Notes From The Town Of No-Can-Do!

A Happy House in the Town of No-Can-Do

A great friend of Promises Project, Stephen Murray is a multi-award winning poet from the West of Ireland. His critically acclaimed debut collection ‘House of Bees‘ was published in 2011 by Salmon Poetry and chronicles his experiences growing up in the Erin Pizzey’s historic refuge for battered wives in West London and later on a children’s home. His second collection ‘On Corkscrew Hill’ was released in 2013 also by Salmon Poetry.

He has performed his work at some of the world’s most iconic poetry venues and has been published in journals across Ireland, Britain and the USA. He collaborated with us on a remarkable piece for our film Loved by Ghosts and is also director of Inspireland bringing creative writing to secondary schools and colleges across Ireland and Britain.

Here, in the only way a true wordsmith can, Stephen explains how in a town where some of the shops are all boarded-up and the restaurants closed-down, a song is so beautiful it makes him cry and tells us what is seriously bothering his five-year-old son’s universe…

"Now they’re dismantling the universe with their song, and I am proper balling, crying like a baby when my little girl walks in, and bang!"

Stephen Murray

Table of Contents

So, it was Ten Years Ago

So, it was ten years ago I met the girl of my dreams, and ended up living in the wham, bang, thank you mam, town of my nightmares. A horrible Dickensian place in the screaming dark of tortured middle Ireland. The town of No-Can-Do. A proper shit hole- famous place, I won’t mention the name. It’s an old British Army Garrison Town and a former IRA stronghold. Lovely architecture, the Brits gave us something positive, at least. That and Premier League football.

It’s surrounded by stunning mountains with forested hiking trails, which can provide an oasis, but the town itself… just no. Hasn’t even got a river. Well, it has got a river, but even the river has given up. The local co-op pours chemicals into it, and, because it’s the only employer, no-one says anything.

The Co-op Means Jobs

Fuck the river, the trout, the salmon and the Kingfisher. The co-op means jobs, and with it comes the creamery, and the creamery excretes it sour excretions into air, which in the summertime create a lingering aroma of perpetual flatulence.

The Town of No-Can-Do smells of farts. I shit you not.

Time drips snot-slow, the river trickles like a lonely tear in a methadone clinic. Hope has abandoned this town.

Dole day is fun.

The town of No-Can-Do has the highest unemployment rate in the country, drug problems, pollution problems, violence at weekends, and as for the weekends, don’t get me started. I’ve been out a couple of times; it was like Gavin and Stacey in Mordor.

Break into Song

It is on a major traffic route but doesn’t have a bypass. So, it creates a constant bottleneck of diesel fumes and articulated lorry traffic, people trying to get to better places, trucks trying to make the ferry.

They sit, festering in the traffic here, their brains pickling in carbon monoxide, getting angrier and angrier, beeping their horns and giving the finger to each other. Then the bottleneck ends, they click into gear, put the foot down, and break into song, as they speed off into the distance, leaving their misery in the town of No-Can-Do.

To be fair (which I am not being), I do have a bit of an auld grá for the people. They’re the salt of the earth, honest people, unpretentious and kind.

It’s the same in all beat-up towns. Humanity lives in the council estates and ghettos of the world. There’s solidarity in the dirt, community in the carnage, fellowship in the bull rings where they box the heads off each other.

It’s no catwalk.

Stonewashed jeans, ripped at the knee, shaved heads with long fringes, botox beauties with hoop earrings, interstellar cleavage, Slothzilla Neanderthal beer bellies. And the grunt of a language comprised of three guttural vowels. The shops are all boarded-up, the restaurants closed-down.

Back to dole day. Always back to dole day.

A merry-go-round

A merry-go-round of junkies and Lidl cider sclerosis drunks, and teenage mums that drip from the dole office to the pharmacist, to the bookies, to the pub, the bookies, the pub, then into the growling chipper and spat out with broken glass and stonewashed jeans and bleeding faces onto the battered burger streets, with not a guard to be found. The only place you see the pigs is down the garage getting their breakfast rolls.

"Every day with them is a new treasure to discover."

Stephen Murray

The Ramblings of a Dreamer

I left the west coast to live here. I left a stormy paradise. Mountains out the back, ocean out front, surfing the dream and bohemian art scenes, dramatic milkshake sunsets, bluegrass, magic mushrooms and yoga-bellied girls with nose-piercings and terrible poems to live here.

I’m exhausted. I am vanishing.

I am no longer a poet here, no longer a writer. I am my wife’s husband, my children’s father. My name means nothing to the people here.

My positivity is dismissed as the ramblings of a dreamer. The ceilings have got shorter. The horizon is something I can watch, only on TV, and touch with my nose.

This is where dreams come to die.

I’ve never been as tired. I’ve never been as sick. I’ve never been as old or as fat. I’ve never had as little time to the things I love to do. I’ve never done as little of the things I want to do, but you know what? Strangely, I’ve never been this happy, because the town of No-Can-Do has given me a few its grey-haired greasy gifts.

It showed me its secrets, and it turns out they were all around me.

Sometimes the Dream is at Your Doorstep

You see, I come from a broken home, foster care and children’s residential care homes. I’ve lived in the run-down council estates in the posh parts of cities, Dublin, Limerick, Galway and London. Sometimes the dream is at your doorstep and the horizon stretches as far your imagination does.

The town of No-can-Do? Well, it’s up to you and what you make. This shit-hole has given me something I never thought I’d have. Perspective.

Hell is the reflection of other people’s fancy, a basket of want and the blindfold of bling, and this town showed me what I have.

A happy house.

A wife whose beauty is way out of my league. Who loves me, when she doesn’t hate me, but it’s okay when she hates me, because her hate is made up of a brightly coloured smelly socks left on the bedroom floor, and the scent of a hundred million fearts that drift away, and are gone with the dust and smell of Sunday roast, but her love? Well, her love is made out the Hallelujah laughter of the children that she bore into this world.

Wrestling with life and death, and time and space, all godddessed-up, and her love is a song, and it smells like breakfast and Christmas and turf fires and good coffee.

She is the Goddess of the morning and the radio is constantly on, a blanket in the background, and my little girl still sleeps all cuddled up with me, even though she is 8. I’ll take the cuddles for as long as I can.

"Her love is a song, and it smells like breakfast and Christmas and turf fires and good coffee.."

Stephen Murray

I’m his Hero

My boy (he is five now), and he’s just figured that I’m his hero (cos I’m a boy like him), and every day with them is a new treasure to discover, the sweetest orange to break into pieces and share together, and we are all singing songs about smelly poos, and our dog, Pat? Well he is a giant cuddle of clouds all knitted together with the white curly locks of cherubs and doodles.

Then Andrea Bocelli comes on the radio and the blanket turns into a giant hanky, because he starts singing Pianissimo, and fuck it. Now I’m gone, into a dark whirlpool of sorrow, imagining all this could be gone, bang, and I’m crying for Gaza, and Lebanon, and all the badness in the world, and why do bad guys win, and why does nice food make you fat, and I’m plummeting into the depths Bocelli’s heart wrenching tones.

I’m full-on imagining the worst thing in the world – I can see myself at the cemetery, being held up by strangers at the funeral of my wife and kids. They’re all gone, all at once, gone! Even Pat!

Now Cecilia Bartoli has joined Andrea and now they’re dismantling the universe with their song, and I am proper balling, crying like a baby when my little girl walks in, and bang!

I’m back, drying my eyes when she asks me why I’ve been crying.

I tell her- it’s because of the song.

The Music of Angels

The song is so beautiful it makes me cry and she asks me what the song is and I tell her, “it’s the music of angels, darling”, and she smiles and tells me she loves it, and then off she twirls in cartwheels and giggles, and my son rolls in, unravelling from a spool of lightning into a firecracker.

“Daddy, Daddy”, he says, and he stops dead in his tracks, and the world stops with him, the radio stops, Pat cocks his head to the side and my little boy, well he’s locked in deep in a tangle of existential crisis.

Something is seriously bothering his five-year-old universe.

He furrows his brow. Pat whines.

“Daddy”, he asks, “Who would win… in a fight between… Jesus… and Hulk?”

Pat looks at me. I look at Pat, then back at my boy.

“Hulk”, I tell him, “Hulk would kick the shit out of Jesus”.

“You said a bad word, Daddy! You said shit!”

“That’s why Daddy gets no Christmas presents, son.”

Then he leaps at me, throwing his arms around me.

He hugs me Incredible Hulk-style. His head pressed to mine, He puts his mouth to my ear and whispers, “I’ll get you something, Daddy!”

And off he fizzes in zig zags of fire and lightning, singing songs about smelly poos in the snow.

And there it is, the music of angels.

The darkness is always kissed by the stars.