On the first day of class Sean discussed her multiple personalities/perspectives. Not
only is she a direct link to the traditional Irish culture through her work with Sean nos singer Joe Heaney, she also is working with
Indonesian music and culture. In addition to these roles she is also a nurturing teacher and loving mother. From the beginning she
urged us to be fearless and outrageous; to listen to our Apollonian sensibility and embrace our Dionysian sensuousness. From the
reading of Friel's Molly Sweeny to the lecture on the Irish poet Eaven Boland, her centrality to the program was like a star
to which our helliotropic faces basked in warmth and light.
I did not have the luxury of being in her seminar last quarter, non the less her lectures on the Bardic Order, as well as Shame and
Sexuality in the Tain, were influential in the work I did. In her discussion of the three strains of music the Filidh
composed in, I queried if they were relative to the strains played by Dagda's harp. Being an American I slaughtered the Gaelic
father God's name, she politely corrected my pronunciation and suggested I was probably correct. One of her comments from that
lecture, which informed my work on the final exam that quarter, suggested that these were the 'information technologies' of the
Irish culture. In this assertion she was crossing the boundaries between the tradition oral and the modem literate worldveews, a
constant theme throughout the program.
In her discussion of the self-assurance and emphatic sensuousness of female figures like Deirdre, Meadb, and Macha from the
Tain, she used them as empowering role-models who were very much in touch with their own personal power and will. In
the same discussion she used the Gae Bolga as a metaphor for the reconnection of a duality severed of Sky(God) and
Earth(Goddess), Divinity and Mortal, as well as Man and Woman; in the same way Solomon's seal is emblematic of this joining. I
used this image to show how the three elements; earth, air, and water, which the Druids used as the foundation of matter, were
combined in the limited arena of the spear's action, that being the ford of the river. In the interaction of these elements comes
lightning, or fire from the heavens, the fourth element.
In this quarter her use of children's song and the continued work with Gaelic has been a major contribution to our study. The
children's song are an excellent place to deal with subjects adults are often less likely to address, as she suggested of the song
Connla. More importantly, as a new father, I am overjoyed at the prospect of introducing an alternate language to my
daughter by way of these songs. Like the poem from last quarter, Mise Raftery, they provide an effective means of wrapping
ones tongue around the difficult phonetics of the Gaelic language. The use of the 'psychodynamics' of Gaelic prepositions has
helped us to see how the language we use affects our perceptions of the world; it offers a view on a world which our modem
frenetic culture has lost sight of.
In addition to being an effective mediator and facilitator in seminar this quarter, Sean gave a lecture on the music of Tin Pan Alley
and the evolution of the banjo. Not only was it informative, it allowed us to see Sean doing what she loves most, playing and talking
about music. Her passion was at her and it was easy to see why she is so confident and relaxed at what she does. Even though it
was in response to a non sequitor, I found her discussion of the 'talking drums' of Africa and it's influence on Caribbean
music informative, specifically because it was relative to communication and the colonized.
In my first year at Evergreen, Sean is the one professor that I have felt a personal connection to. She is serious and engaging while
at the same time capable of light heartedness and an absence of cynicism. Her comments and criticisms have been generous and
helpful; she has attempted to draw me out and find where I place myself within the role of 'culture bearers'. Her placing of a
gess, or spiritual injunction on me to go onto graduate school is suggestive of her personal role in her students education. It
says to me that even though we haven't had much time to converse out of class, both of us being new parents, that she is genuinely
interested in what I have to say and what I think. I would not only recommend Sean as an instructor, I would say that it should be
mandatory for every 'Greener' to take in some of those delightfully healing and rejuvenating rays of her light.