Sentimentality is something I try to avoid. My understanding is that it’s an expression of emotion prompted by the idea that one should be feeling it; it’s a mental construct, as opposed to something from the gut or the heart or the groin.
But it’s unavoidable; we cannot live our lives expressing authentic emotion constantly. I suspect we’d all spontaneously combust if that were the case. Sentimentality is not only about restraint or repression; one can be effusively, tearfully sentimental, to mask an icy lack of feeling, or a dark and dangerous feeling we “shouldn’t” have. It is a matter of socialization, of fitting in with the collective around us. By default, we behave as we are expected to, with received feelings and attitudes, and only occasionally do we break ranks and allow emotional truth to emerge, which can be as shocking in relational terms as it is when politicians shatter the consensus of spin, and speak like real human beings.
Once upon a time, when the 60s meant something more than over-sized floral prints and patchouli, there was an island off the coast of Donegal, full of co-counsellors, people determined to let it all hang out, without inhibition. They were known, with good reason, as the Screamers. An ex-boyfriend of mine spent some time there, and, armed with dangerous tools of personality deconstruction, he used to inform me that I was a very angry young man - much to my surprise. Then he’d pinch me, and, mirabile dictu, he was right. A Google search tells me they left Inishfree in 1991. I wonder where they are now? After Atlantis, whither home?
I need to put this in context. My sentimentality radar is broken. I’m tapping the dial, and the needle is veering alarmingly between empty and overload. By the time this goes to print, I’ll be on a plane heading for Dublin, on my way to set up home in Ireland for the first time in over 13 years. Irish culture is steeped in so many homecoming myths and stories, ones which, in countries like the States, have passed down the generations in a fog of tearful whiskey-sodden tales of the oul’ sod.
It’s a minefield; I consider all the feelings that are whirling around me when facing this journey, and it’s almost impossible to distinguish between what is real and what is expected of me. What are my reference points? What should I be feeling? Something is telling me that it’s much more than just another check-in at a Ryanair desk with a 20kg bag, playing the obligatory hand-luggage sleight-of-hand game, followed by a few hours drinking over-priced instant cappuccinos in an uncomfortable plastic seat.
I’m reminded of Philip Pullman’s concept of separation, when someone’s connection with their daimon or soul is severed. In Pullman’s world, the world of His Dark Materials, this is such a painful process that few retain the wish to live after it, and those who do become witches, with supernatural powers and a melancholy, unsentimental wisdom.
The first few years living in London were when I was most affected by this teary ache, in my early penny-jetsetting days, when I’d leave a moist-eyed mother behind and return to the educational discomfort of the big alienating anonymous city. Christmas at Dublin airport would be overwhelming on so many levels, the poignant temporary return of the diaspora reactivating the ancient collective wound of broken families, long scattered to the wind. Ireland’s population is still nowhere near pre-famine levels, and that human deficit still haunts. Those who return remind us, albeit fleetingly, of those who never made it back.
But I hit the sentimentality trap again. Truthfully, I haven’t felt a twinge of that in years. The city I’m moving to now is more like Thatcher’s London of the ‘80s – competitive, expensive, cosmopolitan, overcrowded. Glamorous and sophisticated, ostentatious in its new-found wealth. Decades-old pockets of urban decay, like rotten teeth in a familiar smile, now replaced with a set of gleaming pearly whites, disconcertingly armoured in steely braces of scaffolding. Dublin still has its hard edge, it still seethes at night.
In contrast, for all its reputation for passion and drama, Italy’s big cities sleep well, as the ragazzi amble around in sober but flirtatious affability in the balmy night air. Italians instinctively perceive open displays of drunkenness as disgusting. It’s food for thought. There are other ways of living.
I try to recall the closed minds and the subtle but suffocating privations of liberty and identity (both internal and external) that pushed me and so many others like me out of the country, back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, and I have to accept that they are gone now, or at least receding. Whatever attachment I had to the idea of outsider, of exile, has to be shaken off.
Which is easier said than done: there is a comfort in believing oneself to be alienated, to be different, to be on the outside looking in. By rejoining Irish society, I have to be prepared to submerge myself again into turbulent and deep waters, with undercurrents that I still do not fully understand, in the hope that I do not lose what I have gained. Detachment, of the English kind, is not an option – it is never an option in Ireland, really. You need all your wits about you to engage fully with the collective in Ireland; and if it proves too intense, too raw, to painful a struggle, there’s always the rosy view through the bottom of a glass to escape to. But at its best, there’s a vibrancy and a passion and a sense of mischief in Ireland that is second to none. I am looking forward to it.
I suspect I’ll write more about my time in Italy at another time, when I can put it in perspective. Right now, I’m still here, saying goodbye, and there’s nothing sentimental about my sadness. It’s been a magical, healing time, full of love and wonder. I’ve already booked my flight back. Homecoming, for me, is not a one-way ticket, and I don’t think it ever will be again. I am blessed.