The Librarian of Inisherin, the source of my inspiration!
“There is always the hope of tomorrow to brighten the clouds of today.” That quote speaks to me, despite the clear and cloudless day I’m basking in. It’s inscribed on the bench on which I’m sitting. I can feel the sun’s warmth on the back of my neck as I look out at an ocean so blue it reminds me of a vast bed of forget-me-nots.
I’m on Achill Island in County Mayo; and not surprisingly I’m thinking of The Banshees of Inisherin. It’s a film that wasn’t to everyone’s taste – I loved it. In fact, I’d say it’s up there with my all-time favourite films. From the opening frame, I was captivated by the landscape, then immersed in its story-arc, while identifying with its characters and the gamut of emotions they go through during the course of the film’s narrative.
The island of Inisherin is fictional, but parts of it were filmed on Achill, most notably Keem Bay was used as the location for the home of Colm Doherty, played by Brendan Gleeson. In the film, Colm Doherty is a man who becomes increasingly aware of the passing of time and wants to create music in order to leave something to the world, which will remain long after he’s gone. Thus, he decides to break-up his life-long friendship with Padraic (played by Colin Farrell), in order to devote the time wasted on what he sees as their dull conversations, and invest that time in creating musical art. It’s this interpersonal dilemma that drives the increasingly dark story.
The character of Colm Doherty’s house remains on Keem Bay, although the film crew have stripped it of its cinematic artifice and it’s now a mere concrete square. However, there’s nothing artificial about the landscape that surrounds it – the epic beauty of Achill Island is a film maker's dream, an artist’s paradise, and a writer's muse.
As I walked along the beach on which the characters of Colm and Padraic arrive at a tentative truce, I was thinking of Colm. He’s a character I identify with. Like me, he’s single, childless and yearns to create in order to leave something of himself behind. I’d been feeling melancholy earlier in the day, but as I walked along the beach my melancholia was overrode by a great wave of inspiration and an enthusiastic urge to complete the second memoir I’m writing.
Another character from the film walked along Achill with me, Padraic’s sister, Siobhan, played by Kerry Condon. She’s a character who reminded me of my own dear sister, Maria. What sustains Siobhan’s lonely life on the island is her love of books and the dream of one day moving to the mainland to become a librarian.
The weather was unseasonably warm, and this combined with the cloudless blue sky, aqua-hued-ocean and rugged mountainous landscape mesmerised me. I walked with my head in a writerly cloud, far removed from Cavan. Until I was pulled from my dreams by a voice, “Well would you look who it is.” I stopped and allowed the thoughts spill from my head; replaced by delight at seeing a familiar face from Cavan; a woman I credit for motivating my writing more than she knows – the librarian-extraordinaire.
Such was our mutual joy at seeing each other we instinctively hugged; before she introduced me to her slightly bemused but lovely husband. She no longer works at Johnston Central Library, but she is greatly missed by myself and many more.
The writer Patricia Scanlon first encouraged me to write a memoir. I published ‘Secrets and Styes’ in 2022. Librarian-extraordinaire was one of the first to read it; she also kindly introduced me to The Anglo-Celt. One day, she told me she’d proposed my book for the ‘The Better Together, Cross Border Peace Project'. To my surprise, it was selected for inclusion.
As a novice writer, I became the only male author in the company of lauded Irish writers: Rachael English, Martina Devlin, and Nuala O’Connor. To be in the company of such literary luminaries was the greatest honour for this humble scribe. I’ll be forever thankful to the woman I now call my ‘Librarian of Inisherin’ for instilling the belief in myself as a writer.
I began with a quote, and will end with one, “Here’s to those who inspire us and don’t even know it.”
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