00:00:00 [MUSIC]

00:00:08 Geraldine Hennessy: Today we welcome author, poet and musician, Thaddeus Ó Buachalla.

00:00:13 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Hi, Geraldine, thanks very much for having me on.

00:00:16 Geraldine Hennessy: Growing up in Cork City, what were your earliest memories of being drawn to both the Irish language and music?

00:00:23 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I suppose there’s two separate answers to that. I suppose musically, there was a lot of music in my family. On my mother’s side, my uncle, he played in a famous show band, Theo Cal, was his name. He played in the Dixies. I was actually called after him. He was Thaddeus Cal, and I was called after him.

00:00:47 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: But I suppose it showed me, they played in Carnegie Hall, I think they were on Top of the Pops or something, but it showed me that it’s possible to get into music and to play music and to do well and to become successful. So it was almost a template in a way. My mother then pushed me when I was 12 to just take up the guitar and play music as well. So she was a big support as well.

00:01:14 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: But as well as that, there was my father. My father didn’t play any musical instrument, but he was a great singer. He loved singing. We’d go someplace and he’d be up singing.

00:01:24 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I think really my first memory of music, of recognising what music is, I can remember specifically the point was, you know, that kind of windy road going into Crosshaven along the coast there. And we were driving around, it was around three years of age, sitting in the back seat, we were going down to Crosshaven, down to the Merries, and my father was in the front seat blasting out Spanish Eyes. You know what that sound? Spanish Eyes. And I remember sitting there going, “That’s fantastic. It’s amazing.” And it always stuck in my head.

00:01:57 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: So like that kind of love of just being able to sing and to play and to create something like that. And it always kind of stuck with me. So I suppose that those were kind of the earliest memories. And musically, I suppose, it kind of grew from that.

00:02:15 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: With the Irish language, then I suppose it’s a different kind of story. And I suppose it makes me kind of think of our evolving relationship with the Irish language in Ireland. Because in truth, growing up in Cork City in the 70s and the 80s, there wasn’t really a lot of Irish around me. I mean, today there are Gaelscoils everywhere. But they weren’t there then. And my family didn’t speak Irish. So I wasn’t raised speaking Irish. But I think I always did have a fondness for it.

00:02:46 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: But it was after I left school. I mean, I suppose I got the kind of normal bit that you’d get from a normal secondary school. But it was after I left school, I kind of I made a kind of a conscious decision that I was going to speak Irish. And once I did, it kind of snowballed. I started going to the library, taking out books, reading Jordan Moon, a dictionary, trying to figure out. And then I’d done night classes. And then I’d say, look, I’ll do a degree in Irish. And then I’d done really well in a degree. And then I said, I do EHD. So I kind of went from not really speaking any Irish to having a PhD, but just it kind of the Irish language kind of just took over my life really.

00:03:28 Geraldine Hennessy: OK.

00:03:29 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It was a fantastic kind of thing really to happen. It just changed my life, the Irish language. From growing up in Cork, I didn’t really have it there. But I had to find it myself.

00:03:40 Geraldine Hennessy: I would have assumed actually that you came, that your whole family spoke Irish, that you were brought up with it. So I’m kind of surprised to hear that. And that wasn’t the case, that you almost–

00:03:50 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: No.

00:03:50 Geraldine Hennessy: It was a choice that you made. So it was such–

00:03:53 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It was. It was a choice. I found the best choices I’ve ever made. Really, it’s fantastic. I think it does reflect the kind of journey that the country is on, really, that we’re accepting that Irish is there for all of us, that we can all speak it. And you just need to make the choice to say, right, I’m going to do it. And you can go as far as you want with it. And there was much–

00:04:15 Geraldine Hennessy: It is changing. Ireland is changing in that respect.

00:04:18 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Absoloudly, yeah. And it’s really– you can do it. It’s not this closed door. You can choose to just open it and–

00:04:26 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah. So you really did open the door. You hold a PhD in Modern Irish from UCC. How did your time, I suppose, studying shape your creative voice as both a writer and musician?

00:04:39 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, it had an enormous effect, really. I mean, UCC really gave me so much. It was just such an amazing place, an amazing experience. Maybe not so much as a musician, because when I went to UCC, I went there specifically for literature, for language. So my degree course was in English and Irish and English. So it was all literature, really, that I was studying. And in first year of my arts degree, I had done music as well. I took classes in Sean Nos with Eibhlish Ni Houlabhain, which was great. But mostly, UCC for me was for literature.

00:05:18 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And I suppose I intentionally went to UCC to become a writer. I suppose I had been writing things since I was very young, in English, but kind of unsuccessfully, really. But I suppose not many people see academia as a route to creativity. But it really is, and it really was for me. And I wanted to write, and I wanted to write in Irish. It really gave me that.

00:05:46 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: So I studied Irish and English for the degree. And with the Irish, I was able to get the wealth and the diversity of Irish literature, and prose, and poetry. It really kind of– I got so much wisdom from that, really, and a historical perspective of Irish literature. And that’s such incredible lecturers in the Department of Modern Irish. I remember Alan Titley was there. He was head of the department when I was there, and an amazing novelist himself. Having people like that just there, teaching you, and it was incredible.

00:06:21 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And then with the English, I studied a lot of great literature as well, but also literary theory and principles of literary criticism. And I learned how to analyse literature. I suppose it was a much more philosophical perspective. And I became really interested in postmodern literature. Postmodernism is kind of– it actually kind of has an awareness of itself, and an awareness of its place within the world, within greater society. It kind of reflects that.

00:06:50 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And so then I decided then that I wanted to do a PhD on the postmodern novel in Irish literature. And I was very lucky to do that with Dr. Padraig Riggs. What I was doing, really, I wanted to write postmodern fiction in Irish. I wanted to figure out how to do that. And there is no textbook on how to do that. So I decided I’d write it. That was my PhD thesis. The PhD was figuring out how do I do this. And EL is a postmodern novel. So I was figuring out how do you write a postmodern novel. So I wrote a textbook on how to do it. And then I wrote it. So it directly influenced me.

00:07:33 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It taught me– but that’s why I went to UCC. I went to learn how to become a writer and how to become an Irish language writer. And it really gave to me. At UCC, it’s just an amazing place. It kind of created everything that I have really as a writer. And I would give me the basis. And the guidance that I got from lecture was there and the people that are there was just immense. So much amazing.

00:07:55 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: People think postmodernism in Irish literature. People are going, is there such a thing? And is it peg postmodern?

00:08:02 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah.

00:08:02 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It isn’t, by the way. But really, postmodernism is a kind of– I actually think that the Irish invented literary postmodernism. You see, the PhD thesis, I had it published later as a book. And I kind of describe it in a way that– they say the first postmodern novel was either “Finnegan’s Wake” by James Joyce or “A Swim to Birds” by Flan O’Brien. So the Irish really invented literary postmodernism. And then 40 years later, the French came up with theories to explain it to themselves. It’s in a way– postmodernism was a way of almost filling the vacuum that the absence of the Irish language, the suppression of the Irish language, created. And it was another kind of a voice that the Irish evolved, really.

00:08:54 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: So it gave me a philosophical understanding of literature and how to find a voice. UCC kind of gave me that. And it really did kind of bring me along with it in so many ways.

00:09:09 Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely. And how do your dual lives as an academic and a creative artist feed into one another when you sit down and start a new project?

00:09:21 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: They don’t feed into each other in a lot of ways, really. I think academia kind of gave me discipline. It gave me– I’ve been maybe trying to write things before, but it showed me how to really focus my energy. Like I said, maybe people don’t see academia as a route to creativity. But it really does.

00:09:42 Geraldine Hennessy: Structures are creativity, I suppose.

00:09:42 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It does. And it teaches you a kind of a structure. I have a kind of a way that I write myself. I mean, many writers would start with a blank page, and they would just start writing. I don’t do that. I kind of take the approach that I do from writing essays. I work out what I’m going to say first. I structure it. I bullet point it. I break it down. When you plan everything out like that, it kind of– it takes the pressure off. When you start writing it, then you can be expressive. You can use the language. You’re free to use the language. The heavy lifting of figuring out what the story is is done. Now, the plan that you make is it’ll change. It’s there. But it gives you this kind of freedom.

00:10:32 Geraldine Hennessy: Roadmap is such a–

00:10:33 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Yeah, it does. It really helps you. So kind of academia and creativity really do– it was a way that I learned how to do it, really. And it did help me so much. But writing literary criticism itself is a very creative thing. The PhD, which later was published as “Chlochains de Suites,” literary criticism is your perspective on a piece of literature. And you can create a totally new way of looking at something, at a novel or a poem or something, which is very exciting.

00:11:03 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: In a lot of ways, I think the PhD thesis was one of the most creative things I’ve done. It’s your vision. You read a book, and you can find things in it. It’s almost like you’re a detective. And you’re finding things in it that nobody else has ever seen. And you’re bringing this out. I mean, that’s creativity as well, really. Academia in the arts, I mean, that is like– I mean, it’s called an arts degree for a reason because you’re studying art. So they do really– they blend, and they do really work together.

00:11:35 Geraldine Hennessy: OK. And speaking about your novel, El, where did the initial spark come forth?

00:11:43 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I know the exact point that it actually started. It was in the kitchen of a house in Gardeners Hill in Cork City. It was late in the evening, and I was sitting down, and the light was on, and there were two flies. You know how flies make these kind of misshapen rectangles underneath light bulbs, and they’re back and forth, and they’re swirling around each other. And I was sitting there, and I was looking up at them, and I was thinking, can you imagine now– because they look like little flying machines, really. And I was going, can you imagine if there were a couple of tiny, microscopic little men inside in each of those flies, flying them around and having a little dog fight under the light bulb. And I don’t know, it’s just kind of an absurd little idea that came into my head. But I don’t know, maybe it’s the sign of madness or something. It’s kind of– it was the impetus really for the novel.

00:12:40 Geraldine Hennessy: OK. I suppose not many people come up with an absurd idea of this and then spend years trying to turn it into a 300-page book.

00:12:46 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Yeah. But it was just the kind of impetus. But L is kind of a lot more than that. I mean, that’s the basic fantasy idea of it. But it kind of grew into so much more than that. But the initial spark was– Gardeners Hill in the kitchen at night, looking at flies under the light bulb.

00:13:04 Geraldine Hennessy: Gosh, one of those splash bulb moments. So it was just this–

00:13:07 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Literally, yeah, this light bulb moment.

00:13:09 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good. And what I suppose compelled you then to explore modern anxieties, like AI, deep fakes, and social media deception through the lens of this historical conspiracy.

00:13:24 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I suppose the kind of modern digital deception, if you want to call it that, has many methods. And one is putting truths together in a way that makes falsehoods believable. And conspiracy theories work like that. They take things that are true that we know. And they just put them together in a way that makes something that isn’t true. It all makes it plausible. And history is one of those dependable truths, really. It’s kind of these things that we depend on. I suppose that’s questionable as well, in the sense that the victors write the history.

00:14:02 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: So it was kind of an exercise in displaying this mechanism in a literary form, this mechanism of deception. So in a sense, like, that’s the way that conspiracy theories work, that they put these truths, these falsehoods together, or truths together in a way that makes falsehoods kind of believable. That’s what I done with EL. I’ve done loads of historical research, kind of an immense amount, really. And I kind of concocted a believable story to make this ridiculous, absurd notion that little tiny microscopic many exist in the world. But I tried to make it as believable as possible. And it’s incredible. It’s like, I think coincidences are kind of very important than that. And if you start looking for coincidences in history, you’ll find them. And it’ll be bizarre. Like, I mean, I found a few things and I went, God, this is not the same believable even to myself. So I kind of, I did really kind of try to find the way of using history as the way of making something which is unbelievable, fantastical, and making it seem like it was plausible. The idea is that the reader will look at the book and will say, hang on a sec, this can’t be true. It’s starting to seem plausible. It’s the kind of play with that kind of idea in the reader’s head that the reader knows that there are tiny microscopic men in flies. But at the same time, it’s starting to become more and more plausible.

00:15:32 Geraldine Hennessy: And it sucks the reader in, doesn’t it? Yeah.

00:15:35 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Yeah. And like the narrator in the book, I mean, he speaks directly to the reader. And he says, Look, I know this is kind of unbelievable, but I swear to you, it’s true. Like this book now isn’t a novel. It’s not a novel at all. It’s true as I see it. And look, if you don’t believe me, take your phone out of your pocket, go online and start looking at the internet and look up the people in the historical parts of this story. And you see that they’re all there. And they are like, I stuck as much as I could to historical accuracy. Like everything in the story is true, apart from the things that aren’t true. Yeah, namely that there are little men and flies, but everything else is true.

00:16:16 Geraldine Hennessy: Very good.

00:16:17 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I tried to stick to the actual facts as much as possible. But I do kind of like that. I think in a way I do feel myself kind of influenced by George Orwell. Like George Orwell used fantasy to create political satire. Like 1984 is a futuristic novel. Animal Farm is a fantasy. So I do that as well. I use fantasy in order to create satire and to create a kind of review on the world. But I suppose this kind of idea of AI and defects and this deception, this is the world that we live in. And I think all artists, all writers, whether they like it or not, reflect the AI living. And I kind of do this purposely. And I suppose as well, I grew up at a time before the internet. And I can see the difference that it has created in the world.

00:17:15 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: There has always been fake narratives. This deception has always existed. And you think of the divine right of kings, this idea that the kings are appointed by God. This notion was just created very conveniently for the kings themselves. But it became this truth that everyone believes in. And everyone accepted it. And it created terrible, awful catastrophes in people’s lives, because it gave power to these people. I think even though this kind of deception has always existed, it is accelerating with the internet. The internet is an enormous thing in the world, really, the new technology that we have is going to utterly change life as we know it.

00:17:57 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And I’m doing this, I’m writing a new novel as well now in Irish. And I do this as well, really. I kind of try and tackle deception and lies and fascism, really, as well. This new book is based on a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. And it’s set back in the times of Bosch. So it’s in the Netherlands in the late 15th century. But again, it’s a satire on how people can kind of get beguiled, how good people can kind of get beguiled into a kind of violent, totalitarian fascist regime. So I’ve kind of continued this with my new book. And it is also, you know Bosch, it’s all very kind of a hellscape, kind of bizarre kind of a painting. All these paintings are kind of like that most of them. So it is kind of a fantasy . So again, I’m using fantasy as satire, really.

00:19:06 Geraldine Hennessy: OK. And EL asks, I suppose, who controls reality? As someone kind of deeply immersed in storytelling, what role do you think artists and authors play in a world where disinformation spreads like wildfire?

00:19:24 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I suppose stories are the most powerful thing in the world. You know, people think it’s armies and navies and bombs and banking and all that. But stories, behind everything, stories, everything that you do has to be backed up by a story. Politics, everything. It’s all narrative. Everything is narrative. Everything we live our lives with reference to the stories that we grew up with, stories of history and culture. And everything forms a backdrop, if you like, to our consciousness.

00:19:52 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: So in creating stories, we can speak out against the false narratives. You know, stories can do immense damage in themselves. You know, stories in politics and like these kind of deep fakes and all this kind of this internet deception, you know, we can confront those who would use stories to harm others and to control others. In a way, I suppose stories are our way of making sense of the world as well. Like, I mean, writing EL, it was, you know, me trying to make sense of the world around me. Storytellers can highlight the methods of manipulation. And EL and the new novel, Arisallius, does this as well.

00:20:34 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Satire is important. The poets in ancient Ireland, you know, they were very, very powerful because they could satirise the king. And they had this power. So to be able to use a story or a poem or something like that, speak out against lies and, you know, against this false reality, you know, and against this, like you said, with disinformation spreads, you know, to be able to speak out against it. It is powerful and storytelling is very, very strong, really.

00:21:09 Geraldine Hennessy: And EL won the Irish language novel of the year, which is a massive achievement. What was the biggest hurdle you faced bringing this complex novel to publication?

00:21:20 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, it actually wasn’t, wasn’t too hard, really. And I suppose this brings in my connection between me as a musician and a writer. I was living in Dublin for a long while, and I met a lot of musicians and everything up there. So I met people in Kila, the band there and there are three of the members in Kila, the three O’Snodaigh Brothers Ronan, Ross and Colum. I would be very friendly with them and while chatting to them one day I was talking about my PhD thesis and how I’d love to to get it in print. And I suppose you spent so long writing a PhD, you don’t want to just sit on a shelf someplace. So he said, why don’t you have a chat with my father? So his father is Padraig O’Snodaigh, who passed away last year, sadly, but he owned the Irish language publishing company Coiscéim. So I spoke to him and he was an amazing man. So we got Cloghain sesqueets , which was the title of my PhD thesis. I wrote a few extra chapters as well. So once I got that in print, then I said, well, I have a novel as well that I want to write. And he goes, great, write away. Once it was written, then Coiscéim published it for me. Great. Yeah. So it wasn’t like, I suppose

00:22:37 Geraldine Hennessy: you had that initial contact that helped. I had,

00:22:42 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I had already published one book from me. So when they were more than willing then to publish the second one, to publish it. Yeah.

00:22:48 Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. And have you faced specific challenges in getting your Irish language work to a wider audience or has it been manageable or has it been easy to achieve, do you think?

00:22:59 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I suppose you kind of have to accept as an Irish language writer that bookshops won’t be, they won’t be having your books delivered by forklift. But I suppose you still have to believe that it’s a changing situation. Like many more people speak Irish now. You know, there are Churcu Chora all over the country. Like even in West Cork, there is even Geailge Ori Ui Chorcai which is an umbrella group of all of the different Churcu Chora in each tongue. So there are connections being made. And, you know, it is changing. Ireland is changing in relation to the Irish language. It’s the, like, I think that the Gealscoil really is an amazing thing. You know, there are generations grow up of young people who own the language and it is their language. And, you know, it’s, it has changed things. It’s fantastic to see really, you know.

00:23:51 Geraldine Hennessy: Very good. EL has been translated into English by Mercier. How did that come about?

00:23:58 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I suppose it’s good to kind of bring it out to a kind of wider audience, to people who can’t speak Irish. But as well as that, you know, it’s good to draw attention to the fact that Irish language literature is there. That, you know, these works are being produced. And I think really there isn’t that kind of awareness, because English language media seems largely to ignore Irish language literature.

00:24:23 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: You know, I mean, you have like, if you have music and film and that is kind of widely broadcast, like bands like kneecap and Kila, that you get them, you know, they make the headlines and films like An Cailin Cun. People speak about that. But there isn’t really that awareness of Irish language literature. So the idea that there is a book out there which translated from the Irish, this was something that I wanted to do to draw attention to the fact that Irish language literature is there. And it’s great to have to be with Mercier. Mercier is an amazing company really as well.

00:24:57 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And it might actually draw attention to the original Irish version as well. That you know, the fact that there is an English language book there. And maybe some people might help people to read the Irish language version as well.

00:25:11 Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:13 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And I suppose this was part of the reason why I translated it. That it is drawing attention to the Irish language, the original Irish language version. And you know, there is this kind of gap, I think, with Irish language literature. That people don’t really kind of know, like I remember when I got the the An post award, people said to me, you know, it’s great that people are writing Irish language literature, but like they never stopped. There was always there. So having it published now in English, I think it’s a good thing to for both really, for both the Irish and the English.

00:25:49 Geraldine Hennessy: And how did you find the actual process of doing this?

00:25:52 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It was maybe tricky enough. It’s hard to translate your own work. You know, you’re going to be very kind of sensitive about something that you’ve put so much heart and effort and thought into. And you’re going to want to try and keep the essence of the book within languages. Two different languages work differently.

00:26:11 Geraldine Hennessy: Yes, even from a technical point of view, you translate something directly.

00:26:14 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It just seems kind of clunky then in the other language, you know, because just the technical kind of aspects of the language. But so it was kind of, you know, it has its own kind of merits translating it to itself, because, you know, you know, that this is what the way that you want it to be. But, you know, it wouldn’t be as nice a process maybe as originally writing the book.

00:26:40 Geraldine Hennessy: I suppose there is the benefit, though, that like if you got someone else to translate it, it probably would have lost a little bit. Whereas, whereas you’re when you’re translating yourself, as you say, you know what the whole meaning, the very in-depth meaning of the book is, and you’re able to translate that in maybe not literally, but what the way it’s meant to be read as.

00:27:08 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Yeah, exactly. There is the fact that I kind of know where I was coming from for the first in the first place, that I kind of knew the right way to translate things, I suppose. So yeah, there is that. It’s a very good point .

00:27:15 Geraldine Hennessy: Very good. Very good. OK. And speaking, I suppose, to your music now, you play an incredible mix of instruments. How did your musical journey begin? I know you mentioned there about your parents were kind of influential in terms of singing and music, but what led you to such diverse sounds?

00:27:35 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I started playing guitar when I was 12. And I suppose I always kind of looked to different avenues and tried to expand things and explore different ways of playing. I guess as a teenager, I was very bold, really, I kind of go on the hop from school. I’d go into it. Never. I’d go into it, I’d go into it. But what I do is I kind of got an almost a better education. I’d go into the city centre and after I’d kind of spent my money on pool and space invaders, I’d go to the music library and I’d sit there and I’d listen. You know, at the time you could the tables had little sockets for headphones and you could pick out vinyl records and sit there. I discovered things like, you know, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, all the kind of 60s psychedelia. And it really kind of expanded my mind musically like that. So like when I was young, I played a lot of electric blues guitar. I got into playing traditional Irish music then, but in a very strange way, really, because this was around the time of Sir Henry’s and, you know, the techno rave scene, which I got really into as well. And so I went and I bought a Roland R5 drum machine with sample bass. And I kind of knew people playing trad and I went, great, if we kind of got a band which done that, which kind of had techno and trad, we were actually called Lunisa, which is the name of another band since that became very big. But we had the name first, strangely, but if it all falls apart, it can always sue them.

00:29:06 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: So then I played loads of trad and then I got a job playing in an Irish bar in Abu Dhabi. So I was there for three months and I came back with an Arabic loud, an oud. Then I lived in Dublin and I played in a band called Mandala, which was a mixture of Indian and Arabic and jazz and trad and everything. There’s a great sitar player who was living in Cork now, Darragh O’Brien. So it was sitar, oud, bass clarinet, soprano, saxophone, tabla, hammerdoll, some more. So we had this really eclectic sound and mixed different styles.

00:29:42 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: And I suppose even in college I learned the learning Sean Os from Eibhlis Ni Houlibhain And now I suppose in a lot of ways I do play the oud, which spoken word and which channels as well. So I was singing a kind of a channel, but to play the oud, which I suppose it’s all really just experimenting and seeing what works. Like I have a house, I have loads of instruments in the house. I wish I can play it to varying degrees. I kind of pick things up and go, oh, I get that. And fixing it’s there. It’s fantastic.

00:30:17 Geraldine Hennessy: How do you decide which instrument best serves like the story or poem you’re trying to tell on stage?

00:30:23 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I suppose the story itself will kind of inform you really. Like I have this poem, long enough poem, but it’s quite a surreal poem. It’s almost like a kind of a desert like post-apocalyptic world. In a way it’s kind of a commentary on the world we’re living in. I would improvise on the oud while reciting it, which is kind of a nice thing to do. You can kind of focus really on both things at the same time that you’re reciting a poem, which you can kind of improvise with the oud and just let the two things kind of blend together. And then I suppose like Imram an Freichain, which is the long poem that I’ve written, it’s about 40 minutes to recite, but it’s a journey through Cork City at night. And it’s almost like kind of a Dante’s Inferno thing. So it’s quite jazzy really in that sense that it’s a kind of a cityscape, but it’s a blend as well. My wife, Sam, she plays the harp and then I have Paul McMahon, who’s another great writer, actually. He plays bass and guitar and Jacobs on saxophone. So there’s this kind of harp with saxophone and kind of jazz and a blend. So it’s the story itself really, that kind of inform really what you can do. But all that can change. I mean, I’d like to kind of do Imram an Freichain as a solo project, maybe using more electronic or recorded songs mixed with playing and mixed with instruments as well. Okay, so it depends on the mood as well, I suppose, as everything else. It is really like how you can feel that what you think the work itself is projecting, but how you feel at the time and how you’d like to do it. And you can always change it and do something else. Absolutely. That’s the joy of being creative, isn’t it? Yeah.

00:32:16 Geraldine Hennessy: And you’ve collaborated with different groups and individuals. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about staying true to your own artistic vision in these collaborations?

00:32:27 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I suppose you collaborate with like minded people as well . I think when you connect with people that you do have a kind of shared vision in a lot of ways, you know, but you also have to be open to other people’s vision. But there are so many great musicians really that I’ve played with really. Cork City as well has so much going on. There’s a great trad scene in Cork City, like I played for years in the Sin E, but at Clonakilty as well as a great trad scene. But collaboration, it’s a fantastic thing really. It kind of brings you to places that you wouldn’t otherwise go. And it is kind of bigger than the sum of its parts, really.

00:33:08 Geraldine Hennessy: And how does the energy of a live multimedia performance compare to the solitary experience of writing a novel?

00:33:15 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: They are, I suppose, a different kind of a headspace when you’re doing it. I mean, the energy of the crowd and the tension of keeping all the plates spinning. And the poem is created in a kind of a solitary space. But that can have its own kind of intense energy as well when you’re writing. So the boat has this kind of energy. But in a way, the live performance is fed by the energy of the solitary creativity as well. You’re trying to connect those two moments in time together, you know, that you are bringing one into the other. And you know, maybe in a lot of ways, a lot of my poetry is kind of written for live performance, you know, for spoken word with music. You know, you can really kind of, you can blend this really, it is a blend in a lot of ways.

00:34:06 Geraldine Hennessy: And balancing the rules of being an award-winning poet, novelist must be demanding. What have been the biggest challenge in managing the different outlets?

00:34:17 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, I suppose the focus shifts really, you know, when you’re writing, you know, it can take up a novel that especially the novel, writing a novel just takes up so much. So you kind of have to step back a bit from other projects. And I have had to say, look, I can’t really do this novel for a while. And because like the novel can be all consuming more than anything else. And you’re creating a world and you’re living in it, when you’re writing it, you know, and it takes kind of time. So you do have to focus on wanting and you know, a good friend of mine said, well, we only actually have time for one and a half obsessions. You do one and then you’ll have to do the other one. So really, I think focusing really is important.

00:35:09 Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah, it’s the key. Yeah. Okay. And when you look at the cultural scene in Cork today, how well do you feel it supports multidisciplinary artists who want to blend literature, music and the spoken word?

00:35:17 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Well, Cork is a thriving artistic scene. It has a huge energy. And I think there is a demand for that kind of eclectic, innovative art. And once there’s a demand, then it will, you know, it will happen. And you will find, yeah, you will find there are great things happening among Cork. And then I think it’s important that there are small venues. You know, I think small venues are really, really sort of an immense purpose. There are spaces like I think like upstairs above The Roundy, it’s kind of open for doing kind of eclectic kind of things like that. And there probably could be some more, I think like you only need a very small space, you know. I mean, I remember the first gig I ever done was in the Phoenix. Now, the upstairs in the Phoenix, they’ve changed it now, it’s probably fire regulations. But between the first store, first story and the second story, they cut away apart from the ceiling. So the top floor was basically a balcony. And so that was like, that was, it was an amazing gig space. But like even in Dublin, I used to go to the international bar, and it was a tiny room above the bar. And they had singer songwriters, one night and comedians the next night. And all of the big, the Damien Dempsey, Patty Casey, all the big comedians, they all came out of that little room. So if you just have a little room with a stage, doesn’t have to have a massive PA doesn’t have to have anything, just have that and give it a space to people who are trying things out. And that can really a few of them in the city, if there were a few more of them would change things. Let the magic happen. Let the magic happen.

00:36:54 Geraldine Hennessy: And what’s I suppose looking back at your incredible journey across music, academia and literature, what’s one thing you wish you’d known when you’re first starting out in Cork’s creative community?

00:37:13 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I don’t know if I’d kind of maybe look at it that way. Like it’s all been a journey. And it’s not over. Yes, like everything is part of the journey. And everything has its own time and place really. And you need to give yourself time to figure that out, I think in a lot of ways. Maybe if I had started, if I’d done one thing differently, or maybe would things have been different, but at the same time, it’s all a journey and you have to let it happen in its own way. It’s not about the end point. It’s about how

00:37:39 Geraldine Hennessy: It’s not about the end point. It’s about how you did. It’s not.

00:37:42 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: It is exactly.

00:37:42 Geraldine Hennessy: And what’s the best piece of advice you’d give a young musician or a writer in Cork?

00:37:48 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: I suppose kind of just trust your own voice and believe that you have a vision which is different from other people’s. It might not necessarily be better or worse, but it’s different and it’s unique. And I suppose believe that you can’t do everything straight away, but at a given time, you have the capacity to figure things out and to believe that you can really make things happen if you just focus your energy on it. And time is long. You have space to explore and discover what you want to do. As artists, we have our whole lives really. You don’t have to do everything when you’re young. Creativity is something that grows and it evolves. And it’s beautiful really. So just enjoy it and it’s kind of part of who you are and it always will be. So just enjoy the journey and trust that you have a vision and stick to it. Very good.

00:38:48 Geraldine Hennessy: Very good. Well on that note of positivity, thank you so much Thaddeus for taking the time to chat to us on the Cork Creative podcast. If you want to find more information about Thaddeus and his work, you can find links on corkcreative.ie. Thank you very much.

00:39:02 Thaddeus Ó Buachalla: Thank you very much Geraldine.