Ronan Brady - Worlds Apart: An Alternative Journey to becoming a Modern Man

One

(The Hamlet dilemma or Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors and the unintended consequences of cause and effect.)

Im not going, I said.

Arent you? he said.

No. Im fucked.

Thats fair enough then. Dont go.

I wont.

Good.

I was having this conversation with a mate and colleague of mine in the mezzanine lobby of a theatre in Letterkenny. It was a June morning in the summer of 2016 and below us the theatre caf bubbled pleasantly with the chatter of locals who, for the most part, were completely unaware that at this very moment, in this very building, people were learning to fly.

By learning to fly, I dont mean planes or helicopters or any kind of typical aviation. I mean aerial circus. Aerial circus is anything that happens in the air using traditional circus apparatus like trapezes and ropes and the like. When you think aerial circus, imagine something as impressive and inspiring as Cirque du Soleil but, in the case of people like me, done on a much smaller scale.

This was why Id made the trip to Letterkenny. I had been learning to fly for a few years now, and the two-week training festival that takes place here every year is the best place to do that in Ireland.

But right then, I wasnt thinking about flying. I was thinking about exhaustion.

We were discussing whether or not I should drive back to Dublin to take part in a photoshoot for a new circus show in which Id been asked to perform.

I didnt want to go, I was too tired, and my mate was agreeing with me.

Fuck em, I said.

I mean, he continued as he paid most of his attention to his laptop, theyre just acting the bollocks, arent they?

They are acting the bollocks.

Cheek of them, like. Not even paying your petrol!

I know. And Im knackered.

You are. You need to look after yourself, Ronan. Youll end up doing yourself an injury.

I needed to look after myself because I was a circus performer sort of.

I say sort of because I was still very unsure of myself at that time. For a while, since I first began to noodle around with circus back in 2012, Id been nagged by the idea that I would like to become a circus performer. For real. Not just for fun or as a hobby, but as a profession, as a living. This idea had led me to a place where Id taken a year-long career break from my position teaching engineering and metalwork in Swinford Secondary School. A year out to go and explore this performing thing.

I was only at the start of the career break, but already it was beginning to dawn on me that I didnt think I even wanted to go back teaching. Not just yet, anyway. To hell with my bank balance and the prospects of a steady career. Here, with this circus stuff, things were just starting to get interesting.

The festival I was attending is the best opportunity to train and learn new skills for circus each year. But its tough. It demands everything youve got physically, mentally and creatively. I was almost at the end of the first week of its two-week run, and it had been a long week; a long month, really, in a long year that we were only halfway through. Already my body was beaten and I felt exhausted.

Added to which was the fact that Id been forced to make the trip by car from Dublin to Donegal twice already in the previous three days four hours each way. Id done this because when the opportunity for temporary employment and the training festival collide, as Murphys Law dictates that they must, this puts performers like me in the unfortunate position of having to attempt to do both things at once. This is the circus world, after all. Were supposed to be good at juggling, arent we? I could worry about sleeping at some other time, in some other life, maybe. For now, I had to work from each end of the candle, take the opportunities for work and try to fit the festival around them.

Id managed it. Twice. Just about. I was shattered, but Id managed it. Then the possibility of this photoshoot cropped up and made things complicated more complicated.

Under normal circumstances I wouldnt have hesitated to accept. But these werent normal circumstances. All I wanted to do was train and sleep. Which is why I was seriously considering saying no.

No, however, is a problem for people like me. There is a fear of saying no that haunts all performers, just as it does all the self-employed people of the world. Self-employment is an unreliable mistress and saying no is dangerous. If you say no to the wrong thing at the wrong time, then, who knows, you might be unwittingly saying no to the biggest break of your career, something that might help pay the mortgage or, as was the case for me, give me the opportunity to even begin dreaming of something as fanciful as a mortgage.