Writing
Macdara Smith's writing practice is a daily one, moving fluidly between songs, poems, and prose. For Smith, writing and drawing are closely related gestures — both are ways of observing and recording daily life, and he moves between the two naturally. This is perhaps most evident in his Fox drawings, where the images carry a strong narrative dimension, unfolding almost like a written story in visual form.
This process of attentive observation feeds directly into his performance work, where the same qualities — attention to the everyday, mark-making, and the search for the right gesture — are present in live form.
There follows a selection of written pieces by Macdara Smith.
A Reminder
Voices always muttering in my head.
Fridges hums but it can never blot out,
The little worrying voices that give it all they’ve got
So that I listen to them and not
What is at the edge of hearing
The shuffling sounds of the stranger
The creaks that show that he is still here
And cannot leave his last living space in peace
He looks at us as we sleep
He is not mean, he feels
But his presence stinks up the toilet
Frightens the child and brings
Nightmares to the husband and wife.
He looks at this writing, mute.
He floats through all our furniture
And plates and pots and clothes
And plans.
A reminder that no-one hears
Or sees and can no longer understand.
A reminder that is nowhere.
A reminder of nothing.
— Macdara Smith
Away from Screens
The time when you won't look at screens anymore :
what about messages that are not what they say what they are?
That are hidden messages within messages?
The secret messages in the sky,
The secret messages in the flowers and the trees,
Those slow messages in the clouds,
the messages from the bustle of people in the streets,
the glinting messages of fish in the sea,
the hidden languages of the fox and the hare in the woods,
gentle touch on green blade fold,
the waterfall murmuring that no one can hear,
the text message never opened, never read,
the scratch of the pen on the paper,
the weight of the body in bed,
the door left ajar, at night,
the breath between the phrases of a song,
the feel of a T-shirt on your back,
the glow of a phone in the dark,
the dance you do in your dreams,
a quiet place that is all your own,
Away, away, away from screens.
DISPOSABLE SINGER
Throw away singer
Disappearing voice
What is a voice but a crack in a body a breath of air ?
A crack opens and gives out a sigh- if you have ears to hear it
you might care
Amplify the voice shake the body move more air
Sing and dance shout the anthem
whisper in your lover's ear
A voice to love a voice to desire
A voice that upsets
A voice that you want to forget
The voice that is just a voice not your own
A voice that you cannot control
A voice that you wished you could hold
A voice that would do just as it is told
But in the cracks in the voice it lets in too much unknown
Too little control time to stop and go home
Out here in the dark on the edge of a bare hill
that voice pretends to know but knows nothing
A voice that is slowly wiped away
Erased from the past
Passed over, forgotten
Disappears from the photos
Too ephemereal
Another person gone
Sad to see those old ways of speaking
not able to say what it means to
Some meaning lost in the gaps
Too much speaking
Air across the lips
Thinking that speaking could heal
Trash talking words that all broken have lost their power
Words that are lost because they are no longer visited
A throw away singer
A disappearing voice
Put into words some feeling that no one needs to feel
Unneeded
Put into words something from hundred years of ago
No words for these cries that traverse the body the cries of joy, squeals of laughter, sighs of pleasure, groans of pain, sobs of sadness : inarticulate sounds too full of meaning
Words that mean many things bringing the speaker into many places at the same time
Throw away this singer
He won't say what he means to say she always says one thing but means something else
Tomorrow will be another day
Forget this singer leave him in the woods, the woods of the words
His song could never come out
Wipe his face from the photos
Those sounds those sounds
Tarkovski and I am losing my concentration think about the dishes and and and
the singer is lost
I am not where I should be
I am always in different places never in the place to be
(This text was used as the starting point for Mirror Voices with Zarboth on the album Grand Barnum All Bloom)