My musical trip to IRELAND. Meeting Mickey McConnel and Gavin family.

On August 22, we met the Family Gavin, and their Gypsy Wagon TV. They had invited me to sing and to be recorded in their wagon, and I had the luck of knowing their natural paradise in the middle of Fintown's Nature; a green paradise of trees and grass, lakes, rivers... They were very kind with us and we spent a happy and nice afternoon of music and friendship. You can see their awesome channel of folk and music.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoiry3FOj-18ibNQe9FijDA

The other great experience of this summer was meeting Mickey McConnell.

First of all, I met the song. “Only our rivers run free”. I listened to it some years ago, through YouTube, sung by a young man in a pub of England; this man seemed a worker or a syndicalist, and he sang for freedom. I felt upset with that song, it made me cry and I didn’t know why. May be It happened because its meaning was applicable to the situation of my country, Catalonia. As I told you, It happened some years ago.

From that moment on, I searched and I discovered that that song was written by a man called “Mickey McConnell”. I learnt things about him. He was born in Northen Ireland. His song “Only our rivers run free” talked about the constittutional status of Ulster, and this song became a hit in Ireland in 1968. He made many other songs like “The little drummer boy” and “Follow the flag”. The songs of Mickey were sung by singers like Christy Moore, The Wolfe Tones, Mary Black, The Kelly Family, The James Last Orchestra...

I listened “Only our rivers run free” again in YouTube from a young singer called Sheena (now she is older and lives and sings in pubs from New York. Few weeks ago she was in derry) and I cried again. Finally I learnt to sing this song, and... from time to time, even now, I perform it in the kitchen of my home for my daughter. Now she is 11, but when she was three or four, she hardly ate his dinner, and I sang this song, an others too, so that she had dinner easier, and really she did. Now, I have just made a Catalan version of the song. I told it to Mickey last night and he loved the idea.

So… after all that… I met Mickey McConnell through facebook one or two years ago. This summer, my family and me decided to visit Ireland and I asked Mickey where did he sing and he told me about McMunns, in Ballybunion. We went to have a dinner there on August, 26, and it was great, magic, exciting… My family and me enjoyed a lot, and, in two occasions, Mickey put his guitar on my hands and asked me to sing a couple of songs. It was very exciting to contribute to the magic of the pub with two Catalan songs. If only I had knew that I was going to sing I would have prepared some irish song; I usually sing “Grace” and “The great majestic Shannon” but I don’t know them by heart, and I sang two Catalan songs that I remember and feel very well. Anyway, It was great. The atmosphere of the McMunns was bewitching, entrancing, gripping, awesome… Mickey sang “only our rivers run free” “Viva la quinta brigada” and many others. Other man whom name I don’t remember that had been a very good football trainning (and player) many years before sang too (a deep song about a worker). A woman stood up and sang too (Me and Bobby McGee). Mickey made us feel welcomed; he dedicated songs to us, he explained to the whole pub that we had come from Catalonia, he introduced ourselves to one of the owners of McMunns and some other kind people, he helped us to feel very happy in a warm and kind human climate. That night, the Irish people of McMunns turned out to be like a group of friends for us, openminded, open to other culture (Catalan culture), cheery…

So… I want to thank Mickey such a wonderful night, three days before I turned fifty years old.

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Interview to myself.

This is a practice of my learning english. I appreciate corrections.

1.- Tell me something you’re proud of.

I'm proud of nothing in my life. It would be better to say that I'm grateful. Yes... because all the things I have achieved come from the chance. I've had the opportunity of reaching many aims, a lot of objectives. I've had the tools, the means to get my wishes. I've had to strive to achieve what I have wanted, but... the capacity of striving is also a skill. This skill originates from genetic inheritance, from my parent's education, from the first childhood experiences... The ability of fighting, of working, of striving, of struggling... is a random inheritance.

-Yes… but… there are men and women that when they have the chance of achieving their aims… they don’t do… In this sense It would mean that people have merit or demerit according to their sloth or they effort…

-But why are they sloth or industrious? Do they decide it? And if they decide it? Why do they decide it? Can they decide any other thing? Are they capables for deciding any other thing? The capacity for deciding the right decission is also a gift, a skill. I can not be proud of this skill, because this skill depends on many random reasons.

2.- What makes you think you could do your job?

I have always had many difficulties to understand the lessons teachers taught me... because many of them were very bad teachers. I have overcome the obstacles they have put on my learning path, and so I know what a teacher must not do, what a teacher must do, how must he speak, how must he dominate the group, what difficulties the group is going to find, what weak points I have to attack... And I know all these things through the mistakes and the clumsiness of my old teachers.

3. What kind of leadership qualities do you have?

I don’t believe in leaderships. I think that the teacher of course must command. And a teacher of children, of young people, have a lot of skills to command without authoritarianism. Perhaps he will have to show his autority the first day, or the first week… but afterwards, the authority will have to diminish… The teacher is older, is wiser, should be more empathetic than any of his pupils… all this skills allow him to work without a constant use of authority. I think leadership is an important matter when we are talking about groups of persons that have a similar age and matureness. A teacher must be a bit like a father… by my point of view.

4.- Why did you leave your last job?

Well, really, I left it voluntarily. I was sitting on the top of a hydrochloric acid tank, in Madrid, under a burden august sun, and I told my self “What I’m doing here? Working day by day only to produce paper? Sheets of paper that will be thrown to the ground of the streets? All my mind, my skills, my empathy, my poetry, my humanity… sacrificed to enrich the bank accounts of the owners of this factory?” After these thoughts, I decided to be a writter and a teacher, and I got off the tank, and went to the personnel department to say that I went away.

5.- Do you have any skills or hobbies you think might be useful for this job?

Yes. I write. I like to imagine situations. I like to invent games, strategies. I like to work the times and the staging of a class. I like young people. I like the way of being of the children. Teens, preteens. I think that they have skills that afterwards they will loose, interesting skills… creativity, spontaneity, happiness, essential sincerity (not about details but about feelings) they usually don’t use a mask, it’s easy for me to know what are their feelings, and how are their thoughts… this ease makes my work more simple.

6.- What do you think is your greatest fault?

I’m too self-dependent, too self-contained, too self-sufficient… and so… It’s no easy for me to relate with adult people, with contributors… In general, in my life, not only in my job, my wishes of independace and freedom push me to break relations with friends or with people that don’t accept a high level of freedom in a relation. I’m happy alone. I like people but if I have to choose between people and freedom I preffer freedom. So… I have very few friends, but I’m happy.

7.- How do you feel about spending time away from home?

It’s very important for me to live usually in my home, with my family. I could sporadically travel far away, but no more than a week every three months. I preffer time than money. I preffer a job with a low salary but a lot of free time than a job with a high salary but many busy hours in a day.

8.- What do you see yourself doing in five year’s time?

The same than now, but in english. I like what I do, more than any other job in the world. I am where I want to be. If I won the lottery, I would do what I’m doing. But if the life changed in the future, I’m sure I would find a way of doing what I’m doing now, or very similar.  

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