An open letter
Dear Ms. O'Connor,
I tried to write directly, or rather indirectly via your management company, but they said that due to the high volume of such requests they could not transmit messages to you. Oh, well. That's understandable. No doubt your work has impacted many lives, and many people would feel compelled, as I do, to say thanks for that. But – who knows? – perhaps you'll read this in any case, at some point.
Over the past year, your music and words have saved my life, as it were. (As I write this, I'm not actually sure whether, or to what extent, that's hyperbole or not.) I was always very fond of your music, especially those amazing first two albums; one of the first really striking videos I ever saw was "Nothing Compares 2 U." But this past year –– the hardest of my life, and the first that really stirred up and brought back awful memories from some of the very hard years that I had growing up –– I've listened so many times to (among many others) "Just Like U Said It Would B" and "Feel So Different" and "Black Boys on Mopeds" and "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" and "Troy." Especially "Troy," and more especially all the extraordinary, stripped-down live performances of it, where you whisper "God, I love you" like it's a profound secret and just before that sing "I know you're always telling me that you love me but just sometimes I wonder if I should believe" as if it's one long word, impossible to break up into component parts. At the most difficult times, particularly early in the morning or very late at night (same difference, really), these songs, and these moments in time, fortunately captured and crystallized for posterity, were always there and were so critically important for me.
Reading your new book, Rememberings, has similarly provided real consolation and strength. Memory itself is such a strange, powerful, painful thing, isn't it? Even such a genius as Augustine, when he assembled his own "Rememberings" some sixteen-hundred-plus years ago, could not fully and completely comprehend the peculiar nature and fathomless depth of this fucked-up human thing, memoria. When you write with such courage about the terrible abuse you suffered and the vitriolic backlash for speaking vital truth to power, it is a tremendous inspiration, and an example par excellence. Your singular perspective and humour and grace are all woven together across this book's pages, just as evocatively as the scene-setting opening lines of "Troy."
With your shaved head and single tear, I always, on some level, associated you with Joan of Arc –– or, rather, with Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc, which has essentially replaced all the earlier images. But the stories recounted in your book and the decades of music after the superlative first two albums have added layers of depth and many different shades and colours to that perfect image of the iconic suffering saint.
Sincerest thanks.
Josh
