Motley Volume 13 Issue 4 January 2020

Volume 13 Issue 4 January 2020

The Iran Crisis Explained Interview: Daragh Fleming Oscar Predictions: Who'll Bring Home the Gold?

Going From EP to Eurosonic & His New Single "FOOL"

MASTHEAD Editorial Staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Dan Webb

DESIGNER

DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Tim Caruso

CURRENT AFFAIRS EDITOR

Maeve McTaggart

DEPUTY CURRENT AFFAIRS EDITOR

Molly Kavanagh

Laurie Shelly

FEATURES & OPINION EDITOR

Méabh Lonergan FASHION EDITOR

Paul McLauchlan

ONLINE EDITOR

ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Andrew Burke

DEPUTY ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Cathal Donovan O’Neill PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER

Grace Byers

Matthew Moynihan

Staff Writers Alana Daly Mulligan

Kane Geary O’Keeffe

Sadhbh Sullivan

Niamh Browne

Contributors KAYLA MAHER | ANGIE STRATOS | EVE ROCHE | ASHLIN O'SULLIVAN | AVA NÍ LOINGSIGH CALLUM MCGUIRE | WARREN DALY | CONOR O’CALLAGHAN | LAURA O’SULLIVAN

Cover Photo

NICHOLAS O'DONNELL

Motley welcomes letters from readers, emailed to editor@motley.ie. Motley is published by Motley Magazine, The Hub, UCC, Western Road, Cork. Printed by City Print Limited, Victoria Cross, Cork.

Copyright 2019 Motley Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. All efforts have been made to ensure that details and pricing are correct at time of print. Motley magazine does not take responsibility for any errors incurred. This magazine can be recycled either in your green bin kerbside collection or at a local recycling point.

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2 | JANUARY 2020

FROM THE

Editor’s Desk...

THE FUTURE IS YOURS...

S

o four issues of Motley, around 140 cups of hot chocolate and many nights of restless sleep later, here we are. For some reason, whenever the team and I start working on a new issue of Motley, I never cease to feel a sense of exhilaration and pride. This is an absolute testament to the talent of the students living, studying and working here in our university community. Not a day goes by without a piece coming across my desk that just makes me stop and say wow. With all that said, I hope that everyone had a wonderful festive season with their families and that you are all settling back into college life.

By now we are reaching the end of that traditional period of self-reflection when phrases such as “New Year, New Me” are tossed around, but personally, I do see that chance to start again with a fresh mindset as inspiring. As I write this, I am sitting in the newly opened Student Media facilities on the ground floor of the Hub, a development which I know many members of our community, including myself, have been eagerly waiting for a long time. Yes, from the outside it just looks like a room with desks and an office for private meetings, but to me it represents both the beating heart of UCC’s student media and the future.

I know that quite a lot of people bemoan the idea of using the New Year as a time to better or change things about themselves, but it doesn’t have to be negative!

So what if you didn’t get involved in clubs or societies last semester? It’s never too late to join up now. So what if you didn’t do as well as you would have liked in your studies?

DAN WEBB,

Editor-In-Chief Photo: Ronan O’Shea

Now is your chance to work twice as hard to achieve your goals. There may be things that we regret not doing in the past, but that doesn’t mean we are out of the game yet.

With that sentiment in mind, I would like to invite anybody with even a budding interest in student media to get involved. It may be the case that you have never written an article before, but so what? When I started contributing to Motley in my second year, I had never even thought about publishing my thoughts to the world online, let alone in an official publication. Now, I’m sitting here in the Editor’s chair just over three years later and I do not regret getting involved one bit.

If you are feeling that your work is not “good enough” or that you are underqualified, please let go of those thoughts right now. Here at Motley, there is always a place for your ideas and thoughts, no matter how crazy or out-there they may seem. Our editorial staff are always on hand to help students develop their writing style and technique. We are always on the lookout to help fresh talent get their work published, so if that is something that interests you, please do not hesitate to send me an email at editor@motley.ie.

I look forward to all to seeing all the fantastic work student journalists here in UCC put in over the next semester, but for now I hope that you enjoy issue four of Motley Magazine, brought to you by a dedicated group of writers and editors that I am proud to call not only my team, but my Motley family.

THE SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL IN THE SOUTHWEST REGION IS CURRENTLY HELPING FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE STRUGGLING TO PROVIDE FOOD, HEAT AND CLOTHING FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR FAMILIES. Your help is invaluable in making all the difference to the lives of people in your community. Without your help, we would not be able to provide our services to those that need it.

IF YOU WISH TO VOLUNTEER WITH SVP OR DONATE AND NEED MORE INFORMATION; PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.SVP.IE OR YOU CAN CALL OUR REGIONAL OFFICE ON 021 4270444

ISSUE No4 - JANUARY 2020 MOTLEY.IE

CURRENT AFFAIRS

FEATURES

ENTERTAINMENT

FASHION

A close examination of the recent attack on Iran, and what it means for the rest of the world

Daragh Fleming talks literature, short stories and his first published book

Chatting with Alex Gough, Waterford's breakthrough artist and Ireland's best teeth in the game

Fashion shoot by Emma Barber, and issues with sustainable fashion

P. 10

P. 13

P. 24

P. 36

PLUS 8.

P PIKA, PIKA!

The challenges of voter likability. Mave McTaggart 28. The world-building of the 12. Is there too much Pokemon Games. How art a bad thing on does it compare with the 17. Instagram? Eve Roche classics and what does it The Not So Lonely Planet. do new? Warren Daly Alana Daly Mulligan 30. Oscar Predictions 2020.

20. An Interview with Robert the Dan Webb Greyhound.

Matthew Moynihan

32.

Fashion is always evolving, but how can one brand stand out amongst the rest.

Find out how ALYX beats the competition with a safety belt.

Conor O’Callaghan

CURRENT AFFAIRS Edit

2020 VISION

MAEVE MCTAGGART AND MOLLY KAVANAGH EXPLORE WHAT THE NEW YEAR LOOKS TO BRING IN POLITICS - BRACE YOURSELVES FOR THE ROARING ‘20S

AT SOME POINT, AN IRISH ELECTION

After a no confidence motion against Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy barely failed late last year and another being hinted at against Minister for Health Simon Harris, Fine Gael are most likely cursing themselves at their hopeful promises for an early election in 2020. The Taoiseach, in an invariably tone-deaf stunt this year, was forced to cancel his commemoration plans for the RIC following public black lash about the ‘Black and Tan’ party plans - antagonised further by The Dubliners song which smugly achieved the number 1 spot on the UK and Irish charts in early January.

Maybe April, maybe May.. and maybe a harder time for government parties than previously thought.

WORLD WAR III

A light-hearted list we have gifted you for 2020, it seems ‘start a war’ was a New Years’ Resolution President Trump wanted to get a headstart on. After ordering a drone strike which assassinated Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani on January 3 and tweeting that Iran “WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” if perceived threats to the safety of American citizens continues, Twitter settled on the hashtag ‘World War 3’ to define the first major event of the 2020s… at least we have the memes?

BREXIT… FINALLY (-ISH)...

Boris Johnson, flanked by his newly-found and Labourdebilitating majority of 80 MPs, has finally received the go ahead to depart - crashing or otherwise - from the European Union on January 31st. While Brexit-induced political limbo will be over, the aftermath seems eternal. 2020 will be the year where Brexit gets ‘done’ only in name, the trade, immigration and diplomatic deals to come will stretch well beyond even next New Years’.

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The Journey to Reproductive Rights FROM ITS 1983 INSERTION INTO THE CONSTITUTION TO ITS REPEAL

BY REFERENDUM IN 2018, THE 8TH AMENDMENT HAS LONG DICTATED CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS OF IRISH WOMEN. ASHLIN O’SULLIVAN EXPLORES HOW THE JOURNEY TO AND FROM THE 8TH IS STILL FAR FROM ITS FINAL DESTINATION.

O

n January 1st 2019, a new age of reproductive rights dawned in Ireland with the new year. Abortion services became available following the commencement of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 some days previously. Abortion was now accessible in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, and later in cases where the pregnant person’s life was at risk or in the case of fatal foetal abnormality.

This was a victory for countless activist groups – Abortion Rights Campaign, Together For Yes and many others. Years of grassroots campaigns had intensified following the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012, calling the government to act in order to prevent more unnecessary loss of life. The restrictive legality of abortion stemmed from the Eighth Amendment of the constitution, that gave the life of the unborn foetus the same value as that of the pregnant person. Widespread protest and advocacy culminated in a referendum of the people in May 2018 to amend the constitution and replace the Eighth Amendment with wording that would allow legislation for the termination of pregnancy.

The campaign for a ‘yes’ vote was highly emotive. Many women and people who experienced unwanted pregnancies shared their often heartbreaking stories, humanising a polarising issue. One thing became undeniably clear to many; the Eighth

Amendment was causing undue harm to real people. That becoming pregnant was not a crime, and that continuing with a pregnancy is sometimes not an option for numerous reasons.

In the days leading up to the vote in May 2018, social media was flooded with the hashtag #hometovote, just as it was a few years previously for the Marriage Equality Referendum.

Countless emigrants flew home to make their vote count, many sporting black ‘Repeal’ jumpers that had become synonymous with the campaign.

In the end, Irish people voted by 66.4% to 33.6% to repeal the Eighth Amendment and to replace it with one simple sentence: ‘Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy.’ It seemed that tireless activists could finally pause and take a breath.

So, now that a year has passed since availability commenced, how have things changed? Reproductive rights have now been recognised across the whole of the island of Ireland with the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland. Legislation passed by Westminster after power-sharing failed to be returned in Stormont decriminalised the procedure overnight, eliminating fear of criminal prosecution for those who have had or seek termination of pregnancy. While this legalisation did not have the pomp and high tension associated with referenda, it was a nonetheless groundbreaking achievement. Perhaps it also served as proof of a quieter, insistent activism that can be overlooked in favour of marches.

On the other hand, debates continue to rage here regarding what form legislation will take. Consistent calls have been made for the introduction of exclusion zones and other measures to ensure safe and accessible access to the service – the need for which was made clear with recent protests outside the National Maternity Hospital reiterating their opposition to abortion. There is a real fear among activist groups that vulnerable people in need of assistance are slipping through cracks in the system or falling prey to rogue crisis pregnancy centres.

The referendum was seen by many as the finish line in the struggle to establish reproductive rights in Ireland. And while the vote proved the general public to be much more progressive than was previously thought, the past year has undeniably shown there is still work to do.

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 7

VOTERS, LEADERS and the "LIKABILITY TRAP"

A LOOK AT THE ISSUE OF ‘LIKABILITY’ PLAGUING THE 2020 DEMOCRATIC FRONT-RUNNERS, AND WHY WE FIND IT SO HARD TO ELECT LEADERS WE LIKE.

BY MAEVE MCTAGGART

8 | JANUARY 2019

RALLY CAP!

TOP TO BOTTOM: DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES ANDREW YANG, PETE BUTTIGIEG, ELIZABETH WARREN RALLY NON-STOP ACROSS THE COUNTRY AS THE ELECTION PICKS UP.

L

ook, Joe and I are friends,” conceded Bernie Sanders through an Instagram Live earlier this month. A second-time candidate, Sanders trails ‘friend’ Joe Biden on presidential attempts - 1998, 2008, 2020 - he is a man hoping the third time's the charm.

“But,” Sanders continued, “I just don’t think his record is going to bring forth the energy and excitement that we need to defeat Trump.” The Guardian flagged him as ‘boring’ while The Boston Herald nicknamed the former-Vice President as ‘Sleepy Joe’ - cited as yawn-inducing and lame, sheltered and elitist, the media remains uninspired by Biden’s quest for the presidency. In a field of over ten candidates and counting, this would usually be a non-issue. A ‘meh’-inducing candidate like Biden would shuffle down the polls to make way for someone more exciting - the golden days of Democratic politics where the personality of Obama or sax-playing abilities of Bill Clinton exhilarated voters, endeared them, gave them a clear choice. Yet in 2020, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination is Joe Biden, as Obama’s self-professed ‘brother’ he is likable only by proxy. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg straggle behind Biden’s own lagging poll numbers which a recent YouGov

poll put at 29%. Biden’s likability (or lack thereof ), signals a turning point in politics and in political leadership. The odds of anyone beating Donald Trump this year, the man who lost the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and the president who sits atop a 53% disapproval rating, are confusingly slim - what determines likability, and why do we no longer seem to like our leaders?

‘The Likability Trap’ - four stereotyped walls and a Twitter feed within which candidates find themselves the subjects of character-assassinating criticism and many a ludicrous musing upon the personal pitfalls of candidates. It is a trap which much of the electorate fall into, dictated by social constructions of what it means to be a leader, a man, a woman, a politician, voters find themselves penalising those who do not conform to rubrics of expected behaviour. We associate authority with firmness and strength, subconsciously with the masculinity of two-piece suits and deep voices. The frequent verbal gaffes of Biden, for example, have made the electorate reluctant to trust him with Trump. A littleknown childhood stutter has allotted pauses in the former-VP’s sentences, giving the impression on the debate stage that he is forgetful, headlines revelling in Biden ‘forgetting Obama’s name’ when in reality, he subbed the surname for ‘boss’, momentarily unable to mount the formerpresident’s surname for his stutter. Traditional authority has been internalised in voters and candidates as robust and unwavering, incompatible with the stutter Biden has retired to the past, as a childhood issue he has overcome rather than

one which is omnipresent. He told The Atlantic that getting caught on words can feel “almost like you’re being sucked into a black hole.” The Likability Trap is a vacuum Biden is finding hard to escape, stubbornly sacrificing the reality of dealing with stuttering to conform to a stereotype few politicians have ever met.

In Ireland, we are flanked by two nations whose leaders we cite as mould-breakers, as a glitch in the political matrix, when in reality, Trump and Boris are the over-exaggerated version of everything voters thought they wanted. Caricatures of capitalism and celebrity, aggressive authority hidden beneath the messy suit of the anti-establishment, Trump 2020 is seen as inevitable as a result of how synonymous his behaviour is with hyper-traditional leadership characteristics. “I was afraid if people knew I stuttered,” Biden has said of declining invitations to speak at events, “they would have thought something was wrong with me.” It does us no favours, this trick mirror of The Likability Trap, quick to cite Hillary as shrill, Sanders as radical and Biden as weak, the electorate are made desperate to find a Democrat to refract the dominance of The Donald, to find a party to compete with the leadership legacies of Fine Fáil and Fine Gael.

As a consequence, we are left with patchwork exaggerations of leadership who do little to reflect who we are and what we look like.

Credit: Greg Skidmore

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 9

THE IRAN CRISIS EXPLAINED

BY MOLLY KAVANAGH

O

n January 3rd, President Donald Trump authorised a drone strike outside Baghdad International Airport in Iraq that resulted in the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, sending the international community reeling. The United States has been caught in a vicious cycle of violence and retaliation within the Middle East for several decades, involved in a plethora of seemingly never-ending conflicts. For the vast majority of concerned American citizens who aren’t foreign affairs experts, engaging in discourse surrounding Soleimani can be difficult. We are forced to sift through World War III memes as we grapple with how desensitized we’ve become to constant U.S military interference in the Middle East, left wondering: who is Qassem Soleimani, and why does he matter?`Even in death, General Qasse, Soleimani remains one of the most powerful men in Iran. Hundreds of people flooded the streets of Tehran for his funeral, chanting ‘Death to America,’ as the newly appointed leader of Iran’s elite Qud Forces vowed to avenge his predecessor. The Qud Forces are a secretive branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corp, responsible for carrying out many of Iran’s foreign policy goals and expanding Iranian influence abroad. They actively train and support paramilitary forces in Iraq that are fighting ISIS, while simultaneously backing militia groups in Syria aligned with

10 | JANUARY 2020

President Bashar Al-Assad, who is infamous for using chemical weapons on his own citizens. This has led to uncertainty regarding whether or not Soleimani should be considered an ‘enemy’ of the United States- his primary goal has always been to exert Iranian influence abroad, and sometimes his foreign policy goals happen to align with those of the United States (such as when Soleimani worked with the U.S military in 2001 to target the Taliban). Other times, however, his goals do not align with those of the United States.

The United States and Iran have a long, rocky history that includes the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979, in which fifty-two American diplomats were held hostage in the U.S Embassy in Tehran by protestors who believed the U.S was interfering in their revolution (which resulted in the ousting of an Iranian Shah who was granted amnesty in the United States). President Donald Trump took to Twitter to warn that: “If Iran strikes any Americans, or American

DEMONSTRATIONS IN IRAN OVER THE DEATH OF QASEM SOLEIMANI DURING THE US ATTACK ON THE BAGHDAD AIRPORT IN IRAQ Credit: Fars News Agency

assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago).” The assasination was partly in response to the storming of the U.S Embassy in Baghdad- an act allegedly coordinated

by General Soleimani himself following a series of U.S airstrikes against Iranian backed militias in Iraq. The situation is incredibly complex, with the United States and Iran in a constant cycle of retaliation.

Qassem Soleimani’s assasination is highly divisive.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed: “There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks that were being plotted by Qassem Soleiman. We don't know precisely when, and we don't know precisely where, but it was real.” The Iranian general has been compared to Osama Bin Laden as supporters of the Trump Admnistration insist that even if Soleimani wasn’t an immediate threat, his assasination was nonetheless justified due to his past acts of ‘terrorism’ and escalation, including the attack on the U.S Embassy in Baghdad, the killing of a U.S contractor in Iraq by an Iranian backed militia, and the targeting of oil facilities and tankards throughout the Middle East. Killing Soleimani, according to Trump, was the most effective way to deter Iran from continuing to target U.S interests and foster instability in the Middle East through militia and proxy organizations.

However, Trump has failed to identify the ‘imminent threat,’ which has led to experts calling the legality of the assination into question. Others insist that Soleimani’s assasination will not deter Iran from attacking American assets. Anti-American sentiment has existed in Iran for decades due to the perception of the United States being an imperialist actor- this, coupled with the fact that many Iranians revered General Soleimani, will not paint the United States in a favourable light. Donald Trump has already inflamed tensions by withdrawing from the 2015 Iran Nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions that had been lifted as a condition of the agreement.

Donald Trump has been criticized for perpetuating an endless war in the Middle East, and the most pressing question at the moment is: what next? Iranian officials have explicitly stated that they have no intentions of targeting the American public in revenge attacks, but have vowed to exact revenge on Donald Trump and his administration.

Despite what the World War III memes tell you, in the unlikely scenario of Iran and the United States going to war, it’s very unlikely that it’ll ever reach American soil.

It’s difficult, however, to predict how Iran will respond to Trump’s largest act of aggression to date.

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 11

OPINION Do we appreciate the art we see on Instagram?

BY EVE ROCHE

A

s I scroll through Instagram on a cold winter’s evening, I find myself liking every post of art that I see. Whether it’s a graphic print or a painting, I wouldn’t say my eyes rest on it for more than 20 seconds.

One has to wonder if technology has affected the way we look and think about art. Have we become more flippant?

Instagram is a relatively new social media site and is hugely visual. Created in 2010 and now with over 1 billion monthly users, it’s a force to be reckoned with. I follow numerous artists on Instagram who use the platform to sell and promote their art, which would not have been possible 15 years ago. Instagram, in a way, has bypassed the role of the dealer in allowing for artistic agency. Before, people saw art in a gallery space, they spent time with the work of art that was carefully chosen by curators, it had spatial context, whereas it could be argued that Instagram has no such context and is completely unfiltered. However, Instagram is accessible for millions of people and so perhaps artists are much more accessible now?

It was my friend Amy’s birthday recently and a group of us put our money together to get her a print from a Cork artist called Alannah Calvert, @lalakalillo on Instagram. The relationship between artist and buyer has changed: we were able to message her and find out more about her prints. Becoming an artist is a daunting task, it is an extremely difficult industry to break and Instagram is allowing artists the platform they need to promote their work.

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Nevertheless, in 2020 there is an oversaturation of artists on Instagram. It has allowed for an ease of viewing art, we no longer have to enter a gallery or museum space: it can all be done on our phone, and in the comfort of our own home.

Scholars date the beginning of viewing art online to 1993 whereby the World Wide Web allowed for a large capacity of images to be viewed online. Nowadays the internet has permeated every area of our lives, so it feels much more natural to view art online.

Perhaps it is the participatory aspect of social media that draws us in, we feel we can have a say on any given topic. This can be said for Instagram in terms of liking, commenting and sharing things that interest us.

When researching, I found an interesting exhibition that used public participation online. ‘Click!’, held by The Brooklyn Museum in 2008, asked members of the public to rank art works in accordance of what they liked. The museum found interesting results worth noting. They found that the participants looked at an image for no longer than 22 seconds. This seems relatively short, however I can admit that I look at art on Instagram for even less time.

The Hiscox online art trade report 2019 found that the footfall in galleries is decreasing, however Instagram followers of galleries and museums are on the rise. With one billion monthly users on Instagram, is this any surprise? The main reasoning for galleries having an Instagram account in the first place seems to be commercial and marketing. The reach they can obtain on Instagram surpasses other modes of traditional advertising.

With claims of the art world being elitist, Instagram is a more accessible avenue for artists to sell and promote their work. The popularity of accounts such as Banksy’s (standing at 7.1 million followers) attests to this. We are an extremely visual generation that relies on technology, and this is reflected in the way we buy and look at art. Instagram acts as a sort of online community, whereby people follow things they have a personal interest in, and want to understand more about. Buying art online can be seen as a good thing and a bad thing, however technology is growing and improving at such a rapid rate that we can expect it to enter all areas of our lives.

INTERVIEW WITH

DARAGH

Fleming

ANGIE STRATOS MEETS ‘A 21ST CENTURY WRITER, ONE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY READERS’ DARAGH FLEMING TO DISCUSS HIS NEW COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES, HOW SOCIAL MEDIA HAS INFLUENCED LITERATURE, AND THE MONETARY VALUE OF BOOKS.

FEATURES & OPINIONS | 13

I MEET DARAGH FLEMING IN A BUZZY CAFÉ. IT’S ON WINTHROP STREET, IT’S OPEN LATE, AND IT’S WHAT WE CALL THE SECOND COMING, OR SEASON “SOCIAL MEDIA HAS MADE TWO, OF PAUL STREET... PEOPLE’S ATTENTION SPAN

T

he conversation is punctuated with babies crying and hand dryers yelling, and the noise of teaspoons being picked up and put down onto saucers. My recorder is placed on no-mans-land on the table, it picks up every word, and so do I.

Daragh is what I would call an authentically 21st century writer. He’s one for the Instagram generation, the eyes that scroll through Twitter in their beds in the morning.

At 25, he writes the words your mam wouldn’t wholly understand. Before his first book of short stories, The Book of Revelations, he was the words behind the blog Thoughts Too Big, formerly known as Thoughts Too Big for Twitter.

14 | JANUARY 2020

He tells me of his poor timing when picking up projects like his blog or his book. Thoughts Too Big came about in his final year of his undergraduate degree in Applied Psychology in UCC. “I started my blog just before my last exam.

I don’t know why, it was just a complete whim, but I felt like I had some things to say.” It was during his Masters in Linguistics that his book came about, and he started writing short stories. His questionable timing became a theme.

“It was very much do anything besides college work [sic.] apparently is why I started writing.” I ask about his feelings about social media, and its effect on today’s literature. Is this the trademark of our

QUITE SHORT. IT DEALS WITH 180 CHARACTERS AT A TIME, 7 SECOND VIDEOS, ETC. PEOPLE WON’T READ MORE THAN 200 WORDS IN A POST. I WANTED TO WRITE SOMETHING YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO COMMIT A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF TIME TO.”

generation, which inspires writers to create short stories instead of novels?

Are our attention spans too short for longer pieces of ‘literature?’ Daragh says “writing no matter when it is written is always going to be influenced by the culture and social climate, and so of course writing now, be it style or content, is different to writing 100 years ago.”

This point of view comes across in his work. His style is indicative of the 21st century in both style and content. “My style, and I’ve done this purposefully, is to make it sound like someone is talking to you.”

He knows it won’t suit everyone, and can seem a bit ‘train-of-thought-ish', but he doesn’t see the point in over-intellectualizing things - “five or six of the stories could be categorized as personal essays.” They’re fictional, but grounded in real-life thoughts and conversations.

He talks about the short story 46A-pathy, and how it is “semiautobiographical.” The story is brief, about a homeless man on the bus in Dublin who’s drunk and hits his head. Nobody checks to see if he is okay.

“Some of it happened and some of it didn’t, but that experience of me on the bus with him gave me the revelation or realisation that happens at the end of the story: the reason he was homeless is because none of us gave a shit about him.”

Daragh frequently approaches such commentary in his blog, in his book, and on his

social media. I ask about blog titles that could be deemed controversial, such as “Why the Pro-Choice Movement is Convincing Me to Vote No,” or “I Don’t Care if You’re Offended.” “I wouldn’t say it’s reactionary, if I wrote something that I thought was controversial I wouldn’t post it straight away. Sometimes I write something and I’m like no - that’s not actually what you think either. I think the kind of ‘outrage culture,’ even though the message behind it is the right one, the way it’s being treated is causing people to be averse to it. People think they’re being told what to think.”

He talks about how his Masters affects his thinking and writing. He talks about linguistics’ relativity and about how every word has a price. Free speech exists, sure, but there are certain things people can or can’t say, that can ostracize a person from society - he draws on slurs as an example. Does he worry his outspokenness will affect his readership? The long and short of it is no.

“OBVIOUSLY I WANT PEOPLE TO READ MY BOOK, BUT IF I EVER START WRITING BECAUSE I THINK IT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE WILL LIKE TO READ, THEN IT’S GOING TO BE ARTIFICIAL. I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE GET IN TOUCH AND ENJOY MY WRITING, BUT IT ISN’T THE MOTIVATION. I DON’T THINK IT BOTHERS ME.”

His publishing experience leads him to talk to me about the monetary value in books: “if you’re going into writing books for money, you’re going to be deflated by it. It’s not about that anyway, if you’re writing to get paid, you’re not writing for the right reasons. In terms of being a writer right now, it shouldn’t be something that’s done for the pursuit of fame or money. Mainly because it takes quite a while before that side of the industry builds up, but also because the art created loses something if it’s created purely for financial gain.” I think of the long and complicated history between writing and money, the rumors of Dickens being paid by the word or Fitzgerald being offered $4000 for a short story. But Daragh seems to know that a modern writer shouldn’t expect financial success in spite of commercial success. The opposite seems true almost; “I did get two vanity publishing offers which is essentially we’ll publish your work but give us two grand. It doesn’t really feel like you’ve earned it. And I considered selfpublishing, but I feel like there’s a bit of validation in the traditional contracts.”

While talking about his inspirations, Daragh juxtaposes James Joyce with Blindboy. In relation to Joyce he admits he doesn’t think he’ll ever be up there; “by rights he’s arguably one of the best short story writers ever.” But before reading Blindboy, he wasn’t trying to be published, not only that, he didn’t know he

could be. “His stories are so bizarre and out-there, and not connected like traditional ones, and it made me realize I could push at getting published because his themes are disconnected too.” I point out that Daragh’s stories are connected, if that is what it means to have a ‘traditional’ collection of short stories.

“Vaguely, sure, but not like Chekov or Joyce. David Szalay did a collection where the link was a person’s experience on a flight from one place to the next, and the following story was from that place to another.

I’d like to do a collection with a link, make it more nuanced and underlying. At some stage I’d like to do a novel too, so we’ll see.”

I think of the writer in front of me who I herald as a

21st century writer for the 21st century reader, and I also think of the homage he would like to pay to the writers of the past. Maybe this is the trademark of this generation of writers, those who are desperate to change the rhythm, but who are deeply in awe of those who have gone before. Maybe money or social media or societal changes taint today’s writing, but I leave the interview knowing one thing; “in the end, writing now is quite similar to writing in any other age, in that those who are writing do so because they need to, and that’s probably the universal common ground.”

Find Daragh Fleming's book online, or read his blog at thoughtstoobig.com

OPINION Why the world needs meninism...really.

“MEN ARE TRASH”, “WHY ARE MEN GREAT TILL THEY GOTTA BE GREAT?”, “BOO MEN”. THESE ARE ALL THINGS YOU WILL HEAR NIAMH BROWNE SAY ON OCCASION. ARDENT FEMINIST AND FRIEND TO SOME MEN, WHO BETTER TO TALK ABOUT THE CRISES IN MODERN MASCULINITY?

Y

es, poor men, poor, poor men who benefit from the goodies of the patriarchy and don’t get undermined continuously and plagued by doubt. The checks and balances that put women in their place are not present for men. To be woman is to be other. What I mean by this is that women are not included in “mankind”. By seeing ourselves as exterior to the human experience, and treated so very terribly, we have given sincere thought to what it is to be human. Every time we have had a major societal or technological development, women have reconsidered their roles. For example, in response to industrialisation, women developed the suffragette movement. When the contraceptive pill was invented and more women joined the white-collar labour force, we demanded maternity leave. With the advent of the internet, we now examine questions of consent, revenge

16 | JANUARY 2020

porn and intersectionality. Men, on the other hand, are not plagued by these existential questions, not to the same extent anyway. Men just exist.

Or so it would appear to an outsider.

There is no positive movement for young men to participate in. I ask you sincerely, who would you want your son’s role model to be? Ronaldo? Kevin Spacey? Drake? Nope. Obviously, there are positive role models for young men out there but they seem few and far between. I asked my male friends and we came up with Stormzy, David Attenborough and Ian McKellen. Slim pickings in comparison to the number of inspiring women out there.

When having these conversations a mother of a friend said “men don’t have these role models because they don’t need them.” I see what she means - we have thousands of years of Western thought that uphold the superiority of men.

I wager though that it’s the same thousands of years of Western thought which supports rich men. The cogs of human history have ground down and oppressed poor men for millennia. There’s a viral video of Jordan Peterson (the “intellectual” of our time we do not need), giving a spiel to the effect of: The majority of prisoners are men, men fight wars, most homeless people are men, suicide rates are highest amongst men. To my surprise, I actually agree with Peterson.

The highest cause of death among

men in the US army is suicide, men are coal miners, and of the 170,000 black male teenagers living in New York, 120,000 of them were frisked by police in 2018.

The closest thing men have to a seminal text of liberation, is probably the communist manifesto (hot take from a college student).

Marx examined the appalling conditions working-class men, women and children were subjected to. The miner’s strike in the UK during the 80s was a perfect example of society letting men down. The miner’s strike was positive fraternity - which is so rare. It’s difficult to find an example of fraternity that doesn’t include some aggressive alpha-orientated fight for superiority of money or power. There is no sincere concept of men helping each other up without putting others down.

The midlife crisis is a phenomenon reserved for the middleaged man. Men often experience a crisis in masculinity because there are so few outlets for them to be normal human fucking beings. This is why Peterson’s book “12 Rules for Life” is so successful. It just includes basic advice every woman in your life has already told you such as “make your bed in the morning” and “make friends with people who want the best for you.” What intellectual gems! His success though is a by-product of a society that is not conducive to men being moral, happy human beings.

There are no resources for men to cross the bridge into adulthood. Perhaps the best bridge out there is feminism.

As my friend Zac said so eloquently, “Feminism is the best empowerment movement out there for men.”

T H E N OT S O LO N E LY P L A N E T

BY ALANA DALY MULLIGAN

ERASMUS (NOT ALWAYS)

ORGASMUS T

his article has changed its tone and gone through a romance of its own since I first left for the USA in August last year. I started out as a hopeless romantic, but with editing became more cynical about the trials and tribulations of long distance love. Many people leave for their international adventure in love with someone at home. Some return eager to rekindle the fire, others fear encountering what’s left of it. Nobody prepares you for the strain your lovesick heart will feel on a year abroad.

Distance might make the heart grow fonder, but it also makes the string between you thinner – and when a string is pulled too tight, it snaps. I am no expert in romance, so take what I say with a pinch of salt – I am not in your relationship – but maybe my somewhat newly adopted realism towards stretched-out love might be useful.

IT’S ME NOT EU OR US(AYYYY)

This is your time to shine, baby. You’ve put in the work, now take the rewards that come with a year abroad. It’s a challenge, but love or hate the experience, you will learn so much about yourself, and dare I say, come back a changed person. Your relationships shouldn’t hold you back – fully immerse yourself in the experience, sexperience, or whatever takes your fancy, watch your horizons expand and dive into the colours they display. Look after your heart and do what is best for you among the complicated vines of romance.

PLAN AND – THIS IS VITAL – BE REALISTIC

Speaking of complications, college is MANIC enough without uprooting your ass to a foreign country. If you are hell-bent on making long distance work, talk to your partner and put a plan in place. Talking about your emotional needs, while it might raise uncomfortable thoughts of one’s own vulnerability, is essential in making the time apart fair on one another without making the romance seem too ‘plastic.’ Touch starvation, calling, care should be taken when dancing between the lines of consistent and dependant that romantic relationships tend

to tread on. Talk about open relationships, going on a break, or just going your separate ways, being thankful for the time you had together.

FOR ALL THOSE SINGLE LADIES, GENTS AND PEOPLE WHO GENDER BEND…

You may find your lilting Irish accent has made you a shagmagnet…congratulations, welcome to phase 1 of Erasmus Orgasmus: The opportunity to sex it up with a wide variety of individuals, and leave. Romance that isn’t in your lingua franca can be challenging so here are some tips: Consent - Ask for permission no matter what you’re doing and know how to say yes and no in the language of your partner.

Wear a hard hat - Whatever kind of heavy machinery (or light, we don’t discriminate) you’re operating, make sure you’re protected; condoms, the pill, the bar, the coil – stock up and prepare before you go abroad just to be safe.

Here for a good time, not a long time - A mantra to remember while abroad. At the end of the time abroad, you’ll have to return to UCC, so should you fall for some exotic god abroad, think about long distance, and re-read this article! People have feelings; don’t play with theirs if you also don’t want your own being played with.

BACKUP

FRIENDS. THEY EXIST. Keep your pals in the loop and let them know how you’re getting on. If shit hits the fan, you know you won’t be alone when you come back.

It is very lonely when you are a time zone behind, and an ocean away. It can be easy to fall out of love with other people, but remember through it all not to fall out of love with yourself while you’re in the midst of rediscovering who you are. At the end of the day, que será será – what will be, will be. You aren’t the only person who is nursing a heart of two minds. If it breaks, it can be healed, and the cracks, well, they just show you felt something once.

FEATURES & OPINIONS | 17

POETRY

Mo Hata AVA N Í LO I N G S I G H

Look, keep your warm calloused hands and your smiling eyes, Keep those sea wet salty eyebrows under Connemara skies, Keep the easy-going attitude “Beidh gach rud ceart go lóir,” Stay there and sit in factor 50 on the sandy shore Keep the dances we danced together and try to dance like me Think of Fionnán eating lunch in a jellyfish sea Keep the classroom coincidences I don’t even care Sometimes I wish I’d never met the loveliest boy from Kildare Keep your kayak bravery and your rounders skill Please promise me you bless yourself when an ambulance passes still Keep a list of people and counties and keep the Cork lads close Ní raibh mé do chailín níl mé anois ach b’fhéidir go mbeidh mé fós Keep “tá Oisín chomh deas” yeah keep especially that Keep it all ná bach leis but give me back my hat Woo Trad The trad monster stumbles forward it takes a deep breath, The boy on the uillean pipes hasn’t learnt his part yet, Eight people sit each a limb of the beast, All set to fight (or like to intimidate at least), All quiet respectful a room full of dotes, An instrument per person, a cacophony of notes, Float up into the air, Diffuse across the ceiling and settle nicely there, Unbelievable symbiosis it all comes to an end, We’re shocked we weren’t aware we’d such a talented friend, They hold their breath and they all look to Saibh, The three of us stupid talentless, stand to the side, Mise i m’oibrí is fear ag dossáil i gceart ach ag foghlaim alán, Ar an slí abhaile cheannaigh mé fadóg stán

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FICTION

THE YEW TREE IN THE ABBEY A SHORT STORY BY A S H L I N O ' S U L L I VA N

T

here was a yew tree in the abbey. A pulsing, near-sentient thing that stood deep-rooted in the cloister. Its boughs with their needle-like leaves were the only roof the ruin had known for centuries. Its trunk seemed skeletal, bone encased in moss and bark.

Arched walls that broke off into passageways and tunnels surrounded it, but they could not make it feel trapped.

It had grown there long before the stone enclosed it and would continue to grow there for centuries after they finally return to dust.

The yew tree had watched them build those walls many years ago. Newcomers to the land had felled many of the surrounding oak and ash trees but their efforts had avoided this one. Most of the men felt a deep unwillingness to be the first to lay his blade into the gnarled trunk, felt an instinctual revulsion at the thought of splitting it open to reveal the poison lifeblood beneath. One scoffed at the thought that any heed should be paid to the old pagan rituals but could not rid himself of the gooseflesh that crawled under his skin. The back of his neck prickled in the presence of the imposing column and the handle of his axe became suddenly slippery.

One man did not feel the same reluctance.

The tree was aware at the edge of its vast consciousness of all the scorn and derision he felt for the people here and their old ways, of how it fanned a fire in his belly and a tightness in his throat. Hatred grasped his fear in a stranglehold and tightened until it was all he could feel.

This tree was a stain on the land, an artefact of the past. It needed to be removed.

That night he crept out to the deserted copse and clambered up into the canopy accompanied only by his axe.

Hacking and sawing at one of the heavy boughs, he did not

notice the branch beneath had started to move. It yanked out from under him and he fell like a stone. Plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. A particularly sturdy branch snapped against the trunk as he crashed through where the gap once was, clamping around his neck with an ominous creak and bringing his descent to an abrupt halt. All the breath left his body as he was crushed against the mighty trunk. His feet kicked desperately at empty space. His fingers clawed at the branch suspending him until the rough bark had gouged through them. Coarse gurgling and gasping were the only sounds in the clearing, loud and crude in the black night.

He still hung there like a grotesque ornament when the other workers returned at dawn. Bloated, ghastly, swaying slightly despite the oppressive lack of a breeze. The yew appeared unharmed. However, if any of them looked close enough they would see a glisten of new sap on an otherwise unharmed branch. The sight burnt itself into the corneas of all present – an omen, a promise, a whispered threat – and the tree was left where it stood.

FEATURES & OPINIONS | 19

FOR TH FOR THOUGH THOUGHT:

AWS AWS AWS FOR FOR THOUGHT: FOR THOUGHT: THOUGHT: AWS FOR THOUGHT: Robert the Greyhound Speaks to Motley

ROBERT THE GREYHOUND HAS GAINED SOMEWHAT OF A CULT FOLLOWING ON SOCIAL MEDIA OVER THE PAST NINE MONTHS, ESPECIALLY IN THE FALLOUT OF THE SOCIETAL DISCOURSE STIMULATED BY THE RTÉ INVESTIGATES DOCUMENTARY THAT SHOOK THE NATION IN 2019. FOR A 21-YEAR-OLD (IN DOG YEARS) THIS YOUNG GREYHOUND HAS SEEN AND DONE MORE THAN MOST OTHER DOGS HIS AGE AND HIS ADAPTABILITY TO HIS CONDITIONS SHOWS A MARKED RESILIENCE.

A

dopted by his owner Zoë-Louise DoyleNeilon nine months ago, his life has changed utterly from a world of abuse as a coursing dog, where he was dumped after being deemed surplus to requirements to the

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home comforts of a loving owner and a not-so-secret romance with Molly the Greyhound.

Greyhound adoption has changed his life. Sitting and chatting with me in Café Nero he gave off a relaxed, sociable and thoughtful vibe, pausing

our conversation only to eat the occasional Dentastick and let me pet him. With Robert full to the brim with treats and me caffeinated to the gills things were always going to get pawlitical. Here is the conversation that followed.

Credit: Karl Kachmarsky

Robert, what is life like being a greyhound in Ireland today?

Well Matthew, it’s complicated. If you’re a rescued greyhound like me, then life is pretty sweet. But did you know that in Irish law, unlike most breeds of dog, greyhounds are classified as livestock? I’m certainly not saying I’m better than your standard cow, or sheep, although I do like to bark at them, but would you feel safe in a world where you were deemed a farm animal and could legally be euthanized after your master got the most out of you on the racetrack? Life is ruff if you’re a greyhound in Ireland today, but I continue to wag my tail with hopeful expectation for the day it will be better.

What would make Irish life better for greyhounds like you and Molly, and can you comment on your celebrity romance?

To answer the first part of your question I believe stopping statefunding of Bord na gCon is the first step. The greyhound industry has been dying for years and attendance is falling asunder. In Budget 2020 the Irish Government will give €16.8m

of taxpayer funding to Bord na gCon to counteract this lack of attendance.

They talk about respecting animal welfare, but then fund animal cruelty on the side. I would call on Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed TD, to immediately halt state funding.

Then I would call on the public to boycott greyhound tracks and join animal rights groups in their protests.

That would be pawsome. If that were to happen then anything would be pawsible. As regards to Molly we’re a private couple but what I can say (as she’s very tall) is, to quote the philosopher Sir Mix-a-Lott, “I like big mutts and I cannot lie''.

What can the students of UCC do to support Irish greyhounds like yourself?

The first thing UCC students can do is come and sign Greyhound Awareness, Cork’s petition to call on University College Cork to take a formal antigreyhound industry stance in line with the University’s environmental and sustainability goals. I would ask the President of UCC. Professor Patrick G. O’ Shea to paws for thought and opt for the college, through EnviroSoc,

to take a forceful and forthright stance in line with their goals. That’s the leashed you could do. Secondly, students can opt to take pawsession of their gambling habits before betting on Greyhounds in the bookmakers.

Having spoken to the pup-arrazzi I hope the students of the University are now better informed as to how cruel the greyhound industry is to animals and the strong actions they can take to alleviate this cruelty. Finally, and perhaps most substantially, students could consider adopting a greyhound like me. Zoë’s choice to adopt me has changed my life, even though I keep her on a short leash. You could do the same.

The Irish Greyhound Board and Curraheen Park were both contacted for their response to this article by Motley, both however refused to comment.

You can follow Robert the Greyhounds journey here: Instagram: @robert_the_greyhound Twitter: @GreyhoundRobert Donate to: grai.ie/donate/

FEATURES & OPINIONS | 21

JANUARY

ENTERTAINMENT Edit

ANDREW BURKE AND CATHAL DONOVAN O’NEILL SHARE THEIR TOP PICKS FOR JANUARY

GHOSTKING IS DEAD @ PLUGD RECORDS

THIS MONTH

February 13th Upstairs in the Roundy

A HOLY SHOW February 17th-20th

Ever feel your hometown’s a gilded cage? Matt Corrigan, better known

by Ghostking is Dead, sure as hell does. Thursday February 13th the indie/synth-pop experimentalist debuts tracks off his Fever Dreaming EP with his live band.

The EP’s fantastic, full of anxieties and dreams that are painfully, inextricably Cork - student debt, emigration, inspiration. It marks Corrigan’s return after a year in the producer’s seat, and we’re excited to see what happens next. Go throw your money at the good music.

A Holy Show is a comedic production directed by Janet Moran based on the true event in 1981 where an Aer Lingus plane was hijacked by an ex-Trappist monk. This play is a commentary on the relationship Ireland has shared with religion over the years and is meant to make you think and laugh, but mostly laugh. Tickets are €9, but must be purchased in person or by calling the theatre box office.

THE DUMP MONTHS January and February

Credit: Bartek Gruba

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG February 14th

THE WONKY DONKEY COMEDY CLUB

Every Friday at 8pm

The Wonky Donkey is the newest ‘premium’ comedy club in Cork City. Located in the Cellar Theatre in the Mardyke Entertainment Complex, it has become a staple of Cork comedy. It is now over a year old and features not only the best of Cork comedy, but the best comedic acts from all over Ireland and the UK. You will find regular comedy gigs and themed nights such as improv, dark humour, LGBTQ+ and more!

Tickets are €15

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Some of us still struggle to this day with the original design for Sonic, but one cannot deny how great it is that Jeff Fowler listened to the fans and changed the design into a more video game accurate version. It shows that this director genuinely cares and wants to give fans the film adaptation they deserve.

Whether that is enough to make you go see the film is up to you, but how can you resist Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik?

Big movies traditionally don’t release in January and February. They can’t be eligible for the Oscars (February) and Golden Globes (January), and people have less time, money and motivation after December. Generally a few lower-budget horror or rom-coms fall out, so look out for those if you’re a fan of those genres.

Otherwise, you’re probably up the proverbial creek if you’re a movie fan. Stay at home during the long nights, watch Netflix and do a bit of early-semester hibernation.

‘The Witcher’ is supposed to be quite good.

QUARTER BLOCK PARTY

February 6th-9th

Ireland’s coolest festival returns for the sixth time, bringing the best talent to Cork for a series of truly top-notch live shows. Electronic fans and party animals should check out Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies and top-class beatmaker Jar Jar Jr. in the Kino on the 8th. Also on the 8th, over in An Spailpín Fánach, God Alone, Melts and Pretty Happy are joining forces for an ear-splitting metal/punk gig. All the above acts are known for making crowds lose their minds, so keep the date well free. More to be announced at QBP’s website.

Credit: Morgan Hill-Murphy

REVIEW T PM Live a t t he Kino

T

he recently redecorated Kino was the perfect venue for a gig where every member of the audience had a cartilage piercing and looked like they studied graphic design. TPM is a hip-hop sibling duo from Dundalk. The Hendy brothers perform lively and lewd hip-hop which I would most certainly not be comfortable singing with my brother, but Charles and Andrew seem unfazed.

The buzz of the gig was established by the support act Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies of the Limerick art scene. According to Podge: “He is a truth-seeking singer/ rapper/musician who is here to save you from the drudgery monotony of modern life which his fusion of Krautrock, Post Punk and rap with strings.” I have no idea what that’s supposed to sound like either. Very Limerick.

Post Punk Podge is loud, charismatic and most certainly knows how to establish a rave. I initially thought they were the headliners judging from the buzz they created. Donning a papal sort of envelope on his head that really is the only way to describe it - he ran the length of the Kino stage and generated much excitement. At one stage he initiated a fight between some Kerry football fans. It was wildly entertaining. Songs such as ‘PostPunk Election Party’ and ‘Full-Time Mad Bastard’ lend themselves to mosh pits and screaming, activities which I personally adore. I’m not sure if Post Punk Podge is the kind of tuneage you listen to on your own in your room or commuting on the bus though.

TPM themselves are equally captivating. Once they burst on stage it became immediately apparent who the main act was. They opened with a smooth rap song ‘Eat That Curry’ which in spite of being a tune that is taking the piss, is remarkably suave. I knew none of the songs but even I was singing along and side shuffling along with the rest of the audience in no time.

The duo doesn’t just produce silky rap songs, however, and ‘Fuck RTÉ’ was the antonym of ‘Eat That Curry’. It was fast-paced and aggressive and highly reminiscent of Kneecap’s ‘Incognito’. Honestly, the lyrics were not as elaborate as Kneecap’s and in English. For me, it was a discount version of ‘Incognito’.

That was a recurring theme of the gig. They were like Kneecap, but not as good. Ouch. I know. I feel bad typing this. The same anarchical spirit and hedonistic revelry could be found, but the lyrics were not as complicated and they were in a language which is easier to work with.

‘All the Boys on the Dole’ was funny and I enjoyed myself immensely at the gig. The beats were good, the hype was great and the energy was fantastic. Ultimately, TPM is a fantastic addition to the vibrant Irish hip hop scene, but they aren’t breaking any new ground.

This is harsh. As I said, the gig was craic on steroids. If you’re looking for a fun time yes, see TPM next time they are in Cork. I urge you. ‘Don’t Ever Smoke Skunk’ is a hilarious bop that the crowd went mental for.

‘All the Boys on Karaoke’ used the same melody as All the Boys on the Dole’ and brought the gig full circle. The siblings work really well together and their performance is tight (there’s a third person on stage behind a computer, but I’m told he’s just a pal sitting there drinking cans and pressing play on the backing tracks). TPM’s vibes are that of the very best seshs you’ve attended but in terms of originality, look elsewhere.

FEATURES & OPINIONS | 23

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FROM EUROSONIC WITH LOVE GOLDENPLEC.IE WRITER CAILEAN COFFEY PROFILES THE RAPID RISE OF WATERFORD MUSICIAN ALEX GOUGH

WHEN IT COMES TO MUSIC IN IRELAND, THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE MESMERIZING THAN AN ALEX GOUGH LIVE SHOW. JOINED BY A BAND OF THREE, THE 20-YEAR-OLD WATERFORD ARTIST RAPS, SINGS AND DRUMS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN A WAY ONLY HE AND ANDERSON .PAAK CAN. YOU CAN SEE THE RAW ENERGY, PASSION AND CONVICTION IN EACH OF GOUGH’S PERFORMANCES, AND DESPITE THE CONCERNS OF MANAGEMENT AND FRIENDS IN THE AUDIENCE, HE SHOWS NO SIGNS OF STOPPING. PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICHOLAS O'DONNELL

ENTERTAINMENT | 25

MY GIRLFRIEND AND MY MANAGER SAID TO ME ONE TIME THAT THEY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO PASS OUT. I WAS FEELING FINE BUT LOOKING AT ME I WAS SWEATING, GOING PALE, AND WHEN I’M DONE I JUST NEED TO HAVE A SIT DOWN.

I

n a year that’s taken him from relative anonymity to halfa-million Spotify streams, sharing a line-up with Billie Eilish at Electric Picnic and shows in London, the time has come for Gough to take centre stage.

Gough was six years old when took his first tentative steps towards music. Inspired by the movie School of Rock, Gough was determined to learn how to play the drums, and as a present on his sixth birthday he was gifted a children’s drum kit. “It was a stupid Smyths drum kit,” Gough admits, “but the first thing I did when I got it was try to learn how to play it. I really started taking interest in it when I was about six and started getting to a point

ABOVE: ALEX PEFORMING WITH HIS BROTHER JORDAN IN 2018 WITH THEIR BAND CENTRAL HALL

where there was a good reason for me to get lessons that I had enough of an interest.” Gough began taking drumming lessons from the age of 12, before his teacher unceremoniously moved to America. He’s taught himself through YouTube tutorials ever since.

At age 16, Gough began writing music for the guitar before developing an interest in music production. After learning that people were beginning to produce music from their bedrooms, Gough got a laptop and borrowed the production software Logic from a friend of his Dad’s. From there he began fiddling away with the programme and figuring out the ins and outs of the software. Without ever intending to, he found himself producing house music. In Gough’s own words, “When you first pick up a laptop or Logic or something like that, the first thought is ‘What is the most electronic thing I can make’, and that kind of music is the first thing that comes to mind.”

In 2015, Gough was releasing music on SoundCloud.

Between house tracks and ‘Stranger Things’ theme song remixes Gough put together his debut EP ‘Day/Night’ in early 2017 before following it up with the EP ‘eighteen.’ later that same

year. ‘eighteen.’ marked the first time Gough had released a song on which he added his own vocals, and also included one of the earliest versions of a track that would go on to kick-start his rapid rise, his future debut single Afraidofmoney.

Unfortunately, Gough’s vocal renaissance didn’t last as ‘eighteen.’ was followed up by two instrumental projects, ‘Art is Alive and Well (Part 1)’ and ‘The Infomercial Tape’ in 2018.

The reason why Gough decided to cut his vocals? Confidence, or lack thereof.

“I HATED MY VOICE, PLAIN AND SIMPLE. I REALLY DIDN’T LIKE MY VOICE ON THINGS, AND I THOUGHT THAT …. PRE-AFRAIDOFMONEY I THOUGHT I COULDN’T PUT MY VOICE ON ANYTHING BECAUSE IT DOESN’T WORK.” Little did Gough know that just a year later, his voice would be heard by thousands across the world. By 2018 as his band Central Hall (which he drummed in along with his brother Jordan on vocals) was picking up steam, Gough decided to turn his hand back to solo work, beginning

JAMIN'! ALEX PLAYED HIS FIRST

SOLO GIG IN CORK CITY AT THE KINO IN EARLY NOVEMBER.

to take his solo material a bit more seriously. Afraidofmoney was released in September of 2018 to widespread acclaim, with the track finding placement on a variety of Spotify playlists.

In February of 2019 he released Breakfast, which shot straight into playlists and charts upon its release.

By the time Step To Me came along in July, Gough had garnered a loyal and ardent fanbase. The video is one of the best of 2019. Shot from the top of a hill in Cork, its close-capture framing and disorientating perspective capture the essence of the track and encapsulated everything Gough wanted from the shoot. “The meaning of the song really shone through,” Gough admits, “and that’s really important for me that there is a reason for everything.”

As the singles were beginning to grow and anticipation was beginning to build Gough began work on his biggest release to date, his latest EP, ‘80%’. Gough was working on the EP up until the very last minute, only receiving the final mix and master

Credit: Jordan Gough

of the project in a car on his way to perform at Electric Picnic mere hours before his deadline.

Made up of four tracks and a short introduction, it tells the story of man’s dependence on irrelevant technology, and their negative effects which has seen anxiety and stress levels increase due to the influence of the likes of YouTube and Instagram. The EP was met with widespread acclaim upon its release and to date has been streamed over half-a-million times on Spotify, a fact that amazes Gough when asked about it. “It’s crazy,” Gough laughs, still shocked by the sheer size of such a number, “It’s only been out for over a month, I didn’t expect it to get this big at all. I went into it thinking ‘Awh maybe I’ll get on the odd Spotify playlist like the last few singles’, maybe get 100,000 or 200,000 streams total so to get half a million is crazy.”

Since Electric Picnic, Gough’s played a show in London’s Seabright Arms, as well as playing his own headline show in Whelans in December. In November, he was announced as one of five Irish representatives for this year’s Eurosonic Festival in the Netherlands.

On top of that, he’s got a new single out now: ‘Fool’, which looks set to be followed by an EP later in the year.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but the only way is up.

Follow Alex on social media @alexgoughhh You can read Cailean’s extended version of this article at GoldenPlec.ie now BELLOW: ARTWORK FOR ALEX'S NEW SINGLE "FOOL", AVAILABLE TO STREAM NOW!

Building a Pokémon World THE NEW GAMES’ WORLD-BUILDING HAS A LOT MORE OF ‘EM TO CATCH, WRITES WARREN DALY

I

think it’s easy to see the appeal in Pokémon. It’s simple fun, and with such a large collection of well-designed characters and creatures, it’s nigh-impossible not to find one you like. At the same time, I think it’s hard to understand the obsession. Cute creatures and accessibility shouldn’t be enough to explain the thousands of hours people put into it. While I can’t speak for others, there’s one reason I’d like to talk about that fuels my passion for the franchise. The world of Pokémon is fascinating.

It may be sanitised and sanded down, but it has character. Every new entry in the series gives me a new opportunity to explore that. Hence, I was, as I always am, excited for the release of the new games last November.

I have since poured a modest 100 hours into Pokémon Sword and Shield. They’re fantastic games and I’d wholly recommend them to anyone with a Nintendo Switch and a passing interest. That being said, I did find the games lacking in that one element I love so much. Let’s look at the world-building tools the games employ.

The staple pokédex gives you information on every creature you catch. These games actually contain one of my favourite applications of this series mainstay. In one city you can enter a random woman’s house. She has two Litwick, a cute little candle Pokémon. She describes being mesmerised

by Litwick’s flame and how, for some reason, she feels very weak. This doesn’t mean much until you read Litwick’s pokédex entry: “While shining a light and pretending to be a guide, it leeches off the life force of any who follow it.”

Suddenly, the interaction goes from curious to unsettling.

Aside from that, the only other important method used to flesh out the world are the league cards. In the Galar region, where the games take place, Pokémon trainers are treated like sports stars. As a result, you are handed different

28 | JANUARY 2020

trading cards in game that have descriptions of their lifestyles or quotes from interviews written on the back.

This is how you discover facts like how Nessa, the water type gym leader, also works as a model.

This may sound fine, but it disappoints when you consider how Sword and Shield’s predecessors Sun and Moon handled it. Rather than giving you cards with exposition, Sun and Moon bakes its character’s lifestyles into the world you explore. You aren’t told that the trial captain, Mallo, works part time in a restaurant, but you can go to that restaurant and see her working. This method of discovery is simply more engaging. Most major characters have houses you can visit and families you can speak to.

Heck, you can even check out their rooms and lie on their beds, prompting a description of the bed’s scent. It’s a bit creepy, but it works.

The thing that bothers me the most about this lack of integration is how it impacts the sense of history.

In Sword and Shield, you battle in generic stadiums and complete artificial obstacle courses designed by humans.

Compare that to Sun and Moon, where the trials take place in locations with different original purposes. However grand a stadium may be, battling in it doesn’t compare to exploring an abandoned supermarket to get a photo of the ghost that lives there. By asking around you can also learn that the supermarket became abandoned because it was built on sacred ground, enraging the guardian Pokémon, who then destroyed it. It makes the world feel lived in.

But why does this matter? I’ve already said that Sword and Shield are excellent. However, I still feel they’d be better served by putting more effort into their world building. Every game in the franchise begins with a variation of the line “Welcome to the world of Pokémon!”

It’s an effective hook. To escape into another world is part of why we enjoy fantasy media. Why wouldn’t we want that world to be richer?

REVIEW

J OJ O R A B B I T : A T H I N LY V E I L E D MASTERPIECE Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures

ANDREW BURKE TELLS US WHAT HE THOUGHT ABOUT THE STRANGE NEW NAZI MOVIE.

I

had the pleasure of seeing Jojo Rabbit back in November as part of the Cork Film Festival. At the time of writing this, I have watched it a second time, now that it has been released in Irish cinemas. It is hard to truly describe what this film is about without spoiling it.

On the surface, and from what the trailers showed, this film comes across as a satirical parody of World War 2 and Nazi propaganda. And while there is satire in Jojo Rabbit, this film is a lot deeper than it initially lets on.

Directed by Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit is about a ten year old German boy named Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) in the latter stages of the second World War when Germany is losing. He joins Hitler Youth and believes in the Nazi cause so much that Adolf Hitler, who is played by Taika, is his imaginary friend. Things take a turn when Jojo discovers that his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) has been hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) upstairs and his beliefs are really put to the test.

What surprised me the most about this film was how serious it could get, along with the perfect balance between comedy and drama that it achieved. There are the high moments where I was almost on the floor from laughter, with some of the best comedic timing I have ever seen in a film, and the low moments where this film will hurt you and make you sob, where the thinly veiled upbeat childish tone fades away and you are reminded about the atrocities of WWII. And Taika allows for both of these moments to shine. He never threw in a poorly timed joke or jokes in poor taste and allowed both the comedic and dramatic elements to settle and linger for as long as they needed to. He genuinely treated the time frame in which this film happens with respect. When there is a joke in this film, it is almost always either something to do with Jojo’s innocence and childish antics or poking fun of the Nazis and what was done around that time.

Jojo Rabbit is mainly about JACK OF ALL TRADES: IN ADDITION TO CO-STARRING, DIRECTOR TAIKA WAITITI ALSO WROTE THE FILM'S SCREENPLAY, MARKING WAITITI'S 5TH WRITER-DIRECTOR ROLE.

childhood and living life to the fullest. Jojo is a victim to the Nazi propaganda at the time. He sees everyone else participating in the war and wearing cool uniforms and wants to be a part of it too. He idolises Hitler so much that he is his imaginary friend. Roman Griffin Davis is excellent in this movie and I hope to see him in more films soon.

But the best part of this movie is without a doubt Jojo’s interactions with Elsa. His childhood innocence shines as he has irrational anger because she is Jewish, and he is afraid because she is a girl and we don’t see Jojo talk or know any girls other than his mother or late sister. There is a contrast between these two characters, with Jojo refusing to live life and just be a kid and Elsa not being able to go outside and live a life at all.

My personal favourite character is Sam Rockwell’s Captain Klenzendorf, whose only desires, seemingly, are to fight gloriously in the war and drink away the days because he can’t. As the movie progresses, we see that he really does care for Jojo and his family and there is more to him than his comedic exterior persona. No main character in this film is the same from beginning to end. There is always a deeper level to them revealed to us throughout the film.

I cannot recommend enough that you go see Jojo Rabbit. This may be one of my favourite films of all time, and at the very least, the best film I have seen in a long time. I promise you this movie is more than just an imaginary Hitler being funny. For me, Taika Waititi has created a masterpiece of cinema.

Thank you to the team at Cork Film Festival for the invitation to see Jojo Rabbit early!

ENTERTAINMENT | 29

THE 92ND BEST PICTURE ACADEMY AWARD

SHORTLIST

DAN WEBB GIVES YOU HIS PREDICTED LINEUP OF SOME OF THE WINNERS FOR THE UPCOMING OSCARS CEREMONY

BEST

SUPPORTING ACTOR

BEST

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

BEST DIRECTOR

PREDICTED WINNER: PARASITE DIRECTED

BY BONG JOON-HO

PREDICTED WINNER: MARTIN SCORSESE FOR THE IRISHMAN

Now this was indeed a tough one to call, but in the end Parasite was one of the only films this past year that touched me in such a way that I am still thinking about it days after. After the absolute snub that was Roma not winning best picture last year, this is the Academy’s chance to do the right thing!

Scorsese is one of those filmmakers that is a legend amongst his contemporaries, and film goers alike, but will that be enough to beat Sam Mendes’s 1917?

Or will he be “Swimming with the fishes”?

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTRESS

PREDICTED WINNER: ANTHONY HOPKINS FOR THE TWO POPES

PREDICTED WINNER: LAURA DERN FOR MARRIAGE STORY

PREDICTED WINNER: JOAQUIN PHOENIX FOR JOKER

PREDICTED WINNER: RENÉE ZELLWEGER FOR JUDY

Probably one of the bigger surprises that the years end brought was Anthony Hopkins take on the former hierarch of the Catholic Church Pope Benedict XVI. Whether he take home the award is speculation, but to see Dr Lecter win his second award would be treat

Laura Dern is one of those actresses who never fails to put a smile on my face whenever I see her. In Marriage Story her take as a divorce lawyer at the heart of a relationship breaking down is both heartwarming and tragic. In my eyes she is the clear winner this year

Everyone's favourite clown prince of crime certainly has taken center stage over the past few months. Joaquin Phoenix was absolutely phenomenal in his depiction of the Joker as a man cast aside and failed by society itself. Will he be putting on a happy face come February 10th?

In a year dominated by a self-reflection of Hollywood in cinema itself, is it really surprising to see Renée Zellweger to be nominated for playing the queen of classical Hollywood Judy Garland, but will she follow the yellow brick road to victory?

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Craicin' On A n In t er v iew wi t h C r ai c Boi M en t a l CATHAL DONOVAN O'NEILL INTERVIEWED CRAIC BOI MENTAL TO FIND WHAT MAKES THE WEST CORK RAPPER A CULT SMASH

2

019 was a banner year for Ireland’s self-proclaimed greatest pop star.

Craic Boi Mental (he prefers to remain unnamed) has gone from releasing comedy songs like ‘Polos Is Life’ and ‘Polos Is Still Life’ on YouTube to selling out Workman’s, Dublin’s most infamous hipster gaff. All this in a year full of triumphs, tragedies and a seemingly-endless slew of albums and mixtapes. The man himself hopped on a Skype call with me to talk about the last year, his future plans and every angle of the music.

Craic Boi rose to prominence with viral hit ‘Polos Is Still Life’, gaining recognition from The Rubberbandits and Red FM’s Mike McGrathBryan. February’s Cork City Anthems was the first of seven projects, most of them self-produced. At first it’s easy to brush him off as a novelty act, a fact he readily acknowledges. He’s not going for technical skill, and often goes for comedy. Listening to him enough results in a kind of religious conversion, however, as his production skills and laid-back, conversational style come to the fore. The music is something he has to make: “I do it for my own sanity, you know what I’m saying? It’s just something I’ve been doing since I was like nineteen so, if I wasn’t making constant music I could probably feel like there was a void.”

More and more often, the comedy comes with a frustrated, weary side. It’s an intentional mix, making the bitter pill easier to swallow: “sometimes people think if there’s comedic elements in your music that you’re not a serious artist, but I think if you’re trying to get a message out there—a political message or a conscious message— you’re more likely to reach people through comedy than being serious or obnoxious with your message.”

Craic Boi’s work outside of rapping also deserves recognition. In response to perceived flaws in the underground scene, he pulled together a loose-knit collective of eclectic artists and producers using his cultfavourite following on Irish music Twitter. That project, ‘Squick’, is a concentrated effort to promote Irish artists outside the standard mainstream: Rural-based, female, autistic and transgender artists feature in the project alongside left-field musicians like Post-Punk Podge.

“Every music platform you can think of is pretty much Dublin based, bar maybe Mabfield [an Irish hip-hop podcast] or a few others […] I put a lot of women in the Squick thing because, in my opinion, overall in Ireland it’s harder for women, because the scene is all ran by men, it can be harder for women to break through and be taken serious… Then, for rural artists there’s the struggle of not being in Dublin where everything is based, so that’s why Squick is for them.” His ideal for the group would be a shared festival billing, but for the moment his Pickn Polos Out My Nose tour’s serving as a showcase for the group.

It’s a project of passion for the rapper, and he’s at his most forward talking about it, simultaneously hopeful and stubborn as a bull. Even if you don’t take his solo work seriously, it’s hard not to root for the budding collective.

Looking ahead to 2020, Craic Boi’s aim is to enjoy the music more. After online spats with Versatile and popular music website Nialler9, the artist is aiming for a less volatile 2019.

The water’s under the bridge, and he’s got a new focus. “One day over Christmas I was completely getting blanked by the end of year lists, someone ran into me when I was at a petrol station, they were like ‘Sorry now but can I just stop you and say I love your music, your music has really helped me,’ and that to me is more important than having your name or anything or any streams or any views.” Mindful words from a Mental man.

Catch Craic Boi in Winthrop Avenue on 22 February, tickets on sale now. Bring Your Own Polos Consultation on this article from Mars FM’s rap show The Backroom. Give ‘em a follow on Twitter @ TheBackroom and listen when they’re back.

ENTERTAINMENT | 31

STREETWEAR GOLD

CONOR O’CALLAGHAN INTRODUCES THE STREETWEAR GIANT ALYX, FROM MATTHEW WILLIAMS, THE DESIGN GENIUS BEHIND EARLY LADY GAGA AND KANYE WEST OUTFITS. HIS NEW VENTURE FUSES TAILORING AND STREETWEAR IN A CONTEMPORANEOUS ALCHEMY.

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A SAFETY BUCKLE IS AN UNLIKELY FASHION STATEMENT...

B

ut it’s got multi-million dollar potential. Take it from Matthew Williams, founder of ALYX, a brand synonymous with its industrial and utilitarian design. Inspired by a trip to California theme park Six Flags, the buckle is made by a company that makes car engines in Austria, adding to the quality and industrial vibe that ALYX gives off but also the price with the belts averaging at €300. With revenues doubling year on year since its launch, the unlikely accessory became a hit.

Born in Chicago but raised in California he was strongly influenced by L.A skate and street culture. His introduction to high fashion was unorthodox - coming to Europe to play soccer and ending up interning for a brand his soccer coach owned. He became the stylist for the on and off-stage personas of both Lady Gaga and Kanye West.

He designed many of their most memorable outfits, often in collaboration with brands. In 2012, he founded the streetwear collective #BEEN#TRILL with Heron Preston and Virgil Abloh which was heavily involved in the genesis of internet hype.

ALYX puts contemporary spins on streetwear - from sportswear to suiting, the intent is to imbue the clothes with a sense of urban luxe, a mix of polish and grit that encapsulates the spirit of his American upbringing.

“Fashion is a great time capsule of the world,” he told British Vogue. “Collections capture how the world is during that period – showing what everybody’s feeling.”

Williams has many connections in the fashion world being a friend of Kim Jones, the current creative director at Dior Homme. It was only inevitable that they would join forces and for Dior Homme’s SS19 collection, William’s lent his expertise, incorporating his famous utility buckle into belts, caps, and backpacks. “I like the way that Matt pulls things together from every part of his life

and makes them his own,” Jones told British Vogue.This brought two very different styles into one collection and helped to firmly establish Williams and his brand ALYX in the industry of luxury fashion.

In the 2010s, the worlds of luxury fashion collided with streetwear - entering hoodies and trainers into a trillion dollar conversation. Brands like ALYX, Off-White, and Heron Preston enjoyed a meteoric rise to success, placing them in the same arena as historic luxury houses, showing alongside them at Paris Fashion Week. ALYX’s collaborations with Nike helped to introduce more people to the brand as it was more affordable than Moncler or Dior and most of the collection was easy to wear being Athleisure, a type of fashion that grew popular in the 2010s as gym culture grew.

In 2017 Williams moved to Ferrara, Italy, in order to set up the more environmentally friendly production of ALYX products. Sustainability is one of the company’s main pillars. “When I began the brand there was a lot of buzz around [sustainability], so I’ve kind of embraced it.

We have the up-cycled cotton, recycled nylon from fishing line from Scandinavia and then this season we’re launching a special leather that’s been developed where the dying process uses CO2 gas – that’s the most sustainable dying process of leather,” he explained of ALYX’s efforts to bring sustainable practices to luxury fashion,’ he explained at a GQ event last year.

ALYX has upcoming projects such as plans with Vibram to give shoe sole repair kits to kids in skateparks teaching sustainability to the upcoming generations. Like Williams has proved with ALYX, you have to start from the ground up but the sky's the limit.

FASHION | 33

A W E E K I N M Y WA R D R O B E

BY PAUL MCLAUCHLAN

UNISEX BUYING

A

s ‘A Week in My Wardrobe' enters its fourth iteration, I wanted to stray slightly from novelty and enter more into the realm of personal style, while also asking the bigger sociological questions. It led me to study my wardrobe - what’s really in there and how is it relevant to the column? I landed on a play on gender roles.

I own quite a number of women’s clothes so I thought I’d throw them on for the week… something I’ve done throughout the year already.

(A note to the reader: I’m no saviour - a man wearing women’s clothes isn’t a revolutionary concept, nor is it to the intent of this column to proclaim it thus. In 2020, it’s not news. In fact, it harks back to the ideas I outlined in the first column: that nobody truly cares about another’s outfit choices.)

For the recent autumn/ winter 2020 menswear shows, the mood was unanimous, men’s fashion is

34 | JANUARY 2020

undergoing a seismic shift. At Gucci, there was a complete abandonment of preconceived notions of contemporary masculinity. You needn’t look any further than the baby doll dresses and short shorts, the glam rock metallic trousers,

Meanwhile, on the red carpet, actors from Harry Styles to Billy Porter are branching out of the strict black tuxedo dress code in favour of the feminine. The same can be said for rappers like A$AP Rocky and Kanye West, notable admirers and wearers of women’s clothes.

With confidence, there is nothing that can hold you back. This rang especially true with Billy Porter’s dress to the Oscars last year was part-tuxedo, part-ballgown - it was a thrilling proposition.

While I didn’t arrive at the campus in a ballgown and full beat, it was abundantly clear as I arrived at college on Monday 13, January, in high-waisted navy trousers from the vintage section of Topshop and a plain tee that nobody was likely to notice that I was wearing women’s clothes.

It was the same on Tuesday as I wore my favourite Eckhaus Latta unisex jeans - though those are more eye-catching with their painted seams.

Wednesday and Thursday came and I sported a pair of ‘Dad’ jeans from Topshop. Again, highwaisted, blue and straight-edged.

It would be too hard to spot the difference in a quick glance. The only giveaway was the high waist.

Yet, while we can look around and see our classmates who typically shop from the women’s section wearing boyfriends’ hoodies and their dad’s shirts or jackets, we’re less likely to see men in

There are a number of reasons for this one. Firstly, sizing.

Some men won’t be able to squeeze into sizes. Secondly, more damagingly, fragile masculinity prevents even a consideration of wearing women’s clothes.

As the Gucci show notes read, ‘toxic masculinity, in fact, nourishes abuse, violence, and sexism.

And not only that. It condemns men themselves to conform to an imposed phallocratic virility in order to be socially accepted. In other words, toxic masculinity produces oppressors and victims at the same time.’

Again, to refer to my earlier point: I am no saviour for showing up in women’s clothes. Especially when there was no high heels or makeup involved - though that would’ve been fun, time didn’t permit and I don’t know the apparatus - it was just another outfit which is the point of this instalment of ‘WIMW.’

Why not broaden your horizons and browse the women’s section with the same intent of the men’s. High-waisted jeans are flattering and a more muscular man would find it hard to refuse a tight-fit top.

Challenge yourself, clothes are fun so why not have fun with them. Men’s or women’s, who cares!

SUSTAINABLE FASHION HAS A

Size Problem LAURA O’SULLIVAN WRITES ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE AS A YOUNG PLUS-SIZED WOMAN ATTEMPTING TO BUY INTO THE SECONDHAND RENAISSANCE AND THE DIFFICULTY IT POSES.

I

hate shopping. The meaning of ‘let’s go in town for a sconce’ once meant a bop down Opera Lane, an overwhelming half an hour in Penney’s and a quick run around the make-up counters of Brown Thomas. This, as a teenage girl wearing a size 16- 18, sparked enough dread that I’d spend hours planning outfits the night before for fear of being the dowdy chubby friend who can’t take care of herself. But as the landscape of shopping has morphed from ‘thanks hun, Penneys!’ to ‘thanks hun, found it in a charity shop!’, it’s created a new level of discouragement for plus-size people.

As our collective environmental awareness has grown, there’s been a large push against fast fashion people are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers that companies producing fast fashion present to not only their workers, but to the climate.

This led to a second-hand renaissance. Buying clothes second hand has become normalised in our modern culture. Whether it’s spending hours on sites like Depop to find your LBD for the year or bussing around the country to find the best vintage Levi’s, we’ve all welcomed this change into our lives.

Sustainable clothing options not only keep cash in our pockets, but also reminds us that by filling our sustainably sourced cotton totes with a winter wardrobe, we’re doing our part for the environment. If you’re between a size 8-14, this is your reality, and it’s such a wonderful thing to make environmentally conscious fashion choices. But it’s not mine. Now, it’s worth noting that the average size of a woman in Ireland is 14-16. This is on the

verge of what is considered “plus-sized”- “plus-sized” being the frilly way of saying fat (which isn’t a curse word), curvy, or, my personal favourite, ‘thicc.’

Considering that the national average is on the cusp of a size 18, which is where you get into plus-sized territory, it begs so many questions as to why sustainable fashion has cripplingly few avenues for plus-size people.

Grown, a sustainable brand that runs to a size XXL. With a strong belief that “clothes shouldn’t cost the earth”, the founders of Grown root their beliefs in not only sustainable clothing, but in protecting the rural landscapes and coasts of Ireland.

Largely though, in the case of shopping sustainably online, the scarcity of anything larger than a size 14 is astounding. Not to mention the countless hours I have spent hunting in vintage stores, only to turn up empty handed or, at best, with an oversized button down and a pair of ill-fitting jeans that never make it to the tailors.

Where does this leave us?

It leaves plus-size people feeling disappointed, outraged and hurt. It further marginalises an already villainised group of people for no real reason. Plus-size vintage does exist, it exists in the shopping bags at the back of charity shops, it exists in suitcases at estate sales that get left behind, and it exists in mock-ups that never leave work-shop floors.

But it stays there in the belief that the people wearing these sizes don’t care. And in a world where there’s space for everybody and everyone’s bodies to be celebrated, where there’s plus-size influencers for people to look to, where celebrities we all know and love (looking at you Lizzo) are being open and unashamed about their stomachs, asses and thighs, it’s overtly clear that we do care. We care an awful lot.

FASHION | 35

Twice As Nice

Miss Daisy Blue

P H OTO G R A P H E R

ASS I STA N T

MODEL

EMMA BARBER

JORDAN MURSHED

ALIMA FRODÉ DE LA FORÊT

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FASHION | 37

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Mother Jones

FASHION | 39

40 | JANUARY 2020

The Village Hall FASHION | 41

POETRY

I Am (the confessing animal) CALLUM MCGUIRE Do you ever feel the same as I do?

That is to say, Not at all?

No rise, no fall, Just a constant plateau An incessant urge to let it all go To shit Because your life's a jigsaw puzzle, But the last piece couldn't quite fit Couldn't quite click into place, And all you can feel Is that empty space Like your finger Poking through a hole in your pocket Like your brains just not Plugged into its socket And there used to be screens Between reality and my dreams But now they're breaking, Bursting at the seams Bleeding into each other like invading regimes That I can't fight And harsh insight's a light too bright Behind my skull Leaves me vulnerable to feeling void and null, To going through the motions, Actions automatic, Alarms ring out But can't cut through the static A step separated, Living through a lens Reality removed Sterilised and cleansed, Sutures sewn shut As strings pull the limbs, And with experience extracted So the play begins

42 | JANUARY 2020

AD SPACE NOW AVAILIBLE! C O N TAC T E D I T O R @ M O T L E Y. I E F O R D E TA I L S

Societies Spotlight

STUDENTS UNION PRESIDENT KAYLA MAHER SHARES WHAT' S COMING UP FOR UCC SOCIETIES Social Media:

Be sure to follow us on our social media pages!

Just search for UCC Societies.

Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who attended events during Societies Week! Check out our social media to see our overall total that we raised for JIGSAW.

44 | JANUARY 2020

Clubs and Societies Ball Tickets for the best ball of the year go on sale on the 27th of February in the SU Common Room from 8am. Fulls Tickets are €40 and Afters Tickets are €25! The Clubs and Socs quiz is taking place in Devere Hall on the 26th of February from 7pm. You could be in with a chance to win tickets AND a hotel room!

Earth Week!

Earth Week takes place from the 2nd-6th of March! Email UCC Environmental Society to get involved! environmental@uccsocieties.ie

Welfare Training:

Our Welfare Officer Hannah will be giving Welfare Training on the 19th of February. It’ll be a super training session with lots of information on great ways to take yourself, especially in the lead up to exams. Be sure to check it out!

FASHION | 45

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Talent will out...

At UCC, in collaboration with our partners Henry Ford & Son Ltd., we nurture talent through support, encouragement and by challenging and mentoring students, both academically and personally.

The Quercus Scholarship offers students the opportunity to apply for scholarships in the following areas: Academic, Active Citizenship, Creative & Performing Arts, Innovation/Entrepreneurship, Sport.

To find out more, please contact the programme manager, Michele Power: Telephone +353 21 4904688, Email: mpower@ucc.ie

www.ucc.ie/quercus