SECOND TREASURE-HUNTER (thinking aloud): What does an Irishman keep under his bed?

SECOND TREASURE-HUNTER takes the gun from the REBEL’s hands, inspects it closely.

FIRST TREASURE-HUNTER: Pot of gold maybe?

GUIDE: Pot of tea?

SECOND TREASURE-HUNTER: [Returning rifle to REBEL] Pot?

Thanks to Ruth Pe Palileo (Director/Co-producer), Tommy Costello (Co-producer), and actors Matt, Boomer, Amanda, Liz, and Corey.

Flickr image by kman999

Peak Oil proponents hold that we have used around 50% of extractable oil and thus face a dwindling, increasingly expensive supply. (One proviso: OPEC do not reveal their reserve estimates but, as every driver knows, prices have been rising over recent years, indicating demand outstripping supply).

Cut out oil overnight and our social and commercial fabric would quickly collapse: supermarkets would be empty in a matter of days for example. But this will be a slower crisis and, if we are to overcome it, we need to act now.

One grassroots initiative that has taken off in recent years, particuarly in English-speaking countries, is called Transition Towns. You can learn more in an article I wrote for the Smarter Cities website recently:

Keegan – All Together Now: Transition Towns Rise in the US

Thanks to Paul McRandle, John-Paul Flintoff, Annie McCleary, Ben Brangwyn, and Trathen Heckman for their help. Flickr image by Roger Smith

His protagonists are wanderers, usually bohemian, invariably troubled, following their distant star across oceans, into deserts, through the orbit of violence and evil or madness, then on into the depths of almost certain obscurity. They live, for the most part, in the contemporary world, consuming books and encountering friends and lovers, but their dedication to art seems anachronistic, more of a piece with the romantics, surrealists, or beat poets: these are not the kind of self-branding careerists to show up as writers in residence or guests on Start the Week. As with all great vocations, many are called but few are chosen: suicide, addiction and neurosis are often their lot but, along the way, they partake of a quest which, for Bolano, is the most interesting thing humans can do.

You can read the full text at the Dublin Review of Books.

Flickr image by rocketlass

As I write, it remains to be seen whether Ireland will actually pay off the outrageous (banking) debt that has been settled upon us, courtesy of our inept, lame-duck government (itself the product of a rotten political system).

My main point in the discussion–besides pointing out that we are being penalized unfairly–was that civic reform is vital. The public space in Ireland is currently agog with initiatives, most at an early stage of gestation, testifying that a historical opportunity is upon us.

If we leave our public life unmended, darker forces, in my view, will seize the initiative. Besides emigration, political violence is another Irish “solution” to Irish problems.

You can download/listen to the radio show here:

KNPR Radio Discussion

Stay tuned for details of a new online initiative being cooked up by myself and some friends here in Westport. Flickr image by karen horton

Good News from Another Universe

Not exactly high-fidelity since I forgot to take the recorder out of my pocket–but I hope you like it.

Thanks to Dermot and Steve for a great night of music, fun, and smart people. The next event is being held on Saturday, November 20th. See their Facebook page for details.

Please bring, if you wish, copies of a page or two from a story or book that has impressed you. And a pen and paper…or a laptop.

The day, which costs 60 Euro, runs from 10.30am to 5pm with delicious home-made lunch included and takes place set in the delightful surroundings of Old Rectory Retreat in Knappagh, not far from Westport along the Leenane Road.

Hope you can come! For further information or to make a booking, phone Roisi­n at 087-776-4820 or email oldrectoryretreat@gmail.com

Why then, one might ask, does society lay siege on imagination? For that is how things stand today.

To begin with, falsely believing abductions and child murders to be everyday dangers, we have put in a host of needless restrictions on children’s lives, preventing them as a result from experiencing much nature (or life indeed) beyond the bite-sized chunks dolloped out to them on screen or in museums.

We allow advertisers (even on RTE, to our shame) to exploit children by making them feel self-conscious for not having Object X or looking like Celebrity Y.

You can read the full text of this article I wrote for the Mayo News, by clicking the link below:

Keegan – The (Almost) Lost World [Mayo News]

Flickr image by …Tim

Enter the Colorado River–which kisses the southern edge of the Silver State and keeps Las Vegas alive.

Of course, long ago, when the southwestern states divvied up river resources, little did they imagine that a city of 2 million high-maintenance souls would emerge in the pitiless Desert cauldron of the Las Vegas Valley.

But emerge that city did, replete with mod cons and then some. And then along came Global Warming in the shape of an ongoing drought.

Add to that trenchant opposition to water extraction from rural counties…and you end up with the present situation: a regional water system under severe stress, as evidenced by the dramatic “bath ring” in Lake Mead pictured above.

You can read an article I just wrote for the NRDC’s Smarter Cities website on this topic, as well as listen to a portion of an interview I conducted with Pat Mulroy, the Las Vegan charged with meeting the city’s water needs, by clicking the link below:

Keegan – Ring of Dust (NRDC Smarter Cities)

Thanks to Pat Mulroy, Dr Robert Fielden, Robert Glennon, and Paul McRandle for their help on this article. Flick image by loop_oh.

The Brown Envelope

This story came second in the 2010 Jonathan Swift Satire Contest. I hope you like it.

flickr image by Conor Pendergrast

If there is an Open Mic event near you, I urge you to go: you never know what you will discover.

Keegan – The Four Colour Pen

flickr image by ianus

The protagonist, a retired conjuror called Victor Goodbody, is living out his last days in a Las Vegas Valley hospice. Having been relatively unsuccessful in life and love, he has come to delude himself that he is in fact a real magician:

By the power of magic alone I raised not only the City of Las Vegas–but also the Volta Hotel and Casino–eighth wonder of the world and eclipser of the first pyramids of Old Vegas. With only words from the Lore Books and the force of my Will I raised a Stratosphere and a Forum. Volcanoes rose and fell at my command…even statues moved.

For Victor, electricity and digital lifestyles are an abomination, and he raves and rages against modern Las Vegas with wild (and, I hope, entertaining) abandon. As his illness progresses, his Doctor and Nurse play out the roles of figures from his past, allowing Victor to come to some sort of terms with the loss of his mother and his lover.

Here’s the schedule, with all performances taking place at the Las Vegas Little Theatre:

• Friday June 4th at 8:30pm
• Thursday June 10th at 6:30pm
• Saturday June 12th at 6:30pm
• Sunday June 13th at 4:30pm and 6pm

Go to Las Vegas Fringe Festival to purchase tickets. Wish I could see you there…

My sister Miriam directs :)

See her blog for the details

DEE: Sing Hibernia? The maidens will no doubt spreadeagle themselves on every known crossroad. Has your spoon wilted or what? Do you be forgetting that I am Dee, most high consumer of skincare products from the laboratoires of Lake Geneva? Dee, decked out every waking hour like the nest of a magpie in designer labels so exclusive they have yet to be knocked off? Sing Hibernia how are you?

NAOISE: And do you forget, Dee, that I am Neesh most honoured of Tribunal solicitors, who did his J-1 in Cape Cod and travelled once to Machu Pichu after college, and drives a turbocharged Audi TT morning, noon, and night? Begone with your spoons, wicked woman! It is babies you are wanting from me and the promulgation of the marriage banns in national newspapers on two consecutive Mondays! I have your measure!

Though usually available, if memory serves, in all Nevadan bookstores worthy of the name, the journal is currently changing distributors so, if you want a copy, send a $5.50 check (payable to “Board of Regents”) to English Department J2A, College of Southern Nevada, 3200 East Cheyenne Avenue, North Las Vegas, NV 89030.

Flickr image by lcrf

Thanks are due to the director, Will Irvine, and especially the actors, Aidan Jordan, Claudia Schwartz, and the amazing Lorna Quinn.

The play concerns an extraterrestrial intervention in the affairs of a country battered by financial crisis and skyrocketing unemployment:

ADMIRAL: Let me guess…you want me to rescue this little band of Celts, is that it? And how do you suggest, young Meindroid, we get this shower of saints and scholars across six dimensions and up the back arse of a galactic wormhole?

MEINDROID: We could use the Moving Statues strategy, your welcomeness.

ADMIRAL: Stupid robot!

MEINDROID: Quite so, your Majesty.

Flickr Image by micky mb

My play Grace of the Median, a comedy of Hiberno-American errors, got a public reading, with actors, in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, on July 19th:

I am an Irish rock. Whoever treads on me–Norman or Gael, peasant or prince, child or crone–is all one to me. Civilization itself is but five minutes old in my day-long life; the British Empire, the Irish Republic, Eurovision, the blink of an eye…

It was a really useful exercise for me: I cut quite a bit of the text as the week progressed and have since, as a direct result of feedback, inserted 2 new scenes, made innumerable microcuts, and plan to redraft before I submit the play for a full performance.

The event was produced by Painted Filly Theatre Company, directed by Louise Lowe, and featured a great cast: Christopher Samuel Carroll, Derval Cromie, Mark Gordon, Brian McGovern, Sarah-Jayne Quigley, and Lorna Quinn. (Thank you to all–and to any of you that came on the day.)

Image: ‘The Road to Ragged Mountain’ by Chris Seufert on Flickr

My short story “Ursula’s Ghost” is in Crannóg Magazine‘s summer issue (affording me the great pleasure of reading it at the launch event in Galway). The piece is a spooky little number about a returned emigrant with blood on her hands…

Was she thinking of the man she had just killed? No. She was back living in Ireland after twenty years away in America and, perhaps to take her mind off things, was idly flicking through the changes she had found.

What had she noticed? The cracked pavements, with their teeming weedlife, for one; washing lines and lace curtains; the smell of rain and the sight of rust; the smokers stooped about doors; the Slav and English accents everywhere; the stone and the grey and piped music and yes the damp, the mist, the rain.

You can get a copy via the Crannóg website.

Image: ‘Welcome, ghosts’ by The Devil is in The Details on Flickr

All credit, while I’m on the subject, to Director Duncan Molloy and lead actors Sarah-Jayne Quigley and Colm O’Brien, all of whom did sterling work: I was whisked off after the performance by family and friends and wished I could have shaken them all by the hand.

Here are some choice quotes from the papers:

Fin Keegan’s Sing, Hibernia is the brilliant one, an exuberantly satiric and acid-edged jab at the pleasure-sated offspring of the Celtic Tiger. A couple lie in fine clothes, literally eating the heads off each other with spoons, while a line of black-clad servants–”our friends from the accession states”–leap to push the shuffle button on their iPods and clean stilettos with a tissue.
-Daily Mail

The sardonic zenith has to be Fin Keegan’s riotous Sing, Hibernia which somehow manages to send up middle-class drug-taking, attitudes to immigration and globalisation, all in a rich Synge-like English.
-Metro Dublin

The Irish Times also made a passing reference in its review of the evening to “Fin Keegan’s amusing Celtic folklore update”

2009 Update: The play also appears in the current issue (#23) of Nevadan literary journal, The Red Rock Review… MORE

Image: ‘Broadway’ by Timothy Neesam on Flickr

www.amazon.com/dp/B00121WDG0

The best reader review will be given a $2000 token by Amazon so, beside my undying gratitude for your support, you may get a free shopping spree!

Impressions of Ireland