The Point. In that privatisation of public space it was renamed the O2 and then when they withdrew from the market it became the 3 Arena. Presenters on one of the Dublin music stations call it the 2.3. The sign at the tram stop outside says, ‘The Point’, so The Point it will remain.
Before the development of huge outdoor venues, The Point was a place where major artists would play. I saw Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac play here (and Diana Ross, although I don’t tell people about that).
The Point became a place for laying a ghost. Fleetwood Mac’s Rhiannon had become the backing music to a time of isolation and loneliness when I was 20. Three decades later, I stood in The Point and listened to the tale of the Welsh witch with complete equanimity.
More than a dozen years after the velvet tones of Stevie Nicks filled the space of the old docks depot, it is time to spend an evening under its roof again.
The loneliness of those days in Surrey four decades ago is again pervasive – and there is no-one whom to blame except myself.
What was it that Springsteen sang in The River, “is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?”
Dreams are dreams precisely because they do not belong to the realm of reality, they are foolish, fond imaginings. They are shreds of the fantastical and threads of the impossible.
Confrontation with the sense of having pushed a self-destruct button comes with standing among the crowds awaiting the concert by Elbow. The band’s Looking like a beautiful day provided a theme tune to the loss of everything there had been.
To be honest, I am not even sure now why I spent €55 on the ticket. Perhaps it seemed cheap when compared with other ticket prices in Dublin (tickets I saw on sale for The Eagles at Lansdowne Road were €200). Perhaps it seemed to offer a way of marking an end to the working year, the state exams coming to a conclusion.
Perhaps the mood is just post-viral fatigue, the shingles still require the consumption of a pack of Panadol every day. Perhaps it is the onset of some syndrome. Perhaps it is simply a confrontation with reality, a signal to look around and try to find a route out of the bind into which I have tied myself. Perhaps there will be a line in a song to lay a ghost.
