Week 16 - Andrew - Movies

This is an extract from an interview with Joey Ridge, during the press tour for the movie based on the unexplained death of Duane Richards.

Joey Ridge - Lead singer; Lightning

I have a lot of regrets about that time, you know? Things you won’t see in the movie. It was all so intense, I think i lost who i really was. And while the rest of the world saw this gypsy queen, in command of everything, I was just this lost little girl.

Duane was this dark genius prince. The first time I met him, he was so...quiet, and so centred. It was in the Gold Dust in San Francisco, we were both recording nearby at the time, and we both ended up there late in the night. I just wanted to dance, and allow myself to be free. Duane was at the bar with some of his buddies - that big guy, Alexei, and they were both throwing back whiskeys.

I knew the second I saw him that we would have an affair, we were both burning so brightly at the time. I was going through a really bad time with Rick, and I think it was obvious from the pain on our songs that our marriage was over.

I remember trying to get him to dance, and he wouldn’t. It got me so mad! But he must have seen something in me, because he invited me back to his hotel once the bar closed. We broke out onto the roof, and sat there staring at the skyscrapers around Union Square. Anyone else would have brought me straight to the room, but Duane wasn’t like that - it wasn’t his princely way.

He kept trying to talk about how this could all be wiped out tomorrow, that everything was hanging by a thin balance, but then I kissed him. That was a beautiful moment for me, kissing on that rooftop. I really felt like our two primal spirits were combining.

Of course a few months later, he called me up when we were mixing the album, and told me to drive out to this rinkydink airstrip, and he was going to fly me to Omaha. I couldn’t believe it. Of course we had our own tour plane, but this was different, this felt like love. It felt very significant, him sending the jet for me.

Then when I got to Omaha, he shut me out! I couldn’t believe it! He gave me a quick kiss in front of everyone, but then when we got back to his room, he wouldn’t even look at me. He just kept checking his watch, like he was bored of me.

Well I didn’t take that well! Like I said, I’m still a little girl inside, but sometimes, I need to be a princess, so I started screaming, and shouting, and throwing a little tantrum. That’s when he got so cold! He told me that I could sleep in the room, and he’d find somewhere else.

No one ever walked out on me like that before. He left me heartbroken and devastated. I wrote ‘Sleeping Alone’ that night, and that lyric - ‘staring at the stars, waiting for the world to end, in four walls, you aren’t a friend’ was about everything that happened.

Week 14 - Andrew - Possibility

Dad always said 'look for the third possibility'. In situations where there seem to be only two terrible options, look for the third possibility. I would go to him with a problem, something one of the other girls had done to me in school, and he would take off his glasses, and ask me to describe the problem.

He would listen, he would stop to ask detailed questions, and he would want to understand who had done what to whom. And it seemed that no matter what way I described a problem, he would still, in his mongrel accent (Polish, with twenty years of Cavan) come back to his refrain; 'What is the third possibility'.

I think about this now. Ronan is sitting at the table, crying. He hasn't been home for almost six months, and he looks different. It's hard to see your son's eyes in a junkie's scabbed body. We lived through the cliches. He's lied to us, he's stolen from us. I've borrowed money and I sold my jewellery. When Eoin died, I noticed that his watch went missing. You can't close your door to your son.

I want to reach over and hold him. I want to be his Mammy again. I want to give him a wash and some new clothes, make him a hot milk and tell him a story. That's not going to help him. He's crying, switching between shivering, pleading, and asking me to help.

We're at our kitchen table, again. It feels like we've sat here for years, since the first time the guards brought him home. While Eoin got sick, bald and thin. Then just me. I started to try to make the kitchen nice. I dried strings of peppers. I hung cheerful lights, but there was Ronan, in trouble, slumped at the kitchen table.

It gets boring, after a while, the apologies, the pleas. This time, the story he told me frightened me, but didn't surprise me. He had borrowed money, again – he said he had a way to make it back, but the money was taken from him. Of course it was, the fool. He could never hang onto anything.

I have almost ordered everything around the house. I can get a few thousand euro for my car. It'll be a hassle, but one of the others will be able to give me a lift here and there.

When they came to get the money, he tried to save himself – He must have been crying and screaming, like he is now. He told them a secret, something he shouldn't have. He knows what'll happen now. There'll be two men coming for him. They'll put him in a car, and we'll never see Ronan again.

They don't want the money anymore. It's about the secret he told – something terrible he did, for someone else.

He keeps crying that he doesn't want to end up in a mountain. He's so specific about this – the mountain – that I know he's been that man, driving people up to the mountain.

We can't call the guards – they aren't going to rush to help  Ronan. They know him, and they've arrested him enough times. And what can you say? My son is going to be killed, because he told someone about a man he murdered for a pittance?

Ronan can't get in their car, when they come. My son will not end up buried in a mountain, even if he might deserve it.

My other two sons arrive – family men, pudgy around the waist, in cars strewn with toys and cornflake crumbs. When Ronan told me about the men, I called them, they understood. They brought rolls of plastic sheeting, and cans of petrol. Eoin's shotgun is by the door, loaded and oiled.

When the two men come, and realise just how far into the country we live, they'll understand that there's always a third possibility.

Week 14 - Laura - Possibility

There’s a big difference between theoretically knowing something, and really, properly, personally knowing it, and believing it.

I think to a large extent my concept of personal possibility has existed in the theoretical realm for much of my life.

Apart from getting 15% in my first ever Science test when I was 13 (how was I to know I was meant to learn something from flying paper airplanes in class?), I've always been an academic success. I got a good Leaving Cert, and a place in my first choice course in college. I left college with an honours degree, and picked up a job in the corresponding sector.

On paper, that’s a success. And of course in real life it’s a success too.

I think I've also let it pigeon-hole me in a way though. I'm good (not great) at what I do. That’s made me less likely to test myself for fear of failing. And as a result that’s made me, to some degree, actually fail myself.

I'm a good girl. I like to think I've had my moments of rebellion throughout the years, but it’s always been within a system I've never seriously thought of working outside.

To date I've mostly played it safe.

Writing that - and reading it back - shames me.

Playing the game well is clever. I am clever. Bowing out of the game and deciding to play your own game is even cleverer, and that's what I want to be.

The best work I've ever done has been when I throw away the rulebook. When I don’t measure myself by the existing standards. When I come up with my own way of doing things, of reaching goals, of making something work.

In recent times I've begun to mentally re-draw my professional parameters, and give some thought to what success is for me.

Re-configuring what’s possible with life (which is pretty much anything) is heady stuff. Getting to the point where you really believe it's possible is exhilarating.

There’s no guarantee I’ll be good at what I set as a goal for myself in the future, or that I’ll be a success even if I am. But my truth from here on in - not just theoretically - is that anything is possible.