One Hundred Mornings is currently streaming on Prime Video.

When I finished writing the script for One Hundred Mornings, I wasn’t overly concerned about which genre the film would be — I just wanted to get it made. But most filmmakers have to specify their project’s genre at an early stage — it makes everything nice and neat, and life is a little easier for all involved, except maybe for the writer/director who finds it important to try to make something that doesn’t fit in so easily, for whatever odd reasons of his own…

One Hundred Mornings has elements from several different genres: horror, thriller, dystopian relationship drama and others, but it wasn’t specifically any one of those. And without wishing to quibble at all with the decision of the fine people at the Rhode Island International Film Festival who recently gave us the Vortex Science Fiction & Fantasy award, I don’t think it’s really one of those categories either.

It does have what could be called a sci-fi element, albeit more of an indie sci-fi than anything more lavish. I used to devour science-fiction books when I was a kid — Frederik Pohl, Stanislaw Lem, and when I got a little older, the twisted, paranoid imaginings of Philip K Dick (though after reading about PKD later, it seems a lot of it was pretty real for him.) I was always more interested in ‘hard’ sci-fi, which has its logic rooted in the possible and probable, than in the other kinds, which often felt like some kind of faerie opera in space. One of my first school essays that attracted any kind of positive attention had definite similarities to the plot of The Omega Man, with my solitary teenaged protagonist wandering down deserted streets and past familiar Dublin landmarks, utterly and gloriously alone. In hindsight, I suspect that story was much more about being a lonely teenager than about living in a futuristic world. But then again, aren’t all futuristic films really reflections of current issues and preoccupations? Anyway, the world we set out to create in One Hundred Mornings didn’t require the addition of any fantastical element to make it feel real; all it needed was the subtraction of one of the elements that we all tend to take very much for granted — readily available power. So I think that, much as I love science-fiction in many of its forms, OHM couldn’t accurately be described as a sci-fi movie.

Another possible category for the film raised its head halfway through filming — I was talking to lead actors Ciaran McMenamin and Alex Reid on the wooden veranda of the very un-Irish looking cabin that was our main location, when it suddenly hit me and I asked them if they were aware that the film could also be a kind of a Western — after all, it had remote locations, a sheriff type figure, life and death situations borne out of elemental needs — the whole shooting match. I could see slow smiles growing on their faces — of course the same thought had occurred to them, and a long time before it had with me. As the conversation wore on Alex was horrified when I admitted I’d never actually seen Once Upon a Time In The West, and she made sure to send me a copy as soon as we’d wrapped.

Things could have very easily gone in another direction as well: an early script reader pointed out to me that if I made a few simple changes I would most likely have a gangbuster of a horror flick on my hands, but that also wasn’t the film I was most interested in making — I wanted to make something else.

I can still remember, very clearly, being unable to sleep after the first time I saw a film called Z — it was about the iniquities of the military dictatorship in Greece in the early 70’s, and was made in France by the exiled director Costa Gavras*. I was probably around twelve years old, and saw the film on a flickering black & white TV, and what kept me awake wasn’t the horror of it, or the violence —which was tame enough, even by the standards of the day. What had me tossing and turning was the sheer injustice of it all — I wasn’t terrified, I was fuming. I’m pretty sure this was also the first time I became aware of film’s power to provoke as well as to entertain, and this is something I’ve tried to hold on to ever since.

But OHM wasn’t written to be a political film either, at least not in the way that Z was. Like most of us, I was becoming increasingly interested in some of the global problems that have been looming ever larger in recent years, so in a way I set out to make the most realistic depiction that I could of a world where some of those problems have come into effect — and do it in a way that would show how we might try to deal with the consequences of such clearly signposted issues. And no, I didn’t know what kind of a genre you could call that either.

So One Hundred Mornings is all of the above genres, and none of them. It’s not a horror film, but it gave my younger sister nightmares — it’s not a fantasy, though a large part of me wishes that it was. If I had a gun held to my head (which I haven’t…yet) and had to come up with a description, I’d probably quote a filmmaker friend, who called the film “a fine, spiky example of Irish post-apocalyptic speculative fiction.” Which is just what I was hoping for — a genre all of its own. — Conor Horgan

*Many years later, I got to interview Costa Gavras for the Screen Director’s Guild of Ireland. Sometimes you definitely should meet your heroes.

One Hundred Mornings - New York Times Critic’s Pick Review

"If Harold Pinter did a rewrite of The Road, it could easily resemble One Hundred Mornings; eschewing multi-million dollar CGI special-effects and giant fireballs for an emphasis on actual story and character, Irish filmmaker Conor Horgan and cast craft an intimate look at the emotional and spiritual toll the apocalypse could bring to one's life."
Todd Konrad, Independent Film Quarterly

Portrait of Oliver Stanley, 1992

To choose a favourite photograph is, of course, impossible. Even if I ignore the landscapes and still lives I’ve made and narrow it down to portraiture, I’ve shot so very many of those it’s extremely difficult to pick one favourite.

Unless it’s this portrait of Oliver Stanley.

Technically, it’s far from perfect. Taken at the start of my career, it owes a bit too much to the style of Richard Avedon, one of my early photographic heroes. I wish I’d framed Oliver a little to the left. Did I really have to crop the top of his head quite so tightly? Made in a time before Photoshop, I just had to live with the shaving cut on his chin.

But oh, the eyes–the eyes have it.

I first met designer and activist Oliver while in the middle of a personal crisis, one which he helped me through with compassion, generosity and no small amount of wit. We became firm friends and I’m very grateful for everything he taught me. I once agreed to accompany him to a leather bar in Barcelona, despite my unspoken worries about how I’d be able to deal with all the unwanted attention. Naturally, when we walked in the leather queens’ jaws all dropped. Not for me - I might as well have been invisible - but for Oliver, fully decked out in peaked leather cap, waistcoat and chaps. That particular life lesson stayed with me, and it’s one all young straight men would benefit from learning - it turns out they are not, in fact, irresistible to all gay men.

The portrait was taken in 1992, and he had yet to tell me and most of his friends that he was HIV positive. When he did, he also let me know this was the photograph he wanted used for his obituary. He died on April 11th 1995, at the age of 41.

In order to be a work of art, a portrait needs to have some mystery to it. A good portrait has some ambiguity to it, and is more of an open question than a definitive answer. That’s what keeps us coming back to them. And probably most importantly of all, we take pictures of people to remember what they look like. This portrait shows what a beautiful man Oliver was. It doesn’t capture his mischievous sense of humour, but it does show something of his depth of character, not least his knowledge that he didn’t have long to live coupled with his near-total lack of self-pity. To my mind, these are some of the qualities of a hero.

Again, I find it impossible to choose a favourite photograph, or even a favourite portrait. But it is possible to choose a portrait of one of my favourite people, which can represent all of my favourite portraits. What they have in common is that, as well as revealing something important about the subject, they make me feel something. When I look at this image, I feel a number of things, including a sense of loss and grief, naturally. And the feeling I experience most keenly is love.

Conor Horgan is an award-winning visual artist, photographer and filmmaker. Acclaimed for his portraiture, his socially engaged practice includes landscape and still life and is regularly exhibited nationally and internationally. He won the inaugural Taylor Wessing Irish Photography Prize in April 2026 and has an upcoming exhibition Súil Amach - An Outward Eye, a Literature Ireland & Culture Ireland commissioned exhibition of portraits of great Irish writers that will be launched in the EU Parliament in September.

www.conorhorgan.com

Snap happy: Irish photographers on the story behind their favourite photographs

Two of my portraits of other photographers featured in the article:

Salem Anowe Chukwuezi, 2026

Alen Mac Weeney, 2019

Illustration by Simon Pemberton.

A new discovery: I’ve loved the work of photographer Sally Mann for years and recently discovered she’s just as good a writer as she is a visual artist. Her second book Art Work: On the Creative Life, is a generous and inspiring mix of stories, visuals and life lessons that is an unmissable read for anyone who would like more creativity in their life.

A recommendation: As well as many of my friends, it seems that everyone I know on the internet has been enthusiastically recommending Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said The Dead. I was already looking forward to it, not least because I’ve long enjoyed her work. It’s proved to be a uniquely structured fever dream of a book that plunges you into an utterly fascinating world right from the get-go.

Cork roots run deep, and I discovered a personal connection to Said the Dead when I photographed Doireann for Súil Amach, An Outward Eye, a Literature Ireland / Culture Ireland commissioned exhibition of my portraits of great Irish writers that will be launched in the EU Parliament in September as part of Cultúr 26. While I shot her in front of the former Cork District Lunatic Asylum, which she’d extensively researched for the book, she told me she’d come across two of my Cork ancestors and that they were both featured in the book. I admit I was relieved to hear, not as patients.

Me by Doireann, Doireann by me

This was originally published in the Sunday Independent newspaper on August 2nd 2026

Playing the part of a war photographer in Vietnam for a test commercial for Chanel, directed by John Moore on the set of Michael Collins at Grangegorman.

We live in a world where a degree of public performance seems to have become a necessity for getting on in life, which for the introverts and shy people among us makes life all that more challenging. If there is a sliding scale of brazenness, I’d be a lot closer to the Howard Hughes end than to someone like current US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose cosplaying as a heavily armed, flak-jacketed security agent with a full set of hair extensions has had her nicknamed ICE Barbie. And even though these days I can usually acquit myself fairly well when called on to speak in public, every time I manage to pull it off, I’m still quietly surprised.

First Act

It was not always thus. I was a serious, withdrawn kid, and it wasn’t so much that I was afraid of public speaking, which I was – I was afraid of private speaking. Some of this stems from my very first attempt at speaking in public, a complete and unmitigated disaster. It was many years ago but the memory is still sharp, and I remember acutely how I felt afterwards. I’d been chosen to do a reading at my Confirmation, in front of all my family, schoolmates and the Archbishop of Dublin. I stood at the lectern, quaking gently as I waited on a hair-trigger for my cue. When one of the roadie priests whispered was I ready I launched straight into it. My voice echoed around the huge church, and my relief as I neared the end was overshadowed by the sense that something had gone very wrong. I glanced over at the Archbishop, to find him looking daggers at me over his glasses – it seems I’d stepped on his lines, as nobody is supposed to speak before the star of the show. I felt very ashamed, a feeling that persisted for the longest time. Years later I discovered that many people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death – that made a lot of sense to me.

A Suit of Armour

As I entered my teenage years the terror of blowing my cool got even worse. I was surprised years later to hear from an old schoolfriend that my habitual silence had been taken as intimidating by some classmates – they assumed I didn’t deign to speak to them, when the reality was, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Help came from an unexpected quarter – a Saturday job at the Lambert Puppet Theatre in Monkstown. The two youngest Lamberts were my friends, and before long I was spending as much time as I could in their house – there were so many kids around I don’t think anyone noticed an extra one. Not being of Lambert blood made me like a non-Italian member of the Mafia – I didn’t get to go near the puppets so was put to work selling tickets, manning the sweetshop and helping to clean up afterwards. Then we’d all have our tea and watch that week’s episode of the children’s television programme Wanderly Wagon, starring head of the family Eugene as the bumbling O’Brien. He could be a hard taskmaster to his homegrown theatre company, and there were times when some of the older brothers only spoke to him while in character as one of the puppets. On Sundays we’d go in to RTÉ to shoot next week’s episode, and one glorious day the rules were relaxed and I got to play the squirrels in the window-box – no lines, just squeaks, but still a big moment for me. I don’t know if this was one of the episodes written by starting-out screenwriter Neil Jordan, but as the Forty Coats character wasn’t wrestling with his sense of identity or exploring a taboo relationship, probably not.

15-year-old me, middle, photographed at a Puppet People performance in Dublin, 1977.

Shortly after I turned 15, youngest Lambert daughter Paula had had enough of working for Eugene and decided to set up her own puppet company. To my great surprise the first person she called was me. Though I’d never thought I could be a performer, she saw something in me and that was good enough.

We were called Puppet People, and it felt like we were the Provisional Lamberts to Eugene’s Officials – I also knew that by throwing my lot in with her I could never go back to Monkstown. By then my voice had broken into a deep baritone so I played all the villains, including the memorably named Terrible Turkey. We toured all over the country, playing to thousands of people at Feis Ceoils, and had a successful run of shows in the Project Arts Centre. Even though I was utterly mortified every time Paula called us out from behind the wooden booth to take a bow, in doing the show I’d made a discovery that helped me get over some of my horrendous self-consciousness.

I know now that many performers, especially drag artists, see their costumes as a kind of suit of armour and I’d found my version of that – it turns out that you can do pretty much anything, even singing and dancing, from behind a quarter-inch of plywood. I’d have been absolutely fine out in the world, if only I could have figured out how to bring my suit of armour everywhere with me.

By the time I hit my 20s I was ever-so-slightly less silent, though still nowhere near chatty. An obsession with photography had won me an apprenticeship with Tony Higgins, the leading fashion photographer of the day, and I quickly found out that to get good pictures of people you needed to talk to them. This was quite a challenge, so when I started doing headshots as nixers all I could do was copy Tony’s practised patter word-for- word. Eventually I started to develop my own and made the happy discovery that rather than being something to hide behind, a camera could be a way of connecting with people.

Naked Public Vulnerability

Thoughts of performing again didn’t even cross my mind until many years after that, when I started directing TV ads and pretty quickly had to face the fact I had no idea how to talk to actors. Well, I knew how to talk to them but not how to stop, and I got used to seeing their panicked eyes registering “Full” when I was barely halfway through giving an incredibly detailed, fundamentally unplayable set of directions. So nothing else would do – I took myself off to some acting classes. The first thing I discovered was that every class was specifically designed for the students to make the biggest fools as possible out of ourselves – not very welcome for someone who still took themselves as seriously as I did. Nevertheless I pushed myself on, writhing around on the classroom floor pretending to be a tree in a storm, but I wasn’t enjoying any of it. Then during subsequent courses I made some interesting discoveries – one, that I was actually kind of okay at acting and two, going out of my way to make a complete eejit of myself was actually quite good for me. Well, at least it helped me take myself a lot less seriously, which could only be a good thing. It turns out that being kind of okay at acting was enough to get me cast in a couple of bit parts, and I also discovered why it is that so many actors are actually shy – it feels liberating being someone else for a little while, and as an extra bonus you get to shout at, fight or kiss people, all with no consequences whatsoever.

Just Say No

It’s said that the only power an actor has is the power to say no, usually to parts they’re not suited to. I wouldn’t know, having said yes to every single thing I was ever asked to do – these included a stern-faced martial arts instructor, a stern-voiced neglectful father, and two completely different stern-faced patients in The Clinic TV series. They were different not only because one was called Angry Patient and the other Impatient Patient, by using all my skills of characterisation I’d given one of them a beard. To be fair, I’m not a particularly stern person, but the combination of the deep voice and decades of squinting through cameras have given me the appearance of a habitual scowler, and you might as well use what you’ve got. Not only did I never turn down a role, I’m very proud of my 100 per cent success rate at auditions. To be clear this comes from the one and only audition I ever did, which got me the part of a (you’ve guessed it) stern-faced paterfamilias in an am-dram production of an Alan Ayckbourn play. I may never do another audition, not least because the chances of immediately reducing my hit rate to 50 per cent is very high indeed.

Working on the play was a delight, though the six-month rehearsal period in the back room of a Rathmines pub made me think we were never going to actually offer it to an adoring public. This meant I didn’t take it seriously enough to even begin to learn the lines, so when the production date was set, I had a mad scramble to get off book, and though I didn’t dry once on stage I had stress dreams of doing so for years afterwards. Not being overburdened with confidence in either myself or the production, I didn’t tell anyone I was in a play until after we’d performed it for the first two nights of our week-long run. So all my nearest and dearest came to see it on the fourth night, which is when things came seriously unstuck.

The play was set in a restaurant, with scenes that went back and forth across a timeline of several years. Most of my scenes were with my wife, and as we headed towards the interval I realised with horror that she’d jumped from halfway through the scene we were in to another scene that was supposed to happen much later, the one in which I’m just about to find out she’s been sleeping with my brother. The sense of being on a runaway train was overwhelming, and thankfully the lighting operator hadn’t fallen asleep and brought the lights down just as we ran out of dialogue. There was consternation backstage – the director rushed in as we ran around flapping, not knowing what to do. He made his ruling – when the scene came up in its proper order, we were to play it again as though nothing untoward had happened.

Reader, I said no. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but it was probably the prospect of another public humiliation caused by a misplaced cue that motivated me to suggest I could busk my way through an improvised bridge between the two surrounding scenes. The rest of the cast went along with it, and while half-way through the second act the audience experienced some fairly ropey acting and very un-Ayckbourn-like dialogue, none of them were any the wiser.

Appearing in Irish horror movie The Canal (2014) alongside Hannah Hoekstra and Rupert Evans.

Main Character Energy

The play was the only time I’ve ever played a lead in anything, and even the few times I’ve cast myself in one of my own films I barely made an impression. I appeared as Naked Male Shoulder (uncredited) in a love scene in my first short, and when I later cast myself as Village Guard in a feature film, the Director of Photography shot me from so far away I was playing second banana to the entire village. That village does share a name with a more celebrated place in California, so at least I can say I’ve acted in a movie that was shot in Hollywood (Co Wicklow).

The thing is – I never really wanted to be an actor. No, really. It was just so far from my comfort zone, especially when I was younger, that I felt drawn to it by a curiosity that could only be satisfied by seeing if I could actually do it. When it turned out I could, that was enough. I certainly didn’t expect to learn any valuable life lessons along the way, but despite myself there were some to be had.

The first one came after I stalked across the busy clinic reception area, getting ready to complain bitterly to the temporary receptionist about how much time I’d been waiting to be seen. He looked exactly like celebrated Roscommon comic actor Chris O’Dowd, because it was him, and as he gazed up at me with his trademark supercilious sneer I just knew he’d have a withering put-down ready – I knew, because I’d read the script.

By the third time we’d done it, I was not in a good place. I’d seen during the previous takes that the other actors were all fine, but each time the camera cut, all the director said was “Going again”. All my insecurities rushed in to fill the vacuum, and of course it seemed a fair assumption that the reason we had to go again was because I was being so awful. Looking back, this was a very useful experience for a director who needed to know what actors go through, but no fun at all at the time. After the next take I couldn’t stand it any longer and quietly asked the director if I was even getting close. She looked surprised, said I was fine and she’d only say something if there was a problem. So my first lesson was this: from then on, even if an actor on one of my sets fell over or broke something halfway through a scene, I would always, always, say thank you at the end of each take. This is something I’ve taken into the rest of my life; if someone gives me something, anything, it really doesn’t matter if it’s any good or not, I always say thank you.

A little later that day I found myself going properly Method for the first and probably only time in my life – they needed a close-up of Impatient Patient being, well, impatient with Chris O’Dowd, and try as I might I just couldn’t do it believably. As the camera rolled on take five, the sheer frustration at how badly I was acting welled up in me and I involuntarily rolled my eyes as I spoke the lines. “Cut!” called the director, “That was great – moving on”. Lesson two; it’s usually best to go with the gut feeling.

Lesson three is probably the biggest one; being profoundly embarrassed in public, despite all my misgivings, is not actually the end of the world. One thing you can say for it, you definitely feel very alive, and completely in the moment. Surviving it a couple of times has helped me take myself a lot less seriously than I used to, and has greatly lessened my fears about it happening again (it almost certainly will, and it’s okay), which is something I’ve become very grateful for.

I don’t feel the need to act again, but I did do something similar recently which I’ve long dreamed about. Last March I got up on my hind legs and told a true story at the Dublin Story Slam competition. I was extremely nervous, but still felt proud of myself for having given it a go. To my great surprise, I won, so last June I stepped out on the Abbey Theatre stage to tell another story at the Summer Grand Finale. The anxiety was still there, and just before I went on I found myself wishing fervently the Abbey had a thick stage curtain – not to hide behind, but to do an actor’s trick before a performance. They sometimes go out behind the noise-absorbing curtain, as the audience waits on the other side, and shout “F**k you all!” – apparently a great way to steady the nerves.

I didn’t win that night and really didn’t care – I felt very much at ease and actually enjoyed telling the story. The audience enjoyed hearing it, and it confirmed to me that it’s possible to overcome an innate terror of public speaking and move past crippling shyness to the regular shyness many of us have, one which needn’t prevent anyone from doing anything. I know there must be easier ways, but what worked for me was some structured humiliation, a bit of luck and a lot of practice. Ultimately, what really mattered that night was how I’d done that mortified kid in the church proud – I’d shown him it’s possible to get over yourself, let go of the shame, and do things he’d have never thought possible.

All I had to do was to make a complete show of myself.

This article was originally published in The Gloss Magazine.

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A recent study from Maynooth University suggests that Ireland is the loneliest country in Europe, and as more people start going into the second or even third act of their lives still or newly single, many find themselves in a world of dating unlike anything they’ve ever experienced. As someone who's never been married and has had an on-and-off dating life well into my 50s, I thought it could be interesting to offer a long-term perspective, and from a male viewpoint. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on these things, what I do have is experience. All kinds of experience.

Dating has always been a numbers game, though the numbers don’t always look good. An applied maths student called Peter Backus recently took an equation used to estimate the number of evolved civilisations in our galaxy and adapted it to gauge how many women he might meet in London. This rapidly winnowed the five million population down to 26 women with whom he might have a wonderful relationship. Not great odds. I applied his method to Dublin (population just over one million) and using much more generous criteria (he thinks he’d only get on with 10% of women, my estimate is much higher) I ended up with…21. Of course, once I subtract the number of women I’ve already dated in Dublin I end up with – well, I’m not going to tell you that, but let’s just say it’s a minus number.

It’s also a jungle out there. Which I guess makes it a numbers game in the jungle, and if that tortured mixed metaphor bothers you as much as it does me, we should probably meet for a drink sometime. One good thing about jungles is that it’s possible to have adventures in them – it’s just that you won’t know which kind.

I’ll start off with a couple of tips, based on seeing many, many profiles online. Even though I’m a professional photographer, with all of the kit and years of experience in making people look their best, the pictures on my profile that get by far the most positive responses have all been taken by (non-photographer) friends. So a picture that shows you relating to someone you like is a hundred times better than a furtive selfie, no matter how good the bathroom lighting is.

And a tip for men – be kind. You are not the king of this particular jungle, and no matter how challenging the experience is for you, it’s invariably worse for women. Oh, and never send photos of parts of your anatomy – unless you’ve been asked to, in writing, at least three times. Whenever I’ve been asked for nudes, there’s one photo I’ve always enjoyed sending.

Disastrous dates are very much part of the process, and sometimes one of the few consolations after going through one is a feeling of pride for at least having tried. Another one is that I might end up with a good story for my coupled-up friends, giving them the opportunity to feel grateful they no longer have to hack their way through the dating undergrowth.

I lived in Paris for a while, and went on a date with a French film director. Before we‘d even mentioned the weather she took out a small glass bottle and start spooning a syrupy liquid into her mouth. “Homeopathy?” I asked, my heart sinking a little. “No, no, not at all” she replied,”this is a powerful sedative-hypnotic drug - if I don’t take it I’d be hysterical right now”. For several reasons we didn’t have a second date, and when I did some research it turned out she had been the darling of the Cannes festival a number of years earlier for her first film which she had written, directed and starred in. It was about a young woman who starts out self-harming and ends up self-cannibalising. Not really somebody you’d like nuzzling your ear on the pillow.

Another date in Paris took a different turn. I’d matched with a lovely and interesting writer, but when we met she told me she’d just started seeing someone, so was only interested in being friends. I was disappointed, and as a consolation she invited me to join her book club. This was full of other lovely and interesting people, and we all became great friends - a definite win.

The information included on a dating profile usually isn’t enough to give any idea of what someone’s actually like. My hopes rise when I match with someone whose interests include reading, though that could mean anything from Hello magazine to Homer in the original Greek. Sometimes very important information is omitted, as happened when I matched with a very alternative woman from Dublin. I suspected she might be a little too woo-woo for me, but thought I should remain open-minded. When we met it was a total coup de foudre, an instant mental, emotional and physical attraction. I've been around the block and know that these kind of fireworks tend not to be sustainable but again, I was being open minded. Then on our second date she asked me about the pandemic, did I get jabbed, and if so how many times. Thinking this was an unusual way of describing the vaccines, I told her I’d taken every one that was offered. It turned out that much as she would've liked to, she believed that on health grounds she couldn't be with anybody who’d been vaccinated because they’d “shed vaccine spike proteins” onto her. I fancied I heard a distant pop as the last of the fireworks fizzled out. She didn’t agree that this was information which would have been relevant to include on her profile, and we went our separate ways.

Last year I matched with four therapists in quick succession. I really should have learned from a previous experience, when over dinner an artist with a psychology degree had forensically (and completely unethically) filleted my past until she found something she decided was one of her red flags. The first two therapists were NBNS (nice but no spark), and the third was the most hyper-vigilant person I’ve ever met, who barely glanced at me as she scanned the wine bar, looking for possible threats. Things were going swimmingly with the fourth until the date came to an abrupt end when she found out I’d once met her ex-husband in passing, twenty years ago. I mentioned all of this to my own therapist, who took a sharp breath and said “You know, Conor - therapists can be very odd people”. No kidding.

While not all that keen to date one, I know that psychologists can be very helpful, so to get an overview on the current state of dating I spoke to an expert: Dr. Nicola Fox Hamilton, a cyber psychology researcher, who specialises in online dating.

I already knew that despite appearances, the apps aren’t designed to smooth your path towards finding love. Quite the opposite in fact–they work by frustrating users, mainly men, to the point that the user becomes a purchaser. And most unfortunately of all, many male users assume the female users are the cause of their frustration. She told me that while dating apps are on the decline, with more and more users reporting negative experiences, they are still by far the most-used way to meet people. I’d also seen reports saying that up to two thirds of people on dating apps have no intention of ever meeting, using the experience as a kind of dopamine boost, but she was able to reassure me that about 3/4 of people who sign up to online dating have gone on at least one date. She added that it is still the number one way that people find long-term relationships, and a third of marriages between 2005 and 2012 came from initial meetings online.

So if we’re stuck with the apps - did she have any tips? She said there can still be quite a stigma around online dating in Ireland, but we are slowly catching up with other cultures. Her PhD research confirmed my experience that dating profiles tend to be very shallow. She suggested that it’s much better to more specific about yourself - this makes you more different and you’ll get fewer matches, but they’ll probably be better quality ones. It’s very important to be authentic and avoid clichés, as absolutely everybody loves long walks on the beach and watching Netflix with their friends. Her attitude is that the first date should really be the final stage of the filtering process.

We discussed red and green flags - one of my red flags is people who describe themselves as having a sarcastic sense of humour, which in reality can swing from passive aggressiveness to naked hostility, always followed up with a “I’m only joking”. Another we agreed on is people who say they’re only interested in THE ONE, with whom everything will somehow be easy. I applaud the romanticism, but this is magical thinking at best and usually means the person hasn’t quite grasped just how much hard work it takes to sustain even the best relationships. I know that as a somewhat scruffy artist, entering very late early middle age, I’m a walking red flag to many people - but I also know I’m someone else’s dream date. I just have to meet them.

I mentioned the shopping lists I’ve seen, detailing the attributes people do and don’t want in a partner, and Dr. Fox Hamilton was quick to point out that these tend to put people right off, adding it’s always best to be positive in your profile. A few years ago I was in a relationship with someone who had a wonderfully open-minded attitude to dating, saying the only specific things she’d been hoping for was a partner who had a similar taste in music and good stories–luckily for me I had both, and she didn’t seem to mind that I sometimes told the stories more than once.

As our conversation drew to a close, I had to ask Nicola the hardest question of all: what’s the best way to say no to someone online, especially for women? She was very clear about this, saying “If you're not interested and they don't seem crazy, it’s best to say very clearly that you don't think there's any spark, and thank them for the conversation. And then, because you never know who might kick off in a nasty way, you can block them. Nothing wrong with doing that at all”. At this point I felt I really should mention someone who’d asked her out via Twitter quite a few years ago, whom she had turned down expertly and with great kindness. She laughed and said she remembered me well, and because I’d been straightforward and honest, she’d felt she could respond honestly and without fear – it had ended up as “just a lovely interaction”. It was good to hear I’d done something right.

If you just can’t be doing with dating apps, there are plenty of other ways to meet people. I’ve heard about pitching events, where one of your friends puts together a Powerpoint and pitches you to a room full of singles. Sounds interesting, though a lot of hard work. There’s also gaming, which has a strong social element, and joining online communities of shared interests, which sounds more like me - something akin to a virtual hiking club, without the blisters.

Last year I signed up to the rather threateningly named TimeLeft, an app that matches you with a group of complete strangers and books a dinner together. The first one I attended had one other man (who was gay) and five disappointed-looking straight women in their early 30s. It ended up as a really enjoyable night–there can be something joyful about spending time with complete strangers, liberated in the knowledge that you’ll never see each other again. Then at a subsequent dinner I made a new friend, always a bonus.

I've met people online in ways other than via dating apps. One important relationship started when I began reading somebody's blog and shortly afterwards bumped into them in the queue at Avoca Handweavers. “I think I know you”, I blurted out, “I read your blog”. She smiled back inscrutably, and later wrote a charming post about the encounter, revealing she’d been frantically thinking back through everything she’d ever written to figure out just exactly how much I did know about her. The blog was a lovely beginning to our relationship, though when we broke up a couple of years later it became a lot less lovely, at least for me. She wrote eloquently about her feelings after the breakup in what became a series of heartrending posts–they even won her an award for best personal blog. As it was my decision to end the relationship it might seem churlish of me to complain about this, but in our own ways we were both heartbroken. I certainly felt very exposed knowing that pretty much everyone in my life, including my mother, was reading her honest, hurt and extremely well-written posts. There was a hard lesson to be learned there – don't ever look at your ex’s social media, there are so many ways in which it can make you feel worse. Or maybe the lesson is don’t go out with writers. In any case I’m glad that blogs aren't really a thing anymore.

Another option is placing an ad in the London Review of Books, which has a long-standing tradition of printing hilarious personals - a favourite one reads “They call me naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist, M, 46.” If you prefer to advertise closer to home, Ireland’s Own magazine has a (free!) “Penpals Section”, which often includes ads from genteel octogenarians, seeking partners of 70 or over. This makes for the complete opposite to an app’s upload’n’swipe experience–the magazine cautions that it may be up to three months before the ad appears in print. It’s remarkable how the people with the least amount of actual time left seem to have the most patience.

If hope is fading after considering all of the above, let me share one last story. My most recent girlfriend has a younger sister who lives in rural Kerry. After resisting for a while she held her nose and signed up to Tinder, the OG of dating apps. She didn’t much enjoy the experience and only swiped right on one man. It turned out that the man she swiped on had also just joined and had also only swiped right on one person. Three years ago we attended their blissfully happy wedding.

One of my conclusions is that dating for the over 50s is pretty much the same as dating for anybody else. Possibly the only thing us mature daters need to consider is the distant possibility that at some point over the next 20 years or so, we may start to lose our looks. One attribute that definitely comes with age is a degree of self-knowledge, an important asset in the dating world. I now know and accept the things about me that make it less likely I’ll have a conventional relationship, and more likely to have an unusual one that works really well. In this I’m with Whoopi Goldberg, who when asked if she’d like to get married again said “And have some guy living in my house? Are you f***ing crazy?”.

When I think about heading back into the jungle, something Dr. Fox Hamilton said really jumped out at me: “Dating could be so much better if we all just had a little more understanding of how difficult the experience can be, and showed a bit of grace towards each other - that would go a long way”. I think she’s just defined my favourite-ever green flag. So I’ll end with this, both to myself and to anyone else out there who’d like not to be single: be graceful, and don’t give up.

This article was originally published in the May 2025 edition of The Gloss Magazine.

Frank Cotham / The New Yorker

It seems George Michael was right – you gotta have faith. A recent study conducted at the University of Bristol claims that we have a genetic predisposition to believe in the supernatural. We need to believe that there is pattern and reason in events, because we have yet to evolve a way of dealing with the terrifying randomness of life. This may have given our ancestors an evolutionary advantage, but does it still hold true in these more rational times? And what would happen if I exposed myself to some of the more intense experiences religion has to offer – would my genetic inheritance tip me towards faith, or would I remain a reasonably devout atheist?

My closest brush with religion in many years was going to a fancy-dress ball as a priest.

The first thing to do was to take stock of my spiritual development. I’ve never knowingly gone to church, just for the sake of it – in fact my closest brush with religion in a very long time was going to a fancy-dress ball as a priest, and I’d like to think that the addition of dark glasses and slicked-back hair made me the image of Father Jack – Father Jack Nicholson, that is. The feeling of power was intoxicating as I strode towards the ballroom with my soutane flapping, seeing friends who’d been schooled by the Christian Brothers instinctively cower at my approach. At school I’d been a militant, nihilistic atheist, which has mellowed into a more easygoing scepticism. There are plenty of other atheists popping out of foxholes at the moment, judging by the recent howls of protest in the Irish Times’ letters page provoked by Professor William Reville’s latest attempt at a ‘scientific’ explanation for Christianity. One of his more specious arguments is that we should believe in God because Einstein did, and being very clever Albert was probably right. This notion that Einstein believed in a personal god is one of the many modern myths comprehensively rubbished by Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The God Delusion’, and the alpha-evolutionary goes on to argue that organised religion is responsible for most of the suffering in the world today. I’m not sure I’d go that far, as even without religion people will always find an excuse to vanquish the neighbours. Nor do I particularly care what other people choose to believe, obviously as long as it doesn’t impinge on how I live. Having said that, I am looking forward to reading Prof. Reville's scientific rationale for the Pope’s abolition of limbo.

I began by narrowing down the options. I’d already flirted a little with Buddhism, which didn’t flirt back, then with Tantric Yoga, which most definitely did. My unwillingness to adopt a fixed grin or dance in public places makes me a lost cause to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishnas, and I considered Scientology but the chances of making any Hollywood contacts at the Dianetics Centre in Middle Abbey Street were far too slim. Frisbeeterianism sounded promising, until I discovered it was a made-up religion (but aren’t they all?) with a central belief that when you die your soul goes up on the garage roof and you can’t get it back down. I admit I was going into this exercise with what couldn’t really be described as an open mind, but I did promise I’d do my best to suspend disbelief.

It was time to take myself to church.

Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, Belfast

The best place to start was in at the deep end, so off I went to the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, a vast Presbyterian church in the Loyalist heartland of North Belfast. As a precaution I left strict instructions with some friends that if I came back saved they were to immediately un-save me, preferably by liberal indulgences in the sins of the flesh. The church holds thousands, and there were video cameras, giant TV screens and a sound-mixing desk that needed four people to operate it. A wide stage held a full band, in front of a steeply raked 80-strong choir. As they started to play I was hoping for a Blues Brothers type treat, but the first 30 minutes of the service consisted of a series of fairly drippy love songs to Jesus. Judging by the repeated promises that He’d always be wanted, loved and needed, this church’s Christ came across as a pretty insecure Messiah.

Then came the main attraction; Dr. James McConnell, a burly, silverhaired preacher in his early 70s. He roamed across the stage, jutting his chin like an ageing street fighter, the kind of man who used terms like ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ with utter conviction. The God Dr. McConnell praised certainly was a fiery one, given to damning his priests as “thou wicked and slothful servant”. There was nothing slothful about this priest, and his voice grew hoarse with passion when he hit into the main thrust of the sermon. This recounted the parable of Mary of Bethany, who impulsively poured a box of precious spikenard ointment over Jesus’ head, a potion so valuable that “if it had been sold, it would have fed three hundred poor families for a year”. Dr. McConnell seemed to think that this was a good thing, rather than an appalling waste of resources. If you see Jesus as the biggest celebrity of all, then I suppose it makes sense – because He was worth it.

Things got even more interesting when the pastor issued a challenge to the congregation, daring them to raise a hand so he could compete with them to take the first soul to Christ. Then he went up a gear, saying that he felt anointed by the Holy Spirit and if anyone dared to challenge him in return he would “tell you the secrets of your heart’ and if this wasn’t enough, to “tell you the paint of your very door”. My hand twitched in anticipation, as the paint of my very door is one of those indeterminate bluey-greens, that I’ve never been able to describe properly when giving directions. It’s probably teal, or viridian. Then, as I looked around at the sea of hard-faced Ulstermen, ‘bluey-green’ suddenly seemed close enough.

After making a small donation towards the church’s missionary drive to save souls in Ethiopia, China and Dublin, I left the centre and reflected on how I was feeling. The music was pleasant enough, there was a definite sense of community and I’d been hugely entertained, but I hadn’t felt even a twinge of a spiritual awakening.

BACK TO BASICS

Maybe going back to basics would help. Having had more exposure in childhood to the regular Catholic Mass than I could ever have wished for it was likely that I’d developed an immunity, so needed to find something more potent. The Latin, or Tridentine Mass was in common use for over a thousand years until it was effectively banned by Vatican II. There are very few churches that still offer the ceremoney, but I found one in St John’s in Dun Laoghaire. The service was very different to the one at Whitewell; the attendance was in single figures, no-one was under 60, and the Mass was celebrated in a low murmur, inaudible to anyone but the co-celebrant. The only entertainment value was watching the assistant reach over to hoist the back of the priest’s tabard as he knelt down, making it look like he was receiving some kind of a ceremonial wedgie. Still feeling the sting of my moral cowardice in Belfast, I resolved to go all the way this time and went up to receive communion. As I went back to the pew, the papery disc dissolving in my mouth, I searched deep within and found…relief, mainly. My lack of Latin hadn’t unmasked me as a heathen, although if there had been any danger of being burned at the stake I could have probably outrun the congregation at a relaxed lope.

Bob Mankoff / The New Yorker

This got me wondering about the Catholic Church’s stance on atheism. I rang the Press Office and asked if an atheist would be welcome at a Catholic Mass. The wary voice on the other end of the line promised to get back to me, but didn’t. Then I remembered that the only time I’ve ever felt remotely comfortable in a Christian church was at the Unitarian Church in Stephen’s Green. I’ve attended several ceremonies there, including two funerals which were refreshingly free of the “aha, we have him now” sentiment that underlies so many Catholic burials. I asked the same question of the Unitarian minister, the Rev. William “call me Bill” Darlison, and was very surprised when he told me that the Unitarian Church counts almost as many atheists and humanists as theists among its membership, so if I ever did want to go to church just for the sake of it they wouldn’t turn me away. My interest increased as he told me that Unitarians believe in the principles of freedom, reason and tolerance, and I was impressed when he outlined how the church conducts its business. The pastor is elected by his flock, and could be fired just as easily. Every month at least one service is conducted by a lay member, who can speak on any topic they please. This is a church with no heretics, an accountable ministry, and one which gives its members what they want and need as opposed to telling them what they need and shouldn’t want.

COMMUNITY SPIRIT

It all seemed too good to be true, and then I asked Bill his views on the primacy of man. Although he was at pains to point out that it was only his view, rather than official doctrine, he definitely believes that man has the divine within him. This is the point where my path diverges from that of organised religion, or at least from those religions that I feel I need to be concerned about - the ones which the people in charge belong to. Any belief system that propagates the theory that mankind is more important than anything else, with the implication that all of the worlds’ resources have been provided for our use by a munificent Creator, is – well, it doesn’t take more than a quick look at the current state of things to see this as, plain and simply, wrong. I suppose there is a possibility that we were put on this earth to use up all its resources and ultimately self-destruct, but I’d like to think there might be a bit more to it than that, what with all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth it will involve.

It was time to check out some disorganised religion. According to the website for the Irish Druids School, every full moon there is a Druidic ceremony on the top of the Hill of Tara ‘around eight-ish”. It was actually closer to nine-ish by the time six blanket-clad druids formed a circle under the clear October night sky. Con Connor, a lavishly bearded Arch Druid and part-time plumber, conducted the ceremony with an appealing mix of good humour and political invective. After his reassurances that taking part wouldn’t instantly turn us into druids, we invoked the spirits of the earth, sky, moon, stars, our ancestors and several other entities with rites that mixed elements from Celtic mythology, Reiki, and a bewildering number of alternative traditions. Con sent the resulting healing energy towards Dáil Éireann, in the hope it will help them become enlightened enough to prevent the destruction to the sacred site due to be caused by the proposed M3 double toll-road. Spare energy was used to invoke a herd of spirit horses to gallop through the walls of a nearby Opus Dei Centre (“Those fascists” muttered Con) and the last of it went on a heartfelt plea to re-open the disused Navan railway line.

As religious services go it was refreshingly different, not least because of the biting Southerly wind that threatened to tip me into hypothermia as the night wore on. The cosy interior of a church, any church, had rarely seemed so inviting. The ceremony eventually ended, and as I rushed back to the car I became quite alarmed - not so much by my lack of spiritual feelings as by the lack of any feeling in my toes. In the car, I reflected that the ceremony had made just as much sense as any of the others I’d attended. It was basically about community, joining with other like-minded people to share a sense of belonging and shared values in a spirit of goodwill. It doesn’t matter where you find it, be it in a church, a therapy group or an Aikido club – it’s a requisite part of living a fulfilled life. And this sense of community is probably the best chance we have of dealing with the challenges we face, although it would probably also help to appoint a practicing Druid as Minister for the Environment.

REVEREND HORGAN

I needed more guidance on my spiritual journey so turned, as so many have before me, to the All- Seeing, the All-Knowing, the Gigantic Everything; the Internet. The first useful site I found was that of the Irish Sceptics Society, and the second was God: Frequently Asked Questions (which has only one question - Q: Is there a God? A: No.) The third site was even more fun, and only a few hours later I was ordained (once I’d made sure it didn’t involve a vow of chastity) as the Reverend Conor Horgan, a minister of The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic (with the legal authority to officiate at agnostic and secular ceremonies in several U.S. States, though unfortunately not yet in Ireland). Our creed is very simple: Nesciamus, non attingamus, or in other words, We don't know, and we don't care. Then out of the blue a friend sent me a link to the term ‘Horganism’. This is defined by the American science writer John Horgan as ‘a healthy scepticism toward faith of any kind, scientific, political, philosophical or spiritual’. Was this just an amazing co-incidence? Well, what else could it possibly be?

Still waiting for my first wedding booking

The experiment was an enlightening one, and actually made me a more convinced atheist. But I didn’t overcome my genetic conditioning – if pushed, I’ll admit I’m as irrational and superstitious as the next person. I just try to restrict my superstitions to things like not walking under ladders, especially any supporting anyone big or clumsy. The exercise also helped me realize that, although my lack of faith does not have a harmful effect on anyone else, the same can’t be said for the plethora of religions on offer. Even the most devout among us must face the reality that man isn’t the centre of a world filled with limitless bounty for him to use without consequences –it just doesn’t add up. What definitely does go up are the sea levels, so all I can do is hope that, as George Michael sang, “before this river becomes an ocean…we’ll re-consider our foolish notions”.

Text and photographs for The Irish Times Magazine.

Cuba is full of surprises. On my first morning in a Havana casa particular (room in a private home), the young woman who brought breakfast invited me to accompany her into work.

Her name was Yvette, and as far as I could understand her job was playing oboe in some kind of band. She flagged down a pre-1959, fixed route taxi collectivo and 50 cents brought us to the centre of Vedado, the newest part of Havana.

We hopped out beside the Cuba Libre hotel, opened as a Hilton in 1959 then commandeered a few months later by Fidel as his command centre during the revolution.

Around the corner was Yvette’s job, and my next two hours were spent in a crammed rehearsal room thrilling to the glorious noise of the 60-piece Cuban State Television Orchestra, with the highlight of their extensive repertoire being a swinging salsa version of the Strauss classic El Danubio Azul.

Afterwards I made my way along 17th Street, admiring the succession of majestic, crumbling Deco houses, each more beautiful than the last. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it will be before most of them are snapped up by pimply tech millionaires from Palo Alto, now that Cuba has been opened up for tourism from the US*.

There certainly were a large number of tourists from el Norte around, and when I went to hear some world-class jazz in legendary club La Zorra y el Cuervo (The Fox and the Crow) it was hard to ignore the bunch of well-oiled retirees from the Midwest clapping along out of time. They did settle down after a while, as I imagine Cuba will once it gets over the shock of a sudden influx of Americans and their money.

The signs are good – there is a great sense of civic pride in Havana, and the Office of the City Historian, a huge state department of architects and planners tasked with renovating the many near-derelict buildings, makes sure that each part of the city remains properly mixed-use rather than turning it into some kind of Cuban theme park.

Laps of the square

This means that the local equivalent of Grafton Street has a maternity hospital (on publicly-owned land, naturally) and the Old Town’s Plaza Vieja hosts a primary school, where the pupil’s gym class has them running in between the tourists as they do laps of the square.

I did see another side to the story when I visited Harris Brothers, reputedly the best supermarket in the city. They had limited stock on offer; not much more than bottled water, rum, shampoo and jars of mayonnaise on otherwise empty shelves. Directly opposite, beside an abandoned van with no wheels, workmen were putting the finishing touches on a Mont Blanc fountain pen shop.

The plan was to spend a few days in Havana then strike out for the country, but I quickly discovered that despite the relaxed pace of life, leaving things to the last minute doesn’t really work in Cuba – there were no bus tickets to be had, and I didn’t particularly feel like spending six hours in the back of a truck. Accommodation was the same – figuring that all the casas in the guidebook would be well booked out I tried Airbnb, only to discover it doesn’t take bookings from inside Cuba. Thankfully, the landlady of one of the booked-out casas was happy to figure out what I was trying to say in broken Spanish and found me an alternative.

Havana is made up of three distinct cities, more than interesting enough for a 10- day trip. I started in well-to-do Vedado to the west, before moving to the Old Town in the east, all the while exploring Centro in the middle.

Centro is the barrio, the roughest part of Havana – a dimly lit, forbidding looking place with lean youths on bikes flitting through the shadows and wheezing Russian Ladas carefully negotiating gaping crevasses in the street. This was another surprise – in any other country no tourist would dream of venturing into this part of town, especially after dark. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt so safe, even with a camera.

Cubans are so friendly and polite that even the hustlers are easy to deal with – I was regularly asked if I wanted a chica, cigarro, internet card or all three, and when I demurred I’d get a big smile and best wishes for the rest of my evening.

As time passed I was glad that my very basic level of Spanish started to improve – one night while photographing a gang of youths in Centro, one of them said “Tu no entiendes Español, coño?” (You don’t understand Spanish, coño?) and I was able to give him a big smile and reply in Spanish “I understand ‘coño’.” His friends thought it was hilarious. If you don’t understand the word “coño”, a quick viewing of Scarface or any episode of Narcos will put you right.

Surprises around every corner makes the city a photographer’s paradise - it’s not just the vivid colours and amazing light but all of the events, the richness of life being lived in full view. Trying to capture everything from a girl emerging from a cloud of white smoke to a policewoman in mid-argument, my camera rarely left my hand.

There’s so much to see on the streets, so many pictures to take, that the whole time I was there I only made it to two museums – the first was the Museum of Chocolate, which happily turned out to be just a great chocolate shop with a few glass cases of implements.

Bullet holes

The second was the Museo de Revolucion, which I found unexpectedly moving. From the bullet holes in the marble staircase left when the rebels stormed the building to the armour-plated tractors in the courtyard, the museum told the story of a small bunch of young men (and Raúl Castro, looking about 15 in the pictures from the time) who set out on a near-certain fight to the death and to their surprise ended up liberating the country. Pride of place goes to the yacht that carried them from Mexico, the Granma, now housed inside a giant glass box, making it look like some kind of revolutionary Damian Hirst installation.

Cuba is pricier than I expected: while accommodation is cheap, getting around does add up (after a few days I was politely informed by an American that the taxi collectivos are reserved for Cuban citizens). I tried one of the bright yellow, egg-shaped tuk-tuks, but one trip was enough to convince me that walking and official taxis were a far better option. As it zipped between the hulking 1950s cars at terrifying speed I took little comfort from the fact that at least the helmeted driver might survive the spectacular crash that was surely around the next corner – there wasn’t much hope for his bare-headed passenger.

I had also been warned to lower my expectations of the food, and with good reason; if you want to eat anything much better than a Cuban pressed sandwich (ham, Swiss cheese, roast pork, pickles and salami) you’ll pay a fair bit for it – such as the small plate of lobster risotto I treated myself to at the rooftop bar of legendary restaurant La Guarida, a beacon of fine dining in the middle of Centro.

Splurging like this meant I needed to use ATMs more often than I’d expected, and I quickly discovered they had their own, particularly Cuban temperament. “La máquina está loca,” grumbled an old woman in the queue beside me, encouraging me to keep trying – it worked on the fifth attempt.

Fever dream

Another price to be paid in Cuba is an inevitable bout of food poisoning. Whatever it was that didn’t agree with me put me in bed for an uninterrupted 18-hour fever dream, which actually wasn’t all that unpleasant. Coming to the following morning, I looked up and saw I hadn’t hallucinated it – there really was an ace of hearts stuck to the ceiling above the bed. The landlady explained that this was because I was staying in the habitación matrimonial or bridal suite.

Aside from the heat, the light, and the colours, the best part of the entire trip was experiencing the openness and incredible spirit of the Cuban people. I hope nothing will take it away, and that I can get back there soon to experience even more of it.

*Since this article was published, travel to Cuba has been prohibited again for US citizens, with certain exceptions. Non-US citizens who have recently travelled to Cuba will also need a visa to enter the US, rather than an ESTA visa waiver.

© 2025 Conor Horgan. All rights reserved.

We sped towards the South Wall at 4 a.m. The streets were empty but we were late and starting to feel a little anxious that both of us might not get in. I'd registered a week ago, but they'd closed the list before K had arrived from Rome and it was such a balmy night that every amateur nudist in Dublin was probably there ahead of us. The sea of cars in the temporary car park didn't reassure us much.

We managed to get on the last bus taking participants from the carpark to the bottom of the pier. I saw two people I knew on it and couldn't help thinking that on average, two people by maybe 60 buses equalled around 120 people that I'd know there. Even though K has lived in Dublin, she wouldn't know half as many people, and now she had the somewhat alarming prospect of being introduced to some of my 120 while completely nude.

The South Wall

A spectacular sunrise was brewing over Sutton, with rich oranges and pinks that looked almost Californian. There were already more than two thousand people on the South Wall, all clutching transparent plastic bags for their clothes. We threaded our way towards the front, and found a Portaloo for a landmark to help us find our stuff later. There was nothing much to do for the first half an hour, other than trying to decipher the instructions that came from what sounded like an over-excited American station announcer, via Tannoy horns hidden in the rocks. This was the artist Spencer Tunick , broadcasting from the top of a cherry picker lift. His directions were a little unclear at times."You may be strong", he bellowed, "but the person next to you may be weak - help them out". What could this mean? Would we be propping each other up?

Then we saw a Mexican wave of nudity coming towards us, starting at the lighthouse end. Getting naked was remarkably easy, with no self-consciousness at all and a great feeling of freedom. Everyone was cheerful, the barriers were down, and to be in the middle of this mass of people having such positive feelings was an unexpectedly profound experience. Jokes started being cracked and laughter rippled through different sections of the crowd. We shuffled along the pier, leaving the cherry-picker behind and hopefully beyond the distance where we could be recognised in the photographs, especially reassuring for those of us with distinguishing characteristics when naked (just to be clear, I'm talking about beards here). The Evening Herald's front-page piece about Tunic’s previous event in Cork had already sprung to mind, with its picture of a hundred nude bodies and the the headline "See Anyone You Know?".

As we found our place there was much milling about, deliberate eye contact and an increasing amount of shivering. The early promise of a good morning had disappeared with the sun and the sea wind was beginning to make its presence felt. Nothing happened for a while, other than the occasional opportunity to wave, shout and moon at passing container ships. The few passengers they carried were all lorry drivers, and we could clearly hear the wolf-whistles across the water. At this stage the laughter was also helping to keep hypothermia at bay, and I did my best to keep K warm while trying to ignore the uncontrollable shivering in my right thigh.

Once we started, the pictures didn't take long - there were three different poses, each punctuated by Spencer's pleas - "Heads to the sky - not hands, heads! ", "Please stop kicking that guy’s butt", and "Knees to the front, I'm begging you". Someone near us yelled, “Beg harder!” . For the last one we curled up in a foetal position, facing the person in front. The view wasn't great, I have to say, and it didn't improve much when the large male arse in my direct line of sight started to jiggle with laughter after another nearby wag finished off Spencer's countdown to the photograph with "..and clench!"

Then, mercifully, it was over, and we headed back down the pier to find our clothes. Before we got there we passed the camera position and I recognised one of the documenting photographers up on the crane. I couldn't resist the urge to give him a big hello and he spun around, shouting "Gotcha!" as he took a picture of me with a huge grin and K's face buried into my shoulder.

We were completely comfortable being nude but the cold was another thing altogether. I've never experienced such raw pleasure from the simple act of putting on clothes. Rain started to pelt down as we walked back towards the bus, and we met neighbours, former assistants and many others I knew, including the bus driver. Some of the people who'd been near us for the photographs walked by, and we both noticed that everyone seemed much more open and just somehow nicer when they were naked.

We were home by 7, getting stuck in to hot chocolate and porridge and buzzing with the sense of achievement. It was a wonderful thing to be part of.

Kelly Campbell in One Hundred Mornings

Conor Horgan on how he learned to jump into the middle of the script when writing One Hundred Mornings

I'd wanted to write a drama about an impending breakdown of society for quite a while – well, actually, ever since I'd started reading about the impending breakdown of society. My first attempt was called 'Greenland', and concerned a London adman who discovers something untoward while working on a major oil company account, which propels him out the doors of the agency and over to the other side. Unfortunately, the script soon descended into sub-Bourne shenanigans, with stony-faced men in black SUVs and helicopters pursuing our hero as he attempts to tell the world what lies ahead. It wasn't great, to be perfectly frank.

One unfunded submission to the Film Board later, I landed in the Catalyst project, a scheme which enabled three teams of filmmakers to shoot their first feature on an absolutely tiny budget. It was an inspiring process, and the moment I remember most clearly during the workshops was a production manager calmly telling us that if we went over budget, we couldn't have this, that, or indeed the other. As I listened to the growing list of what the films would have to do without, something occurred to me – this is how I can define the world of a film, by its absences. Authenticity could come from taking things out rather than by adding them. My micro-budget film about two mis-matched couples hiding out in a holiday home, trying to avoid the worst of a societal breakdown, was a go.

Deadline

I had an idea I was excited by, I had a producer who wanted to read what I came up with, and I had probably the most useful thing any writer can have – a deadline. So much of writing seems to be about surfing the deadline – start too early and there's a lack of urgency about the proceedings, start too late and panic takes over, leaving you forever teetering on the back foot.

Alex Reid, Ciaran McMenamin, Rory Keenan and Kelly Campbell in One Hundred Mornings.

Setbacks

It took four and a half months to write the first draft. There were a few initial setbacks, such as realising after writing the first 27 pages that page 28, which was after the second of the two couples arrived in the house, was actually page 1. I hit a few more speed bumps along the way, and a writer friend gave me some great advice by suggesting that I didn't necessarily have to write the script in order. I immediately jumped into the middle of the script and wrote one of the key scenes that the entire film revolved around, then darted to the finish to write what would turn out to be the first of several versions of the end before hopping backwards to start filling in the gaps. This gave me an episodic story that I could re-order as needed, and in the pell-mell rush towards the finish line I didn't have enough time to worry if I was making it too personal – I just put it all in.

I wrote in the mornings, mainly, until I couldn't write any more. After a while the real world changed from being a distraction to something else – it took on a ghostly sheen as I became smitten with the far more interesting, more exciting world of the film. It's a most pleasing state to be in, and if I could choose one super power it would be to be able to enter that other world at will.

The last elements I put in were a couple of jokes – well, not so much jokes as a few moments of paper-dry wit, which both suited the characters and made the tragic elements feel even sadder.

Who can you trust when the world is falling apart? Ciaran McMenamin and Alex Reid in One Hundred Mornings.

Moment of truth

As the cast and crew assembled for the first table read in the week before the shoot, I knew the moment of truth was approaching. Would the dialogue sound authentic? Would there be enough exposition? Would the damn thing work, or was I looking at feverish rewrites as we headed into the shoot? As that pivotal scene came closer, I shifted uneasily in my chair. Then, when Alex Reid said the first few lines, clearly and simply, I felt something. Even though everyone there was familiar with the script, they were all leaning forward, eager to see what would happen next. It was a great moment, and I knew the writer part of me had done his job, and now I could hand my baby over to the director (also me), hoping that he wouldn't mess it up. I was finished. Job done.

Of course, you're never really finished. There were many late night discussions during the shoot between myself and Katie Holly, the film's producer. We huddled over a kitchen table in our B&B, figuring out which scenes needed to be combined with other ones, and which could be binned completely. Every time I rehearsed a scene, I kept an ear out for lines of extraneous dialogue, and often dropped them completely. Even more came out during the edit, and I think I didn’t really finished writing the film until we hit picture lock. Even after that there were more lines of ADR [Additional Dialogue Recording] to write.

One Hundred Mornings isn't the first feature script I've written, but it is the first one that really felt like a film when I was writing it. It's a good feeling, and one I look forward to having again.

Postscripts:

The screenplay for One Hundred Mornings won Best Feature Script at the 2011 Irish Writer’s Guild Awards.

The film received a New York Times Critic’s Pick review

The film’s Director of Photography, Suzie Lavelle, went on to win the IFTA for best cinematography and is currently in the news for doing amazing work shooting episodes of Severance and the most recent Bridget Jones film. Whenever I’m asked what it’s like working with Suzie, I say she’s the best kind of collaborator you could hope to have on set - she’s the perfect combination of a fine artist and a Regimental Sergeant Major.

The exhibition of Film Ireland cover art continues in Flux Studios, Dublin.

One Hundred Mornings can be streamed on Prime Video.

The trailer for One Hundred Mornings

Portrait of Conor Horgan by Nicky Lewis

I never really wanted to have a job. Not a proper one, anyway. As a result, I’ve spent the majority of what might be called a career as a member of the social class known as the Precariat. This has involved some unexpected shifts in direction, a couple of dead ends, a lot of freedom and no small amount of insecurity. So when I think about the coming age of AI, which appears to herald the end of most jobs, I cross my fingers and hope I’ll be able to adapt, yet again.

Considering everything I’ve already done for work I see a potted, chequered, and inconsistent career, with all the swings and even more roundabouts. I blame Transition Year. It was so much fun it ended any academic ambitions I might have had—we got to put on plays, publish newspapers, and even make a film. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in life but hoped it might be something like that, and ideally something that didn’t need me to pass the Leaving Cert.

It’s quite possible that by pursuing different professions, with varying degrees of failure and success, I’ve been subconsciously trying to turn my life into one long Transition Year. Seeing this pattern of constantly adding new strings to my bow made an old friend start referring to me as a Polymoth. At first, I thought this was just an endearingly daffy Spoonerism, then I realised she had a point—I do have a tendency to fly heedlessly towards whatever shiny new thing is glinting in the distance. This is perhaps best illustrated by a conversation I had with a film producer friend, just after I’d made my first short film. “I spent my twenties as a fashion photographer, and my thirties directing ads,” I told her, “and now I’m going to spend my forties making films!” “Great,” she replied, “and you can spend your fifties trying to buy your house back.”

This was the beginning of a great love story with photography that has continued to this day, despite AI’s current attempts to muscle in on my turf.

Let’s start at the beginning—after leaving school early to be a teenage punk in London, I landed on my feet and was soon the head (and only) waiter of a Knightsbridge greasy spoon café. We had a varied clientele, lots of builders, a couple of dancers from the Royal Ballet, and two wonderfully polite Japanese businessmen who would regularly come in for the full English fry, which they seemed to find particularly exotic. They didn’t have a word of English between them and told me via sign language, bowing and smiling, that they would have everything. One memorable day in the middle of the lunchtime rush I completely misjudged my velocity as I hurtled down the stairs towards them, barely balancing their heavily laden plates. The plates hit the table and the laws of physics dictated that the food kept traveling, a veritable tsunami of burgers, beans, eggs, and chips sliding over the edge and onto their impeccably dressed laps. They kept nodding and bowing throughout.

It seems I was never going to be suited to a career in hospitality, but working in the café did give me two things that would prove very useful later on. The first was the waiter’s skill of observing everything going on around me, which helped a lot when I later became a photographer. The second was a camera, brought in by a pretty shady character on a Friday afternoon just after I’d been paid. One quick cash transaction later, I was the proud owner of a shiny new Pentax of dubious provenance. This was the beginning of a great love story with photography that has continued to this day, despite AI’s current attempts to muscle in on my turf.

A while later, I moved to Germany, where I had a brief stint as a semi-pro langefinger (a great German term for shoplifter). I can still see myself slinking out of the KaDeWe department store into the hot Berlin sun, sweating conspicuously under a borrowed winter coat that reached down to my ankles and made strange clinking noises from the various bottles I’d hidden deep in its pockets. Thankfully, I wasn’t caught. A little later, I found a different source of income—selling a litre of my blood for 40 deutschmarks, which kept me going for quite a while.

No doubt AI is already conducting job interviews, and I’m glad that a tangible benefit of being an upstanding member of the Precariat is I’ve been subjected to very few of them.

I then got a gig driving an eccentric geophysics professor around the country in a VW van, even though I’d never driven anything that big before and my driving license was only a month old—I could barely drive on the left, let alone the right. The first clue that I might not be a consummate professional came when I picked up the van from a hire place, drove it around the corner and straight into the back of a large BMW that had stopped suddenly at the lights. After I’d convinced the police that the odd-looking document I was waving at them was in fact a driving license (all the Irish writing and the absence of a photograph had confused them), I drove very carefully back to pick up another van. Luckily, the rest of the job went fine, until later that year when a summons arrived at my squat for an upcoming court case to settle the accident. I’d already booked my bus and ferry tickets home, so didn’t bother going and thought no more about it. That is, until I suddenly remembered the whole farrago with horror while queuing for passport control in Frankfurt in the mid-2000s, the first time I’d been back to Germany since going on the lam. Thankfully, they didn’t have AI facial recognition yet, so I wasn’t greeted with a “Ah, Herr Horgan, ve heff bin expecting you” before being marched off to a windowless room for an uncomfortable interview.

No doubt AI is already conducting job interviews, and I’m glad that a tangible benefit of being an upstanding member of the Precariat is I’ve been subjected to very few of them. One exception was a couple of years ago when I was living in Paris—paying work was particularly scarce, so I decided it might be wise to try getting a regular income. A friend put in a good word, and off I went for my first job interview since I was a teenager.

I tried to maintain an open mind about the interview, which was for a part-time film lecturer job in Europe’s biggest private film school, just beside Versailles. The first inkling that I possibly wasn’t a great fit was when the head of the school asked me what I’d like to teach the pupils beyond the syllabus. “That’s easy,” I replied, “I’ll teach them how to deal with failure”. This is a vital skill that’s rarely referred to in education, especially in the arts. I could see from his glowering Gallic expression that this had not gone over at all well, and as far as he was concerned every one of his students was a mini-Spielberg in the making. I must have then said something right as he started to smile and told me that even though I was being interviewed for a part-time position, if things went well, it could very easily become a full-time one. It was my face’s turn to fall, with his quickly following suit. We silently agreed that this gig was not for me and I returned to Paris, thinking non, je ne regrette rien.

But what do I regret? Following my dreams. Well, not all of them - some of the dreams I had were absolutely ludicrous, and enough of them have came true by now that I can say I’ve both been a disappointment to myself and exceeded my wildest expectations - no mean feat. However, I do still regret one particular dream—or to be more specific, one particular screenplay that I wrote and obsessively rewrote for almost a decade. In hindsight, it wasn’t the slam-dunk introduction to the Hollywood money I’d hoped it to be, so when I eventually gave it to the producers I was pleasantly surprised when they got in touch after only three weeks (in the film world, this is equivalent to the phone ringing back before you’ve even put it down). So much of working in film is waiting for someone to read the thing, deciding if they want to be in the thing or invest in the thing. The producers were calling to let me know they loved the thing, and the only problem was that it was too big (meaning expensive) for me to direct. This meant it would need to be given to a more bankable director, and that my only compensation for the years of toil would be an eye-wateringly large cheque. I was, quite frankly, okay with this.

Unfortunately, the project was not handled well and fell at the final hurdle before it could secure production funding. I had been used to my screenplays either curling up and dying on their first exposure to daylight or going on to actually get made, so this was an entirely new and not very pleasant experience. I’d already followed this dream for far too long, and knew if I wanted to keep following it, there was only one real option: sell my house and rent a converted garage in an unfashionable part of LA to spend the next five years pushing the project uphill - and then, and only if I was very lucky, end up with not enough money to make it properly. My producer friend was right. I let it go.

While not necessarily done with making films, at least the arty no-budget kind, I was definitely done with the film business. Again, no regrets, especially as I’m keenly aware that before long, AI will be able to churn out entire films—truly awful films, it must be said, but there does seem to be a market judging by how many are already being made. So I had one less thing to worry about, and could continue my career trajectory of getting better and better at things that paid less and less.

WILL AI STEAL HIS JOB? When Conor asked AI to create an image of Irish drag queen Panti Bliss "in the style of photographer Conor Horgan", this is what he got.

If there weren’t going to be any solutions to potential unemployment from past experiences, maybe I should consider what underused assets I have. The first one to spring to mind was that much like Leonard Cohen, I was born with the gift of a golden voice. A remarkably deep baritone, as it happens, which has done me well on various film sets and photo shoots. I was once so taken by what had just happened in front of the camera that I fell into a kind of silent rapture. One of the producers had to hiss furiously at me, “You only have two things you need to say on set, now for God’s sake say the second one!” before I came to my senses and shouted “CUT!”

The first time I’d hoped my voice could lead to a career was in my late teens when two school friends and I formed a band. I was the ‘singer’, and it was quickly apparent that while the speaking voice was good, it wasn’t remotely musical–– I doubt even AI Autotune could have helped. We called ourselves The Introverts, very appropriate for a group that never went further than the rehearsal room, and our only legacy was a horribly embarrassing cassette tape that I hid deep in a drawer. Much later, I discovered my kid sister used to play it to her friends for cheap laughs when I wasn’t around.

Just after the banking crisis, I was asked to do a paid demo for a TV ad voice-over. The terribly suave ad director from London handed me the ad copy, directing me to sound as much like Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood as possible. The text had no poetry to it, didn’t scan, and ended on an appalling tag line, but nevertheless I gave it a lash. A week later, I was greatly relieved to hear that they were “going in another direction.” I never found out what the full fee was, but I doubt it could have been enough to persuade me to have my distinctive tones going out over the airwaves on behalf of one of our most insolvent banks, urging the Irish public to “Be Brave.”

There’s one other use for my voice I’ve yet to try, and now that AI can easily clone them it might be worthwhile seeing if mine can be licensed. A few years ago, a friend and I were chatting as we waited for a ferry from the Aran Islands. A tall, striking woman, who I later found out was the poet Rita Ann Higgins, marched over to us. Without any niceties or introductions whatsoever, she boomed “You have a fabulous voice!”. I murmured my thanks, and she continued “You should do phone sex—for money!”

AI now looms ever larger on the horizon, and my prospects for gainful employment remain…uncertain. Meaning that really, nothing much has changed, and at least I do know AI will have no real impact on the most important parts of my life. It’s incredibly fulfilling to make things by hand; a good dinner, the marks made with a pen on a page that became this article, and printed photographs that will be hung on walls rather than displayed for a few seconds on a screen. The machine might be able to output computer-generated, photo-realistic illustrations, but it can’t put on a play. With this in mind I’m now writing my first-ever one-act play as part of the dlr Lexicon playwriting course, which will receive a public outing in their theatre this June—yikes!

If you’re also worried about the irresistible rise of AI, take heart by creating whatever you can with your hands and even discover the joy of repairing something you might have otherwise thrown away. Not least because, if AI does take over the world and eat all the electricity, someday you may have to.

Despite the sleepless nights and unpaid bills, I’ll keep up my membership of the Precariat; something always turns up, usually at the last possible moment. And if someday it doesn’t, I’ll take comfort in an exchange I once had with the great writer Maeve Binchy, who had worked alongside my father at the Irish Times. Many years later I was sent to photograph her for the Telegraph Magazine, and she remembered meeting me as an eight-year-old and asking that dreadful question which adults insist on asking of children: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Apparently I replied, “a beach bum”. Fingers crossed, I’ll get there yet.

Annaghmakerrig Lake

Having grown up on stories of bands getting it together in the country, I was really looking forward to a six-week stay in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, an artists’ retreat in Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan. But when I arrived, I was falling apart. I was going up to write the final draft of a film script I’d been working on for a few years, which was, at long last, just about to go into production. All well and good, until I opened my front door the day before I left and saw the ‘We have to talk’ look on my producer’s face. The problem was a simple one; the project was over. Scuppered. Dead.

When I started working in the film business I was advised that in order to remain relatively sane it helps to be as Zen-like as possible, avoiding too much attachment to any project. Sound advice, but unfortunately I don’t really work like that. There were many long, dark nights at the beginning of my stay in Annaghmakerrig, as I lay awake wondering where things had all gone wrong, and why I’d ever deluded myself into thinking I could make films in the first place. It felt, just a little, like the end of the world.

I did what I could; I read, I walked and I cooked. Then walked, read and cooked some more. As Christmas approached, everyone else left the retreat, and the main house closed until the New Year. It was very quiet – just me, and my recently expanded collection of demons. At least I was staying in one of the self-catering apartments rather than alone in the Big House, so I only had one bed to look under at night.

After a while, being among the lakes and forests began to calm me down. I found that I could survive perfectly well without most of the comforts of civilization, and hardly missed television or balsamic vinaigrette at all. I did, however, have fairly severe withdrawal symptoms from the activity that writers call ‘research,’ more accurately known as ‘mindlessly surfing the web.’ I assured myself that I’d be able to get much more work done without it, but unfortunately, after only a few short hours twiddling with my phone’s settings, I somehow managed to get my laptop online. The transfer rate was achingly slow and it took ages to download each message, often as not another offer of cut-price Viagra. How useful, I muttered to myself, gazing out the window at snow-dusted fields bereft of even the odd sheep. Anyway, by this stage I’d heard that couples are barred from staying in the house; other residents found their – ah – creative collaborations a little distracting, especially late at night. I’d also heard another reason why the ban was so rigorously enforced; many years ago an artist had a casually indiscreet affair with another resident, which didn’t bother anyone much until he had the gall to invite a guest to Sunday lunch, and they all had to make polite conversation with his unsuspecting wife.

As the New Year approached, my monastic existence started to change. The hum of creativity began as the staff returned – the cooking in Annamaghkerrig is exceptional, and the head gardener moonlights as a TV current affairs director. Or maybe it’s the other way around, I couldn’t tell. As the big house began to fill up, I sneaked in to have a look at the booking sheets in the kitchen. Luckily no recent ex-girlfriends, bitter rivals or other enemies were due to turn up.

Raphaella at work in the library

Among the first to arrive was a passionate ex-punk, who would sometimes dispose of her paintings that she didn’t like by making a bonfire of them. She was followed by an electronics lecturer writing his second novel, two beautiful French translators and a well-known theatre director who could only work from midnight till dawn. Then the house was invaded by muses, as a composer from Cork brought three young female singers whose boundless energy, irrepressible charm and apparently hollow legs conquered all around them. They were billeted next door, and held several late night singing sessions, notable more for the enthusiasm than ability of some of the participants. During one of these parties the lecturer suggested I try Wandering Star, adding helpfully that it was “always a good choice for non-singers.” Another night I showed the girls a short film I’d made, some pictures I’d taken and a few other things I’d worked on. “Well now,” said one of them, her voice dripping with East Cork attitude, “aren’t you just a bag a’ talent?” From then on, any arrivals to the house who enjoyed banging on about their accomplishments would soon find themselves being asked if they were, indeed, just a bag a’ talent.

Residents quickly become institutionalised, and there are few reasons to leave. We made a brief excursion to see a movie at the Monaghan Omniplex, which became a typically small town cinema experience when halfway through the film ran out to a white screen and a teenager had to be dispatched to wake up the projectionist. It was a novelty being out in the world, but it was even better seeing Annaghmakerrig’s white gates again, looming out of the dark woods. It felt like coming home.

There is a sense of privilege in being able to work at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre; to meet other ‘like persons’ and even just to stay in such a magnificent place. Some people think that artists are fundamentally monsters, driven by a selfishly egotistical desire to create. They’re probably right, but one of the things that makes Annaghmakerrig so special is that somehow, everyone there is at their best. There’s a deep, subtle and irresistible sense of goodwill. It’s the kind of place where lecturers can write novels, single mothers can paint and arts administrators can write poetry. Or, indeed, where photographers can write screenplays. It’s been said that the measure of a society is in how it treats its prisoners and old people, and it’s not unreasonable to add artists to that list. Whilst far from ideal, Ireland does at least have Aosdána and the artist’s exemption from income tax – although that benefit was under threat in the run-up to last year’s Budget. There were many efforts made to support its retention, including a letter-writing campaign by members of the Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild. Around that time I bumped into a writer friend, and after we’d passed a few pleasant moments complaining bitterly about how underappreciated we were, the conversation moved on to the letters. “I tell you what,” he said in his broad Dublin accent, “I’m going to write to the Minister and let him know that if he takes away my tax break, I’ll just have to go back to selling drugs.”

It seems to have worked.

Forest Walk, Annaghmakerrig

I felt a little sad leaving the centre, but knew I’d be back before long. I was also thrilled – quietly thrilled – with the new screenplay I’d written, all about the end of civilization. Considering how I’d felt five weeks earlier, it seemed an appropriate subject. Hopefully the film will be showing at an Omniplex near you soon, or at least sometime before the actual end of civilisation.

As well as the work, I’ll treasure the memory of three young women singing, flirting and carousing, and the roars of abuse from the theatre director as I won an intensely competitive game of Trivial Pursuit. What I’ll value most is how Annaghmakerrig helped me to slow down, long enough to let inspiration catch up with me.

Post-script: the trailer for the film I wrote in Annaghmakerrig.

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A Rude Awakening

Léche-Vitrines

It Takes A Man to Cry

One of my favourite cartoons, by Robert Weber for the New Yorker. I was thrilled that the magazine used it to illustrate the article.

It all started when a floppy-haired, raffishly charming man in an expensive suit dropped into my photography studio. Apparently he’d noticed a pop video I’d directed, and he wanted to put forward a modest proposal. “If you can direct TV commercials,’ he said “I think we might be able to make obscene amounts of money.’ The bluntness was a little off-putting, but he certainly had my undivided attention.

There were a few obstacles, not least among them that I didn’t have a clue how to direct TV commercials. But as I’d wanted to be a film director since before I even really knew what it was a film director did, this was a golden opportunity. It helped that some of my directing heroes, like Scorsese and Lynch, often made commercials. Even renowned Marxist Ken Loach has been known to take the soup on occasion. When I suggested that I might make a few ads while also working on some worthier projects, my would-be producer’s face fell. It seemed that this was having notions, and people in ad agencies didn’t appreciate directors with notions, and indeed very often chose not to give them obscene amounts of money to make ads. Ah, there was that phrase again – it was beginning to sound oddly compelling. Anyway, he seemed like a decent enough skin, it was a pretty simple deal – and after all, what did I have to lose?

Next up was a crash course in directing, which consisted of a few hours chatting with an editor followed by a speed read of David Mamets' On Directing Film. A very good book, though it omits one of Mamet’s best adages; “Film is a collaborative medium - now bend over”. I’m not sure I would have taken much notice. The next hurdle was the Union. It took six attempts to get my application approved by the directors’ section, a cartel of aging barflies who at that time had a lock on the production of all TV commercials in Ireland. Their resistance to new blood backfired splendidly; by the time I got in every agency in town had heard of my difficulties and thought that, if it was so important to keep me out, I must be talented. So began a career that would encompass beer commercials, National Lottery ads, more beer commercials and a particularly cheesy pitch for washing powder before ending in ignominy several years later at 3 a.m. in the Presidential Suite of a Nairobi hotel.

One of the first things I discovered was that whenever I told people I made TV commercials, they would invariably say the following three things, though not necessarily in this order; 1.) There’s a lot of money in advertising, isn’t there? 2.) I always think the ads are much better than the programs these days, and 3.) Do you come up with the ideas?

(The appropriate responses are 3.) No. 2.) Well, we do our best, and 1.) Mmm.)

Underlying all of this would often be an involuntary flicker of distaste and the unspoken sentiment - you jammy bastard, how do you manage to get paid so much to do that? To my friends I explained that I did the pre-production, filming and editing for free –what I got paid the big money for was this; I would be invited into an ad agency boardroom, where I would sit facing several men, each paid the price of a small suburban house every year. At least one of them would sport a comedy tie, often depicting a cartoon character, worn to show his uniquely unorthodox creativity. They would be hunched forward over the acre of blond wood that was the boardroom table and ask me earnestly to explain just how, exactly, did I intend to have the baked beans dance across the plate. In these circumstances my fee was completely justified, mainly by my ability to keep a straight face. Another ex-commercials director recently told me of his final straw moment, when he was called in to pitch for the opportunity to do a simple packshot of some rashers and some goateed oik invited him to expand on his ‘vision’ for the ad. “My vision” he snarled “is that we put it on a table, point a camera at it and shoot the fucking thing!”.

As I progressed, I discovered some of my assets and liabilities as a director. Chief among the assets was my background as a photographer, as many ads aren’t much more than a succession of pretty pictures. One of my major drawbacks was that I wasn’t much given to grandiosity - if I had been a tantrum-throwing king baby I would have got a lot more work. The tradition of directorial grandstanding goes back even before the late, great Tiernan McBride, who once leaned out of a helicopter to order Paddy Hillary to get the hell out of his shot when the President wandered onto the deck of a ship McBride was filming for a Defence Forces commercial. A more recent addition to the gallery is John Moore, who worked as a gofer on an early commercial of mine before going on to greater things, such as directing the recent shot-for-shot remake of The Omen. I can say with certainty that the first time I heard him run through his repertoire of the muzzle sounds of various types of sub-machine-gun, I knew he was destined for greatness. I’m glad it proved to be the filmmaking kind of greatness, rather than the Mark Chapman kind.

One unexpected pleasure of directing commercials lay in witnessing the spectacularly co-dependent relationships between client and agency. In an effort to avoid causing even the slightest bit of offence, it was routine to remove competing manufacturers’ biscuits from the plate in boardrooms, or to pass around bottles of whatever ghastly fizz was being hawked to be sipped unenthusiastically during pre-production meetings. Even chance remarks by clients were treated as Holy Scripture. I’d somehow managed to persuade one agency that a commercial should be shot in Prague, but on the flight over the client was heard to mutter that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the ad looked “kind of American”. This triggered a frenzy of behind-the-scenes set-building, along with the ruthless excision from every shot of any traces of Gothic splendour. Then there was the beer client who chose, after a hard day’s shoot, to show his gratitude and ordered a round of drinks for the entire cast and crew which he then refused to pay for when no-one ordered any of his product. This customary pandering to clients was once taken to an almost surreal level by a producer working on a shoot for a new mobile phone network. She changed the prefix of all mobile phone numbers written on the crew list to that of the client’s network, with predictable results.

Image from National Lottery “Beneficiaries” TV Commercial

It wasn’t all about being underworked and overpaid; many of the shoots were very enjoyable. I’m still fond of a series of early black and white ads I made for the National Lottery because, of all the work I did, they are the least like ads. Other moments to treasure include the fan letter I received from a nun, singing the praises of a tea commercial I’d made in which a mother and daughter reminisce about the mother’s old boyfriend. I was glad for her sake that my correspondent had failed to see the subtextual implication; the mother telling the daughter that her real father was actually her uncle Jack. There were some wonderful moments shooting, such as the evening I spent at 2,000 feet above Dublin in a helicopter filming the twinkling city lights for an ESB commercial. Mind you, I still have no idea why the ESB advertise at all; it’s not as though we can use a personal wind turbine to boil the kettle, unfortunately. Looking back, my finest moment wasn’t any big shoot, or even winning any awards (which are now in a cardboard box in the attic), but the moment when I overruled an agency in the middle of a presentation to show the client my version of the ad. The client preferred that version and the agency team stormed out, vowing all kinds of vengeance for my treachery. It was a small but significant victory, and it signalled the beginning of the end of my career in commercials.

Recently, I asked a well-known copywriter, a cultured and intelligent man, what was the benefit of television commercials. After carefully considering the implications of the question he replied that they helped inform people of the choices they had and that, personally, he enjoyed the influence they had on other forms of popular culture. He brightened considerably when I asked him about the downside. That’s easy, he said cheerily, it’s all the terrible ads out there. Which, I have to say, was not really what I’d been getting at. Seeing the direction the conversation was taking, he went on to volunteer that he’d had to make the decision to leave his morals outside the door when he started in advertising, as he knew this was the nature of the business. He’d barely suffered a twinge since, other than the times he’d had to work on cigarette campaigns and the Fianna Fail account. Afterwards I realised that the reason advertising people get paid so much money is not necessarily because they’re any more talented or even more productive than anyone else. Rather than paying them for what they do, the money is to distract them from what they do.

In my time as a TV commercials director, I did many things. I had helped make obscene amounts of money for large businesses and my producer while making what could be described as at least an offensive amount of money for myself. Ken Loach may have worked for Campbell’s soup, but then he used his fees to help subsidise his political films. Even David Puttnam has gone on record as saying that despite all his successes in producing feature films, he still regrets his involvement with many of the ads he helped make in the early part of his career. Two years ago, as the shoot in the Nairobi hotel suite wound down, the ad agency were muttering about putting me forward for a new campaign for a skin-lightening cream. The effort of turning it down without letting them know how I felt about skin-lightening creams was just too much. I knew it was over. Maybe because I was starting to have notions, or that I finally realised that all that money came with a price. At the end, it was for a very simple reason – I knew what it was I was doing. As I walked out the door, I noticed a small huddled thing, weak and anaemic from lack of use. My morals. I gently picked them up, and kept on walking.

Click image to see the National Lottery commercials

Postscript March 2025: it was only after I gave into the notions and started directing real films that I realised how much the person on the set of a TV commercial shouting “Action” and “Cut” isn’t actually the director. If you define ‘director’ as the person who has the ultimate say in what goes in or is taken out of the work, that person was someone who often didn’t even visit the set, but would show up after the editing was almost done to demand the inclusion of a take with the actor jumping up and down - the client. It was my job to play the part of a director on set, while covering everybody’s asses by shooting multiple versions of everything to satisfy any of the client’s possible whims. This was brought home to me half-way through the first day of shooting my first short film , when the production manager let me know that as I’d already burned through so much film stock we didn’t have enough left for close-ups of both actors in the next scene. I had to decide which of the two to feature. That’s directing.

Post-postscript: I was tempted to include here my Grand Unified Theory of advertising, but have nobly resisted. The short version is this–once you realise that the underlying purpose of advertising is to create a lingering sense of inadequacy in the viewer, it becomes very difficult to keep making it.

Well, it does for some people.

Portrait of Conor Horgan by Karl Burke

I don't remember crying once during my teenage years, despite having enough to cry about. This was one symptom of a degree of emotional isolation that showed no signs of changing as I went into my twenties. Whatever was in there did come out in other ways, however, including on occasion some very self-destructive behaviour. By the time I reached 25, that behaviour had reached such a point that I needed to seek help, despite my long-held notion that there was something wrong in not being completely self-reliant, and that the worst thing I could ever do would be to show any vulnerability.

Things didn't all change overnight. The most insidious form of self-destructive behaviour, which was also the most difficult to let go of, was to keep listening to whatever it was in me that kept whispering that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I just wasn't good enough. I had to keep working on that, and one of the things that really helped was the realisation that I wasn't alone - if anything, that whisper seems to have become a lot louder for a lot more people since the advent of social media. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who doesn't suffer from it to some degree. I've also come to realise that the whisper won't ever leave me completely, it's a part of life and the creative process, and understanding where it comes from has made it a whole lot lot easier for me to work with.

A lot of the work I've done has involved being vulnerable and more than a few tears, and hasn’t been without its challenges. But as time passed, I discovered that accepting my vulnerability has not only been hugely helpful in my personal life, it's also helped me be better at my job. You might think that a film director and photographer's work is to be like the general who takes charge and tells everyone what to do, and there is some truth in that. But to really connect with the person in front of the camera, who is likely having their own moment of vulnerability, there's nothing more human and helpful than showing real empathy. This is only ever really found by being in touch with your own vulnerabilities, and to be okay with doing that you need to trust yourself.

Ultimately, I think that's what General Schwarzkopf was really talking about - not fear, but trust. How could he trust someone who wouldn't let themselves be vulnerable? And without that trust, how can we ever truly connect? Which is what I think life is really all about - connecting with others. Whatever it takes.

This was originally published in Hot Press Magazine’s special issue on mental health.

It Takes a Man to Cry Playlist

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Shoeboxes

The Love of the Irish

A Rude Awakening

In my youth I’d always found Paris oppressively classy, so for years had gravitated to edgier cities like Berlin or Barcelona. Then, in 2017, I was awarded an artist’s residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in the fifth arrondissement– the picture-perfect, Hollywood district of Paris. Thankfully it didn’t take long to discover something reassuring: scratch the elegant surface, and Paris can be really quite tacky.

When the residency ended I stayed on – for two years. One of the great pleasures was walking the city with a camera. I’d take a random right, then a left, knowing that turning each corner would reveal another treat for my hungry gaze, an imprisoned nude, or a couple in a café made impressionistic by the rain.

I worked on several photographic projects – food detritus on the streets after the markets, a series on Parisian windows, and one of burnt-out cars. The cars came as a by-product of the venerable French tradition of effecting social change by forming a mob and throwing things at the police. As the latest wave of manifestations broke out, I imagined barricades made of bar stools and bullet holes in bank windows.

After wandering into an unruly protest one Saturday I made another important discovery: while an Irish press card will get you in free to the Musée d’Orsay, it won’t get you out of the Place de la République when it’s cordoned off by riot police. I circled the crowd, looking for an escape, and suddenly found myself on the front line as missiles sailed over my head towards a phalanx of CRS. With their Kevlar exoskeletons, they looked like killer robots from the future. I’d been caught up in a squatters’ riot in Copenhagen in the ’80s and knew that the people most likely to harm you in this kind of situation aren’t the rioters.

I beat a tactical retreat, just in time to see four smoking projectiles soar from behind the police lines and land in front of me. It was years since I’d been tear-gassed, and they’d improved the formula a lot since then. The familiar burning in the eyes and upper respiratory tract was there, but now accompanied by a sensation that my lungs were about to explode. Narrowly avoiding getting trampled, the rush of the crowd took me towards a side-street that wasn’t blocked by police.

I took refuge in the nearby Cartier-Bresson gallery, where up on the wall there was a story about the legendary photographer. He always avoided being photographed himself so he could remain anonymous as he went about his work. When he ventured out–well past retirement age–to document the riots of May ’68 and found himself jostling for position with a mob of younger photographers, one of them called over, ‘Who do you think you are, Cartier-Bresson?’ ‘He died years ago!’ Henri shouted back.

When I left the gallery the streets were quiet again. I’d lived to shoot another day, and knew I wasn’t going to run out of interesting subjects in Paris – tacky or classy – any time soon.

* Lèche-vitrines is French slang for window-shopping. Literally, it means ‘window-licking’. How vulgar. How French.

This was originally published in Winter Papers Volume 9.

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Shoeboxes

The Love of the Irish

He was large, ruddy-faced and looked like the kind of man who regularly attends tribunals, but only under duress. He slowed as he walked along the railings outside Trinity College, turning to see who was shouting at him. From a safe distance, a wiry Dub offered his opinion. “I saw you in the Sunday papers,” he said gleefully, “You owe the banks 15 million, don't you?” The businessman nodded and grunted, "Do you have a problem with that?" The Dub replied, “You're going to have some problems raising that kind of money, aren't you? I'm glad you're fucked!". The businessman stared, failed to come up with a pithy comeback, then stomped away. The exchange was honest, spirited and there was no doubt both parties knew exactly where the other was coming from. Above all, it was fantastically rude.

Sometimes it seems that there just isn’t enough rudeness in the world. I don’t mean coarseness, vulgarity or simple bad manners. The rudeness we need more of is the one that shares an etymological root with ‘erudite’; a rudeness that educates, and can even elevate. Rudeness with a purpose. Edmund Burke, whose statue outside TCD looked down on the exchange between the businessman and the Dub, said that manners are of more importance than laws. Some things, however, can be even more important than both laws and manners, and sometimes when you really want to reach out and touch someone, a blast of full-throttle rudeness is the best way to get his or her attention. To be rude is to be gloriously, heedlessly alive, unashamedly saying to someone that although your need not to be insulted may be great, it’s not as important as my need to give you the finger. Like many of the best things in life, rudeness is both free and liberating and, when applied to the right people in the right way, has the potential to make quite a difference.

In a culture where our lives are becoming increasingly distant from the wider community, rudeness is a proven path to a quick, though not necessarily easy, intimacy. Of course, being rude to those we are already close to is also one of the great pleasures in life. After a recent, ah, frank exchange of views between my dear mother and myself, she sent a text saying “sorry, didn’t mean to be quite so rude”. Quite.

Intimacy of a different kind is available on the Web, and the reason many of us venture online in the first place is because of the opportunity it affords to be blisteringly offensive to people we would never dream of meeting. This facility to be rude without fear of consequences is also a large part of what draws many people towards acting, which is often just being paid to shout at people. See any Pacino film, all of which include at least one, probably contractually stipulated, ‘bellowing Al’ scene.

Being publicly disrespectful to complete strangers can be great fun, although it’s not always without consequences. Years before he became the well-deserved toast of Sundance with his film Once, director John Carney had to contend with me being loudly and publicly rude to him at the Galway Film Festival when he offered up a rather seedy exploitation movie and tried to pass it off as ‘edgy’. Within a few weeks he'd moved into a flat on my street, and for months afterwards every time I went to the local shop there he was in the queue behind me, glowering.

It can work both ways, however. Last year, I was rude enough to stop a well-known artist on the street to tell her how much I’d enjoyed her recent show in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. I found out later that I was one of only two people who'd bothered to give her show that kind of impromptu feedback, and it meant more to her than any coverage in the media. And if it wasn't for people being rude enough to approach complete strangers in pubs and discos to initiate conversations that both parties know full well are heading in only one direction, many of us wouldn’t be here at all.

Rudeness can be inspirational. The best sitcom of all time is a monument to Donald Sinclair, the Torquay hotelier described by John Cleese as “the most wonderfully rude man I’ve ever met” and the model for Basil Fawlty. Entire media careers have been built on a talent for great rudeness – imagine how far from the public’s affections broadcaster Eamon Dunphy would be if that looming brow harboured a polite and humble mind. If you are in any further doubt about the prevalence and profitability of out-sourced rudeness, have a look through the Sunday Independent and imagine the kind of pamphlet of dog racing results and the weather that would be left if all traces of rudeness were excised from its pages.

I first experienced the transformative power of rudeness during a teenage spell as a punk rocker. It was a two-way street, as I discovered when I came back from my London squat to dreary, provincial Dublin, all gussied up with black leather jacket, bleached spiky hair and earrings. Walking into Furlong’s newsagent in Donnybrook I was greeted by the proprietor, who once famously refused to stock Private Eye after it had referred to Charlie Haughey’s bouts of ‘horizontal jogging’ with a well known journalist. “ Can I help you?” he called across the crowded shop, adding just under his breath “or are ye beyond help?”. In all honesty, I’d been having some qualms about togging out in full punk regalia in the heart of suburban Dublin, but Mr. Furlong had instantly reassured me I was doing the right thing.

Punk was undoubtedly the rudest popular culture movement of recent memory, and it brought with it a fleeting sense of genuine danger. Its heyday was during a more innocent age, so when the Sex Pistols showed an unusual lack of deference by quite accurately calling third-rate chat show host Bill Grundy a “fucking rotter” on live tea-time television, the impact was extraordinary – it felt like the start of something big and, for a thrilling, all-too-brief moment, real change seemed possible. According to Clinton Heylin in Babylon’s Burning, his recently published history of punk, there was an idealism that underpinned the movement - a desire to find honesty in a dishonest world. While the current degree of permissiveness may make life seem more honest, it’s really that we are simply less shockable. There is still power in rudeness, however, especially when applied to those who expect deference as a matter of course. It’s also much easier to join the revolution – according to a recent advertisement, all it takes is to open a current account with a well-known bank.

There are certain sections of society that don’t seem to get their fair amount of scorn. Politicians are often very rude to each other – the Duke of Wellington once ended a letter to a political rival with the words “ I am, sir, your humble and obedient servant, which you know, and I know, is a damned lie”. That shows a certain style but, like most people, they’re keener to dish it out than take it, and tend to dismiss most journalistic criticism as hacks trying to sell papers. What politicians truly fear is any negative feedback from vote-wielding members of the public, which is exactly what they need if they are to properly serve that public. Unfortunately, truly creative acts of rudeness towards the rich and powerful are now so rare that when they occur they usually make the evening news. There was a welcome spate of flanning a few years ago, with many custard pies flying through the air at various self-important faces, but unfortunately the custom seems to have died out. The current record-holder for flannings received is Bernard-Henri Levy, the celebrated French philosopher and stuffed shirt, who once said ‘God is dead, but my hair is perfect.’ To-date, his noble profile and perfect hair have suddenly arrested the flight of at least four gooey confections.

I inadvertently discovered the remarkable effectiveness of rudeness on elected officials during a debate some years ago at the Galway Film Festival (obviously, it’s easier to be rude when you’re out of town). The discussion followed a screening of A Crude Awakening, Irish director Ray McCormack’s shattering documentary about the looming energy crisis. The panel consisted of various sustainability experts and local darling and parliamentary representative Michael D Higgins. As the audience floundered, trying to come to terms with the enormity of what they’d just seen, they took little comfort from Michael D’s exhortation that what we needed most of all in the tough times ahead was a “thorough and rigorous philosophical debate” on the issue. Well, yes, but I would have thought some kind of guaranteed energy supply might just edge its way to the top of the to-do list. I ventured the opinion that in times of crisis, many of us would turn to the people who were genuinely engaging with the problem and that unless they brought themselves up to speed, our elected representatives would run the risk of finding themselves increasingly irrelevant. Seeing the look on Michael D’s face, I saw that ‘irrelevant’ is the worst possible word you can use about a politician, and that when faced with a problem for which they have no adequate answer they still have to come up with something – when did you last hear an elected representative admit that he or she didn’t know what to do?

At least we can be rude to our politicians without fear of reprisal, although not in Poland, where it’s illegal to publicly insult foreign heads of state. The Italians took a different tack in 1952 when the three million members of the Italian communist party were sent a stern memorandum from headquarters outlining a "proper code of bad manners" to be observed toward visiting Americans. It outlined a five-point plan for variously snubbing, refusing to give directions to or making Americans wait unnecessarily, in order to convince them that "Italian youth will never cooperate with them in case of war”. The directive went on to make one other very important point, to ensure Yanks would be unaware of the plan. "One should be rude," urged the memo, "but with spontaneity." Things are changing rapidly, however, and even the politest people in the world are now looking for new ways to be rude – as there are hardly any swear words in Japanese, they have had to resort to a reliable English expression, pronounced in their own way: Fakkyuu.

It’s time we reclaimed the power of rudeness. It’s undoubtedly rude to ask someone a question when you know they don’t have an answer. So when the next election draws near, and eager, needy faces start pitching up at your door, feel free to be rude to them – ask something like, oh, off the top of my head, “What are you going to do to secure Ireland’s access to energy over the next ten years?” Hopefully, a torrent of rudeness on the doorsteps of the nation will go some way towards showing the government the impossibility saving their face and your ass at the same time. And if that doesn’t work, any subsequent time they come looking for your vote I suggest you respond in the Japanese manner.

This article is a slightly edited version of one that was first published in The Gloss Magazine.

Audio from RTE Radio’s Sunday Miscellany.

Shoeboxes

There were only a couple of them, but I still felt a bit of trepidation as I took them out for the first time in many years. Partly because we are all feeling things a little more intensely at the moment, or a lot more, and I knew that if I opened these boxes some feelings were bound to fly out. I wasn’t unfamiliar with their contents, or so I thought. But the spice drawers had been labelled, rationalised and rearranged, the storage under the stairs had been emptied into the kitchen and carefully packed away again, and I certainly wasn’t going to start kidding myself that I’m the kind of person that alphabetises their books. Not yet, anyway.

I opened the first box. There was an awful lot of tat in there, lots and lots of keepsakes and tchotchkes. Earrings from when I used to wear earrings and badges from when I used to wear badges, including one that said in large bold lettering “ I lasted Twenty Four Hours.” Proof I’d gone the distance at the Project Art’s Centres’ 24-hour Punk festival in the late Seventies. And another badge - taken from the caved-in radiator grille of the Golf GTI I’d nearly killed myself in sometime in the early Nineties. I’ve slowed down a bit since then. There were treasured ticket stubs aplenty - but what are the chances of my future grandchildren being impressed at the ticket from the only Irish gig that Bill Hicks ever played? (“Bill who?”) . They certainly will care less that Grandpops was given a backstage pass to the Eurovision in 1988 in order to photograph the winner, Celine-Dion-who? There were plenty of other memory-jogging documents in the boxes - long-forgotten membership cards, cancelled passports with stamps from countries that no longer exist, and a receipt from the time I was so broke I had to sell a litre of blood in Berlin. Good times.

But I knew that these things were just asides to what I’d really hung on to, down all these years. The real motherlode was the letters, the notes, and the cards, including a few fairly wicked caricatures of me drawn on home-made Father’s Day cards by my son, a gifted and merciless cartoonist from a very early age. I took some photographs of them and sent them to brighten up his lockdown in Montreal.

There were all kinds of letters, several of which I had no memory of ever receiving. Such as the airmail letter I was sent in my late teens by my friend Brian, which arrived in Morocco where I’d gone to work as a surveyor for a while rather than finishing school, much to the despair of my mother. Brian’s letter included a detailed plan that involved him writing great screenplays that I would then film, and how we would then go on to make our fortunes together. At the time I was still learning how to work a stills camera and the thought of making films was beyond my wildest dreams. Nevertheless, Brian proved to be right - we both did end up in careers as a screenwriter and a director. But we’ve yet to make a film together, and even more unfortunately neither of us has yet arrived at the “making a fortune” level, either.

But of course, what really tipped me over the edge were the love letters. Letters signed with love, lots of love, with all my love. Some sent by people that I’ve shamefully little memory of ever being loved by. Seen in rapid succession, they were a concentrated documentation of love sent, received - and lost. Someone wiser than me once pointed out that all love stories end in tragedy, of one kind or another, and some of these letters were evidence of the heartbreaking moments just before the inevitable end. Mind you, the ones that meant the most to me weren’t any multi-page protestations of undying passion, but ones like the couple of small notes, left where the sender knew I’d find them and my heart would unexpectedly be blown open by the knowledge that I was so loved.

I already knew all of these. I’ve carried most of them inside me, since the time they were sent. I didn’t really need the evidence. But there was something new to be discovered in those boxes - something I hadn’t properly realised before. One of the senders, with whom I’d had a complicated relationship right up until her death a few years ago - that sender wasn’t much given to letting me know that she loved me. Well, there was one time I remember well, a few months before she died, but that was bound up in a package that included enough other feelings as to render it inadmissible as evidence. She never really said it, not as far as I can remember, and over time I’ve come to understand why it might have been quite so hard for her to do so.

She couldn’t say it - but she could write it. Over and over again, on birthday cards, dogeared airmail letters, and postcards filled with her impossibly tiny, spidery handwriting. All my love, with lots of love, with love from…your Ma.

It was enough. As I closed the last box, I remembered very clearly the last words I’d said to her. They weren’t written anywhere, but I won’t ever forget them. I lent down, touched her face and said:

“ I love you, Ma”.

This was originally broadcast on RTE Radio's Sunday Miscellany on May 17th 2020.

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They don't call it the Empire State for nothing

When I arrived to spend the winter in New York, people naturally asked me why I was there. I told them I had no compelling reason not to be. I’d gotten lucky—a friend’s sister had a fifth-floor walk up in Little Italy she needed to sublet for a few months. An itinerant writer of my acquaintance had spent enough savagely bleak winters on the West Coast of Ireland to want a cosier bolt hole in Dublin–my place. I had a perfectly portable occupation, writing a screenplay, which I figured I might as well do in New York as anywhere else.

Sunlight and shadow on Prince Street

One of the first things I noticed is that a defining characteristic of the true New Yorker is enthusiastic complaining about how the city has changed for the worse since its former days of glory. My idealised New York is that of the Lower East Side in the mid Seventies–early punk, bohemia, drugs and danger. I knew that things had changed a lot since then, but was still surprised–is it really necessary to have such widespread access to cupcakes? There isn’t a cupcake shop on the Bowery yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time.

Fat Fuck, The Bowery

Most mornings I would write in the Rose Reading Room in the New York Public Library, nodding a greeting to the impressively-coiffed woman manning the information desk as I passed.

A font of information, and an artist with hairspray

In the afternoons I wandered, always with a camera. It feels wrong to go out without one in New York–there’s so much life on every street, to miss any of it would be a crime.

Bad Santa gets punished on Broadway

Being in New York often feels like being in a movie–almost as if it’s some kind of illusion. When friends at home saw my picture of Leonardo DiCaprio on Broadway they were very curious as to what trickery I’d used to achieve the effect–how had I transformed the poster to make it loom over the building like that? The answer was, I hadn’t–I’d just lifted my camera and pressed the button. It was all right there in front of me, the brownstone and the twelve–story-high photorealistic mural. Only in New York.

Leo looms large on Broadway

Everyone in New York has an attitude–sometimes it seemed like even the dogs in the street expected me to account for myself.

"And you are?"

After the bustle of the day has ebbed, New York is just the place for solitary late-night walks through deserted streets. I saw hellish liquor stores in the West Village…

Lubricating loneliness in the West Village

…and wandered past a private moment between a girl and her hairdresser on Hudson.

Hairdresser on Hudson St.

Then I sauntered up to Hell’s Kitchen, where the sign in a deserted car wash reads like a mantra for Zen living.

Zen and the art of car washing

Despite the amount of time I spent on my own, I didn’t want for company. I hung out with a German playboy turning his life around, and an Irishman who’d spent time as the world’s only part-time personal astrophysicist.

Seamus, New Gallery

I dated an avant-garde music composer I met at a recital in a black box studio in Chelsea, where the deliberate atonality of the music was occasionally relieved by somebody in the band standing up and hurling an armful of cymbals at the back wall. I had my first ever Jewish Christmas (a movie on Third Avenue, soft-shell crab in Chinatown) and I spent New Year’s Eve at a Malaysian-Lithuanian house party in Harlem. I photographed pretty much everyone I met.

Stand clear of the closing doors, Times Square Station

Even though the city reached out to me, I often felt alone. It was a bittersweet, oddly welcoming feeling. It felt right. After a while it dawned on me, that’s one of the reasons I was there. New York is an excellent place to be lonely.

New York Sketch #1: If You’ll Let Me

New York Sketch #2: If That Is What

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