For Granta, Momtaza Mehri reflects on the life and legacy of Sinéad O’Connor, on the first anniversary of the singer songwriter’s death.
I suppose that’s why I’ve always been in awe of O’Connor as a musician and a daughter. In publicly exorcising the mother-daughter relationship, she obliterates the hyphen at the cost of her sanity. There’s a reckless porousness to her work, a willingness to return again and again to that garden, locked-out and trembling. Formative nightmares can sometimes fuel you. An artist can decide to have her own baby, despite the stern advice of her record label. She can willingly choose the terror of motherhood. In photoshoots, her belly will protrude. ‘Wear a Condom’, her crop top reads. She will flash a cheeky grin. Her first child will be born three weeks before her debut album.
If you are implicated in everything you witness, and vice versa, then how do you live with yourself? The borders of your personhood become dangerously compromised. Such hyper-empathy can be a perilous position from which to think or live, one with personal and professional costs.
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