

“Well, I’ve always seen myself as a character in a soap opera, and I’m able to sit back and enjoy watching it,” said one lad to his mother. I seen another man tell his wife, “We’d all be better off if we learnt how to speak music... it’ll be the next step in our evolution. Language reduces experience and tries to define it, and it never quite gets it right. Music hits the nail on the head the whole time.” To which she replied, “I’d love to be an emoji…”

Anyway, I refocused on me own compadres and continued, “So if everything is caused by something else, well then, nothing can be said to be independent. And if nothing is independent, then nothing really has an identity of its own, and therefore all things are empty, and, in a sense, don’t exist as themselves at all.”

“Is that why Carlow have never been in an All-Ireland final... cos they don’t actually exist?” said the sound man.

I blathered on, “And if nothing exists as itself, then you can’t really take anything too seriously. It’s all a game in a sense; a charade of masks and appearances. And the quare thing is that there’s nothing behind the masks.”

“So next year, Carlow should just pretend to be Dublin and see what happens in the Championship.” the sound man said.

Now this seemed to us at the time not just a theoretical rant about the meaning of life, but one of the actual realities that we live with. And the strange thing was we were all taking it quite well, given the fact that we’d just realised that none of us or none of anything was what it appeared to be. A revelation like this on other parts of the island could lead a man to panic and retribution, but not here. Here, we ordered tea.

A kind waitress came over. She could tell that we were newbies. “Is it your first time?” she asked. “Yes,” the sound man said, “I mean I’ve been to Laois before, but it’s nothing compared to Carlow.”

“Do people actually live here?” I asked.

“They live more here than anywhere else,” she said. “What do they do?” “What do you mean, do? People don’t do anything in Carlow. They just are.”

Now the following day, we had to set sail for Clane. A fine place too, but weeks later it is the land of scallions that has stayed with me. If ever I go missing, you’ll know where to find me. Follow me up...