This much I know: Jimmy MacCarthy, Singer-songwriter

I’m famous for not being famous.

I’m not a show biz guy and in the beginning I was very shy on stage. I have learned how to enjoy performing and how to be comfortable with it. Now, I love it once I’m out there but I’m at my happiest in the creation of an idea, and the glory of an idea completed.

I’ve been doing The Alexander Technique — ‘the technique that inhibits bad habits’ for 19 years. That is how I overcame crippling stage fright. The technique helps to ground you. These days, I also work out every three days for 25 minutes.

And, I meditate every day, learning how to use my mind when I need to use it and stopping it when I don’t. In my meditation I generate energy within myself and become more energetically connected.

I have a shoe box out in Spain, away from everything. It is the perfect place to write. I wake up each day and start what I finished the night before. When I’ve finished the first stage of writing something, I need to walk with the bits until I get them right.

I’m an outgoing recluse. I embrace the world but know that the time I am on my own is the time I need to be creative. I love solitariness.

I watch the world: I’m an energetic observer. There is a psychological un-wellness that comes with the modern world. Everything is so fast, it seems as if there is no time to stop, people don’t have the tools to slow down. But, that is an illusion, when your thoughts have taken you over.

At the moment, people seem unable to ask ‘do I own my own mind?’ They are totally alone although they are together, avoiding themselves and each other. It is a problem that drink brings into the equation.

I don’t drink now, I’m a recovering alcoholic. I have suffered from anxiety and depression in the past, but have managed to come to terms with them in the last couple of years. I used to say it was alcohol related, one doesn’t want to look at these things, but now I have addressed them in a meaningful way.

It all depends on what you are looking through, not what you are looking at. I was looking through bouts of melancholy. It was a personal battle to rise above it but, finally, the disciplines I’d been employing for many years started working.

I’m a well-rooted romantic. Now, I view the world from shafts of light I create for myself to see through.

I was bold in school, although I always had a thirst for knowledge. I was playful and adventurous, spending lots of time in the fields behind our house riding a pony.

Horses were my first love. I left school at 15 and became a trainee with Vincent O’Brien. I was still light and wanted to ride. Then my dad got sick and I left it to go back home and help with his transport business. That’s when I began singing in pubs.

My biggest challenge has been overcoming my own limitations.

I’m looking forward to the tour, although touring can be a lonely and intense experience if you are sensitive. Some people are more robust and they react differently when they are confronted with difficulties and behaviours that they find difficult to understand. To them, it’s water off a duck’s back.

I believe there is an alchemy to living, I’m lucky that my dad let me in on it when I was just a boy ‘doubt the source of supply Jim, and it will oblige you’ — meaning, don’t doubt the source of supply and it will never get you down.

Jimmy MacCarthy is on a nationwide tour this October: Oct 13, Civic Arts, Tallaght; Oct 17, Cork Opera House; Oct 18, Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire; Oct 19, The Source Arts Centre, Thurles, Tipperary; Oct 26, Vicar St, Dublin; Oct 27, Siamsa Tire, Tralee, Co Kerry and Oct 31, Limetree Theatre, Limerick.