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This city always gets to me.  Every time I come to New York, thinking that I’ve already seen it all, I end up seeing more, or at least something new.  The last time I was here, holing up in my usual spot where I can find hospitality that agrees with me, I was setting things in place in my room, and had my music playing off of my laptop.  I always like to start a project by listening to the Pogues, it has something to do with a streak of superstition that I blame on my Irish grandmother.  So when the Thousands Are Sailing song came on, it was background music until the lyrics started to dig into my unconsciousness.

This song is about New York, and it’s particularly about the Irish experience here after the potato famine in 1947.  It moves forward in time, past JFK, and into the present, or at least the 80s when the song was written.  It’s got a happy beat, like all their songs, but an incredible sadness buried in it, just like all their songs, too.  This is a song that tells the history of the Irish crossing, and lamenting all of those who never made it across the ocean.  I think of my great-grandmother, born in one of these coffin ships during the passage, and think of how tenuous that life was, and the soft miracle that she made it into the world.

The song was written by one of the long-term Pogues, Phil Chevron.  He was writing about his own experience in visiting New York, after learning about it through the eyes of Irish history.  It’s a very patriotic song, and one of the best kinds of patriotic songs, revealing deep sadness and tragedies that are the bedrock of the lives of those who see promise, and keep pushing on in spite of the difficulties of the struggle.  Chevron is working more in theatre now, having survived a very rough bout of living as a Pogue, and his vast experience in musical forms are coming to light in the recent and splendid work.

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