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In August of 2004, I was driving by Beach Park in Bakersfield. We couldn't help but notice a small wooden boat, green,
orange and white, on a trailer parked in the park. We hove alongside and struck up a chat with the captain, an Irishman. The
truck towing the boat over the 4,000 foot plus range that divides Los Angeles from Bakersfield, was underpowered and had failed
under the strain. Thanks to Mayor Harvey Hall of Bakersfield, however, the boat and its captain (there was no crew) were given
safe harbor in the park while a new truck was found. The boat, explained its owner, would be the focal point of many spontaneous
theatrical and musical events as it travelled across the United States to the Atlantic Ocean. The theme of all such productions
would be the restoration of Gaelic as the language of use in Ireland. The boat, an older wooden vessel, was a wooden ketch
reminiscent of the Asgard, the boat on which Erskine Childers ran guns to Ireland in 1914, two years before the Easter Rising.
This boat, the Asgard III, would be the mother ship for a small armada of currachs (leather rowboats!) which would be rowed
across the Atlantic back to Ireland, carrying symbolically if not inspirationally, Irish Gaelic.
I was impressed. And seeking to impress with my general knowledge of Ireland, I peppered my responses with knowing references
to William Butler Yeats, Maude Gonne etc. and claimed that two of my relatives named Mates and Gardner (Protestants no less!)
fought in the Post Office in 1916. Wishing to be helpful, I asked, "Are you familiar with the Celtic Arts Center in Los Angeles,"
I asked.
Pause.
"I founded the Celtic Arts Center in Los Angeles," he said patiently.
I realized suddenly who I was talking to. This was Brian ó h-Eachtuigheirn [pronounced: BREEan Heron] whom I had know but
not worked with when in the 1980s I performed at the Celtic Arts Center when it was located on Hollywood Boulevard.
"I'm David Nigel Lloyd," I explained.
"I know who you are, David." he said. "I've just been wondering how long it would take you to know who I was."
To my delight, Brian was stranded in the Bakersfield area for nearly a week. This meant, I could rekindle our friendship over
the course of a potluck in the park; a visit to the Cornerstone Theater's production of WAKING UP IN LOST HILLS; his hurriedly
arranged brilliant harangue to the ArtShare group; and a most enchanted evening of music and conversation at the famous site
of Sunset Camp near Weedpatch.
His voyage so-far reminded me, I said, of two famous predecessors: the earliest being that of the mythical Irish hero Maeldoun
who sailed from one fantastic island to another in search of his father's murderer. The other being non other than Henry Miller
whose sad meander across America in the 1940s was chronicled so brilliantly in his book, THE AIR CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE.
Brian, gita, Ursula, Jill Egland, myself, Jennifer Barber and some others talking in the dark grass in front of the school
till round about midnight when the sprinklers came on ending all discursive thought. Marvelous!
| Asgard III... |
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| ...in Beach Park, Bakersfield |
| Headless DNL about to... |
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| ..entertain the troops. |
Go to Brian's website on the voyage
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August 20, 2004
Greetings Brian Maeldoun Miller,
Where are you on your journey now? Sailing up the 101 Freeway just to prove that it can be done? Or up in the Rocky Mountains
raising high the deepest depths of the sea? What will they make of the Asgard III sailing east across the grassy waves of
the prairies? Will those grasses froth with snow?
In Texas and in Tennessee you may stir up an old song or two upon which, insensibly, some Gaelic still clings. Green lichen
here (It's Home Boys Home) and of course, that red British Soldier Lichen (Yes, Sar!). In Chicago... Boston...
ME: What is it about the Irish where, if they like you, they'll make you Irish, too?
YOU [silence]:
Have you left it too late in the year? Will the steely-eyed Atlantic welcome you? —for breakfast? Will An Claidheamh
Soluis point the course and still the waters? Good Sailing to the Asgard III and her merry currachs, their stalwarts rowing
across the ocean!
Not this season, I think. Next year, eh?
You all must land at last upon the Western strands of Ireland's imagination. Then you will have come from the Country of the
Young. Then you will speak with tongues of green fire, swords of light. "Not merely Free but Gaelic as well - not merely Gaelic
but Free as well."
Greetings to you, Henry Maeldoun oh-Eachtuigheirn! Your accidental sojourn on Kern Island pointed light onto my own voyage
home. No accident at all!
All the best,
David Nigel Lloyd
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