When I read that Dolores O’Riordan died, I experienced an irrational emptiness that defies explanation.

Then I cried.

I have cried several times since then as well.

Yesterday, from behind me as she sat at her desk looking at her phone, my partner said, “Sinéad O’Connor died.”

Once again, an irrational emptiness.

I resisted at first. But then I cried.

I have cried several times since then as well.

And now I carry the news of O’Connor’s death with me in my partner’s voice along side the emptiness I feel for the death of O’Riordan, who was only 46. A decade younger than O’Connor at her death, 56.

Like most people familiar with O’Connor, I associate her with tearing up the Pope’s picture on Saturday Night Live, which I watched live, and “Nothing Compares to U”—the mesmerizing and chilling video especially.

But the very first thing that comes to me when I think of O’Connor is the image of her with Kris Kristofferson.

When I was growing up, Kris Kristofferson was a famous actor and musician, but I wasn’t a fan of country music even though I enjoyed him in movies. It isn’t hard to do the right thing when you are a wealthy and famous white man, but Kristofferson did the right thing at that moment.

And when I think of that singular act of kindness, I have a Grinch moment—my heart swelling nearly out of my chest.

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My first infatuation as a reader was science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke and others. But my first literary crush as a reader was British writer D.H. Lawrence, who believed in “blood consciousness”:

Lawrence had long believed in the duality of human consciousness, seeing a polarity between blood and mental consciousness. For him, mental consciousness was characterised by the exertion of human will, something that was demonstrated by an emphasis on science, mechanisation and materialism. In contrast, he viewed the consciousness of the blood as something inherent and more intuitive; it was as if the blood remembered older religious ideas than those imposed by Christianity, a different kind of relationship between humankind and the cosmos. Thus Lawrence’s particular interest in the notion of blood-consciousness indicates his preference for a more instinctive, rather than scientific, response to questions about man’s place in the world.

Lawrence’s “Best Adventure”: Blood-Consciousness and Cornwall

Then, and now, blood consciousness appeals to me because I often feel connections deep in me, in my bones, in my blood.

There was a hedonism to Lawrence, of course, that appealed to me as a late teen into my early 20s, but Lawrence’s work was also about language, the dialects that join us, the dialects that separate us.

Lawrence was writing about blood consciousness but class consciousness as well (priming me for reading Marx).

And there is a pattern to my affinities.

In college English courses, I found myself drawn to Irish writers, William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. Throughout my life, that Irish thread has repeated itself—George Carlin (who often spoke of his Irish heritage), Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and others.

Of course as well, there was music—U2, The Cranberries, and O’Connor.

Listening to Irish actors and singers resonates with my deep Southern drawl since we in the South owe a bit to Irish descendants who came to the Southern US among others from the British Isles. I am Scotch/Irish on my father’s side, which compels me to trust Lawrence’s faith in blood consciousness.

Regardless, there is something about language running through my love for the Irish, and that is where O’Connor and O’Riordan speak to me both literally and metaphorically.

These smallish women, physically frail, with powerful voices, daring to say what shouldn’t be said.

There is a deep humanity in O’Connor’s and O’Riordan’s lyrics, but there is also a confrontational politics that demands that we not just listen, but that we really hear what they are saying:

It’s the same old theme, since 1916
In your head, in your head, they’re still fightin’
With their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns
In your head, in your head, they are dyin’

“Zombie,” The Cranberries

O’Riordan’s death came well past the pop stardom years for The Cranberries.

For O’Connor, the Pope incident on SNL likely derailed her career as a pop star because O’Connor committed the Great Sin for a woman.

Speaking with her own voice. Daring to claim her voice and body as if it were her own:

I don’t wanna be no man’s woman
I’ve other work I want to get done
I haven’t travelled this far to become
No man’s woman
No man’s woman

“No Man’s Woman,” Sinéad O’Connor

Yesterday, alone in the apartment, I played through several of O’Connor’s songs. Today, I did the same in the car with The Cranberries.

There was more crying, and my chest feels eerily empty even as my heart swells with each song.

In O’Connor’s and O’Riordan’s songs and voices, there is a longing, a humanity, a demand, and a frailty.

We humans can be very lonely and at times very lost. Longing for that Other to be by our side, to love and cherish.

To reach for, to hold.

But also wanting to be comfortable with ourselves, our true selves, the one in our bones, in our blood.

Crying and feeling sadness for people I did not know is irrational. It is uncomfortable to think about being able to listen to their songs any time, their existences somehow captured forever.

I am aware much of this sadness is about what these women and their death’s represent: We humans are incredibly frail.

And even as we may often admit physical frailty, we resist admitting our mental frailties.

We lose people all the time due to our own carelessness.

O’Connor’s death again makes me wish we could be better with and for each other.

We should all be willing, no, eager, to walk on stage into the jeers and booing of others, take that other person in our arms and say, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Fecking hell. If only.

See Also

Should We Be Nice?: The Banshees of Inisherin

Sinead O’Connor Danced on the Edge of the Dark All Her Life, Susan McKay

Auden wrote of Yeats, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.” Cruel Ireland hurt Ms. O’Connor into song. She called Ireland a theocracy. She was furious that in a country that had supposedly fought for and won its freedom, women and children were so silenced and disempowered. She understood and had experienced pain, neglect and injustice and sang for those who also knew these things….

On Wednesday night I watched videos of Ms. O’Connor performing and read some of the tributes on social media. Two stood out for me. One quoted the Yeats poem that inspired her extraordinary “Troy”: “What could have made her peaceful with a mind/That nobleness made simple as a fire. … Why, what could she have done, being what she is?/Was there another Troy for her to burn?”

Sinead O’Connor Danced on the Edge of the Dark All Her Life