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I’m writing on my laptop in a café. A woman, in a hurry and a huff, sits in the free seat next to me. "Can’t get away from the computer on holiday, can you?" It offends her deeply, it seems, this laptop. I tell her, "Wait two years, you’ll see them all over here." This does not make her happy. "I’m here to get my book back from the printer." "Well, I’m working here actually, on a book too. What’s yours?" "Music and painting." "Mine’s music too, photography." "Photography, that’s so invasive." I look through her printer’s proofs as she looks through my mock-up. We’re sizing each other up.

"These are all wrong," she mutters, "They’re upside down." It’s her own piece she’s referring to, not mine. "Kandinsky, Klee, they’re the only ones who have painted music, not representation on music, but the music itself, and now me. No one else has done it." The benefit of being married to a therapist is that I can spot an Axis II disorder at 20 paces now, but I’m curious to see where this is going to go.

"Do you ask permission before taking pictures?" "Yes, I do." "Do you send prints?" "I do." "Good, you’re ok then." "Can you tell me how these traditions continue so vibrantly in a modern European country." Her eyes flash in anger. "Don’t ever think Ireland is a modern European country, don’t ever believe that." A long diatribe ensues. "The tradition’s dying, it is. People have no attention span now, with all this technology. Back when the music was most alive, it was in the sheheen houses, no alcohol, though maybe a bit of the poteen, and word would go out and people would come for 20 miles to dance. They’d pick up the music that way, memorize one tune from that night and go home with it and learn it, not from a pub or a CD and not with all this commercialization and money." "A pre-media music," I say, and she likes that, "Pre-media, yes." This woman wants to live in pre-media. "I don’t have a TV, I don’t have a mobile, I don’t have a phone. I want nothing to do with that. I play my fiddle and I paint."

She looks at my prints. Carefully. "You have it," she says. "I’m an outsider," I protest, "What you see is a romantic yearning to be inside." "No," she interrupts me, "You’re not outside, you’ve gotten inside."

Galway
3 April 2000