Sinead O’Connor has died at 56 years of age, according to her family. No cause of death has been given and the family is requesting privacy.
Some years ago, Rhythms’ Martin Jones was fortunate enough to talk with O’Connor focusing on the topic of spirituality. Throughout her life O’Connor was deeply involved in Catholicism (ordained as a priest by Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church), Christianity, Rastafarianism and Islam.
“I suppose, not to get too John Lennon about it or anything, but the problem of war for example, the existence of war shows the absolute disconnection from God. And the problems that we see in the world, for example the problem of war, it’s not actually a political problem, it’s a spiritual problem, so it can’t be fixed with politics. To try to fix it with politics is like throwing, you know, a big rock to a drowning man. I think that’s probably where Mavis is coming from also – these things need to be solved by us going back to whatever we call our spirituality and trying to sort the thing out from the inside out.”
O’Connor raised Ghandi’s pacific protest as an inspiration.
“But we’re all complicit in what’s going on because we’re not actually sitting in the street quietly saying we don’t want it anymore. And I suppose we need to look at that. Are we so busy trying to gain material things or whatever that we don’t believe anymore that we have the power of spirit to sit and change things?”
Did Sinead feel any particular responsibility to speak as someone who’s able to gain the ear of a lot of people?
“It’s not that I feel a responsibility, what’s the way to put it? It’s not that I feel that I have anything in particular to offer, I’m not kind of vain enough to think that I have something to offer. What I can do in my teeny insignificant way in the world is create music which hopefully, A, is soothing and peaceful for people, and hopefully maybe makes them consider their own spirituality. But I don’t think that rock stars should be so vain as to… for example I think if I wanted to protest against war, I can do that by sitting in the street with everyone else.
“The other thing that I’m trying to do is just to create some gentleness. What can you do in a time of violence? Well maybe I can create a little drop of gentleness.”