NEST

NEST is a Mass for the Tenant, not a Mass in the traditional sense, but I see the piece as a Mass for the tenants of the past and the present. NEST is also a critical response to the theme of home in Éamon de Valera's 1943 radio address, 'On Language and the Irish Nation'. With a libretto by Eimear Walshe, the line, "they come to make a ruin", repeats throughout the piece like a congregational response. A line that traverses periods and regions, it conjures different scenarios, from landlords to military forces to hired goons. The piece went in an unconscious musical direction of a Mass, channeling de Valera's sermon-like delivery of his 1943 broadcast, but I have realised I was getting at something else. Our relationships with where we live and where we call home, our 'nest', can embody a certain sacredness, even when those who have powers over where we live do not treat it as such. NEST carries a double meaning for this reason; it can be a place of total refuge and comfort, but it can also represent the seizure of property, of illegal occupation, and colonisation. The critical relationship with de Valera's antiquated, idealistic notion of the home is placed in stark contrast with the inherent violence of the privatisation of shelter and the disruption of the nest.