âChildren say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.â Joan of Arc, 1400s
âPut your fucking seatbelts on âcause I havenât finished yet.â Sinead OâConnor, SPIN 1992
Singer. Banshee. Advocate. Priest. Theologian. Mother. Bold. Brave. Muslim. Life-long nonconformist. Feminist. Human.
Iâll never forget the SNL episode when she tore the popeâs photo in half after singing Bob Marleyâs War. No one did that. No one was brave enough to speak truth like that.
I bought combat boots that year and later wore them out walking all over Moscow, Russia during the changes in 1992. Inspired to be a Russian studies major and music minor because of the spirit of the revolutionaries, from the 1800âs and 1900âsâyouth, women, men, poets, writers, the truth tellers, the artists and musicians who spoke truth- real truth- against hypocrisy, against insanity, against a system that would kill them or exile them for having the audacity to speak truth. To be a free thinker.
I thought the most incredible destiny at the time, was creating art because of and despite the insanity of the lies, the struggle of the human condition. And the journey of the one, the artist inside a collective sea, despite and because of persecution or being gaslit, silenced and all manner of atrocity, yet living on through and beyond. Their art, an eternal message of possibility, freedom and hope.
Iâve been reading a slew of articles that paint Sineadâs portrait and highlight the spectrum of her human journey through her music, political activism, mental illness, motherhood and spiritual truth finding. She journeyed deep and wide, high and low. She was that destiny, not ego in the harmful sense, Artist. She was not going to change or be what the industry wanted her to be. Her music, her songs lifted up so many of usâthe voiceless, the broken, the afraid, the confused, the troubled. She gave feelings and words to millions. She was an angel and a waif, a punk and a rebel, a truth teller and her own wild wolf. She howled and gave us permission to feed and feel the moon.
She was unapologetic. she did not care that what she said or did for the sake of truth and freedom, impacted the socially constructed ideas of what fame or fortune in the music industry are supposed to looks like. That they impacted her musical âcareerâ as the industry explains it, mattered not. Sinead was a woman of her own making.
âI didnât have time to think about [becoming famous] before it happened,â she says. âI was singing in clubs and pubs, pubs and clubsâŠI was just singing for the sake of singing, âcause I had shit to get off my chest. I feel like thatâs the only reason really [for anyone] to make an album is because theyâll go so fucking crazy if they donât. If youâre making an album for any other reason you shouldnât be fucking making it.â
I played her albums on repeat. Some songs and albums more than others, through my twenties. I visited the once upon a time music club in Greenwich Village Sin-e, wishing deeply that I had been there when she played in that smalll intimate space. Just touching the building felt a small pilgrimage in her honor.
âWhen I sing, itâs the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. Itâs not about notes or scales, itâs all about emotion.â
I cut my hair short after returning from Russia. Swore off my insecure, boy-crazy teenage low self esteem superficiality. There was Before-Russia Stacey and then After-Russia Stacey. Like Baba Yaga said, to know too much is to grow too old too soon. I saw too much about the human condition, the cost of freedom and itâs opposite on the human psyche, felt and saw one world dying and another world risingâa world that was being made a golden childâCapitalism! And all I could see and smell was lies and hypocrisy. Yes some of the old needed to die, but some of the soul of the old was being raped by the dollar and that seemed insane to me. I didnât know how to put in in words or digest it. It was a bone to choke on.
I was only 20. I struggled mentally with anxiety and depression After Russia. An awakening of sorts. But no bearings back home to make sense of it. Sineadâs music and Russian literature, poetry and music of the revolutions of old helped tremendously during that time. Dr. Zhivago. The Master and Marharita. Anna Akhmatova. Learning about the artist/writer and the struggle for freedom amidst censorship and death. Life, the world didnât make sense. All the things that didnât make sense about being a girl becoming a woman, American capitalism, not speaking truth, following social norms, political bullshit, pretense, Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose placeâŠI rejected all of it. Mostly quietly, silently. While imploding inwards on myself because I didnât understand transition or how to wake up fully boldly inside of it. Mental breakdown was the label that made sense. Yet it was more, it was that so much of the system was insane. So much of the conditions the inheritance the American myth the gender this and that â-it was insane.
Sinead was like a beacon of sanity amidst all that nonsense. They said she struggled with mental illness too, but she didnât shut up. Did she have mental illness or did she grow up into a world that was completely knickerbottoms a nut job. Sometimes itâs a both and but sometimes the mental illness is the result of being fed insanity.
She didnât stop saying through music what needed to be said. It was felt through my pores even if I wasnât fully listening to the words. I freakin loved her. I cried to her songs. They resurrected me.
âWhatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don't think so
You asked for the truth and I told you
Through their own words
They will be exposed
They've got a severe case of
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothes
The emperor's new clothesâ
Sinead had a hard life. A difficult insane mother. A fucked up religion with its Massoleum of ghosts and secrets. She fought hard against child abuse, sexual abuse, hypocritical lies in the name of god and more. She became a priest. And she sang her own songs in her own way. In one interview decades ago, she said she thought Americans were wussies and needed to be more brave and speak out more against the lies and injustices. She was changed by motherhood. She lived through the painful suicide of one of her beloved children. That changed her. Some stories break you harder. And some stories donât have a medicine that makes the pain go away.
She converted to Islam and changed her name several times. She took on the Muslim name Shuhada' Davitt â later changing it to Shuhada Sadaqat â but continued to use the name Sinead O'Connor professionally. Shuhada means martyr.
From what I understand, Islam was the culmination of her spiritual journey as a theologian. She felt home inside of it. She found contentment.
I havenât yet read her memoir. I somehow forgot about her in my 40âs and didnât pay to much attention to her music. Her death wakes me up to her story, to my story, to our story of waking up inside a machine, waking up to truth, to life/death/life. May she fly free. May her passing be a wave of wakefulness over our heads, reminding us to be more bold. More truthful. More real.
âI never made sense to anyone, even myself, unless I was singing. But I hope this book makes sense. If not, maybe try singing it and see if that helps.â
And lastly, Shuhada⊠May the words of the great truth teller Pasternak carry you into the arms of Allah and beyond.
âAnd now listen carefully. You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.â
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago