Right, so summer is actually happening and I need to get my head in the game about festival prep, so I'm going to write this as a kind of... grounding post. A moment to remember that there are normal things happening too.
Electric Picnic confirmed. Fleadh Cheoil confirmed. I've got my talk notes started — though they're a bit rough because I keep getting distracted by, well, everything else. But the talks ARE happening and I need to not fall apart about them.
The sessions are picking back up around the country. I've had reports from Clare, Galway, Cork, Dublin — everywhere. The Rattlin' Bog is BACK in the session repertoire. Not as a novelty. As a proper tune that people actually want to play.
Mick and I have been playing together again. We went to Cruise's last Friday and did a session. Just two of us, but it felt like the whole place was listening. People asked us to play it twice. TWICE. Mick was grinning like a lad of twenty, not nearly seventy.
The merch is selling brilliantly. Pre-orders have been mad. I've already had to reorder stock and we haven't even launched officially yet.
Schools are teaching it. Festivals are celebrating it. Musicians are reviving it. The song has moved from being "that weird thing on the internet" to being "part of Irish folk tradition again."
That's real. That's happening. That's not mysterious or strange or unsettling.
That's just lovely.
I need to remember that sometimes. I need to remember that underneath all the weird bits — the coordinates, the domain history, the recordings, the @bog_remembers account, Rattlin' walking to the gate every night — there's a real, beautiful thing happening.
A song came home. And people are singing it.
That's enough. That has to be enough.
Summer is coming. The festivals are waiting. And for now, I'm just going to be grateful for that.
— Seamus