The Auld Songs, the New Homes
A Not-At-All Work-Related Reflection on the Occasion of St. Patrick's Day
Today, on a really inopportunely placed Tuesday, is St Patrick’s Day.
I have not lived in Glasgow in an uncomfortably long time, but I still remember what the week surrounding this day felt like DEEP in my bones.
While I lived there, I worked as the head door steward (head bouncer) for a relatively well known Irish pub in a fairly nice part of town called Jinty McGuinty’s (RIP, Jeanette 😭).
Most nights were fairly chill, though with the occasional bit of sectarian chaos, some football stars pissing in the corner, and the equivalent of drunken fratboys deciding that the absolutely WOULD NOT be welcomed out of the door by the American thrown in to keep things lively. But it was generally just students rubbing shoulders with presenters from BBC Scotland. The normal hospitality chaos that I could handle by myself or with one or two others.
Then St Paddy’s would roll around.
I am serious when I say that I had to hire just about everyone I knew that was willing for at least that day and ideally those surrounding it. Everyone. Because it didn’t matter how “not Irish” someone might claim to be the rest of the year. It didn’t matter how complicated their feelings were about (as Flogging Molly called it) “The Old Free State”, or politics, or history, or any of the messy stuff that comes with identity. They would be absolutely God. Damned. if they would be caught dead drinking in a Scottish pub on that day. They might as well go and drink with the English at that point, if they’re not in a proper Irish pub (these are direct quotes, before you come after me)!
They might not be in Ireland. They might not even really want to consider themselves “Irish” anymore. But in those moments, they had the most human instincts of all. They gathered with their people, they sang the old songs, and they remembered the things that made them . . . them.
I think about that a lot, especially now, living far from the places that shaped me, watching the world get weirder by the hour, and trying to build something that still feels human for myself and my children.
Community is such an ephemeral thing. It’s not something I’ve ever been good at creating, much less maintaining. I’m the epitome of “How does an introvert make friends? An extrovert finds them and forces them to be friends.” But joking aside, it is not some sort of social accessory. Community is how we survive distance. Grief. Repression. It’s how we resist the quiet slide into “just keep your head down” as a way of life.
Relevant to today, diaspora is not just nostalgia. It is a built-in network. Working the crowds those . . . UGH many years ago at Jinty’s . . . I saw it over and over again. Men and women who had clearly never met before finding instant camaraderie through a shared story. Did that story also include an approximate keg’s worth of Guinness? Each? Yes, yes it did. But the foundations were in the shared background and the mutual stubborn refusal to become isolated, even when geography (and sometimes . . . often? . . . governments) would really prefer that you did.
I appreciate the community I have managed to keep long distance. And I appreciate the community we have been building here. I appreciate the people who check in . . . DESPERATELY so. I am aware of how awful I am at such things! The people who show up for both myself and my terrible children, and the people who remember your name and said terrible children’s names, and what you said you were worried about last week (sidenote: look at that grown-ass man who just yesterday was a little boy and how he’s trolling his sister by shoving his face in front of hers. I couldn’t be more proud! *sniff*).
On our side, please know that no matter where you are, we bleed for you. For all that is going on in your world. Because I have no doubt that no matter where you are, it is . . . not great. And I hope everyone reading this knows that too. If we only protect “our own,” we are not building community. We are building a smaller circle to stand in while the world burns.
So . . . with all of my rambling I say: Put on your greens, sing the songs (I recommend Flogging Molly, if that’s not clear), and raise your glasses to toast your friends and those who cannot be here. And if you are out drinking, be kind to your door staff, and don’t drink and drive.
But also remember what the Irish diaspora has always known: you can leave home, but you do not leave who you are. And none of us can ever leave our responsibility to resist, even from our new homes.
Happy St Patrick’s Day. Sláinte mhór . . . and take care of each other.