An extract from Count Me Out: Selected Writings of Filmmaker Bob Quinn. To order the book, visit https://journalofmusic.com/shop

These days, my father and I meet once a week. From Leitir Péic in Conamara I drive the half-hour west along Cois Fharraige and through the moon-like landscape of Bóthar Loch an Iolra to the townland of Tuairín, where Bob’s dwelling is almost entirely hidden from thirty years of tree-planting. He is now 89 and there are always practical things to discuss, but we are rarely in the mood. Instead, we continue on to the village of An Cheathrú Rua where in the early evening we have our choice of seats in An Chistin pub and we settle down to talk about what matters – writing, thinking, ideas, music, the world. 

It has always been like this. My father is known as a filmmaker, photographer and writer, but beneath these pursuits is a relentless inquiry. That is why his artistic work is so polymathic, from the anarchic Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoire to the first Irish-language feature film Poitín to the intellectual explosion that is Atlantean. ‘A low threshold of boredom,’ is his bald explanation, but there is more at play of course.