CEOLA DONLON
In English, my Grandfathers surname, Mac Robhartaigh, translates to ‘son of the tide’. Leaving school at the age of 12 to start a life of work, my Grandad Jim began working on boats off our local pier in Ballywhorisky, North Donegal. Fishing for a living changed his life and the lives of my entire family. As I see it, growing up around the sea, working on the sea, or even being around people who rely on the sea, changes you. The more I learn about what my Grandmother’s life looked like as the wife of a lobster fisherman with seven sons also working on the sea, the more I am able to understand her and my own mother. I think the sea is in your blood. This has been the case for my brother and I anyway, him spending his summers working on a muscle farm on Mulroy Bay, and I teaching sailing on Lough Swilly and in Bellmullet, Co Mayo. It has shaped who we are and how we interact with the world we live in.
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When I consider the prompt ‘to know the world we live’, I think about how our landscapes impact us as people. To know our world is to understand the connection between it and us. It’s to contemplate why it is that when I get the four-hour bus home and eventually see Mulroy Bay passing my window, I feel like I could cry with joy. It’s to read ‘Postscript’ or ‘Bogland’ by Seamus Heaney and feel a deep connection to the physical land which I come from. It’s to understand how the unpredictability of the sea has shaped my Granny and how she handles challenging times with the strength of someone who has spent many nights listening to weather reports, worrying about her sons who are 12 miles off the coast.
I would love to explore this idea further onboard Excelsior, developing a deeper understanding our landscapes, particularly the landscape of the sea, translates into an individual’s character. Travelling along the coast of both Norway and Denmark, I would be eager to research how fishing families in these communities have lived. Does it differ from the experience of my own family? Do fishing communities share common traits due to their experiences and connection to their landscape? Equally, how will the experience of living on a boat for three weeks shape the characters of those onboard Excelsior? How have the crew’s lives and the places they have lived shaped them?
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Given that my name is Ceola, the Irish for music, it comes as no surprise that both music, and Irish culture are central parts of who I am. I love to sing and play piano, a few traditional Irish instruments and am learning guitar at the moment in an effort to stop myself from going mad in the final month of uni! In particular, I love to make music with friends. I am fortunate that my Mum’s first language growing up was Irish. A love for our language has been passed on to me, leading me to teach sailing through Irish in Mayo and live in an Irish speaking residency during uni. Any chance I get to share my culture with others, be that our music or language, is a dream for me. Equally, I would be excited to learn about the cultures and skills of other crew members, if given the opportunity to join the North Atlantic Islands Residency this year.
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Responding to the prompt of ‘dreams and goals for the future’ is a big question in my own life at the moment, as I feel that I’m at an exciting and unsure intersection. I have loved studying law and some day hope to pursue this further, but when I think about my goals for life, I just want to be happy and am very content with simple things and good company. Regardless of what the goal is, I know that I want to work with people, be that as a teacher or as a lawyer, or in some job that I don’t even know exists yet! To do this well will be to understand people, to hear their experiences and consider how they have led them to where they are and made them who they are. Taking part in this residency would be a great stepping stone in this regard. I think a lack of understanding, generally, is the root cause for most issues in society today. For this reason, I would say a goal for society is to continue to build spaces that foster an understanding and respect for one another.