A quiet place
The Tommy Tiernan column
Ipopped into a deserted church in Cork city a few weeks ago. There’s a righteous strain to the people down there; a strong Catholicism that runs deep in their bones. As audiences go, they are probably the most fun-loving and the most easily shocked at the same time. It was seven on a Saturday evening, and I wanted to go to Mass before the show. I wandered into this place just off the main street, and nothing but a few stragglers in it.
The silence is a marvel. You don’t just get it in churches, though. Theatres in the afternoon have it too, as does me shed down the bottom of the garden. John Moriarty one time talked about seeking shelter from God in a chapel. He meant, perhaps, that the wild world is bursting with divinity; a flourishing, unmannered, and reckless life force that is too unpredictable for the human mind to get a grip of, so the quiet places give us respite from that torrent of God.
Inside, two Polish lads are steamed and giggling beside the confessional box. They are covered in builder’s dust. They manage to wobble themselves up to a shrine and light a candle. They bow their heads and drunkenly pray.
A girl comes up to me and asks me for money. I can’t remember exactly how her story went, because it wasn’t really coherent. It kept hopping from one calamity to the next, but she was crying telling it to me. I gave her some cash. She may well have been lying, but that’s her business, not mine, I suppose.
A priest walks over and tells me, “Mass doesn’t start till eight. It’s a lame enough affair. There won’t be many here.”
A Romanian girl is sitting on the ground between the pews and staring toward a statue of the Virgin Mary. She’s young herself, and clean-faced. She has an air of the street about her, though; she’s a bit rough around the edges. She’s rooted to the floor, planted like an oak. A thousand men couldn’t lift her from it. Her dialogue, her worship, her identification with, and her need of, Mary is absolute. It’s only looking back on it now that I wonder were they the same person. There’s something that I can’t quite put my finger on that links the two of them. I’m not able to look at either of them for very long; it seems like bad manners. The other side A guy kneels down behind me and says over my shoulder: “I was once where you are now.” I’m thinking does he mean this particular seat, but he says: “No, a devout antiCatholic. But I came out the other side. So will you.”
Someone starts playing the organ, warming up for Mass, maybe. I don’t have time to stay, and it’s a pity, because I was looking forward to Communion, looking forward to feeling a part of something, but I have to hit the road to be on time for the gig. Outside, I’m stopped for a few photographs. Happy women on a night out. I throw an arm around them, and smile for the camera.
I walk back to the hotel and try to figure out how I’m going to do the show that evening. An idea comes to try it like a preacher. To have serious points to make and to make them sincerely, but each with a comic twist at the end. It excites me for the night, so off I go. I get up on stage and start. “What do you need to be a success?” I say. People shout out “Determination. Drive. Hard work.”
I say, “No. The thing that you need in order to be a success is for other phuckers to fail. In order for one person to win, 45 others have to lose. It’s a corrupt regime; a pyramid built on the skulls of others. We’ve all succeeded already. We’re here, we’re alive. We are putting way too much pressure on one another to be winners.
“‘Do your best!’ Remember that? Heading out the door to an exam and your mam says, ‘Just do your best!’ Have you any idea the amount of effort and application it takes to do that? It’s too much. What I say to the kids when they’re going off to do exams is, ‘Just come home after. That’s all you have to do…’”
The first half of the show was very enjoyable, but the second half was not. I felt like I was just going through the motions. I wrote the words ‘dribbled and constricted’ in my notebook afterwards.
When the crowd leaves, I come out of the dressing room and sit to have a drink with my friend Brian, who owns the club, and a few of the bar staff. There’s a bright-eyed girl from Donegal, and a fella who swims in the sea. A young lady with pink hair who seems to have got drunk quite quickly, and a guy from Wexford whose hoody is up the whole time.
We sit around a small table in the middle of this cavernous room. The place is as empty now as the church was earlier. We have whiskey and pizza. Together.