Shane MacGowan died this morning. As a small nod in his honor, I wanted to repost this piece about my favorite song that he wrote, which I originally posted on St. Patrick's Day in 2021.

My Irish bloodline is more personal trivia than heritage. My forebears sailed across the sea to farm in Pennsylvania nearly two centuries before my birth and roughly a generation before the Potato Famine, all of which is to say, there’s a great deal of distance there. Ireland is an abstraction, and my connection to it is ancestral rather than lived.

I never experience that connection more strongly than when I listen to The Pogues, “Thousands Are Sailing.” That song encapsulates anything I’ve ever read, seen, heard, or felt of my Irish heritage. There’s a push and a pull, grief and love, genuflection and spit, grit and pride. It’s a great song.

I’m putting a YouTube link with the very-much-still-relevant lyrics below. By all means, wear the green plastic hat, drink the Shamrock Shake, tell the kids the leprechaun left a chocolate gold coin, and down some Guinness and Jameson alongside your corned beef. But if you can spare five minutes and twenty odd seconds this St. Patrick’s Day, give them to The Pogues and think of the Irish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27iJsZpQn3A

I'm tired,

I always say it.

To the point where I don't know when I even am.

I'm tired,

but I can't sleep.

Cause the moment I lay down,

the weight of my thoughts overpower me.

I'm tired,

pass it off as a joke.

Cause I don't wanna worry those around me,

have them avoid me when they need me the most.

I'm tired,

but I don't wanna be put to rest.

Just not feel, not think.

But still be happy at best.

I'm tired,

I say it's insomnia,

but I know it's more than that.

I dont wanna admit it, I just know I can't.

I'm tired...just so tired of it all.

That even the happiest moments are only seconds all gone.

of course green is violence. its a signal of resources; a peaceful, sought after oasis. of course green is violence. the very word itself means something inexperienced and keen on impulse; raw, unfiltered nature. of course green is violence! it's everything we've been trying to stay away from with our caves that turned into huts that turned into houses so complex and beautiful we never have to step out into the green. of course, green is violence. everything green competes with us for the sunlight, reminding us who the real aliens are.

of course, if green is violence, then it surely doesn't explain how we've been seeing so much blue and red and purple and white and black and still having violence. maybe it all comes back to who is the strongest. the filters of the universe are echoed in our own nature - as below so above - and the fittest will survive, as Darwin surmised when he saw those finches on those islands. Darwin stepped into the green of the Galapagos, sprouting from its black lava rock, underneath the blue sky, being kissed by the black-blue sea; he saw the little brown birds with their varying beaks and asked, "why?" and he drew a couple lines and put some specimens in jars to travel with him back to England, to live on a shelf for all this green Earth's existence as a prize of human advancement.

evolution is violence. and nothing is greener than that.

the way you look at me when i am exhausted and you are stressed and we both just need to get out of our heads is violence. our thoughts have evolved past what our brains can handle. just a memory and i can feel the tension in my body as if i were really there. the hormones are triggered by any little thought and i am caught in the turbulent waves, the violence that keeps our planet spinning - both around it's own axis and the sun magnetism.

our planet is green. as far as we know, it's the greenest one to exist. and it holds the highest death rate, birth rate, suicide rate, unemployment rate, and dance-dance revolution stars who entertain folks in the arcade of the mall as they wait for their loved ones to pick out a pair of shoes.

what if green = violence? just look out the window. maybe violence isn't so scary. perhaps we are like sharks on our green land, primed to handle everything thrown our way. everything excpet those damn hormones that keep getting triggered over no real threat. ill always be envious of those damn zebras and their non-ulcer life.