About Me — Martin French
Overthinking overwriter exploring arts and human nature, among other things
I cannot blame anyone who sees the pic, and thinks to themselves “Yaay, another white cishet guy here to write about his feelings and stuff and how hard done by they are”. Well, I hope that is not who I am.
In terms of being some white guy, I am Irish from Ireland (a distinction I have learned from the past 11 years mostly in the US. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in rural Ireland: it was a lonely, isolated, chastening experience. I shovelled shit and I wandered fields, and I didn’t speak to many outside my family if I wasn’t at school. I lived a much more vivid life inside my head, nurtured by my mother, and fed largely through the books I picked up from the library, or occasionally was given for birthdays. I soon found myself swallowed whole by books, writing, and the idea of expression through words. I think the isolation helped nurture that, and words were the first of my abiding loves.
Somehow, the poverty and isolation of my youth gave way to life in Dublin for a spell in third level education. It was there that I discovered the theatre, the second of my abiding loves. I acted poorly in one play. A year later, I was inspired by what I would now describe as a performance art piece highlighting the lack of activity of…
