In memory of Sinéad O'Connor/Shuhada' Sadaqat

Someone has defaced one of Caleb’s art works by painting over it, “ART IS HOW YOU DECORATE SPACE MUSIC IS HOW YOU DECORATE TIME,” a quotation from Jean-Michel Basquiat. I dedicate this blip to the memory of the woman known as Sinéad O’Connor.

She was born three months after my first-born son, and by the time her first album was released, my firstborn had been kidnapped by his father, I’d borne a second son as a single woman and changed my name to Kendall, and I’d worked my way through twenty years of university and finally emerged with a PhD and a job that was a crushing disappointment. Her voice penetrated the haze of my workaholism, but it wasn’t till she issued her sixth album in 2002 that I bought one of her CDs. Her interpretation of “Peggy Gordon” is the most heartbreaking lesbian song I’ve ever heard. 

She shaved her head, rejecting traditional ideas about femininity and beauty. She fought to de-stigmatize mental illness and strong emotional states. She said what many of us knew but didn’t have the courage to say: that mothers can be abusers; that the Roman Catholic hierarchy protects pedophiles; that the music industry preys on women; that divorce and abortion are women’s rights. Her autobiography is called Rememberings, and I have been meaning to read it since it was published in 2021.

She was wild and strong and had a moral compass as splendid as her voice. She died on my 78th birthday, and I grieve her passing.