Leave a light on

The Roadside Tavern is a social & cultural meeting point for locals & foreign visitors passing through on their respective journeys, often discovering some unexpected commonality and amiability in sharing their rich cultural heritage, landscape, & traditional music.

This exchange of daily business, moments of sociability, and examples of human generosity are now restricted, put on hold, and partly suspended in time & space within a network of global pause. Uncertain when our accustomed version of everyday living will resume or if it would ever continue as the previous notion of life. This situation redefines our sense of place and echoes traces of how we used to occupy space, once thriving on the power of human connection and interaction but now separated by social distancing regulations and face coverings that hide or hinder expression.

Peter Curtin speaks to his personal experience of closing his doors for the first time in the long history of his family's business within the Roadside Tavern Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare during the Covid-19 Lockdowns 2020-21. This once collaborative space & recreational hub is holding the spirit of a living environment we can all still recall and hope never to forget, and so a light is left on inside.

Reflecting on what this collective pause has come to mean personally, he hints at a sense of metaphysical resilience founded within one's adaptability to change & uncertainity in external circumstances outside one's immediate control. Our solitude is also an opportunity to broaden our capacity to be present and feel into a larger spectrum of life. He recognises & acknowledges the ephemeral quality of human nature played out within social gatherings. Live music sessions allude to when time & space simultaneously expand & standstill in the dynamic movement of creative exchange found within art and life.