A Happy New Year from Dublin

The day after tomorrow it will be 2026. It seems to have crept up unannounced tapping you on the shoulder and whispering '.. I'm here'.

The year has been one of turmoil, death and uncertainty. And it may well continue for sometime to come, but there is always, always art. As Toni Morrison once said, 'This is precisely when artists go to work'. Whether its writing, music, dance, painting or sculpting, each of us in our creative field has a responsibility to take the world on a journey away from the endless drip-feed chaos.

Not distract (that would be too easy and trite), but try to make sense of a world that is becoming more absurd and senseless. 

And cruel.

2025 was the year when I found my work, the novel I am releasing in January, most sidelined by distractions - the external noise of the endless news cycle, the slop of extremist view points and live-streamed 24/7 horror posts. I began to really detach myself from my devices. I turn my phone off at 7:30pm every night and won't put it on until 6:00am the following morning. I purged every news channel app. I only read the newspaper on weekends.

But I found solace too in the creative world. I found that words have a greater nuance and depth these days. That as a writer, you are constantly fashioning sentences and paragraphs to reassure the reader this isn't AI generated. I reduced my writing on my laptop - preferring long hand and journals one of the many overhauls in my approach in creating THE PAYOUT GAME.

Equally too, restoring a book I found in a nearby water-logged skip helped me in the process of writing. Paying time and attention to it, I fell in love with books again. I fell in love with words and writing again.

Forty years ago, I played in bands, gigging around Ireland's pub circuit, and did ok out of it. I met many wonderful characters off the beaten track, but one, who called himself 'Pete the Swede' always turned to the band before we went on stage (oftentimes a stack of beer crates with a sheet of plywood balanced on it) and said.

"A lot of people who have paid in to see us have had a shit week, lousy pay and crap jobs. We don't short change them here,"

And that is the point we have as creatives and dreamers to get up, get the work out and never short-change the customer.

Have a safe and happy 2026. Thank you all for your support this year, I am truly grateful and we will get through this as long as there are books, libraries, art galleries and concert halls.

Stay safe and have a wonderful New Year.