Hozier and John Moriarty

Multi-award winning musician Hozier has spoken of the influence on his thinking of John Moriarty. Wicklow-born Hozier was being interviewed by short story writer and podcaster Blindboy Boatclub. The characteristically wide-ranging conversation was released as an episode of The Blindboy Podcast. Discussing the topic of celebrity and recognition, Hozier said:

“There's something John Moriarty has said about living in a world that mirrors you. He's referring to being in Connemara in the pitch black night; the kind of a night of darkness that you don't really experience all that much. And he was walking through the hills one day and he thought, my God, all mirroring is gone from the world. He described it as a night that is so dark that mirrors themselves would be useless. They reflect no light. There's no light to reflect. So he's lost himself in that, in that darkness.

But he's referring to living in a world of mirrors and how we all we all mirror each other in some way or another. Your mother mirrors to you that you are a child and you'll always be a child in your mother's eyes, I suppose. But then people tell us who we are all the time when we walk through the world, you know what I mean? And so your identity is kind of bounced to you as you go about the world. And I think that if there's anything that being recognised is, it is a challenge because you are you're seeing yourself mirrored in other people.”

Images and motifs of darkness and light run throughout John Moriarty’s work. There is, however, a striking resemblance between Hozier’s reference and the following extract from John’s 1996 volume Turtle Was Gone A Long Time, Vol. 1: Crossing the Kedron:

“I was walking down the road to my sister’s house. It couldn’t have been much after eight o’clock, but the night was somehow very old. If someone came towards me and asked me what time it was, that’s what I’d say, it is very old. And it was dark. A dark night. Night when all mirroring was gone from the world. If, coming towards me that night on the road, Dan Quinn asked me who I was, I’d have said I don’t know, I only know who I am in a world in which my neighbour mirrors me, in which rivers mirror me, in which mirrors mirror me, but all mirroring is gone from the world tonight, so no, I don’t know who I am.” (p. 177)

Listen to the full conversation between Hozier and Blindboy Boatclub below. Hozier begins to speak about John Moriarty at 30:05.

Link to podcast: https://play.acast.com/s/blindboy/hozier

Hozier performing The Parting Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zufPTLuShCU