Nighttime sat heavily on Dublin, like an overweight aunt on an old couch cushion.
I had flown in directly from Paris, after being shipped there with less than 24 hours’ warning three days previously for a last-minute replacement contract. It had been dark in Paris, but I was unprepared for the sheer volume of darkness to be found in Ireland. It seeped from the cracks between buildings. Oozed out of sewers. Pressed down on the streetlights, waiting to dine.
I booked it directly to the oversized baggage belt. A large blue kayak reminiscent of a whale sat there calmly. My wheel did not accompany the whale.
Oh, …dark.
I paced, and I whimpered, and I may have prayed a little bit. I had less than five days in Ireland to complete three missions: teach a cyr wheel workshop, perform at a special event, and film a promo video. Two of these would occur within the next 24 hours. Needless to say, the kayak was not an appropriate proxy.
45 minutes and a lost baggage report later, my cyr wheel emerged from the pits of oversized luggage, strangled in baby carriages. I disentangled her, embraced her, and apologized to her. Then we were on our way.
Dear Dublin Airport, Your bus system sucks. Even the locals can’t figure out how to use it. For arriving visitors, please provide signage explaining that there are two different airport bus systems with two different kinds of tickets that aren’t interchangeable. Also, what psychopath decided to create an airport bus ticket that does not transfer to regular city bus lines? Love, Shena
After some deliberation, I decided that whichever bus I took would definitely be the wrong one, so I chose one at random that matched the ticket I had already bought. Wheel and I eventually arrived on a busy downtown thoroughfare, from which we walked about 20 minutes to the Airbnb I had booked two days ago. The street signs were obscured by a fine murk and we got a little lost.
“I’m looking for George’s Wharf,” I said out of the shadows to a red-haired passerby. He jumped at my disembodied voice. “Sorry,” he said, clueless.
I wandered further down the street. “I’m looking for George’s Wharf,” I said to the tabby cat slinking into the streetlight. She glared at me. “Fuck off,” she said, and began to wash.
I looked up to find a little girl watching me from the front steps of a house a few feet away. “ARE YOU LOST?” she called with far more volume than what was necessary for the distance between us.
“I’m looking for George’s Wharf,” I said.
“I KNOW EVERYTHING ‘ROUND HERE,” she said, dancing from foot to foot. “GEORGE’S WHARF IS BEHIND YOU ON THE RIGHT SIDE. YOU CAN GET INTO THE BACK WITH A CODE. IT’S 1-5-1-7-4-4-9-8-6.”
Well, if I didn’t know the code, now the rest of the neighbours surely did.
I found the keys as directed by my host, and the door of the Airbnb opened to darkness. I turned on a light, found my room, and made my way to bed. Nighttime snored.
Two days later, cyr wheel workshop and gig completed relatively without incident, Ronan and I were on the road by 6:15am. The darkness before dawn was as thick as molasses. “Go back to sleep,” it crooned, hanging on our eyelids. It pressed heavily against Ronan’s Seat Exeo, resisting our early departure from Athlone. The Exeo sputtered indignantly and flipped darkness the bird. We heaved ourselves onto the highway.
When we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher Retreat, the sky had just begun to grey. By the time we had moved our equipment near the yoga studio, dawn had exploded like a cherry bomb in a set of pastel gouache. Over the course of the next 20 minutes, Ireland went from the darkest place I’d ever visited to the pinkest place I’d ever visited.
Having done its best for the day, the sky wiped its brow in exhaustion. It cleaned gouache splatter from its cheeks, leaving a moist grey pallor. The murk sagged, and darkness became a shade or two lighter.
We went into the studio with an idea but not a plan. I recorded individual sounds made by my wheel while listening to a metronome with a 3/4 rhythm in mind. The goal was to play with the suspension and release of a waltz rhythm, as I find it lends itself very well to my work in the cyr wheel and in dance.
Three hours later, we exited the studio with our SD cards full of video and our fingers crossed.
Here is the result
An artful and acrobatic musical composition played on cyr wheel and hard surfaces.