Troy

I've always loved this song, but the meaning recently fell into place a little more for me when I read the poem "No Second Troy" by WB Yeats. Here it is:

Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great. Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

This song is and probably will always be Sinead O'Connor's most enduring masterpiece, even if a certain Prince cover gets more attention. It's devastatingly beautiful and beautifully devastating. It's half tragic and half triumphant in a manner that seeks parallels but has a hard time finding them. If you haven't heard it, you haven't lived. Nothing compares to...er, this.

This is a phenomenal song from Sinead O'Connor and besides it, on a purely objective level, probably being her greatest track, it's also my favorite.

Anyone who says sinead was "troubled" with a failed career who "could have been" or "should have been" or wasn't listened to or didn't know this or had "mental health issues" (which is just the nice way of dismissing someone as crazy) doesn't get it.

https://youtu.be/JeIHZvZTJTg

By Sinead's own terms, she succeeded. She never wanted to be a pop star and she detested capitalism in Biblical terms, as Babylon. She did not want success in Babylon and it took her by surprise. She was both amused and disgusted by it. She intentionally used the fame and success she did not want ("I do not want what I haven't got") maximally as an incendiary weapon against her real enemy - the Catholic Church.

And tho her project is not finished, Sinead O'Connor succeeded. Sinead O'Connor was a success. She did, in fact, destroy the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Collapse: Inside Ireland’s stunning rebuke of Catholicism https://onlysky.media/hturpin/collapse-inside-irelands-stunning-rebuke-of-catholicism/

Irish Catholic Church's Stunning Decline https://www.euronews.com/2023/02/02/irish-catholic-church-in-terminal-decline-since-sexual-abuse-scandals

Ireland is No Longer a Catholic Nation https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/ireland-is-no-longer-a-catholic-nation

ARE THOSE NOT RESULTS? she manifested the unthinkable!

Not even one of these fawning celebrities in the press "gets it". If they did, they wouldn't be describing Sinead as a "troubled soul". they'd be explicity demanding the continuation of her project: FULL destruction of the church!

But they obscure her message by speaking in abstractions, as if the point of sinead o'connor was personal mental health instead of an outward project to destroy the church, eliminate the authority of the Pope, dismantle the Vatican, return all it's stolen wealth to it's former colonies especially in Africa, eliminate capitalism and condemn material success and fame as false idolatry. FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY. ffs the real enemy is not mental health. Thats just a symptom.

When Sinead was a girl the Catholic Church had a totalitarian grip on her country and its people. Most thought they'd go to thier graves under it's power and abuse, living in shame, a shame they had been convinced they deserved and a violence they perpetuated amongst each other, within families. Sinead's mother used to beat her with garden tools and force her to say she was nothing. "Whenever she beats me, which is daily, I’m naked. She makes me take my clothes off. I have to lie on the floor. I have to open my arms and legs. I have to let her attack my abdomen. She wants to burst my womb. She wants to destroy my reproductive system. She wants to stop me from being a female.”

The beatings only stopped in sinead's late teens, when she became the same size as her mother. She tried to confront her mother about the abuse but her mother denied it ever even happened. Her mother played the victim. This is very familiar to me. It is so confusing.

if only people listened to Sinead's words instead of words written about Sinead.

Most people think TROY is about a heterosexual relationship. It is not. It is about Sinead's relationship with her mother, the abuse, and how Rage can exist aside Forgiveness. It is a masterpiece. She flips constantly in the lyrics between speaking to herself and to her mother and in her mother's words to her to try to get a grip on the reality of what happened from all sides and why.

She's sitting in the tall summer grass in a rainstorm in Dublin not to be romantic. It's because her mother used to force her to live outside the house even in rainstorms!

Sinead wrote this song after her mother unexpectedly died in a car crash. She can hardly believe she's gone. how can such a totalitarian, violent, "loving", omnipotent force just vanish??

I believe her mother's inconceivable death in Sinead's teen years is what gave sinead the moral imagination - the confidence - to know that the Church, too, could also be made to vanish. To be destroyed.

Her mother burns the first Troy, and it's Sinead. By the second verse, Sinead recognizes that her mother is going to return.. that she is going to become her mother. She is going inherit the same capability for destruction and violence whether she likes it or not. The cycle of violence and abuse is real.

But Sinead's going to fight the real enemy. She's going to kill a dragon for her mother, and that dragon is the Church. Like an avenging Christ, she will rise. She will return. And there is no other Troy but the Church for her to burn.

TROY by Sinead OConnor https://youtu.be/JeIHZvZTJTg

An absolute masterpiece.

Right here: No I wouldn't have pulled you to me No I wouldn't have kissed your face You wouldn't have begged me to hold you If we hadn't been there in the first place

on the second line, her voice is beyond words.

Throughout the whole song, actually, but especially there.

Her most emotional work. Powerful

Just to clarify, the song does not refer to a lawyer. At the end of the song, she is saying "you're still a liar", not lawyer. This song is amazing.

She recently revealed this song is about the torturous and sexual abuse at the hand of her mother. It’s an inflection and reflection of love and hurt at the hands of someone who should be a protector. About the rage and fury and pain. She and I had some conversations on fb about it and I told her my story as a child. I used to cry so hard to this song when i would listen to it. Now the song is a fury for my heart. Such purity in it.

This is a masterpiece of a song from O’Connor’s first album probably written about a love affair, although I never knew the last line revealed the lover to be a lawyer, until now. O’Connor’s first album—although not a pop blockbuster—was her best. I recall reading she was largely influenced by a mentor who motivated her to wrench these songs from her heart and he was spell-bindingly successful.

I ran into “Troy” under different circumstances when it was used by a marauding angel who must have shown up in my life because he was bored—I’m laughing—that is so tongue in cheek. The song became part of our performance art chapters—sung by Ariana about and to—her trinity partner, Pete. The phoenix fire is reincarnation. In their current exchange, life was bewildering and Ariana apologizes for stinging words and for even showing up. Pete has a lover already when Ariana shows up. And Ariana is not so much trying to beat the lady’s time as she is curious about the relationship Pete has with this lover. [Does she love you? Does she need you like I do?]

Ariana asks if she is intruding, reminding Pete that she would kill a dragon for him—such are words of an impassioned love goddess, as Ariana was playing one in the story. She points out to Pete that she showed up to check on him because she was concerned—his light had gone out and his door was closed. Ariana suspects Pete did this on purpose—[ah, but I know you wanted me to be there—oh—oh. Every look that you threw told me so.] I’m laughing—this was enormously serious and heartily comical at the same time—he was shooting “goo-goo” eyed looks in photographs but I have to admit she claimed she wasn’t certain they were aimed at her. Pete, multi-tasking—was also working as a heart throb because the cash was good.

Depending on how the ongoing story was shaping up, Ariana would shriek “you’re still a liar” to either Pete or her angel—but mostly to her angel—who lied like a rug. They didn’t mess with lawyers—Ariana said they frightened her because she was also playing Love and Love is blind so she couldn’t see herself clearly enough to tell if she was coming off looking like a stalker or not.