Brendan Wrestles With Irishness
I have a strange relationship with being Irish. On St. Patrick’s Day last year, a friend posted on her social media “I’m always jealous of Irish people.” My response was “Oh yeah? Which part strikes your fancy most - the sunburns or the crippling depression?” Ironically, self-deprecating wise-assery was probably the most Irish thing I could have done at that moment. But still - whenever St. Patrick’s Day rolls around and I’m expected to celebrate the Auld Country, a strange resistance comes up in me that I don’t fully understand. So let’s explore it, shall we?
For context, my father was from Kildare Ireland and my mother is from Maine so I’ve always considered myself half-Irish, half-American. But my Celtic roots go deep. In her genealogical studies, my mother discovered that every line on her side of the family traced back to Ireland except one which traced back to England. So genetically, I am basically a potato-flavored shamrock covered in Guinness.
While we were growing up, my parents brought us to Ireland every year or two. It was important to them that we stay connected with our Irish family. I am grateful - I love my Irish cousins to pieces to this very day. On a side note, my cousin Aaron is an Irish champion in kickboxing! His nickname is the Bounty Hunter. So bad ass. We’re all really proud of him. I’m not sure where the athletic gene came from, but it certainly wasn’t from cousin Brendan “Not In The Face” Boogie.
Anyyyyyway… in college, I spent a year studying in University College Galway. By “studying,” I mean that I would wake up at noon every day, screenwrite in the computer lab (hey old guy!) until dinner time, eat a bowl of white rice with sweet and sour sauce for nutrition, and then spend the shank of the evening drinking Smithwick’s cream ale and shooting the shit in the pubs. It was - in a word - glorious. Since then, I have been back to Ireland every 3-5 years for most of my life for family events, visits, and even the occasional music tour. While Ireland doesn’t feel like “home” per se, I feel a comfort and familiarity beyond being just a visitor. Kind of like how Conor MacGregor probably feels at a Tijuana pharmacy.
So you could definitely say that I love Ireland. And it’s true - I do. So why does St. Patrick’s Day rub up against my cockles and mussels? Am I just a cranky, unpleasable bastard?
Well, yes. But also I think it hits on something deeper. To me, St. Patrick’s Day celebrates the idea of Ireland. It is an oversimplified, cartoonish idea that doesn’t relate to the Ireland that I know. I love Ireland the way I love my family. And family love is complicated.
Before we get specifically into Ireland, let me clarify my larger thoughts on this idea of “love of country.” I think it’s weird. Having pride in where you’re from baffles me. I never got it. What is there for me to be proud about? It had nothing to do with me. I just happened to pop out of a particular uterus at a particular time and place. I’m supposed to be proud of that? For me, pride is reserved for things I personally accomplished. So naturally, I’m proud of my writing, the relationships I have nurtured, and of course my killer washboard abs. But “Proud to be Irish” makes as much sense as “Proud of Turning Oxygen into Carbon Dioxide.”
Secondly, countries are made up. They’re completely imaginary. You don’t believe me? Step over any border anywhere on the earth. If there weren’t a wall or a sign there, would you even know you changed nations? Nope. Because you aren’t in a different place. Someone decided to categorize one place as one thing and one as another. And those categories are fiction.
Also - the idea of “I am Irish” is fundamentally untrue. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson pointed out, we are picking a fairly arbitrary point for our origin. There were centuries of human life before there even was an Ireland. Or any country as we know it. We all go back to what is now categorizes as Africa but of course it wasn’t Africa then. Why are we planting the flag of our identity in a random era in history?
So - in short - patriotism is dumb and we should all stop doing it. Also, money is fake. But we’ll tackle that one another time.
However, I am interested in inherited cultural messages and how they interact with our personal psychology. In this regard, being Irish has left a HUGE imprint on me. No matter how much I may try to deny it, I think, feel, and react like an Irish guy from Boston. And - like most things - some of it is great and some of it suuuuuucks.
Things I love about being Irish:
Gallows humor. We like our humor like we like our cuisine: utterly devoid of taste. I believe that dark humor is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms for tragedy and despair. The Irish practice this in spades. You always get the biggest laughs at the funeral.
I was in Dublin for a memorial event for my dad. Years before, he had given me his tweed flat cap which I lost at some point during my years of drunken rock band debauchery. I decided to replace it at a local hat shop, leading to the following exchange with the sales lady:
Sales Lady: What are you looking for?
Me: (trying on hat) Something like this. I had my dad’s cap and I lost it.
Sales Lady: That one looks good. Was he a big guy like you?
Me: Well, he’s dead so he’s much smaller now. You know… decomposition.
When I tell that story, most people respond with “Oh my God! Was she horrified?” No! She laughed! It was Ireland. Which leads me to…
Attitude toward death. When people ask “What is it like to be Irish?” I point them to this story about an Irish man who pranked his family by recording himself pretending to still be alive, trying to get out of his own coffin. You want the most Irish thing that ever happened? That’s it, folks. Game over.
Have you ever been to an Irish wake? It is a beautiful thing. There is drinking, music, drinking, laughing, drinking, crying, and of course drinking. All emotions are allowed and encouraged. In a culture full of repression and denial, the Irish do not shy away from death. Perhaps it is the frankly horrific history of this little country and all the times they were almost wiped off the map. In the 1840s, the Great Famine killed 1 million of the 8.5 million Irish people in just 6 years. That is a mind-bending amount of death. And that was just one incident! It doesn’t even count all the other times in history that the British government passively and actively tried to eliminated the population and the very idea of Ireland. I guess when you are plagued with so much death, you learn to face it with a laugh or it will destroy you. Which leads me to…
Reverence for the artist. Did you know that artists in Ireland don’t pay taxes? That is how much the culture values music, dance, film, etc. As an independent filmmaker in America, this sort of support from the government and the culture at large is unfathomable. When Alex Chilton of Big Star died partially because he had no health insurance, the response from some ‘Murican patriots was “Well, he should have gotten a real job!” Ireland values artists in a way that seems foreign to those of us trying to create in late stage capitalist America.
For the reasons for this support, we again look at Irish history. Throughout the centuries, the British government tried to erase Irish language, art, sport - you know, classic colonialism shit. Stubborn as always, the Irish doubled down on keeping their art alive. I once heard a story that the reason Irish dancers keep their upper bodies so still is that the British soldiers would look through the window and only see upper bodies, not noticing the wild flailing of the dancers’ legs. This could be utter Blarney, but as my dad used to say “It doesn’t matter if it’s true as long as it’s a good story.”
There is a lot to love about being Irish. So why do I have such trepidation on St. Patrick’s Day? Well, there’s another side to it as well…
Attitude toward sex. For a long time, I was fuuuuuuucked uuuuuuup about sex. To be clear - I never got any overt ‘anti-sex’ messages. A scary nun didn’t wave a ruler at me and warn me that I was going to hell for yanking my shilelagh. Outside of a clinical explanation of fallopian tubes from a half-interested gym teacher in health class, I never got “the talk.” At least, not in any real way. There was such a glaring avoidance of the topic of human sexuality that my pre-adolescent mind could only draw one conclusion: good kids don’t do that. And I desperately wanted to be a good kid.
It wasn’t until I got to college-age when some of my friends started having (relatively) healthy sexual relationships with willing partners and… everyone was suddenly ok with it? What happened? I thought this was a bad thing, no? I had held on to this idea of sex being a bad thing for so long, it took me well into my adulthood to deprogram my stupid brain to actually enjoy healthy sex.
Can this all be blamed simply on being Irish? Probably not. But I know for a fact I’m not the only Irish kid who went through this. I’ve had conversations with Irish friends about their courtship rituals and I’ve got to tell you - it’s amazing that people over there get together at all. If you don’t believe me, watch Irish comedian Aisling Bea’s amazing bit about Irish flirting. If it weren’t for a general distaste in birth control, we’d have no more Irish babies. Which brings me to…
Catholicism. This is the big one, folks. The wildly oppressive grandaddy of them all. I know that the Catholic church has wreaked havoc on large swaths of the world, but there is a special flavor of Irish Catholicism, isn’t there? The shame, the guilt, the constant sense of wanting to make yourself smaller, put yourself down, remind yourself that you are - in fact - a piece of shit who’s only salvation comes through telling your deepest secrets to an untrustworthy celibate man in a wooden box… doesn’t sound like a recipe for happiness, does it? It is no surprise that for a long time, Ireland was the teen suicide capital of Europe. (They’re #4 now. Thanks Lithuania!)
To be fair, my impression is that the Catholic church has had much less of a grip on the younger generation of the Irish. Same sex marriage was legalized in Ireland before most places the US. My queer non-binary cousin tells me that Dublin has actually gotten quite progressive. Which is a wonderful thing. But those Catholic roots run deep. They are insidious and seep into the psyche in the form of self-loathing and self-destructive behavior. Oh, and when we’re not tearing ourselves down, we’re tearing each other down…
“Don’t get too big for your britches.” It is tough to put my finger on these sorts of messages and figure out which ones are universal versus my own neuroses. But I feel confident that other people of Irish descent have definitely felt this one. There is a strong reflexive impulse to cut down anyone who shows any sort of pride in an accomplishment, even when it is a positive one. What complicates this one for me is that it is also a Boston thing, a non-coincidentally Irish town. Why do we do this to each other and - more intensely - ourselves?
Every time I put my creative work out to an audience, I feel an intense internal backlash. Unfortunately, I’m in Hollywood where many of my peers/competitors are not encumbered by such unproductive self-reflection. It really gets in the way. Do you know how hard it was for me to even email you about this newsletter? To tell you about my movies or podcast or anything I’m doing creatively? My first thought EVERY time is “Why should they care?” or “I don’t want to bother them” or - ultimately - “Who do I think I am to be worthy of someone’s attention?” And I am a confident person! I think I’m pretty good at this. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t matter because I am a piece of shit and oh Danny Boyyyyyy! The pipes, the pipes are callliiiiiing!
Ultimately, I love and hate being Irish the way I love and hate myself. But I am always trying to decrease the hate and increase the love. My mission in my post-therapy years has been two-fold. Step 1: figure out which of my personality quirks rolled down the Liffey to me from generations of unfiltered Oirishness. Step 2: keep the ones I like and get rid of the ones that do me no good. So far I’ve gotten pretty good at squashing guilt and shame. But it is a work in progress.
In the end, I think St. Patrick’s Day bothered me because I was jealous. On this day, people feel free to can drink a green beer and wear a silly leprechaun hat, whereas I jot off a few thousand words on guilt and shame. (I swear I’m more fun than this at parties.) But I want to be free. I’m trying to be free. And St. Patrick’s Day is as good a day as any to start.
So Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Here’s a picture of me in Supermac’s, the Irish version McDonald’s. I may have ambivalence about being Irish, but my love for Supermac’s is as pure as Kerry gold. (And by that, I mean the butter.)
Boogie Writes is a completely independent endeavor by one hard-working funnyman trying to make his way in the world today (which takes everything you’ve got.) If you like what you read, please subscribe, support, and tell a friend! Also - do you need advice? Of course you do! Send your queries to brendan@brendanboogie.com with “Dear Boogie” in the subject and get some solid or at least passable advice!