GUEST BLOG: The Joy of Persistence
Paul Connolly, is the frontperson of The Wood Burning Savages. He is a poet, lyricist, sometimes writer and by his own admission, helplessly obsessed with electric guitars and effects units.
Music has taken him to the sweltering heat of SXSW in Texas, the mudbath of numerous Glastonbury appearances and the mountainous wilds of Armenia among other places.
For over a decade, he has been heavily involved in community arts facilitation and advocacy with organisations such as Nerve Centre and Oh Yeah Music Centre. Below, he outlines the power of creativity and the joy it can bring.
From a young age I developed a half-decent talent for mimicry, or at least doing voices that sounded wildly different to my own. Not to tease or ridicule but just for the sake of entertaining myself, when I was alone, which looking back on it was a larger than average portion of time.
This knack for voices didn’t go unnoticed by classmates and friends and for a while rather than play Nintendo or goof around on skateboards, my small group of friends and I would use an ancient twin-deck tape recorder with a built-in microphone and cassettes to piece together made-up radio shows. They would be DJs and I would pretend to be whoever was on heavy rotation at the time being interviewed; the more absurd the better.
Stuff like Noel Gallagher talking about his top ten geese noises or Fred Durst being fascinated by the average number of bubbles in a bottle of Football Special and how if it didn’t have at least 40,000 bubbles per bottle it could only be sold as Football Average.
These required a surprising amount of work, from curating a playlist and script to fit the run-time of the C90 cassette tapes, to increasingly weird adverts for impossible products like Tartan Paint or the double-barrelled telescope, all this and a script edit in real-time too.
It was cutting-edge stuff, I’m sure you’d agree.
The reasons why I share this bizarre anecdote from the very early 2000s, are because making anything, whether it’s a spoof radio show, a film, a book, a tour, an album or an event require a lot of different skills. Secondly, often more than one person is needed and thirdly, perhaps most importantly, making the thing should contain some measure of joy.
Whether that’s laughing your head off in between takes or an enveloping joy that your work is out in the world, it comes in many guises, but when it comes, try to be mindful of it.
I ask you to try this because being a musician or a creative today is an increasingly uphill struggle and it feels often that the memory of a good time or a triumph tempers our resolve to set coordinates for more of them.
It’s my long-held belief that very few people in office here understand the rarity of our abundance of music makers and creatives operating on this island or the very real precarity of our lives as creatives trying to make ends meet in 2025.
This attitude we are systematically met with has the effect of a potato grater on the spud of our creative spirit. It erodes us and damages our confidence. We can begin to question if we’re any good, if we deserve opportunities or if we’re too old.
It is without question that each of us in the creative industries in Northern Ireland deserve so much better.
I will sign off by saying this: if you feel alone as a creative, reach out online or in person to the Oh Yeah Centre, the Nerve Centre and Glasgowbury and I can guarantee you that you’ll be met by fellow creatives who will steer you in the right direction to finding the folks you need to realise your work and find that joy.
You are never too old to begin your journey with music making…or any art for that matter.
