SETTLING on WINDS
Darran Brennan
At the close of business on June 6th 2014, Thomas Callaway shut up his guitar shop in the Georges’ Arcade. He was never seen again.
We know that Thomas left a 1974 Martin D28 acoustic guitar in the doorway, with a note for someone called Andy. However, it was the poem left pinned inside the window of Thomas’ shop that was the most intriguing clue to his whereabouts, which read:
My longing wind
Make me penetrate my stable walls
My boyish whish to run
To be scattered
From refinery
To where we wanderers may roam again
Light in soul
Where bonfires glow like specks upon an unending blackness
We learn to survive on little; no less
Set solid by timeless strokes
Inhaling the spice of the Westerlies
Delivered from that fallowest of meaning
Where love awaits always free
In the hopes of finding out more, we at Sift Media conducted interviews in the Georges Arcade and surrounding areas. We learned little from the anecdotal stories about Thomas and the trail went cold for several years. However, I could not walk past his hauntingly empty shop each day and not be driven mad by questions. I needed answers!
I put out a call to you, our subscribers, and a reader claiming to be Andy emailed in suggesting we seek out some of Thomas’ artworks for clues. At the time, we didn’t know that Thomas painted. We got several responses from people who’d bought his work and strangely, or perhaps not, each painting showed a man standing alone facing towards what appeared to be a vast desert.
Intriguing right? We were hooked.
We have since learned that Thomas paid the rent on his shop ten years in advance, suggesting he intended to return. However, hooked as we were, my editor finally decided that we had to let him go.
This year is the tenth anniversary of his disappearance. He’ll be missed. Thomas was a skilled luthier as well as a renowned player who frequented Dublin’s bars after work. Having spoken to him many times while passing his guitar shop each day, I know he had achieved all the goals he set himself as a young man, except starting a family. Despite his achievements, I believe he was still unsatisfied. Making guitars is a highly skilled and bespoke profession, and he was a man who needed difficult challenges and perhaps needed one more before settling down. Perhaps he took a chance on a crazy dream, crossing the Sahara Desert.
Sadly, I fear he failed. Yet, if he did, he did so on his terms.
So what do you think? Did Thomas go on an adventure? Or was it something else? If he did make that daunting trip into the driest, hottest place on Earth, do you think he’s still alive? Could Thomas have gone deep in the desert to where bonfires glow like specks upon an unending blackness and found a bedouin wife?
Whenever I think of my friend Thomas Callaway now, I hear the throaty grunts of camels and the chimes of ankle bells as his wife lies down next to him on cooling sand, their child asleep between them, beneath a sky of infinite stars. And finally he is satisfied.