Róisín Ingle: I turn on the karaoke machine and switch off the war

I did not think about Ukraine in the karaoke booth. I was blinded by the disco lights. And anyway, normal life must go on. There was no room on the black banquette seating for the families mired in quiet, escalating desperation trying to squeeze onto a train heading from Lviv to Warsaw, elbows in each other’s faces, escaping from war.

There was a pleasing lot of reverb on the microphone, I noticed. All the better to drown out the sound of babies screaming as they were jostled on platforms or of a little girl crying as her daddy, off to fight the Russians, gently touched her face. He said goodbye not knowing when they’d see each other again. I did not think about him or of the heroic men on Zmiinyi (Snake) Island who boldly told the Russians on the warship to go f**k themselves. I did not think about any of them while I was singing Carpenters songs. Rainy days and Mondays and terrified people having panic attacks in subway stations that have been turned into bomb shelters always get me down.

It took a while for our voices to get warmed up. It’s been a long time since myself and M, my partner in serial karaoke crimes, got together to sing. Since the pandemic our usual singing spot, a place I used to frequent so often I once got awarded a lifetime VIP membership, has used their booths for restaurant storage. I picture them in my head, the rooms where we’d sing into the early hours, crowded now with cardboard boxes full of cooking oil and tableware.

I did not think about his appeal to the Russian people to hear the truth about the war while M nibbled her beef and I ate my salmon teriyaki

My friend had found a new place, a new singing restaurant. We went through the motions of eating dinner before our two hour session, the pretence being that we were there for the food. In truth we were chasing a different kind of sustenance. Everyone knows music, even our own rusty versions of random tunes we think we might do justice to. Tunes by Paramore and Take That feed the soul. While we caught up about our lives and our problems I did not think about the speech by an emotional, defiant Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. I did not think about his appeal to the Russian people to hear the truth about the war while M nibbled her beef and I ate my salmon teriyaki and we both sipped lemon infused green tea.

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We climbed three flights of stairs to the karaoke booth. This was a sign of our firm commitment to the sometimes maligned, often misunderstood art of singing along to backing tracks. As we ascended both of us, women who recently left our forties behind, huffed and puffed, scolding ourselves for our lack of fitness. As I climbed I did not think about the video a friend had sent me earlier that day. The video of a speech by veteran journalist Vladimir Pozner, from a talk he gave at Yale University in 2018. The speech was titled: How the United States created Vladimir Putin. I did not think about Vladimir Putin sitting at the top of a 6 metre table far away from his advisors who do not seem to do any advising, only the following of orders at a fearful, respectful distance.

I did not think of the other buttons, the ones in Moscow and Washington, the ones to press for nuclear options

Before we started singing, it took 10 minutes for the helpful young member of the restaurant staff to teach us how to use the interactive karaoke touch screen technology. There was a button to press to search for songs. There was a button to order drinks. There was even a button to press to call for assistance if we had a spillage. I did not think of the other buttons, the ones in Moscow and Washington, the ones to press for nuclear options. Instead I pressed the button for Taylor Swift’s All Too Well, (yes, the 10 minute version) and sang every word with intensity. I did not need the words on the screen in this instance. I remembered them all too well.

The videos that accompany the karaoke songs are mostly of completely out-of-context young women, in short flowery dresses and chunky boots, dancing around manicured lawns, caressing themselves moodily. The out-of-context karaoke young ones allowed me not to think about the powerful cartoon by Morten Morland that went viral. It depicted a woman, clearly meant to be British Home Secretary Priti Patel, waving a piece of paper on which is written her country’s criteria for Ukranians to enter the country. She is waving it at a Ukranian mother and child, trapped at a window in an apartment building engulfed in flames. The piece of paper reads: I SAID ARE YOU WILLING TO PICK FRUIT?!

The cartoon has been widely praised. Nobody seemed to notice how Morland had made Patel appear much larger and more rotund than she does in real life. Political cartoons, as is tradition, aim to make the baddies look as grotesque as they can. In this case, Morland made Patel bigger than she is to add to the grotesqueness. But I did not think of the widely praised fat-shaming as I did a competent enough version of Lily Allen’s The Fear. “Forget about guns and forget ammunition/’Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission/ Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner/Now everything’s cool, as long as I’m getting thinner”.

I watched and did not think of the list of goods needed at the collection points being set up for Ukraine

Two hours goes quickly in a karaoke booth. The disco lights cover a multitude and when the music stops the room becomes ordinary again, real life seeping under the door. I said goodbye to M and got a taxi home. On the way I caught up on a little bit of Love Is Blind, Japan on my phone. Reading Japanese subtitles makes the experience of watching a trashy reality TV show 10 per cent more edifying. I watched and did not think of the list of goods needed at the collection points being set up for Ukraine around the country: thermals, first aid, foil blankets, fabric strip plasters, bandages, pain killers, surgical masks, latex gloves, antihistamines, sleeping bags, warm clothes, jackets, blankets, socks, nappies, paper towels, microfibre clothes, dry foods, energy bars, dry fruit and nuts, canned foods, baby cereal mixes, baby milk, torches and batteries.

At home, in the evening gloom, I noticed the first of the daffodils poking up from the raised beds out the back. And normal life went on.

roisin@irishtimes.com