Dougie Maclean
Article
Dougie Maclean is a recurring music project in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between March 17, 2025 and December 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Irish music - Dougie Maclean”; “Caledonia - Dougie MacLean”; “my dad plays dougie mclain”. It most often appears alongside New York, David, El Salvador.
Metadata
- Category: Music
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: March 17, 2025
- Last seen: December 22, 2025
Appears In
- Here, There, Everywhere
- Live Diary.
- A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again
- The social experiment is now over
Related Pages
-
- New York (4 shared issues)
-
- David (3 shared issues)
-
- El Salvador (3 shared issues)
-
- Lower East Side (3 shared issues)
-
- Celsius (2 shared issues)
-
- Dimes Square (2 shared issues)
-
- Financial District (2 shared issues)
-
- Ganni (2 shared issues)
-
- Iris (2 shared issues)
-
- Los Angeles (2 shared issues)
-
- Matthew (2 shared issues)
-
- Night Club 101 (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Irish music - Dougie Maclean, The Garden of Jane Delawney, The Secret of Roan Inish (film) (1994)
Monday, June 2 I read some GirlInsides on the airtrain back from JFK who I think is just like me if I were more honest and precise about it, or maybe whom my stories would echo more precisely if I did not have this sick need to put my face all over everything. Anyways, GirlInsides was talking about how summer would bring things like long long long hair and farmers market plums eaten over the sink in underwear and writing and reading all over the place, and her ideas made me feel like I was melting and going to cry. Then I wrote what I wanted summer to bring, all - getting off the subway because it's too hot and walking in sandals sticking to my feet until i find somewhere that glows right and then its morning and we're sitting first then lying down on the terrace in sun that becomes unbearable drinking sparkling water out of glass bottles dripping it over my chest opening the door for the blast of air conditioning and to let the friends that come by in and out people floating by in and out and come and go and then at dusk i put on something green and i drink cold cider cold diet coke or spicy watermelon margarita outside at kikis in swan room away from the heat at vol de nuit with fries and garlic sauce on the roof, on my roof, in the backyards and basements and i walk out and walk everywhere when it is time to leave i leave and sometimes it is time to leave and so then I take the train and there’s the coast and then I’m putting laundry on the line in a black bikini and drinking diet coke with lemon in my black bikini and driving to the ocean down the driveway at night headlights breaking through june gloom fog and jumping off the dock where the sharks don't eat us but any summer now they could, or then it's morning and i'm sober writing in my google docs journal walking outside, writing in my greenhouse apartment in new york, writing along the overgrown pond and field and it always smells thicker there outside of boston, writing by foggy shores and rocky shores and sometimes the air becomes thick too and my dad plays dougie mclain and we make pesto pasta mozzarella chicken sausage in yellow china bowls on yellow placemats the meal gets kind of hazy through the sheen of blue hour rain coming through the window and then i'm pacing and writing down ocean drive in Miami because I can't decide where i want to be anymore and i like flashing lights i like coming back to the very nice very cold hotel that we're staying in because he's Sorry but I don't want any more apologies i want this summer to be Being very very very in love because i really have been anticipating extinction events or at least things become robotic sterile i used to think id be pretty good at both being in love like this and at not being robotic and sterile and i have become slightly above average at both these things in practice i guess though, it's nice to have the most human thing in the world, it's nice for me all the time, even then, even when it isn't for him i think it's nicer for me then it would be to not have this all the time and I don't know why i keep sabotaging the only thing i know to be true and human and so i am hoping for a summer of all that, hands pressed against the plane window greenhouse window train window glass mirror glassy water plunging my face underwater no more eb and flow. Anyways, none of that made any sense and then shock of all shocks it did eb and flow again last night. Everyone was so nice to me about my story and I wore the Nasseau, Bahamas shirt he bought for me all Life Is Better In FlipFlops and he wanted me to wear the sunglasses too, to exacerbate the bit but I thought that would be a little bit too far. He said “you know why I’m mad at you” when we got home, and I didn’t know, I had no idea actually, and so then I got sad, but the story was fiction. This is fiction too. I’m not being facetious when I say that. This isn’t even autofiction. This is literally all made up. “they seem lost and completely clueless,” he is saying now, downstairs, on the phone, he is talking about some forty year old woman and an awful charleton and some guy who does RedPill posting online and some guy he personally has a strong dislike for who has a lot of medical malpractice suits against him. Maybe he’s a genius, he is saying. I don’t know, he is saying. These people are so strange, he is saying. Tuesday, June 3 His friend rubs my head like i'm a dog or something when i walk into his stupid fake exclusive evil party that i'm not invited to and then my heart swells with rage. I'm so mad, I was telling everyone. I'm so sorry I didn't mean to say that I guess I had one too many, I was saying. I didn't have one too many, I had just right, I was telling him. I like The Sweet East, he is telling me. I like Yeats and social norms. Yes and, I say; I hope that you get everything you have ever wanted. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, June 9 A quiet night in the realm of events. Consider; dinner at The Marlton’s new restaurant Chez Nous followed by a screening of Buffalo 66 at Metrograph (10pm). I have historically liked The Marlton because it is vaguely past its prime and also a five minute walk from my apartment, and a place where no one ever tells you that you’ve stayed too long. The food at the old restaurant was terrible (so I’ve heard) (I only went for tea), but the recently refurbished Chez Nous is chic and fun and has maintained all of the hotel's original charm. The shrimp salad is very good, as is the martini. I’ll report back after my second visit (possibly tonight). Otherwise - 10pm on a Monday evening is the perfect time to see a film bar none, besides, possibly 1pm on a Friday.
Inline links: GirlInsides, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!grTj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d8950da-492c-4aea-8f52-bfae799e190d_968x440.png, Chez Nous, https://metrograph.com/film/?vista_film_id=9999002294, recently refurbished Chez Nous, 1pm on a Friday
WHAT I DID Monday, December 15 Woke up to snow feeling self possessed, self determined, and ill, and so I’ll hold onto this for a while, I think. Everyone keeps on telling me what I should do next, to which I say: o.k. Everything is kind of medium levels of certain, these days. Lying on the floor last night at the after party and I could tell that people’s visions were kind of starting to spin but I have needed, personally, to be more solid about it. I have needed, personally, to keep my own vision clear. You can look at her face and see she’s not a good writer, the boys were saying, last night, about someone, can’t remember who. Can we just talk about pretty girls who are good writers?, the boys were asking the group. I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Just kind of sitting there watching everything because my only real goal here is to be observational and not prescriptive. There’s not a role to be filled if you want God to love what you do, someone was saying. If you want the angels to sing you have to eat the script. Angels weren’t really on the mind as I drifted home, more consumed with things like self improvement and hand selecting a new addiction and a caution to the wind sort of impulse. Potions washed up at my doorstep this morning. Sparkling ICEE water and Advil and fever chills which come as blessings when one reads them as signs. Anyways, magical blue hour snowy dusk over Washington Square Park on the way uptown tonight, and since everything changed this summer or really three days ago in a way that is true, I have started to imagine something else. The Christmas party was in an apartment around the corner from Saint Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church off Lexington Ave, last night. The apartment was open-concept with big windows and a pine tree and roaring fire, poached salmon, chocolate chip cookies and a beautiful bed on which everyone lay their beautiful coats. I wanted to stay there forever, as I always do in places that I like. I wore the Cinq-a-Sept holiday dress and the big wool coat I’ve been donning for weeks now, and I wore pearls, too, which is something new. Everything was slippery and bright and better and kind of like a dream, but I don’t want to get complacent. When I moved to New York, I lived in Yorkville where I could not sleep and where the streets were too muted and it made me uneasy. In the Lower East Side, in an apartment I hated, I was given a whole new life, and there, nothing was muted and everything was windy and cold. The wind made me kind of crazy, as wind tends to do. I was airlifted out of that apartment, ultimately, which I suppose is what I’ve kind of been praying for, here, in a space that is my own and good except for; the bed faces a fluorescent hallway and there is no room for a couch or even really a trash can. I’m seeking clarity for kind of selfish but partly religious reasons. And I’m sick of writing about the things I own or once did. On the end of the year; it is kind of pointless to say anything at all when things were fast then slow then impossible to recall, and all of this is just to say that I hope I’ve been sincere. Almost midnight, and so I go to Caffe Reggio, where things are small and precise and decked in holiday cheer, cozier even than the hotel lobby. Resolutions are: everything beautiful. And more stories that flow like water, obviously. The night is crisp and cool and I care to be extremely alert. Tuesday, December 16 Celia left the scene because she was good at noticing when things became embarrassing, and I resonated with the principle but still could not help but to hover. Nothing was embarrassing, anymore, Matthew reminded me, because everything was dead in the water and then it wasn’t and then it was and now, he suspected a new wave. Last year at this time I had to beg girls to come to parties, Matthew sighed. He gestured around the very crowded and warm bar and towards the people standing and sitting in circles and filtering in and out and the elderly Italian birthday party in the backroom. This is nothing like last year, he insisted. In the Financial District, everything was FAKE. Fake little streets and old-timey bars and I only realized the facade of it all because I walked by a Christmas Tree and the sign at its edges sent the whole charade tumbling down. EVEN THE CHRISTMAS TREE IS FAKE, the sign said. In the freezing cold, the most freezing day of the year so far, Celia and I got burgers at a small and new seafood spot. Celia wore three pops of red (bag, tights, gloves), and I wore all black. After the reading, where the stories were good and where more and more people kept materializing as if out of dust by the door, I bought three books and then sat on what seemed to be a bike rack in the back of a van driving towards the Lower East Side. Ducked my head so it wouldn’t slam into the van ceiling on every bump. The views became Real again, driving out of toy-house-town simulation FiDi, and then the bridges were glowing and the streets were full of snow and I was writing on my phone, kind of just humming to myself and mostly just saying the same things in my head over and over and over again; everything clear and everything sweet. Cold and windy winter where the elements make me kind of lose my mind. Sober minded mania. I am drawn to these kinds of things. The thing about this winter is that everyone has been going crazy. Me first, but then I learned how to put a stop to it. Sophia gave me a white rose at the Marlton Hotel in the morning, and then I found it kind of crumpled in the recesses of my bag. Petals floating everywhere and we’d moved to a different bar by then, somewhere kind of velvety and sleek and my friends and I were the only people there. Matthew was talking about people who fabricate enemies out of neutral acquaintances who just didn’t want to be their friends. A sad sort of thing, but you can’t feel too bad about someone who decides to turn evil. Dimes Square was a two year operation to get [redacted] laid, Matthew was saying. The experiment is now over. The social experiment is now over, and now you can all go home. Wednesday, December 17 I have decided to take the rest of the winter floating and soaring. Orange leaves turning brown outside the open window. Little gold watch and swan and cross and green Dartmouth Tercentenary tile and white Lake Neuchatel winter landscape postcard propped against the windowsill. So, if clarity is the thing that is most important above all, then you know what has to give. I will play “Garden Botanum” and “Come Undone” and “When Autumn Leaves” and everything by Dougie Mcclean and watch as things become crisper and more into focus. It’s important to only make a promise once and then keep it. It’s important to not be so vague about all of it going forward. Very precise and very discerning. That can be what a winter is like. I watch the light and shadows shift and shudder off my walls and bad-feng-shua hallway for some hours. I walk to the gym and I feel normal. Water and hyperpop music and images of faces sheathed in light or maybe armor all around. The television is falling off its hinges at the gym, and so the mantras on the walls are all skewed. COMMIT TO SOMETHING. REACT TO NOTHING. I’ve been culling mantras from the internet. I’ve been making lists of all my friends and everything kind I have to say about them. I’ve been making lists of all the ways I’ve maybe wronged others but have never been wronged myself. Sitting in a basement that’s illuminated blue watching films last night. Sitting in a conversation pit all day and all night for most moments of this week. Sitting under holly and cranberry and splintering wood and dried wasps nests and flowers and everything sparkling and snowy outside, soon, next week. There’s a few more dinners before that. The last days of gluttony but everyone seems over it. Sitting around dimly lit tables and everyone keeps talking about the ways we used to be. We used to wake up with crumbling Prada purses at the foot of our beds, overflowing with candy and mascara and all the things we didn’t remember stealing the night before. We used to be at the gym before dawn. I used to get along with people who viewed things as linear. I’ve always known the happiest days of my life to be exactly what they are, even as they are happening. Slipping away. There are other things, too. What do you think your new addiction will be?, Celia asks me. Something unrelated to consumption, I tell Celia. Something kind of manic and empty?, Celia asks me. It’s not so bad to think about what you want in strictly material terms, I tell Celia Thursday, December 18 THINGS I PROCURED THIS YEAR IN STRICTLY MATERIAL TERMS Silk long sleeve Ganni top
Inline links: Silk long sleeve Ganni top