A trip to Berlin the week before my 30th birthday in July 2014 was a turning point. It was a three-day trip and there were five of us, all musicians and songwriters — we used to attend open-mic sessions in Galway. One of them suggested the trip to play a few gigs but it was a holiday really.
None of us knew each other very well but over that weekend we became really good friends. I was a little bit lost at the time. After the recession, a few years earlier, two of my best friends and my sister had all emigrated.
I’d gone through a period of anxiety. I’d had a car accident, that was part of it, but also a cousin had died in a car crash a few years before. By the time of this trip to Berlin, I was finishing up a research PhD in Galway.
I think at this stage — finishing college, looking for a job — it’s quite common for people to start thinking ‘what am I doing? Where am I going?’ I call it a quarter-life crisis. I’d been playing in pubs in Galway and Clifden, to pay my way through college, doing cover songs, writing songs all the time. I see that as my internship.
And this trip overseas to play music was a crossroads for me. We were in this all-night city, hanging out in the streets, people busking, hanging with a lot of artists and singers. I hadn’t travelled much outside Galway or Ireland doing music.
And there was a reaction to a couple of my songs over that weekend — a great response. I felt fulfilled. I realised I could travel, bring my music to more people — I could pursue this, it would be a dream.
.. that weekend I had the feeling I wanted to do this.
And it was also the weekend I met Ciara, who I’ve been with almost most of the time since — we have a little girl together, Éala, who’s two and a half. And so maybe I thought Ciara, whom I’d just met, saw me this way too — this musician pursuing his dream. I know exactly where I first saw Ciara.
Me and these four musicians, and the two musicians we were visiting over there, were standing on a bridge, Warschauer Strasse. We hung out there a lot, right beside the Berlin Wall. It was the Sunday, about 12.
30 in the day. Ciara was a housemate of one of the Berlin-based musicians — we’d stayed in their house the Friday night but she’d been visiting a friend in Hamburg. So we were standing on the bridge, waiting for everyone to gather — we’d slept very little the night before — and she arrived on a bike.
I saw...
. I don’t know..
. this beautiful German woman cycling..
. smiling. She seemed.
.. nonchalant, I guess would be the word.
She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I remember, because we’d had that late night, being aware I was looking dishevelled, and fixing myself up, fixing my shirt, as she cycled over. I was immediately struck by her.
Maybe we all were. She came across as down-to-earth, cool, a bit arty, genuine — a lot of good qualities. I said to her she didn’t sound very German — she had very good English.
And she said she was born in, and grew up in Oranmore, and I said ‘but you do look German’ and she said ‘oh yes, both my parents are German’. In the group, we chatted intermittently through the day. One of our friends had wandered off somewhere and we all had to go looking for him.
I said I’d go in one direction and she said she’d come with me. This was about 12 hours after I met her. Near the Berlin Wall, she and I walked up along the river Spree.
I know I kissed her that night. I felt she’d be important in my life but I’d no idea we’d end up together. I was strongly hoping I’d get to know her more.
In the aftermath of that weekend, I probably fell into the friend zone with her. She moved to Galway. I always joke I was the reason, but it was because she got a job in what she’d studied for at college.
There was a shyness, on my side definitely, but on hers too. It was nine months after Berlin we started going out — March 27. We were at a concert in Galway — Keith John was playing.
I don’t remember what was said, but we realised we were more than friends. It was quite magical. We didn’t look back.
That weekend changed me, freed me. Before I’d have been more likely to go looking for a job, maybe in IT, start making money. Now I felt free to pursue music, do something I was passionate about.
The four lads and I became close friends. We were all poets, songwriters, all very serious about song-writing and trying to write good songs. I wrote my song ‘Lovely Stare’ about that trip.
It’s a song for Ciara, and a bit for the lads and for everyone who was there — because that was a very positive weekend for me..
