GOWP One

Contents

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Poetry And So I Keeled Over And Died by Maryam Ali jklihhk by Liam Maher Untitled by Matilda La Foile by Seán Delaney DetriMental Health by Lewis Kenny Fiction A Handful of Recollections Concerning a Man Who was Born in Monaghan in 1920 and Died in Dublin Several Decades Later by Christian Cooney Several Minutes Passed Before Help Arrived by Tadhg Hoey Essays Just what is it that makes today’s faces so different, so appealing? or: The Society of the Selfie by Tadhg Hoey Interviews GOWP meets… Oisin McKenna by Christian Cooney and Tadhg Hoey

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Art Untitled by Emer Toale

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Welcome to GOWP One: We are GOWP

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poetry/fiction/interviews/essays

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We are GOWP (Group of Writing People) and the booklet you are now reading is our first publication. GOWP was founded in Dublin a little over a year ago by four friends with shared literary ambitions. We met regularly to discuss each other’s work and offer advice and encouragement. We drank and we talked and we hatched grand plans. It was great. Really great. After we found our bearings, we decided to expand our activities. We started the website www.gowp.biz as a home for all the work that we had been producing. We also produced a project called Poetress that involved hanging poems to tress in various public parks around the city. And now comes GOWP One — our first print publication. This issue, which we are distributing free of charge, was designed, produced and paid for by GOWP’s three key members with help from friends and family. It was something we felt compelled to do. (There will also be a digital version of this publication available at www.gowp.biz).

The central belief that rests at the core of GOWP is perhaps this: that Dublin, and indeed the rest of Ireland, has an abundance of literary talent, and that tragically little of that talent ever sees the light of day. We want to act as a platform for young and emerging writers who don’t know where to send their stuff. We pride ourselves on openness and inclusion. We want to read your work.

We want you to read ours. That isn’t say that we’ll simply publish anything that shows up in our inbox, but we are committed to working with writers so they can realise their full potential. GOWP is writers helping writers.

We’re really proud of this issue. On the fiction side of things we have Tadhg Hoey’s Several Minutes Passed Before Help Arrived. It’s a story of frustration, alienation and the ways in which technology shapes our inner lives. It’s powerful stuff. On the poetry front we have, among many other gems, Maryam Ali’s And So I Keeled Over and Died. The poem is a devastating reflection on faith and the fragility of family bonds. We also have an interview with Oisín McKenna, the theatre maker and artist. Oisin has been a near constant source of inspiration to many of our members and his interview is incendiary and thought provoking.

There’s lots of other great things lurking in these pages as well. Have a look. We hope you’re surprised.

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— The Editors

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AND SO I KEELED OVER AND DIED

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I was a young girl, and my father told me: 'The older you grow, child, the less you will dream'.

This truth hung heavy between he and I, And unfurled with intent the longer I knew him.

His chimera for me stopped at the borders Of the hilly green town in Africa North.

Lonely, this beast wandered about, Until the rain of a Wednesday cleansed from my mind All notions of myths existing on buses.

It became apparent that my father was choking, Slowly fading to the colour of grief.

Blinded to it until age and tradition Ousted me of a nook in his heart.

The death rattle finality of the word 'whore' Thrilled me to nausea and tentative hate.

I covered and stole it under my tresses, The bitter god of my yellowing faith.

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— Maryam Ali

A Handful of Recollections Concerning a Man Who was Born in Monaghan in 1920 and Died in Dublin Several Decades Later

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Interview except #1- 07/09/2011- Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan, Ireland.

I remember him well. He was a handsome boy, to be sure: tall and strong with rich sallow skin the colour of tobacco that gave him the look of a foreigner. ‘The Indian’ the other boys called him as they chased him through the field, pretending they were cowboys, all riled up after the pictures. I watched those Blarney boys torment him with their jeers and names and knuckles. But I did nothing. Only watched. I was always watching. They gave him a quick hiding — the ‘scalping’ they called it, tearing at his chestnut hair. If he was hurt he didn’t show it. When they were finished he walked away, keeping a steady pace.

He was a handsome boy who was also lonely; whose loneliness made him more handsome still. To me at least.

I felt so sorry for him. I decided I’d find out where he lived. I followed far behind him, hiding in hedges if I got too close. I kept having to hold my breath that had become heavy and uneven with anticipation. My head was full of fanciful thoughts — if he steps on that cowpat he loves me. These things are decided by nature.

He stood in the barn. I peeked in the rear window. He took off his shirt— a dirty, ragged thing more suited for a dog’s bed than anything else — and began to wash himself from a bucket. The water turned brown as he washed the blood from his hair. As he began to sing I swear I loved him. A soft voice. A girl’s voice really. But it suited him. Everything about him suited me. I can’t remember the words but the melody was a mournful one. I never saw him angry. I can remember one word from the refrain: ‘Goodbye’. We’d read about volcanoes in school: the one in Italy that froze the people in stone. There was a tremor in my belly. My blood had been replaced by lava. I wanted to erupt and seal us both there forever. But Castleblayney is no Pompeii and I started for home as soon as the sun began to set.

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Who are you to him? I’m tired, so tell me this and tell me no more: is he living? ! *** “…”

#2- 08/05/2011- London, England It was my first funeral. I guess I was about five or six. This was the mid-seventies and the country was in some state. No one used the word ‘poor’, but we were. I got my first suit from a shop on Capel Street for the occasion. I was proud and, on the way to the church, I kept peeking at myself in the reflection of windows and clear December puddles. I’d gotten the day off school and I was thrilled. I thought funerals were great fun. My granddad was dead. I’d only met him once before he died; a quick visit to the hospital. I carried the punnet of grapes. He wanted cigarettes. My mother sighed. We were there for all of ten minutes. He gave me 20 p Still and stiff in his coffin, his skin was the colour of dry bark. We took our seats at the back just as the first heavy notes of organ music began to fill the perfumed air. The priest’s words struck me as nonsense and I had to stifle the giggles that were building in my belly. I’d never been to a church before and knew nothing of God or his servants. This was the first time I met your mother. She was introduced as my aunt. This is at the afters, now. She was heavy and sweet and only a year or two older than me. I told her I was sorry, as I’d been prompted to do, and she just shrugged. I liked that and I was suddenly annoyed that I was stuck in a musty pub. I wanted your mother to take me to the park or something. But then someone gave me a packet of tayto and glass of red lemonade and I forgot all about it. I drank my lemonade and thought of something funny the priest had said about drinking blood. Then we went home.

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Later, when we’d moved to London, my mother hung a single photograph of him above the mantle. My parents were having a party one night and a guest asked who the handsome man in photo was. My mother replied ‘some bastard’. She was drinking a lot then, I think. *** #3- 15/09/2011- Kennedy’s Pub, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland A fuckin’ eejit by all accounts. He was practically soldered to that bar stool there. He was forever talking an endless stream of shite. Nine children at home and him here every night, talking his shite. I used to be a fierce one for the drink, but I had me standards. The children were fed, the gasman was paid. But Matty was a law to himself. I even saw him punch a nurse once. He’d escaped from the Mater. He had a banjaxed heart or something.

He came running into the pub in his gown and slippers and started hassling the lads at the bar to stand him a pint. He got his way before long and settled into his throne. Then this nurse walks in, looking gorgeous in her white uniform. I’ve always had a soft spot for nurses. Like angels, I always think. Well anyways, she taps him on the shoulder and asks him what he thinks he’s at. And he says “havin’ a drink, are you blind are wha?” Before she could get a word in, he threw a box to her stomach. While she was doubled over, he downed the dregs of his pint and went legging it out of the place. I’d never seen anything like that before. The cheek of him.

! “…” ! ‘The Minstrel’ we used to call him on account of his dark skin and his fondness for singing when he was slaughtered. ! “…”

Are you a Garda or something? I always knew he was a bogie. Tell me what he did. It has to be something bad if you’re looking into him after all this time. He’s dead twenty years or so, isn’t he? *** #4- Email received on the 03/01/2013 Christian, I got your e-mail months ago, I’m sorry. I’m very busy these days and this book I read once, and have a very high opinion of, warned me about engaging with the sort of thing you’re on about. The past is past. But you are family and the book also advocates devotion to family. You say it’s memories you’re after. Well here’s one. Do you remember where the loo was in your granny’s house? Well when we were children that was where daddy kept the chickens. He was a Poulterer. He dealt in chicken corpses. They were headless and were hung by their feet. He’d lock us in there for a few minutes when we were bold. Your Granny was in hospital having Sean and we were left alone with daddy. Every evening he’d arrive home with a few bags of chips and a packet of biscuits. He’s put the food on the table and then head out gallivanting. One evening I was starving and when he wasn’t looking I ate all the Kimberly. He caught me just as I was finished the last little mallow sandwich. He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me into the chicken shed. He must have forgot about me, Christian. He left me there all night. The others couldn't find a key and soon tired of my plight. I tried to sleep in the corner, but I kept thinking there were ghosts floating around me. They kept calling my name. [Name removed] can you hear us? I could almost see them. They left silky traces on the air. I thought I was going mad. But I know now that these were spirits. They follow all of us, you know. Some protect and others are malevolent. You can read about it in [name of book removed]. I was livid with him for years. But it really was my first spiritual experience.

Tell your mam I say hi.

May the angels be around you

[Name removed].

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— Christian Cooney

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jklihhk

Paint me in the myth of your love While you’re still excited Before my heart deafens Without its hearing aid

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— Liam Maher

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Several Minutes Passed Before Help Arrived For Him !! !!

Silently, you sit, dragging slowly from a cigarette, taking in everything around you. The

view of Fez from the terrace where you sit leaves you in a subdued reverie. Reps from cafés and restaurants swarm beneath you flagging down potential customers with one hand, and fanning themselves with a glossy menu with the other. Many of the younger reps succeed in coaxing sweaty, palefaced people in for food, while the older men look around for other customers, glancing resignedly at one another, silently acknowledging that trade in Bab Boujloud is not what it used to be. Glancing at your phone, you see it is now half past five. You watch on as people stream in and out of the Medina gates, hundreds of them, often in groups, chatting to one another. A man, with one hand pressing a phone to his ear, directs with his other a jeepnie piled high with cases of soft drinks which has gotten stuck between a wall and a now angry sandwich vendor, blocking the entrance to one of the city’s biggest souks. Beside them, a donkey’s head, camel’s testicles and countless sheep’s hooves lie decoratively across the counter of a butcher’s kiosk; men with dark eyes sit in cafes, silently observing; a vegetable seller splashes handfuls of water across his produce; a young man sits in a door stand, his eyes rolling, his clothes ripped, a damp cloth pressed to his mouth. Smells you cannot describe — but if you had to, like molasses, hay, and cumin — waft up from the street below, giving you pause momentarily, as you raise the glass of coffee to your lips.

You reflect on the past two nights you have spent in this city, alone. You think of the three days you spent in Marrakech, of the night in El-Jadida, the one in that small village outside Safi, and of the three in Casablanca. The prospect of moving north to Tangier tires you. You read that its Medina is renowned for its aggressive street hustlers. If your past experiences are anything to go by, you should survive okay. But it’s the prospect of learning a new city’s ways and customs which is bothersome to you. You know Fez — you have spent two long days exploring and you find it’s people charming. Nothing about a seven hour journey to a strange city appeals to you.

Morocco has been quite good to you so far; the country has proved a nice respite from the pace of life you had been accustomed to in Dublin as of late. Yes, it was just what you needed in many ways. In short, you have not felt happy at home for a few months. Feeling isolated amongst friends, declining all offers to go to a gig, a play, or a drink, you would instead stay late at the college, studying alone in a dark corner of the old library. Some implacable feeling had removed you from you from yourself, had made you feel the need to leave.

You were relieved when June came around. The university where you teach had become increasingly depressing. Though you have only been teaching for two years, you are sick of it. You never had any intention to teach, but your Masters thesis — a monograph on the failings of parliamentarism in Weimar Germany — spiralled out of control, becoming a PhD, eventually earning you work tutoring in the university. But you don’t want to think about Weimar Germany tonight, or university, or the stupid, spoiled students who come in with lawyer uncles demanding their grades be changed.

Your thoughts are broken by the call to prayer, the adhan, a loud, cacophonous roar coming from a nearby mosque, echoed moments later by another mosque which lies out of your view. A single cat roams the rooftop of another cafe beside the one in which you sit, dodging in and out of grey satellite dishes. The sun has moved across the sky and is now sitting right above the Kasbahat at the other end of the square. The waiter sits two tables over from you, a towel draped across his left shoulder, speaking in Arabic to a customer.

He remind you of a waiter you once saw in a cafe in Strasbourg, standing propped up against the counter with the towel slung over his shoulder — like something out of a movie.

You consider the prospect of living in a place like this; whether or not you feel you could truly adapt; whether you could flee everything at home; whether it would be possible to find someone here to fall in love with, to marry, to have a child with. You wonder what it would be like to raise a child here. But you wondered, with even greater

intensity, what it would be like to be a child growing up here. In the Medina where you sit, many children roam around freely, often arm in arm playing games with sticks, while others sit quietly on chairs, selling tissues or bread — some, as young as four or five are working in their father’s shops. As alien as it is to you, it is not wholly undesirable. Future or no future in Morocco, you will never quite understand what it is like to grow up here, in this strange city, for you are from Ireland. Your childhood seems very suburban and grey compared with this.

Besides, you are getting ahead of yourself. You would first have to meet a woman here if you were seriously going to consider this, and you have had very little luck with that so far. According to the guide who brought you to your hotel in Marrakech, there will be little or no opportunities to meet Moroccan women — unless, of course, the guide told you in a hushed voice, you wanted to pay for such privileges. When you asked him to elaborate, he told you, rather crudely, that you can go to most bars, and be approached by a girl, buy her many drinks, and pay her to sleep with you. Surely there must be another way to meet people, you pleaded. No monsieur, he replied, shaking his head slowly, raising his hand and rubbing his fingers together. Money, he told you, is what they want, signifying the end of the conversation.

Though you didn’t like that man very much, his remarks coloured your impression of the country you were about to spend almost a month in, sparking an interest. Your curiosity had been piqued so much that that very night, you went down for a drink in the hotel bar only to sit by yourself, completely isolated from the hotel’s other residents. Your skin colour, you felt — even if only superficially — set you apart from them. It made you selfconscious, your actions awkward and inorganic. You left quietly after two drinks and fell asleep watching the news in Arabic, glancing often out the window form your seventh story hotel room, imagining that there might be somewhere else you could go to forget yourself, even for a night.

Your other excursion to a bar, in El-Jadida, gave you the impression that you had made progress. In a crowded, smoky bar, illuminated by tacky green lighting, you saw one of the most beautiful girls you have ever seen in your life. She sat with her friends talking and laughing late into the night, looking occasionally, you think, at you through chestnut brown eyes. She wore a sprightly coloured, flowery dress showing little or no cleavage.

Her smile was the smile was one of contentment as she sat there, her chin resting in her palm, absorbed in her friends’ talk. You realised that it had been quite some time since any conversation engaged you like she seemed to be engaged. Your mind often wanders during conversations and you spend more time looking around you at other people or lost in your in own thoughts.

Perhaps the alcohol coloured your recollections of this girl, or perhaps it was your tendency of romanticising women. Whatever the case, she left while you were sitting there, contemplating your big move. She got up and left, glancing once more at you before she did, plummeting you further into your doubt about whether or not she had smiled at you earlier. Regardless, you think you shared a beautiful, if fleeting, moment with that girl — that girl who you would, you told yourself that night as you lay in bed hugging a pillow, never see again.

Yes, you might say that your two trips to bars here have not been incredibly enjoyable, let alone fruitful. It has been quite a while since you approached someone whom you didn’t know.

Speaking of girls, a blonde girl wearing baggy, green pants and a loose, white shirt, enters onto the terrace where you sit, and sits down at the other end. You watch as she takes off her sun-glasses and places them gently on the counter. The waiter comes over to her, takes her order, disappears, and returns with a bottle of coke. She could be a tourist like you: lonely, lost, and running from something neither of you can quite explain You watch as she sips slowly from the glass bottle through a straw, thumbing at the screen of her phone. She takes out a cigarette but you look away before she lights it.

Intimacy with this woman, you find yourself thinking, would be nice. You look over, less subtly than you had hoped to, catching a glimpse of her slender upper body, as she sits, her arm erect, yet at a distance from her body, holding her cigarette, and gazing into her phone which lay on the table. You are a voyeur, a born-gazer, taking in but never taking part. Ironically though, you do not see yourself as one.

You pine for her to look your way but she does not. Your thoughts run away with you.

You resolve to go out more often when you return to Dublin — to put in more of an effort by going to clubs, meeting people, speaking to members of the opposite sex. Desperate to get beyond yourself, you take out your new iPhone and begin to flick through the apps your friends filled it with. It all seems quite alien to you, for you, for so long, had refused to get a smart phone, choosing to hold onto your old Nokia — the brick, your friends called it —a phone unable to connect to the internet, which you retained more out of pride and stubbornness than anything else. But alas! Those days are no more. You swallowed your pride after increased pressure from friends, who, assuring you not only of the benefits for work and other practical uses, insist upon the social advantages of such technology. It will change your life, they insisted. You, however, are not so sure.

Thumbing through your list of apps, you come across one you have heard some friends of yours mention quite a bit — Tinder. You heard stories from friends of people signing up and meeting people instantly. You initially scoffed at this. Adolescent nonsense, you called it. Your thumb hovers over the icon, but you continue looking. You are interested but try to stop thinking about it. Why had your friends filled up your phone with such stupid applications and games when you had gotten it? You are irritated. You put your phone down. A cool wind comes across the terrace, chilling your elbows which rest exposed, sending a fleeting shiver down your back; you glance at your phone; it is almost six.

Opening back up your applications, you slowly make your way towards Tinder once more.

You hover over the icon, unsure whether you will click it or not. You look up — it’s grown slightly darker now. You click it.

It says it is finding your location, alarming you slightly. But recalling your little knowledge of how it works, you pacify yourself by thinking that this must be a necessary step. The Tinder logo flashes large across your screen and you are brought to a page which asks you for name, age and a picture of yourself.

You become awkward for a moment as the camera turns on, showing you a picture of a dishevelled looking man, whose light hair has clearly been blown around by the wind. This is not how you imagined you looked today — but the camera, apparently, does not lie. You take a moment to fix your hair and pose inelegantly. It takes a picture. No, you think to yourself — no good. You take another — this one not as bad as the other. You watch as it uploads. And there you are, onscreen before your very eyes, looking slightly confused but not at your worst. It makes you slightly queasy. You look up from your phone to see if the pretty girl is still there: she isn’t. It has grown slightly colder. You look back down at your phone and see a beautiful girl looking up at you. She looks in her mid-twenties, darkskinned, and is smiling at you. You think she is local. You know how to use Tinder — you know how to ‘like’ or ‘pass’ on someone — but you seem unable to advance. You cannot decide what you think of this girl; she is clearly attractive, but are you actually attracted to her?

Should you click yes, even if you are not sure if you would like to ‘match’ with this girl?

With slight hesitation, you pass, denying a possible future with this girl who you are uncertain whether you like or not. Before you can give it much thought, another girl appears on your screen — another Moroccan girl, you think. She wears a hijab, and is disarmingly attractive. You confirm her — not without taking a moment to absorb her beauty — with great ease. Another girl pops up on your screen, almost equally as beautiful. You confirm her quickly, without taking much time to look at her, to take in her unique beauty. This is easy you think; much less difficult and weird than you imagined it might be. You continue in this manner for another five or six girls, you can’t be sure, confirming maybe three of four, and passing on the other — you can’t be sure.

It was, perhaps, your eighth or ninth when you see her — the blonde girl, the pretty girl from earlier. You freeze up; you look up for her; you remember she has already left. You glance back down at the phone — was it really her? Can you be sure? You barely saw her, but you think that you could pick her out from a crowd. But you are unsure — she has just two pictures of herself on her page: one up close and another of her from afar, on a beach, and she wears glasses in both.

Uncharacteristically, you get up and run to the edge of the terrace, and begin looking for her amongst the crowds of people in the Medina. Your eyes search for a blonde girl in a crowd of brunettes. It’s no use; you can’t see her anywhere. You walk tensely back to your

table and look once more at your phone before making your decision. It has to be her, you conclude; it must be.

You swipe, indicating your interest in her and suddenly she is no more, has disappeared.

Another beautiful girl has taken her place — but it feels different now. Your mind is restless, curious, you cannot focus on any new pictures. You swipe your way absentmindedly through another three or four girls. You become anxious and close Tinder — there is nothing left for you to do. You call the waiter over and ask for the bill in pidgin Arabic, pay it, and leave.

You walk in silence through the Medina’s many darkened laneways, graciously declining offers from shopkeepers who try to drag you into their shop, reminding you that looking is free. You feel at ease as you slip through the streets, towards your hotel, your mind awash with vague and implacable thoughts. You reach your hotel in minutes. You share a brief exchange with the door porter who smiled at you before, and opt for the stairs, which lie at the far end of this white marbled foyer, with its dark, oak furnishings.

In your room, you change into swimming shorts and a t-shirt, grab a towel, and head downstairs towards the pool. There are only a middle-aged couple sharing a bottle of champagne, and a lone man sitting in the overly modern hotel bar, you notice, as you climb down the ladder into the pool. It is cold; you feel your muscles tense up. You look around the complex as you cruise through the water — how artificial everything looks to you. Fake plastic trees which surround the pool area, reminding you of that hotel you once stayed in in Florida as a child with your parents. Though your hotel is two minutes from the Medina gates, it seems like it could be in another country altogether, like it could be anywhere, really, with its Western features.

You enjoy how the water feels on your skin; it wakens you up; you feel alert, silently taking in all around you. For a few moments you forget about your day and just drift. Your mind wanders, and you try to think of the last time you swam. You swallow a mouthful of water, accidentally, cough, and imagine what it would be like to drown. They say it’s the most peaceful way to go. Falling, full, floating, screaming without making a sound, you wouldn’t like to find out.

Not before long, you begin thinking about the pretty girl. Was it her? Could it be? Where was she now? Would she check Tinder before tonight, before you leave tomorrow morning?

You try to curb these thoughts, quickening your lengths, coming up less for air, straining yourself — pushing yourself as far as you can go. You do a dozen or so lengths like this, swim to the ladder, grab your towel, and leave.

You don’t notice that the bar is empty when you walk past it, absorbed in the pain you feel in your shoulders, in your tiredness. You check your phone when you get to your room: nothing. You shower slowly, watching the steam gather across the shower door, tracing abstract shapes with your finger. You feel tired now, fed up, maybe. Wrapped in a towel you walk across the room to turn on the TV. Your phone, which lies on your pillow, lets out a small flash of light. You walk slowly towards it, all emotion suppressed. 1 new message from Tinder.

A match with Michelle, 26, Lyon. The pretty girl.

You look down at your phone; your hand tremors; you feel excited, nervous and terrified. No, you think, there can be no doubt about it: it was her. You catch sight of yourself in the mirror for a second, slightly startled by the naked, scrawny man draped in what now appears to be a hand -towel, a coat-hanger smile plastered across his face. You look down once more: a message. A message from her. ‘Bonsoir!’ it reads. The blood drains from your face. This is real, you think, and you barely speak French. You try to think how to advance — admit you speak little French, or try to bluff your way? Let’s not tempt fate, you think; no use in trying to be a hero. Bonsoir! Excuse-moi, mais je ne parle un peu de francais. Je suis désolé! Je suis Irlandais. You cringe at the horrible sentences you struggle to string together. It reminds you of being in school all over again, struggling to write letters to fake French pen-pals, telling them all about your trip to la discotheque. You hope she doesn’t think you come across puerile. Perhaps you are reading too much into it.

A reply.

No problem. I speak English also. Your French, it’s not so great :) Can I ask you something — are you the guy from the cafe?

The guy from the cafe, you think to yourself. Your French isn’t great but you don’t care — you’re the guy from the cafe! You are the guy from the cafe. Yes, you tell her, I think so?

From Bab Boujloud?

Yes! she replies. I wanted to talk to you earlier but I was shy so I just left. How lucky to find you here! Lucky, you think. This seems beyond luck. You are shocked, but you tell her that you, too, wanted to go over to talk to her, but had not been able to bring yourself to do it.

Why? she asks.

You are not sure, but you tell her you wanted to.

Which part do you stay in? Fes El-bali or ville nouvelle?

El-Bali. Bab Al-Makina. What about you?

Oh, I am staying in a hotel in the ville nouvelle. How long are you in Fez for?

Just one more night. I’ve been here for a few days now, but I leave in the morning for Tangier.

Oh, I see. Well, would you like to meet up tonight, for food or a drink? If you are free of course!

You are taken aback by how good this is going — how easy, how surreal it all is! You imagine her staring down at her phone, tucking a loose strand of her blonde hair back behind her ear — nervous, maybe as nervous and excited as you are of this whole experience. All your qualms with internet dating literally blown out of the water! Should you put smiley face in? Is that what people do? Yes, you’ll put a smiley face in, that’s what you’ll do.

Yes, you say, I’d love to :-) Her frankness excites you. Another message pops up on your screen.

Wonderful! Where is good for you?

Would you like me to come to the new town?

Yes, she says. There are many bars we could go to here. There are not many in the Medina. Is this okay for you?

Yeah, that suits me fine. Where could we meet?

Let’s meet at Hotel Royal at 9.30?

You are not sure where that is but you can look at the map.

Okay, you say. Perfect. I’ll see you there!

OK! Au revoir!

You sit at the edge of your bed, still in a towel, with water dripping from your shins, drying slowly from the heat of the city, looking down at your phone — this machine of wonder. You hear horns beeping in the distance. You sit completely still, trying to process what exactly has just happened. It is dark outside — it seems unreal. Your phone beeps again. A text. But it is from a friend back in Dublin. You are invited to a gig tonight. He mustn’t know you’re not in Dublin. You don’t bother to reply. You remember you need to check where the hotel is. You do. It is central; you have past it before. Silence. You thumb your way through the messages onscreen. A nervous smile spreads across your face. This is happening, you say to yourself.

Throwing your phone aside, you stand up and begin to dress. It is eight-thirty. You just remember a shirt you packed at the bottom of your rucksack which you have had no reason to wear up until now. You dress quickly, spend five minutes fixing your hair, another five cleaning up your room, and head downstairs. It is much cooler now — cold, even — and the streets have grown much darker. You leave the Medina to look for a taxi. It is quarter to nine. You have forty-five minutes. Plenty of time, you think. You haven’t been waiting for two minutes when a taxi pulls up to you. You say Hotel Royal. He nods and you jump in.

You wait anxiously as the taxi sits in a long row of traffic outside a Carrefour supermarket. You are alarmed at how different this newer part of the city is to the Medina. Your thoughts pass as the car moves along the boulevard and into the city centre.

You laugh as you see a sign advertising the launch of the McArabia burger on an enormous bill-board which spans the length of two arctic lorries. How appetising you think: all the taste of bad street food at just ten times the price — a steal.

You find yourself staring at an enormous, upmarket hotel for a few moments before you realise that this is it — the Hotel Royal. You pay the taxi-driver the twenty dirhams, who nods at you, before you climb out onto the street. It is two minutes past nine. Twenty eight to kill. You decide to go and look for a pack of cigarettes while you wait. You find yourself wandering down a long avenue. This is your first time in this part of the city. In fact, out of all the cities you have been to, you have only been to one other ville nouvelle.

You are halfway down the street and you realise you have walked too far and seem to be surrounded solely by residential buildings. You turn back, spotting an old man across the road selling cigarettes. You walk over and ask for a box of Marquis. Twenty five dirhams, he tells you. Five dirhams more expensive than the tobacconists. You hand him thirty dirhams, and shake your head when he tries to hand you back your change. He puts his hand on his heart and smiles, showing that he is missing a few teeth. You return his salute and walk off.

It has grown colder yet as you make your way back towards the hotel. It is twenty past.

You wonder if this is her hotel, if she is in there right now — in one of the hundred square windows which illuminate the front of the building. Curtains drape over most windows, but you can see in others. You wonder. You look around you — people rush past in cars and on motorcycles, largely ignoring you. Old men sit along the front of a cafe across the street, silently observing, barely speaking to one another. Time. You rest on the gate and take out your phone. Twenty six minutes past. If this isn’t her hotel, you think, then where does she stay? You have no idea. You wait. Colder now.

As the minutes pass, you become restless and begin to look around anxiously. You check your phone — it is thirty four minutes past. You look through the gates of the hotel. A security guard spots you and cranes his neck in your direction. Where is she? You turn back around, and begin looking up and down the street. Still no. You can feel yourself begin to perspire. It has gotten busier; families out for dinner pass you; beggars roam up and down the pavement; traffic has slowed down but become more congested. Cold heat. Busier now. Where is she? You take out your phone and try to turn on Tinder. You have no internet access. Inside? You are tempted to go in and ask the hotel but you think they will not give it to you. Looking. Where —. It is thirty six minutes past. Small children, holding their parents hands, stare at you as they walk past. People look out at you from the windows of their car. Traffic. Some adults also appear to sense your anxiety and glance at you. Breath.

You return some stares and look around uneasily. Warm. Warm. Thirty eight minutes past.

You turn back around for some strange reason, you keep visualising that couple kissing at the bar from earlier. They are looking at you, staring. They stop kissing, and stare, worried looks on their faces. Looking .Staring. The security guard is now standing halfway between the hotel and the gate. Where is she? No don’t. Panic. Staring. So war—. She said she.

What do you wa—. You look around. The guard is nearer. Back around — people. More people. Staring. Where? Children. At you. Begging. Traffic. Around. The guard nearer.

Eyes. Forty. Closer to the wall. Eyes. Where are you? Meet me at the Hotel Royal. Slender arms. Guard nearer —. View of Fez. Staring. Dublin. Where are you? Beautiful from he—.

One more ni—. Excuse-moi. Drowning. Sir. Drowning. Where are you? Warm drown. Eyes.

Horror. Why are they stopping? 21Legs. Sir. Sir. Drowning. You said you’d be—. Drowning.

Little girl screaming. Your legs. Breathe. Your legs. Breathe. Try. Drowning. Sir. Are you—.

Where—. Calm. Feels good. Where am—? Screams. You are nowhere. You are alone.

!! !! !! !! !!

— Tadhg Hoey

On Becoming the Subject of a Cautionary Tale: Music Students are not your friend

!You know I love these English

Girls, all Derrida and Hipster frames, A half a dyke is Dyke enough For all my fun and games.

I will trailblaze through that girl, and Flense her to raw nerves.

Grind her to a splinter, Smoke her to the filter, Suck life from those bones and curves.

You know I love these English Girls, all rhetoric and Marxist cool, A half a dyke’s An easy mark If the other half’s a fool.

You see heaven’s molten bodies Whirl above me In Dance eternal, And imagine I travel that very Wretched maze of waves you Call your home.

You forget, There is no mercy in a cello, No meaning in a symphony, And no intertextuality in my Wretched little heart.

Fool. I’m the woman your Mother warned you about.

!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

— Matilda

!

GOWP Meets… Oisín McKenna !!

We first met Oisín back in 2011 at the weekly Literary and Debating meetings in the

cramped seminar rooms of the John Hume building at NUI, Maynooth. At the time, Oisin was the chairperson of the Literary and Debating Society, and an avid writer of all things poetry. A champion of the spoken word, Oisín helped facilitate slam poetry with Lit & Deb Soc and various other spoken word events for LGBT Soc or Mental Health Soc at a time when very little attention was paid to spoken word events at the university.

Fast forward three years, Oisín is living in Dublin, working at SpunOut.ie — one of Ireland’s leading youth organisations — and is a distinguished voice within Dublin’s underground arts community. Having performed at events such as last year’s Come Rhyme with Me, Oisín formed PETTYCASH, with fellow performer, Niamh Beirne. PETTYCASH — a spoken word night and arts collective —went on to make a serious name for itself in spoken word circles around the city. Then came a show at Dublin’s Fringe Festival.

GRINDR/ a love story, — a play about ‘frantically trying to connect’ with people over the internet, and the inherent complications of combining technology with sex — gained Oisín some much deserved respect on the Dublin theatre circuit. Oisín’s position at the forefront of the underground arts scene in the capital, alongside his politically and socially committed approach to writing — as his recent article, ‘Please Talk To Who? — A Thing About Mental Health’ article on his tumblr illustrates — meant that interviewing Oisín was an ideal way to launch our ‘GOWP Meets…’ writer series.

We caught up with Oisín on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Trinity for a chat about mental health, Pro-Choice, theatre, books — and, most importantly, writing. We also chatted about his upcoming project: an as-yet-untitled magazine he is the process of designing.

!GOWP:

You took part in the march for choice today so we thought we might start by asking you what you see as the relationship between politics and theatre in your own work, and the in the arts more generally?

!Oisín:

On a personal level I’m really interested in using creative skills to effect positive social change and deliver tangible political outcomes. I think using theatre, or the arts more broadly, as a political tool is really important. But I think due to theatre’s nature it is often presented to a very limited audience. I think it’s also a problem that a lot of theatre has no real outreach program, so a lot of people who go to theatre are very middle class.

Also a lot of people who go to theatre work for theatre. So even though it can deliver really positive messages the people consuming, those messages aren’t necessarily the people who would benefit most from hearing them. I think theatre can act as a political vehicle, but that writing for print and digital media probably at the moment has much more of a capacity to effect real change because it can reach much more people.

!GOWP: So would you always start writing with a political objective in mind? !Oisín:

Kind of — in theory anyway. When I’m actually in the process of writing I’m really just thinking about making that piece as good as I can. Sometimes it can be hard to see that in a political context even though I would like to. But I’m trying to move towards that in a more solid way and think of more tangible ways it can actually do something instead of just vaguely thinking [while writing] ‘this is a comment on something and maybe someone will pick up on that and maybe they’ll do something’.

!!

GOWP:

You might say you’re moving towards making the political content of your work more explicit?

!Oisín: Yeah, not even just in the content but in how it is delivered and consumed. !GOWP:

So you’re currently in the early stages of founding your own magazine, can you elaborate a bit more on what attracts you to print as a medium?

!Oisín:

I think print more than any other art form has a history of effecting political change. I’m also interested in the design aspect of print-making a thing look as nice as possible. I also think it’s really important to find ways for art to exist outside the digital sphere. I think the digital sphere is really good but that we should resist its monopolisation of distribution. So much of the means of distribution on the internet is owned by corporate entities. I think things like social media can be very useful but I’m also aware that those means are owned by a system I would like to resist. I think the place of print in art should be enshrined and respected. I think it serves a really important purpose. But at the same time digital stuff is also really important because it can reach so many people. I think print and digital mediums can work together in really interesting ways.

!GOWP:

You staged your play GRINDR: a love story at last year’s Dublin fringe. One of the many things that struck us about the piece was the way it explored the relationship between social media and feelings of alienation in today’s youth. Would it be fair to say you see social media as contributing to a distinctly contemporary type of loneliness?

!Oisín:

I totally think that —100%. I think that’s very much the case. Everyone reacts to it differently, but it’s such a new thing that it hasn’t really been studied that much yet. I think in years to come there’ll be lots of unsettling mental health issues linked to social media use. I think seeing the ‘best’ versions of people you know on Facebook all day long wreaks havoc with your self-esteem. I think people now struggle to see their lives in any other way except in terms of how it’s going to look on Facebook; you’re right in the moment of something and all you can think about is how to make a funny status out of it.

!GOWP:

You founded the PETTYCASH collective two years ago which went on to make a serious contribution to the spoken word scene in Dublin. What first got you interested in spoken word?

!Oisín:

I don’t know, it was a really weird thing. Growing up I always wrote poetry, but that was a very private, non-social sort of activity for me. It was nice when I started realising that could exist in a live setting that involved actually speaking to other people. That was really exciting. But part of it was probably my own stupid prejudices about wanting to make things that were cool or hip or whatever. It seemed like a more current way to present poetry to people.

!!

GOWP:

You seem to want to distant yourself from it slightly — do you feel less connected to spoken word as pursuit now?

!Oisín:

Yeah, I do. It’s nothing to do with the form. I don’t feel that any one art form is more inherently valuable than another. Some of it has to do with audience sizes and wanting to

reach more people and deliver more tangible social results. I think spoken word and theatre is limited in the ways it can do that. There are some really amazing spoken word artists in Dublin, but a lot of my own art has a lot to do with the kind of art that I’m looking at at the time and I’m not that engaged with the spoken word scene at the moment. It’s not that there’s a lack of quality, it’s just that I’m looking at other things at the moment. I would be moving away from it [spoken word] to a certain extent.

!GOWP:

We’ve talked a bit about your desire to find a larger audience- ideally, who do you think this audience would be?

!Oisín:

This could just be me being lazy since I am one, but young people is always the first one I say. I think because I’m a young person I feel I’m qualified to speak to young people. I really want to involve outreach in anything I do and find ways to speak to other communities. But that has to be done in conjunction with people who are qualified to do that. There are so many politically disenfranchised communities that I know literally nothing about and I am not a part of whatsoever. I guess it’s about finding ways to empower these communities to have a political voice without speaking for them in any way. I’m really interested in finding ways to make creative output that’s specific purpose is to dispense information. I think the problem with the way a lot of public life is lived today is that people don’t feel they know enough to have any real stake in a conversation.

People feel really dis-empowered and not able to contribute.

!GOWP: So your new project will seek to engage directly with the disenfranchised? !Oisín:

I think explicitly with social causes, yeah. I kind of see it as ‘documentation and mobilisation’. So documentation of social issues, but that documentation can take place in a creative sphere. It could be documentary based performance, prose or even fiction — but fiction that explicitly deals with things that are actually happening. And then mobilisation around those things that have been documented.

!GOWP: So you really feel that art can effect social change? !Oisín:

Yeah, I do think that. I kind of think anything can happen! Art and creative skills, when used well, are the best and most powerful way to communicate an idea. And when that’s done on a mass, broadly accessible, highly visible scale that is explicitly trying to effect change, it definitely can [bring about social change].

!GOWP: Do you vote? !Oisín:

I do, yeah. I wouldn't vote in an election that didn't have a candidate that I felt comfortable with. But I think it’s totally fine not to vote. It’s a flawed system and I think it’s fine not to support it.

!GOWP: This question might sound a bit hostile, buy why do you choose to live in Dublin? !Oisín:

No, it’s a good question. I live here because I was born in Ireland and after college it seemed like the place to go because it’s the biggest city in the country and has the biggest

art scene and stuff. Sometimes I have felt very energised by it, but energised because there are so many terrible things about the way Dublin is run. It can be such a terrible place sometimes.

!GOWP: You have a day job as a staff writer for Spunout.ie, can we talk a bit about that? !Oisín:

They’re really great. I think it’s a really positive thing. For so many young people, their social and sexual education in school was really lacking. All that information isn’t really provided in the institutional framework. So I think stuff like SpunOut is really important because it can dispense that information to young people in a very non-judgmental sort of way. It definitely ties in to what I want to do with this new magazine I’m planning. It’s not about telling people ‘this is how you should behave’ or ‘you should do this and that’.

People feel really dis-empowered from conversations and having a stake in the quality of the nation because they feel like they don’t know enough and they don’t have the right information, when actually your own lived experience makes you fully qualified to contribute and participate. It’s about providing people with information in a very accessible and straightforward way. That’s what SpunOut is about.

!GOWP:

You’ve said that you see your new project, in part, as a response to the art and media establishment in Ireland as it stands today. Can you comment on that a bit more?

!Oisín:

I think the entire establishment in Ireland, the arts and the media and everything, that a really central remit of these organisations is to maintain the status-quo. This is probably the case in most other countries too, I think. I think it’s really important to find a way to produce art and media and to work in a creative way that doesn't for one second feel the need to ask permission from institutional frameworks [to exist]. Those institutional frameworks don’t ultimately have our best interests at heart. They have different goals.

They’re looking to maintain an order.

!GOWP:

A lot of the problem probably lies with how these organisations are funded. You've used crowd-funding to produce some of your previous work, is this something you think you will continue to do?

!Oisín:

Yeah, definitely — if a project I’m doing calls for it. There’s been kind of a backlash against it recently and I’m not sure why. People seem to think it’s exploitative of the funders or something.

!!

GOWP: How do you go about writing your stuff? !!

Oisín: I’m not really that prolific. I just take a lot of notes. Things occur to me in a sort of natural way and I write them down. I actually don’t even like writing that much. I like when it’s done. I usually find the process really frustrating and unenjoyable. But I also feel really compelled to do it and there’s nothing else I’d rather do in my life. That’s probably a really negative thing because it makes me really unhappy most of the time.

![Laughter] !GOWP:

So what are you reading these days?

Oisín: I’m reading lots of non-fiction at the moment. I’m reading this really good one called Estates: An Intimate History by Lindsay Hanley. It’s a history of social housing in the U.K told through a personal lens — the author grew up in social housing. That’s really good. I’m reading some fiction as well. I’ve been reading Miranda July and Dave Eggers

!GOWP: What advice would you give to aspiring writers and theatre makers? !Oisín:

I think a good thing to do is look at the platforms that are available and think about which ones would be suitable for your work. Think consciously about what the place of your work in a broader cultural context. Be professional in how you see your work.

!GOWP: So how did you get your first show staged? !Oisín:

The first show I did there was an application form. It was just publicly advertised. It was part of a festival run by Theatreclub that was specifically for up-and-coming artists and more established writers presenting something outside of their regular practice.

!GOWP:

Before we finish up, is there anybody working in theatre in Dublin today that you find particularly interesting?

!Oisín:

Yeah, Theatreclub that I just mentioned — I always really love their work. They had a trilogy of plays — Heroin, The Family and History — that told a social history of Ireland through three different stories. Their work is really current and exciting. Amazing performances. I’d really recommend their stuff. Stefanie Preissner is a theatre writer that I really love. Her play Solpadiene Is My Boyfriend is amazing. It’s about solpadiene addiction and emigration. It’s written in a spoken word style — it would be very influential on the stuff I do myself. Also Shaun Dunne [author of Death of a Tradesman] is really good.

!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

Just what is it makes today’s faces so different, so appealing? or: The Society of the Selfie

! !“Now, for an absurdly small sum, we may become familiar not only with every famous

locality in the world, but also with almost every man of note in Europe. The ubiquity of the photographer is something wonderful. All of us have seen the Alps and know Chamonix and the Mer de Glace by heart though we have never braved the horrors of the Channel…

We have crossed the Andes , ascended Tenerife, entered Japan, “done” Niagara and the Thousand Isles, drunk delight of battle with our peers (at shop windows), sat at the council of the mighty, grown familiar with kings, emperors and queens, prima donna, pets of the ballet and “well graced actors.” Ghosts have we seen and have not trembled; stood before royalty and have not uncovered; and looked, in short, through a three inch lends at every single pomp and vanity of this wicked but beautiful world.”

!

— “D.P.,” columnist in Once a Week June 1, 1861 !“With the daguerrotype everyone will be able to have[London], their portrait taken — formerly it was only the Prominent; and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same — so that we shall only need one portrait.”

!

— Kierkegaard (1854) !“The personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of

ourselves —result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology,” Marshall McLuhan writes in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), before going on to conclude that “it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and interaction.” Writing fifty years ago, McLuhan foresaw how technology can often define, or frame the way we view ourselves and the world around us. Increasingly, new technologies often allow us to interact with one another and our environments in ways we could not have otherwise. The purpose of this essay is to examine one such relatively recent interaction with evolving technologies — the Selfie.

The Selfie is a perfect example of an extension of ourselves; it stands as a testament to the ways in which humans utilise and internalise technology; it illustrates just how quickly new technologies can be appropriated and embedded within culture, how quickly they can govern social relations. Scooping up Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year last year — with a reported 17,000% increased usage in the past year alone — the Selfie, or a “photograph taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website,” is, to be sure, the defining image of the twenty-first century to date.

Though the term ‘Selfie’ only slipped into common usage in the past three of four years, the practise of taking pictures of oneself is not at all new — with the first recorded Selfie dating back to an early daguerrotype in 1839. With the contemporary Selfie — alongside the advent of front-facing cameras — we can, however, take them much more easily; we no longer look through the lens to take a picture — it looks through us.

Why the increase in popularity now, though? Well, it seems there are many reasons for the exponential increase in the taking of Selfies. One of the main reasons is mainly due to the increased number of Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat — alongside Facebook and Twitter — which provide simple and effective platforms for image-sharing. Secondly — fads, particularly online fads, which encourage you, the individual, to share your own unique take on a certain trend (for recent examples see ‘No make-up Selfie’ or ‘Ice-Bucket Challenge’). Lastly, it’s easy — a picture speaks a thousand words, apparently Selfies are an effective way of saying ‘This is me — this is what I do’; Selfies enable anyone with a camera and internet access to document themselves within their own, unique environments and share it instantly with an online community, allowing them to feel ‘connected’; Selfies attest to our existence. According to an article entitled “My

Selfie, Myself” in the NY Times Jenna Wortham argues that receiving “a photo of the face of the person you’re talking to brings back the human element of the interaction, which is easily misplaced if the interaction is primarily text-based” (emphasis my own). Wortham is true to a point, but she forgets that language, too, is an intrinsic part of what it is to be human. In the same article, she posits that Selfies are the “perfect preoccupation with for our Internet-saturated times, a ready-made platform to record and post our lives where others can see and experience them in tandem with us.” This is also true.

What Wortham does not say here, however, is that Selfies don’t enable us to experience an event with someone — rather they allow us to look at an image of an event, a representation of the event. Selfies, then, we may say, have become the event. Taking Selfies, looking at Selfies — these are the events which fill our screen, our days — our lives.

The very act of taking a Selfie also amounts to saying ‘look at me’. This is not necessarily narcissistic. Humans crave attention, in some form or another — Selfies being just another medium through which people can draw attention to themselves. So we may say, then, that Selfies demand our attention, command our gaze — insist, essentially, that we consume them. According to Alise Teifentale, a member of CUNY’s Selfie City Research Project —a study of different types of Selfies from five major cities — “the very rasion d’etre of a selfie is to be shared in social media, it is not made for the maker’s own personal consumption and contemplation”. In this sense, the subject and photographer merge, creating a subject who crafts themselves into an object for consumption — the process of a subject becoming an object, or in this case, self-objectification.

What is perhaps most interesting about this is how much control individuals now have over the process of objectification. The process is left to each individual person, who then can meticulously craft their own image of themselves. This adds a certain level of performativity to the act of taking a Selfie. While heavyweight post-structuralists such as Derrida, Foucault, Butler et al. claim that all identity is performed — and Selfies are no different — no major study has yet looked at how we perform, or represent ourselves in Selfies. Charles Horton Cooley, in Human Nature and the Social Order(1902) 1904, similarly reminded us that we engage in impression management all the time, and developed his ‘looking glass self’ and ‘three principles’ systems (“the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling such as pride or mortification” — a concept of the self very alike Freud’s, while prefiguring much of Lacan’s ‘mirror-stage’.)

Half a century later, Erving Goffman wrote in The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life (1959) that humans are constantly occupied with self-presentation, as best expressed in his analogy of humans as ‘actors’. Goffman used terms like ‘front-stage’ to connote experiences where one might present a front to another — e.g., a job interview or formal occasions; whereas ‘back-stage’ experiences were more private experiences — e.g., relaxing at home, talking to a friend — a situation which does not call for a laborious ‘front’ to be put on. Though there is a danger in reducing complex aspects of social relations down to binaries such as ‘front-stage’ and ‘back-stage,’ the analogy proves useful in an examination of Selfies.

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), Walter Benjamin argued that humans were becoming more and more dependent on the image for truth. He warned that dependency would gradually reduce our contemplative faculties, and we would no longer look inward for truth — we would, instead, merely look to the image.

Benjamin’s prediction now rings truer than ever.

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The curtains that once divided back stage and front stage have fallen; everything private becomes public, furnished with a nostalgic image and posted online to be judged, to be taken for reality. If we present ourselves in images, we also demand that we be judged, be measured by our images. And so we become fronts, appearing— because appearing means everything.

In April 2014, TIME ran a story about a woman in the U.S. who got ‘Selfie-surgery’ in order to look more like her Instagram photos. “I feel like I look like myself, but Photoshopped” was how he felt after the surgery, before going onto state that your online presence is just as important as your “real-life presence”. It’s ironic that this woman draws such distinction between ‘“real-life” and virtual, when her face is proof they no longer exist. “We’re going more and more in the direction of high definition, that is to say, towards the useless perfection of the image — which is no longer an image,” Jean Baudrillard wrote in 1997. “The more it becomes real, the more it is produced in real time, the more we approach absolute definition, or the realistic perfection of the image, the more the image’s power is lost.” When the image becomes so realistic, so life-like — a simulacrum — it ceases to become an image, and becomes an intrinsic part of our reality.

The woman mentioned above may best epitomize our obsession with images. “Real-life” is now becoming more and more informed by “virtual” reality. While me may have one had an authority over the image, it now appears to have redefined us: to quote Baudrillard again, “the map precedes the territory”. Susan Sontag similarly noted that the “images that have virtually unlimited authority in a modern society are mainly the photographic images; and the scope of that authority stems from the properties peculiar to images taken by cameras.”

So, if we say that the Selfie is the image which best describes our experience as humans in the twentieth-first century, what does it say about us? Is, as Kate Losse puts it, the self the message and the Selfie really the medium? Will we, in years to come, look back at the billions of Selfie and see what it was like to have lived during these years? Will we know what it was like to feel sad or lonely? (Perhaps taking Selfies is an effective way to combat loneliness, but I’m not sure). Or will we just see smiling faces? What will we think, looking back at ourselves, of all the looking at ourselves and others we do? What will we, the scopohiliacs, have learned about ourselves? What will the countless funeral Selfies (or ‘griefies,’ as they are affectionately known) tell us about these strange years? What about the idiot who deservedly got kicked in the head by an angry train driver as he stood dangerously close to a passing train, trying to take a Selfie? Or the lady in NY who took one of herself in front of a guy about to jump from the Brooklyn bridge? The ‘outside a plane-crash Selfie’; the ‘standing outside a burning house-Selfie’; the ‘me with my dead relative-Selfie’; the ‘me smiling as a woman’s water breaks-Selfie’ — just what will these tell us just what will these tell us about how we live now? And there are sad stories out there, too — the story of the fifteen year-old Philippino child who shot himself in the face trying to take a Selfie; the tragic story of the young girl who fell from a balcony and died trying to take one; the man who suffered from body dysmorphic disorder, and tried to kill himself because he couldn’t take a Selfie he was happy with. I think we shall only be able to understand theSelfie in retrospect. I think we may be too much involved in the spectacle to adequately critique it. I don’t know what these say about ourselves, in short — I’m not sure if any of us can tell, yet — but we’ll let the viewers decide for themselves. *For an extended, fully referenced version of this essay, see the online version at gowp.biz

— Tadhg Hoey

DetriMental Health

!

When she spoke the words 'Lewis, I think you might be depressed' I laughed in jest, But being honest, I felt a sickening sinking feeling Right down in my chest Disharmony at the core Reality became insanity Conformed order gives way to frantic panic And now...

I don't know which is which anymore.

!

I'd always been aware of it, but somewhat oblivious Frivolous life no longer carrying meaning or weight, Of expectation, I no longer have Except to expect the negative entity To creep up the backstairs of my mind At the first sign of serenity

!

See this is my penalty for awareness of joy.

!

'Shit I'm actually happy!

! ... Oh shit I'm actually happy...

! ... And now it's gone...'

!

Being happy out now replaced with crippling self doubt And seeds of chaos put down roots And grow with haste, ill natured fruit Used to brew a never ending fusion of uneasiness Please Sir, I've had enough of this anxie-tea, bless For it's now bound round my present tense heart By chain being squeezed TIGHTER And TIGHTER And TIGHTER Til the pain becomes too much to bear That I can barely breathe anymore And I'm scared.

I'm frightened that this will never end That the remainder of my days will be spent feeding the negative my energy.

He's in the door and he's hungry I feed him more and more but he is never satisfied It won't be much longer till I have nothing left to give Only myself...

It's all I have to give.

It's all I have to live.

! ! ! — Lewis Kenny!

A La Foile

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His eyes on mine, My eyes on his, Closer together, Fingers tracing.

The scars once healed, They tore afresh. And poisoned our blood.

Once safe in the dark, Now thrown to the light. Our love wasn’t theirs, But they took it away.

I blamed him, He blamed them But the love was lost, Cut from the stem.

Your eyes on mine, My eyes on you. But they’re all wrong.

They’re not his.

— Seán Delaney

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Note from the editors

Editors: Christian Cooney, Maryam Ali,Tadhg Hoey.

Copyright of all work belongs to individual authors.

For more information on this publication please contact us at: hello@gowp.biz With special thanks to: Ben Burns (our fourth member), Edel Martin, Kealan Cooney, Elaine Hoey, Manma Saor Collective, Tadhg Byrne, Denis Byrne, Maggie Moran, Reeta Cherie, Patrick King, Sarah Kennedy, Rob McGon, Liam Maher, our contributors, and to anyone who showed an interest, or helped GOWP out in any way over the past few months.