Martina Devlin: While we wallow, Sinead follows her hopeful heart
I DON'T suppose many of us will ever understand the turbulent spirit that is Sinead O'Connor -- but we can still salute her talent, courage and hopeful heart.
She is wearing that hopeful heart on her sleeve as she marries husband number four, Barry Herridge, in Las Vegas today -- her 45th birthday. And the best of luck to her. No matter how long or how short the duration of that marriage, a bride beats the Budget hands down on the good news front.
Besides, her taste is to be applauded -- who wouldn't fancy exchanging vows in Las Vegas, preferably before an Elvis impersonator in a rhinestone jumpsuit?
Sinead is Ireland's best-known iconoclast, unafraid to march to a different beat to everyone else. A woman of inherent contradictions, she has always been consistent in one area: rejection of conformity. Right from the start of her career, she made a personal declaration of independence and never wavered from it.
Whatever about the mental health issues she has openly discussed, in her resistance to the status quo she shows wisdom. Being part of the herd is overrated. Conformity produces no major works of art, no scientific advances, no transcendence.
The writer Thoreau criticises orthodoxy in his book 'Walden': "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
But Sinead's dissent from group-thinking leaves some people uncomfortable, and there is a tendency to mock individuals unwilling to parade in lockstep. So Sinead, born without the gene for caution, has been pilloried.
Frank Sinatra was among those who felt threatened by her, growling he would "kick her ass" because she refused to allow the US national anthem be played before a concert she gave there.
However, I'd sooner have Sinead as a representative of womanhood than someone like Madonna, who stripped or dressed as a porn star to promote albums and tried to cod us it was female empowerment in action.
Sinead always had strong views and was prepared to express them, even at the risk of alienating her audience. I'm not saying she was the Virgin Mary -- even if she did play her in Neil Jordan's film 'The Butcher Boy' -- but she did think for herself and stay true to herself. With her shaven head challenging beauty stereotypes, she was no designed-by-numbers pouting popstrel.
She hasn't been pummelled into submission by the beauty police; she doesn't do bunny girl and call it post-feminism. She is a real person who looks her age -- a perfectly normal occurrence, except in a cockeyed society where celebs bare their faces and bodies to the carving knife.
And as for that liquid voice -- regardless of whether you agree with the various stances she has taken, few could listen to those distinctive vocal chords unstirred. I'd rather hear her sing than look at a queue of supermodels do their unnatural catwalk strut.
Now, as to her recent quest for a man: crikey, she led with the chin there. She went on 'The Late Late Show', took herself off to Lisdoonvarna -- although other romance-seekers complained they couldn't get near her -- and blogged and tweeted about looking for love. And sex. Polite evasion and Sinead do not belong in the same sentence.
She even outlined a wish list with her tongue firmly wedged in her cheek: no car clampers, no hair gel, hairdryer or aftershave users and no Nigels or Brians. (A bit hard on Brians, I'd have thought, but we all have a few unaccountable prejudices.)
Her ideal man had to be "very snugly, not just wham-bam" and have stubble -- that was a non-negotiable. Oh, and he must like his mum. Speaking as a mother of four herself, it made perfect sense.
She promised special consideration would be given to Robert Downey Junior, a condition betraying impeccable taste. And now, a few months later, she's taking the plunge again, she told Ian Dempsey on his Today FM radio show yesterday. Not sensible, I suppose, but this lady doesn't do sensible.
It wasn't the most balanced behaviour in the world, nearly 20 years ago, when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II live on US television, generating a 'Holy Terror' headline in the 'New York Daily News'. But she was right about the Vatican covering up sex abuse of children.
She stuck her neck out. That was no publicity stunt. She risked her career for personal conviction. I'd prefer someone in the public eye, with the power to influence others, to have passionately held beliefs -- whether or not I agree. Many of today's female models are a disappointment: boob jobs, frozen faces and trout pouts trussed up to make ersatz women.
Sinead is flesh and blood. Slippery as an eel, maybe, and hard to pin down, with a host of issues she can't move past; but there's nothing fake about her. You'd never get her demanding a picture be photoshopped to enhance her looks.
Irrespective of what she comes out with -- and even she couldn't possibly stand over all of it -- those other women who try to hold back time, or starve their bodies into submission, or kid themselves they've bathed in the Fountain of Youth are the ones with mental health issues.
While Sinead's life has been an open book, there are still some areas where we remain in the dark. Like is she still Mother Bernadette Mary, a priest with a breakaway Catholic group; has the rage of youth mellowed or is it simply hibernating; and will she stay in Bray, which always struck me as an unlikely base for her.
But other things are a given. We accept she will continue to make statements that leave us bewitched, bothered and bewildered. And we know that voice, which could send shivers down the spine of an invertebrate, remains in magnificent working order.
Happy birthday, Sinead. And happy wedding day too. Whether or not you and Barry make it to your silver wedding anniversary is irrelevant.
As the rest of us wallow in gloom, at least you're still taking prompts from that constantly hopeful heart of yours.
Irish Independent
