Strangers on a Bench - EPISDODE 21: I Want to Be Un-Unique

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Tom Rosenthal approaches a stranger on a park bench and asks if he can sit down next to them and record their conversation.This is what happened! Produced by Tom RosenthalEdited by Rose De LarrabeitiMixed by Mike WoolleyTheme tune by Tom Rosenthal & Lucy Railton Incidental music by Maddie AshmanEnd song : 'Powerful Things' by The Howl & The HumListen here : https://ffm.to/powerfulthings-------------------Instagram : @strangersonabench Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, sorry to bother you. Can I ask you a slightly odd question? I'm making a podcast called Strangers on a Bench where essentially I talk to people I don't know on benches for you up for that? Do you want to give it a go? So, first question. Is there a day of the week you favour? Oh, erm, I think I like the days that I work, because I don't work in a location every day of the week. So I kind of like those days and Friday's good as well. Friday, it's a safe Friday. Let's imagine you're not working and the day is entirely yours to do what you like with it. What's the ideal happening? I would get out early if I could and maybe I would go to the Thames Estuary and take a long walk along the Thames Estuary, start a Benfleet and walk all the way to Fowness Island maybe. I mean I would stop off at a few cafes along the way and also maybe have some seafood at

Leoncy. Yeah, so that's what I would do for leisure. And also love the cinema so I would maybe then try to nip back and go to the BFI. To round it all off. Round it all off with something at the cinema. Fantastic. How do the Thames make you feel? I feel like it's in my DNA.

What does that mean when you say it's in your DNA? I was taken to the Thames Estuary a lot as a child. My family had a caravan there. In its very particular landscape, it's natural and totally artificial artificial like big oil refineries and I mean a lot of them have been decommissioned now and turned into nature reserves so it's kind of like a combination of nature reserves and post-industrial landscape but the way it makes me feel it makes me feel very connected.

Connected to what? Just connected to the landscape. It makes me feel like I belong somewhere. And also just, I don't know, on a sort of like more fantastical level, I looked into my family tree a bit on my mother's side because she didn't know her mother. She passed away when she was two. So there's always been a bit of a fantasy like connected to this side of the family and so I decided to look into it or get my partner at the time's dad he was very interested in family trees so he looked into it and he said well your family have worked on the docks in on the Thames as far back as you know back as I can go. So maybe I just feel very connected knowing that as well. You mentioned the family history there.

Yeah. What's that experience been like to delve deeper? Has it made you want to find out anything else about any other bits of family of yours? Well, it was interesting because my mother, she had to make it all up because there was no information because it was quite traumatic for my grandfather. So he never really spoke about it. So there was this fantasy that we were from Rome, Italian immigrants and we were from Rome and I don't know where the hell this came from.

I think it's because my great-grandmother always said, oh they are gypsies, the other side of the family. She was very disapproving of the marriage and maybe this word Roma came up and maybe my mum got confused at Roma, Rome and anyway so this idea of like, oh we're from Italy, but I don't think we are at all. If anything, there might be a bit of Roma in there because my mother was taken to see her uncle at some point when she was very young.

And she said that he lived in a flat, but it was decorated like a caravan. It had all the kind of knickknackery of the traveling community. Anyway, how does it make me, you know, do I want to look into it more? The thing is I got a little bit burnt out with it because the guy who researched it was so passionate about it, he went like very quickly and I was like a bit overwhelmed with all the information. So I was just like, okay, let me digest that for a while. And on my mother's side,

she was kind of a little bit disappointed that there wasn't something more exotic. She was trying to, she was desperately trying to make herself more exotic than she really is. Yeah, so at that point, I was really pleased that my partner and my father-in-law just really whewed, they really bonded over it as well, it was really nice.

I think I liked that bit the most out of everything. How do you get on with your father-in-law? Father-in-law? Oh yeah, he's a lovely man. Yeah, she got lucky there with him as a father. He's a very warm character. When you say she got lucky, you mean? My ex-partner.

So you're no longer with this person who you are with? Yes, unfortunately not. Is that a sadness? Yeah, there's a sadness there. Do you look back and think, I should have done that? Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. What didn't you do enough of? Change.

Interesting. Yeah. Can you elaborate? I don't know I think we're getting into some sort of personal area which is a little bit painful for me so maybe I would like to sort of kind of because I think about that too much I think. The separation hasn't really been that long. And so it's still a bit raw, and to sort of maybe talk about it with a stranger and the reasons why. That's okay. Yeah.

I mean, just vaguely connected, but kind of moving you slightly away from the kind of personal nature of that. But I can imagine, you know, people may listen to this who are in relationships and want them to thrive. If you could kind of look back in a general sense and think, you know, what would you say to people who... I would say one of the... well, there's lots of different things, but one of the things

which I have sort of taken away from that is maybe if somebody tells you the way they feel Say somebody doesn't like a certain part of your behavior and They tell you this is how I feel about it It it it doesn't necessarily mean that's a criticism something that you should become defensive about sure, you know people But people that's too general. But I personally get into the trenches too quickly. Well, I haven't done anything wrong. And that's not necessarily what people are saying when they

tell you that they're hurt. Ideally, you would try to come to some agreement with that person about how your behavior won't affect them so much so that's one thing I take away from it and another thing maybe is Maybe don't expect too much of yourself if it becomes apparent right from the beginning or very near the beginning that Lots of changes are going gonna have to be made.

Are those changes realistic? Because in the first flush of love, everything seems realistic. So it's very hard to, you know, not get carried away with that and just hope you can deal with lots of different things, lots of different life changes. Because I, you know Because I got into something where I was maybe over-optimistic about what changes I could

make in my life. We had to extricate ourselves from the situation. Anyway, when in those moments or the days after it kind of didn't work or what do you do when you're really out of sorts? Well I come here and I play guitar. You're holding your guitar now, as you mentioned. What kind of pieces do you play with your ear? Well at the moment I'm playing a couple of Bach pieces because I didn't play classical guitar for years and I've come to... because I haven't got a classical guitar here

I've just got an acoustic guitar but yeah, I'm sort of trying to play some classical pieces just trying to do something, no I've been trying to do that for the last couple of years Yeah Yeah. Tell me something you do as part of maybe your daily routine or some area of your life that you think is totally yours? What I mean by that is, is there anything you particularly do

which you don't think anyone else does? No, absolutely not. I'm utterly un-unique. I strive to be ordinary. That would be my ambition in life. When I was younger, I wanted to be special and I wanted to be, stand out and be noticed and get on a stage and say, love me, look at me.

Now I just want to like disappear, well not disappear, that's not true, but I want to blend in, I want to be every man, be unexceptional, just want to be a good version of a human being whatever that is What is the kind of apex world do we then for you mean? Can we think of anything that could get you come even more ordinary? Yeah Loads away. How can we do how can we do it having 2.5 kids and we could get you some of those

Yeah, I'd love that actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then you probably have to have a less interesting job those? Yeah I'd love that actually yeah. There you go. And then you probably have to have a less interesting job or profession. I mean music is maybe too exciting. Is it? Very ordinary. Oh no well I can't let that go. I just want to be like an ordinary like musician. I think it's what we're getting to here is I'm trying to undo my past desires isn't it? It's like I was desiring to be some kind of genius or... When you wanted to be special. Yeah. What did that look like?

Like what what what? It looked like Wembley Stadium and lots of people screaming at me. And that would have... For good reasons. For good reasons! Yeah no, like get off! Lead singer in a band? I always wanted to be a lead guitar player actually and sort of just do these endless boring solos like Prince or something like that, you just wouldn't

know when to stop like... and so in my... so this would have been the sort of late 80s, stadium rock kind of like ruled out in a way so that was my template I was gonna like yeah. So if I say let's say you know your phone starts ringing now yeah it's Hollywood there is someone shouting yeah it's Hollywood, there he is, someone's shouting. Yeah. It's Hollywood. Yeah. They're like, look, you know, we've got a slot come up Wembley for a few songs, can you come and do it? What do you say? I'd say yeah, yeah sure.

And I'm bringing my band, yeah. Are you saying, well, I'm gonna try and make it the most ordinary performance possible? It won't be possible, no, because the band, I mean, are... It's too exciting. It's too exciting. Just by their sheer nature, but by our sheer nature, everybody in the band has a learning disability or autism and or. Interesting. So by our very nature, we're a bit off-center. Would your band cope with Wembley? Okay, do you think? Well, I feel that just to do a Wembley gig, that would be great.

Like to have that level of attention afterwards might not be good for some of the members. Might not be good for me. My role in the band is actually support. So I don't think it would be good for me and I definitely don't think if somebody's more profoundly autistic that I feel that that might not be a great thing for them to have people screaming at them in the street or whatever.

I understand. We're about to be joined by a thousand children. I quite like this bench position because you just get, sometimes you get just hordes coming by. Yeah, you do. This is quite an active place, isn't it, this corner? I quite like that though. I agree.

Also, I train, it trains me to not get, try to not get distracted. It's almost like a mindfulness within guitar playing. Completely. So can I deduce to what you just said that you are yourself autistic? Yeah yeah I had a late diagnosis last year. Oh last year? I had a sort of semi diagnosis like an expert I knew somebody who could diagnose and they said look I'll do a free test if you like, because I was sort of interested

in certain patterns of my behavior. So she did the test and said, there's no way you can't be, but you don't necessarily need an official diagnosis because you've carved out a life for yourself where you've avoided a lot of the things that will give you trouble or that you won't be able to handle or find difficulty with. But I did, I did want to get an official diagnosis just to sort of get

a second opinion and blah blah blah. And so yeah, I saw four specialists. I think it was like three out of four people said, yeah, yeah, I think so. I think the diagnosis is yes. So yeah. What did that mean to you to get that diagnosis at that time? Yeah, I mean, at the time, I just felt really sorry for that young boy who went through the conventional education system and was just at sea. You mean you? No, myself, who just probably felt really at sea within a sort of mainstream setting. Although I do feel glad in a way.

When I first started school it was in the 1970s, so probably been given a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome and I think then I would have been separated and put into special education and I would have had this idea of myself that I was other and I don't think that would have been entirely useful for me. I think it was useful for me to just get through life and to a point where a Diagnosis wouldn't make a huge impact on the way I saw myself. I Did feel as I say I did feel very sorry for that young boy who suffered so much, but I Was glad in a way that I got the diagnosis when I did What is that if you can try and explain?

for People who don't know much about autism than I did. What is the, if you can try and explain for people who don't know much about autism, what kind of the inside of your mind looks like that people don't see? Whatever you've always come to with. It's more like for me, it's more what I feel I don't see. I feel like I might be blindsided slightly. So I always feel a little bit on guard that I could be taking advantage of. There's always a sort of vulnerability I feel there.

There's the area that I'm not seeing. So sounds seem more intense to me than the neurotypical. Maybe I like rituals a lot more than people that are neurotypical. But I can't say that for sure because I think everybody likes rituals. But there's slightly obsessive behavior patterns. So I mentioned that I like to go to the cinema and I like to go to the BFI, the British Film Institute,

and what they'll do is they'll have seasons of things. Like for instance at the moment they have a season by a director called Lindsay Anderson. That's not the point. The point is once they announce all the films, I'll just book every single thing. And I'll have to see everything. Got it.

And I'll have to see in chronological order as well. I sometimes book tickets twice, because then I realize, oh, okay, that's not particularly in chronological order, and I've booked it then, and this film comes first, so I'm gonna have to turn up on the day and see if I can get a ticket to see the film that comes before this film.

You maybe notice with autistic people that they have some coping mechanisms which look obsessive. I've got three more questions for you, and then I'll leave you be, because I don't want to take up your whole life. I would like to play the guitar. One of the questions that actually involves you, I'm going to ask you to do something slightly ambitious that I haven't yet to ask anyone to do. I'll tell you what, I warn you about it and then when

it comes, you'll know what's happening. I'm going to ask you not to sing, you don't have to sing, unless you want to, but try and answer a question whilst playing the guitar. Si I'll try. Yes. Because you're the first person I've encountered actually with an instrument on you. I thought that would make sense. Anyway, so we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Okay, before then, the questions. Is there anything you would like to ask yourself and answer it? I asked this question because sometimes as we've been talking, you might have thought, oh, I would like to talk about this or I've got something to say about that, or I'd like to answer this question, but that might not have come up.

Oh, well the only question I'm thinking about asking myself is what do you really want? But that's a question I can't answer right now. So it's a question that I'm working on rather than have the answer to. I see. I think that's a life's work in a way. What do you want?

What do you really want? The really is a big word there. Yeah, really. It implies that the things you want may not be the actual things you want. Yeah, they might be sublimations for what you really want. Can you, because we're only here once, can I ask you to have a stab at the answer? I think I want to connect with people.

I want to be useful. I want a purpose. I think I have that already, but it's very professional related. Maybe that could be expanded. Be of use within the community. That's what I want. But what I really, really want, I might want to be loved. I might want to be a father. I might want all these other things that are not so tangible. I'm blivering on a bit but... No, no, no. All very, very interesting things. What is the biggest thing that has happened around you rather than to you? I don't know if this

is just a weird memory but when I was a kid I think I saw somebody almost get hit by lightning. There was a guy that always used to cycle up and down the road that I lived on and it was a really hot summer day and he had his top off and the traffic lights exploded like there was a big fun sim and then the traffic lights exploded and he was cycling past it and then he looked almost like Cartoon. In my mind, he's like, here he's standing on end. His eyes were really wide and he looked up at the balcony where we were and he was like, did you just see that? That was an enormous event. Nature was putting its hand almost

like... That's a great one. That's obviously stayed with you. Is that the kind of like putting its hand almost like, boosh, that's a great one. Yeah. That's obviously stayed with you, but is that the kind of, what was the emotion you felt seeing that? Yeah, or just like that looks really powerful and you know, he could have been unlucky, but he wasn't. So also the message I got from that is that, bad things can happen near you

and you can be unaffected as well. So you'd have to be unlucky for it to strike you directly. So the thing I took away from that is powerful things happen out the blue but they're very unlikely to happen to you directly. I like it, that's a very good thing to take away. Okay I'm going to give you the big challenge now. I'll get back to the piece that I was playing. I reckon that's it. The question is, what are you going to do next? Right. So in answer to your question, first of all I'm going to go to the toilet because that's a pretty basic human need that's

got to be attended to. And then after that I'm going to keep on keeping on because that's all we can do really, any of us can do. And I've taken a bit of artistic license there with Bach. You saw the phone ringing. That's Hollywood. Yes, Hollywood. Rembrandt StadiumBilly Stadium. I wonder who that could be actually. We'll find out.

People hardly call me. Exciting? Not exciting. No, it's... I should basically... Yeah, that's... Anyway, I'm not going to say anything. Take your time. Yeah. Right. But you just stood up and cycled home for tea

Ate a spare ball, played Final Fantasy You were almost semi-famous for a while Signed a t-shirt once In a Tesco aisle Well the years fell by and the posters all fell down But you took no heed Because you met Denise Powerful things happen out of the blue But they're fairly unlikely to happen to you Powerful things happen out of the blue

But you might never notice them happening to you