Sinéad O’Connor You Should Write More

“And you have to be careful what you write, because all songwriters will tell you that songs always come true.”

Sinéad O’Connor, Rememberings.

Sinéad has an edifying way of writing about all those people in her life, I wish I could do the same with all the books I encountered in my own life. I met people through books. Still, I can’t remember which was the first real book I read. I am not talking of schoolbooks. I remember this one, it had a dolphin on the cover and it was about a girl who wanted to learn the dolphins’ language; she wanted to translate into human language their sounds. I really liked it. Maybe this has been the first real book I read. Until the age of 12 or so, if I remember well, I was not a passionate reader. I just read because I had to, or because of my father’s rule to spend two hours a day during the summer break reading the I Quindici the encyclopaedia of the How and Why. I think it was the Italian version of some American encyclopaedia for children or adolescents.

Sinead’s professionalism made me think I skip the basics. Yes, when I start learning something new I am too anxious to go past the basics, so I never learn the basics well. Most people know the ABC but I still haven’t a command of the English ABC or the Greek one, or even the Latin or the German one or even of the French one… all languages I have studied for years. I can’t memorise the foundations of the topics I learn. This creates a constant feeling of being a beginner or unprofessional. I can look intermediate or advanced, but in fact I have gaps (or hiatus) in my knowledge of any topic. I have a patched knowledge with many unfilled holes; a leopard-skin like learning.

Sinead writing about people who abused her in the early years of her life had the effect of evoking this: People shouting at me? I don’t like it! It doesn’t matter if it is my father, my mother, brother, boss or wife, daughter or son; even if it were god himself, I don’t like it in the least. By the way, the word God is for Sinead very powerful: He talks to her and He does so without a sound or a thought. The way God talks, Sinead says, has nothing to do with what we use the word talking.

I read this book in two sessions and half – I couldn’t stop turning the pages and I did so only once my eyes were too tired to continue. I can’t find the words to express the feeling this book gave me. The words are simple but stay with you, in fact I can remember nearly everything I read in it and there are entire sentences that went straight into the shelves of my memory without effort. The way she narrates the hard times, the way she reveals her inner life is never dragging you to the negativity of the experience but lifts your heart; it focus on the way she came out, the way she got back on her feet and not on the way she fell.

A great and inspiring reading taking you through an eventful and passionate life.