10,000 readers of Cic Saor/Free kick or - Glasgow's James Kelman vindicated
"These bastards think they own the language. They already own the courts. They own everything. They want to block your stories, and they will, if you let them."
James Kelman - Booker Prize Winner
see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview22
Many readers of Cic Saor will be aware that this blog was started because of the unspoken but extremely effective type of censorship that is practiced by Irish media and broadcasting outlets.
You want to make films or write stories from a left wing and "gaelach" perspective – no chance. They will tell you that you are being didactic and are not an artist - as was said to me.
As for trying to highlight collusion between the British state, the higher ranks of the Garda Síochána and pro British death squads and the RUC - why Easons will refuse even to put the book on its shelves. Or, as the Irish Times demonstrated on Thursday (see...
... blog below), your comments will be removed instantly, Irish media features editors will not even acknowledge your existence never mind reply to your email with as much as a no thanks.
If that is my experience as a former European Journalist of the Year, what must it be like for people trying to give voice to their feelings, philosophies and creative urges from their tower block or bedsit homes? Those who have no contacts in the media whatsoever.
Draw a line down from RTÉ’s headquarters in Dublin 4, on through the Arts Council at Merrion Square and finish it at Tara Street by the banks of the Liffey , where the Irish Times is based and you have a Blueshirt/Workers Party tripwire waiting to snap you shut. A partition line both for the country and of the mind.
In all my dealings with RTÉ and the upper echelons of Irish media, I have never met one person who is unashamedly an Irish Republican, which in my eyes also means that they believe in true wealth redistribution, an end to capitalism as a social system and the building of new society in Ireland that has our native language at its core.
Like many Irish immigrants, I was schizophrenic until I learned to speak Irish (as best I can). Without An Ghaeilge, the whole country is schizophrenic . Tír gan teanga – tír gan anam. A country without its language is a country without a soul.
This month so far, 10,000 real and separate readers took time to read some of the many individual posts on Cic Saor, and we still have a week left in the month.
Let this encourage all of you out there. Don’t let tiredness after work, crying wains, dodgy relationships and poor excuses stop you creating the things you feel inspired to create - be that writing, sculpting painting and so on. Get back to that story, blog or block of granite and batter away at it - "pick at your own wounds" as Paul Schrader, writer of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver once said.
Or as James Kelman would say - fuck them - scrios dearg orthu. We are many they are few.
Buíochas ó chroí / fair play to all of ye
Pablo
@Paul Larkin
Béal Feirste
Mí Meán Fómhair 2011