Declan Cashin

Writing: the art of applying the ass to the seat

My ‘Upfront’ column from ‘Day & Night’ in today’s Irish Independent

Call me batshit crazy, but I’ve applied for an audition to be a dancer during the opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics, which you might have heard are taking place this summer.

Technically, the audition is to be a “performer”, but the ceremony director, Danny Boyle, has made no secret of the fact that organisers are desperate for more male volunteers to come forward who are willing to shake their thang.

As an adopted citizen of London town, I feel it behoves me to do my part, even if it goes against all my instincts that London isn’t ready to stage the Olympics, and that the strain on the public transport system, to take just one example, will make life in the capital unbearable for the duration of the Games.

So instead of fleeing the city, as I’d originally planned, I may yet end up strutting, bopping, pirouetting, and jazz-handing around the Olympic Park in Stratford.

At this point you might well inquire, in the words of Cat Deeley: ‘So you think you can dance?’

It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately as it happens, and not just because I reduced my niece to tears of laughter/fear on Christmas morning during a dance challenge on her Xbox Kinect in which I flapped about like an epileptic seal at feeding time.

I’ve always thought I was a decent enough hoofer, but maybe that’s just because I’m often more willing than others to muster up a little soft-shoe gentle sway at social gatherings. Naturally, such enthusiasm is usually drink-fuelled, and, being a total lightweight in that regard, a mere sip of wine is now enough to have me dancing on the bar a la Coyote Ugly.

But just because I’m usually willing to dance doesn’t mean I should. Or can.

I had two weddings last year where my dance – let’s just say “skills” for now – came under intense scrutiny, my exertions on the floor earning me a slew of knowing winks and smiles over breakfast the next morning and even the ambiguous complimentary nickname “Twinkle- Toes”. Personally, I’d have plumped for “drunken asshat”.

There’s a disconnect in all this, of course. I’m a gay man. Stereotypically, at least, dancing is supposed to be in my genes.

Alas, I have to face the truth, and admit that I’m an uncoordinated biological aberration. Like a lot of guys, I work best when my dance songs have specific instructions for me to follow. Example: “Put your hands up in the air” and “Side to side like you just don’t care” are perfect. Similarly, “Jump Around” is pretty self-explanatory.

Looking at my moves in as clinical and sober a manner as possible, I guess I do over-rely on my little feet-shuffle/shoulder-shrug dances, incorporating a few of the legendary hand gestures and shapes known as ‘Shuffing the Deck’, ‘Dealing the Cards’, ‘Painting the Ceiling’, ‘Rowing the Boat’ and the seminal ‘Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box’.

So how does this all bode for my Olympics audition? I guess it depends on just how desperate Danny Boyle et al really are. Presumably I’ll have to be fully sober for some or all of this process, so I’ll have to get past the awkward self-consciousness that holds so many of us back when it comes to bustin’ a groove (oh yes, I just said that).

Oh, and if you’re reading Mr Boyle, this audition will work better for all of us if you use one or more of these tracks to gauge my level of dancing ability: Westlife’s ‘World of our Own’ (officially the only acceptable pop song to which men everywhere can dance), Jackie Wilson’s ‘Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher’, Amy Winehouse’s ‘Valerie’, or White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’. Don’t even think about springing any Beyonce on me.

Whatever happens, I’ll report back later next month after the audition. Now to finish: jazz hands!

My ‘Mantalk’ column from yesterday’s ‘Weekend’ magazine in the Irish Independent

It’s a familiar feeling to all of us. It’s a Friday or Saturday night, and, either by reluctant choice or unavailability due to a prior commitment, you have to pass on friends’ invites to the pub or a house party or some other shindig.

The pangs begin as soon as you’ve ended the call or replied to the text. You immediately doubt your decision. You start to imagine the kind of night out your posse will have without you, growing ever envious of the hijinx they’ll get up to, and the people they’ll meet.

You might discover that someone you fancy is also out and at that same event, sending you into a mini-panic about lost opportunities to meet them, accompanied by visions of them getting together with someone else.

Suddenly your own plans seem lame in comparison, and the anxiety caused by what economists would call the ‘opportunity cost’ of committing yourself to one course of action begins to erode any enjoyment to be had from and at it. All that’s left is an epic sense of inadequacy, giving way to irritation and even misery.

This paralysing social problem is what the cool kids call FOMO, or ‘Fear of Missing Out’. It’s a prime example of a ‘first world problem’, which the increasingly vital online source Urban Dictionary describes as a condition afflicting (relatively) wealthy, industrialised countries like Ireland that people in poverty-stricken, third world nations would give anything to have to endure.

An early definition of this very modern, very middle class phenomenon was actually articulated in an early episode of Friends, where Chandler lambasted Ross for moaning about having to juggle two female lovers. “Oh no, two beautiful women love me,” Chandler mocked. “And my wallet’s too small for my 50s [dollar bills], and my diamond shoes are too tight!”

Of course, FOMO has always been with us. Its past incarnation was known simply as ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, ostentatious displays of which will be painfully, cringingly familiar to all of us who lived through the Irish boom years.

But what makes FOMO notably different – and more agonising – is that the likes of Facebook and Twitter ensures that you can’t escape the horrible comparisons raging in your head. Indeed, these outlets provide you with enough real time updates of the event you’re missing to make it even harder to feel good about your choices.

Social media really has a lot to answer for. Everyone who has their own account knows that the format is all about presenting your best self online. Your profile is the ultimate personal PR exercise. We’re all complicit in the game; locked in that cycle of perpetuating FOMO feelings amongst one another with our updates, pictures, and location check-ins. I’m the first to admit my guilt.

Just the other night my news feed on Facebook was inundated with pictures and comments from friends (the real and “inverted comma” kind) who were bopping away at a concert that I had declined to attend in favour of a night in on the couch.

It was hell, and the only thing I could do to stop myself clawing at my own face was to pop some herbal sleeping pills and pray for unconsciousness to escape the crippling FOMOness of it all. The sad thing is I’m barely exaggerating.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Facebook and especially Twitter, as those who have ‘friended’ (and, more than likely, blocked) me can attest. But the potential to torture and taunt yourself as I did that night is simply too great. Maybe this is the way the machines will ultimately – and, let’s face it, inevitably – overthrow and enslave us all? If so, all I will be able to say on the day of the Mac-pocalypse is: well played.

It doesn’t stop with FOMO either. A quick search on our future overlord Google tells me that FOMO is so prevalent and pervasive that it now has its own offshoots.

For instance, ‘Weekendvy’ is the term to describe those specific feelings of shame and inadequacy you feel upon coming into the office of a Monday morning to hear about Mary from accounting’s dirty weekend away, or IT guy John’s two-and-a-half day drinking session, or the glorious two days of pampering enjoyed by Sorcha from marketing.

Then there’s so-called ‘Decision Fatigue’, as identified by American social psychologist Roy E. Baumeister. Apparently our meagre human brains only have so much energy and capacity to consider choices, and having to make one decision after another causes the old grey matter to give up, leaving us paralysed and robbed of all willpower.

So what options are open to a man to fight back against the likes of FOMO? Avoiding social media on a night out (and, more crucially, a night in) is an obvious start, or, at the very least, hiding/blocking/unfollowing the updates and Tweets from the most egregious bragging offenders.

There’s also the (new)age-old advice to just try “living in the present”, to enjoy what you’re doing in the here and now.

The problem with that suggestion is that it may induce FOMO in those of you living in the past or looking to the future. You just can’t win.

My ‘Upfront’ column from ‘Day & Night’ in today’s Irish Independent

New year, new you. Well, to that I can only say, ‘Me bollix’.

Yes, defying all weekend supplement protocol for this time of year, I say we need further hedonism! More scoffing of mince pies and “medicinal” hot whiskeys for breakfast. More sneaky afternoon pints in cosy snugs. More days on the couch watching Indiana Jones while ingesting tins of Roses (never Quality Street – we’re not animals).

In short, January, and all its inherent guilt, psychopathic good intentions, and Communist Russia-era frugality, can eff right off.

What maniac, what self-hating sadomasochist, first decreed that January was the month to punish your body, and to brutally deprive yourself of all the treats that make life – or, at the very least, that post-Christmas comedown – bearable?

Well, whoever (s)he is, I hope that their self-help-peddling posterior is subjected to the most severe form of karmic wedgie as soon as possible.

It’s just not natural. Think of it this way. Say you go to a personal trainer in a gym – as no doubt some of you already reluctantly have, or will, or are ‘maybe-kinda-I’ll go next week I swear’ thinking about doing.

If you haven’t been particularly active in a while, that trainer will ease your way in to a fitness routine, and firmly insist that you don’t blow all your enthusiasm in a first few days of heady exercise, do yourself an injury, and then never return to that gym again.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. So is January. How, then, does it make any sense to go from sleeping in until lunchtime before ambling downstairs for a lazy lunch on January 1^st, to a frantic, lung-ripping 6am spinning class on January 3^rd?

Do you really think that that’s doing you any good? Or that you’ll sustain it for the month, let alone the year. Or for a lifetime?

“Yes, I will!” you’ll cry indignantly, to which I’ll adopt my best David Cameron demeanour and patronisingly tell you to “calm down, dear”. You won’t. You’ll last about as long as Justin Bieber pleasuring a groupie backstage (allegedly – calm down dear Indo lawyer).

But hey, I’m not the boss of you (yet, but that day is coming, mark my words…Oh, I’ve said too much). If you want to subsist on broccoli, cabbage water and Rusk biscuits for the month, please feel free.

Or, if you just can’t or, more proactively, won’t go along with the New Year-body/mind-fascism industrial complex, then why not adopt the half-arsed route to self-reinvention?

Yes, a light stroll and taking the stairs at work is the equivalent of an hour-long jog. Didn’t you see the latest research* verifying that? Have a boozy lunch this weekend. Don’t skip dessert after dinner.

We need “closure” on Christmas, after all. Who knows, maybe the best way to get that is to treat it like you did/will do that tin of Roses in the living room? You know you’re better off just eating them all until they’re gone, hence eliminating the temptation, while simultaneously making you so sick of them that you couldn’t possible envisage eating another for the next 11 months.

Then, come February, you’ll likely be far more inclined to making a few lifestyle changes as the whole delightful Christmas naughtiness will be fully trashed out of your system.

And that, my friends, is one of many reasons why it’s so crucial to always opt for Roses over Quality Street. Yep, stick by us here at ‘Upfront’ for further life lessons, and things will work out juuust fine.

*Actual research may not exist.

Adorable. Starring the swoonsome Julian Shaw.

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