It felt like another universe, standing on one of the balconies of the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, celebrating the opening gala concert of the Island: Arts from Ireland festival. Looking out over the city lights, over that fantastic vista, a chasm of river, brightness and space opened up.
Panicked, I kept trying to foreshorten it, mentally placing the Bank of Ireland and Keenan's butchers in front of me, as if by living on this small street, I had lost the ability to measure scale. I felt a sense of fear that I could no longer contain my world with neighbours and routines and buildings so close, that if I opened my sitting-room window, I could call time in Philomena's pub, on the other side of the street. Given the context of my visit to Washington, I tried to imagine the trauma of past immigrants coming to places like Washington from places like Manorhamilton.
They must in part have felt liberated by such endless horizons, yet terrified by the imperative to draw a new psychological map to help them with the demands of this brave new world. Walking away from the crowds, along one of the centre's massive plazas, I kept remembering the first time I cycled a bicycle without stabilising wheels. I could almost taste the freedom and the terror in equal measure. And as I walked along, I counted it out, step by step, and found that I could walk the length of Manorhamilton before I'd even reach the end of a single balcony.
There was a lot of discussion among the press about the scale of the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, the core debate centring on the perceived "triumphialism" of Irish Americans in fashioning such a massive monument to their past, as if in some way it was "vulgar" to create such an enormous building. It rather missed the point, as far as I was concerned.
Minority communities need to fight fire with fire, and what would it have achieved for the immigrant community to have built the equivalent of the North Leitrim Glens Centre in a city the size of Washington. What would the value have been in making such a parochial statement about who we think we are, instead of the necessary acknowledgement of who our immigrants have had to become? The issue is scale and context and, of course, snobbery.
A casual comment which I overhead from one Washingtonian summed it up: "Irish traditional music in the Opera House," she said to her companions, "well it looks like Jack Kennedy finally got his way." I felt like slapping her, overcome with a sense of nationalism I didn't even think I possessed. It was as though all my assumptions of the place that the Irish hold abroad suddenly fell away, and I could understand why some Irish emigrants felt unable to cope in America, clinging to their enclaves and communities, creating images and memories to help them survive.
Later, when Mary Black's rendition of Ellis Island soared through the auditorium, that feeling of anger became stronger. When Sharon Shannon's genius became palpable to the crowd, I wanted to seek out that Washingtonian and ask her to tell me why Jack Kennedy shouldn't have been proud, and what was the real problem with the presence of our culture, in our house, built to commemorate one of our own? America is ingrained in the Irish rural psyche, yet we have no real understanding of the enormous challenges which faced so many who left. Tony's daughter, Hannah, was right when she called Manorhamilton, "Manorhatten", confusing his new address with his old one in New York. Her innocent confusion summed up the truth about our relationship with America. Our names are intertwined, our histories are intertwined and we remain co-dependent, whether we wish to acknowledge that fact or not.
America has always taken the ones for whom we could not provide, the economic migrants who have so quickly been forgotten in our new economy. And we let them go, and we were happy that they went, because in their going there was more left for us. We never really thought about how they would cope in cities such as Washington. Back in Manorhamilton now, it's like I was never there. The routines of a small place pull you back, in what seems to be less than the blink of an eye. But the reality of the town makes more sense having been and returned.
I am haunted by the empty buildings that remain here and can't help wondering where the previous occupants are. Are they "over there" thinking about "over here"? Whatever views might be expressed about how Irish Americans choose to celebrate their lineage, it's worth remembering that the only monument here to those who left is carved not from stone but from shadows: those collective memories that you can feel on a cold day, but you can never, ever touch.
