By John Stapleton
Ronan tells it like this: “I had full on psychosis. But I kept drawing all the time. I was living in Saigon in Vietnam, ended up homeless. I was pulling the cameras out of the wall in my hotel; and they kicked me out. I was so anxious. I couldn’t work. I thought it was a set up. Everyone was involved. The guy driving down the alley with …. I thought people were waiting for me on every side of the street, everywhere I went. When is this going to end, I wondered. There was no off switch.
“My younger body building brother came out and took me back to Ireland. I had overstayed my visa by nine months, which made leaving difficult.
“I ended up a mental institution in my home town of Cork. I kept drawing from 5am until one or two in the morning. I could barely sleep. But I turned my hand into a weapon.
“You can see from the pictures below the state of mind I was in.”
In the picture below, there’s Ho Chi Minh City floating at the bottom, My parents are praying for me. All I had was my pad and pens, I had multiple knives stabbed in my back, I am watering the plant which is eating me, I had smashed my phone because I thought I was being tracked, I didn’t have a credit card, I couldn’t access cryptocurrency, and I ended up sleeping in the park. I was losing my mind, surrounded by questions and demons. My brother couldn’t find me for two days. He left on Christmas Day; I couldn’t go back with him immediately because of the overstay, which took some sorting.
They put me on anti-psychotics, which gave me the personality of a cardboard box. I was brokenhearted, nothing was working physically or mentally.
But I still kept drawing.
It first began a few years ago with a blast of anxiety; I didn’t know what to do, or where my life was going. I wanted to be a tattoo artist; and I just picked up a pen and started drawing cars.
I thought and then wrote down: “Anxiety is fear of the future or what might happen. If you don’t know where your future’s going, the best thing to do is to create it!!””
And so that in a sense is what I have done.
I’m not an artist yet, I can’t label myself an artist at the moment, but I’m on the way.
The first person who asked me to do a tattoo design is a reality TV show star called Sania Smestad, from Norway. We met in Saigon. She was with her boyfriend. The friend who introduced us just said, these are your sort of people. We instantly clicked. She’s an unbelievable artist and dancer.
I want to live stream my first tattoo, I hope she’ll be into it.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do since I was 16, be a tattoo artist. This is honestly a passion. There is no room for error. I want my tattoos to be amazing; they’re not going to be normal tattoos.
This is not about money. It is very personal. And you leave people with something amazing, for life. An amazing stamp on people’s lives. It’s true.
I used to draw constantly as a kid; my mother still has all the drawings I did at school. She always thought it would get me somewhere.
I came back to Saigon about two years ago. I’m just on a mission to be a tattoo artist; then I’ll go back to Ireland when I have my personality back. But I still think I belong in Asia. I just love it. Always have. I went to Thailand when I was 22, and just fell in love with it. I idolised everyone in Asia. I thought they were so lucky to live there.
Just the lifestyle. Life shouldn’t be lived indoors. In Ireland everyone is sitting inside watching television. I’m drawing on the side of the street my ego switches on. I draw on the streets. Saigon is a people watching city. There’s a constant passing parade. In Ireland the silence is deafening. There’s energy here.
Saigon never sleeps. And the Vietnamese people tried to help me. I was too proud to let them. But they’re good. One cafe would serve me food; no alcohol.
After a period of relative stability, hanging out in the ever fascinating cafes and streets of one of the most famous entertainment districts of Saigon, Bui Vien, Ronan once more finds himself in something of a crisis. He is frightened of returning to Ireland, where he fears the worse. “Things just got too weird and I hate trying to have to dumb myself down around people.
“I feel like I’ve psychosis again. So what now? Back to the mental institute so they can put me on meds and turn into a fat numb fucker again sitting on my bed all day watching TV and the same personality as a cardboard box again. I was an alien I needed and escape but I’m not gonna lie to you. What’s the biggest cause of addiction isolation and loneliness? You don’t need to be alone to feel that way!”
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.
There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.SENECA THE YOUNGER
“Picasso could draw without his hand leaving the paper and van Gogh lost his mind in the process.
“If the environment is manipulated being the person what would that cause the person to do?”
Rohan says he meets people sometimes who are on the same wave length as him, who can hear things that are happening 200 metres away, who feel as if they can hear what other people are thinking, who call themselves old souls. Who feel that they have lived before, that carry the emotional madness of former selves. Who normally live short lives, burn bright, die young. But they are rare.
It was Einstein who reportedly said the normal person was incapable of telling the difference between madness and genius. Perhaps this is what we see in real time. Or an echo of all the ages; the world as a giant algorithm. Everything has happened before. Everything will happen again.
“I get wacky and impulse when I get ideas and the right side of my brain gets going. Do u know creative people are 20 times more likely to suffer from mental health issues?
“I met four people the other day who said they were old souls. Rare. Last question they asked was what advice would you give to your 20-year-old self and I said focus on yourself because the better you become the happier you become and the happier you become the happier the people become around you. And if you put your happiness into someone else you’ll always end up disappointed. Weird shit.
“With Banksy I realised how manipulated the art world is by the cult of followers and the popularity of the followers behind him. They’re stencils. Many people would be doing that. You must go through some dark times to shine some light on your work. To find clarity.”
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Ronan: “I’m gonna head to Ireland and do a few tattoos. I had to run away cos I was an alien.”
OTHER SAIGON STORIES IN A SENSE OF PLACE MAGAZINE
