From Out of Chaos: The Art of Ronan Dinneen, A Sense of Place Magazine, 17 October, 2023.
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 picture below the state of mind I was in.
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.
OTHER SAIGON STORIES IN A SENSE OF PLACE MAGAZINE
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/whatever-happened-to-earl-black-the-life-of-frank-earl/
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/yens-white-lie-charles-gerard-and-the-secrets-of-old-saigon/
https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/motorcycle-saigon/
