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Features Spirited Soul Monday, March 03, 2008 Sinead O’Connor Is Set To Inject Her Spirit Into Bluesfest. By Martin Jones.
Whilst you wouldn’t classify Sinead O’Connor’s life as conventional by any stretch of the imagination, the last year has been particularly tumultuous for her. O’Connor gave birth to her fourth child, Yeshna Francis Neil, in December 2006, her first with boyfriend Frank Bonadio. As the new-born Yeshna struggled with life-threatening pneumonia, O’Connor’s relationship with Bonadio was falling apart, he still very much involved with his wife Mary Coughlan.
Considering her predicament, it’s astonishing that O’Connor was able to find the time to focus on, let alone record, a new album. But she did, and a double album at that. Theology was released in June 2007, exploring themes of faith and religion in two separate formats – Disc One, the ‘Dublin Sessions’ the stripped down acoustic album, Disc Two the ‘London Session’ the more expansively arranged ‘electric’ album.
Interestingly, not long after producing this densely spiritual album with two distinct personalities, O’Connor appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show last October revealing that she had long been struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. O’Connor attributed her controversially erratic behaviour – O’Connor infamously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on television, proclaimed herself to be a lesbian before retracting the proclamation soon after, and was ordained into the HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism_%28religion%29" schismatic HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Catholic" Independent Catholic group – the bipolar disorder which stemmed from a miserable family life as a child.
O’Connor’s parents separated when she was young and her mother died in a car accident when she was 17 which was when she moved to London to seek a career as a musician. But, she told Winfrey, her success only complicated matters: "I started making records and suddenly became this pop star thing, but I never had time to form my own identity, if you like, or recover from my upbringing. It really confused me. I didn't know who I was or what I was. And I didn't have anybody around me who I knew before, so you're not seeing yourself reflected back at yourself from anyone around you. It can be a massive identity crisis."
O’Connor told Winfrey that her depression intensified to the point where she tried to commit suicide on her 33rd birthday and was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 37, some four years ago.
It’s no wonder, then, that Theology saw O’Connor rummaging desperately for faith and identity. Indeed, perhaps music is the only place in which the disparate facets of O’Connor’s personality and spirituality can effectively co-exist; though Theology is rich in dialects of Christianity, Catholicism and Rastafarian teachings, what emerges is a single burning spirit that is both desperate but also free and audacious. O’Connor herself has said this album means more to her than any of her other releases and I asked her if that’s because there’s more of herself than in other releases.
“Um, well there is so much of me in it,” O’Connor confirmed. “I think there has been in all the records though. But there is a lot of me in it… But it means more to me because, geez how can I explain it, it’s very hard to even put words on something when you’re so deeply moved by it all – but to me it’s something that I’ve wanted to do since I was nine years of age and therefore represents me becoming me. That’s the best way that I can explain it.”
Which begs the question, why did it take her until the age of 40 to do it?
“I just think it takes a certain amount of age, it’s a bit like the way they say you shouldn’t stop a baby from crawling because it’s psychologically bad, they have to go through the stages, you have to let a baby go through all the stages. And I think in a way it’s like that – you have to be an angry teenager, you have to do your rock and roll years and you have to do your crazy years, you know. And then you come to a certain age and you go ‘okay, I’m grounded now’ or ‘I know what I want now’. Before you can do what you want, you’ve got to do everything you don’t want and find out what you don’t want.”
Considering all O’Connor has been through, that field of options must be narrowing significantly. And for all its searching, Theology comes across as a positive album. O’Connor herself has described it as beautiful response to ugly times: “I simply wanted to make a beautiful thing, out of something beautiful, which inspires me."
“I suppose, not to get too John Lennon about it or anything, but the problem of war for example, the existence of war shows the absolute disconnection from God,” she augmented in person. “And the problems that we see in the world, for example the problem of war, it’s not actually a political problem, it’s a spiritual problem, so it can’t be fixed with politics. To try to fix it with politics is like throwing, you know, a big rock to a drowning man… these things need to be solved by us going back to whatever we call our spirituality and trying to sort the thing out from the inside out.”
That sounds like positive action to me! For someone who once tore up a photo of the Pope on television, Theology demonstrates a surprising degree of restraint as a reaction to the blunderings of Bush and Blair.
“Well I think the quietly sitting in the street as taught by Gandhi is where it’s at,” O’Connor sighed. “But we’re all complicit in what’s going on because we’re not actually sitting in the street quietly saying we don’t want it anymore. And I suppose we need to look at that: are we so busy trying to gain material things or whatever that we don’t believe anymore that we have the power of spirit to sit and change things? But to be honest what I think what we’re seeing is the war that will end all war, I don’t think anyone will tolerate war once George Bush and Tony Blair get out of office. We haven’t had any power so far because they’re in the office and therefore they’re the masters, but I think people just won’t tolerate it anymore.”
I put it to O’Connor that, though the tide has clearly turned in recent months, most of us has felt pretty helpless in being able to effect any change. As someone who is able to reach a lot of people, does O’Connor feel any responsibility to speak out?
“It’s not that I feel a responsibility, what’s the way to put it? It’s not that I feel that I have anything in particular to offer, I’m not kind of vain enough to think that I have something to offer. What I can do in my teeny insignificant way in the world is create music which hopefully, A, is soothing and peaceful for people, and hopefully maybe makes them consider their own spirituality. But I don’t think that rock stars should be so vain as to… for example I think if I wanted to protest against war I can do that by sitting in the street with everyone else. So the record really, it isn’t a message record, there’s no real message or anything, it’s just a beautiful thing that hopefully makes someone, like I say, contemplate their own spirituality.”Read the full feature in March Rhythms.
Theology is available through Shock. Sinead O’Connor plays: the West Coast Blues Festival on March 16; Sydney’s State Theatre on March 18; Byron Bluesfest on March 21; Brisbane Convention Centre on March 22; Pt Nepean Festival on March 23; Melbourne’s Palais on March 25.
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