He has spent time under the tutelage of Dr Janov in California, using primal-scream therapy to unlock memories and hurts.
He composes music by tapping the subconscious and seeing if he can put manners on what comes out.
The seeker, the rebel, the self-infantilising, guru-seeking peacenik. There is the frail figure unable to bear the weight of his own mythology. What is Lennon after? Its hard to tell, tied up in who he is.
Cornelius keeps Lennon one step ahead of the red-top press, but the island remains just over the horizon. Ray Lynam sings country on the eight-track and hard-bitten Fleet Street journos comb the country for Lennon. Epic drinking sessions convene at midnight. The psychic wayposts are dank hotels in Newport and Mulrany, the Highwood bar and the Amethyst hotel. Lennon’s driver, the profane and wily Cornelius O’Grady, appoints himself to the role. A spirit guide is needed for the ghosts and shapeshifters, the whirl of terrain and myth. In Robinson Jeffers’s words, beauty is not always lovely. But the strange airs of the west coast need to be negotiated. He wants to spend three days on his island getting under his own skin.
He’s on a mission not entirely rational, not entirely sane. In Kevin Barry’s superb novel it is 1978 and Lennon is back in Clew Bay. The planning permission lapsed and the retreating tide of psychedelia left the self-sufficiency pioneer Sid Rawle, the King of the Hippies, just about in control of the island until fire and storm drive him ashore. His next steps were a typical Lennon mix of practicality and whimsy, on the one hand floating a painted gypsy wagon out to the island, on the other applying to Mayo County Council for permission to build a house. In 1967 John Lennon bought Dorinish island, in Clew Bay, for the knockdown price of £1,550.
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