The Blindboy Podcast - Analysing a 9th century Irish poem about a white cat

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Analysing a 9th century Irish poem about a white cat . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leave me the end of your Lucas-age, you elderly gelding Brendons. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first podcast, maybe go back and listen to an earlier podcast. Some people even begin from the start. I was actually really shocked this week to see how many people actually have listened from the start. Because loads of you were sharing your Spotify wrapped on Instagram and on Twitter which is if you don't know

if you listen to podcasts on Spotify or listen to music on Spotify once a year the Spotify app will analyse your data and then feed it back to you as an assessment of your listening habits for the year i don't know how i feel about spotify wrapped it's very enjoyable it's enjoyable to to see

these are the artists you listen to this is how much music you listen to this is how long you spent listening to podcasts it's enjoyable but there's also something there's something about it makes me queasy I don't know what it is it's like watching an advertisement for yourself it's like Spotify collates all the data of your personal aesthetic choices like what music you listen to what podcasts you listen to these are spiritual choices that you make for yourself. They're quite private acts, mostly, unless you're like playing Spotify to have a party every Friday and you're sharing music with people. But the music that we choose to listen to, the podcasts that we choose to listen to, these are private things, I consider them to be spiritual acts. Listening to

music and listening to podcasts is spiritual. I don't mean in a religious way or in a supernatural way, but you're engaging with entertainment as a way to experience emotions and to explore emotions. And then once a year, Spotify comes along with this really well-made bright shiny packaging of your private aesthetic choices and sells it back to you as your own brand and then we take our Spotify wrapped and we share it online as our brand and I'm not sure why it makes me feel weird. I suppose it's because using our personal aesthetic choices, our taste in music, our taste in films, our taste in books, using these things to communicate something about ourself to other people, that's not new at all. You can wear the things that you consume as part of your identity to communicate

something about yourself to other people before social media this is all you had you had subcultures if you listen to punk music you would dress like a punk and you would become a punk and it would be a way to let other people know I like this type of music I identify with this type of music I'm comfortable with this type of music being my identity to exist in the world with other people and I want you to know this same if you were a goth same if you were a rocker if you listen to fucking hip-hop music or you were a skateboarder if you were a metler when I was growing up everyone wore slipknot hoodies and corn hoodies and limp biscuit hoodies if films were your thing you might get a t-shirt of fucking pulp fiction and you'd wear that and to be honest that

was fairly fucking cool or if you didn't want to dress like a punk or you didn't want to dress like you were into grunge or if you weren't allowed because your ma would kill you you'd at least write the names of the bands that you like or the films you like write them on your school bag and that was your way of letting people know but looking back that was quite expressive there's an even though in a way there's a conformity to it because if you dress like a punk you dress like all the other punks. Because you had to get your hands dirty, because you had to choose the clothes that you wore, or sometimes you'd have to make the clothes, or you'd have to make do with what was available. There was quite a lot of creativity involved in that type of expression, as a way to let other people know,

especially if you were a teenager and you didn't have your sense of self figured out yet. It was a way to let people know, this is the music that I like. You can infer from this type of music several things about my personality. This is my way of advertising myself to other people, but I'm hands-on with this. Like before my time, because I was too young for this, but I remember it as a child record shops used to sell little badges badges of your favourite bands and I was definitely too young for this because I remember

I still have a Whitesnake badge in my ma's house inside a soccer trophy that my brother won in the early 80s there's a little soccer trophy in my ma's house and it contains a badge for the band Whitesnake

which was given to me at about the age of 2 or 3 probably 3 by one of my brother's friends who just took it off his denim jacket and said here that's yours I didn't know what the fuck

Whitesnake was I don't think I enjoy the music of Whitesnake now to be honest but that's yours I didn't know what the fuck Whitesnake was I don't think I enjoy the music of Whitesnake now to be honest but that's what people used to do in the early 80s you'd have a denim jacket or a waistcoat and you'd buy badges of all your bands and you'd stick them onto your fucking waistcoat

and it was your walking advertisement for the bands that you like and this communicated something about your personality by the early 2000s in my day there was no badges but you went into the into the music shop fucking HMV

and you bought hoodies of your favourite bands so Nirvana, Slipknot Korn if you were lucky maybe Blink 182 or something that was all that was available and I remember making I don't think I earned money off it Or Lockheed, maybe Blink-182 or something. That was all that was available.

And I remember making... I don't think I earned money off it. I was doing it for fun. I was doing it for social acceptance and because I enjoyed it. But I would have had friends who were into more obscure heavy metal bands. Like Cradle of Filth or Cannibal Carps. And you couldn't buy these hoodies in Limerick. You had to send away for them. And I was really handy at painting and drawing.

And people knew me around Limerick. As being really good at art. So. What I used to do for some of my buddies. I remember one of my buddies wanted a. There was a band called Cradle of Filth. Who were like. Operatic heavy

metal, they would have been quite obscure at the time and my buddy wanted a black Cradle of Filth hoodie so what I did is I said to him go and buy a plain black Fruited Loom hoodie and give me a loan of your Cradle of Filth CD and I will paint the front cover onto that black hoodie using acrylic paint and then I'll iron it and all you gotta do is make sure you don't wash it with hot water and that'll stay on your hoodie

so I did and it took me about a month and I painted my buddy a cradle of filth hoodie and then more people would come to me and I painted someone a cannibal corpse hoodie I painted someone a metallica ride the lightning hoodie and I used to love doing it you see because I was mad into my art I used to love the opportunity for painting I used to love painting acrylic paint onto the fabric of hoodies because it was like a soft canvas.

And heavy metal album covers were fucking brilliant looking, so I enjoyed painting them, especially something like Cannibal Carps. And for myself, Cypress Hill had an album out called Stoned Raiders. And I was a huge Cypress Hill fan,

who were... Cypress Hill were just this incredible hip hop band. Unbelievable fucking rap group with real hard beats. And the rapper used to rap like someone was fingering his hole. Pure squeaky high pitched rapping over hard beats. And they used to rap about smoking hash. And I fucking loved Cypress Hill. And they came out with this album called Stoned Raiders

and I didn't like the album but the fucking album cover was amazing it was red and all it was was this skull that was wearing a crown and it looked amazing so I got myself a red hoodie and I painted that on that I wish I still fucking had it

and if anyone in Limerick has a hoodie that I painted that on that. I wish I still fucking had it. And if anyone in Limerick has a hoodie that I painted for him. 20 years ago. Let me know. Although they're probably gone. I did about 9 of them. And I did a Pink Floyd one for myself. I had a black metal hoodie.

On which I painted. The front cover of Pink Floyd's album Wish You Were Here. Which contained two businessmen shaking hands. but one of them was on fire. But the point I'm trying to make that was Spotify wrapped. That's what we were doing. Using our aesthetic choices in art and music and wearing them as a way to communicate something about

our personalities to other people. Subcultures existed. Skaters, meddlers, goths are the best one. Someone who was into a bit of everything

but definitely smoked hash. And they used to wear I don't know how you describe these jumpers. You associate them with Galway. They're called drug rugs. Actually I need to give a bit of time to the drug rug.

Because you will very rarely still see a drug rug mainly in Galway or possibly Sligo the proper name from is Baja they're from Mexico they're not unique to Ireland they're all over the world and it was a way of letting people know

that you smoke hash how do I describe a drug rug think of a hoodie there's no brand on it often they might be in the Jamaican colour or sometimes they were just grey or green it was more about the fabric. They were made of a very tough fabric.

This very tough kind of loose fitting hoodie. If someone did wear a drug rug. They kind of wore it all the time and nothing else. And when I was a teenager actually. So when I was a teenager. Because there's no fucking social media. And I'm mad about music. And the thing with my musical taste when I was a teenager actually. So when I was a teenager, because there's no fucking social media and I'm mad about music and the thing with my musical taste when I was a teenager, yes I

did listen to fucking metal because that's what everyone listened to at the time, so you listened to Korn and Slipknot, but I loved all music, I really, really loved all music like I do now, so I would have also liked Pinkfly, David Bowie, Cypress Hill, Ice Cube, The Prodigy. I liked fucking everything. So when I was walking around town as a teenager this is turning into another old man nostalgia podcast now. That's what's happened. I didn't intend this at all I just wanted a few brief words about Spotify Wrapped When I was a fucking teenager In the early 2000s lads There wasn't internet

There was but no one had it You couldn't download music You had to buy CDs Finding out about music was Really difficult This is why back then To wear your music As a personality was quite important

because we lived in a time of cultural scarcity. So if you knew bands that were cool or rare, that actually gave you a lot of social capital. You couldn't just Wikipedia shit. Like there's no longer any social capital going for knowing good music. That doesn't exist anymore because if you find one obscure band you just listen to it on spotify and the algorithm suggests other bands that sound the same so there's no longer cultural scarcity and there's no longer coolness or exclusivity

attached to knowing about music when i was was a fucking teenager, there was. And this is why hoodies were very, very important. And this is why people came to me to go, I can't get a cradle of filth hoodie. I can't get a cannibal corpse hoodie. These things don't exist, not in Ireland. Will you paint one for me? Because what this person wanted was,

everyone else has got their slipknot hoodie that you can buy in HMV or their Limp Bizkit hoodie but this person is like I've got a Cannibal Corpse hoodie and the other teenagers didn't know who Cannibal Corpse were and I remember the image I painted on this hoodie it was the front cover of a Cannibal Corpse album called Tomb of the Mutilated. The image on this album, it's horrendous when you think about it, but that's... It was a crucified, rotting corpse, disemboweled, and then another corpse crawling up to that corpse and licking that corpse's fanny. And the band was called Cannibal Corpse. And the lyrics were about that type of stuff.

Now I know that sounds offensive. But that was the point. Cannibal Corpse were gore metal. And it was so offensive. And so extreme. And so horrific. It was the musical equivalent of horror films. It was so horrific that it wasn't offensive. If you get me. It was the musical equivalent of horror films. It was so horrific that it wasn't offensive.

If you get me. It was comedy. So extreme that it's comedic. And it kind of developed as a response to censorship. In the early 80s in America. Under Reagan. There was a huge fucking push by conservatives to censor music. And it backlashed completely.

Because if music was offensive it got that little parental advisory sticker on it and if that was on the cd you're fucking buying it because you wanted to piss off your parents but when i would paint a cannibal corpse hoodie for someone and they were to wear it in limerick they wanted the other kids coming up to them going oh my god what the fuck what's that on your hoodie my god that's her that's horrific what band are they who are they and then they go cannibal corpse have you never heard of them check out their music and then that person got social capital they knew who this obscure metal band were now i know if you listen to metal

you're going to be saying cannibal carps aren't obscure I know they're not, they're huge but they would have been obscure in Limerick in the early 2000s when there was no internet and this is the shit too that would have gotten me kicked out of school because and I've spoken about this before in my podcast

where I spoke about my autism diagnosis I used to paint these hoodies in like fucking economics class and the teacher would come down I'd about my autism diagnosis. I used to paint these hoodies in, like, fucking economics class. And the teacher would come down. I'd have my headphones in, listening to Ice Cube, and painting a fucking two crucified, disemboweled corpses fellating each other onto a hoodie, and then getting in trouble for it,

until eventually they just started. By about 60, every teacher would just get out of the class and go to the art room so I would be I'd be banished from whatever class I was in and there was always a place for me at the back of the art room in my school, I had a sound

fucking art teacher called Christy McGrath who once, who was once driving his car and he saw someone abusing a donkey. He saw someone mistreating a donkey and hitting him. And he felt so sorry for the donkey that he pulled over and begged the man to stop beating the donkey. And the man said, I'll stop beating this donkey if you buy him off me for 20 quid so Christy bought the donkey off him for 20 quid but then had to

had to try and he shoved the donkey into the back of his fucking Fiat Punto and he had to drive to the he had to drive to the donkey sanctuary. With a full donkey in the back of his Fiat Punto. With fucking legs and tails and ears all over the front seat. And him pushed up to the steering wheel with a full, beaten, breathing donkey in the car.

Which is a very tragic story, but it also lets you know that he was a compassionate man, but at the same time an incredibly funny image. But he used to let me into the art room in school whenever I wanted, no questions asked, to sit at the back and paint. And a lot of the time I just wouldn't attend other classes and I'd just silently sit at the back of that art room while other classes were going on. I'd sit at the

back with my headphones on painting these hoodies and then all the other kids in the school they could be second years or first years they'd sometimes come to the back of the class and goes who's that weird at the back who's always painting weird shit on hoodies? And then they'd come to me and they'd go, wow, that's amazing. Then I'd feel good because I'm effectively failing my subjects, you know, so I feel like shit that I'm failing everything. But getting praise for being good at art was nice. But the teachers figured out by about fifth 50 or he's a very poorly behaved student he's really really disruptive but if you send him up to the art room and let him paint and listen to music he does not cause any trouble at all and now that kind of that kind of hurts me now because that was undiagnosed autism. No one asked, why is this highly disruptive student who doesn't show interest in other subjects,

why is he able to sit still for fucking hours on end so long as he's doing something he's passionate about? And why are students from other schools coming to ask him to paint hoodies for him because he's so good at it that's the hard part about getting an autism diagnosis in later life I have to go back to that period of my life which I'd moved past and view it now through

a lens of unfairness a lens of the system not working for me but having a hoodie with an obscure band on it that was your way of communicating things to other people about your identity and your taste and I used to search out the fuckers with drug rugs

because if someone was wearing a drug rug it didn't just mean they were into hash that was the main purpose of it if you're wearing a drug rug you really smoke lots of hash but for me what it meant was that person has an eclectic taste in music and for me what I used to say to myself if I was in town and I saw someone my own age with a drug rug I would say I bet you that

person listens to the prodigy or afix twin and I And I used to love fucking Aphex Twin. I used to adore, I still do. In my Spotify wrapped this year, Aphex Twin was my fourth most listened to artist next to Ryuichi Sakamoto and Gigi D'Agostini. But in the early 2000s in Limerick, there weren't a lot of people listening to Aphex Twin. Aphex Twin Aphex Twin is incredibly incredibly difficult electronic music

Aphex Twin is like the prodigy if they had to drive around in a Fiat Punto with a donkey in it and there weren't a lot of people listening to Aphex Twin in Limerick in the early 2000s even though since then I've found out Aphex Twin is from Cornwall over in England but he was actually born in Limerick by accident. His dad was working in I think the mines out in

Tipperary and his family happened to be in Limerick for a couple of months and Aphex Twin was born in Limerick. So I'd search out for people with drug rugs and I'd say do you like Aphex Twin, do you like The Prodigy and they'd go fuck yeah I like Aphex Twin and The Prodigy and then I'm talking to them and then we become friends and now I'm learning about new music. That was also the purpose of this shit. In school, in secondary school, there was only a handful of teenagers who were really into creativity and really into art and really into music and as I got older I wanted to be around these types of people because of common interests and you didn't have social media so you literally had to go into town and teenagers from different schools who didn't know each other would gather together based on

the clothes that they wore and that's how you found people who were into the same shit that you were into and I never wore a drug rug but the drug rug people were the ones that I would go to for music and from people who had drug rugs I found out about Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Primus, Jeff Buck Buckley Nine Inch Nails Deftones Not only music, films Someone with a drug rug gave me a copy of a DVD of a film called Gummo Directed by Harmony Corrine

Which is probably Probably the most important film in my life If you put a gun to my head and said what's my favourite film It'd be a toss up between Gummo And fucking Runner. Now don't go off and watch Gummo. Don't go off and watch Gummo. Don't sit down with your partner with some popcorn and decide to throw on some Gummo. It's a deeply deeply obscure film. For people for people who want to make things like if you look at any Rubber Bandits video there'd be a bit of gummo here and there but this is what was there before

Spotify wrapped a real conscious getting your hands dirty creative engagement with wearing your aesthetic interests on your body as a way to communicate and connect with other people in a landscape of cultural scarcity.

And I watched that slowly disappear over the years. As social media became a thing. Because now we still construct our personalities to communicate something about ourselves to other people. But now it's through social media. The death of hoodie culture and badge culture that ended with myspace because when myspace came about in 2005 the kids who would have been wearing slipknot hoodies or would have had would have been goths or would have been emos they used their myspace profile to communicate this about themselves or in the about me section

where you could just literally list off all the bands that you liked but that then devalued the their MySpace profile to communicate this about themselves or in the about me section we could just literally list off all the bands that you liked but that then devalued the social capital of knowing obscure bands because you could just see it on someone's MySpace profile and go onto LimeWare and download all the music and I suppose that's what makes me a bit queasy about Spotify wrapped. We didn't know our generations before me. We didn't know that's what we were doing. We didn't know we are effectively curating a personal brand as a way to communicate and find connection with other people.

We didn't fucking know that. We're just like, I like this music, so I'm going to wear this hoodie because I like this band and this is very important to me. That was the zeitgeist. The concept and idea of curating a personal brand. That's very easily understandable now because of how we interact with social media. But with Spotify Wrapped, it's just this fucking app is playing you an advert for yourself. That's what it feels like.

That little buzz I got when I opened my Spotify wrapped and it's like here's everything you've listened to the past year and it's playing me an advert about me for me. Then I screen grab it and I share it. It stripped away textures and colours and individuality and mystery from the whole process and made it quite corporate and sterilised. And everyone's Spotify rap looks the exact same. There's no individualism to it. Everyone has the exact same Spotify rap

except for the bands or podcasts that are mentioned. It's hard to talk about this shit without sounding like a grumpy old man who's just saying, oh shit was so much better back then. I will say with confidence, and this has nothing to do with being fucking old, like,

the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s were a legitimate golden age for the art of music that will be remembered like the Renaissance is remembered, without a fucking doubt. Because music is probably the oldest human art form that has existed for tens of thousands of years. And in those short decades, that was the first time ever that humans could record music and share it and learn and develop.

So there was an explosion creatively in music in those decades that didn't exist before that. And also cultural scarcity was a good thing. I don't think it's a good thing that I can go onto Spotify now, find some artist and explore their entire catalogue in a half an hour by clicking through it really quickly. That's not as rich or emotive or mindful an experience of buying a fucking CD that you spent 20 quid on and having to listen to that album for a month. And to not have access to bands so having that tension of knowing that there's all this music out there and I don't know what it is and I don't know where to find it but I know it's out there and I just have to find the right person based on the clothes that they're wearing and they might tell me my next favorite band like that's lovely but there's

also a bunch of positives that did happen when the internet came about if you were an artist or sensitive to art. Recording music. Making art. If you grew up in the fucking 90s or 2000s and you wanted to start a band or you wanted to make a film or make anything. It was very, very, very difficult. Equipment was incredibly expensive, it was hard to find and the information of how to practice your craft that was even harder to find and I was lucky as a teenager to be able to learn how to be a music producer, to be able to turn my computer at home

into a full recording studio and to learn the tools of the trade and to be able to illegally download software that I simply could not afford. But downloading that software illegally as a teenager and training allowed me to become a professional and now as a professional I pay for that same software. So it actually worked out quite fair in the end for everybody. It's why I'm able to make this podcast with professional audio like forget about that fucking 20 years ago not happening you either had access to a studio or you didn't same with making music videos so there's positives and negatives another positive is being able to not only make your creative work at a professional level but putting it out there yourself using social media. What did you have to do 20 years ago? You had to make a shit demo,

send that demo to a record label and hope that a human likes it out of the hundreds or thousands of tapes that they might receive that day. So if you did have talent or passion or a desire to create back then, you might never get a chance to express it. The ideas might just have to stay in your head and never get developed. But then the double-edged sword to that is everybody now, if they want to, if you have the talent and the will, without leaving your fucking bedroom, if you have the talent. And the will. Without leaving your fucking bedroom.

If you have a laptop. You can have a professionally produced album in a year. And release it yourself. And promote it yourself. But the likelihood of being able to earn a living from that. Or earn any money at all. Is practically impossible. Because of the likes of Spotify.

So what you don't get. is a label coming along and saying, you have talent, here's an advance, here's a bunch of money, and this money is for you to spend the next two years developing your craft. That's gone. And I think the era of, I think the era of the professional fucking musician is on the way out. Like in Ireland alone, there was a lot of musicians who had a buzz around them

before the pandemic. They were up and coming, but they haven't recovered from it. It's like we're waiting for the next up and coming fucking artists. Even more established artists can't afford their tours anymore. Like there's this band called Animal Collective.

Be a fairly big indie band. Not huge, but able to play. To three four hundred people. In most places around the world. And this year they literally just had to cancel their European tour. Because they're like. We can't fucking afford to do this anymore. And we can't make money from streaming.

Like a few weeks back. I interviewed a band. I'll play the interview for you at some point. But I interviewed. A group called play the interview for you at some point but I interviewed a group called Hudson Taylor who are two Irish lads two brothers and they got signed

they got signed with I think it was Hosea's label they released about four albums I think they've been going since 2010 and I interviewed them down in Wexford I think it was I interviewed them down in Wexford I think it was I interviewed them an hour before their last

ever gig on the stage where they were doing their last ever gig and what we spoke about was how it's impossible to earn a living as a fucking professional musician. You either become hosier or you don't but if you're there tipping along

even with a record label with moderate success and moderate success means getting played on the radio doing european tours doing american tours playing venues that are like three to five hundred that's that's successful that's fucking hard to do but i interviewed this band hudson taylor and they're both now like 30 and they're like yeah we have to quit we have to quit and this is going to be our last ever gig tonight because we're 30 fucking years of age and we've just looked at what we've done with our 20s and it was a lot of fun but now we're fucking 30 and we don't have any money and we're in debt. Which is.

That's exactly where I fucking was. With the rubber bandits. And my music career. But out of sheer luck. I happened to start this podcast. And start writing books. But that's. That's a freak situation.

That's. Luck. Just time and place. I think as the decades go on. Music is going to become mostly just a hobby it'd be like five-a-side soccer people will still make music because if if you're creative and the music is in you you can't fucking stop people will still do it but i think we're gonna start seeing emerging artists literally not even entertaining the idea of making your own music being a career. Like the folk music of the pre-recording era.

People making music for the sake of making music for whoever wants to listen. That's part of the reason as well. Behind my Twitch stream. That I've been doing for the past two years. Even though I'm on a break now. Until the new year. But. I have music in me. Like I'm a fucking musician.

I'm a producer. I fucking love making music. And I don't think I'll ever stop. But when I go on to Twitch. And I literally. Make music on the spot to the events of a video game I'm literally getting it out of my system I'm getting the music out of my system in a short allotted space of time but I don't think I could ever go back to spending months producing one track

like a rubber bandit song like Dad's Best Friend could have taken me two months to make every day but I don't think I could go back to that I couldn't go back to the inevitable disappointment of spending ages on one song

and then spending a lot of money on a video then doing a lot of gigs just to pay back that investment that's tough and it's a fucking young person's game as well it's a lot easier in your 20s so financially support the musicians that you like if you're consuming their music usually the best way to do that is buy their album off somewhere like bandcamp or buy march directly from their website because they're not making money from Spotify streams and

touring is very expensive. This is a good time for me to do my ocarina pause. I don't have the ocarina but I have a set of keys. I'm going to jingle a set of keys. Be nice and friendly to your dog's ears. And when I jingle these you're going to hear a digitally inserted advert.

And when I jingle these, you're going to hear a digitally inserted advert. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It, is to be the mother. Mother of what?

Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. What's not real? Who said that?

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of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca That was the key jingling pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast if you enjoy this podcast if it gives you solace entertainment distraction whatever it

does please consider supporting the podcast directly via the patreon page this podcast is my full-time job this is what i do for a living it's how i pay my bills only because this podcast is directly listener funded am i able to do the podcast every single week all i'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it if you met me in real life would you buy me a coffee would you buy me a pint if the answer is yes well you can via the Patreon page. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast.

I get to earn a living. Also, it keeps the podcast independent. I'm not beholden to advertisers. No advertiser comes in and fucks up my content or tells me what to talk about or pushes me towards certain topics just so i'll get fucking listens i don't have to worry about that each week i want to talk about whatever i'm passionate about that week for whoever wants to listen also share the share the podcast, all that shit. And follow me on Instagram, actually, if you're on Instagram.

Twitter's gone to shit since Elon Musk took over. And I don't have high hopes for it. I think Twitter is going to go the way of Facebook. I think it's just going to become a place where you don't want to be. That's what happens with... I've seen all the fucking social media sites fall apart it never just ends it just slowly becomes a place where you don't want to be I saw it with Bebo I saw it with Myspace I saw it with Facebook one day you realize you haven't checked your account in a month and Twitter is going that way so if you're

on Instagram follow me on Instagram. Blind by Ball Club. My account has a blue tick. So you know it's me. I'm not doing any gigs until next year. So here are some gigs that I have coming up. If you fancy. Getting tickets for fucking Christmas presents or something. In.

Let me look at my dates here. When's my first gig? February. 2023. I'm in Killarney on the 3rd in the Eyeneck I'm in the Cork Opera House on the 15th of February oh in March I'm in Belfast, really fucking

looking forward to Belfast, I love gigging in Belfast, on the 4th of March I'm at the Waterfront in Belfast, then Dublin, 22nd and 24th. I'm in Vicar Street. April 1st.

I'm in. TLT. In Drogheda. Which is rescheduled. And then. Where am I? I'm in Canada. I just announced my Canadian dates.

I'm in. Toronto. In the Opera House. On the 26th of April. In Vancouver. on the 26th of April and Vancouver on the 28th of April but I don't think that's on sale yet and that's it I had a fucking hot take planned this week and all

I didn't plan on spending the first 30 minutes dissecting who I think Spotify rapped is a bad idea I do want to give you an update on my cats. You're always asking about my two fucking cats and I haven't spoken about them in so long. My two cats, Nappertandy and Silken Thomas, they're fantastic.

They're both doing really well. Nappertandy was sick last year. Now she's okay. They're brother and sister. They're two very happy little white cats. I recently patched up their house with duct tape, because the weather is getting really cold, and their house now is about four or five years old.

It's a little kennel made out of wood, but I checked around it to see was there any openings, and there was, so I've then covered with duct tape. The two of them go in and they cuddle with each other and they keep each other warm and I love these two cats because they humble me they humble me like all they want is food and warmth and each other's company. And that's it. Once they have that. They're happy. Also. Silken Thomas.

As you know. Is deaf. And most likely. Blind. I don't know. He can see. His. His pupils.

Are continually dilated. He always has like snake eyes. Even when it's dark or bright. pupils don't change and you know from cats their pupils change with the light his doesn't he just has snake eyes and he can't hear and if he was on his own without any assistance i don't think he'd survive but his sister nappandi she minds him, she bosses him around but she minds him and she's the one that fights other cats when they come into their territory

she minds him so I'm always more concerned about her than him because she can survive on her own but he can't recently one of them killed a rat I reckon it was Nap or Tandy

because I can't see Silk and Thomas killing any rats but they killed a rat recently and I found the body of the rat I'd say about two weeks into decomposition so I couldn't move it I couldn't move the rat if it was a fresh dead rat I'd pick it up with a

shovel and fuck it into the bin, but I found the rat when it was, when its ribs were exposed, so I've made the decision to, I'm just going to leave the rat there, I'm just going to leave it there and let nature sort it out, it doesn't smell because it's gone past that point. But every day when I feed the two cats, I walk over to the corpse of the dead rat. And I just look at it and I notice how it changes each day. I notice the different insects that are having a crack off it. And I use it as a mindful opportunity to reflect on my own mortality.

I know again this sounds fucking mental. But that's what I do. I can't move it. It's gone too messy to move. It's not fucking with me. It doesn't bother me. I'm going to leave the rat. Rat.

I want to leave it until nature eradicates it until whatever happens I'm looking forward to when its bones are there in fucking May and they get bleached by the sun and this isn't macabre it's not a gore thing i don't enjoy looking at a dead rat i don't want to look at the dead rat i don't want to i don't want to look at this rat decomposing because it frightens me and it frightens me because it reminds me that i'm that rat i like to think of myself as having an identity and a personality and that i can be distilled down to a Spotify wrapped playlist but ultimately I'm that fucking rat and one day I'm gonna die

and the earth won't give a shit about me and slugs will eat my testicles and a crow will fly off one of my ribs so every day after I feed my two cats after I give them sustenance and life and meaning, I walk over to the decaying corpse of the dead rat and I mindfully check with my breathing and I spend a little moment looking at it, noticing the desire to look away

and investigating those feelings of my own mortality that come up in me and I use it to humble myself and to remind myself that ultimately as long as I have my fucking health and I can eat everything's okay because most of what causes me distress and unhappiness and pain in my life

it has to do with my sense of self and identity feeling threatened not feeling like a good enough person not feeling like I'm as successful as I should be if I only worked harder. Having a need for other people to approve of me. Needing a stranger on the internet to like me in order for me to feel good about myself. Experiencing pain because I'm worried about what other people think of me. Experiencing pain because I'm worrying about the future or worrying about the past. Taking a mindful moment to stare at the decaying corpse of a dead rat while listening to a deaf and blind cat crunching on whiskers behind me really helps me to appreciate what actually matters and to say to myself I'm gonna to be that fucking dead rat one day

I'm going to be in an animate bag of fucking bones and skin getting eaten up by worms and slugs and I have a responsibility to make the most of the time that I'm healthy and breathing and alive and to be placing too much currency on things like my achievements or what other people think of me to be placing too much time in these things I'm wasting the short amount of time that I have here and when

it comes to me being a fucking bag of bones getting eaten by slugs none of that shit matters at all and also the two cats didn't eat the rat, they left it there. And cats leave rats for the humans that feed them as a gift. Now as rotten as that is, from Nappertandy and Silken Thomas' point of view, they've given me a gift that's a thank you for sheltering them, for feeding them. That's their gift. So I can either say it to myself stupid fucking cats think i want a dead rat go up and rob a playstation 5 out of smiths for me instead

instead of rejecting their gift of a dead rat i respectfully leave it there and use it as an opportunity for meditative reflection on my own mortality. And I'm not touching it. I'm not fucking with it. I'm not going too close to it. I'm just noticing it. And mainly, it's not about the rat. It's about sitting with the uncomfortable feelings that the decaying rat brings up in me. And those feelings are my fear of my own mortality. And what inspired me to do that is there's a buddhist practice where in parts of tibet where they don't bury people in tibet because there isn't enough soil or the soil might be too cold they do tibetan sky burials so when a person dies they leave the body on a mountain and then vultures come down and eat the person's

dead body and scatter the bones all over a valley and then young buddhist monks meditate amongst the bones and the rotting corpses of people as a way to confront the truth of mortality also what inspired me was the poor claire's convent cemetery in ishia in in Italy which is a little island in Italy right and they have this monastery there and it's the monastery of an order of nuns known as the Poor Clares

and what these nuns used to do, they were Catholic they had this weird tomb with all these thrones that look like toilets. So imagine you walk into this crypt and it's a circular room

but there's all these thrones and they have like a hole like a toilet. And what the nuns used to do is when one of the nuns died they'd leave the nun's body like sitting on this throne to decompose and then other nuns would just go there and pray all day long while their fucking colleagues rotted all around them and they did this for the same reason that the buddhist did it to be present around actual death and decomposition as

a way to appreciate the time that you have right now mindfully and to confront your and sit with your fear of fucking your own mortality but however so i did notice the main insects that are eating the rat are slugs right and I noticed a good few fucking slugs going over having a munch on the rat now I have a bit of a slug problem in my back garden I do have a slug problem

and the same slugs the same family of slugs that are helping the rat to decompose they also steal food, out of my two cats dishes, so when I leave out, dry food for my cats, because they're wild,

they don't like, eat all their food at once, and I think as well they get taxed, by other cats in the neighbourhood, my two feral cats, if I give them a full fucking bowl of dry food they'll always leave some and i think they leave it for other cats that they know that come into their territory that are allowed and they have a little munch so i think my cats are being charitable to other cats but at night time the slugs come along and all night the slugs finish off the

cat's fucking bowl every fucking night and I found out there's a very rare disease that can affect cats and this disease is known as rat worm lung disease and it's spread by slugs who are around rats so there's this parasite called a rat lungworm who lives in rats and slugs can catch this parasite from rats and give it to cats so I now can't have

all these slugs eating my cat's fucking food so the main thing I've been trying to do the past few weeks is I've been trying to

elevate the cat's dishes so that the slugs can't get at him. So I've made like a little elevated platform out of copper wire because slugs won't climb copper. So that's actually been working. This small little plinth I made out of copper wire. I put the cat's two dishes on that so they're now able to eat from their dishes. I put the cat's two dishes on that so they're now able to eat from their dishes but the slugs can't climb up and eat their food and potentially give them rat warm lung disease. So that's what I've been doing with my life. But also I found a beautiful poem about a white cat which was written in the 9th century and it's one of the oldest poems that's written in Old Irish.

It was written by an Irish monk called Sedulius Scotus. I don't know his name in Irish, that sounds like a Latin name. But he was an Irish missionary monk around the year 850 or 860. And he fled Ireland because the Vikings were attacking on the monastery so he fled Ireland to go to Europe as a Christian missionary and to work as a monk in the 8th century which would have been like being an artist or an academic so this monk anyway artist or an academic. So this monk anyway, Sedulius Scotus, he ended up in an abbey in Germany called Reichenau Abbey and he would have spent his day writing, making illuminated manuscripts, translating the gospels into Latin. The 8th century would have been after the collapse

of the Roman Empire and Irish monks and Irish monasteries were very, very important when it came to preserving literature, preserving education, ideas. Irish monasteries with Irish monks dotted around Northern Europe and also the Islamic Caliphate of Spain in the 800s would have been very, very important centres of education. And there's this book called the Reichenau Primer, which I was reading about by researching this podcast. And it's mostly written in Greek and Latin and bits of German.

But in amongst the margins, there's poems written in Old old Irish and this is actually where we get a lot of old Irish from a lot of old Irish is found in these ancient books that we find all over Europe books that could be from fucking Italy France Belgium that are like nearly a thousand years old the books are written in Latin but because the people writing them were mostly Irish monks they would write in their own tongue in the margins as little notes or little jokes just just for themselves but in this fucking book anyway this 9th century book from Germany there's a beautiful little poem written in Irish about a white cat and the name of this poem

is called the Panger Barn and they believe it's written by this Irish fucking monk Sedulius Scotus and what I love about this poem is so this monk obviously had a little pet cat and Panger was the cat's name.

So he named the cat Panger. And Bon is the Irish for white. So this was obviously a little white cat that he had. And while he was focused on his work. Writing as a solitary monk. His best friend was this little white cat. And he wrote a poem for the cat. In the fucking.

In 840 and it's one of the earliest examples of old Irish that we have so I'm gonna read for you a translation of Panger Bonn I was gonna read for you Seamus Heaney's translation but there's another translation by a fella called Robin Fowler and it's a bit easier to understand. With book and pen. Panger bears me no ill will. He too plies his simple skill. Tis a merry task to see. At our tasks how glad are we. When at home we sit and find. Entertainment to our mind. Often times a mouse will stray.

In the hero panger's way. Often times my keen thoughts set. takes a meaning in its net. Against the wall he sets his eye, full and fierce and sharp and sly. Against the wall of knowledge, I let my little wisdom try. When a mouse darts from its den, oh how glad is panger then. Oh what gladness do I prove prove when i solve the doubts i love so in peace our task we ply pangor bond my cat and i in our arts we find our bliss i have mine and he has his practice every day has made pangor perfect in his trade

I get wisdom day and night turning darkness into light so that's a little poem that was written in like 850 probably which is what 1200 years ago written by an Irish monk

who's an academic and a scribe in some monastery in Germany and he has his little pet white cat and it's a poem for the cat and it's it's the earliest example of old Irish we have and what I adore about the poem is it's the monk comparing what the cat does to what he does, so the monk is like Panger Bon, Panger is the cat and Bon is the colour white, so my little white cat, he wants to catch rats all day and catch mice and he's a fucking expert at it and all this little cat cares about is catching these mice and keeping me safe from the fucking mice that's his job and what I do all day is I write these scripts and I try to understand the knowledge of the

gospels and I try to translate and I wait for inspiration and I'm a poet and I wait for the inspiration to write my poems what he's saying is that him and the cat are the same. The cat's vocation is catching rats and he's good at it and he gets better every single day and it's his vocation and he focuses on it and the monk is the exact same except he's not catching rats he's catching inspiration. He's studying all day long. He's writing all day long. Just looking for that spark. The joy of creativity. And loving his vocation.

And he's noticing a parallel between the two things. And I just fucking love that. I love the compassion of it. I love the simplicity of it. Like I've all the time in the world for Irish mythology and stories of great battles and magical fish but

what is it I love about that poem this is a 1200 year old poem and I'm doing the same shit today with my fucking little white cat 1200 years later my cats humble me. My cats remind me of what's important. What the poet is saying is focus on the fucking work. Focus on what you love doing. Don't be worrying about what people are thinking about you.

Don't even be worrying about what people think of your work. Look at your little cat, Pangor Bon. What does he do all day? He catches his fucking rat. That's his thing. That's all he wants to do. He likes getting better at it. The only person he's competing with is himself. Be like the cat.

Learn from the cat. It's a poem about meaning and purpose. The cat has a singular meaning and purpose. To be happy through fucking catching rats. And the monk, the poet, the scribe, same thing. He has a singular meaning and purpose.

What you're meant to be doing, write your poems, do your research, enjoy your fucking work. Nothing else matters. You'll be dead one day. So it was a real pleasure for me to find that fucking poem to find so much truth in something that's so old right i'll catch you next week that was a bit of a rambler that was a rambling podcast i hadn't intended to be a rambling podcast but sometimes if i have a hot take planned

i like to follow the ramble I follow where my heart takes me in the meantime rub a dog feed a cat stare at a dead rat dog bless You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series.

This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder. April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall.

For tickets, visit TSO.ca. Thank you.