Getting 2 Know Derek Lundy

Where do you feel most comfortable, and why?

Even though I live in a small community, on a small and beautiful island, and have done so for 9 years now, I still feel most comfortable – in the sense of secure, “at home”, at one with my surroundings – in a familiar city. It could be Victoria or Vancouver, Ottawa or Toronto, Dublin, London or Paris, all of which I’ve spent substantial time in, or even Belfast, where I was born, and in spite of its reviving sectarian violence. I like Salt Spring Island very much and will continue to live here, but I realize as I think of it, that it’s still a somewhat alien place to me. I prefer the complex and artificial jangliness of cityscapes to the admittedly much more soothing trees and water, and quiet winding roads of my island. If I could live in the city and spend part of my time here, I think that would be ideal, although the reverse could work well too – live here but spend substantial time in a city.

I like cities because there I can be an anonymous, silent, watchful, non-participant in life as if flows by. There is a kind of passivity that’s possible in the city that won’t work in a small community, and, for good or ill, I find that comforting. Here on Salt Spring, I know so many people, that any entry into the public realm of the island is rife with contact and conversation. I’ve come to enjoy this, but it’s not my natural proclivity outside the sphere of family and close friends. The intimacy is nourishing in many ways, and it’s good for me to be drawn out into community and friendship, but I feel more comfortable in an urban, and no doubt much less healthy, solitariness.

What charms you?

I realize the answer to this may seem contradictory to my answer to the previous question. But I’m charmed by fast talk and quick wit, by a joky and ironic eloquence. Perhaps it’s my Irish birth and childhood. These are obviously and notoriously the qualities prized in Ireland – the word for it is craic (pronounced “crack”) – good times, good talk, drinks, good will, a generous, non-competitive (as much as possible) noisy confluence of conversation, alcohol, singing, give and take. When I meet another Irish person, most of the time, I immediately recognize that prediliction in them too, and they in me. There’s a connection. The truth in stories or conversation is always secondary to the story itself, so that the normal non-fiction of conversation may, in the Irish expression of craic, be transformed into fiction. Truth is a good thing, but the story, the wit, the fun, the exuberance of words for their own sake, is far more important. This may be a vice, but it’s a supremely pleasant one to watch and to take part in, and it does charm me.

If this does seem inconsistent with my first answer, just put it down to the eternal mysteries of the human heart.