Sinead O’Connor has been angry for most of her life.
She had a traumatic early childhood witnessing her parents' acrimonious separation and forced to live with her mother who suffered from depression and drug addiction.
O’Connor also went through a stage of self-abuse through drugs and depression: she has seldom been happy.
She has spoken candidly about her dark times: at the hands of her mother who allegedly abused her physically and mentally. Darker times at a Catholic institution where she was sent at the age of 15 to curb her school truancy and shoplifting.
Dark, sad and confused times when she found herself raising a child on her own.
Further dark times when gripped by depression and quite possibly bipolar disorder unable to shake her inner demons.
She has issued very public cries for help, even threatening suicide.
O’Connor’s presence in the Media over 25 years of her career span has been riddled with scandal mostly from her own actions.
She tore a photo of the Pope on live TV in protest for the Church’s silence about child sexual abuse in Ireland.
She spoke of being lesbian in very graphic and un-complementary terms when an admission of homosexuality, especially of female homosexuality could end careers, bring on public disapproval, and condemn people to ostracism.
She has spoken of her private life, and even her sexual preferences in vivid detail - She has caught controversy.
Recently she confessed: "I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes"
She also mentioned a “hot-date with a banana” on Twitter.
But she has also revealed her human side, her anxieties, her fears, her loneliness, and her vulnerabilities in a way that not many public figures have dared to.
And throughout the last 25 years or so she has kept many of her fans under the spell of a beautiful if somewhat hoarse voice, a voice that can reach high notes even when chocked with tears, a voice that sometimes is so full of anger that sounds more like a bark than a human voice.
It is also the voice who sang “Nothing Compares 2 U”, the song that talked about the immense void after a break-up, something that most of us understand and can relate to.
"Nothing Compares 2 U"
Some quotes:
'Everyone thinks I’m mad,”
“But I still believe you should only make a record for one reason, and that’s because you are going to go crazy if you don’t.”
Her anger as a young artist:
“I was a very unhappy person. Young and angry. I couldn’t understand why people liked my music because for me the only reason I was making it was because I was mad and I had to.”
“went straight from hell into the music business”.
“The greatest thing about it was money, ’cause it meant I could send my kids to a good school and I could have a nanny. I was terrified I would be a really bad parent. The money made a difference.”
O'Connor has said she's been consistently misunderstood by the media, and "nasty people" generally.
"Since my first record, all that has happened is I get treated like a crazy person, in a world where crazy is used as a stick with which to beat someone. It's very nasty … And loads of people than in our life think its ok to treat u like shit and dismiss u as 'mad'. It's very sore."
“When I was younger, I was making music because I was fuckin’ mental,” she says. “And it was the only outlet for me. That’s why I love Bob Dylan because when he came along he changed what you could say in songs. Up until then, it was all ‘baby, baby, I love you’, but with Idiot Wind, he showed that you could say stuff in songs that you wouldn’t be able to say anywhere else."
“For me, starting out in songwriting, I did it because I lived in a society where I couldn’t actually discuss these issues. Now that I’m older, and I’ve worked through a lot of that, I have different reasons for writing songs... .I don’t have this enormous pain, which I would have felt before – and which was very healthy then. Now, I’m driven more by the need to make music or the enjoyment of singing the songs live.”
“For me, starting out in songwriting, I did it because I lived in a society where I couldn’t actually discuss these issues. Now that I’m older, and I’ve worked through a lot of that, I have different reasons for writing songs... .I don’t have this enormous pain, which I would have felt before – and which was very healthy then. Now, I’m driven more by the need to make music or the enjoyment of singing the songs live.”
Music as healing:
“My records are diaries to me. They started out in anger and recovery, and there is a journey and I’m pleased that it has reached a place of happiness.”
from her new album, she says “to regain some of my dignity would be nice”.
“When I sing, it’s the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It’s not about notes or scales, it’s all about emotion. You must be in the song, see the picture and tell the story. If this room burst into flames, you could sing 'fire!’ at the highest octave of your voice, you’d go to a place you can’t reach any other time."
“I’m on fire when I’m singing, I’m completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It’s a very special thing."
“Nobody gets between me and my microphone.”
She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and for a while thought this would be the end of her career, but soon after she made a come back by experimenting with other musical styles.
Child abuse:
“When you are a very tiny female living in a situation as violent as the one I was in, the only way you’re gonna survive is to be very tough,”
“You cannot be a poppy in a tsunami. The more delicate and fragile you are, the tougher you have to act.”
“People who experience child-abuse situations can be terribly angry, partly from fear,”
Early years:
“I think anger is really a fist made out of tears. I would definitely be dead if not for music. I prayed very fervently as a small child that God would give me a way out. And I remember distinctly walking home down this laneway, I can’t have been more than five or six, and with the rhythm of my feet I began to hear music, and within that second I made the association with the Holy Spirit, and I said thanks to it. I felt it was the answer to the prayers. I get to stand there and scream and I have a right to, ’cause what else am I gonna do? You’ve got to stand up for yourself somehow. That’s what singers are, people who have to get everything out.”
Relationships:
“I don’t think about these things rationally. I just go impulsively with feeling. It doesn’t matter how strong a woman you are, the feminists will hate this, but we all want some big, hairy bloke to snuggle us and tell us everything’s going to be grand.”
“growing up the way I did, you have this terrible longing for the normal family. You’re trying to get something through a man that no man can actually give you, all the hugs and holding you didn’t get, you’re almost trying to heal a wound.”
“my husband is a very gentle and delicate and private kind of person, so the last six months have been really kind of awful and I’ve learnt some very hard lessons, and one of them is I am never going to talk in public about anyone I love.”
Coping with fame:
"They're like sunglasses – they put a bit of distance between me and the audience. I'm very shy when I sing." On wearing rimmed glasses to go on stage.
"A lot of people say, 'You destroyed your career by tearing up a picture of the pope'" – on US TV in 1992 – "but I define success differently in this spiritually bereft business. To me, it's 'Can I be myself?' I could stand in the street and sing and get enough to pay the bills. I don't need millions of dollars. That was why I tore up the pope's picture – I knew I had enough money that I didn't have to marry a man with a very small penis to get the bills paid. I don't want any man to have control over me. And that is success."
"The reaction I had from people … the usual, 'She's mental,' and that it was the culmination of my lack of self-esteem. 'Send social services round!' It made me depressed about being me."
Her home:
It’s currently in Ireland by the seaside, with a rather bare front garden and a big warning to hackers and snappers.
“Home, for me, means my kids, a place of safety, a place where I know who I am,” she says. “When I’m away working, I find it hard to know who I am or what I am. I don’t have the things around me that normally make me know what my role is.”
About her new album “What about me being me ( and you being you)”:
“I think also artistically, it’s about returning to doing my own thing, after a circuitous journey. I’ve made quite a few themed albums, and this one is really all about coming home.”
On drug addiction:
“Well, obviously if someone is taking Class A drugs, they’re trying to cover up something,” she explains. “Only an enormous amount of pain would require heroin. But I don’t think it just applies to drugs. We all use different means of keeping people away from us. I used to be a terrible weed head. There was this smoky mist all around me, which I could see afterwards, was my way of creating this haze because I was afraid to love someone or let anyone in. And that was because I was afraid I’d lose them. In my case, I was smoking like a fuckin’ maniac, but it would have been because I was a crazy bitch rather than because of anything else.”
Breaking taboos:
“There’s a whole load of obvious stuff in the world that nobody ever talks about, like pooing, pissing, wanking, dying,” she says. “I have a great T-shirt that says ‘Death ... bit of a worry isn’t it?’ I’m sure death is something that nearly everybody thinks about at least once a day – but no one ever talks about it.”
"It is sickening to have it suggested by anyone that I am 'insane' for talking openly about sex. The researcher said to me that since I suffer from depression do I not think it's insane behaviour to be talking publicly about sex. I will never as long as I live, consider appearing on The Late Late Show again.” Well... she was, just a couple of days ago.
Love is…
When I’m an Old Lady has O’Connor singing a poignant line that ends with “that’s my girl”, which echoes her 1992 album, Am I Not Your Girl? Rainforests have been felled in the name of O’Connor’s (admittedly eventful) love life. Does this song reflect a primal need within her to belong in a relationship? “It’s actually a song about being in love with your boyfriend’s best friend. And that did happen a number of years ago, that a guy said those words to me, ‘That’s my girl’ – and even though you’re middle-aged, you still act like a 16-year-old and get carried away.
“Up until recently, I probably would have been the kind of woman who feels like I have to have a fella in order to be alright or to feel secure. But I actually don’t feel that anymore now. I think it’s just me growing older. Now, I’ve got used to doing my own thing ...I feel better now, in terms of feeling a sense of belonging in the world. Sometimes being with people in the past, I felt more lonely than being on my own.”
“Not minding whether I'm in a relationship or not does not mean that I don't want to shag the arse off every man I could possibly get my hands on, she says. In fact, while I may be happy enough without a partner, I would wilt away and be depressed if I wasn't having sex. With nice people.”
When I’m an Old Lady has O’Connor singing a poignant line that ends with “that’s my girl”, which echoes her 1992 album, Am I Not Your Girl? Rainforests have been felled in the name of O’Connor’s (admittedly eventful) love life. Does this song reflect a primal need within her to belong in a relationship? “It’s actually a song about being in love with your boyfriend’s best friend. And that did happen a number of years ago, that a guy said those words to me, ‘That’s my girl’ – and even though you’re middle-aged, you still act like a 16-year-old and get carried away.
“Up until recently, I probably would have been the kind of woman who feels like I have to have a fella in order to be alright or to feel secure. But I actually don’t feel that anymore now. I think it’s just me growing older. Now, I’ve got used to doing my own thing ...I feel better now, in terms of feeling a sense of belonging in the world. Sometimes being with people in the past, I felt more lonely than being on my own.”
“Not minding whether I'm in a relationship or not does not mean that I don't want to shag the arse off every man I could possibly get my hands on, she says. In fact, while I may be happy enough without a partner, I would wilt away and be depressed if I wasn't having sex. With nice people.”
And after the whirlwind on/off/on again latest marriage whose emotional ups and downs led to her latest suicide attempts, she tweeted:
“Guess who had a mad love making affair with her husband last night?”
“I’m been spoiled rotten by my hubby”.
About her song “I Had A Baby“ and on being a single mother:
“It’s a subject not really written about,” she declares, referring to the challenges of rearing a child whose father is absent. “The only other song that’s tackled it, at least that I could think of, was Papa Was a Rolling Stone. I read so many books, but no one talked about what to do when the father isn’t around. My main objective was to tackle it without being accused, and if it blames anyone, it’s me. It says quite clearly in the song that a child shouldn’t suffer over things that I’ve done. It’s more about what do I tell the kid ... What would the father want me to tell him?
“It’s not just fathers who bugger off. Mothers do it too, and they don’t ever have to look back and watch the damage that it can cause. I mean, it can really ruin a kid’s life. It became a terrible stress for myself and my kid for a while, and it was a real source of sadness in my life.
“It’s all sorted now, and I certainly had no desire to cause any hurt in the song to the child or to his father. Anyway, anger is a temporary emotion. There will come a time, years from now, when we [the child’s father and O’Connor] won’t be angry with each other, so I didn’t want to put something down that would be permanent, and which just wouldn’t be true at some time in the future.”
Child abuse in Ireland:
“I spent some time after the Murphy report came out trying to encourage various Irish and other artists to get involved,” she says, “and they were completely indifferent. They did not want to know, and I was very wounded and very angry about that. At the same time, I’m aware that I have no right to tell people how they should or shouldn’t act. And that raised the question in my mind: what is a real VIP?
“In music, we all think we’re great, yet the real VIPs are these children. The song talks about ‘a face that never was, nor will be kissed’. Well, that’s about these children who never felt a mother’s kiss on their face. I think it’s easy for a lot of us to lose the sense of what’s important.”
“One hundred years from now, Irish kids are going to be learning about this, which is to me the most important event in Irish history. And they’ll be asking: ‘Well, what were the artists doing?’ This is what I would call real Catholic emancipation: the loosening of our psyches from the Catholic church."
“Enda Kenny’s speech is the most important speech ever made by an Irish politician. He nailed it with his ‘gimlet eye of the canon lawyer’. So I feel there are a cowardice and a hypocrisy about the silence that’s come from Irish artists – and artists in general. And there are times when deafening silence from artists is really criminal. Don’t they say ‘All that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing’?”
Religion:
“We don’t necessarily need religions but we like rituals, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s basically a charity and we could run it ourselves. The only real use for priests is for bereavement or dying. In the 21st century, we don’t need anyone dictating to us what we should think. It’s fuckin’ stupid.”
Her physical appearance:
Masculine: shaved head, masculine clothes, spectacles and a heavy set tattooed body displaying many religious symbols, often wears a top with a picture of Jesus on the upper chest.
She says: "I don't feel like me unless I have my hair shaved. So even when I'm an old lady, I'm going to have it."
Her spirituality:
"I think God saves everybody whether they want to be saved or not. So when we die, we're all going home... I don't think God judges anybody. He loves everybody equally". She also expressed a belief in Pantheism, viewing the physical universe as a body with divine "energy".
You can also watch an interview where she talks at length about her Christian believes and what was like to grow up in a profoundly religious country, by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.
One of her most remarkable quotes from that interview is when she describes how as a 7yrs old child she perceived the Holy Spirit as a bird, but a bird that couldn’t breathe and how this made her feel suffocated too.
She also talks about Catholicism being deeply imprinted on her DNA, and of children being criticized and chastised by their parents and by priests if they told that they had seen ghosts.
"It felt like I was living in a coffin," She said about her latest marriage and the reasons for the breakup "It was going to be a coffin for both of us, and I saw him crushed. The whole reason I ended it was out of respect and love for the man."
Her ideal man:
Recently she advertised for a boyfriend. She didn’t want any unemployed men or those who use hair gel, aftershave, hair dye and hair dryers.
Instead, she requested stubble as a must, and any potential men to be "snuggly".
"Must be living in Ireland but I don't care if he is from the planet Zog."
"Must be blind enough to think I'm gorgeous."
"Stubble is a non-negotiable must. Any removal of stubble would be upsetting for me."
"a very sweet sex-starved man".
Depression:
"I am tired of all this 'Sinead is crazy' crap. It's a disgrace. It has caused me enormous pain in my life as an artist and has many times led me to consider ending my life.
"Thankfully I have four beautiful reasons not to. Those are my precious children. But no woman should have to walk around feeling like someone has driven a tree through her heart. I can honestly say that is how I felt since my conversation with the Late Late researcher."
"I am tired of all this 'Sinead is crazy' crap. It's a disgrace. It has caused me enormous pain in my life as an artist and has many times led me to consider ending my life.
"Thankfully I have four beautiful reasons not to. Those are my precious children. But no woman should have to walk around feeling like someone has driven a tree through her heart. I can honestly say that is how I felt since my conversation with the Late Late researcher."
"Had to go to the psychiatrist for routine renew prescription etc. She says I'm a bad mum and mental for talking so openly about sex in public. All this shit we’re not allowed to say. Including suicidal feelings, sex etc. You just get treated like a crazy person."
I want to go to heaven SO bad. Have for years. But I don’t wanna abandon my kids. But if I cud die without them knowing I did it myself I would.
"Anyway.. If any1 knows how I can kill myself. Now I f****g wish suicide wud kill me."
I want to go to heaven SO bad. Have for years. But I don’t wanna abandon my kids. But if I cud die without them knowing I did it myself I would.
"Anyway.. If any1 knows how I can kill myself. Now I f****g wish suicide wud kill me."
Sinead O’Connor Homeopathic remedy is Drosera:
About Drosera:
Drosera is a carnivore plant part of the Sundew family closely related to the Venus Flytrap. The plant grows in the wetland in peat or sandy soil with very poor mineralisation. Its leaves are permanently moist, their filaments resemble hairs and are covered by Mucilage: a natural glue designed to trap and decompose the insects the plant preys on.
An average size Drosera consumes about 2000 insects per season, they supply the nutrients the plant needs to thrive and which cannot be absorbed from the soil. In fact too much lime in the soil and the plant can easily die, the poor the soil the better.
In homoeopathy, this remedy is used for whooping cough, malnourished children, lung problems, asthma, skin growths such as moles, weak bones particularly the ankles, visual disturbances – where there is a flickering and difficulty adapting to artificial light, as well as long sight.
Patients who benefit from this remedy can have many pains: sharp and sudden, prickling sensations, and a bruised feeling on the bones.
Their voice, as well as their cough, can be like a high pitch barking sound, they also tend to have a hoarse voice.
They are angry people: angry about social injustice, about an injustice done to others, particularly children. They distrust their own friends and have a short temper.
They are idealistic but feel easily disappointed, cannot focus their attention unto anything or anyone for too long. They can be paranoid and feel prosecuted by others.
The plant also treats urinary infections particularly when the patient can only urinate a drop at the time, and the ailment is related to excessive sexual activity. The plant also has aphrodisiac qualities.
Patients who benefit from Drosera as a homoeopathic remedy feel very lonely especially at night, and can have delusions/dreams of ghosts. They always feel better when accompanied. They suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts, with a particular tendency to commit suicide by drowning.
Drosera is well suited to O’Connor for her need to be in a relationship and yet not being able to maintain a long-lasting commitment – she has four children from four different fathers.
Her strong libido is also addressed by the remedy. The need for sex comes from a constant feeling of emptiness: the feeling is typical of the carnivorous plants' mental picture - they need to "fill themselves with their prey in order to survive".
The pain that she has suffered for most of her life, first emotionally and later physically when she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia: a condition that causes a lot of pain, can also be addressed by this remedy.
The pain that she has suffered for most of her life, first emotionally and later physically when she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia: a condition that causes a lot of pain, can also be addressed by this remedy.
Her depression and suicidal tendencies as a cry for help – even her choice of email for the event was a cry for help: imwonderful@me.com wonderful is hardly the word someone would describe themselves with if about to commit suicide.
Her very intriguing video-clip of “The wolf is getting married” suggests keynotes for the Drosera plant energy: the trap is set, the “bride” is covered in elastic white lace that peels off every time a string is pulled.
Her interview about her album Theology a few years ago is also revealing of this same Drosera energy:
Check at 2.15 as she speaks of a feeling of suffocation as a child growing up in a Catholic environment where the Holy Spirit was a bird locked up in a cupboard…
Check at 17.28 when she plays with the large mole on her chin while she is thinking: Drosera is also a remedy for moles and other skin growths.
Check at 2.15 as she speaks of a feeling of suffocation as a child growing up in a Catholic environment where the Holy Spirit was a bird locked up in a cupboard…
Check at 17.28 when she plays with the large mole on her chin while she is thinking: Drosera is also a remedy for moles and other skin growths.
She broke an ankle recently: Drosera is a remedy with an affinity for treating weak bones particularly ankles.
Drosera thrives on wet ground boggy or sandy soil: O’Connor lives by the sea.
Plant remedies that grow on soggy conditions tend to treat patients who are emotionally needy, who need to be in an emotional/sexual relationship in order to feel complete. A well known homoeopathic remedy for this is Pulsatilla which is, however, a more feminine, timid female type.
Drosera is just as needy but with a more aggressive and predatory mental disposition: after all is a carnivorous plant – it sets up a trap in order to attract its prey which will eat once decomposed.
O’Connor has an interesting choice of words after she was reconciled with her fourth husband: she tweeted several that she was being “spoiled rotten” and “sickly happy”. The way she talks about loving someone as losing them in one of her songs also points to this same Drosera theme: where possessing the insect means killing it! She even mentioned that the reason why she was breaking up with her fourth husband was to release him…
And then there are other minor but no less important signs: she wears glasses, Drosera being also a remedy for eyesight problems. She wears her hair shaven, and she also likes her men with stubble: they also match the plant’s appearance with its hairy/spiky appearance.
By the Undercover Homeopath
By the Undercover Homeopath
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