Nothing compares 2 u

Remembering Sinéad as I search for MFA "comps"...

A year ago near the end of July I awoke early in a small, Dublin inn to read an email from a Photo Editor who reached out with an offer of photojournalism work. He wondered could I possibly document the historic floods that had hit Halifax and were wreaking havoc right across Nova Scotia. Over a 24-hour period, 9.8 inches of rain had fallen. By July 22nd, a state of emergency was declared and four people were missing, two of them children.

When his e-mail landed in my inbox on July 25th, I sheepishly (and regrettably) had to confess that, like him, I was witnessing the historic flooding unfold from afar. I was nowhere near home in Halifax (where I’m normally based). I’d been following the crisis myself for two days, fielding emails and texts from concerned family members and friends around the globe to assure them my kid and I were alive and well.

My teen was back in Canada, safe and dry in Huntsville, Ontario, attending a two-week, overnight YMCA camp. As a single mom, the last two weeks of July were my final chance to hop to Europe to research a book I hoped to write. At 14, my kid was aging out of the camp they’d attended for four years. And it might be years again before I would have two consecutive, child-free weeks all to myself.

I drove five hours from my parents place in Waterloo, Ontario, to deliver my teen to Muskoka and then another five hours south to Toronto Airport to hop a plane to Denmark. In four days of travel all over that beautiful Nordic nation, I visited the remains of six Iron Age Bog People. Then I hopped a flight to spend 4 more nights in Dublin, birthplace of my siblings, parents and every known familial ancestor. In that fair city, I toured Listen Now Again, an exhibit on Irish Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney where I interviewed a rep of the National Library about Heaney’s particular interest and series of poems inspired by the Bog People. I spent time touring the Bog of Allen Nature Centre. I hiked Lullymore Peatlands where I had the good fortune to chat with Ray Stapleton who has managed this special place for over a quarter century. Before heading back to Dublin, I pulled over to a small, unmarked spot to pace the boardwalk out upon Lodge Bog.

At the National Museum of Ireland, I meandered the marvellous Kingship and Sacrifice exhibit where I met more Iron Age People unearthed from Irish bogs. Around the corner at the National History Museum, I developed a crick in my neck staring up in sheer awe at the 4-metre span of antlers that crown the skeletons of Megaloceros giganteus, the Giant Irish Deer preserved and birthed from Irish bogs. Megaloceros became extinct at least 8,000 years ago.

To keep to the theme of sacrifice and death, on the evening of July 25th, I strolled from the inn past Trinity College and Grafton Street and crossed the Liffey via O’Connell Bridge to attend the gripping Girl on an Altar at Dublin’s famous Abbey Theatre.

It was nigh on 10:00 pm by the time I returned following the play’s finale. On the mainfloor, the inn’s bar was still open. I curled myself into a corner table and turned on my cell which I’d silenced during the performance. News was just breaking that Sinéad O’Connor was dead. Rest In Peace. The bar staff and I whispered of her to each other. Concerts we’d attended. Anecdotes. Favourite songs. Stories. I sipped at a dram of Irish whiskey to toast her memory. Before the next evening’s performance at the Abbey, the Irish Times reported how the director and entire cast and crew of Girl on an Altar gave her a moving tribute.

I recalled a story from one cousin of mine about another who attended school with Sinéad in childhood. A man who lived a few doors down from my Nana’s in Walkinstown was her chauffeur for years. Sinéad was born 37 days before me and an ocean apart. I will never forget when I first heard that voice singing Troy. A string of lyrics leapt out at me:

Cover of The Lion and the Cobra, Sinéad O’Connor’s debut 1987 album.

You will rise
You'll return
The Phoenix from the flame…

Being what you are
There is no other Troy
For you to burn

Certain words, I instantly recognized, were borrowed from the poem No Second Troy by another renowned Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. Speaking of comps: in his poem, Yeats was comparing Maud Gonne, an Irish Republican revolutionary, actress, and the woman he loved to Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Gonne was born in the same month as Sinéad O’Connor exactly a century earlier. Now as I sat in the bar, here was Sinéad’s powerhouse voice over the speakers singing words and inspiration from a poem I had long loved.

Three Irish women. Me, Maud Gonne, and Sinéad O’Connor. All winter-born. Capricorns. Just like Jesus, I thought to myself and smiled at the memory and courage of Sinéad ripping up an image of the Pope on national television to protest widespread abuse of children at the hands of Catholic priests and the Church’s shameful coverup. A final lift of my glass before I ascended the stairs and fell into my bed, submerging into dreams like Heaney’s Bog Queen into peat, like this Dirty Old Town was sinking slowly into profound sorrow.

In 1990, Sinéad released a cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U on her second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. I caught her live at the CNE the same year. By the time I bicycled into a life-altering bank of fog on the southwest coast of Ireland the following summer, her rendition won Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards. It would go on to sell over seven million copies worldwide. The last time I saw her live was at Massey Hall, my favourite Toronto venue, in 2014. For me, a heartbreaking performance to witness. She seemed to be struggling, vocally, physically, emotionally.

This past June, I began a two-year, low-residency MFA in Creative Nonfiction to write my book on bogs, Bog People, and on sacrifice and preservation. Maybe sitting in that Dublin bar shook me. I was a mere month younger than Sinéad. I’d just moved 2000 kilometres across Canada to enrol my kid in a school I hoped might better support and equip them for high school, never mind college or university. Maybe I’m trying to lead by example about living and pursuing one’s dream.

In truth, I struggled getting hired after we relocated across the country. It crossed my mind that perhaps the Cosmos was telling me not to let all my research and reading go to waste. I ‘d been diligently digging about death, burial rites, death rituals, and the greening of funereal practices for more than a year. Sinéad’s passing, a tragedy far too soon for such a talented artist in midlife, felt like a wake-up call. My parents are still alive. *knocks wood furiously* Each of them turned 91 years of age this year and they’re still chugging along though all of us know we live on borrowed time there. I’ve been too focused on their great age and the enormous blessing of their continued existence to dwell on my own eventual demise. I landed a temporary contract when I returned from Dublin and worked through the autumn. Then I made a leap and applied to pursue an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and officially commit to writing my book.

One assignment this summer has been to find and read two viable “comps,” books published in the last 2 or 3 years that will reasonably compare to the book I aim to write, pitch, and publish. During the fall term, I must write two reports on how each title compares to my book. Since June residency, it took two months to nail down at least one comp, but I must submit two titles by September 1st to my Cohort Director. With less than ‘7 hours and 15 days’ left, I freely admit I’m struggling to find a second.

During residency, while students were crafting and re-crafting the pitch we each will eventually make to agents/publishers based in New York and Toronto over the next two winter terms, our MFA instructors and mentors impressed upon us the vital importance of proving how our potential book compares to books already published and thriving in sales out there on the shelves of real—not fictional—bookstores.

Almost every instructor during residency repeated the fact that no one, I repeat NO ONE, wants to end up the wanna-be author who says, “nothing out there right now compares to the book I’m pitching to you.” [*Insert shrieks of panic here.*]

And all the ancient Norse and Celtic gods I have been studying know I am the last person to want to pretend I am some kind of incomparable writing giant. That I secretly embody the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin or Cormac McCarthy. That my writing is so wildly unique, it matches nothing currently published on Earth.

Definitely not fool enough to believe I’m that kind of singular writing genius. I’d rather sacrifice my own body into a bog than come across that way to agents or publishers. (Let’s just say I’m freaking out.)

It’s not that I haven’t found comps in the kind of voice or lyricism I aspire towards. There are beautiful books within the category I hope to publish (Nature and Science) that speak deeply to me, but many are collections of personal essays, memoirs or strictly scientific journalism. Maybe it’s enough that such books at least compare to certain sections of what I aim to write in my book.

I have found, bought or borrowed, and read stunning books I could only dream of comparing my own to, though their content has nothing to do with my topic or plan of approach. For example, I read Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog, and Swamp which is brilliant. The problem is, if I select it, I can only perhaps write about how much my own book will enormously differ from hers (apart from a slight, frail connection to subject matter.) I imagine this approach won’t exactly improve my pitching chances.

The MFA comp struggle feels real but here I sit and roll my Irish eyes at my own folly. As I type this, I picture Sinéad shaking that beautiful bald head of hers at me.

I am alive. If I so choose, I could go out every night and sleep all day. I could put my arms around every boy I see.

I can do whatever I want.
I can see whomever I choose.
I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant.

You get me? I have the privilege to still be here breathing on this exceptional planet. I have applied and somehow, unbelievably been accepted into an MFA to write! What a dream! I have this chance to sing my own song, compose my own lament over loss and the need to act. I get to pursue this creative writing degree and one day breathe a book of my own into being, hold it in my hands and hopefully witness it brought to palpable life, sitting proudly on the shelves of bookstores. To even perhaps open the minds, move the hearts, touch the souls of human readers out there in the world.

When I was accepted into this MFA, by way of celebration, I gifted myself—midlife, single mom that I am—three tiny, bottles held in a box made to resemble and open like a book. Each bottle holds Irish whiskey called Writer’s Tears. I aim to open one tonight and raise it to the memory of Sinéad. Let these be the only tears I indulge in tonight. I will leave off despairing over this comp assignment and accept instead how goddamned lucky I am. I will unearth that second title by the end of August. I will breathe and laugh at my ridiculous, self-imposed anxiety.

I both want and need not want what I haven’t (yet) got.

Writer's Tears Irish Whiskey Gift Box in the shape of a book. For the stoopid tears I'm crying tonight.

Somewhere in the Cosmos, a star glistens just a little brighter over my head. Maybe it streaks across the inky sky with the last comet trail of August Perseids.

The star whispers to me. Light years away, it sings. It screams in fierce, formidable soprano as it sails through ancient black velvet:

Girl, you better try to have fun no matter what you do.