The Blindboy Podcast - Boola Bus

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

I answer loads of yere questions. Such as, How to deal with feeling insignificant in the universe, and overcoming creative block. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

God bless you hessian drenched confession kestrels. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. How are you? Are you having a charming day, a charming morning? If you're a brand new listener, maybe go back to one of the earlier podcasts. There's lots, lots of earlier podcasts. On Spotify I have a playlist of my favourite blind buy podcasts get a listen to those to acquaint yourself with the

flavour of this environment to the regular listeners what's the crack we are still in the midst of a global pandemic I don't think it's going anywhere for a long time em it's grand I'm dealing with it I'm't think it's going anywhere for a long time.

It's grand. I'm dealing with it. I'm dealing with it. What is it now? It's nearly six months. Six months now of dealing with a global pandemic. So it's the goblin of strange and uncertain times. But I think we're no longer in the strange and uncertain times.

It's now feeling normal. I'm seeing more and more people wearing masks in the shops. From August 10th, I believe, in Ireland, masks in shops are now mandatory. And we're just getting used to it. We're getting used to it. And the phrase they use is the new normal. It's becoming normal. I can't really remember what it was like before coronavirus. I did a podcast a few weeks back where I analysed our coronavirus response within the stages of grief.

Because it is grief. Grief is when you lose something and it's unexpected and I do think we're in the stage of acceptance now I think we're accepting the big one to accept is that

it looks like coronavirus is probably a couple of years Probably a couple of years. Probably a couple of years of it being a thing. Even if vaccinations were to happen next month. It still takes like a year for that to be effective on a huge population. But we're all adjusting and changing and coping. To the restrictions of it.

And it's not as scary anymore it's becoming normal and manageable so it's no longer this big goblin of strange and uncertain times it's just it's like someone in the room just doing loads of bad farts

all the time and you just have to go I'm in a waiting room and that person over there has done eight farts and success successively these eight farts are an assault on my olfactory systems but then you kind of go look fuck it man I'm stuck in this waiting room. This person over there has done several farts. The air is thick with the smog of fart.

It's... I'm making it worse for myself by concentrating on the smell of fart in the air. I'm... My resistance to the farts is what's making me upset. If I leave the waiting room, then I lose my place. so we can't have that but if i obsess obsess continually about the farts in the air

then i'm just making it worse for myself so i need to accept that the air smells like farts right now and through that acceptance i can go back to enjoying my magazine while i'm in the waiting room and i'll just deal with it there's farts in the air what can i do nothing out of my control so where i am at the moment with the goblin estranged in uncertain times what i'm wondering what i'm wondering is there's the optimist in me that says, okay, what coronavirus is doing is that it's a type of, it's a forced asceticism. Asceticism is a spiritual practice where you deliberately deny yourself sensational pleasures. It's present in a lot of major religions.

Muslims fast during Ramadan. Catholics don't masturbate. Buddha starved himself. Buddhist monks don't eat. They try and eat bland food. Kellogg's cornflakes were invented by Protestants as a way to stop wanking. That's a fact

I can do a full podcast on that at some point but like asceticism, the denying of physical pleasures to attain a spiritual understanding is a thing I don't agree with

in its extremity but I think asceticism is a good thing. Look, I do it. I've spoken about it before. I'll get up in the morning early and run for 10 kilometers in the rain because I can face anything in my day

if I've just ran 10 kilometers in the rain. It sounds like something that's not pleasurable but in a spiritual way it actually is pleasurable and then coming home home and having a shower that's asceticism um so i'm thinking right okay we've been forced this asceticism has been forced upon us we can't socialize we can't go on holidays you can't shake someone's hand or hug them when you meet them you can't go to a pub go to a smoking area meet someone you haven't met in ages and both of you be six points deep essentially spitting into each other's faces as you chat and sharing a cigarette the concept of that right now sounds absurd but that's how things were

and there was that intimacy was lovely but that's gone now so my hope is that when all this lifts we'll now all have this new spiritual here and now appreciation for the little things because coronavirus has removed the little things. But then I'm thinking. What if this becomes so normal. That when restrictions are fully lifted. And the powers that be say. We have herd immunity.

Coronavirus is gone. Will we be able. To step back out into normal life. Completely. I don't think we will I don't know I don't know is this a 9-11 style event like

I don't remember what going to airports was like before 9-11 because I was too young but I know you could do whatever the fuck you wanted in an airport in the 90s lads you could do whatever you wanted if your friend was flying to america you could walk through security with him and security wasn't even security a man from ennis came up and smelled you for to make sure your clothes weren't doused in petrol that was it and you could walk right up to the

gate and see the yeah fuck it sure my dad worked in an airport when I was a kid on Sundays I'd be brought to the airport to look at the airplanes no security no nothing and then 9-11 happened and it changed everything

and now you can't bring a water bottle on a plane and that's the inconvenient new normality so maybe it'll be like that maybe it'll be like that maybe and it could be a good thing maybe after coronavirus you'll still see people wearing face masks you'll still see people washing their hands and being aware of social distance could be a good thing all around i tell you what there'll be no flus this this winter there'll be no flus there'll be no one getting sore throats so what have i been doing fuck all all right i've been staying in my house i've been visiting the shop once a week going for my runs i'm back at the gym i go to the shop once a week. Going for my runs.

I'm back at the gym. I go to the gym twice a week. Engaging once more in the intense orgasmic pump of lifting heavy weights. Which I adore. It releases some very special brain chemicals. And I'm so grateful to be back. And being able to be in the gym. And it's safe as well. gym is safe there's no one

there so i'm grateful for that i've been live streaming definitely my favorite thing to come out of this pandemic for me i love doing live gigs i miss live gigs i miss the communal aspect of my job the pressure of being on stage the sense of connectivity that I have with a room full of people when I'm doing a live podcast. Doing live streaming, I have that feeling again. I'm on live stream performing to an audience of between 500 and 1,000 people each night. Just making songs or chatting. And either being creative or talking to people and it's really fun i'm so glad i've found that twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast if you want

to see me doing it wednesday thursday friday for sure i think i'm going to start at 8 30 this week 8 30 p.30pm Irish time. And I do Friday and Saturday. Sorry I do Saturday and Sunday as well. But I don't tie myself down to that. Just in case I do a little bit of cans on a Friday night. I don't want to be streaming with a hangover. So come along and enjoy that.

You can chat to me. You can chat to me live. If I'm writing songs. You can literally say to me blind boy write a song about Colonel Gaddafi getting his ear pierced

and I'll write it live and it's fun so this week's podcast I'm going to do a question answering podcast I had a steaming hot take last week I was very happy with last week's podcast

investigating the history of Irish influence on pop music I've had a lot of hot takes recently and what I haven't done is a question answering podcast where I get tons of fucking DMs from me on Instagram

on fucking on Twitter on Patreon and i get lots of questions so i keep these questions and i answer them when i can every so often on a podcast and every time i do it i make the promise i'm gonna answer as many as possible and i end up answering fucking two but i'm really gonna try and answer as many as possible this week all right so I got a good question here from Ava and she asked before I answer this question actually just a little a little heads up a content warning that this is about violence towards women and sexual assault but i won't i'm not going to speak about anything in with a kind of an irresponsible level of detail that it might be triggering for some

people's trauma i'm going to speak about it in a in a responsible way and still if you don't want to hear it at all just fast forward 20 20 minutes. Alright, about 20 minutes. So Avo asks, Well blind boy, Do you have a hot take on how women are always urged and taught to do things to protect themselves? For example, carry car keys between their fingers, don't sit in your car in public places, don't wear revealing clothes, etc.

Instead of urging and teaching men that they shouldn't attack women and the many things women have to do for their own safety because rape culture is so heavily embedded into our society and victim blaming is extremely common. It's not exactly a question more of a topic of conversation but I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm currently reading your book and I'm a podcast listener I've been following your work from when I was far too young and I'm a fan of everything you've done from Rubber Bandits to the BBC documentary that's fucking gas

I've been following your work from when I was far too young that's gas because Ava is obviously now an adult who's been looking at Rubber Bandits shit since she was fucking eight and now as an adult is going an adult who's been looking at rubber bandit shit since she was fucking eight and now as an adult is going I shouldn't have been

looking at this I shouldn't have been watching this but I was and now here I am em so I've I've dealt with this topic on one of my very earliest podcasts I can't remember the name of it it was I did one where

I tackled kind of I suppose toxic masculinity and i spoke about consent and misogyny and how i was raised how how i was raised as a man in a misogynistic culture to benefit from misogyny and how i was raised to be a misogynist as such with misogynistic views and how I've had to challenge all them and relearn things as I get older and become an adult one thing so one of the questions there like I was well into my fucking 20s

late 20s nearly before I started to realise. The absolute freedom that I enjoy. As a man. When I'm. Just going for a run. When I go for a run. I'm not.

I'm never ever thinking about. Is someone going to attack me. It just doesn't enter my head it's when i was a teenager and when you're when you're a teenager there's groups of lads who go around in gangs and they want to rob your phone and they want to rob your money and i used to worry about that when i was a teenager but then once you get to an adult, being an adult man, the idea of being attacked is, you'd think about it the same way you'd think about,

will I get hit by a car? But with women, it has to be a continual, non-stop awareness. How must I, instead of enjoying the run that I'm going to go on, or I always get asked loads to, whenever I speak about travelling, because I go to Spain on my own to write, and I always get women in my DMs asking me, blind boy when you spoke about going to Spain there on your own for three weeks, that's something I would love to do but I just can't because it's just not safe I don't feel it's safe to do and it always gets me thinking about rather than having a society where the onus is on women to protect themselves that what do you do instead can we have a society where men feel greater responsibility to not attack um now one thing i said back there because it's something i was pulled up on before when i say that as a man i don't fear being attacked or don't fear being sexually assaulted. And someone points out that like men do get sexually assaulted.

Men do get attacked. It's true. That's a fact and I'm not denying those experiences. Or denying anyone's pain around that. All I'm saying is that legitimately it's not really something I think about or I've ever had to think about to be honest it doesn't come into my

awareness nor have I ever needed it or felt physically threatened in a situation what I think back to is that And what I think back to is that the. So I was taught from a very, very young age, right? And a lot of other lads are taught from a very young age to not be physically violent with girls.

Okay. Don't hit girls. And most lads are taught this, and what I'm, what it's caused me to reflect on, is, the way in which it was taught to me, was actually quite fucking toxic,

right, and I think this might be part of the problem, it's just one aspect, one aspect, it's just one aspect one aspect it's just something I want I want to reflect on so when I was like three three or four when you're when you're a toddler we'll say when you're a toddler and you're able to walk and when you're a toddler and you're in play school and you act out and you hit other kids because that's what toddlers do if the other kid

if you're a young boy and the other kid that you hit happens to be a fucking girl you're immediately like whoever the adult around is you're chastised immediately and you're very quickly told no no no you don't hit the girl but the thing is the way

that it was told to me and the way that it's told to other lads it was never explained to me as a little boy don't hit that girl because it's wrong to hit another person it was sold to me as no no no you're a big strong man you're a big strong man and you girls are weak and you mustn't hit this girl because if you hit her you could knock her stone dead

now the thing is I'm three now if you remember being three or even as far up as six or seven girls would kick your fucking head in. When I was six, girls were three foot taller than me and were bigger and stronger. And as a young boy, I would have gotten my fucking head kicked in by girls in the schoolyard. They were bigger and stronger it was that simple but yet i was being told no no you must not hit the girl in particular because you're

a big strong man you're a big strong man and you have this potential force and power and you end up then it's like the adult tells you that you have this sword. It's like you've got this sword like Excalibur and this sword is your masculinity that you must, it's chivalry. It's not about basic human respect. instead of it being this girl or this boy is a separate human being and this separate human being has rights and they have a right to exist in this schoolyard without their physical safety being in danger right that's the healthy thing to say to someone you don't hit other people because other people in a civilized society have a right to exist and have a right to piss you off without their physical safety being put in danger that's not what's said to young boys that's not what was said to me what was said to me was nothing about

the other person's boundaries nothing about the other person's humanity nothing about the other person's rights it was she is a weak little girl and you're a big strong man and then it's seen as shameful then if a lad what where where that kind of goes then as an adult right and you'll see this in that kind of goes then as an adult right and you'll see this in Facebook comments if you see an article

on the Irish Times or the Journal.ie about domestic abuse most men will get very angry in the comments and most men will say things like what a fucking scumbag I'll kick his the comments and most men will say things like what a fucking scumbag

I'll kick his head in and the men appear to be rallying behind in support of the woman who's been domestically abused and they appear to be shaming the man who's the abuser and wishing retribution upon him and from a distance that can look like

a positive thing it's like okay all these lads get it they get it what's been done here is a bad thing and domestic abuse is bad but i think those adult men with that anger they're not angry for the right reasons they're angry because the man broke the code of chivalry that we've been told since the age of three and that has actually nothing to do with respecting another person's boundaries or another person's right to live safely what they've done is you've been given the secret

excalibur sword of masculinity and you made a promise when you were three to never use this sword against weak women instead you must use it to defend their honor and you you you use the magic sword wrong and they're chastising him for that it's not about respect it's not about boundaries it's not about human rights it's not about dignity it's getting angry for the wrong reasons and that then is toxic

and then when it comes to something like rape or sexual assault you end up with grown men who categorise sexual assault into I don't want to say what they'd call good and bad it's

a lot of men in order to get angry about hearing about a sexual assault and a rape they then need to know they need to know or find out well did he beat her as well do you get me it's not about a person's uh right human right to consent to consent to have boundaries around their sexuality it's not about the person's right to to say to consent to have boundaries around their sexuality it's not about the person's right to to say i consent to this i don't consent to that what it becomes about is well which type of sexual assault was it was it the one where he physically also beat her and then when that happens you'll get most men getting really angry going, that fucking bastard, he beat her up.

And we're also raised with this idea of... A rapist or a person who... A rapist is like a boogeyman that hides down dark alleyways and commits acts of physical violence as well as sexual violence and that's what we're raised with we are raised with don't hit girls because girls are really weak and you must protect them and who all right who am i protecting them from the creepy boogeyman rapist in a dark trench coat who lives down an alleyway and jumps out

and catches weak women and beats them up and then forces sex on them and that's all we're kind of told regarding sexual assault so we're given this incredibly narrow unrealistic

vision of what is and isn't a rapist okay and when something then arises in the media where someone is saying that they were raped or sexually assaulted and when it doesn't then fit into this unrealistic narrow definition of what men are told, you get men not believing. If the situation is a woman coming forward saying, I was at a house party and I went into bed with this fella and then he raped me. You get lads not believing. They're going, no, you asked for it. You asked for that. What were you wearing?

Why did you go into bed? All these questions. Absolutely ridiculous, unrealistic questions. Now, if you said to the same lads, okay, you get into a taxi and you say to the taxi, drive me home. And then instead, the taxi driver drives you to Dublin airport and charges you 300 quid

how would these men feel about that well that's completely fucking wrong but you got into the taxi buddy yeah but I told him I wanted to go home I didn't say I wanted to go to Dublin airport they'd understand it very quickly then but when it comes to having to think

that someone who sexually assaults is someone who looks like them someone who looks like your dad your brother your neighbor we're not taught that we're taught that about the boogeyman the unrealistic dirty boogeyman, like a type of, auger like troll, who, uses physical violence, to attack women, breaks the rule,

of chivalry, and uses physical violence, but if it doesn't fit within that, then, they're questioning, whether the woman is telling the truth or not, and that right there, is straight up,

misogynistic mythology that young boys are taught that has nothing to do with human rights consent boundaries it has to do with fluffing the male ego and justifying what is considered appropriate behavior for a young boy if a young boy is physically aggressive we're not chastised we're kind of it's it's it's like if you go to if a young fella hits a girl in the schoolyard or hits another lad but mainly when they hit a girl the adult says no no no i know you're a young strong little boy and this is what you do boys will be boys but you must understand this great power you have you have to use it for good

and it's it's rewarded when i remember it i remember i it was it was actually a it was a female teacher telling me it was if it wasn't me it was one of the lads I was with or something I'm very very young now I'm talking play school and saying you're big strong lads you're big strong man now you can't go around hitting girls and you don't feel as if you're being given out to you don't feel as if you've just been told you've done something bad you feel like you're getting a compliment it's a real strange back it stops you hitting girls

but it doesn't stop you hitting girls for the right reason it also the other lads then will police other lads' behaviour. So if, by the age of six or seven, if you're the lad on the schoolyard who's hitting girls, the other lads will beat you up because you've broken the rule. Now what happens if, what happens if the young boy gets into an argument with a little girl and instead of hitting her, he gets upset and he starts crying.

Then you feel like you're in trouble. Then the teacher comes over. And says what are you crying for? That's what little girls do. That's wrong. Fuck that. Don't be crying. You're a big strong man.

I thought you were a big strong man. Big strong little boys don't. You don't cry. What you do is you have a magical sword and you have to keep it sheathed at all times and only use it to slay the boogeyman dragon but don't be crying, what use are you

when you're crying and again your your outlets of emotional expression are then confined to certain types of anger. And you end up with,

that's how adult men end up punching walls because tears are removed from our emotional vocabulary at quite a young age. I can nearly measure, I measure my adulthood if I think back

you know when you're 10 and you're keeping tabs on the last time you cried 10 years of age and you're going I cried last March because my ma wouldn't let me play the Nintendo and I cried last March. But I've done three months now with no crying. And I remember measuring my sense of how old and mature and manly I am by how much I couldn't cry. Or didn't cry.

And then you get to 14, 15 and maybe something makes you cry once a year. And then in my late teens my father died suddenly and I didn't cry at all I couldn't cry the biggest issue I had around my grief was the sole issue around my grief my father dying suddenly was being unable to cry I couldn't cry I felt numb and wondering whether that was okay or not or whether i should cry and you're going why the fuck do you think what's crying is a human thing that's what happens when you're sad and i'm spending all my time stressing about is it okay to cry now am i bad because i'm not crying am i a bad person because I can't cry instead of going you've been told

you're not supposed to cry since you're three because you're a big strong man who doesn't hit girls so what are you crying for really fucked up and then just taking it back to the schoolyard violence when I was six or seven no no younger maybe four or five and I remember being on a slide in a playground that was near my gaff and I was at it was a very big slide and I was always kind of scared of this slide it was a slide that had been put in the 1970s and 1970s playgrounds were no joke like Jesus Christ when I think back to the playground that was near my gaff. I saw my friend nearly split his head open because he fell off the fucking slide. It was 13, 14, 15 feet in the air.

Just way too big for kids. But this is how they built slides in the 70s. And I would have been playing on this in the 90s before it was removed. Removed in the very early 90s. But anyway, I was at the top of this slide. I was kind of scared of going down it because it was 12 times my height. This was a 13, 14 foot slide.

And while I was on the top of this slide, this older girl who I didn't know was behind me. And she wants to go down the slide too. And I was being scared and like taking my time going down this slide she got pissed off and kicked me really hard into the back and I went flying down the slide and probably started bawling crying no I remember really consciously holding the tears in because girls were around and I was four or five. And I'd just been kicked down the slide really hard into the back by a girl. And it felt humiliating.

And it felt like my rights had been taken away. I'm trying to enjoy a slide and I've just been kicked into the back. And a girl did it. She got physically aggressive and kicked me really hard into the back. She was older. She was about eight. But then like no one saw her doing it but what would have happened if an adult chastised that girl for kicking me down the slide would they have said to her you're a big strong woman now and he's a younger boy and you can't be hitting boys. No.

She would have been chastised because acts of physical violence for a little girl are not seen as ladylike or feminine. She would have been chastised for the physical aggression part. It would have had nothing to do with that little boy has a right to be on that slide. And that little boy has a right to be on that slide and that little boy has a right to be nervous on that slide and that little boy has a right to go down the slide and not be kicked into the back you've removed his rights right there his right to physical safety that wouldn't have been communicated to that girl she would have been told don't kick other people because that's not ladylike however if uh i wasn't moving on the slide and her response instead of what her response should have been no i shouldn't say should have been she's a kid if an adult was present what an adult should have said was that little boy is nervous he's entitled to be nervous um give him his space and sit with the

delay your gratification let him go down the slide in his time and you'll have your turn that's the mature responsible thing that should have happened there but let's just say she didn't kick me into the back and send me flying down the slide instead she started bawling crying he won't move i want to use the slide and he won't move and she starts bawling crying which again isn't a fully i don't want to be judgmental of kids, but an adult should step in there and say, even you crying there, maybe have some patience and let him down the slide.

But if she did cry, she'd have been rewarded for that because it's okay then for little girls to cry. That would be seen as ladylike. But definitely don't kick him because that's not ladylike and then what happens you know she grows into an adult woman with narrow uh boundaries of emotional expression and she feels angry and instead of expressing anger it comes out as tears and now she she's crying, but she's actually angry

and doesn't understand why tears are the response to something that should be anger. And what you have there is, again, none of it has to do with people's boundaries. None of it has to do with consent. None of it has to do with rights. It's all bizarre bizarre gendered scripts about how two genders should and shouldn't be and it has nothing to do with rights and both those cases are are

incredibly unhelpful misogynistic fantasies that don't apply to reality and in the case of lads to be raised like that to be raised with don't hit girls because you're the big strong man and they're weak like and use your only protect women from these imaginary bug boogie men who jump out from

alleyways and physically assault and sexually assault you have to protect them from that you end up with adults who then believe these things internally because they're so deeply internalized from a young age and then you end up with a fucking legal system which has a narrow definition of what sexual assault and rape is and tends to believe abusers

protect abusers rather than people who are being abused so I was asked for a hot take and that's that's my that's just one train of thought I have around the whole issue. It's one personal train of thought that I have when analysing my own

life and things that I was taught and learned. It's obviously far more fucking complex and bigger than what I've just mentioned there. That's just one little thing that I answered in response to a specific question. I've definitely spoken about this stuff in earlier podcasts,

I can't think of the names of them. Okay, I'm going to answer another question now, something which is less emotionally taxing and emotionally heavy, because that's emotionally taxing territory for me to talk about, and I'm sure it is for you to listen to. Alan asked, if you were in government now, what laws would you change? I don't know about like, okay,

not specific laws. My general beliefs and what I would like in the society I live in right and I get called a fucking Marxist communist

I get heavily chastised people thinking that I'm fucking Joseph Stalin and all I want all I want right this is all I want all I want right this is all I fucking want

and this this is what I got this from my dad my dad was a socialist we'll say bordering on communist but all I want out of a society

I believe that housing healthcare and education should be a given that's it that's what I want housing healthcare education that

regardless of who the fuck you are in a society regardless of how much money you have whatever your conditions were growing up that everybody without restriction should have equal access to housing, healthcare

and education that's it nobody should be denied a home because they can't afford it and some people think that sounds mad it's like so everyone

should get things for free why not why I consider home why can't having a home be a human right an undeniable unalienable human fucking right.

There's people in Ireland living in tents and living on the street. That should be illegal. Alright? And I don't mean criminalising the person who's doing it. It should... There should be a department and the responsibility of this department is to provide that person

with a home and I say the word home because look here's the situation we have in Ireland at the moment let's just take homelessness okay this is

this isn't spoken about enough this is very fucked up and I'm going to say this in the least amount of words that I possibly can. We have a situation in Ireland called emergency accommodation, right? If someone finds themselves in homelessness in Ireland, what do they do? What have they access to? Well, they have access to what's known as emergency accommodation,

where mostly if it's someone with a family, they are put into a hotel room. It's called emergency accommodation, which would suggest that it's temporary. But in all practicality, it's not used as a temporary solution. It's a long-term solution. that it's temporary, but in all, it's, in all practicality, it's not used as a temporary solution, it's, it's a long term solution, there are people,

who can't afford, to live in, a house, and they're living in a hotel room, usually like, it could be a mother, and a father, and three kids,

living in a fucking hotel room, for three years, alright, now, here's what's even more fucked up first off that's not a home right you you can't prepare your own food in a hotel room you can't do the basic human things that dignity that give you a sense of meaning in life preparing food for your family uh washing your clothes, personal hygiene, a sense of space, a sense of

privacy. These things don't exist in emergency accommodation. I've stayed in hotel rooms for two weeks in a row. After two weeks, it's unpleasant. We're talking about people in Ireland for three years in a hotel room with a family, right? That's not living. That's not a home. And then you think, well well why are these people not given access to social housing or some type of affordable accommodation or just simply given a free house so that they don't you know to keep them from the streets why isn't that happening we must not be able to afford that if that's not happening no no no what's happening is, yes, we can afford the country. People have jobs. People pay taxes.

There's money for the government to build social housing. They're not building social housing. They are not building. If you give that family access to social housing, they would have the ability to cook their own food, the ability to wash, the ability to have a degree of privacy these human things that give life meaning these people can't have that yes we can afford to build social housing we don't instead we have a very fucked up system whereby tax money that comes

from if you work and you pay taxes and you're wondering fuck it the government are taking all these taxes from my wages why are there still people on the streets why are there people living in emergency accommodation because they've created a quite corrupt system whereby they take the tax money that should be used to build social housing and instead of building a social housing they give money to people who own hotels and the person the family that's living in emergency accommodation it costs the taxpayer maybe two grand a week two grand a week to keep a family in a hotel room that's tax money two grand a week is a huge amount of money and instead of that money going to build a house the government are spending

like maybe 150 grand a family 200 grand a family a year to keep them perpetually in this emergency accommodation and the person who owns the hotel or the company who owns the hotel is profiting from human misery and profiting from homeless people continually staying in an inhumane environment. And it's in perpetuity. It never ends. So that right there, I consider that corruption. And then you go, why? Why is that the case? Because that's called neoliberalism.

The government, ideologically, does not believe in providing people with quote-unquote free housing that that's not incentive they want to de-incentivize people from homelessness so you punish them and it's just so rather what i would like to change is that instead if someone becomes homeless for the many reasons that people become homeless, it's not just lack of money. It could be mental health issues. It could be dealing with issues of trauma. There's a lot of things.

It could be addiction. Huge amount of issues. If someone doesn't have access to housing and they end up on the street, you give them access to social housing. They have a home. You give them a home. You build have a home you give them a home you build them a fucking house with the money that exists that's being used it's being funneled

into hoteliers your tax money is being taken and someone's profiting off it and the person who loses out is the homeless person who's being made a fucking fool of and being kept in inhumane emergency accommodation take the money for that and build a fucking house and allow that person the human dignity to live in a house to cook food look look after their family and do these things so that should be a human right no one should live in emergency accommodation and nobody it should be illegal all right and i don't mean criminalizing the homeless person someone should not be living in a tent on the side of the road they yes they should be given a home with the money from tax all right yes and think of that what you want if you think but then sure

no one will work and everyone will have a free house that's not how humans work humans humans aren't like that humans aren't like that alright humans always a healthy human always searches for meaning

and self improvement and things like that when they're given the opportunity all right health care similarly all right if you're if you're poor and you get sick then you should have access to exactly the health care that you need to get better and if you can't afford it i'm gonna pay for it with my taxes fuck private health fuck the deliberate dismantling of our health service

I've no problem with the HSE many fine people working in the HSE who work their absolute fucking arses off, right, same with the mental health services, nurses doctors, psychotherapists working as hard as they can and why are the services ineffective is it their fault no it's not it's poorly managed from the top and some would

argue it's deliberate again a deliberate attempt to fuck up a public service so that you can hand it over to the private market that's the neoliberal belief don't directly provide for people instead try and hand everything over to this wonderful animal known as capitalism the private market and finally education i'm someone i i didn't grow up with a huge amount of money but i didn't grow up in poverty so I had the weird situation of growing up in Limerick my parents owned the house that we lived in it was we had a mortgage which afforded me a certain amount of privilege but even though there was a mortgage both my parents worked and the jobs they worked weren't particularly well paid so we had our own house but i still needed a medical card

for access to health care because of my asthma but when i came to college all right because my parents wouldn't have been able to afford to send me to college because it was in the mid 2000s and things were slightly better i went to college for practically free with a means-tested grant the department of education had a look at my parents income and said well you can't afford to send him to college so taxes are going to pay for it and as a result even though i fucked up my leave insert i went to art college and it was paid for with a means-tested grant these things are slowly being eroded now um in 2020 i don't think i'd have gotten that grant to go to college i think i'd have just have had to not go to college i don't think a job would have existed because college fees have gone up massively too just don't think i'd have gone to college

so that's what i'd change about the country that's what I want healthcare, education, housing their human rights and everyone should have equal access to them and it's as simple as that that's the society I want to live in and I hate making that fucking awful capitalist argument for it you see it's the same argument they want you to make regarding immigration.

When it comes to people like asylum seekers who are escaping horrors, some people argue that, oh, well, if they work, then they're taxpayers, and it's measuring someone's worth in terms of their economic contribution, which I don't believe in. It's measuring someone's worth in terms of their economic contribution, which I don't believe in. But if you have a fucking society where healthcare, housing and education are afforded equally to everybody,

you've got a better fucking society. You've got less crime. You've got... The ills of society tend to dissipate when people are given equal opportunity like that so that's what I'd change about the country that's what I'd like to see and if you want to chastise

me there and say blind boy you're a fucking Marxist eejit with his head in the clouds Marxists are just people who spend other people's money you can't print money the money exists we're all paying taxes what you need to be getting pissed off about is your tax is being funneled into private

interests to perpetuate problems and not solve them we have socialism in this country lads we've got socialism for rich people i described their emergency accommodation taking tax money exploiting vulnerable people and then funneling and paying that tax money to privately owned hotels that's hotels getting loads and loads of tax money getting real rich that's where your taxers are going that's socialism for the. We are a country that huge multinational corporations come to this country and because of our cheap, low corporation tax of 12.5%, but they're not even paying 12.5%. Look at the Apple ruling there.

Between, I believe it's 2003 and 2014, Apple paid something like 0.1% tax they're not even paying the even if they paid the 12.5% which is the lowest in Europe even if they paid that they're not they're paying nothing

the most fucking richest country in the world that's socialism for rich people we have it get pissed off at that alright that's what you want to get pissed off at i want the taxes that already exist to become socialism for people that are poor what's wrong with that um speaking of socialism it is time for the ocarina pause

i don't have the ocarina i don't have any instruments directly at hand what I do have I've got a little tub of retinol eye cream that I use after my when I'm live streaming this one is kale aloe vera sunflower oil trepidide 5 and retinol when I'm live streaming my eyes get sore so I use a little eye cream afterwards. I also have a USB stick, so we're going to have the eye cream and USB stick pause, and I'm going to bang these off each other gently, and while I do this, you may or may not hear an advert.

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So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. That was the eye cream and USB stick pause. The podcast that I'm making right now is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page. I don't have any live gigs during the global pandemic. I don't have any live gigs during the global pandemic I don't know when I'd say a year maybe before I can gig again realistically

so this podcast is my sole source of income and I'm able to earn a fucking living and from this podcast because of the patrons of the podcast alright so all I'm asking really is if you're listening to this podcast if of the patrons of the podcast all right um so all i'm asking really is if you're listening to this podcast if you're enjoying it if you're listening to it regularly this is my work so just pay me for the work that i'm doing all i'm looking for is the price of a

cup of coffee or a pint once a month that's it patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast um pay me for the work i'm doing also it allows me editorial freedom every so often i will have an advertiser on the podcast but i'm not beholden to any of them i can tell advertisers to fuck off i have been telling advertisers to fuck off i've been approached by two advertisers in the past week I don't agree with I don't want to sell their shit and I just said no don't want to do this I don't believe in the product so

I'm able to do that because of the Patreon and it means that full editorial control I can speak about whatever the fuck I want to I don't have to pander to advertisers and what the thing that you like about this podcast can maintain because it's funded by the listener directly funded it's a wonderful model even better if you can afford to give me

the price of the pint and you're listening to this and you're someone who can afford to give me the price of a pint once a month then you're the person i'm asking to pay pay for my work but there's other people and they can't afford it they're either out of work or they're a student and the price of that pint means a lot to them you're paying for them to listen for so it's a very equal democratic model I earn a living from it and people who can't afford it are listening to the podcast for free it's just absolutely fucking fantastic

I plug the Patreon every week because people come and go so I have to keep at it patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and thank you so much to everyone who is a patron once a month I run a little lottery I will contact one patron

at random and I will send you a hand drawing one of a kind hand drawing in the post alright so that's the crack let's answer another question what how long are we what time is this you'll be pleased to know again.

Four in the morning here. Because I've fucking destroyed my sleep patterns. I don't know what sleep is anymore. I do. I don't like sleeping. I don't really like sleeping. I'm not. It's not that I'm difficulty sleeping.

I just think it's pointless. It's lying horizontally in a dark room. And I just can't wait to get up in the morning. My Twitch stream as well. I'd be finishing the Twitch stream at 11 at night. And my brain is just hopping and buzzing. And I don't want to go and lie horizontally in the dark. I want to drink tea and look at wikipedia articles so i'm up

at four o'clock recording this podcast and that's fine that's fine and i'll be in bed by five most likely and that's fine too grand i'll get up at 10 i don't really need sleep um so so niamh asks what is the best way to work through writer's block it's been going for on for a while i'm a bit of a in a bit of a slump for the better part of the pandemic myself so firstly it's okay to be have a bit of writer's block during the coronavirus pandemic all right the world is scary um you're stuck inside home you're not receiving a lot of input into your unconscious mind a lot of people put themselves under huge stress stress at the start of this pandemic to write a book to write an album and it just didn't happen for some people and there's people right now feeling mad disappointed okay it's okay i'm like i i have i should be i don't want to say i should be writing a book now i have the i'm going to be writing two more books i'm definitely writing two more books

by which i mean two books are on the table there's two books being offered to me and I'm not doing that right now because I don't think I can write books right now in the four walls of my house in order for me to write fiction,

I need to leave my house, I need to sit in a cafe, I need to see human beings walking around me, so I'm not writing right now, I'm going to give it a bit more space, so instead what I'm doing is, I'm making music, I can make music at home,

if you want to, to be perfectly honest okay so my twitch stream I'm on twitch and I'm playing a video game called red dead redemption which is a virtual environment set in the wild west and I have all my musical equipment and what I do is I write songs live and I use Red Dead Redemption as inspiration for what the song is going to be about that right there is me proactively and actively

confronting writer's block that's the opposite of sitting down with a piano or a guitar and telling myself i have to write a song so in order to overcome writer's block you have to be playful you have to be playful and non-judgmental so when i'm riding around a digital environment on a horse and I decide I need to write a song about a tree that appears in the distance I have no criticality there I'm not thinking this is going to be good or this is going to be bad I'm simply doing for the sake of doing so what I would suggest to you

the easiest way so the last book that i wrote my second book i had a bit of writer's block here and there so what i said to myself was i'd give myself a word count i'd say today i'm gonna write 500 words of something it doesn't have to be good it doesn't have to be bad but i'm writing 500 fucking words and i would promise myself that at the very least and some days I would write 500 words that I wasn't happy with at all that I wouldn't use and it's tough but at least I got my 500 fucking words because if I didn't the writer's block would get worse so the easiest way to get out of the writer's block you simply have to do you have to do writer's block can only be unraveled in the act of doing it won't be unraveled thinking about

writing reading about writing planning about planning writing it only gets unraveled unraveled in the act of doing so you need to fucking write and a good way to get sometimes writer's block is created when you have visions or notions about what good and bad is so take yourself out of the fucking comfort zone when i if it's scary to say what the fuck do i write 500 words about that's when you start incorporating random input when i'm playing red dead redemption it's just an excuse to give me random input to write songs i do two hours on red dead redemption and write about five songs four of them aren't great usually one is is good that's how it works random input for you can be anything.

Open up a picture book. Book that doesn't have words and has loads of pictures. Or open up a web browser and go into the web browser and type in random image generator. And let it generate for you any picture, any visual picture. And just write 500 words about that picture and the act of let's just say it's a fucking a swan with a fire engine in the distance something utterly ridiculous random input tends to present us with really ridiculous suggestions and because the suggestions are so ridiculous that takes us out of our comfort zone it makes us not scared

and just write about the random image that's generated and say to yourself I'm going to write about this for 500 fucking words and if you can do that it will relax you to the point that you can access

your true creativity that's just what happens and that's simply doing It will relax you to the point that you can access your true creativity. That's just what happens. And that's simply doing. And if you write the 500 words and you're not happy with them, it's still a success because you wrote 500 words. And if you write 500 words and you're like, you're really unhappy with them, in a week's time, that which you were unhappy with can actually come back as a fully formed idea.

So writer's block is combated by the act of doing. You have to do. There's no other way. You do. You simply write. If it's painting, you paint. Take yourself out of your comfort zone. Bring in ridiculousness and humor the five

conditions for creativity right number one you give yourself space so you create uh for me when i'm writing a book space is a cafe but it could be a desk it could be your couch whatever formalized tends to work nicely when you have a little desk and a chair and a laptop and this is turn off your fucking internet unless it's essential right second thing you want to do is time you need to give yourself two hours you need to actually say to yourself this is my two hours for writing now and it's not two hours where i get up every five minutes to make tea or i check my phone all the time put the phone into a different room this is two hours for just writing okay third thing you want to do is confidence right now confidence

you can have confidence while thinking you're not confident confidence to me would mean i am confident that i'm gonna write 500 words that's all it needs to be you it's not the confidence of this is gonna be good no i'm gonna write 500 words and i have two hours to do it and i'm confident that I'm gonna reach that there you go and then finally humor all right you have to you have to allow humor into what you're doing you have to laugh at yourself you have to allow ridiculousness you have to allow silliness even if you're a writer who doesn't write silly ridiculous things the beauty of silliness and ridiculousness is they circumnavigate or not circumnavigate they they subvert the part of ourselves that takes us too seriously if you're taking yourself too

seriously if you're thinking about i'm i'm a good writer i want to write like sally rooney i want to write like james joyce that's the shit that keeps you from creativity you have to connect with the playful fun part of yourself that when you were three or four years of age playing with lego and you didn't care what the lego looked like because you were just doing Lego. That's why you bring in absurdity and silliness and foolishness. It's just a way to unlock your creativity. That's why I said bring random images into it. Bring silly images into it. Bring ridiculousness into it.

Write about a farting teapot. Because once you start writing about the farting teapot, first off you've set yourself up for failure there's no such thing as failure the only failure is creating nothing because you were scared to try that's the only failure but if you write 500 words about a farting teapot it will unlock the part of you where the ideas you really care about come from but only a farting teapot can unlock that what's the wrong thing to do? the wrong thing to do is to do nothing because you were scared to try

that perpetuates creative block so create physical space for yourself give yourself time, about two hours be confident that you're going to get your 500 words done and bring in humour and absurdity and ridiculousness

into your process. And that will get you out of writer's block and it'll get you real comfortable with... If you do that five days a week, four of those days, you're going to write something that you really don't like and the more and more you write something you're on you're unhappy with the less you self-flagellate for writing something you're not happy with

so it's a win-win so one last question though this one was from stephanie this is a big question and I really want to answer it in a concise way my microphone has decided to start going fucking flaccid, hold on I've got a microphone that you know what the microphone does it moves forward

and then the pop shield tickles my nose and makes me want to sneeze so Stephanie asks beautiful question over the past week or so i've become more aware of how i'm human rather than a bit of dust in the wind and that i'm a microscopic speck in a vast vast universe i found it difficult to come to terms with it and get extremely emotional when those thoughts pop up again and again do you have any advice on how to overcome these strong emotions that come with these thoughts and to keep grounded

as i've struggled with meditation as i've always been taught that meditation is time that you spend in the now in silence and staying still which is something i struggle with so much. I'm laughing there, I'm laughing there, Stephanie, because that's just such a beautiful, common... I bet you... I don't know what age Stephanie is. I would wager that Stephanie is like 1920. Because that particular... that's such a 1920 thing. It's... what that's called, Stephanie, that's such a 1920 thing it's what that's called stephanie is that's existential anxiety and all humans get that at one point in their life i think 1920 is is a a big age for that it's when you become an adult and you take a look around and you just go what the fuck is life i mean the nature of that is what the fuck is life

and pondering the overwhelming it's like it's like when i used to get anxiety you know you look up at the fucking sky and you try and think of the size of the universe and it can make you feel really scared and small and reality is deeply irrational and when you think about the size of everything and even what is being alive these are questions of human existence it's when you're a human and you become aware of what what the

fuck am i what is this what's going on that's existential anxiety stephanie and all human beings struggle with that i mean existentialism is an entire school of philosophy based around it existential psychology is a school of philosophy around it it's it's your search for meaning that right there is what am i who am i what is meaning what is life what is existence what is consciousness and how did i struggle how do i struggle with that or how do i come to terms with that, because, so what can become frightening about that thought, that thought of,

holy fuck, I'm a microscopic speck in the grand scale of the universe, what the fuck is this, what you're being confronted with there is the chaos of existence and reality the uncontrollable you're it's almost like when we think like that we're striving for definition and control and then you realize fuck it's all outside of my control. Life is chaos. The universe is chaos.

By chaos I mean it's undetermined. Anything can happen. And to take from John Paul Sartre who's an existential philosopher existentialist philosopher we're condemned to be free. It's almost.

Like. When we feel that way. We're. Noticing the sheer freedom of choices that we have. And. Existentialists say that that we choose things like religion and we choose things like working a nine-to-five and hobbies and all this stuff because we're trying to find certainty in something which we know is uncertain the universe is uncertain and chaotic

but yet we strive for certainty and we don't sit well with this grand chaotic uncertainty how I deal with that is again I take it from cognitive therapy it's I have

I accept every day that i have no control over what happens to me in my life but i have absolute control over how i react to what happens to me in my life so the way to to sit with existential anxiety, you accept it, you accept that the universe is chaos, but you find your personal meaning within it. If the universe is meaningless, and the universe is vast, and the universe is mysterious, and when I say the universe, I don't necessarily mean space, I mean the very fabric of existence

that includes space that includes your emotions that includes you your consciousness your friends your friends consciousness your dog's consciousness everything that is existence it includes being alive that's all chaos and overwhelming so you find your own personal meaning within it because that you do have control over and personal meaning is unique to you I get personal meaning from my creativity

when I'm writing making music listening to music cooking doing anything which fulfills my personal sense of personal meaning then I'm not worrying about my insignificance in the universe I'm just not because i have meaning in my day that keeps existential anxiety at bay so what do you get meaning from what and it can be anything is it sports is it fucking an interest in fashion is it rubbing dogs what do you enjoy doing and do you get personal meaning from and a sense of accomplishment from and a sense of narrative from like cooking is the great one for me because cooking has narrative set up conflict resolution find the moments in your day where you can have set up conflict resolution set up i am hungry i go to the shop

i plan what my meal is going to be i buy ingredients when i'm at the shop i'm choosing the best ingredients do i want this orange or that orange is that carrot a bit bent or do i want that carrot that looks fresher conflict resolution I purchase the goods I create a meal I prepare it I eat it set up conflict resolution within that story I've created meaning meaning comes from story story is always a three-act structure set up conflict resolution exercise i go to the gym i put on my gym clothes i do the exercise i enjoy it while i'm doing it it's difficult there's conflict resolution i've left the gym i feel fucking great now i'm starting a new journey into fucking aldi to begin the narrative of purchasing my meal set up conflict resolution these things

give me personal meaning in my day in my life and when I feel a sense of personal meaning then I'm not beholden to the chaos of the universe and that's that's human life that that's human existence to take it back to what I was talking about earlier, with people living in emergency accommodation or in direct provision, these people are being stripped of access to that type of meaning, and that's what makes it so fucked up. So, what you're experiencing, Stephanie, and the reason I'm laughing is just it's gas,

because I know you're getting that feeling for the first time and every human gets it and it's always when you leave when you stop being a teenager and you're do you know what it is it's when you stop being a teenager and you're confronted with the freedom of adulthood which is fucking terrifying with the freedom of adulthood which is fucking terrifying the freedom of oh shit um i used to go to school and i'd get up in the morning and there was classes and my parents used to look after me fuck now i'm an adult existential anxiety always presents at that crucial stepping into the autonomy and freedom of adulthood and ultimately being responsible and autonomous and of course the other thing that can free us and relieve us from existential anxiety love and compassion love compassion empathy there's a reason why most world religions

at their very core have messages of love, compassion and empathy. We're social animals. We are social animals built on cooperation and helping one another and loving one another and forming bonds. And doing something kind for someone, for a stranger. Listening to somebody that you love. Speaking to them and not talking about your problems, but listening to what's going on for them. All right?

If you have a pet, a dog or a cat, loving them, feeling the warmth of their fur, feeding a cat, you know, and seeing how your action of feeding this cat you know and seeing how your action of feeding this cat makes that little cat happy and makes him

purr you know hugging someone I know now with fucking coronavirus but love compassion

empathy for other people for yourself and for animals there's huge meaning in that and that helps around

that makes existential anxiety seem insignificant love makes that insignificant because it is it's kind of it's a selfish enough feeling it is quite a self um where is my place in this great universe but when connection to humans animals nature and love and compassion and wishing good and wanting to do good things and see those good things reflected back that love compassion and connectivity is also a great way to deal with those feelings in fact that's what can make that seem insignificant love can make the universe seem small. Do you know what I mean? A book I would recommend for you

and for anyone who's in this situation, I've definitely done a podcast on this. I'm up to nearly 300 podcasts now. I don't know what fucking one. A book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankllin who is an existential psychologist it's about his he was sent to a nazi concentration camp he's a he's a jewish man and he spent time in a nazi concentration camp and he came out of it and it's he developed school

of existential psychotherapy based on that experience and it's called Man's Search for Meaning that's how even in the horrors and terror of a Nazi concentration camp he was still able to search for meaning and he saw other people search for meaning and he watched as he felt that the people who lived longer

were the ones who were able to find meaning even though their lives were so terrible as opposed to the ones who gave up that was Frankl's thesis so there you go I'll catch you all next week I'll probably have a hot take come join me on Twitch

twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast I'm on most nights it's great crack if you like this podcast you like what i'm doing on twitch you can come chat to me you're rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the tor the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats

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