Review

Culture

11 December 2023

5 min read

The spiritual depths of the genius

Moved by his songbook and his funeral, Belle Tindall considers the source, and sacrifice, of Shane MacGowan’s genius.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Upon his draped coffin, a picture of Shane MacGowan and a crucifix sit

Celebrating the life of Shane MacGowan at his funeral mass.

RTE.

Have you ever seen a Catholic priest hold up a Buddha during a Mass? Or a crowd applaud and cheer after a reading from the book of Micah? Or Nick Cave miss his cue by half an hour?

No?

Then I suppose you’ve yet to see the footage of Shane MacGowan’s funeral.

On a cold December afternoon - in a Tipperary church which was full to bursting – family, friends and fans gathered to (in the words of the presiding priest) "hold, help and handle the loss of the great Shane MacGowan… to celebrate his song, his story, his lyric, his living." I watched the footage because I had heard rumours of dancing in the aisles, renditions of The Pogues’ songs on the streets, bible readings by Bono and prayers led by Jonny Depp. And I can confirm, the rumours were all true.

People really did climb out of their pews to dance around Shane’s coffin to ‘Fairytale of New York’, a song which has just lost its maestro. Fans really did line the streets of Dublin to greet Shane’s body with raised glasses of Guinness and renditions of his most-loved songs. What’s more, Bono really did read the bible and Jonny Depp really did pray for ‘a deeper spirit of compassion in our world’. In fact, far more interesting (but far less documented) than the presence of Jonny Depp, was the presence of Shane’s raw and gritty Christian faith, which was so obvious throughout. It wasn’t just cultural Christianity on display here, it was far deeper than that. But alas, I’m getting ahead of myself - I’ll get back to that in a moment.

There was defiant joy, immense grief, loud laughter and silent sobs. There was lament and there was celebration, there was bitter and there was sweet, there was light and there was darkness. It was raw and messy and awkward and authentic and, in every way possible, profound. I suppose you could suggest that it was a lot like Shane in that way.

Indeed, this was no ordinary funeral.

Nick Cave performed a rendition of ‘Rainy Night in Soho’, which has only cemented my opinion that it is the most romantic song ever written (we can argue about it later). And then there was the eulogy, given by the person that I like to think inspired the song that Nick had just performed: Victoria Mary Clarke, the woman who has loved, and been loved by, Shane MacGowan since she was twenty years old. And while it was the star-studded eccentricities that enticed me to watch the funeral, it is Victoria’s eulogy that has plagued me ever since. She delivered it with an eloquence befitting of a poet’s soulmate and the composure of someone who has been preparing to eulogise the man she loved her entire life.

Victoria understood MacGowan completely, and through her words, she has helped us to understand him too. She told us how –

"He wasn’t interested in living a normal life, he didn’t want a 9-5 or a mortgage or any of that stuff, he liked to explore all aspects of consciousness. He liked to explore where you could go with your mind…. He chose many, many, many mind-altering substances to help him on that journey of exploration. He really did live so close to edge that he seemed like he was going to fall off many times…"

And I suppose therein lies the source, and sacrifice, of his genius. He was incredibly introspective, almost scarily so. It reminds me of another songwriter – a biblical one – King David, who once wrote:

‘Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’

I’m wondering if Shane made similar requests of God, whether anyone would have the boldness to pray this line with as much literality as someone who was fascinated by ‘all aspects of consciousness’. Perhaps such introspective depths are reserved for the geniuses that are brave enough to ask God to take them there. And that got me thinking about other such geniuses - some of them present in that very church - who have plunged the depths of themselves and gifted us with the spoils through their art, those who follow their romantic longing’s lead, those who have an eye for the unseen. I can’t claim to fully understand it, but how interesting that those who live as ‘close to the edge’ as Shane did tend to either bump into oblivion (Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake, Ian Curtis) or God. Or, as in the case of Shane MacGowan, both.

The reason I could never write a song like ‘Rainy Night in Soho’, is that Shane boldly went where I doubt I ever could - to the costly depths reserved for the brilliant.

At one point, MacGowan was taking one hundred acid tabs a day, and Victoria recounted (with a hint of a giggle – her adoration of him utterly tangible) how, in the early days of their relationship, Shane carried an encyclopaedia of pharmacology around with him. This was so that he could look up each drug he was being offered before accepting it. I suppose to an explorer of consciousness, this encyclopaedia is as close to a compass as it gets. And so yes, there was darkness there. Deep and dangerous darkness. But Victoria wanted us to know that –

"He didn’t just like to go to the dark places and the weird places, he also liked to go to the blissful and transcendent and spiritual places… he was intensely religious."

She evidenced this with a story drawn from the last months of his life, all of which were spent in hospital, when a priest had to confiscate Holy Communion from Shane – who had obtained it ‘illegally’ and taken it daily. You see, in the Catholic Church, Holy Communion has to be administered by a priest under specific circumstances. And so, Shane became, perhaps, ‘the only man in the world who’s been busted for Holy Communion’. But nevertheless, whenever he came to the end of himself, Shane found God. And while he held the pluralistic belief that no religion had a monopoly on God (hence the afore mentioned reference to the Priest displaying a Buddha), he was utterly devoted to Jesus.

"I think what he was trying to get across was that there’s something in this stuff’ explained Victoria, ‘there’s something in Jesus that’s worth thinking about. It’s worth valuing. It’s worth exploring that Jesus is real."

I didn’t know this about Shane MacGowan; how actively he sought God, how deeply he enjoyed Jesus. But it makes complete sense. If one goes looking in the deepest places, they’re likely to find the deepest thing. Roam around the truest place, and eventually you’ll bump into the truest thing.

I, like Shane, believe that to be God.

I suppose the difference, and the reason I could never write a song like ‘Rainy Night in Soho’, is that Shane boldly went where I doubt I ever could - to the costly depths reserved for the brilliant. Instead, I shall simply ponder how beautiful it is that God waits for the brilliant to notice him, even in those depths.

Article

Attention

Character

Culture

Film & TV

21 January 2025

4 min read

Traitors holds a mirror up to this obsession of ours

The attitude that is eroding empathy.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

The cast and presenter of a competition TV programme assembled in a montage.

BBC.

“So you’re basically calling me Harold Shipman or something?”

2025 may have barely begun but BBC One’s The Traitors has already offered a strong contender for TV moment of the year.

If you’re not familiar with the show – and if you aren’t, where have you been? – a group of strangers head off to a castle in Scotland to earn money through a series of challenges while show host Claudia Winkleman smoulders at the camera. Meanwhile, some competitors are designated ‘Traitors’ and can steal the money at the end of the competition, while the rest – the ‘Faithfuls’ – must unmask the ‘Traitors’, banishing one person each day. In return, the Traitors can ‘murder’ one Faithful a night.

It's stupid and ridiculous and melodramatic. I love it.

Something that has struck me this series is the inability of contestants to imagine that people might behave differently to them. Early on, Dr. Kas “Definitely-Not-Harold-Shipman” Ahmed raises a toast to a ‘murdered’ Faithful. “That’s sketchy,” everyone immediately thinks. “I wouldn’t have done that, and I’m a Faithful, so Kas MUST BE A TRAITOR!”

The group votes to banish him shortly afterwards.

The certainty with which contestants decide someone is a Traitor based on the most minute and innocuous details is incredible. Oooh, Glenda just coughed at an inopportune moment. Obviously a Traitor. Look at Keith taking the stairs two at a time. It’s like he wants to be caught!

The ‘Faithfuls’ seem completely unable to imagine people might be different from them. That they might think differently, or act differently. There is, in other words, a complete lack of empathy.

As the always-absolutely-right-about-everything Brené Brown tells us, sympathy is recognising someone else’s perspective. But empathy is feeling with someone; it is sharing that perspective. And it’s empathy that’s needed for human connection. And it’s empathy that is missing on The Traitors.

All of this ultimately reminds me of the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. Taylor is arguably the most influential living philosopher. Much of his work – especially in books like Sources of the Self, and A Secular Age – is concerned with explaining modern western societies, their characteristics, and where those characteristics emerge from.

Taylor claims that these societies have stopped privileging ‘exteriority’ and have started privileging ‘interiority’ instead.

What on earth does that mean?

In 1637, René Descartes says “I think, therefore I am,” and western philosophy never recovers. Descartes is looking for a foundation, a starting point from which he can make sense of himself and the world around him. But this is not easy. What’s to say he’s not hallucinating, or being deceived by a demon, so that the world around him isn’t as it seems?

What’s the one thing he can be sure of? That he thinks!

The fact he’s even thinking and doubting his senses tells Descartes that he is someone or something who exists and thinks. That sounds obvious, but it gives Descartes the foundation from which he can make sense of reality.

As a result of Descartes’ philosophy, we imagine that our very ‘selves’ are located entirely ‘within us’ somehow, with the rest of reality found ‘outside’ ourselves. This is a ‘gap’ of sorts, between us and the world, while the interior self becomes the place where the meaning of our existence is discovered and understood.

Modern life, Taylor says, therefore instils in us a sense of detachment from everyone and everything else. I have my interior world, you have yours. I can never truly know you, and you can never truly know me.

I could be the next Harold Shipman for all you know.

But it wasn’t always like this, Taylor argues. Modernity’s preoccupation with the inner self was preceded by a more outside-centred view of the world.

In this outside-centred worldview, I and the people around me aren’t simply unknowable black holes of interiority. Instead, we are both parts of a broader created realm. And, by virtue of us both being creatures located within something bigger than either of ourselves, this outside-centred view of the world becomes a point of commonality from which we can get to know each other.

Shared humility leads to connection, in other words.

All of this, I think, goes some way to explaining why I’m watching a seemingly lovely doctor having a quasi-breakdown over being misconstrued as a serial killer. The Traitors shows how obsessed we have become with our own interiority. We are inward-looking creatures now. As such, we are often slow to recognise the ways in which our shared place within creation only unites us.

While a little introspection and self-reflection is vital for healthy human flourishing, out-and-out navel-gazing only hinders our ability to connect with those around us. With a little help from Charles Taylor, The Traitors reminds me to get out of my own head and to see beyond myself. To look at the world around me, and to see the people with whom I share it.

To see them with empathy, not as unknowable voids of interiority, but as fellow creatures walking a shared journey.

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