BONO
I remember standing with my head just below the level of the black and tobacco keys of my Granny's piano. I could reach them but I couldn't see them. I could hear the hammer hit the string & bone machine but I didn't know why, having hit one ivory, I could hear a sort of rhyme for it in my head, leading me through the din and clangour of choices to a melody. I knew then that music was a playground that for the rest of my life I would be chasing in.
Only problem was they sold the piano. I lost the argument to bring it to our house in Ballymun. I wanted to learn how to play the melodies I heard in my head. Poor Bono. No, poor you as it turns out. Everyone was going to pay for this … everyone was going to have to listen to me … Revenge like this takes a lifetime…
Revenge … on my father, a beautiful tenor who conducted our stereo with knitting needles, who never even imagined music might be handed down through the DNA like his bad back and bad temper … and so never bothered to bother us about learning an instrument. And revenge on music education, which teaches children to imitate rather than create. It's good to know the voice of the masters but not to have yours drowned out.
Peter and the Wolf is a lesson in how to teach. This is a new version of the Prokofiev classic by two of my favourite people and musicians, Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer. It is for Hospice Care . . .these angels who were so ready to look after my father in his losing fight with cancer asked me to illustrate the book that accompanies the music. Ciaran O'Goara was art director and guide. I asked my girls Jordan and Eve to help me with detail and a filigree of flowers. I painted myself in a corner as PETER. My Da we made the grandfather, as he was to Jordan and Eve, my two daughters who loved and were loved by him. THE WOLF was ambition for things just out of reach.
