I wasn’t a fan of Sinéad O’Connor’s music. At least, not at the height of her fame. I haven’t caught up on her stuff from later in her life. But her spirit spoke to me, even though I was just a kid when I became aware of her and she was out of the zeitgeist before I had any sort of maturity.
If you had asked me just a few months ago what I truly remember about her, it would have been “Nothing Compares 2 U” and that she tore up a picture of the Pope on SNL. I remember, when she did that, being puzzled. It was such a bold statement to make without any context.
Yet even with that little knowledge I knew she was a kindred spirit. I knew that there was something special about Sinéad. That she would speak truth to power. That she would say what was real. That she would not be cowed by the thought that there are some things that you just do not say. And that she would say and do those things regardless of the personal cost to her.
I think that most of us, often, think that we would be that way given the circumstance. But how many people truly have been, and had the public stage? How many people were saying what she was saying in public in the early 1990’s? How many people are even saying it today?
Tonight I watched this interview that she did with Arsenio Hall in 1991 (it’s 20 minutes long but it is worth it, folks). My eyes welled up watching this, because she is such a gem. She is saying things, in 1991 when she was 24, that we now all openly acknowledge are true today. And her spirit, her attitude, is seemingly irrepressible. Yet it was repressed.
I saw this tweet tonight. Yes, I’m still calling them tweets (suck it Elon).
“what she could have been if the world wasn’t so ugly, misogynist and cruel to her.” That hurt to read. Because it’s true. And it’s been true, not just for her but for so many of the best women in our world for centuries. It’s been true for enough women that I have known personally that it brought them all to the forefront of my mind.
I know we, as a culture, have let ourselves get in the habit of judging women who do not conform. Who are messy, who are loud, who don’t reign their sexuality in, who are up front, who are confrontational, who do not brook bullshit. But we need them.
Sinéad had the temerity to say that the music industry was more motivated by profit than by truth or art, in 1991, on national tv. She said that men were shit, in that same interview, at a time when that was just not something that was openly said. When she tore up the photo of the Pope on SNL, she was protesting the wide ranging abuse in the church – an issue that wouldn’t become well known in the US for years after. I hope no one reading this thinks cancel-culture is new, because after that she was effectively cancelled worldwide.
We need to make room for the wild women in our lives, or we are going to keep putting them into the ground too young and too soon. We need to make room for the women who challenge our ideas and our notions, at all levels.
I had the luck of listening to this story of Sinéad’s life just a couple of weeks ago. It said much more than I have the words for right now. What’s sad for me, thinking of that story, is how it ended on a hopeful note. Hoping to see what the next chapter in Sinéad’s life will be. We will never know.
I’m tired. I’m tired of admirable people getting the shaft in our world. Yet, all I can do this time is say goodbye.
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