"The Wind Beneath the Stone" - Interview with David Keohan, Author and Irish Stone Lifting Revivalist

David Keohan's recently published book "The Wind Beneath the Stone" explores his passionate search for more information and understanding around more than a handful of nearly lost Irish traditions, folklore, and cathartic cultural rites of passage that he seeks to share as broadly as he possibly can.

I DM'ed David on Instagram in the early morning (EST) and he said "I'm free for next 2 hrs if you are", so I very quickly made some coffee and got to the microphone to catch up with David over zoom for a completely unscripted chat about Life, the Human Experience, Connection to land and self, Internalized Capitalism, Fíordraíocht, Béaloideas, and more than a little Gaeilge here and there.  

David's work has been not only to chart the stones of the past, but also drawing new maps of where this cathartic, grounding, and uplifting practice is going via an international network or sport and healing through this reemerging cultural medicine.

Thanks for Listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

And you're listening to the Big Irish World and the Irish Diaspora podcast. Today on the program we've got a special guest, uh David Keen, author, athlete, and Gaelic revivalist. Uh David, how are you doing this morning?

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Oh, short, awesome down to my show. I'm really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

You have Keith. Oh my goodness. So um wow, you have been on a wild ride over the last series of years. Uh, you you've come a long, long way in writing this uh your new book, uh, The Wind Beneath the Stone, I believe. Uh where is that where is that being released? Is that out now?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

It's released at the moment in Ireland and England and under Bloomsbury Publications, but it's coming out in the US um in the 1st of September, and that's under Chelsea Green. And Chascarloo, it's coming soon. Oh god, yeah. I mean, I it's it's fiercely exciting on the fair shows. You know what I mean? Did I ever think I'd get to this kind of stage? Never, never in my wildest dreams, but it's been quite the adventure for the past four years.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

I'll tell you, I um I'm so I'm a recent, I'm a recent passenger on your journey, and then I've been uh digging into a lot of what uh the work that you've been doing over the last couple of years. So a couple of years ago, you were kind of hitting an emotional low point. I believe this was was this around COVID or sometime around there, where you were kind of casting about, you're trying to find yourself, there's you're in that isolated place, or like uh uh Mancon Magan would say that Irvelacht, right? Um the loneliness at dawn, uh where you're just you're just kind of there by yourself and you feel like there's gotta be something more. And so you start looking around and you noticed a whoa, there's a cat attack. So you would discover that there was a a a sport of stone lifting in the north, like in Scotland somewhere, and that you had you had taken an interest and you were digging into that community, and that as you were digging into it, you're thinking, Well, was there anything like this in Ireland? And of course, everyone knows you know the historical linkage between you know the Scots and the Gaels. I mean, it's Gith and Kid. So it wouldn't be weird if we had a version of it here, or maybe even he said very quietly, maybe even a version of it here first. So so you dug in and you found out that there was one person who had really been digging into this, who had been carrying this torch, and it seemed to me like you had identified like one of the last torch bearers of the Irish version of this sport, and then as you started to peel away interest and layers of this fog, it was something where you didn't even know if it was a thing, and then it seemed like nobody knew if it was a thing, and then you started digging even further, and then this town said, Well, I can't speak to anyone else, but our town chair has a thing like this, and then another, and then another, and then another, and here you are, you're like graphing out this like map that was basically gone. There was one person who was holding a torch, and they're like, they're like throwing it out in the dark, and you go, snack, and you just grab it with your hand, you're picking it up and you're like mapping out where all these stones are, and and now there's a global community of folks who are working within this tradition, and uh not just I feel like the part that drives me bonkers about reading about all of this fascinating tradition is that when people hear sport, myself included, I'm guilty of this. I'm kind of a book book guy. I do I do get up in my hairland, but that's about all I really do sports-wise. I'm not sporty, right? Like, I'm not like the typical sporty guy. So I hear sport and I think, well, you know, competition and trying to get one over on this other guy, and you know, some folks really get into that, and that's their thing, and that's fine. But like that's it never really been my thing. But I think what's fascinating is folks miss the community around the thing that's happening. They see heavy thing go up, they don't see all the time and all the time in training, or all the time talking to people around it, or all the time where you're just sitting there with a pint in hand and you're wondering, you know, that stone's been sitting in that plot of land for god knows how long. How many hands have been on her? How many times has that gone up? And you're all just sitting around talking about it. And that's a connecting thing. I feel like right now, um, especially in a lot of the um the ugly rises, some of the political outcroppings of late. And frankly, the world's on fire, so that's not even specifically a thing. You could spin the wheel on that one. I think that what we're in right now is a real crisis of connection and of that type of community. And I feel like things like this have created such a global community. And it is a big thing. Like, I as I started digging into this, like it feels like in the beginning it was just you. Like you were just this dude out there in the dark who had like you had found something that had given you some connection and had given you that nourishment that you needed to that time. And I think that that loneliness that was not on you then, I think it's not on a bunch of folks now. And I think the same way that you were able to find that connection and make that community, and you have those you have goals. You know, I'm not I'm not going like the fight club route, but it's like, you know, suddenly you have a reason to do this or that. Like my muscles are hurting, so I should probably eat something about that, you know? Puts you in contact with your body more. Like whenever you're doing these things. But I think that what's happening right now is that there is this need for connection with ourselves, not just emotionally, but like physically, not just our capabilities and what we're what kind of labor we're suddenly good for. But that kind of I told myself that I could do this thing that I'm yeah, I'm on the edge of not knowing if I can do. And then when you ring that bell at the end, you kiss that rock three times, you know? Like you get the wind under and then you put that back down. Like I can that's not an experience I've had, but when I've heard it described the way that you describe it in some of these interviews, and I'm sure the book is poetry. I know it's coming from a place where you've seen and touched on something that I think the world really is hungry for right now. There are a lot of different ways that folks are going at approaching that kind of loneliness and that kind of isolation, right? And some people go to substance, some people go to really angry boards, or just places where they get to feel really loudly. And I think that that draws some folks as it doesn't even have to make sense to them. They just need a room to scream in. And so they're like, they're in a room where people are screaming crazy things, but like they get to scream in the room, you know? And I think that there's a uh there's a catharsis that is culturally informed as a type of medicine. Um, Irish folklore, all the the Belajas and the Twahada Dadan, the the tribe of Danu. There is so much like this out there waiting to be discovered. And I thought that the fact that you went with Indiana Stones as a screen name was like Chefkiss. Because that's what it feels like. It feels like you're doing this type of cultural archaeology and you're rediscovering there's this thing, and it's been sitting there this whole time. People are walking by it, people are driving by it, people are like, oh, that's a big rock. You know, it's yeah, it's been sitting there waiting for it's like um like almost the reverse of King Arthur, you know, who'll lift this stone from the sword. That's it, you know?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

That's it, you know. Um there's there's a lot to unpack in in what you've said so far. Um there's a there's a hell of a lot of directions we can go with this. Um so the first the first thing I suppose is you know, it kind of comes back to I always come back to clarity and meaning and purpose, you know. Um as to why why you're doing something, why do you want to do something, why does it mean something to you? Um and all I can say is I've seen the impact and I've felt the impact of this as I say at first, you know. Um I've got connection to the land specifically. I mean, uh you're traveling to every single part of the country looking for these stones, and life just kind of uh flows along. You go to work, you come home, you go somewhere maybe on the weekend, but just stay in there, it's in a bubble. I managed over the past four years through this uh quest, I suppose you can call it to visit every single county in earth to literally to rediscover my own land. Um and that's been a powerful experience, very, very powerful. Um emotionally powerful, very powerful, and to meet the people and to get the stories and to travel to the areas and to see the beauty of this place, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

And you you really touched on um that's such an important piece you just touched on, isn't the work home, work home, work home, work home. When that cadence gets so tight, when capitalism has like really gripped you where that's all you can do, there is no time to go looking for your land. There is no time to go lifting stones, there's no time to grab your come on and go puck about in the park with the guys. Like that's when culture dies. That's when culture dies. It's when that rhythm gets, well, I'm just not gonna do it today. And life is made of days. And before you know it, like you and you and I, like we've we're rocking the salt in our beards, man. Like we look back and we're like, life is made of days. Like, if you didn't do it today and you didn't do it yesterday, you gotta figure out when you're gonna do it. And when life is that tight, like you lose that culture. And I think folks forget the fact that it is, I think, literally a cultural flex. I'm gonna own that pun. Uh, it is a cultural flex to say that not only have you created a society where there is enough time for people to pursue culture like this. I think that there is a need in the human soul to create and to connect in cultural ways. And I think that when we're given enough time, I always repel, like I always I push back a lot on the idea if folks didn't have to need money, you know, for food and necessities, they just lay around, you know. I don't think that at all. I've just I've known too many folks. You see what people do? Like people do things they want to create, they want to connect. And I think that we have a natural gravity towards those things. And I think people like yourself, you act as like a signpost of like, hey, it's over here, you know? When someone's like, hey, I've got some I've got some free time coming up, or I've got a free day off, or you know, I've got a bank holiday coming up. And you know, people joke about bank holidays, but it's like, man, that's where you can make the culture happen. Like, that's when you can go lift the stone, that's when you can go puck about in the park, you know. You want to go to a Kirkokura or go to a pop-up gale talk and see what people are like after a couple of rounds. That's when you do it, you know? That's where living happens. And I think that when I see the type of stuff that you're doing, like it's all extracurricular and unpaid, it's a passion work, you know? It's your it's your heart place. That's why I'm dying to read this book. Because in every single interview, like I hear it in I hear it in your voice. I hear it in your voice with the way you talk about it. You've seen something, you've seen the thing that people are looking for. There's a type of connection.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

You know, you've you've punched the magic, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've cut a law and dry out. That's it, you know what I mean? And that electrically cable, you punched it, and you're like that's fucking me. Yeah, you know. Um where you just get flattened and dried out in walk, you know, and especially if walk working working a service job. Yeah, your soul gets crossed, you know, beneath the weight of that. And to be able to travel off, like I did with a pastor, yeah, to travel off and know what on Saturday when I'm off. I'm gonna go on a quest. I'm gonna head off the way. I'm gonna meet some amazing people, I'm going to have an adventure. I might travel over to one of the islands, and I'm gonna look for a long, a long-lost piece of my culture that we've gotten about. And through the process of that pilgrimage to get to the place, I'm having the most amazing day you could possibly have. Whether I find it or not, it doesn't matter. Because ultimately the story and the journey that matters, you know what I mean? No, the destination is great, don't get me wrong, it's great to find these things that I found 56 over the past four years. There has been probably about another 56 that I haven't found, but the days out have been absolutely marvelous. You've met people, you've connected, like you've talked about at the start of this interview. You've connected with people, you've physically had a chat with people. You've got me face-to-face, you know, you've shook their hand, you've gone for a bit of uh lunch or a cup of tea, and you've shared stories of life. And ultimately that's what life is, you know. Like it's the same we said. I cut back to part-time there's uh uh probably three months and because uh you kind of ramp up a little bit for me. And it's just like you said, you you don't sit around, you do a hundred things, you know. You you you want to create, you want to travel, you want to go to a place, like I'm you're writing books, you're playing music, you're being creative, you're touching your heart, yeah, different part of your soul, you know. And this I've seen not only with me, I've seen the people how they gravitated towards this, the joy it has given them, you know, and you've given them purpose in the character, you've given them purpose in their training, you know, you've given them clarity of mind, and you've given them a reason and a meaning to go to a place, you know. Yeah, and I have some people know that who are 18, 19, 20, who have never left their own parts before, who are now traveling over to that in the British More, or they're traveling to the Aaron Islands, they're going to West Sally, and their jaws are jaw. I can't believe how beautiful this country is that we live in. You're connecting them to the land, you're connecting them to themselves, and you're connecting them to other people. Sure, it's not a wonderful thing they accused.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

It's hard to do anything else once you've actually had that experience. I feel like that's it. Um I feel like we're left wanting so much in this kind of consumerist late-stage capitalism where like the way you show appreciation for things is you buy them. But then you people think, um, oh, I remember this. I had uh during the pandemic, I know a lot of friends got dogs and they did it for similar reasons, right? They were like, I wanted to go outside and I wanted to touch grass, but I didn't really have a reason. Their reason that they did was they created a reason. Now, you know, sometimes I feel like that reason shouldn't necessarily be a leading beat. But I kind of like your approach a lot better where you say, you know, okay, there's a there's a type of thing, and it's going it could potentially connect me to an old practice. And man, I wish more folks did more of that, Jason. Like they've they've never rung that bell. And I feel like there's this uh there's this new laGrasse Tyson type energy that where you once you've had that moment, you want to shake people on the streets and be like, have you heard this? You're like, there's this thing, it's stone lifting, and it goes back so far. And there are people in there are towns here where if you lifted this stone, that's how you became an adult. Like men and women, to all, like anyone, you lifted this stone and uh you were you were strong enough to help if something crested that hill that shouldn't. And it's not strictly militaristic. I think a lot of it is just there's that will, right? There's that achievement of will where you've done the thing, you know? Especially where if you've done the thing and failed and done the thing and failed, uh, there's this really weird saying where folks say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And I'm like, no, that's a definition of practice. The definition of practice is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. You know what? You eventually get different results if you do it right.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

So if you all Japanese and fall down seven times, get up by eight. Yeah. Oh, I like that. Yeah, that's that's what it's been. Um physically, I suppose when it comes to the Archivia because that's what it's been for me because I came with this from not being a strong man at all. You know, I mean I was just I was doing fitness levels out there. Yeah, I wasn't like a strong person. But it felt important for me to be one in particular, um you get into it. The um the Mono Port Valen Dune, the Nemo Flarity story. So I think of this a lot, but I never get tired of speaking about it because it's the very force of the film. And I think there's there's a lot of particular stone between so I get into that uh the great essay is in one was born in Inch Moore. Yeah, I've got a left hallway. He was very famous for a character. We remember even growing up, but um, he wrote a film about an old man in his daughter remembering reminiscing about the greatest day in his life, the greatest day in his life was when he picked up this loud testing store of the village. And he he said he still remembers the joy it gave them, and that still resembled him 50 years later, he's in his donor. So the story goes that the man remembering the wandering around he's an old man, he remembers a stone, goes back to the country and dies at the stone, and then the young men come back and bring the culture back. He got birth and death in the new and everything in about a short 10-page three. Um I read this story about four and a half years ago. I thought it was a beautiful piece of fiction. But what it's not fiction, it's actually based on practice on this island. I believe it's based on an actual practice on stone that was lifted on this island. And I got this information from Reddit um and doing a lot of research back in the year. Um so I go over the island in the granite and it's sparkling because I leaked in the surface. There's bruised stones on a river. I go over to the Iron Island and rocks. It's just like a tiny rock made out of rocks. But I found out compared to the redder trying to say it's on an old pathway from the from uh the village of Court McCopper from the old uh Port Vale and Dune. And scrolling down this pathway story just written in 1929, like a pirate's train. Walk through the stone style, into a field of anthrocyte grey border. And I said, as you walk down, and as I walked down the pathway, I spotted this rim sparkling in the sun. And then it's like Jesus Christ that Lemo Flaherty wrote about. Um, and that's the very first one that I really felt it was drawn um to an energy I can't quite describe. And then we go back to the falling. You know, by age the first time I tried to look at that, I couldn't budget, it was too heavy. I couldn't get the wind under it even. Um I came back a second time away. Um and it took me to eventually of the old man in his youth, and two or three times and dropped it down with the shout that window that moment happened in the process of water back. It's been it's been incredible. It's kind of like art imitating life, imitating life, you know what I mean? Because I'm reading the story about you are the man lifting the phone. And now people are reading the book of me, and I'm the man lifting the phone, and they're going to lift the phone, and it's like it's just gone.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

100% it's um it's a beautiful and I I talk about that particular one, David.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

It's um one con spoke about killing this world and the other one. And we believe that particular one and the fact that it's called Port Baylon Dune means the world port, and the dune they're talking about the English are sitting on the hill of hope to be seen. So you're touching the mythology, you're you're kind of touching mythology, you're talking about cultural folk memory. You're not just talking about uh a fame of years ago, and now it's back in the public mind. That's quite the magic. You think like the effort has always been the same, what like how much did we change a thousand years, you know? And you think like what did the people did it look like when they came to lift this stone, what did they wear, what was their day to day like? How many people have hands on it? The effort is always the thing, and it's how you lay your hands on this.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Like it could have been how many thousands of people have done that before, how many people have tried, how many people have and I think that energy is going to get uh stored into still things get a little bit more uh esoteric energy to these things that is oh I I I I wanted to warn you is Pagnachme Krajum Sativela. I'm just saying, um wow, Fjord Riach is Brad M Rod Moshara. I love that stuff. So I'm the brand of pagan that likes to sit down and like chat with people about it. So I feel like you could easily point to that stone and say, unironically, that is a magic stone. Leans into the mic. Capital M magic stone. If you can lift that stone and kiss it three times and drop it down just like your ancestors did, it's gonna warm your bones a little more when you're 80. Spot the lie, you know, spot the lie. Call it a spell, say that's a magic rock.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

It's not me.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

I'm no fan thing. Because I suddenly become that go. I've been over to it. I'd failed to lift it three or four times, eventually got it to my knees, eventually got it to my my abdomen. But I went over there with Irish, Irish at Mall when I was there, um B fest. We were over a few years ago and for her very first festival where she had it there. She had like an Irish VP festival on the island for. Five days and a give it all your stone lifting and maybe a demonstration lift. So I agreed. So this would be my seventh. So I came there, came up to the area, and we got the kind of squeler and we went down to the stone. And there was about 100 people on bike. And that was surreal. It was like weird. There'll be 100 people here on bikes chanting and saying. There's about 100 people in the business. Ahead of them. So like there was about 200 people at the stone to give us a lift. And they all came around going in a circle. And you see it actually pegged on me, yeah, Instagram. I mean it's again page. And I'll never change it. Because as it was there, I was getting kind of nervous because I was seeing the people around me in a circle, and I was trying to lift something very, very heavy. I said, Well, can someone put on some music and stuff like that? Everyone started singing all Hawaii. The whole 200 people. Because obviously, I think Molly maybe talked in the song maybe the day before. But everyone started singing Oro Shit of La Hawaii.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Modegadero was there.

unknown 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

That's right, yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Oh, there's magic in that song too. I push hard for that song.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

There is. Welcome home to your language. All at the same time. While you're in the circle. And then I felt all that energy came in in the middle. With me over the stone. Condensed, condensed, condensed. And I had the best lift ever in my life. I picked it up in my lap, turned it and brought it up like that. And kissed it three times. I've never done it before, I'll never do it again. But I really feel the energy of the people who were there. Gave it that bit of extra magic power because it came up like picking up and never forget it. Like it's 171. Big, big lift, you know. And I'm not a huge man. You know what I mean? Maybe a little bit more muscle than that, but not a lot. But that thing came up and I managed to do that thing, and I managed to come to the phone in front of all these people. And then I put it down and I started getting emotional. I just started weeping it.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Oh yeah. Well, it's overwhelming, man.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Oh man, it's not good about anything else. People came in in around me. First one person hugged the thing, you, and then everyone came around in a circle. 30 people literally putting their hands in his face, and everyone was just saying Gorra Mah, but no one was saying well done to work.

unknown 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

And we're like, Mao head, Mahohead, bull of us.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Everyone was just tankful. Everyone was just so thankful.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

You don't think though is um that's a victory shared, though. Like whenever you do that, and everyone like you're the man in that moment. Like everyone's like, Come on, you've got it, you know, put the fucking wind under. Let's go. You know, it is a big share.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

And that's all we did to think of because it wasn't like we don't want to get every people there on that day. It was ours. It was our culture coming back. It was, you know, all rollshit about it was it was everything, it was the beauty of the moment. And you don't get many perfect moments in this life. And I've written about it in my new book quite extensively, that particular moment. It was everything, everything was three of that, everything was just perfect, and it was like I'll never forget it. So then, like new people who I know when I'm eighty if I get to that age, that I'll remember a great day, and it'll be that day, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

It's not just lifting a rock, man. I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

It's not just lifting a fucking rock. You know, it's not, it's not. It's not lifting a stone. It's like saying they call it the ball with it.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

It's not, it's more than that. It's cultural depth, it's who you're fucking out there. You know what I mean? It's who we are as a people. There's memory in these things. They retain memory, they retain energy. These things are ancient. You know, you just have that little fleeting moment with it. Just that little moment. But whatever. That would be your moment. You're that link. That that in that time, you're the next link. You're the link that goes back in what 500 years, a thousand years. You're just you're the next link to the page. You know what I mean? And this is the same thing when you're playing Irish, same thing when you're playing an Irish sport, you know, it's you're the next link. The thing that you have knows when you play for 500 years, and now you're playing it, you know. And there's power in that. It's like you know, steep.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

So I'm capital tracking. If you're playing holy for your parents, you're doing the same thing that's your maybe your your father or your grandfather.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah, you know. There's there's memory in it, and it's like it it's it's so much more than the physical the physical process of listening. There's an emotional and a culture. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Well, and there's there's also um I started to touch on this earlier and got kind of uh sidetracked, I guess. But there is a a consistent thread in Irish mythology and folklore for catharsis as a primary tool in healing, and strength training is just a catharsis reactor, you know, like you are you're you're creating that catharsis, that struggle and strain that a lot of people, I would argue a lot of people credibly would say really does help a lot of folks. You when you don't have the words but you need to have the feeling, catharsis, you know? When you when you when you need to have the feeling but you don't have the words, and again, it goes all into that. People see lift heavy rock, but there's all of these other things around it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

That exactly that there are stones attached to emotions. So um, and I was speaking with the great I call the Galway ghoul, Sean O'Corsilva. He reminds me of John Moriarty, incredible man. And I've been doing a lot of um research into the stone lifting, obviously, but he was like, Yeah, there are stones uh called Klock nawarig, and the Klock de Warrig are the stones of the stones of the wish. Um and they were related to emotion, so they were lifted at funeral games as part of the death rates or the um the funeral games to honor a loved one, you know. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, I nearly put it as the masculine version of the keening ritual, you know. Whereas if you're someone who's renowned for the strength, which a lot of people up the west, a lot of people learn generally more 150 years ago, and you talked about catharsis. If you can't express an emotion verbally, yeah, you can express it in a physical act, so you're lifting something heavy, you're the the strain and the stress and the emotion and the pain and the anger that you're feeling, you can put it into that lift, you can put it into that massive effort of lifting the stone, and there's a healing attached to that.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

It mirrors you up too. Like it lets you when you um if you just come and lift a thing just casually cold, not really thinking about it, like a bag of groceries or something. Like, yeah, that's kind of a heavy. I was joking with my little brother about this at one point because he's a really you know, he's really strong. Uh, but like there are times where you'll pick up a bag of groceries and you're like, oh man, it's kind of heavy. But it's like, don't you deadlift like three hundred something clouds? It's the context of the thing, you know? But then when you're pouring all of that, all that pain and that feeling and that emotion into the lift, like the scream that fills your arms and gives you that little extra push. Like, it's interesting that delta between where we are normally and where we can push ourselves to be. And I think seeing that in yourself, a lot of folks have never seen that. A lot of folks have never seen that's a pretty far distance. I think folks don't realize that's a pretty big distance between back and break and never get and um the strength ritual at a dead-funeral, you know.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Yeah, it there's something powerful about it. Um because I was I was reading about and speaking about a man called Tom Osmoore, Koran Qan, who will be one of the strongest men in Calamar. And one of his brothers died in a in a drowning accident. And to express his grief and his rage and his sorrow, he lifted a massive stone at the funeral. Um, like I said, he poured his his energy and his rage and his sorrow into that stone as he lifted it. And because he was known as a strong man, it was his way of expressing that pain, I suppose. And it's made me think more about a lot of these stones that I have found in in graveyards over. There must be about 10 of them, maybe 12 of them at least, that are attached to funeral things. And a lot of people were saying, Oh, yeah, these were just stones that were put there as a means of diversion over a long funeral, that men and women would gather and lift the stones to pass the time. But I really think there's something deeper attached to it.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, it's hardly a pack of cards, you know. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

I think there's something a hell of a lot deeper attached to it than purely diversion. I think there's um there's emotion that goes into these things too. You know, for why is the keening so powerful? Why why is that such a thing that elicits such raw emotion come up first? There's something otherworldly about it. That's the same thing with the with this massive feat of strength. There's something otherworldly about it too. Yeah, look, I can go into this kind of as a territory, you know. I just think it's um it's a very, very interesting lab at what the picture.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Oh, fantastic. It is. I know that you've done quite a bit of traveling around the island to kind of chart out and discover. Like, again, I love Indiana Stones as a screen name, it's so perfect. So you're mapping out, you're rediscovering, you're you're investigating history and folklore and what you can hear from people about do you know of any large stones, many cemeteries? Like, it's not something you can you can Google. So it's a very human intelligence. You really are running around talking to people about this, and again, there's that connection to culture as you're uncovering this. Like, you get more and more connected the more and more you go down this rabbit hole. So, like, you kind of become the rabbit hole the further down you go, and you have uh kind of big stones, pun intended, that kind of hold this tradition. Like you have a person that references it, and everyone just kind of points back and they're like, Well, I know a bunch of people over here know, and a bunch of people over here know, but that guy really knows. That's that's the guy you need to go looking for. And you've kind of become this next step in that chain where when you had come to it, I feel like people they look at the death of culture as something that happens in a vacuum. And I feel like that's just not what happens, it's not observable. We have that tight work, uh, work home, work home, work home that kind of wrings all of the culture out of us. And it's important for folks to remember when you get that time back, when you win and you get that time back, there has to be something in that space waiting for you, or else what have you won? You know, and part of how you keep the culture alive is you have folks like yourself running around talking to people, keeping the tradition alive, and talking about the things outside of what it is you look at in a Polaroid picture. Like if I feel like folks they think they can get gather so much more just from this one little still image of a guy holding a stone to his chest. It's like you have no idea what the road was there, you have no idea what that stone's history is, like the people you had to talk to to learn about this tradition and about how it's a how it's coming back, or to learn about the ways that it was expressed, when, why, how, and just the idea as a a type of almost, if I could use the term Gaelic medicine, of using that catharsis of when you don't have the words, but you need to have the expression. There it is. It's available to us. Here it is, it feels like wisdom, it feels like a really old wisdom, and it's easy to miss or to try to reduce down to just what you're looking at, because I think that's what we're kind of trained to do in a fractured media environment. Everything's kind of a soundbite, you know? You try to distill everything down, but this is something that you expand to enjoy, it's not something that you distill down to what's just the the two or three sound bites in eat of this. No, no, no. You you you add water to this, you know. You well, let me let me let me delve into that a bit.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Yeah. Um, because through this innocent journey of looking for these things, I managed to well not manage to, but I've I have started to delve into what it means to be. I suppose I'm writing what it means to be a man in modern times, and I've got I've gone very much into that, more so than anything else. And it's it's attached me to my land, the people, the stories, my mythologies, my language, and it's made me become more aware of myself and where I face it in this modern Ireland, you know. And there's something powerful about that too, which is it gives you more connection, your root system gets deeper, um, and and it's it's can force me to look inward as opposed to looking outward, and it's it's it's made me become through the process of relearning the language, I mean that in itself has been uh a healing of the soul, I suppose. You know what I mean? Because you know, Tyrgon Changa, Tyrgonana, man. It's like, you know, I also would expand it out to Teagon culture, Tyrgonana, but you haven't got a language or culture, you haven't got a land, you know, you haven't got a people. And when you're starting to relearn that for yourself, and you're starting to open up this whole other world that you haven't seen before, the place names, the meanings behind things. Yeah, then you're getting into place of mancon Maggan and reading his books, and like, yeah, all of these words and language, it means so much. And all of a sudden, it's not just a field, or it's not just a tree, or it's not just a stone, it's a fucking story. It's the way you relate to your site, it's the way you relate to your people, and that becomes just as fucking the revelation. It just becomes like, oh my god, all of these places, these names mean so much to such beauty in the language and the land that I was blinded to. I never seen, especially when you're living in the east coast like I am. You're you're kind of removed from this western Connemara way of thinking. But I think there's a little bit of Connemara all in all of this to dig deep enough, and I think that's what's happening to me over the last couple of years, you know. Captain Gowitzch cre on this land, you know. And it's like I felt fucking like a tourist in my own country. I hated it. I hated having to go around with Jumakush and him having to work, you know, to relay what people are saying to me back into English, you know, just colonized fucking tone that I have that was given to me that I never wanted, but it's how I have it now. And sometimes that fucking thing out of you sometimes. But no, but you have to relearn this thing. You have to relearn even a small bit of it. And that's what I put in the book so much. Every place that I went to the book, every place name, every area, every village has been given its English name, but it's been given its Irish name, right? And it's been given its meaning. You know, the crack. And it's like this that's it. There's such such beauty in the land if you go looking for it, you know. And manco said it, listen to the land speak. So if you want to open yourself up to this thing, it's there for you.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

It's there for you listen to the land speaking.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Here it is. You know, exactly, it's there for you. Go find it, go open yourself up to it. And if you just want to take this as man lipstone and just go out and lift the things, even if you just want to do that, you're still going to be parts of our seeing parts you've never seen before. You're traveling to islands, you're meeting people, you're still having that wonderful part of the adventure. But if you want to delve deeper, it's there for you too. And I really believe that people should, and they get so much more out of it, you know. Absolutely. I love this so much.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

So I didn't know you actually have Nisimona Kupala Fakovasco Lauer. Like you've got to be.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is um, there's there's a good few in the book. Um, and that to me was very, very important.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Because if this book, if all it does is is give give is give people that you know, to open their mind to that, you know. It's like look at look at the name, what's your place name?

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Yeah, what does it mean? It means you know, and it means something. I feel like this is part of where this is part of where the stereotypes kind of bubble up a little bit, where the second you you learn this stuff, and this is gonna this is gonna sound really offensive. I'm trying not to be, but we used to joke, uh like when we were kids, we were like, why do they call it Bally Nooney Booney Foonie? When like it has this name like like um crest of the fallen soldier or something, and it just incidentally was like, you know, Bally Nooney Foonie Booney or whatever. And it's terrible. And so the stereotype that crops up is like the angry, the angry gale, where you're like, dude, what the hell? Like, why did they do that? We had a cool name here, and the answer is colonialism. It's supposed to be funny. Like, that's the thing. And I feel like there's this comes back to a conversation I was having uh with uh with another person who was talking about Littleting, where it's really easy to do the type of decolonizing where you find the folks who are clearly deserve to be yelled at, and you you need your catharsis, so you take all of that need of catharsis and you go and you just howl at these folks. No, I'm not saying you don't do that. Some of these folks definitely need howling at. And if you can get some catharsis from that, all the same, sure. The real easy decolonizing that people like to do is where you get to spend your catharsis at someone who deserves to have some catharsis spent at them. I think the hardest part are with the things we were taught to mock and laugh at. And the the silly sounding like um DJ Provi talks about Belfast all the time, where he says you would think the word Belfast was just kind of made up, just fully formed, like you threw a spoon down a staircase or whatever. Belfast, like, you know, or you come up with a random sounding name instead of Belfast, you know, which has an actual meaning. The point is ridicule. The point is to make it silly. The point is they had so little investment in understanding what those words were that they just took approximate, and sometimes they didn't even take approximate words, they just wholly threw it out the window and just made a whole bunch of weird sounds together. Not even words, they couldn't even give them words, they couldn't be like big hill place, you know? They had to call it like you know, bally nooney foony boonie, you know?

SPEAKER_02 40:49

Yeah, and then you Yeah, and like you said, and ridiculous and mocker and make you feel less.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Yeah, but there's I feel like the real type of decolonizing I would like to see, and I think I I struggle with too, is the stuff like lilting and like stone lifting, where it's easy for like the cynical teenager to come by and they see man lifting rock and field. They miss absolutely everything we've been talking about, but like there is that pointing and laughing, you know, there's that ha ha ha ha ha, you're lifting a big rock in a field and you're drawing all of this personal significance from it. You know, that's some weird pagan nonsense. You're like, I can't like they shoot their own foot whenever this is the kind of stuff they need to be gravitating towards. People that have that kind of ridicule and that humor and kind of cynicism. I feel like they're the kind of people that need to drop that and like come over to the side and lift a rock, you know? Like they need to come engage that stuff that they're laughing at and that once they can touch it. You know, because come along, come along. Because we're taught to make fun of the culture. We're flat out say it. We are taught to make fun of the culture.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

We thought we were, oh, very much so, and it was very much very much a part of my parents, you know. My own father would would be in any way attached to the culture, and he was brought up through that post-colonial shame period where you know, why would you want to be doing that for? It's silly, it's backwards, you know what I mean, and it's ridiculous, it doesn't mean anything, you know. So, but through me having this cultural reclamation, I suppose, he's having it too. So I see it in him, I see the pride he has in the bear couple of words he has Irish. He's getting more into Irish music, he's getting more in touch with himself. And if I manage to heal my own father of that post-colonial shame, that makes me very, very proud and very, very happy, you know. And through you being like the tip of the spear almost of this now, one of the people are a cultural reclamation, people are kind of coming to you about things, you know. You've been asked to go on TV and write books and academic papers and everything, it's you know, life is turned upside down. But I'm doing this because I love it, and I'm doing this because it's important, and I'm seeing what it means to people, and I've seen how much beauty it has given to the Irish people in general. You know, people have just latched on to this, they have fucking just took this to their chest and are saying, look at what we have here, you know. Look at this really cool culture we have. Look how strong we were before we were told we weren't, you know what I mean? Before we were made to feel like fools, and before we were made to be a weak, bet down surf culture in our own nation, you know. We were strong, we were proud. And now we are strong and proud again, you know. Come and lift these stones, it's a redemptive fucking thing. Come and do it, reclaim your duke us. So fill our ducus, you know what I mean? Fill our, you know, reclaim your port fight, you know, that fiending strength that's in us all. It's there. And say, come and fucking try this thing. And wait till you feel it feels, you know. And you see, you say that to the youngsters, you know, they go, yeah, how many focuses.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

And that's and that's that's the whole, it feels like that's the payload of the experience that people miss. We have this objectifying kind of I can understand as much. Much as I need to by a quick glance or a scroll or a swipe. Yeah, it is reduced to half a moment worth of visual assessment, and you don't really get any depth with that. So, touching on another thing you said earlier that I really appreciate is that I feel like when folks ask me, now why do I want to learn Irish? What they're really asking is they say, I've written been heavily programmed by capitalism to think that nothing is worth anything until it puts a dollar in my pocket. How will learning Irish put a dollar in my pocket today? And it's like, son, it's gonna take so many dollars from you or a euro or a yen or wherever you are. You know, it's gonna take some of that because it's something you chase, it's not something that puts money in your pocket, it warms your bones. I think people are too used to looking at will it put a dollar in my pocket as the sole metric for value.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Listen, listen to me when I'm speaking to you now. Yeah, the amount of people who said that to me over the past couple of years. When are you gonna start making money out of this? And I'm saying to them, you don't fucking understand. I have gotten everything from this, you know. I have gotten so much that you can't put a price on. You can't, but I keep saying clarity, meaning, purpose, reattachment to culture, what it means to be a man, what it means to be Irish. It has given me everything. But some people only see that when you want to say I'm making a money, you know, and it just frustrates the fucking hell out of me. You're being so indoctrinated you can't see past capitalism.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

And they fancy that there's a dollar, that there has to be a dollar somewhere between where they are now and where they're gonna be happier and feel more connected to the land, to their culture, to the people around them, in a way that's like their islands, honestly. Yeah, it's like it's you know it's an ontology that's been sold to us too many times, and I would say that's just colonialism and capitalism to doing what it does best, telling us there's only one way for to assess value, and it's the way the benefits of systems and structures in play, and always towards the folks that have the most amount of that value.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

So you know, are you like you say to people just go out to the fucking west, go out to Connemara, go out to one of the islands, stand there and just look. Look up, don't you? You know, what fucking more do you want? Yes, you know what I mean. What more do you want than that? How much more do you need than that, you know? And how could you put a price on the beauty of a moment like that? Or me having that moment on the island? Like, how could you put a price on that?

SPEAKER_00 46:19

And aren't we chasing that most of the time? Like a lot of the time, I feel like that hole we're trying to fill. We just need those moments where we need to connect and feel like that's what life is about. We're this tiny point of consciousness on this really big thing, and it has a really long history. There's lots of other little points of consciousness, you know? Exactly. And when you sit there for a second and you just reconnect, it's like rebooting, like you're kind of clearing off all of the all the kind of you know. Um, I don't like to like knock modernity if you know, like old, good, modern, bad, but like there's a lot of patterns in late-stage capitalism where everyone is trying to extract value through an attention economy. I know I'm saying this on a podcast, so but I'll be honest, like that's that sure seems to be the case.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

It does, it does.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

And it's like people that there's no magic in people, you know, there's not as much magic of our lost their magic, and they've they've started with a definition of so I'll own, like, I'm pagan af. I will tell folks that they love to take magic, um, Driycht, and they like to define it as any definition that provides it can't exist. Or they say, like, oh, there's no way to define these things. And I say, Oh, well, can I give you a definition? And maybe we'll just work with it as a working definition for magic. And the one that I tend to give whenever I'm pressed for it is um the study or manipulation of the unseen, the intangible, or the unknown in order to create change in accordance with will. And that is 100% what you're doing, right? You're you're creating change in accordance with will, and that when when you're focusing your energy into, like you said, you're putting your energy into the lift, you're powering into the into the rock, and like try to be a strength trainer without understanding this, like one kind of magical principle. You know, everyone says that they don't understand the concept of magic, but everybody's got a power-up playlist, you know? Yes, and that's it's as simple as that. It doesn't have to be like, you know, boom, you're a pig, you know? It's not like it's not that. I feel like when folks try to engage with that kind of um concept of Dreya, I think that it's more helpful and that it can help people try to figure out what to chase or how to grow that within themselves. It's kind of like when folks say uh it's important to love yourself, but they don't give you any guidance for like what love is or how to like measure that. It doesn't mean that you have to have like a hard cold definition of love and that's just all anything is. But with these little tools, like that little definition, not the only definition, but it's one way to think about these things and to talk about magic in a sane way that we can talk about the same thing, and you can invite secular folks in and they can talk about it too, and they understand it. I feel like folks actually don't struggle to understand the idea of pouring your energy into that lift, or like really trying to hone your focus, or like whenever the metal gets really loud, or like you know, the scream hits in the base, I'm just like just pulling up berserker mode, rock go up, man. You know, those moments like they act like, well, I don't magic, I don't know what magic is. You're like that, that right there, that right there's magic change in accordance with will, and what you're manipulating is unseen. You have this. If you put a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you like what the energy looks like or like where it flows from or to, or like I just know that it's there and that you're able to do that. And I think that's one of those fun mysteries um in things like this, things like stone lifting, where it really forces you to dig deep. And when you're digging deep, you have to engage your magic to do it. Like you really gotta dig down to where the good stuff is, where you got the yelling, you can hear your grandparents yelling, is that all the lift you got, my boy? Is that all you got from the parents? Is that what you're gonna give to us today? And you're like, ah, going at it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

Well, I mean, I I had an experience of that up in Mara Felt. Oh god, I did. I mean, up in Marafelt there's a stone called the Sea Finn stone, which literally translates to the seat of Fion, Seat of Fjumakul. Oh, oh. And the story behind the stone was that Fiona Cool threw it from Schlievgalia and it landed on this hilltop, which we think the hilltop is now called Sea Finn Hill. So the hill of the seat of Fiona Cool. Um, and that's the that's the mythology, but the actual culture behind it was that that stone was a standing stone, and the old Irish chieftains used to have to ascend the hilltop like the Leah Fall for all the world on the hill of Tara, put their hand on this stone and announce their right to rule. You know, so there was a chieftain's ascension stone, which was written down by O'Donovan back in his letters back in uh the 1800s. But it was he also wrote that it was a great feat of strength for any man to lift this stone off the ground. Um, it was also a lifting stone. So I go up and I've I've been told about this stone. I'm like, okay, that Irish chieftains were ascended out of Sean McCool through the fucking thing onto a hilltop. There's a lot of magic around this already. So we go up and we dig it out, it's been buried a little bit, but we dig it out of a hedge and we stand it up and we weigh it, and it's 257 kilos, which is monstrous. But it's a pillar, it's like a shape like me, it's a pillar stone. So I just so happened that I was going up with a film crew and a few other people for a shooting documentary, and uh I tried three times to lift that stone, but I was like trying to lift a mountain, and it just wasn't happening. And you know, everybody was kind of looking at you, and like I write about in the book, and people kind of looking at each other with that kind of, you know, he's not going to do this kind of thing. But I went off up the mountain a little bit, and I just stood there, and it was like it was six o'clock in the evening, and it was it was starting to get a little bit twilighty, the golden hour, and I was kind of thinking to myself, Jesus, you're here on this hill in the north of Ireland, and Chom McCool has thrown to the stone and ancient Earth chieftains. You felt this fucking surge of energy come through you, so I run back to the stone and said, Well, I'll turn on that camera and I go over and up it comes off the ground about about two or three inches back down again, and you felt something flow up through you. You know what I mean? It was like this energy had come from the fucking land itself. Up she comes and it goes down. And I was like, I can't believe you did that. I said, I can't believe I did it either. But the payback was for the next three days, I was as sick as a fucking dog. My central nervous system shot down. Um, I was violently sick for a day, and I slept for about 18 hours. But the it's like something burnt you out or came through you that wasn't you, you know, I wasn't able to lift it, but something gave me the power to lift it, but there was a payback one.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

See, that's that's fascinating. This feels to me like you lifted the chieftain stone, and then right after, it's like the shadow of the chieftain stone is that you are then heroed, and you have to be loved by enough people, by enough smart people that can keep you alive for like the next two or three days because you are on your back and you can barely lift a spoon. So maybe that's the real test of a chieftain is that it's supposed to put you on your ass, and if people love you, you could be that too. If the right people love you enough, you'll survive.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

I mean, it's a fucking big stone.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

I mean, I threw my back out just listening to you.

SPEAKER_02 53:02

It's obnoxiously big, you know.

SPEAKER_00 53:05

But what an experience. It sounds like a moment where like that it you get that sensation where you're you're right there at the lift and it's happening, and that jolt comes through you, and afterwards you're like, What the fuck was that? Like, what's it and that's when you start shaking people, you're like, no, no, that was something, something happened there. I don't have words for that. I don't know that there are words for that, but like, what the fuck was that? You know, yeah. How the fuck did that happen? You know, you go out, Chase. I gotta do that again. What was that?

SPEAKER_02 53:32

Oh, there's been moments like that all the time, you know. Every one of these stones is a story, yeah. Like, you know, the story is the stone, and the stone is the story, and the story wraps around the stone over years and years and years. It's a beautiful thing, they just will gather these stories as they go, and that's all I'm doing is just deciphering them and writing them down and passing them on to people because there's so many and they're all so wonderful. I can't talk about them all fucking day long. Um, and I have, and I'm sure like I think it's my my purpose on this earth has been to now bring this culture back, share it with people, and give them a reattachment to their landing to ourselves. That's why you feel I'm here now, I'm in my power now, I know what I'm here to do now. Yeah, and again, I'll go back to challenge your purpose. You know, this is what I'm meant to do.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

That's strength itself, just having that clear line like, I think I know what I'm for.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

This is it took me 47 years.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

You're like, wow, I think I know what I'm for now. And that's amazing. Like, that's a that's a hell of a calling. And like it is wow, you're traveling, you're talking to folks, and internationally, you have other folks. I think I remember uh tell me if this is correct. I think I remember from one of the other interviews I listened to that you had uh one of the earliest stones that you had lifted that you had given to some folks in the diaspora, and that they had started doing it themselves, and that folks in Australia are doing it and elsewhere as well. I think I don't have the full list in front of me.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Oh, yeah, it's it's traveled. I mean, when I was training on the beach, I had this couple of stones that I just picked out again because they looked that they look beautiful, they called me and I lifted them. So I I gave one of these as a gift to the diaspora in Boston um as uh as a lifting stone because there is a cultural stone lifting, and there's a lot of cultural Celtic revival going on over there at the moment, too.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

Oh, yeah, oh for sure.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

So I gave it to the guys at the No Fame games, um, Joshua McIntosh and his wonderful wife, Jane, who are who just get it. Like they're they're like, yeah, it's great to bring that cult, Celtic strength, Celtic culture. So I said, Right, we're gonna send you over a stone. And they just got it, they just loved it straight away. Sure. We shipped it over to Boston, and that stone is now being shipped around, brought around to all of these Irish festivals, lifted by people, just put people put their hands on it, older people, younger people, you know, there's a piece of Ireland, you know, there it is, there. I might have never gotten there, but I put my hand on the damn thing. And if you lift it, you get that same feeling. And it must have it must have closed at a thousand lifts now, this stage. Um, but how many more people have put hands in it than not you? But it's it's it's put hands across the ocean, you know. And again, I I have a lot of ideas and things I want to do before I shuffle off this model Kyle. Um, another one is to collect the stories on the east coast of the states on the east coast of um Nova Scotia, collect these stones and stories. Um, and like Ducas did in the 1930s here, captured the imagination and captured the focal of the areas before it's gone. So that's another thing that I'm in the process of trying to get doing. Um, I've got a lot of things I want to do. Big ideas, very, very big, very scary. But fuck it, if you're not big enough scary enough, you're not doing it right, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 56:36

That's alright. That's it. We could probably keep going. Um, I can't. I've already run over the time that you gave me. I really appreciate all of the time you gave me today. I know you have other things you had to run to do.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

No problem at all. I'll have to head off now at two o'clock already, but it's been wonderful. Like I said, I think this is just the start of a very long series of conversations being told.

SPEAKER_00 56:54

Very much so.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Well, this is the way I need to go then.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

Oh my goodness. We're gonna be DMing more. But uh got up Kay Milamaha got a Risa Kara. I really appreciate it on the show. Won't be the last time. Not at all. Slongafold. Slongafold of Carlos, long slow.