i love you when you're singing that song

"riptide" by vance joy (covered by taylor swift) & a birthday trip to ireland

I’m writing this newsletter from a Sligo —> Dublin train because . . . I took a trip to Ireland with a friend for my birthday. Well, for a lot of reasons, but one of them was definitely my birthday (March 15! I share a birthday with Michael Scott from The Office, which I only know because HE said he shares a birthday with Eva Longoria and Fabio and I also share a birthday with them . . . what can I say, I have a gift for logic).

Right now I’m literally staring out the train window at all the passing countryside — hedge rows and narrow winding roads and expanses of grass with houses dotting the distance. I’ve actually been doing more staring out the window than writing, which is part of my problem with this newsletter.

There’s so much I already want to say about this trip, because another reason I took it was because of the book I just finished writing, the one that should be out next summer. But it’s also hard because some of what I want to tell you wouldn’t make any sense until you had the context of that book, which feels so far away.

So instead I thought I would share five random observations from this trip so far that have nothing directly to do with the book at all:

1. Buskers LOVE “Riptide” by Vance Joy.

Not pictured: any of the numerous buskers I heard performing covers of “Riptide,” but I bet this guy had it built into his set somewhere.

The WAY Grafton Street had me googling “Is Vance Joy Irish?” because I hadn’t thought so but over the course of a couple days I swear I heard this song eight separate times and it made me wonder. (He’s Australian! Which I remembered I already knew the second after I’d googled it. Speaking of birthdays, I once saw him perform on his birthday at a local radio festival and they brought him out a cake on stage.)

I’m not mad at hearing this song so much, to be clear. I’ve always really liked it, and I think it’s one of those songs that “covers” well — which is probably why you hear it a lot! (See: “Wonderwall,” “Stick Season,” etc.) There was a period of my life where I was OBSESSED with this Taylor Swift cover, which is why I’m using it as this week’s song. The lyrics and I got a lump in my throat/’cause you’re gonna sing the words wrong do legit put a lump in my throat, every time. There’s something so tender to me about that idea of knowing a “flaw” or a quirk of someone’s, anticipating it, loving them for it.

(I just saw little lambs running outside the window!!! It was so sweet!!! My friend next to me: “You should put it in the newsletter!” IF SHE ONLY KNEW HOW ON TOP OF IT I ALREADY WAS, I’M NOT GOING TO LET THIS OPPORTUNITY PASS ME BY!!)

2. Ireland goes hard for its literary legends.

From left to right: Copy No. 1 of Ulysses; a mural of James Joyce; and the Hodges Figgis special edition of Ulysses

My trip was quasi-literary in nature, just because a) I was doing some book research, b) I was interested in Joyce/Yeats in particular, c) my friend has a PhD with a focus in 18th century literature so YEAH I guess you could say she’s a pretty big deal, and d) I’m just always interested in books and writing, I can’t help myself. But I was still so struck by and impressed with how hard Ireland goes for its literary figures. Like James Joyce has an absolute CHOKEHOLD on Dublin. It’s really cool just to walk around and see murals, statues, plaques, quotes — if James Joyce once studied there or lived there or ate there or wrote about it in a book, they’re going to let you know about it. I walked out of Hodges Figgis with a doorstop of a Ulysses exclusive edition, which I had no business buying. For one thing, your carry-on isn’t supposed to weigh more than 10kg (my friend: “. . . how much does the book weigh?”, me googling “how many kg in a pound” to find out that 10kg = 22 lbs, my friend: “that book can’t possibly weigh 22 pounds,” me: “it’s like carrying a BABY,” me, googling to double-check how much babies weigh: “like a one-year-old baby”). I also have no business buying it because I’ve been trying to read it for months now and keep feeling like Kristen Bell’s character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, desperate to get Jason Segal to stop playing his Dracula musical: “It’s really good, Peter. I just don’t understand it, I don’t.”

(I must need to rewatch that movie soon, I keep thinking about it.)

From left to right: Yeats' grave, a bottle of Yeats water, and a mural that includes a Yeats quote in it.

Then we went to Sligo, which is all about W.B. Yeats! We visited his grave (this will be a future newsletter for sure) and Drumcliffe Church which was surprisingly beautiful and moving. I say surprising only because it was even more so than I thought it would be? I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that it’s still an active church, so it was cool to see all this history mixed with just like . . . a board of parish birthdays. I also had the best blueberry lemon scone I’ve ever had in the little cafe attached to the site.

3. We WAY underestimated the power of St. Patrick’s Day.

St. Patrick’s weekend in Temple Bar

Okay, you are going to laugh your ass off at this probably but I just . . . didn’t even know. We chose the dates for this trip because of my birthday, spring break when my friend was off work, and the fact that it’s the canonical weekend my book takes place, and not necessarily in that order. I don’t drink and am not a nightlife/parade person so I knew there would be celebrations but figured, well, we’ll just skip that part!

What a sweet, innocent little babe.

First we had a dicey 15 minutes while our taxi driver (the third one we’d called, because the first two couldn’t get to us and had to cancel) tried to navigate the streets of Dublin to get us to the train station on time. It was nine in the morning but most of the streets were already shut down for the parade that was starting mid-day. We thought we were going to get out of the city before having to worry about it but it turns out . . . no.

(Our driver was so nice about it all!! I want to emphasize that part! And we did make it to the train on time!)

When we got to Sligo, it was only a ten-minute walk from the train station to our hotel so we thought fuck it, why not?! We can do that, even with luggage!

St. Patrick’s Day in Sligo

Except we walked RIGHT into the parade lol. Literally our hotel was . . . on the other side of this. Extremely poor planning on our part but you know what? It worked out fine. It was a charming parade (my favorite was the float about the Knocknarea Iron Man competition that featured men pretending to iron clothes, idk, I appreciate some wordplay). Eventually some of the cars in the parade had to stop because things got backed up and we used that opportunity to risk it across the street once we saw a woman with a stroller chance it. Nobody’s going to hit a BABY! Not when they weigh as much as a hardcover Ulysses!

4. People have been really friendly!

I didn’t buy it but I probably should’ve, this made me laugh so hard.

I’d always generally heard that the Irish were, by and large, very nice, but I’ve really been struck by it on this trip. Like what does it even say that a warm, genuine “Sorry!” if someone bumps into you on the street or steps on your foot on the train can feel so good, the bar is on the GROUND. Even the waitress making us repeat the names of items on the menu so she could laugh at us was all in good fun, I’ve been enjoying the vibes.

5. It’s not even the big things you’ll most remember, huh?

From left to right, top to bottom: the outside of Dubray Books; my book on the shelf; a view of St. Stephen's Green; a rainbow/LGBTQ flag mural on the outside of a building; a gorgeous camellia; the view of a bridge over a canal; Samuel Beckett's telephone; and moss-colored walls in Sligo Abbey

This is so cheesy I’ll disclaim any knowledge of it later, but it’s true that it ends up being all of the small moments and spontaneous discoveries that make a trip special. When I think of this one, I know I’ll remember getting to sign one of my own books in a foreign country — a first! — when I found a couple copies of Love in the Time of Serial Killers at Dubray Books. I’ll remember walking through St. Stephen’s Green and hearing a choir singing a mash-up of Seven Nation Army and Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. I saw so many great murals and street art; I saw one of the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen in real life; my friend talked me into watching the entire Bridget Jones franchise just so I could enjoy the new movie because she said it’s actually really good (I’ve only seen the first movie, which I loved, but I did read a few of the subsequent books). My friend was VERY excited about Samuel Beckett’s telephone that we saw in a museum partially because HER friend had written an entire dissertation chapter on Samuel Beckett’s telephone and this is the kind of nerdy shit I live for. We had also gotten mixed signals on whether Sligo Abbey was open — Google said no, another website said yes, a review from someone who’d been in Sligo a month ago said “don’t waste your time it’s not even open until after April” and then “come back in March I guess” which was not helpful because WHICH IS IT, Negative Ned, April or March? Anyway, it was right there in the middle of town so we figured we’d just walk to it to see if it was open, and it was and it was beautiful.

I didn’t get this done on the train, by the way — we had a bit of a stressful ten minutes where we weren’t sure if we were supposed to switch trains or stay on the same one, and luckily once again someone was nice enough to help assure us that we were in the right place. So now I’m writing the end of this from my hotel room bed, at 8:30a.m. which is 4:30a.m. my local time, which means this is probably the closest I’ve ever been to publishing “live” lol. Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely St. Patrick’s Day!!! I do enjoy a holiday that inspires everyone to dress up in a singular color, that’s my favorite part!

Currently reading . . . Okay, TECHNICALLY I read these two books a few weeks ago, but I think I can still get away with mentioning them here because a) I actually haven’t been reading much on this trip, and b) they’re very thematic, as you’ll see. I recently read Heart Strings by Ivy Fairbanks and If Not for My Baby by Kate Golden, both with the Irish musician heroes of your Hozier-fueled dreams. These books were so fun!! Below are my unhinged one-sentence all caps reviews, which rarely focus on the most important part of the book but one burning thing I loved or can’t stop thinking about:

watching . . . We watched Leap Year last night because it just sounded comforting and fun, and ended up having lots of discussions about why the movie is so good but also so bad (affectionately!) and what makes a good romcom in general.

listening to . . . I downloaded my Canonical Five Offspring albums to listen to on the plane, so my obsession continues. I’ve also been listening to so much Celebrity Memoir Book Club podcast episodes that at one point I excitedly started to respond to something my friend said by referencing back to a point I’d thought she’d made earlier only to realize halfway through that I was thinking of Claire and Ashley again lol. It was about how Avan Jogia complains about how fans say stuff to him like “You were my childhood!” and on the podcast they were like, it’s possible people are just . . . saying that, the way that you just say that someone’s wedding had the best food because it’s a nice thing to say and you know they want to hear it but it may not even be true or something you think about beyond that brief temporal moment. So my friend brings up wedding food and here I am like, omg, it’s EXACTLY like you said when — wait, you didn’t say that, I heard it on a podcast.