“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.“
Nina Simone

One letter can make a huge difference in the meaning of a word or when trying to find a particular person. Consider Sink/Sick, Line/Lime, Bake/Cake, Word/Worm, Bear/Gear – sometimes not just the meaning, but also the pronunciation changes dramatically, like in the last example.

I was looking up the German singer Nena and, perhaps because she is not so famous, instead I was directed to Nina (Simone). It turned out not to be as useless as I had thought at first. I made a connection I wouldn’t have made otherwise. Nina says that she knew that “things would change”. Nena “only dreamt” about what she was looking for.

Both kept at it. Neither of them gave up.

Pádraig’s last concert in his current ‘series’ was with the Coronas. He had ‘Acceess”. A Wristband. You got to have a wristband.

And they sang Heroes or Ghosts, Taibhsí nó Laoich. The song of Pádraig’s generation.

And it’s beginning to happen,It’s beginning to moveI’ve seen a reaction,Now we’ve so much to prove

This coming week, on Thursday, it will be eleven years that I was in Sanya, Hainan, in the South China Sea, when I got a phone call in the middle of the night, booked a flight to Boston, drove to Hyannis, and broke down when I walked into Pádraig’s room. Because what, in utter desperation, I had tried to put down to an error became reality. It was not “nur geträumt”.

We’ve come a long way from Boston to here.

It was a question of keeping ourselves together, which kept us sane, until things changed.

Not to what they used to be. Clocks cannot be turned back.

But it’s beginning to happen. We still have so much to prove. Forever Young.