How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Charlotte Church - ‘I was totally exploited. I was a commodity’

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to this super special episode of How to Fail with Charlotte Church. This episode was recorded live from the forum in Bath. I was just totally exploited. Like I was a commodity. I really don't give a fact what a lot of people think. Oh God. I'm going to get cancelled. Hi, How to Fail listeners.

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Starting point is 00:01:32 Learn more at amex.ca.ca slash yamex. My guest tonight has lived many lives. As a child, Charlotte Church found global fame as the classical singer with the voice of an angel. By 22, she had sold 10 million records and performed for popes, presidents, and princes. She then pivoted into pop music and TV, presenting her own. chat show for Channel 4, earning her a British Comedy Award in 2006. Appearing in front of the Levison inquiry into phone hacking as a victim of unscrupulous tabloid practices awakened church politically. She went on to support Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour

Starting point is 00:02:15 Party and has lent her voice to myriad causes, including Welsh independence and a free Palestine. She is also a mother of three children. And now, Charlotte Churchill, has entered what is arguably her most powerful evolution yet, her healer phase, opening a wellness retreat in the Paris Valley. The dreaming aims to reconnect people with community, nature, and the healing power of sound and music. Singing, Church says, is humanity's most powerful tool for healing and connection. It transcends language and culture and has the ability to to unite and uplift. Bath, please unite and uplift,

Starting point is 00:03:04 and welcome to the stage, the one and only Charlotte Church. It's so lovely to have you here. Thank you for being here with us. Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be in Bath, so thank you. I wondered if you can remember the first song that you ever sang.

Starting point is 00:03:28 The first song that I ever sang was, um, ride on time. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That one. And it was just like that, wasn't it? Well, I was about three on the dance floor, some family party. And I was on the dance floor.

Starting point is 00:03:51 And apparently I was just like absolutely shredding. Shredding that that ride on time riff. and just having a ball. Oh, I love that it wasn't a nursery rhyme or anything like that. No, because my mother said that the way she first knew that I had, like, unusual musical ability was that when I'd come home from nursery, I knew all of the lyrics to all of the top 40. Wow. So she'd be like, what, this is bizarre.

Starting point is 00:04:19 I just, like, absolutely sucked up all that music. And obviously singing took you to some extraordinary and surreal places when you were a teenager. Yes. And I don't want to dwell too much on that because you are in this new evolution of self. But I wonder if you could just indulge me and tell me what one of the most bizarre experiences you had during that time was. I mean, I know you sat one of your GCSEs in the White House. Yeah. It was such an evolving mental, as you say, actually surreal is a really good word for it.

Starting point is 00:04:49 Just because I was having to adapt at such a rate. So like on one day I'd be in Japan having to look. learn a Japanese song to do a commercial in a day. There was one trip where I went from the MTV Awards in America. So I was presenting an award with Wyclefshon to Eminem. So I was just like, oh my God, I was 14. I was just like, oh, my God, I'm just dying of embarrassment and excitement and all of it. But I was there with my mother, which was horrific.

Starting point is 00:05:22 And then having to go from there early, which I was fuming about, because then I had a gig in Geneva where I was singing in a really spooky castle for Henry Kissinger and John Major. Oh my gosh. Honestly, like my life has been such an insane tapestry of experiences. A lot, really, a lot for a young person to deal with, a lot for an adult to deal with,

Starting point is 00:05:49 but a lot for a young person to deal with. But it has given me quite a perspective on things. Who was the kindest person you met that we might have heard of during that time? Who was really kind to you? Weirdly, Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise was so sweet. So we met him, we were doing a big TV show in L.A., and we were told Tom Cruise is coming in, he's signing a motorbike for charity, don't look at him, don't look at his face, don't look at his eyes,

Starting point is 00:06:18 just leave him alone, don't even breathe around him sort of thing. So we were like, all right, boom. and then he knocked on my dressing room door. He knocked on my dressing room door and he had his two kids with him and he was like, we listen to your record every night before bedtime, my kids love your music, you're so wonderful.

Starting point is 00:06:38 My mother had just gone out for a cigarette. So she's behind Tom Cruise at the dressing room door just like, introduce me to Tom, introduce me to Tom. But it was so, it was so obviously surreal back then as well he was like it was right at the height of all the mission impossible stuff he was one of the biggest stars in the world so to have then you know tom cruz knock on your dressing room

Starting point is 00:07:03 door it was yeah and it was just very very sweet did you introduce your mom to him i did thank goodness i did she was fine she was happy as larry then i want to get into your failure shortly because i said to you before we started they're really good and they're really deep and i want to leave enough time for them. But before we do that, I want to talk to you a little bit about nature. Yes. Because obviously this new era that you're in is all about reconnection with nature. But that was not something that you necessarily grew up with, was it? Yeah. So can you tell me a little bit about growing up, not being connected with nature, and then how you came to realize it was important? Sure. So I discussed this a lot in, I did a podcast with my family called Kicking Back with the Cardiffians,

Starting point is 00:07:48 And that is... It's a great name. Yeah. And that is really all about championing working class voices and stories. I think so often nowadays, all we get reflected back to us is the insane, you know, insanely wealthy lifestyles of the rich and famous and the hyper wealthy and not really of our own experience. But in that, I talk a lot about what it is to grow up working class. And a lot of the time when you're working class in a city, nature just thinks.

Starting point is 00:08:18 doesn't really factor, and it certainly didn't for my lot. I mean, like, going on a walk, like, even going on a walk would be like, what? We go to the beach once a year. And then through many different, you know, it wasn't a sort of light bulb moment. It was many different experiences over time, some of those being when I was traveling, when I was younger, seeing Niagara Falls in these incredible natural wonders, some of which I got to see whilst I was traveling, and then having kids quite young. myself. I had my first baby when I was 21 and then starting to go oh don't don't we mothers like

Starting point is 00:08:55 go outside and stuff. Are we in parks and you know looking at birds and such and so then just sort of like oh I think this is what we we're supposed to do to then having some psychedelic experiences and falling deeply deeply in love with with nature and really then starting to understand who I was in relation to nature, because I think that so many of us are feeling that we are separate from nature and we are estranged somehow when really we are right at the centre, we're right at the beating heart, we are woven into the web of existence, which is nature. I want to hear a bit more about the psychedelic experiences. I'll imagine you do.

Starting point is 00:09:41 What's been the most transformative trip you've ever been on? We're in bath, come on. I think, so I've done plant medicine and I've done ayahuasca. I've had a number of very transformative experiences with ayahuasca and with magic mushrooms. And I think that it's really incredible what we're learning now from the sort of neuroscience perspective of what psychedelic medicine can do to us and can help us with.

Starting point is 00:10:15 and particularly in terms of our mental health and also our trauma, the traumas that we're carrying. So I found my experiences to be revelatory to be hard. But I'm also really interested. There's a lot of new studies coming out at the moment, which is really looking into, you know, like areas like, you know, psychotherapy and such, but always, you know, always going into our traumas in a super safe, super-held, super-comfortable place where, you know, in First Nations communities, a lot of this healing and a lot of this trauma work would be done with plant medicines and within a ceremonial ritualistic context, which often included pain. Well, well deflected. Thank you. What a pro.

Starting point is 00:11:06 Let's get into your failures because it will lead us into some fascinating territory. Your first failure is your failure to truly allow your creative voice and the music in your soul to reign supreme. Yes. So tell us about that tension, the music in your soul and the music that for many years I imagine you were producing and selling. Did that tension feel difficult at times? So I suppose at the beginning I loved singing and I loved music so much.

Starting point is 00:11:39 and it was just so very natural to me. But then to sort of have everything handed to me on a plate in terms of like a record deal and all of this success and travel and glamour and all of that, I didn't have a chance to become ambitious or hungry. And also what was really wonderful about doing the music that I did then was that I was constantly getting to sing

Starting point is 00:12:07 with orchestras all over the world. I was like, yeah, wherever I was going, I would be singing with the National State Orchestra of Pennsylvania or Chicago or wherever I was. So that's a wonderful thing to be held in that sonic sphere as a vocalist as a singer. But it wasn't what I loved, you know? Because actually, at that time, what I loved was the Spice Girls.

Starting point is 00:12:35 Yes. You know, and... And Pizza Rott. That's fine, that's acceptable, mysterious girl. It's not really acceptable, it's all. Amongst others. And then as I grew older, actually all of the music that I loved was sort of new soul. People like DiAngelo and Jill Scott and India Ari and so as soon as I was allowed to break away from the sort of classical crossover stuff.

Starting point is 00:13:05 and all I wanted to do was go and make R&B and so the record company were like I don't think so that's not going to be happening anytime soon general record company man and it was like my tiny little startings of writing and making my own music and exploring my own soul and that very quickly got sort of shut down by the people that I was working with in the industry

Starting point is 00:13:33 and how would they do that? How would they shut it down and how would they not allow you to do things? Well, they would just basically say that this song was no good. I spent a long time having to rehabilitate my creative self because for a very long time, I didn't think I was creative. I didn't think I was artistic. I knew that I was talented. I knew that I could sing.

Starting point is 00:13:55 But the rest of it, I just thought, oh, well, that's not me. That's these other people who play instruments and who write music and, you know, all of that sort of stuff. So I've lived with a lot of doubt around my own creativity and my own capacity to write songs and create music. And then in my 20s, when I met my now husband, I started writing music with him.

Starting point is 00:14:22 And so then I was starting to write some really fucking weird stuff, which was sort of like Prague, R&B, folk, polyphonic I mean just like all over the shop very experimental music but then because I'd been so badly wounded by the industry

Starting point is 00:14:44 I wanted nothing to do with the industry anymore and so I self-released it self-funded it all and that was really difficult as well you know then that's a whole area of the business I'm like oh god I don't know any of this stuff how do we do all of this stuff and so now I feel like

Starting point is 00:15:00 I'm finally at a place I've been working for the last year on music that is feeling just so free and golden and just like easeful and juicy. That's so beautiful to hear and I wonder if you feel that your singing is now in alignment with your purpose. Interesting. Yes. I think that in a way my singing because I had such a deep, genuine love for it and because it was before I had a chance to become, like, affected. You know, like lots of singers have sort of affectations in their voice

Starting point is 00:15:46 and it's very stylised and not that that's a bad thing, you know, some of the best singers in the world are very sort of stylised, but my voice was always very, like, right from the centre of my being. And do you now believe inside that you're, You are creative. Have you worked on that piece of self-worth? Yes, absolutely. And I think that it really came from outside of music.

Starting point is 00:16:11 So I think when I started to really go, hang on in a minute, I am creative, I can do this, was actually creating the dreaming. Because, again, it was so out of my sphere and frame of reference. And every time people would come in and look at the interiors, and every time people have gone through the experience as well that I have spent like meticulous time, love, energy detail in curating and making it exactly as I want it to be. People are like, wow, this is like so incredibly creative

Starting point is 00:16:50 and thought about and these interiors and I feel so held and this, that and the other one, I'm like, so that was the thing, the thing that really first started to make me accept and realize, that I was a creative being and I was a creative person and that very quickly then has gone straight back into music.

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Starting point is 00:17:44 That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-Dash Canada. Conditions apply. Talk to me a little bit about the music industry as you experienced it.

Starting point is 00:18:03 I mean, you were very funny when you did that impression of the standard man in the music industry. But I imagine it was such a specific time. You know, and you became famous age 12 from a TV phone in, and then you're pitched into this industry that is incredibly male-dominated

Starting point is 00:18:20 at the time that you were in it. What were your experiences like? How do you feel about it now? They were terrible. There's no two ways about it. I was not looked after. I was not nurtured. I was just totally exploited.

Starting point is 00:18:36 Like, I was a commodity. And the industry was incredibly razor sharp. And, you know, even from having, like, I had 40% of my earnings taken from me by my manager at the time. So even stuff like that, even stuff like the deals that I got into and that my parents signed on my behalf, but they were also totally green and naive.

Starting point is 00:19:04 So we got massively taken advantage of without a shadow of a doubt. And, you know, I've made my peace with it now because, you know, I understand the wider context. You know, I'm a deeply politicised person. And so I'm not looking at myself from a victim mindset in terms of like, oh, poor me, this thing happened to me. I've sort of worked through a lot of that stuff and I can understand the soil in which I was growing.

Starting point is 00:19:32 And that soil was full of shit. Yeah. Actually, full of shit wouldn't be too bad, wouldn't it? Full of chemical. No, worms is great. Full of terrible chemical compounds of which shouldn't have been there and were strangling lots of young women at that time.

Starting point is 00:19:54 Yeah. What advice would you give to your pre-fame self? I would say, I mean, it's almost impossible. Just hold steady. And actually, I'm really proud. When I look back at, you know, and I sort of do inner child work and I look back at my little self, I'm really proud of her. I'm really proud of the poise that she showed

Starting point is 00:20:17 and the bravery and the calm and the storm. There was like a, and I feel it still. I'm quite lucky to have a sort of quite a calm centre and I think that I I've always had it my whole life but I think that really kicked in because you know when things started to get really heightened and even things like before a big show so you know I'd be doing the Olympics

Starting point is 00:20:44 or you know George Bush's inauguration like insane world events and my mother would be there like flapping breathing like so nervous for me and I would just be like, just super chilled because I had to be. But that also, I think, then, helped me cultivate a sense of calm in my life. And a sense of self, because it feels like, I mean, I don't know you, although I feel like I know you, which also be the weird thing about fame,

Starting point is 00:21:14 but it feels from my perspective as though you haven't changed. Your essence has not altered. Yeah, totally. And I think that's probably the same for everybody in a way that we, are within us is that that's that same soul essence that has been with us since conception and that has absolutely grown in complexity and beauty and shadow and all of it but is essentially the same person you've got three children I wonder if any of them want to be famous um I mean they don't want to be famous necessarily I mean it is funny sometimes when

Starting point is 00:21:54 they're like, can we get on your Instagram or, and I'm like, absolutely not. I'm very protective, very lioness about, you know, as much as I possibly can, keeping them out of the limelight, just because I know, I know what it means to not consent, I suppose. And so I want to make sure that if that is something that they choose for themselves, that it is something that they have as much capacity and wherewithal to consent to. But they're both interested in lots of artistic things. My son does a lot of acting, and my daughter does acting and singing, and she's set for world

Starting point is 00:22:35 domination. She's studying power dynamics currently in the Western world. She's built a self a curriculum. She's amazing. And I imagine with a mother who has this protective force and this knowledge, I mean, they're going to fly. Your second failure, it's a big one. Yes.

Starting point is 00:22:56 Is your failure to totally strip the patriarchal and colonialist conditioning out of my person? Woo! Yes! I mean, and I feel like you're amongst friends here. Yes. Because we can probably all relate to that, I'm guessing. Yes, absolutely. I think that it is a lifelong job, really.

Starting point is 00:23:17 I thought that I was doing pretty well in those terms of, you know, particularly. in the patriarchal terms, maybe not so much in the colonialism and really looking at where colonialism was still alive and well in my own life and psyche. But particularly in terms of the sort of patriarchal stuff, I thought that, you know, I was, I had done a lot of sort of self-work. I'd done a lot of, you know, understanding the broader context of society and how, you know, what patriarchy was doing to both men and women

Starting point is 00:23:49 in our society. and then I got these tattoos they're aquatic coral water snakes and I saw them in a meditation and they wanted a symbol on my body and how it started at the beginning the symbol was about making my body as strong as my spirit

Starting point is 00:24:08 that actually and they were they would be a reminder of the discipline that it took to be able to like wind tight and be intense and whatever else I needed to be oh and then unwind and be super relaxed so that's what i thought i was getting them for and then but as soon as i had them as soon as they were on my body it was like where i was still allowing patriarchal uh constraints in my life i could just see it all like and and my whole body was

Starting point is 00:24:40 like reactive to the the ways in which i was still allowing sort of patriarchal oppression in in my life, and whether that was from men, whether it was from women, whether it was from others, whether it was from myself. And that was a really interesting byproduct of these tattoos that I was really not expecting. I mean, however, these, they were also, they're the symbol of Lilith, Lilith being the first woman. I'm obsessed with Lilith. Yeah, she's great. Yeah. Adam's first wife, who refused to bear his children, I think. She refused to lay under Adam. And so, So then God banished her from the Garden of Eden, and then he condemned half of all of her children to die.

Starting point is 00:25:26 But yes, her symbol is holding two snakes. So in a way, I suppose, it does make sense in the Lilith version. What does patriarchy mean to you? Is the dominance and oppression that has been shown towards the feminine. towards children and nature. This idea of dominance and control. And I think it is so, so deep in our subconscious and in our psyche. What I'm really passionate about is maybe trying to find ways in which to talk about it

Starting point is 00:26:10 where we're not utilizing always the same language, where we're not always talking about toxic masculinity, and we're not talking, you know, and we're talking it in other ways where we can bring men back in. That is my, my, my, my overriding sense is that patriarchy is fucking terrible news for all of us. And of course, the sisterhood must remain strong

Starting point is 00:26:39 and connected to each other in order that we can protect each other from the excesses and the violence, because it does manifest in violence and rapes and domestic violence and there's a lot of femicide going on in the world right now and a lot of repealing of a lot of women's rights. But I think that underneath all of that, we must also look to what is going on for men

Starting point is 00:27:01 and how isolating and how isolated men are currently, much like a lot of us, you know, the mental health epidemics are going on in all areas of society. but I see and I'm praying and dreaming in a world where everybody can start to feel what balance truly feels like because I think at the moment as women are rising and women are feeling stronger in society that is making a lot of men feel like threatened

Starting point is 00:27:37 and feel like they're in the minority when really it's just that they're so used to imbalance it's difficult because part of me wants to say if we can be gentle with it you know if we can be as loving and caring in this transition in this change as we possibly can to bring everybody who is struggling or conservative or traditional or along with us but then again there is this sort of glaring blaring alarm in the background that's like time's up guys come on I think you've experienced

Starting point is 00:28:13 that so brilliantly and I think there is so much power to be had in compassion and in the solidarity that comes through vulnerability which is really a lot of what this podcast is about and I think you're also touching on the point that those values or qualities have traditionally wrongly been seen as somehow feminine yeah and patriarchy traps us in believing that that is weakness yeah and it's weak for a man therefore to admit vulnerability this and and it brings all this misplaced shame. And I think that there are two things going on. One is if you're still lucky enough

Starting point is 00:28:49 to be born into a world made in your image and if you are a straight, white man, you kind of are. Then you're less likely to think of a failure as a verdict on your character. You think of it as an overcomable obstacle on your path to success, to guarantee success. But I think the other thing that's going on is that idea that to admit to calling something a failure,

Starting point is 00:29:11 patriarchy tells you that that's weakness. And that's changing a lot alongside the kind of alarm bells and what's going on in America. Within the sisterhood, we have these mycelial networks of interdependent relationships and which enable us to be in almost constant communication.

Starting point is 00:29:32 The ways in which men have lost the community of men and the brotherhoods is much more serious. and much more isolating than the ways in which women have. And so I think that often there's just not the sounding board there for men to even talk about what failure is or could mean or how that looks or whether something might have been to even have those conversations. And I know we're making generalisations here

Starting point is 00:30:01 and there are thousands and millions of men and sons and uncles and friends who are engaged in brilliant dialogue about their lives, but I suppose, you know, when we're talking about generationally or within, you know, the broader societal context of what feels like a total breakdown of society, then I think that really we have to, or at least I really want to start to turn my attention

Starting point is 00:30:31 and my efforts to nurturing men within a balance that helps them feel not so threatened because I think that this polarization is going to get us into some really, really bad situations and so there has to be forgiveness and there has to be compassion

Starting point is 00:30:53 and there has to be that I love the book, conflict is not abuse. So there has to be this idea of being able to sit with people in really awkward, difficult conversations and situations where you are essentially reaching out your love and your empathy and your understanding and doing a bit of eye-gazing. Very, very simple, but so powerful.

Starting point is 00:31:17 Well, I think it's incredibly generous of you to want to extend that nurture given what you experienced at points when you were incredibly famous at the hands of men but also of patriarchy. And I just wonder if we could chat a bit about that, but how that's informed you. We've, we've, touched on the music industry but we haven't really explored sort of how demeaning and sexualized some of that might have been for you as a teenager yeah yeah i mean it was really extreme you know really extreme to be constantly made a figure of fun a fodder not taken at all seriously in in any in any way in my art in any in my thoughts in what i had to say

Starting point is 00:32:07 but then also being betrayed on a very personal level by my first boyfriends, the first men that I had sex with and, you know, them all selling stories and making a lot of money and that being a deeply, deeply wounding, shameful thing to happen. And then also witnessing my mother going through that and being like absolutely torn apart by the media

Starting point is 00:32:33 and blackmailed at the hands of the media to the point where, you know, she tried to take her own life and it's massively affected her mental health ever since. So, you know, the women in my family have had their fish. Yeah. And then also, I also reflect on the idea of just to bring a bit of the colonialism into it

Starting point is 00:32:55 and don't get me wrong, like this is nothing or not a patch on the colonialism that is, you know, has been seen throughout the world. But in terms of my own specific experience of it, when I've looked back on those newspaper articles and such, so many of them talk about me being Welsh in a way that was really also very demeaning. And it's a subtle one, but it's definitely there,

Starting point is 00:33:19 it's definitely present. All of those things together. And then, of course, in terms of more broadly colonialism and not being able to strip colonialism out of my person entirely, I think that is the deepest work of our time for us collectively and I think that the deepest wound that colonialism leaves

Starting point is 00:33:44 is separation separation from self separation from our relationships our independent relationships with each other separation from the land separation from our ancestors and our idea of this sort of spiritual continuation. Yeah, I am deeply involved now in decolonial work, really trying to educate

Starting point is 00:34:10 myself as much as I possibly can, you know, of where the oppressor within my own psyche still lies because so much of this stuff starts with us. Where is the colonialist patriarchal oppressor within your own life, no matter what gender you are? And so much of it is hidden and insidious. and this is my ham-fisted link to asking you about something that I read that I can't quite believe, but I'm sure is true, that the tabloid press hacked the phone of your family priest. Father Richard, yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:48 So they hacked Father Richard's phone. I mean, it was literally everybody who knew us in Cardiff. It was all of my teenage friends. It was like my teenage friends, Nana. I mean, it was just like, it was, it was crazy. Like, when the police first came to us with the Leveson Inquiry and such, we were one of the first families they came to

Starting point is 00:35:10 because our names appeared so regularly on all of the private investigators' lists. So we were particularly targeted, even dear old Father Richard. Poor old Father Richard, poor you, have you forgiven? Have I forgiven? Hmm. Not quite.

Starting point is 00:35:32 Okay. I got to keep a little bit of that flame, that fire. Yes. That fierceness alive. Just tend to the rage somewhat. Oh my gosh, Charlotte. I love that phrase and I want it on a t-shirt. Tend the rage.

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Starting point is 00:37:05 available in Chipotle or Ranch. Plus tax at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. And it brings us on to your third failure, which is, I love this, we've never had this before, failure to be a wild woman. Tell us about this one. So the wild woman's an archetype. You know, she's outside all the time.

Starting point is 00:37:34 She is so deeply embedded in the world, in the shadow, in all of it, you know, in all of the feral, primal, she's sexual, she's like, she's desire itself. She is pure creativity. She's, yeah. She's lurched. You know, in so many ways, I think that, you know, I think that, you know, I think, you know, I talk a good game you know I've been in the public eye for such a long time lots of people feel like they know me but you know the truth of it is I've still got such a long way to go as do we all and it's never done you know this sort of this evolution of self but yeah I

Starting point is 00:38:16 am I feel I feel really confined I feel really not free I'm doing my own fucking head in in so many areas of my life where I'm still, like, in these traps, in these patterns and traps of behaviour, and I'm so, like, she's so tantalising the close, the wild woman, the woman who can just, you know, leave all of the tech and just have her hands in the soil from, you know, dawn till dusk. So she is who I am really wanting to move towards in my life, but there's just, there's so much to get through, there's so much to work through. And I think the other thing that I'm learning as well, because I've been, you know, really focused on this healing and this spiritual path, I think that we can often, and I certainly have fallen into

Starting point is 00:39:17 the trap of just constantly doing the work. You know, you're just constantly, in the shit of it all and actually we need to be able to circle in and out of it you know go in for periods of time and understand what it is who we are you know have a have some realizations go through and also it's not just like our own personal realizations like life just comes and you know absolutely smacks us in the face with stuff whether it's a grief a loss all sorts of different things that can happen in our lives that make us advance somewhat, even as painful as it is. But that is what makes us advance is suffering.

Starting point is 00:40:02 So, yeah, what I'm still failing at on a daily basis is to break free of these shackles, of the confines of my mind, modern life, bad habits, all of it. Yeah, and that's annoying. I can relate, because the one, Wild Woman for me, one of the things that I find so aspirational about her is that she doesn't give a fuck what other people think. Yeah. Now, where are you on that journey? Do you care what other people think? Oh. I care about what certain people think. I really don't give a

Starting point is 00:40:45 fuck what a lot of people think. But really, they're the people that I am not, that I don't feel like well even still i was going to say they're the people that i don't feel like are in my tribe so generally that would be like fascists i don't give a fuck what fascist think that fair enough yes um however there is a bit of me that's like yeah but you do give a fuck what fascists think because you want to try and reach them in a way yeah absolutely because it's like you know what else are we supposed to do in this age of polarity than to be a bridge so in a way

Starting point is 00:41:21 I suppose I do give a fuck what fascists think and well actually we should all give loads of a fuck what fascist think is they got all the fucking power right now but do you because you speak so truthfully and there's a

Starting point is 00:41:34 there's a certain courage to that and when you go on this morning and Alison Hammond can't keep a straight face when you're doing a sound bath does that bother you? Oh that pissed me right off. Did it? That pissed me right off. Yeah, I felt for you.

Starting point is 00:41:49 Yeah. I mean, I've, yeah, I've met Alison Hammond a number of times and she's a wonderful woman. I think that part of it was it was a misjudgment on my part to go, let's do a five minute sound bath on national TV. That makes loads of sense. Yeah, let's go for it. So I think it was a misjudgment on my part. But I think that what annoyed me more than anything else was that then I'm given the opportunity to display and demonstrate and represent somewhat this amazing art of sound healing or sound ceremony

Starting point is 00:42:24 or however people want to describe it and then it's made a figure of fun then it's that really did actually touch quite a deep wound for me I was like I really like you Alison but fuck you yes because it reminds you of all those the times that you felt you were made fun of. Yeah, totally. So, and, and I'm, I'm in this dance with a celebrity, which is where, I probably

Starting point is 00:42:50 shouldn't say this. My daughter's always saying that I say too much and that I'm too honest and that I need to keep some stuff back and be like a bit more of a diplomat about things. I mean, you're, you're safe here, is what I want to say, that I don't, I, I am really enjoying your openness. Yeah. But yeah, I think that there is, there's, there's an element of, I stick came away from the spotlight and from fame and from the excesses of it all. And I have to sort of rehabilitate somewhat. And then, but then I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'm going to have no platform now for the things that I really care about and the things that I do want to change

Starting point is 00:43:28 and the changes that I do want to see in the world and any influence that I do have. So I'm constantly in this dance of pushing it, being radical, coming back, doing something that's very mainstream, you know? So that is a thought process for me of pushing it as far as I can and being as radical as I can, not just for radicalness's sake, but just because that is genuinely who I am

Starting point is 00:43:53 and how I feel, but then also having to go, oh God, I'm going to get cancelled. And so then just being in this sort of dance of power, I suppose, and influence. Well, I love your... Lilith qualities, I really admire the way that you tend your rage and that you are so honest and truthful with your journey and I think it makes us feel included and invited. And I said to you before we came on stage that everyone that I've spoken to who knew I was interviewing you,

Starting point is 00:44:29 without a fault said, oh my gosh, her retreat looks amazing. I really want to go. And so I actually think you're doing something very powerful and very necessary. But for Now, I would really like you all to say the biggest, most rousing, most feminine, powerful, thank you to the amazing Charlotte Church. Thank you. I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing with Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions, and we offer advice on some of your failures too. That completely uncontrollable, ferocious grief gave me such a joy, such a connection with nature. Please do follow how to fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends.

Starting point is 00:45:25 This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you.

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Charlotte Church - ‘I was totally exploited. I was a commodity’

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