Episode 84 - Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin's Journey to Finding his Voice

I have something very different from my usual offerings for you on this Episode. There’s lots to learn from today’s smart guest, for sure, but there’s also poetry and music to enjoy! And yes, I may be getting a little teary-eyed… 

This Episode welcomes Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, an Irish poet, musician, ethnomusicologist,  and many other things.

This is exactly why I wanted to interview him because he is such a great example of how you can do many different things with your smart mind. 

Mícheál comes from an Irish family steeped in traditional music and academia. He studied music at University College Cork and got an MA in Ethnomusicology, before becoming a freelance music educator with a specialisation in rap and human beatboxing. 

He’s performed all over the world with his brother in their acoustic pop duo ‘Size2shoes’ - but decided that he wanted a deeper way of engaging with music and poetry, diving into the traditions passed down to him by his parents, both icons of Irish Traditional Culture. 

Thus began his journey as a speaker, guide and poet - and he published his first book of poetry EARLY MUSIC in 20020. 

This isn’t even half of it - and during our conversation, we dive into many more topics and fields he engages in like art, nature, and sacred sites. 

You’ll learn about the significance of finding your voice, the value of apprenticeship and taking time for deep learning, the therapeutic nature of art and music, and the role of tradition and lineage in the arts. 

I hope that this conversation will leave you with a deeper appreciation for the arts, and a renewed sense of inspiration to explore your own creative journeys. 

Enjoy this beautiful session with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin!

Links/Show Notes

You can buy a signed copy of Mícheál's book, as well as explore other offerings here: https://www.turasdanam.com/shop

And you can learn more about tours, courses and working with him and his amazing brother and morning here:
https://www.turasdanam.com/

Ready to learn how to Manage your Smart Mind? Then download my free 'Mapping Your Unique Brain' Workbook. Go to:
https://www.coachkramer.org/brainmap to get access.

Are you interested in working with me? Click here.

Come say hi on LinkedIn |Insta | Twitter | FB

Transcript

Episode 84 - Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin's Journey to Finding his Voice

Else Kramer (00:00:00) - Me and my brother.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:00:02) - All right. I am so happy people to have on the podcast. Mitchell O'Sullivan. Welcome and thank you for teaching me how to pronounce that.

Else Kramer (00:00:14) - If I can teach you anything else that you're an extraordinary person. So it would be. I'd be surprised if I taught you anything.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:00:20) - Listen, there is so much and think we agree on this as we agree on many things. There is always so much left to learn, which is so fun. And the reason I wanted to have you. Oh, there's many reasons I say to have you on the podcast, but I love to have, like different voices. So actually this morning I spent talking about I Silicon Valley, right. All the things. But then I was preparing for this and I noticed like my thirst almost for art, for music, for poetry, for reconnecting with maybe even like something like the land, though I'm not even sure what that means right to me. And but I think, you know, when I notice that it's probably happening to other people as well, right.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:01:04) - That there's something missing in our lives. And I think that is one of the things I would love to dive into today. But first of all, like, without doing a proper introduction, give us one of our identities. You have many, right? So give us one of them. What would you love to start with?

Else Kramer (00:01:25) - Well, a good question. Well, I'm an artist. I'm a performer. A person accused me once of having an oral fetish. I won't tell you the context within which was accused of that.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:01:38) - But is this that still safe for work? Yeah.

Else Kramer (00:01:41) - But I suppose being on a podcast or being a singer, you know, is part of that a kind of it stayed with me some of these critiques that we receive along the way in our lives and and it was meant in good jest, but I suppose a lot of what I have followed in my life has been my own voice. And that voice began as a musical voice. I started as a drummer actually, and my parents, my mother is a singer and my father was a composer and a speaker and an academic.

Else Kramer (00:02:11) - So I grew up in this house where the voice was the lead invite or invitation. And so I suppose primarily I would be a artist who speaks and sings and and that has led me in a lot of ways. It's presented me with a vocation as a guide as well, which is very voice heavy, but also then leans on a sense of presence and a sense of courageousness in order to, I suppose, introduce someone to a place. And I think that that touches on what you're talking about there as reconnecting with the land. And of, of course we're being presented in this epoch with an alternative to connecting with the land or an apparent alternative in AI and virtual reality and the metaverse and and that's creating a bit of a kickback, in my view, because we're being presented with this VR headset future. So everyone's kind of wondering, Well, so what's all the hubbub about being there in real life? In a certain way it's creating that synergy. So the music of Ireland and the sacred song or religious music from many traditions that I've been lucky to inherit, has really assisted me in bringing people places physically and later then poetry as well.

Else Kramer (00:03:36) - Reciting poetry has been the latest art form that I've collected in in the last decade, and and that has been a really vulnerable thing, actually, as a singer and a musician and a drummer, you're always, in a sense, hiding behind the things we sing singing.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:03:51) - It's interesting you feel more vulnerable reciting poetry than actually as a as a singer or a musician.

Else Kramer (00:03:56) - Much more so. Yeah, much more So.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:03:59) - Why do you think that is?

Else Kramer (00:04:01) - I mean, I often talk about value in the world that speakers are valued in and venerated in a different way. And the musicians, musicians are idolized, I suppose, and can create a certain excitement. But there's so few people who can stand up and speak in a serious manner for for a number of minutes, even hours. Of course, the main speaker in, in in in contemporary Western culture, the main person we sit down and listen to speak for an hour our stand up comedians.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:04:37) - Fair enough. Yes.

Else Kramer (00:04:38) - So we're allowed to sit and be with a person as long as they're making us laugh, as long as they're shocking us, as long as they're, you know, inviting us into an, you know, into a confrontation.

Else Kramer (00:04:49) - And so the idea of standing up and speaking in an invitational space, in an insightful space is something that is incredibly rare. And as a musician, of course, born in 1984 or so, I was 18, in the year 2000. So I'm the eldest of the millennial generation, so I have all of the all of the quirks and neuroses of the the millennial generation, but none of the technical skills. And but I often think as a musician growing up in that generation. Of course, Napster and Spotify, I.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:05:24) - Remember it well.

Else Kramer (00:05:25) - It was the end of the career path of of in a lot of ways of earning money through music. So that was quite a traumatic progression for me to be making recorded music in the early 2000 and realizing that this streaming element and the music industry is not going to survive in in in the, in its current way. So I often think of like the value of musicians and music was just taken away and nobody really raised an eyebrow. But yet we're always looking at controversial newspaper articles of speakers giving after dinner speeches, politicians usually for hundreds of thousands.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:06:04) - Yes, they're a second career right after they.

Else Kramer (00:06:07) - It is. And there's a reason for that. It's not just because they know the CEOs of these big companies. And and and I've you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. It's actually because they're great speakers and because it's incredibly rare and because you need an extraordinary amount of practice to become a confident speaker.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:06:25) - You don't just stand up and say whatever no comes to mind.

Else Kramer (00:06:30) - No, you need engagement after engagement. And which politicians have they have. You're speaking to a school of elementary children, then you're speaking to a factory and then you're speaking to somebody who's confronting you. You're battling it out. So they become I never.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:06:44) - Thought about that. I love that. I never realized that they have like constantly have such different audiences with such different demands, like, you know, when it comes to attention. ET cetera.

Else Kramer (00:06:52) - Indeed. And then one realizes the enlightenment or nirvana of of all performing arts. Is that really you're doing the same show for the elementary people as you are for the factory, as you are when you're fighting for your life? It's the same output with a tiny little bit of nuance changed.

Else Kramer (00:07:09) - And once you realize that being yourself and having that message, it all was going back to a message that is that is great eye opener. And you can't prove that to yourself on a primal level unless you see yourself doing it. It's this feedback loop of of performance really in speaking.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:07:28) - So that's why I ask you something about before, before you go on about finding your voice, because you said, you know, voice was important in my family. And so many people are like, okay, but how do I find my voice? Did you find it? Were you born with it? How did that evolve?

Else Kramer (00:07:44) - That is a great age old question. Singing in my own accent was a big deal. I did some musical theater, but really the poetry was a story of apprenticeship and mentorship. So we were on one path. I perform a lot with my brother and with my family, with my mother, who's a great theologian and singer. But we were on this music, which.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:08:12) - By the way, I just have to interrupt you, theologian and singer.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:08:15) - Hello. How like amazing is that?

Else Kramer (00:08:18) - Yes, yes.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:08:19) - So lovely.

Else Kramer (00:08:20) - Yeah. And there was an osmotic effect. And of course in my early 20s, being being a speaker and reciting poetry was something I started out as a rapper and, and a songwriter. And so we were I was on this path, the path that one thinks one should be on, which is a music industry music venue path thinking that that was that was the way to do it. And so. That created a consistency of of places and toughened up the voice. But really I suppose that. I had seen again, you don't you don't believe it until you see it. But I had seen my parents and others use their own voice specifically to to great and to great usage and great excellence. So but finding my voice was singing in my own accent was a big deal and learning to recite my own poetry and other people's poetry in my own accent.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:09:15) - So when you say your own accent, do you mean locally in Ireland, or do you just mean Irish?

Else Kramer (00:09:20) - No, no, I just mean locally.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:09:23) - So where are you from and what is your local accent? What is it?

Else Kramer (00:09:25) - My I'm from the west coast of Ireland, the counties of Limerick, Clare Tipperary. I'm on the border of all of those. And so I went to a boarding school, so I've kind of a middle Irish accent. It was very much an isolated kind of and it was a well-to-do boarding school, so I wouldn't have your typical Irish accent, but. But I suppose when I say accent, it's more about the rhythm in which you speak. And the melody.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:09:57) - May be.

Else Kramer (00:09:58) - Conversational nature, like the conversational melody of, of speaking. And that's very, very difficult because when I first started speaking and not using song as a foil, like I'll sing a couple of songs for you in, you know, in this conversation. I hope and hope so too. But you using that conversation to bring my own style into that At the beginning, I slowed it down a lot and I was very insightful. And of course, I come from a comedy background as well.

Else Kramer (00:10:29) - I was a great comedy fan, so I used to use humor a lot and I tempered that in myself as well. To find my own voice was, you have to confront parts of yourself that you are using as a defense mechanism. Yeah, So and I was using humor really to great use as well as quite, quite virtuosity using humor to to not have a real conversation.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:10:55) - Deflects to deflect. Deflects.

Else Kramer (00:10:57) - Exactly. And and that served me well. Yeah. It served me well. It took me around the world in in certain ways not in the standup comedian way or on the circuit, but it got me. It got me in places and, and but I had to let that go. Of course, once one finds an art form that is too big for that and. And there's a poem of mine called What to Hand On, like finding one's own voice. Um, is is an ineffable in articulable quest But but it is of use. And there's a poem I wrote called What to Hand On.

Else Kramer (00:11:32) - And it's kind of a Dickinson and rhythm to it with some rhyme in it. And it sums up a little bit of what we're talking about. Do you.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:11:40) - Want to?

Else Kramer (00:11:41) - And that goes. I would wish to grow wise. I would wish to grow wise through the gears of existence to find the gradient in each phase of life, just to coast down the slopes beyond travailing times. To know the right hat for the right company. And rhythm of each interaction, chiming in from the periphery to read the grain of every conversation. To fall in love in the prime of life. Seeds sown of deathbed smiles. And the waves of wellbeing lap at low tide, imploring your reluctant side to break even one cycle learned as a child. For wisdom, knows what to hold and what to hand on which to give and what to keep. Where to dig and what to bury, when to wake and how to sleep. And our wish for wisdom still a whisper at the source of which still buried deep. So soul brother and soul sister.

Else Kramer (00:12:47) - Are we changed by what we meet? For. I would wish to grow wise through the gears of existence. To read the gradient in each phase of life, just to coast down the slopes beyond travelling times to know the right hat for the right company and rhythm of each interaction, chiming in from the periphery to read the grain of every conversation. To fall in love in the prime of life and the seeds sown of deathbed smiles and the waves of wellbeing lap at low tide, imploring our reluctant side to break even. One cycle learned as a child for wisdom, knows what to hold and what to hand on which to give and what to keep. Where to dig and what to bury, when to wake and how to sleep. And our wish for wisdom still a whisper, the source of which still buried deep. So soul brother and soul sister. Are we changed by what we meet?

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:13:41) - That mean? That is so beautiful. And I think that could actually be almost no an accompanying song to every to the life of every neurodivergent person.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:13:55) - Right. There's so much I recognize in there, like the the, the hat part, like which had to wear with which company. Like, we could just talk about this poem for an hour, I'm sure. Yeah. Beautiful.

Else Kramer (00:14:09) - And then the opening line, of course I would wish to grow wise, you know, so in a lot of ways that confronted the. The nihilistic part of myself, you know, like that wisdom is associated with age for me. There's no shortcut to it. And so if for a long period of my life, I didn't see myself as an old person, I thought I would burn out. Like many artists, I thought I'd burn out, go into the ether before all of that for many, many reasons. But so I would wish to grow wise was me kind of grasping the mantle of actually, you know what, I'm going to try and get an average life going here. So to see to see the value in, in, in what we dig and what we're to bury, you know.

Else Kramer (00:14:54) - And so it's a it's an emphatic little poem and it's about that. It's about the cliche of things, you know, sitting with. I mean, life is just a cascade of cliches when we're in that negative chapter of our lives, you know, and and I love the aspect of neuro divergence in these conversations, this series of conversations you're holding with people. And and of course, there's a there's a great era of diagnoses coming along. And and I often say that, you know, being 18 the year 2000. I'm 39 now. So I got in under the wire as the undiagnosed generation, one of the last few to sail through high school without without me. And I suppose I. I am. I never, you know, saw it as a barrier, but but definitely something. Being from an artistic family, I was. Oh, no, hold on. Oh, yeah. I actually just have to plug in my charger here. Um.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:15:56) - No worries.

Else Kramer (00:15:57) - Family. I always saw that as, as a as a gift potentially, rather than.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:16:03) - Isn't. Context is so important. Right? So if and context and community. So you can be weirdly yourself amongst, you know, people who are really themselves as well and who welcomed that kind of way of being in the world. And for other people who grew up around people like, what's wrong with you? Why do you want to sing all the time or make music? Or why are you so inconsistent, for example? But then you have a very different experience, of course, growing up.

Else Kramer (00:16:31) - Yeah, yeah. And growing up I always found safety and listening, you know, that's always been a great theme that I inherited from my parents and my home. Is this that you can find a safe space in in the listening of of places.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:16:48) - I want to talk a lot about listening a bit later. But there's one thing you said that I want to just quickly, um, talk about as well, which is shortcuts. Okay. Right. You mentioned there are no shortcuts to wisdom, and I think we live in an age of where people are constantly looking for shortcuts, like, how can I get there faster? How can I be successful? How can I be thin in three days? How can you know cetera, etcetera.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:17:13) - And. I think like anything that has actual value, it's there's no shortcuts. But I'd love your thoughts on that.

Else Kramer (00:17:23) - No, that's not been my experience in certainly in in waiting for a poetic ability to arrive. Um, there's, there is a great gestation period for, for excellence to trickle in. You have to watch for a long time and, and then you need to put yourself in a physical environment that presents you with opportunities to, to excel in front of people. So how did you manage that?

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:17:51) - How did you organize?

Else Kramer (00:17:53) - We I did music in college, so there was a bit of a bit of stuff there. But again, at that age and then I started doing some performances with my mother. So me and my brother, there's just us in the family. And then we started singing in an a cappella trio with my mother. My mother is a great store of a sacred song, so church music from many traditions, Irish language, sacred song, which can be pre-Christian, some of it.

Else Kramer (00:18:17) - Um, then Gregorian chant, which is around a thousand years old and more recent, and then English language hymns and then some classical stuff. So my parents separated when I was around 16 and later divorced. So we started hanging out with my parents on a different level and creating friendships and relationships and singing together was one of the ways that we bonded me and my brother and my mom. And so we started doing some concerts with her, which presented us with a different mode of artistic incarnation, like turning up to gigs in churches under a under a guise that wasn't a music industry songwriter.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:18:59) - Very different expectations, I'm sure. Very much.

Else Kramer (00:19:01) - And and we thought this was only going to happen for a couple of years and that we'd become famous, you know, as the Irish Flight of the Conchords or something. And we would say, Oh, remember when we used to do concerts with our.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:19:11) - I used to know them, right? Yeah. Oh, no way.

Else Kramer (00:19:14) - Do neurodivergent chops for sure. Yeah.

Else Kramer (00:19:16) - And so, so that really opened our eyes to a different and that's a cappella of course. So the power of one human voice to invite a groups or people into a reverie, a deeper sense of listening, of physical space. So that was a real eye opener. Suddenly we didn't have guitars. Suddenly we weren't being plugged in suddenly very naked. Yes. And suddenly everyone in the room is sober. And suddenly everyone in the room is you know, that's another.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:19:42) - Thing I never realized. Of course, everybody hopefully everybody almost everybody in the room is going to be sober almost.

Else Kramer (00:19:49) - And so that was that. And that's a there's a great vulnerability in singing or performing or speaking to people who are really listening and who are not, you know, intoxicated or they're for other reasons. So that was a great a great eye opener. And the power of that repertoire of song and those ancient Latin chants, like, for instance, there is a lounge and a very short one that's very famous and sung all over the world.

Else Kramer (00:20:17) - It's a sanctus and it goes Sanctus. The highest note is that the first? It goes so.

Speaker 3 (00:20:28) - And. Rose sang to. Those song. Who store Minos de o Sabal Pliny's owned jelly at Dedham. Glory to. Hosanna in eggshells. He. He.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:21:22) - And I was waiting for the video, but it didn't come.

Else Kramer (00:21:27) - But so just little, little gems like that, you know, that just immediately bring us into a different space, you know?

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:21:34) - Right. Basically, it's almost like an invocation. And you all of a sudden you're kind of out of time or maybe traveling in time. I mean, what is your experience of that?

Else Kramer (00:21:46) - There is a kairos time that happens when things. Yeah and and.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:21:52) - And for there may be listeners who don't know what kairos time means.

Else Kramer (00:21:56) - It's a chronological time is the ticking of clocks. When I sing, you're not sure how long I've been singing for by the time. And that is one of the spaces, the superpowers of a good speaker, but definitely an acapella singer.

Else Kramer (00:22:08) - So the it's a very vulnerable thing to do. And even still, I find it hard to make eye contact with people who are listening to me singing a cappella. Um, so that's kind of the next level stuff. And one of the is using silence as well. So that long suspended note I did at the end shows. I'll keep that going for a very long time just to kind of tag people's uncomfortableness. They'll start really something happens when we're listening to that long suspended note. And I learned that from my mother singing the Irish Lamentations, the pre-Christian lamentations. She has one. There it goes.

Speaker 3 (00:22:47) - So. Who? Those alumni. Who? Whoo hoo!

Else Kramer (00:23:04) - She's big and even longer notes than that she'll hold throughout that lamentation. And it's people just begin to cry. And I grew up watching her do that and watching people cry. And, you know, when you're pre teenager or a teenager, you think people are people are completely lame that what's wrong with them. But as I got older and doing it myself as well, practicing that song, sometimes you'd be doing that long suspended note and and I'd have to cut off or I would cut off naturally, because I'd started to cry myself.

Else Kramer (00:23:34) - Yeah. So touching that part of ourselves, that does bring up tears. What do you think that is?

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:23:41) - Because again, in Prep I was listening to some songs and your brother performed and Oh, I think you're freezing up on me. Hang on. I lost you there.

Else Kramer (00:24:05) - No problem. I'm back.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:24:06) - I think it's my Internet. I don't know what it is, but. Okay, I'll cut this out and I'll start again. That's all good. So prepping for this. I was listening to some songs you and your brother performed, and I had to cry right now. And I music very often makes me cry. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I'm not sure whether in our pre chat I mentioned that I grew up with Mahalia Jackson and ABBA and Bass Partitas, right? That's kind of the mix of music I grew up with. I just feel it touches something so deep and it feels like coming home in a sense, right? So the tears are not so much sadness. It's more almost like a reunion in a way.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:24:47) - What's that like for you?

Else Kramer (00:24:50) - It definitely is. And it's every genre of music brings up a physical space for me, you know, and so and a person. So whenever we'd have dinner at home, we used to be putting on CDs at the time. And, and I lived with my dad and I would say, What will we listen to over dinner? We we would listen to a lot of music and he would always say the same thing, something instrumental. And because the voice distracts. Yes.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:25:21) - And and literally there's so much lines around this, right? Like that. The brain immediately wants to know what is being said.

Else Kramer (00:25:27) - Yes. And then I suppose I've realized my neurodivergent in a lot of ways. I get quite emotional when I get to a restaurant and they're playing vocal music. And I find it I mean, abusive is a strong word, but I find it kind of.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:25:41) - Intrusive, let's put it that way.

Else Kramer (00:25:43) - Yeah, I find it manipulative and selfish when a person opens it public space and plays only vocal music in it.

Else Kramer (00:25:50) - And I fight because it's the staff actually who are playing it for themselves to keep themselves going until they can go home. And so because I just think that I know that for that day, when that cafe is open, nobody's going to truly fall in love. No one's going to have a truly a real conversation in that place because their mind are part of it is naturally is translating.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:26:15) - Or at least like, yeah, being present.

Else Kramer (00:26:17) - So my wife is really. Yeah. Sometimes we, we can't go. And then sometimes when you walk into a restaurant and they're playing instrumental music like Dave Brubeck or jazz of any kind or classical, it's a very brave thing to do for people because on some level, people who don't know how, why they're feeling so vulnerable is because there's all songs on the radio. It's actually this instrumental music. So maybe people who turn up there and have that cup of coffee begin to think about something that they're uncomfortable with and may never actually go back to that cafe again on some level two.

Else Kramer (00:26:51) - So and of course, people who fall in love in your establishment rarely come back because they're just hanging out with themselves or each other. So that's not great. Is it? Fair enough either, you know, but but that vulnerability and that listening always brings me back. And there's a there is a piece I wrote a book of poetry three years ago now, so I'm working on a second one. And so in my mid 30s, I released a book of poetry and it's called Early Music. And early music is a genre of music that I was always fascinated with. My dad loved early music and I had often seen it classical music and early music. So early music is slightly before classical music and I suppose 15, 1600s, early 1700s before things got very flowery. And, and it was this real modal coming out of monophonic Gregorian chant, coming out of unison, singing into this polyphony.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:27:51) - So, so beautiful.

Else Kramer (00:27:52) - Yeah. And it's all often it's instrumental. There's a very strong canon of, of choral music within early music, but often it's just strings because metal work hadn't, you know, really come on to an industrial scale.

Else Kramer (00:28:05) - So there's no brass instruments, There's woodwind often, but again, that was quite industrially complex. So it's really got string and wood and, and these beautiful slow drones and things like this before. It's not a very it should be more well known, I think, really, because you enter into a, a psychological space. But the flagship poem of that collection is called Early Music. And I'm pretty sure I have it in my mind and I'll read it for you as a homage to our childhood memories and and this finding our own voice team. We're we're dancing around as well. And it's called Early Music. I learned to make music when I was alone. Revering the moment before I began to sing. Then, breaking the solitary silence, I learned to make music when I was alone, revering the moment before I began to sing. Then break the solitary silence. I learned to love my own voice. Making a friend of it. Fashioning a fountain pen to master the phantom language. Each Brandenburg Concerto turned up loud while my father drilled his impossibly strong fingers on the steering wheel, careening the back roads of Bird hill.

Else Kramer (00:29:28) - My mother would sing alone for hours. Hildegard and shadows seamlessly sung. Light would stream in the sash window while she scribbled legibly preparing for a performance. I would drum my hands on my thighs till they were hot and red. Repeating the same beat thousands of times, honing the same phrase. And in the evenings we would gather around two candles and early music on cassette. An invitation to conversation. An instrumental combination, unlocking conversation and making the silences dance like shadows in candlelight. No vocal music to deflect or distract from a small family huddled around only food and flame and the warm, faint sound of wood and got string. A family that feels safe is sacred. And early echoes still bounce back, reflected in the sound of early music. For. I learned to make music. I learned to make music when I was alone, revering the moment before I began to sing and then break the solitary silence. And I learned to love my own voice, making a friend of it, fashioning a fountain pen to master the phantom language.

Else Kramer (00:31:01) - Each Brandenburg Concerto turned up loud while my father drilled his impossibly strong fingers on the steering wheel, careening the back roads of Bird hill. And my mother would sing alone for hours. Hildegarde and Shanell seamlessly sung in Lightwood Stream in the sash window while she scribbled legibly preparing for a performance. And in the evening we would gather around two candles and early music on cassette, an instrumental combination to unlock conversation and then make the silences dance like shadows in candlelight. No vocal music to deflect or distract from a small family huddled around only food and flame and the warm, faint sound of God's string. A family that feels safe, as sacred. Echo soundings still bounce back, reflected in the sound of early music.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:31:53) - Beautiful. And when I love, I love that you're repeating it. And I mean, again, so many things I want to say about that. I think that is also something we're losing. Like everything needs to be a new experience. A new thing, right? A new dopamine hit. For me, I have this like both with music and I think maybe this is an autistic thing.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:32:17) - I'm not sure. But like, I have songs on repeat, like endlessly, right? They will just they will live in my head. They will become a part of my being for months. Yeah, but also the same with art. So at some stage I was in Spain, Bilbao to look at Francis Bacon. There was a Francis Bacon exhibition at the Guggenheim, and I was there for three days and for three days I went in and spent a couple of hours looking at the same paintings instead of like, you know, going to lots of different places. And they change of course every day. And it would have been even better to spend a year with them, which, you know, I'm still working on that. But this it's this being with whether it's poetry, whether it's music, whether it's, you know, the visual arts, spending time and seeing, constantly discovering new nuances and things you've never noticed before. Right. Same thing with music, which is so beautiful. It's already the second time.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:33:11) - Of course, you're also resizing differently, but the second time I'm noticing different new things, discovering new things. And I would so love for people if the one thing they take away from this podcast is to give things like a second chance.

Else Kramer (00:33:26) - Yes. Yeah. That's that's well said. And to know that the complexity, I mean committing things to memory is a long path as well. And and the realization that we must set the shortcut theme that you brought up like we must sit with these things much longer than, than we think. It takes a lifetime and we're only getting the hang of it before, before we have to leave this world.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:33:51) - But it's so incredibly rewarding and actually that is a nice segue into like my Irish experience. I just told you I, you know, being to carry. But we also visited Dublin and what happened in Dublin, there was an exhibition by this Japanese artist called Hokusai famous from the Great Wave and loved it. I've always been obsessed with Japan, but one of the things on there, they had like little quotes and it's something like and I'm totally going to slaughter this and misquote it, but it said something like, at 60, I began to get some idea of what I was doing right at 70, I thought, consider myself like proficient.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:34:27) - And at 80 I was approaching something, you know, of skill or whatever, like and you're you're like, This guy is so good, like insanely good. But even he is like, you know, the way he looks at this, I'm only just starting out. It's at 80 and there's always so much more to learn and uncover and dig into. Yeah.

Else Kramer (00:34:49) - Yeah. I'm a person who repeats a lot as well, but I suppose one of the I don't want to be completely anti streaming services that I talked about at the beginning of this conversation because it's opened up and it helped my mental health to have so much music at at my fingertips. And I listened to the jazz playlists. So I enter into this, you know, instrumental jazz world, but I've never listened to that track before. It's always new. So that's been a great gift to me. And my my own mental health actually, is to enter into music that you've never heard before. It's extremely it's impossible to find if you have your own music collection, you've listened to every single bit of the story, so you're choosing to retrace your steps.

Else Kramer (00:35:30) - And there is a beauty in that. And one of the great gifts of the postmodern age is that we can now put on a world class series of of music that we've never heard before. You can guarantee it can actually make sure that you've never heard these tracks before. So that's been a that's been a great gift to enter into that continuum and and to spend, to spend some time there. And, and that, that link between artistic output and gestation or dormancy. You know there's a great horticultural term dormant when something like dormant you know and and I often think about that and of course that the repeating the the recitation a second time is a very daring move actually that creates a vulnerability in the listener and also feels very vulnerable in the performer. And I learned that from a poet called David White and that story of apprenticeship into a world where of speaking and and post comedy, my post comedy identity and this.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:36:33) - Is by way so perfect because this was exactly going to be my next question around apprenticeship. So thank you for taking taking us there.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:36:39) - That's beautiful.

Else Kramer (00:36:40) - Yeah. And technology has replaced apprenticeship in so many ways. I mean, we think we can just watch a YouTube video on how to and do.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:36:47) - Our own plumbing.

Else Kramer (00:36:48) - Yeah. Best man speech. And do you think you're going to. You're going to nail it? Yeah. But. And that took I mean, I met David White for the first time, maybe 16 or 17 years ago.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:36:59) - So who for those of us who don't know, David White would.

Else Kramer (00:37:02) - Yeah, he is an Englishman with an Irish mother. So he moved to America around maybe 40 years ago, 35 years ago. And following love, he's a scientist, a marine biologist, a marine biologist, background who had been reciting and, well, learning poems, committing poems to memory from an early age since his early 20s, creating his own poetry, too. And this was a parallel track to his scientific endeavors. So for the last 35 years, he has been traveling around mostly America with the world, reciting his own poetry and other people's poetry and offering philosophical insight into those poems and those themes.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:37:52) - So literally, a wandering poet. Yes.

Else Kramer (00:37:54) - Yeah. It's like going back in time, really sitting with him, I suppose. He's in his mid 60s now and he's got a great English accent, very low voice. He didn't always have that low voice. Actually, when you listen to some of his early recordings, he had a voice that kind of I don't want to say a blockage, but it was more up in his Yeah.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:38:14) - In the upper register.

Else Kramer (00:38:15) - And he's done a lot of work over his life to to drop that down. And so the poems do a good bit of the heavy lifting, but he's done a lot of embodying and physically when he performs the poetry that I've that I've learned a lot from. But it took a long time.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:38:32) - But hang on because you know what you mean. But and I think I know what you mean, but embodiment is actually also one of my cards. And so when you say he's done a lot of work around embodying.

Else Kramer (00:38:44) - Yes, he well, one must become a vessel for the message or for the piece of art.

Else Kramer (00:38:50) - And so when when I recite poetry now, I will try to not shuffle on my feet. I learned that from him to grow roots into the ground, which is the the meditation message or invitation as well as to our and and so to to kind of go back on your heel and just stay there is is a very daring thing because when we begin to make jokes as well, we'll start shifting around, you know, and that's why it feels so there's relief in it for us because we can let go. But to hold the space, to use that cliche and not not move, not that you're not lock your knees, but don't let them bend and keep your heels on the ground while you're reciting a poem is is an extremely vulnerable thing to do. And it looks very powerful, but it feels very vulnerable. And that's, of course, why so many of us neurodivergent and mental health, um, you know, not not victims, but those of us who are looking for shelter are are drawn to the stage because it makes us look strong and.

Else Kramer (00:40:00) - But it actually feels vulnerable or sometimes depending on the art form, it's the other way around. We can feel vulnerable, but we end up looking strong so we don't have to be honest, but we still get that relief. And so I learned to really stay still, which was going against everything I was doing naturally, which was trying to make people laugh and being a being a vocal virtuoso. And so I saw him speak a lot about poetry and the Irish identity and and and insight into our own sense of great themes like heartbreak and work and vocation in the world and and using poems directly and indirectly associated with those themes. And and I was really lucky to, to create a my first collection of poetry around his world. And I recited my poetry at his events all over the world. And and I mentioned earlier I was a guide that one of the invitations of singing and speaking has been into bringing people places. And that's one of David's great gifts, is to bring groups and speak about places in Ireland and in Italy and in Japan and all over the world that he visits.

Else Kramer (00:41:16) - And he in a sense, he brings you there physically in an astral plane and through the the work of art itself.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:41:24) - And okay, so I have so many questions about that to Japan, of course, as well. But quickly, going back to that apprenticeship, what made you how did that happen? Because that is it is such an old form. Right. Which is almost lost now, I think, sadly. How how did you become his apprentice?

Else Kramer (00:41:45) - I threw my mother. My mother is an old friend of David Whites and David runs a group of people, about 30 people he brings to Ireland every summer. So my mother would perform for that group for one afternoon and present them Irish traditional song, Irish traditional poetry and Irish poetry, modern and ancient, and some Irish language pre-Christian lamentation repertoire and speak about her own life and her own spirituality. And it's an attached cottage on Galway Bay, and I would accompany her as a as a teenager just once or twice down to this. It's the only kind of tourist.

Else Kramer (00:42:21) - It's not really a tourist gig, but the only tourist gig she ever did. And all these Americans would cry from the ten minutes in. They would cry the whole way through. And and I knew there was something extremely intense about it and and very focused. The intentionality of the group was very, very honed. Though I'd never seen David White speak himself. So then when my parents separated and we started singing in a trio, me and my brother and my mom, my mom said, Come on down and we'll sell a few CDs to the old Americans. You know, like.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:42:51) - Great plan.

Else Kramer (00:42:52) - Sign us up. So my mom did it an hour and then in song, me and my brother would enter the room in song. My mom would start a round and old gospel won.

Speaker 3 (00:43:02) - Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Else Kramer (00:43:09) - And that goes in, around. And then my brother would start from the back of the room and we'd walk up and then we would perform at the top, maybe like some Mozart or like, you know, some Irish language stuff.

Else Kramer (00:43:22) - Do about ten minutes. And and everyone's wondering like, Who are these dudes that just joined this Celtic mystic woman after 45 minutes? And is it good? Is it not? I don't know. And and then she would say, These are my sons. And then everyone would be.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:43:36) - Just, oh.

Else Kramer (00:43:38) - So that, that so in that sense that's what David would have seen us first do. So he saw that we were on a path toward holding a space with this great repertoire, and we were honest and aware of the transfer, the transference of, of the repertoire, right. Aurally from our mom. So we were paying homage to her life.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:44:05) - Yeah. It wasn't just a gimmick. I think that's massively important.

Else Kramer (00:44:09) - It was gimmicky. But. But no, the authenticity was definitely there. So he never said, Oh, you should you guys should start reading poetry. Of course, like every good mentor, he never said anything. He just did what he did and kept inviting us to come and drive a van and sing a few songs in the morning at this group that he runs in Ireland.

Else Kramer (00:44:29) - And we've done that. I've done that for 15 years in a row. Yeah. So which, which entails meeting people, 30 people that arrive in from the States and Southern hemisphere and driving them in a nine seater minivan, one of four around the Burren area of Ireland and making these fireball friendships with people over the week and singing for them all of the different musical styles that I have over the week really. And and then in the last four years that that has entailed reading my poetry and other people's poetry so that that that conversation is deepened, that that role has widened. So I'm now I now tell people I'm a poet and a singer rather than a singer and a poet, which was a big deal.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:45:10) - Interesting. So when did that shift for you? When did you.

Else Kramer (00:45:13) - Only only when a book comes out, I think you can only really call yourself a poet if you've published something not published in the industry.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:45:19) - Right. I was going to say I have to disagree with that, but that's okay.

Else Kramer (00:45:23) - Did something, you know, like I.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:45:24) - Think something tangible.

Else Kramer (00:45:26) - You're committing your own poems to memory. How about that? Yeah. If you committed one of your own poems to memory and can do it for someone even badly at a bus stop, then you're a poet.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:45:36) - Amen.

Else Kramer (00:45:37) - But if you're a poetry lover, then you're reading poetry and you're doing the things. But if you can meet someone on a train and have a conversation and for one reason or another, want to read them a poem and then then you should be able to do that from memory. Because reciting things from memory is part of the bardic traditions and is part of the poem.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:45:57) - So great. That was going to be again. Next question. Love you. How are you? Just read my mind somehow. Why is this important? Why is tradition important to you? Why is lineage important? Heritage write all these things? Why do they matter? And why should we make, you know, sort of cherish them and honor them?

Else Kramer (00:46:17) - That's a really great question.

Else Kramer (00:46:19) - And the answer is ineffable. But the main the main thing that is the currency of the world, especially in the postmodern advertising heavy world, we live in this sense of belonging. So where do you belong? With whom do you belong? It's a battlefield, an absolute battlefield for. For your sense of belonging. Yeah. And. Sport is bigger than ever. And and all of the vices and belief systems are there and getting stronger. And so I think it's that sense of belonging, knowing the same poem as somebody else. It's a great thing when everyone turns up and there's this fellowship because everyone knows the work that David recites and that he's written or knows it to some degree. And there's always 1 or 2 people who don't really know who he is. But just because a friend brought me and and that's always a great initiation to and of course part of belonging is this spectrum of everything from initiation all the way through to.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:47:23) - All right. So that was going to be. Yeah, exactly. So how do you continue that and how do you make sure that you include new people so the tradition doesn't die out, etcetera, etcetera? How does that happen organically or is that is there something intentional about that?

Else Kramer (00:47:35) - I think technology helps that sense of belonging, you know, creep out.

Else Kramer (00:47:40) - So but I think the works that the traditional pieces of art that that I've collected and do the talking so it's a funny way you have to present them in a, in a very authentic way, but also just not get in their own way and.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:47:58) - Kind of remove yourself from the equation.

Else Kramer (00:48:00) - Yeah, definitely. And but you see, finding the deeper themes as well of these songs, you know, these songs have survived for a reason. And so there are deeper, deeper kind of themes. Like there's a great old Irish song which which we reluctantly share with our Scottish cousins called The Wild Mountain Thyme or the Summer. Yes, Go Lassie, Go, which.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:48:24) - I love that song. I mean.

Else Kramer (00:48:25) - People people who know it love it, but it's been stigmatized because it was overplayed in Irish America and things like this. All right. Part of the kind of 60s 70s ballad culture which can be frowned upon in certain certain places.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:48:37) - What is it like kitsch? Is that how is or because I have no idea how to how.

Else Kramer (00:48:43) - I don't know. But it was made famous in America by the Clancy brothers and other other people. But we love returning to that song because really what it's about, it's an invitation. So it's one of the the song is Will you go, Lassie? Go. So it's it's actually the Hook is an invitation, which is very, very rare. And and it's all about going out in community, out onto the hills to forage the wild mountain thyme all all around the blooming. Heather So the time and Heather were actually medicinal herbs, antibacterials and other herbs for, for other reasons. So but again, they're just two herbs of a myriad of things that would have been foraged and collected. And it's a song Bringing in the light. There's all sorts of deep themes in it. And so we love to just do that. And that's why it's important. It's because these songs are part of our lives. But really, if we look closely, there's so much wisdom in them to find a.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:49:40) - Kind of a universal language in a way, right? It touches think even without possibly understanding the language.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:49:47) - Yes. It's still touches you in a specific way.

Else Kramer (00:49:51) - Like the the first verse is quite a it's very, very beautiful. But the third verse of that song, and I'll give you the first and third verse, if my true love were gone, I would surely find another to pluck wild mountain thyme all around the blooming Heather So when I when I was finally in my late 20s learning this song and realizing that it's actually very, very beautiful, I asked my mom, That's very unusual. Isn't in a love song to talk about your lover being gone.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:50:19) - Yeah. And saying, I'll be fine.

Else Kramer (00:50:22) - And and I'll surely find another. I said, What's what's that about, Noreen, my mom. And she said, Oh well that verse is for the old people, you know, just really beautiful. It was like, Wow. But I'll give you a sped up version of Glasgow and maybe we might we might wind it down after that. And that goes.

Speaker 3 (00:50:41) - Summertime is common. And the trees are sweetly blooming and the wild mountain thyme grows around the blooming.

Speaker 3 (00:50:55) - Heather. Will you go, Lassie? Go. And we'll all go together to pluck wild mountain thyme. All around the blooming. Heather, will you go, Lassie? Go. And if my true love were gone. I would surely find another to pluck wild mountain thyme all around the bloomin Heather. Will you go, Lassie? Go. And we'll all go together to pluck wild mountain thyme all around the blooming Heather, will you go, Lassie? Go, Will you go? Let's go. Will you go last?

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:52:22) - Beautiful. I love that song so much. And again, the repetition. Right of the call.

Speaker 3 (00:52:31) - Yeah.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:52:32) - What is the difference for you when it comes to your own poetry? Do you ever feel like setting it to music?

Speaker 3 (00:52:39) - Not so much. No.

Else Kramer (00:52:41) - There's a bit of trauma in myself, and that's part of the path of of any of our lives is we try something and then when, when, when it doesn't work or doesn't connect, we get burned. And that that creative part of ourselves gets soldered off.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:52:56) - Music student Right.

Else Kramer (00:52:57) - Yeah. And I think like my experience in the music industry, which was very positive and we had great meetings and things, but the fact that it didn't connect or, or turn into a revenue stream or something, I just felt that maybe that's not the calling in my life. So I started learning a lot more pre-existing traditional songs and sacred songs, and I realized that my voice is extraordinary, but it's it's too crowded in the music industry. And I you know, that's not the that's not the path for me. So I've immersed myself in in the great works of, of traditional music, sacred song and poetry. And I've tried to create some good poetry myself along the way for sure. So, yeah, I haven't written a song in a long time, nor have I put my own poetry to music. No.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:53:45) - And you don't feel the itch either to do that or the urge?

Else Kramer (00:53:48) - I don't. I don't. And I think we we have to focus as well on on what little parts of excellence we can achieve and repeat them and repeat them much more and much longer.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:54:00) - And know your strengths.

Else Kramer (00:54:02) - Yeah, I think that's part of a life well-lived. And I have but also I have no desire to, to put my own poetry to music, you know.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:54:11) - Interesting. So and you just spoke of like, okay, you know, revenue streams. I'm sure a lot of people listening are thinking, okay, well, this this guy does is amazing, right? That is so cool and so beautiful and so wonderful. But how does he eat?

Else Kramer (00:54:27) - Well, if any of you are listening and I invited you before we started boarding, me and my brother and my mom, we run a group experience to Ireland. So we run two week long tours every summer, and one is in Kerry, which is the southwest of Ireland and another is in around Loch Derg and the. River Shannon. And we call that one the Golden Vale region. So we run two great weeks in the summer that people can join us for. And every morning we create a little village. We book the whole whole series of self-catering accommodation.

Else Kramer (00:55:03) - And then we gather every morning at around 930, very civilized, for about two hours of music and poetry and insight, a bit of mythology and and conversation. One of the themes is we invite people, participants to come into conversation with each other and themselves, and we go beyond being a tourist and really be a pilgrim, not in an orthodox spiritual sense, but in that deeper to drink from a deeper well, as David White would say, but really to invite a progression into a into a deeper sense of identity, whether Irish or otherwise. So just to become part of our family and part of our wider circle of friends who we go out on the land every, every afternoon. So that's a great weeklong thing. People can join us for. We call that tourism. So tourists in Irish is a journey and Arnhem is of your soul. So we have a website called Tourist T you raised Arnhem and that's that's one great way to meet people and invite people who we do some. We also do concerts in America and around Ireland and Europe.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:56:11) - So you tour.

Else Kramer (00:56:13) - Yeah. Not in a not in a music industry sense where there's like a person organising it, but people invite us. And when you spend seven days with somebody on one of these tours. And they see the possibilities in the range of things that you offer that that they can bring you into their lives, whether it be an organization or a university or a church or a house concert, even. God, we've done so many amazing house concerts and meet people in their own in their own world.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:56:40) - I love those.

Else Kramer (00:56:42) - Yeah, And that's been a great upside of the music industry. Falling away actually, is the house concert movement. And then we perform with David White. We perform a cappella song and our own poetry and recite the great poems, some great poems, and with him for his people. So we meet people through that, and I offer one on one singing lessons online around recitation of poetry and also singing, using the voice and creating an interactive document, a big repertoire of songs.

Else Kramer (00:57:13) - So by the end of three 45 minute sessions, you'll have a document with so much in it that we could just keep retracing or as we could keep on finding new things from the world of jazz, English language hymns, Gregorian chant, Irish language, pre-Christian lamentation, all the things, all the things and hip hop even. I'll teach you how to beatbox. So that's been a great thing. And I just had a baby, so.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:57:37) - Yeah, congrats again. Right? Listen, people, two days ago, right. And he's still he's on the podcast.

Else Kramer (00:57:42) - Two days ago. Yes. And but then I also have conversations around people around the poetic process as well. Be using your own poetry or else just working with great poems and having a serious and focused poetic conversation around new poems, the great poems where we can find a safe space to just have an unbroken. In adults conversation about poetry and what poems mean and what what it means in our lives.

Speaker 3 (00:58:08) - So that's what I'm hearing.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:58:10) - Is that you is that like almost radical openness instead of I have a marketing plan or a business plan.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:58:17) - It sounds like you're very open to invitation, right? Yes. And then whatever you're spreading gets spread out even more and more. And that leads to other beautiful things.

Else Kramer (00:58:29) - Yes. Yeah. No, we want to be invited to places where where people want to listen. And we learned that. We learned that we were prone to burn out. We're not that tough. Get in the back of a van type of artists. So we're. I think that's.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:58:42) - A myth anyhow, right?

Else Kramer (00:58:44) - Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:58:45) - So.

Else Kramer (00:58:46) - So, yeah, following invitations has been part of it and trying to stick those invitations together in geographical reality is that's, that's.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:58:54) - Another challenge, I'm sure.

Else Kramer (00:58:56) - So yeah. And there is no shortcut. There's, there's, there's months of my life where, where I don't have that many invitations and then there's other ones where you feel like this is what Beyonce must feel like, you know?

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (00:59:06) - Yeah, right. So much demand upon my attention. Yeah.

Else Kramer (00:59:10) - So it's it's wonderful.

Else Kramer (00:59:11) - And but to end this conversation, I'd love to recite a poem of mine called First White Hair. And I've been watching my son age for over a week now. And I wrote a love poem to my wife. And this is about aging and there being no shortcuts, actually. So and I'll dedicate it to you, Elsa, and all of the people listening. And thanks so much for this wonderfully wide ranging conversation. Thank you. First white hair and it goes. The thought, the thought of your eyes. Heather Brown. Make my pale blue eyes glisten. And I wonder how God chose which strand to grant your first white hair. You make an art form of disappearance and teach me that life is second nature. So I reach out at your request, finding the strand between my thumb and forefinger. The stillness while you wait for the pinch of the clock. Eyes widen as I rip the strand from its root and realize you are determined to live. Be free and love what you love Like a baby in the shade gurgling.

Else Kramer (01:00:26) - Oh, most alive thing changing before my eyes. Let me change with you. Let your scalp be the loom of my life. And let your white hairs weave a seam of double stitching to bind us. This silver strand I hold is momentous, for it is the last thread I shall ever pluck from your head. And letting go of this white hair in the warm and shining sun. I let it float upon the air and turn with time and times be gone. For the stillness while you wait for the pincher to pluck. Pfizer widen as I ripped a strand from its root and realize you are determined to live, be free and love what you love. Unabashed like a baby in the shade, gurgling almost alive thing change and before my eyes let me change with you. Let your scalp be the loom of my life And let your white hair is weave a seam of double stitching to bind us. And this silver strand I hold is momentous, for it is the last thread I will ever pluck from your head and letting go of this white hair in the warm and shining sun.

Else Kramer (01:01:34) - I let it float upon the air and turn with time and times be gone.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (01:01:42) - Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you for everything. This was beautiful. And I'm sure we have a lot more to talk about. So who knows people.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54) - The same.

Else Kramer (01:01:55) - Maybe my mom and my brother sometime too. It'd be great.

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (01:01:58) - That would be so much. So check the show notes for all the amazing work Mikhail does. Oh, my God. Yes. So good. And thank you again for a wonderful, beautiful conversation.