As Brian Lynch begins writing Bury the Dust in Dublin, a movie he scripted, Love and Rage, starring Daniel Craig, is being edited in Berlin by its outstanding director, Cathal Black. The film looks good – not surprising since it was shot by Slawomir Idziak, cinematographer for Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique and Three Colours Blue. Meanwhile, the BBC loves the script Lynch is writing for them about the 18th century poet William Cowper. A contract is on the way. Caught in a Free State, his TV series about German spies in Ireland during World War 2, has sold all over the world. Crooked in the Car Seat, compared by the novelist Colm Tóibín to James Joyce's Exiles, has been nominated for best play in the Dublin Theatre Festival. In 1985, Samuel Beckett, praising Lynch's 'exceptional talent', has nominated him for election to Aosdána, the Irish government body set up to honour artists.
What could possibly go wrong? Everything. Or nothing.
Written in a garden shed beside a defective septic tank, Bury the Dust provides some of the answers. Or none?
The diary relies on many philosophical texts, from Kierkegaard to Wong Kiew Kit, the noted Kung Fu teacher. Wong is the author of The Complete Book of Zen, which says that you shouldn't meditate if you are 'suffering from frequent physical pain, manic-depression or imbecility'. Ruled out on at least two counts but undeterred, although he's unable to cross his legs in the Lotus position, Lynch sits down to follow the advice of the ancient Chinese poet Han Shan: 'Think of what does not think'. Only a fool could write a thoughtless book. Is this it?
Bury the Dust - a Zen Diary is dedicated to the memory of Maura O'Halloran, the author of Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, whom Lynch describes, though she died at the age of twenty-seven, as perhaps 'the most interesting Irishwoman of her generation'.
