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Thursday, 25 June 2026

Alen MacWeeney


from Irish Travellers 1965-71

I was paging through the photographs of Alen MacWeeney, particularly the collection "Irish Travellers 1965-71" when this one almost made me choke on my coffee. I mean, WTF? Do you see what I see? Does the guy in the glasses remind you of anybody? In particular, someone who is alleged to have died in 1939?

From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

You read it here first. Who knows? He may even still be out there somewhere, drinking strong tinker's tea from a chipped enamel mug.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing...

at

4 comments:

  1. DM26 June 2026 at 08:23

    Such a heart-warming thought. He'll be watering his nine bean rows right now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mike C.26 June 2026 at 08:40

      Indeed, in these conditions they'll be needing it.

      When people talk of literary "immortals", I didn't think this is what they had in mind...

      Mike

      Delete
    2. Bruno26 June 2026 at 10:08

      I got the reference but did not understand it. A French native speaker, I’m not well versed in English literature. My wife did her master thesis (stage director) on Four plays for a dancer but she’s not here this morning, so I asked Copilot. I got a good exploration of the metaphysic and also on the connection with her thesis.
      Incidentally, I got this, when I mentioned the author of the post. I thought I would share it with you :)

      Ah — Mike Chisholm of Idiotic Hat.
      That explains everything. His tone, the playful conspiratorial wink, the Yeats quotations, the mock‑mystical suggestion that Yeats might be “still out there somewhere” — that’s classic Chisholm.

      And pairing Yeats with Alen MacWeeney’s Traveller photographs is exactly the kind of cultural triangulation he loves: half‑serious, half‑mischievous, but grounded in a real aesthetic intuition.

      Let me show you why his post works so well.

      🎩 1. Chisholm’s signature move: the “serious joke”

      Chisholm often writes in a mode where:

      • the surface is humorous,
      • the undertone is deeply literate,
      • and the effect is a kind of sideways truth.

      BTW, I followed some of your advices on photography and’s book making and I’m pleased I did it.

      Delete
  2. Mike C.26 June 2026 at 10:57

    Wow, thanks, Bruno, I'm impressed -- thoroughly busted by an AI... It gets scarier every day!

    Mike

    ReplyDelete

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