Listening multiple times to 1987's "The Lion and The Cobra" and 1990's "I do not want what I haven't got" took me back to just that period in my life, a time span that was very intense. In the earlier part (1987 thru 1988), I had finally made close friends at college in Austin (after arriving in 1983 and still bemoaning my lost high-school love Ginny), had moved out of college dorm rooms and by '87 into my first couple of small apartments, had taken my first couple of poetry classes and fallen in love with a girl or two and made close friends with one guy that I would go on to put out a poetry magazine with. I was also paying close attention to the Austin music press and trying to be "hip" to what was going on---not liking things just because the weekly press raved about them (Husker Du and My Bloody Valentine still suck, and Hoodoo Gurus is not much better) but because I wanted to be "cool" and informed on music/trends I might possibly be missing out on...
I learned about Sinead O'Connor's first album, "The Lion and the Cobra," through the Austin weekly press. There was no local radio to play it at the time, and no Internet or YouTube, so I took a chance and bought it, based on the raves and on the cover photo---I hadn't yet figured out I was gay, and she looked kind of cool and maybe, with her shaved head, gay like I might be. Turned out to be much more meaningful to me than just her image (and far beyond what some shallow 20-year-old college guy was writing). The album was throbbing/raw/weird/hypnotic/scary/exciting. I couldn't quite understand what exactly she was singing about (only last week learned that "Troy" was about her dead, abusive mother who had died in a car crash in 1985, when I had only thought it was about a sexual triumph), but I FELT everything she was singing about. She wasn't a dummy, media-posing sex-doll like Madonna, or a good-natured, quirky goofball like Cyndi Lauper. Sinead was sincere and raw and honest.
I walked around with those songs in my head for the next year or so, and felt more powerful for it. I was someone who GOT this music.
In the summer of 1988: I moved from Austin back to Fort Worth, to be near the twins I had met in 1988, my first very close friends since high school. I wasn't yet out of the closet, and I had a mad crush on one of the twins. Lots of drama on my part, and lots of bad feelings on the part of the twin that I actually liked better though she wasn't the one I was in love with! The main setting, though, was that their mother was dying of cancer and I was living in a 2-bedroom apartment with all of them: The dying mother in one room, the 3 of us in the other room. (Still not sure why they invited me to move in with them. Did they not understand how serious their mother's health situation was? Why didn't their mother say to them, "I'm not feeling that well right now and don't really want a stranger around.") I moved there in August, and their mother died in late September. Afterwards, they dealt with it by inviting tons of people over for constant parties. I wanted to be alone with them, to talk quietly. And, yes, to get closer to the twin I was in love with. By November 1988, I'd moved out of their apartment, and by February 1989, I'd moved back to Austin.
Met my first girlfriend ever in April 1989. (I was 23, had never had sex with anyone, and was dying to come out of the closet.) Met a very sexy but utterly sleazy/stupid club-dyke and ex-bank robber. Moved in with her in December 1989. After numerous fights, moved out in March 1990. The soundtrack to my next 2 years of trying to get back with her was Sinead's 1990 album, especially "Nothing Compares 2 U," which was playing constantly on MTV during that time, but also songs like "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" and "You Cause As Much Sorrow" and "Emperor's New Clothes." Soundtrack of utter pain.
After that, I lost track of Sinead. She tore up a picture of the Pope on SNL (I didn't care one way or the other). Her third album was a collection of standards, which I didn't care about. Her fourth album in 1994, I bought while I was in grad school in San Francisco---it didn't do anything for me at all, so I sold it off. After that, I paid no attention to her musically, was just aware of her whenever she became a priest or a Muslim or married multiple times or publicly berated her ex-husbands and children or posted suicidal messages, or whatever her latest schtick was. She had meant something to me earlier, but she had become crass and embarrassing.
In one of her "help me" public videos, posted from a cheap hotel in San Francisco, she wailed that people needed to be kind to the mentally ill, like herself. Well, in the abstract, yes, they should be. But in reality: The mentally ill are obnoxious and hateful. No one wants to be around them. No one wants to be brought down. I've learned this myself, when I was in the midst of depression, drinking heavily and making snide comments online (and even pre-online, trying to hang out with my brother and his wife, when they clearly didn't want me around). When you're in the midst of a bad patch, most people, except the very saintly, don't want to be around you. And most people aren't that saintly. One must learn to understand that fact and learn to make your own way during those times.
In the past couple of days, I bought Sinead's 2021 autobiography, "Remembrances." And a T-shirt with the alternate "Lion and the Cobra" cover (not the one released in the US).
I'm post-50 now, and somewhat calmed down, so I don't think reading her book will trigger anything (at least I hope not---when I listen to Amy Winehouse, for instance, I do still get triggered back to the masochistic earlier part of my young womanhood; same for reading Sylvia Plath today---as a young woman, I used to keep her "Collected Poems" by my bed like a bible. I still think she's brilliant on paper---which, for posterity, is most important. But: In my middle age, which Plath never reached, I now completely understand that you can't go around acting on your intense feelings and expect those around you to put up with them).
And I look forward to going around wearing the T to honor Sinead's memory, but also so people will understand that I'm cool and in line with that. (Not to the point of going mad, but as far as I've been able to go on my middle-class income. It's a reality---you can't go crazy unless you have family money to back you up. Ask Sylvia Plath and Scott Fitzgerald re his wife!)
