Mouths That Refused to be Silent
Remembering Sinead O'Connor and Barry Crimmins at this year's Latitude Festival
Was it Troy or Mandinka that I first heard?
How hastily I hurried to buy that first Sinead O Connor album and then every twelve inch single because the B sides would always have collaborations and remixes that were startling and exciting. The B side to Jump in the River was my introduction to the performance artist Karen Finley, a doorway which led to another new world. Here was someone who when advised to grow her hair longer by the record label shaved it to the scalp. Here was an artist whose work was so powerful and beautiful that it was hard for those who wanted to dismiss her to throw her under the train. Here was someone who stood on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury in a Fat Slags T shirt. Here was someone you knew had to create and also wanted to share the other artists she admired, to bring other new voices to the fore.
Luckily for the status quo and those unsettled by artists who won’t obey, the fans of an iconic protest singer protested against her after she used her high profile TV slot to try to wake people up to the systemic abuse in the Catholic Church.
She still created beauty and rallying cries, but there was a penitent criticism and persistent desire to dismiss her as mad. As so often with whistleblowers, it was not the villains who were held to account, but the those who dared to disturb our cosy notions. I think of this was I look at the punishment of those who planned peaceful disturbances to try and get governments to understand the perils ahead if our addiction to fossil fuels and the slowness of energy companies to bring in alternatives that may damage their profits. Those protesters will languish in prison while those who vandalise the world for profit will dine at the highest tables.
The 26th July was the anniversary of Sinead’s death. I was at Latitude, so the night before, I took to the stage with Sarah-Louise Young and Matt Watson and performed a poem I had written in memory of this great artist.
Is it an ugly envy that drives us to crush
Those who wish to expose us to the possibility of beauty
And the hope of change ?
At your peak on a platform
prepared to propel you to platinum
Instead
You dismantled your stage
By daring to tear into a photograph of an abuse concealer
A papal alibi for paedophiles
your failure to obey the rules of silence outraged.
Not anger at the perpetrators or the pope
it was you that betrayed the sacred trust
She must be mad
She must be kicked
she must be silent
the media soon don the garb of Vatican emissary
a reminder of their deference
that considers calling out the true offence
History shows that most oppressors
will have eager dressers
to clothe them in camouflage
you never complimented the emperor on his hosiery
cast out , a not for profit prophet
In the desert something grows
it blunts chainsaws when it blossoms
And it can't be felled
and on its leaves grow the stories
that they still battle to conceal.
This Latitude Festival also marked the anniversary of sitting on stage with the great activist comedian Barry Crimmins.
Barry had been the victim of sexual violence when he was little more than a toddler. In adulthood, he spent much of his life fighting for the oppressed and against power. He was admired by Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn. He used his damage to repair others. I celebrated him on stage with this poem about the night, one year after our Latitude weekend, where I remembered his life and his eyes as I listened to James perform Sometimes.
EYES - for Barry Crimmins by Robin Ince
I’m at a loose end in a big field
Pressed upon by kissing couples and teen packs
Solitary within the rumble
Queues at the liquorice shack
Someone tripping in a Guinness hat
Sometimes it’s hard to have fun when everyone else is
Drifting like marsh gas across the grass
Where the tramples fries
And empty nitrous oxide lies
The melancholy romanticism of detachment
In a crowd
I dismiss the headliner
Not loud enough
A pop act who on other days I’d surprise myself by liking
In the tent nearby
The pogo sweat is turning grass to compost
and out of it grows
a band I know from long ago
Who i though I’d left behind
I see it’s 10pm and I remember
On this soil one year ago we made plan
Force-fed you churros when you only wanted beer
You didn’t make it to the spring
Sometimes
Sometimes
Sometimes
“I look into your eyes and I swear I can see your soul”
As the crowd sang I felt my own eyes
As I saw yours - eyes that witnessed horror
A mouth that refused to be silent
Four months dead I’ve finally found your song
 | A guest post by
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I really thought she was someone incredibly special and respected her for not toeing the line. We need more people like her. She was a great musician too. So when the news of her death came, it was a horrible shock to my family and I.
And Sinead knew what a woman was. She knew that sex-based oppression matters. She knew that our lived experiences as women cannot be replicated, or impersonated.