Are You Singing Your Song?

I rarely write about the death of someone famous, instinctively I find the outpouring a little false. Today I’m making an exception and acknowledging my own internal drama.

If asked for something they remember me saying, my daughters would probably say “everybody dies”. I have said this too often, sometimes placing emphasis on the gap between “every” and “body”. I don’t possess some morbid obsession with death, rather that I am aware of the brevity of life and the unstoppable journey we make towards our end. My family have lost a lot of people we hold dear, it’s a stage we all reach, but ours seemed to begin almost from the moment my second daughter was born, some 31 years ago.

In my work, I have been truly lucky to work for and with some wonderful people, who have also died. I’m mischievously sometimes called “Dom Doom” because I am not afraid to verbalise the darker realities of life, the potential disasters and its end. I can see how this may present as being a pessimist or curmudgeon as one person told me, but that’s not my intention, quite the opposite – which is to find joy, love and hope despite the misery and challenges, to encourage others to similarly seek to tread lightly, dancing to the beauty within and around, celebrating life as it is breathed.

I’m writing now having been listening to Glen Hansard songs. He’s not known to all in the way that Bowie, Jackson, Mercury etc were, but he is certainly well-loved by those of us who would describe ourselves as fans. Maybe it’s just me, but I also tend to think of other fans as people I’d like. He died yesterday at just 56 due to a motorcycle accident in Dublin.

I first became aware of his music through the film Once which is a small, joyful tale and a little representative of his own life (but not). We have a poster of the staged musical version, signed by the London cast in our Boardroom. There is something within it that always touches me to my core, something artists seek to explore and convey, what many of us might wish “to bottle”.

Since the film was released in 2006, I have attended many of his gigs when he was in London. The Union Chapel, The Southbank, The Palladium, The Apollo to name a few. I last saw him in December 2025 at a charity fundraiser for Streets of London at the Royal Albert Hall. As a street musician, he seemed to find an affinity with the homeless and each Christmas Eve has been running a street concert with others in aid of the Dublin Simon Community; there is something about this that sums up who I imagined him to be rather beautifully.

Most of us don’t really know the artists we love, for me the ones that I particularly like are those who seem to bridge that very obvious and real void between us. Of course this is projection and fantasy from a psychological perspective, yet seems to pierce the spirit of human connection. It’s not simply the sound, tune, words, look or even the feelings evoked, but something beyond them when they align in a way that makes us, well me, vibrate at a very pithy, core, innate level of rawness.

I cannot make anyone feel as I do, I may encourage you to explore “the work” but we all have different tastes, preferences and responses. Hansard always felt deeply honest, broken, human, fragile yet incredibly strong, generous and loving. I projected onto him my “love of the Irish” for their deep history of art, literature, poetry and music, character- forming from centuries of struggle with brutal people much like the fools causing widespread misery and chaos who are in power today.

All eulogies pander to sentimentalism and selective stories, we all know that, but nevertheless they are valid and important expressions of what we value. This week I met with some business owners looking for an adviser, I don’t know if they will become clients, their enquiry was initially about something quite basic – what to do with the cash building in their business account. I wanted to encourage them to think more deeply and longer term, about what they really wanted from their business, how they wanted to leave it – starting with the end in mind as Stephen Covey might suggest. I don’t think it was quite what they were expecting, but for me understanding the end helps me anticipate some of the hurdles in between and how those are managed will depend on how clear the end goal or values are.

It’s a question that I have posed to you, maybe dressed differently – but how do you want to live? How do you wish to be remembered? What are the values that are truly and deeply important to you? What makes you really sing? What is your story? What is your great work? This is actually what I enjoy most about my work.

Life can be cruel, cut short, deliver bad and unexpected news. We have all had some, some more than others, and some of us use that as a guide, not the motive, but a reference to make our time count, and count well. It is my hope and desire to help you achieve that, and as much as I know there will be challenges, will still wish “your winning streak, may it never end”.

References:

Glen Hansard website: https://glenhansard.com/

Once – the 2006 film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0907657/

Once – the musical (2013 launch at Phoenix Theatre, London) https://officiallondontheatre.com/news/onces-london-cast-ep-202624/

Streets of London Homeless Charity: https://www.streetsoflondon.org.uk/news/streets-of-londons-starry-night-2025-raises-150-000

Dublin Simon Community: https://www.dubsimon.ie/

Stephen R Covey – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/books-the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-people-revised-and-updated-by-stephen-r-covey or any good taxpaying bookseller.