This one is hard. Like many I have spent the last 24 hours immersed in the incredible back catalogue of Sinéad O'Connor who passed yesterday at age 56.
"Be kind to Generation X," someone wrote on Twitter, and that is exactly how I feel. One of our own is gone and it really, really hurts. Here is one of my favourite songs by her, performed live in 1988 at a gig I should have been at!
I never met Ms. O'Connor. I'm sad to say I never interviewed her although there were near misses back in the 1990s. Many have amazing interactions to report, her humour, her sharp observations and pointy opinions to the fore. I was just a fan.
But I can say that in my very polarized lesbian house in San Francisco, where we spanned a range from teens to 30s and from folkie to Riot Grrrl, we only agreed on one thing: we all loved Sinéad. So much so that we erected a shrine to her on one wall of our common room. I donated the poster, in which she slouched staring directly into the lens of the camera. Someone else draped fairy lights around it and a third added a home-made Irish flag. Anyone passing by the flat when the light was on could see it from across the road. That pleased me. She was our beacon.
Slán abhaile.