The Blindboy Podcast - Cossacks Frock

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Otters killing a monkey, Sykes Picot agreement, Impressionist painting Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, you stinking bin witches. How are you getting on? What's the crack? Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first time at the Blind Boy Podcast, I appeal to you to go back to the episodes at the start because we're up at episode 22 now and it's not that the episodes are sequential or anything um well they are no they're not sequential but there's certain themes there's certain themes that have developed throughout all the episodes and this podcast is very much a journey that has developed. And it would be beneficial to go back to the start and start from there. Rather than go balls deep. Straight in at episode 22.

For instance. I might mention Yorty Ahern. And you're like who the fuck is Yorty Ahern? What is he talking about? Because a lot of people have been asking me about Yorty Ahern and Yorty Ahern is

he's an otter he's the patron saint of this podcast he's this pirate podcast spirit animal and Yorty Ahern is an otter that lives in Limerick's plassy river and i spotted him about two months ago and first mentioned him on this podcast and since that time we've checked in with yorty quite often now i haven't seen yorty in in a good few weeks I haven't seen him at all so I don't have many

updates for him but what I can say to you is the area of Yorty's couch in Plassy River where he lives this weekend um was subject to a big cleanup by University of Limerick Environmental Society the Yorty's Couch was flooded during the winter months and this flooding caused quite a lot of plastic bottles and dirt and shit that came from up river to go down river

and distribute itself along the shoreline so loads and loads of volunteers got together this Sunday the last Sunday and I have a little bit of a tickly cough left I'm sorry So, loads and loads of volunteers got together this Sunday. Last Sunday. And, I have a little bit of a tickly cough left, I'm sorry. Last Sunday, and they sorted out Yorty's couch. And it looks immaculate.

They took fucking bin bags full of old bottles and plastic and shit. Fucked it into a skip, so, as spring, comes upon us, Yorty has got a nice clean, stretch of river, upon which to roll around, do otter, otter stuff,

whatever the fuck he gets up to, so I had a busy weekend lads, I had a very busy weekend, I did three live podcasts, the Sugar Club in Dublin. And they were unbelievable. They went fantastically. It was so much crack. We had a load of people out.

We had loads of... It was very engaging. Three very engaging live podcasts that I'm going to... I'll put them out incrementally. I'm not going to put them out immediately. I'll hang on to them. And I'll release them to you as I see fit. But my first guest on the Friday night was...

A man who played keyboards with Bob Marley in the 70s. Called Natty Whaler. Who's been living in Ireland since 2000 and Natty came along and we spoke about we spoke about Rastafari we spoke about Bob Marley we spoke about all sorts and Natty played a few songs then I interviewed two academics, Eimear and Garo Dean, who study, Eimear studies early Irish literature, right?

Early medieval Irish literature, but specifically what she's interested in is the role of women in early Irish society before the Brits came. And then Garo Dean specializes in the irish language and specifically what she's studying is the rights of minority languages in ireland and how that interacts with the court system i learned something very interesting that there's there's quite a few people in this country that speak Irish sign language and they're not really represented by either the guards or in

court so that's what Garadine is studying studying how to give these people more rights then my last guest was Finn Dwyer who was a historian he presents the irish history podcast and we had a two-hour discussion about the irish famine and it was enthralling you could have heard a pin drop for the whole thing so yeah it was great crack really enjoyed those live podcasts and there will be more live podcasts, because they're a lot of fun, at, at first,

I was nervous with them, you know, but now I'm getting into the swing of them, like last week's one with Kevin Barry, you know, that was good crack, so, I was on,

I was just arsing around YouTube there last week, in an otter hole, on YouTube, looking at videos of otters, probably because I miss Yortley O'Hearn, I was just arsing around YouTube there last week. In an otter hole. On YouTube. Looking at videos of otters. Probably because I miss Yorty O'Hearn. And I haven't seen him in a while. But I came across this. Very interesting thread of videos.

In the Bronx Zoo. In New York. For some mad reason. They have this enclosure. Of monkeys. I don't know what type of monkeys they are they're small monkeys so it's these little monkeys on an island in the zoo and then there's a pond around them around this island so a couple years ago they decided to introduce a colony of sea otters into monkey Island for some reason I don't know that

seems a bit strange to me that you'd have monkeys and otters together because I don't think they coexist in the wild so there was about eight or nine otters similar enough number of monkeys and I start looking at loads of videos mainly shot by tourists on their phones of these monkeys and otters coexisting in the Bronx Zoo and there was never in any video I saw there never appeared to be one moment of peace whatsoever now otters are highly intelligent animals, monkeys are highly intelligent animals. There was never a moment of peace. From what I could see the monkeys would basically they'd swing off branches or come down to the shore and spend every waking moment grabbing the otters by the tail. You know really ganging up on them, grabbing the otters by the tail you know really ganging up on them grabbing the otters by the tail

or pulling their ears or pulling the otters legs or running up to the shore catching an otter and then dragging him onto the land and really pissing the fucking otters off you know very foolish move by Bronx Zoo

if you ask me to put these two species co-existing and it just looked like the otters were being bullied non-stop by these monkeys who, more like they were really acting like dickheads, you know, and I'm very compassionate towards animals but when I saw how these monkeys were treating the otters in Bronx Zoo it made me dislike monkeys because they were just being nasty bastards for the sake of it and the poor old otters were kind of putting up with it so I'd gone through about eight videos and then finally saw this fucking insane video so anyway one of the monkeys fell into the water or whatever

and the otters ganged up as soon as the monkey went under the water the like seven or eight otters went over and just started grabbing onto him seven or eight otters went over and just started grabbing onto him like and screaming they were squeaking and screaming and really biting him hard and this monkey was there in the water with like seven or eight otters all around him and you know holding him down underneath the water and all the monkeys then were on the shore like with their heads on their like their hands on their heads like visibly panicking in distress, watching their friend getting attacked by these rabid otters. And the otters weren't letting go. And they kept holding on to him and biting him until they killed him.

They killed one monkey. They all ganged up together and dragged this poor monkey underneath the water until he drowned and died and the grief on those monkeys faces as it was happening was phenomenal i could feel their pain and grief and panic but it was amazing to see that act of vicious revenge. Enacted by those captive otters. Who just simply had enough. Of the monkeys bullshit. And. It was vicious to watch you know.

It reminded me of. There was something very human about their hatred. You know. It reminded me of. Like a nasty online argument. Against a public figure. when a public figure you know finally falls when something happens when they say something out of place and then everyone just latches on with the nastiest comments they can find

that hatred was present but it kind of changed my opinions about otters a bit you know and I started to see when i saw that viciousness then i started to wonder about about yorty iron and whether he himself would be capable of similar acts of um hatred and i doubt it because the irish otter those those little river otters they're not pack animals i mean mean, now, Yorty's very territorial, and if he sees another male otter, there'll be a scrap. But he doesn't hang around, there's no pack mentality with Irish otters. But sea otters, they're a different story. They're quite sadistic and vicious.

They can be. Now, sea otters as well as well now are the very cute ones they sleep on their backs and they hold hands with each other and they have a little pocket in their belly and they keep their favourite rock in there and they'll put an

oyster on their belly or a clam they'll smash it with their favourite rock and it's quite cute but adult male sea otters have been known to catch a baby seal and forcibly rape the baby seal to death. Whether they do it deliberately or not, we don't know. to death and whether they do it deliberately or not

we don't know but when otters mate the male otter has a habit of biting down on the back of the female's head and when male otters do this to baby seals

they force the seal's head under the water and basically drown it to death until the male otter climaxes which was a bit of a strange fact that I learned and do you know who else

turns out are absolute dickheads termites termites are they're like they're colonial insects right so there'll be thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands in a termite colony and they're always getting into fights with ant colonies so termites and ants will have full-on wars with each other, large-scale wars. And termites, when they get into a war with ants,

they grab the oldest members of their colony, like essentially their elderly, and they shove their elderly to the front of the battle line. And the ants kill Kill the elderly. In this battle. And it's the termites way of kind of. Preserving their best soldiers. Which is quite. Human.

You know now. And with humans. You know if you look at. We'll say World War 1 or 2. They tend to. Humans tend to protect the elderly. Not protect them, but... If you look at, like, Dad's Army. They're the last line of defence.

When the Brits were fighting the Germans in World War II, and all the... They put the young out first. It was the Dad's Army, the old guard at home of elderly people who had to defend the country. But humans are... Like like I learned a here's a shitty thing I learned about the Brits recently I was looking at the history of we'll say council housing in Britain because the Br, in fairness to them, after World War II introduced the welfare state.

And out of that came the NHS and quite a lot of social housing. Britain after World War II were quite socialist in their public policy. But anyway, proper council housing wasn't really introduced by the British until about, I think it was 1917, 1918, around then. It was after the First World War. Up until that point, social housing wasn't really a thing. They had a tiny attempt at it to clear some slums in the very late Industrial Revolution. to clear some slums in the very late industrial revolution but the first actual housing act was about 1919 and it was introduced by Lloyd George and on the surface it looks like a good thing it's it was social housing for lads who were returning from World War I. So it's like, you know, you fought for your country, here's a free gaff.

Seems pretty nice on the surface. But then when I looked into it more, they did a, the British Army did a health check on all the kind of poor working class lads that they would have sent off, they would have conscripted for World War I. It turned out that a lot of the conscripts were incredibly unhealthy and weak in medical tests, that they weren't really battle fit because they were malnourished their entire lives and grew up in terrible living conditions where they didn't

have sanitation or proper warmth so british troops were quite weak in general in world war one because they had grown up in industrial revolution slums so what made the british government lloyd george introduce council housing and social housing was so that the British could create better cannon fodder when it came to another world war, so that they could raise thousands and thousands of working class people in better conditions with sanitation and warmth and shelter access to running water

and access to better food as a result but they did these things not for, like these things should be done for the good of people's lives, to improve the lives of a population. That's what a welfare state or socialistic model is for.

But the... You know, Lloyd George didn't do that for these reasons. He did it for purely imperialistic fucking reasons. He wanted a better cannon fodder to go and fight the Germans again and that's what happened

which is so fucked up it's so it's such a great thing to do isn't it it's like you think they're being sound but it's like they're not they're not being sound they're just looking at the big dirty tits in the empire and how to grease them up they're not being sound they're just looking at the big

dirty tits in the empire and how to grease them up you know typical shit did I ever tell you about the Sykes-Picot agreement this is a

this is some classic British imperial shit em during World War 1 okay some classic British imperial shit em during World War 1 ok

that's not the Hitler one the one before it during it was Germany

where the you know Germany were causing it but during World War

1 one of the powers that had aligned with Germany were known as the Ottoman Empire, okay?

And the Ottoman Empire's territory is, it was pretty large. It's what we'd now call the Middle East, right? It had parts of North Africa. What we'd now call the Middle East was, up until about 1916 1917 it was called the Ottoman Empire which was controlled centrally from Turkey the Ottoman Turks so they had aligned with Germany so the Brits were fighting them did you ever

hear of a lad called Lawrence of Arabia? Very famous individual. A mythological individual. He was real, but he's been mythologically painted as a white saviour. If you remember previous episodes where I spoke about tropes, this Lawrence of Arabia is a white saviour. So anyway, he led Arab tribes, you know, arab bedouin nomadic tribes in military revolt against the ottoman empire in the closing kind of years of world war one and he did this with the promise of look i'm a i'm a British agent, essentially,

and I'm going to, you know, unify all of ye, and we're going to fight the Ottoman Empire, and when ye win, the Ottoman Empire is going to fall, and you will have a unified state for all Arab peoples. You know, the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire will become one Arab state okay that's not how it panned out obviously

now the Middle East has always been not always but for the past 1500 years has been in turmoil for a lot of reasons Crusades caused quite a lot of reasons Crusades caused quite a lot of shit and

Islam within a hundred years divided into Sunni and Shia and they've been at each other's throats but a lot of the modern conflict

that we see today in the Middle East is because of this Sykes-Picot agreement, okay? And kind of what happened was, so like I said, Lawrence of Arabia led the Arab revolt, said to the lads, ye beat the, you know,

ye help me beat the Ottoman Turk fucking Ottoman Empire, and ye get, you know, all their lands, you get a pan-Arab state unity but what happened is that the french and the british created a secret agreement in may 1916 on the sly which double crossed the arab revolt right and this is kind of how it worked revolt right and this is kind of how it worked oil was becoming it was becoming quite clear by 1916 that oil was going to be a very serious commodity okay and the british and the french wanted this so what they did in the sykes pick Agreement, they carved up the Middle East, the lands that would fall when the Ottoman Empire fell, they carved up the Middle East into the countries that

we now know today, the likes of Syria, Lebanon, fucking Saudi Arabia, you name it, okay, Israel, you name it okay Israel they created these countries not they didn't create them with any sensitivity in mind regarding the tribes and conflicts and the peoples that lived in those areas but they created the borders based purely on French and British control and needs, and that's what created a lot of the shit. Like I said, this is an area with massive conflict. Sunni, Shia, Kurds, fucking Jews, all at each other's throats with their own predefined areas, and then the Brits and the French just went in

and said, fuck that this place is called libya this place is called saudi arabia here are the lines here are the territories i don't give a shit if it cuts your farm in half i don't give a fuck if it creates a new conflict and that's what they did for isle so there is some uh some sneaky colonial shit and it's not just the Brits who do that of course it's the French but

to my British listeners I think I've said this before you know if I've got Jesus it's nearly 80,000 British listeners at this time at this point at 22 weeks into the podcast if you're listening to me

like the past 10 minutes and feeling that I'm Brit bashing or whatever first of all I'm not I'm just actually talking about history but secondly I want you to be just to give some context

why I talk like this number one you weren't taught any of this in school number two this is what's very important like if you hear an irish person go off on one about the brits you know i'm going to say brits now in in inverted commas like i'm not talking about the british people i've nothing against british people whatsoever what i'm talking about is british colonialism and british colonialism throughout history has only benefited rich british people that's it it only benefits the elite and i've no problem or qualms whatsoever with ordinary British people,

I'm just not a fan of the history of what your colonial rulers have done, and neither should you be, because you too are also a victim of that shit, as evidenced there by, you know, when I spoke about Lloyd George's housing act in 1917 or 18, whenever it was, Housing Act. In 1917 or 18. Whenever it was. You know. He's.

Like George is considered to be the founder of the welfare state. But. He did it. So that he could create. Cannon fodder. Out of the fucking working class. You know. He. It was to benefit.

Colonialism. To fight other colonial empires. to fuck over more poor people. So ye lads are victims of that shit too. And the reason you're not taught about it in school is because the British education system, it needs certain people in school to still want to join the army. And if you talk about things like the Sykes-Picot Agreement or any other colonial stuff, it's not going to make people want to join the British army, is it? So just bring that one into your awareness. Irish people have no problem with British people. And Irish people have no problem with British people and Irish people who do have a problem with British people

are fucking agents they're what you'd call cunts you know what I'm saying so there's how the fuck did I end up getting on with I started off with otters then I became disappointed

to learn that sea otters are cunts then who else I found out that termites were cunts and then i found out that sea otters were even worse cunts than termites and that got me talking about the brits being cunts and the french being cunts let's move on to something more positive I don't know

I hope in my exploration of cuntiness you are still experiencing your podcast hug I'm not in my

regular studio this week I'm recording this podcast in a temporary location. There's a slight reverb, especially when I raise my voice like that. There's a slight bit of an echo. Let's talk about paint, will we? I can't give you an ocarina pause this week either, actually.

Because I don't have my ocarina with me. Let's have a moment of silence. let's have a slight moment of silence for a digital advert to be inserted and you will either hear an advert possibly a recruitment advert for the SAS or the RAF if you live in Britain and if you don't hear an advert you're going to hear just a little bit of silence and some jazz piano. And we'll use that as a moment to reflect before I move on to the next topic on the podcast. So here we go. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl.

Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. 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's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone.

Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Oh yeah. Yeah, I've got a prick of a tickly cough left over from last week's flu and it's just it's like candy floss in my thorax

do I have a thorax? I think that's only something that insects have my lungs my trachea I mean not my thorax that's only something that insects have my lungs my trachea I mean not my thorax that's a part of an anatomy that's unique only to insects I believe

anyway fuck adverts this podcast is made possible because of the Patreon page and what that is is a few of you lovely sound generous people go on to my patreon which is patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and some of you donate me a few quid every month and i cannot stress how grateful i am for the few of you to

do this um it's really keeping me going it's fantastic it makes this podcast a fucking joy to do so if you're enjoying the podcast and you like it and the podcast is free. And it's five hours of free content a month. So if you're really enjoying the podcast. And you feel that, you know, if you met me in real life. That you would buy me a coffee or a pint once a month. Then please feel free to contribute a few quid to the Patreon account. If you're feeling generous. And if you can't afford it,

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directly if you're enjoying your podcast hug thank you very much so a few podcasts back I spoke about the painting of

an artist called Caravaggio who was from the 16th century. And I've got to say, the response I got from that was overwhelmingly positive. So many people contacted me, you know, just saying how much they loved hearing about it and listening about me describing 16th century painting and I of course then got a great kick out of that because art is seen as

being inaccessible you know a lot of people are scared of art a lot of people get freaked out when a painting sells for 120 million quid and people are like I don't know why that's good and art shouldn't be

inaccessible at all art shouldn't be highfalutin or considered highbrow and it is it's not at all

art is if you can listen to fucking music and you can appreciate music, you can appreciate painting or any other visual art form. Art is considered out of reach and inaccessible because

I think money is the root of it, okay? Art is used to to launder money. Art is used as a tax write-off. Very wealthy people buy art for a number of reasons. People will buy art not just to put 60 million into something that's outside of the hands of the taxman but also to purchase taste um because so much money goes into art one of the ways that you can make it more valuable is to speak about it in you know very academic and inaccessible language,

so that the average person then, you know, art attains a greater glow when it's spoken about as being far, far, far more important than it is. And money drives that. And like I said, yeah, I think, you know, a lot of rich people are just trying to buy taste but what I mean by that is I think

art is used by the super wealthy right as a way to define lines of class amongst wealthy people it an appreciation of art

separates old money from new money so if some fucking Russian oligarch comes along who just made a couple of billion in the last 10 years but grew up in a slum you know he can buy all the Ferraris in the world but he will never appreciate

a Caravaggio you know what I'm saying because that requires knowledge and culture and empathy empathy and education so I think these rich wealthy people buy art to separate themselves it's like yeah I could buy a Ferrari if I want but I have taste so I'm gonna buy this Renoir but art shouldn't be out of the reach of anybody especially not painting which is a to be honest it's a simple medium it's no more complicated than music it's no more complicated than classical music or jazz painting is as complex as you want it to be you know and you think your favorite songs you enjoy them because you fucking enjoy them they do something to you emotionally it's the same with paintings but if you want you can analyze that song from

you know you can analyze its production the musicianship all of that stuff but you don't have to and the exact same thing goes with painting and i like democratizing that I like democratizing it and showing ye because I've done my kind of study on it that like you can appreciate fucking art and painting and it's enjoyable it's for everybody so I spoke about Caravaggio a couple of podcasts back and my main point of the Caravaggio chat was to show how styles in painting and art throughout the last millennium are driven by economic factors. Around the time of the 16th century and the 15th century, colours were very fucking expensive.

The most expensive colour was blue. That's why Holy mary is blue and my hot take on caravaggio is that he was trying to save money by his painting style utilizes the use of inexpensive colors and sparingly uses expensive colors such as reds and blues and that's how caravaggio style came about and. And Caravaggio's style, it'd be called Baroque classical. Baroque paintings were part of the counter-reformation, right? As you know, Protestantism became a thing about five or six hundred years ago, and it shook up the entirety of Western Europe. But then europe but then about 100 150 years afterwards catholicism made a comeback and this is known as the baroque period and caravaggio's paintings

are considered baroque because he is exploring catholic themes in his paintings and his paintings. His paintings are considered classical. Classicism in art is when painters aesthetically looked back to the art of the classical period, which is Greek and Roman. So he is a Baroque classical painter. And that style lasted for a good few hundred years afterwards. But what I want to talk about today is impressionism which would have been considered quite a radical art form when it burst into the scene in the 19th century so first you got to look at kind of the political climate at the time in France, okay? Napoleon had been the leader of France. Napoleon was a pretty hardcore dictator,

a nationalist, had a strong sense of French identity and believed that the French were entitled to try and take over the world, and he did, he tried. So the type of art that would have been that Napoleon would that this is this that Napoleon society would have wanted would have been classical type artwork very traditional artwork traditional painting um the neo-classical style and like i said classicism is when you look back to roman and greek ideas so napoleonic art of the napoleonic society would have a lot of classical themes a lot of religious themes uh very detailed straightforward, very skilled painting.

And this kind of changed in 1874 when a group of four artists kind of shook shit up. So how art was presented in the 19th century was, it was presented to what's known as the Salon system. Okay? A Salon was a gallery in Paris. And kind of sanctioned art that was sanctioned by society was presented in the Salon.

That's what you did. If you were to paint, you got into the Salon. That's what happened. So this group called the Impressionists, made up of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille, they said, fuck the salon, we're going to have our own salon.

Here's an exhibition of some mad shit, some mad paintings. Now if they were really radical, they'd have included a couple of women, but they didn't alas now if you want to get an idea visually of what impressionistic painting looks like if you're on your phone or whatever and want to see what it looks like while i'm talking i would suggest uh going to google images and look up claude monet m-o-n-e-t and that is that's that's kind of impressionism as it says it on the tin um what was so different about impressionism to previous styles of painting now when when the lads had this exhibition it made the traditional art community fucking furious this was seen as childish painting it was seen as

breaking every rule in the book it was the beginnings of what we call abstract art but like with caravaggio and like i said painting styles before were driven aesthetically, but not necessarily aesthetically. They were driven by economics and society. Impressionism was the same. So what kind of characterized Impressionism as opposed to painting before it is that the brush strokes were very thick and messy, right, and quite visible. thick and messy right and quite visible and impressionists they weren't necessarily concerned with painting things as they are right they were concerned with in print painting an impression of what was in front of them most Most importantly, they wanted to understand how light works. Okay?

Up to that point in painting, up to the late 19th century, not a lot of painters actually left their studio. Not a lot of painters went outside into the actual open air and fucking painted. Okay? a lot of painters went outside into the actual open air and fucking painted okay um normally what a painter would do is they'd take a sketchbook outside and maybe sketch trees and hills and then take that back into the studio and kind of have paint from memory okay but the impressionists were the first to really properly go outside and paint an entire painting start to finish in the open air. And this was radical.

One of the things that drove this, again, was technology. again was technology paints before the impressionists if you were an artist you made your own paints you had a limited selection of pigments which were very expensive you mixed them with oil in your studio and they didn't really leave the studio

now a few painters would take paints outside of the studio but what they'd do is they'd get a pig's bladder. They'd put some of the oil paint in the pig's bladder, tie it up and then prick it with a pin. But this was very wasteful and messy and not a lot of people liked doing it. But with the Impressionists, we're talking 1874. The Industrial Revolution had happened. the industrial revolution had happened and what we saw was the first availability of commercial tubes of paint tin tubes of paint that had never been a thing up until the 1870s so now all of a

sudden you had artists who could leave the house with tubes of fucking oil paint. This was radical. This was revolutionary technology. This was like having an iPhone back then. And not only had science allowed for tubes of paint, chemistry had gotten fairly far by 1870. And new pigments were emerging, pigments that were created in laboratories. So painters had a much wider range of colors to choose from also so what the impressionists would try and do and you'll see this the best example of this is there's two paintings series of paintings by Monet

study of Rowan Cathedral and haystacks and what these are are haystacks in particular it's four paintings of the same haystack at different times of the day and Monet had tried to use his human eye to accurately paint light as it actually is and this had never really been done before if you look at haystacks when it's painted in the morning it's fucking blue because that's how that's what light actually is it's blue and monet painted this exact blue light with purple painted this exact blue light with purple and it's the most realistic depiction of colour that you can get. And even today, cameras cannot portray colour exactly as the Impressionists were able to get it on a canvas with oil paint. oil paint one of the other things that drove impressionist painters to paint the way they did is that photography had just become an emerging technology and if you look at the neoclassical style of painting from someone like Jacques-Louis David

that the impressionists were railing against you'll notice that it's almost photographic. You know, the painting style is almost, it's perfect. So the Impressionists were like, fuck that perfectionism. Why try and be a camera? We need to do what a camera can't. The other thing that would have informed the Impressionists was the emerging science of optics. Biologists were starting to become interested in the human eye, and to become interested in how the human brain processes colour.

Scientists were starting to become interested in the actual light spectrum, the spectrum of light that makes colour. And all of this stuff informed impressionist painting and it's what made it a modernist movement. And when we say modernism in art of any description, modernism to give it a bitch basic description is when the artwork kind of puts faith in scientific discovery and searches for truth using science. This is why modernism is mostly a 20th century art movement. In Ireland, our modernist was James Joyce.

James Joyce wrote Ulysses and his style of writing was informed by the discoveries of Sigmund Freud and the human mind, the unconscious mind. Joyce, when he wrote, and Joyce is considered the greatest modernist, Joyce, when he wrote, was not... The words that he was writing were not the words that came out of his character's mouth, but they were the words as they formed in the unconscious mind before they came out of the character's mouth but they were the words as they formed in the unconscious mind before they came out of the character's mouth and that is pure modernistic right there and the impressionist painters were modernistic in that they were not painting they were not painting

something exactly as it is like like a camera would do but rather they were painting how colors are perceived by the human eye and absorbed by the brain and how light actually works you'll see this too in another style of painting that happened around the same time as impressionism this painting is called pointillism and if you want to see a Pointillist painting, you'll know this painting because it's reproduced loads. It's called A Day in the Park by George Surat. S-E-U-R-A-T, I think. And Pointillism was, again, an attempt to understand how light and color works and how it is perceived by the human eye and the brain pointless paintings are made up of thousands and thousands of tiny little

individual dots and it is the human eye that joins these dots into the image that we see so again it's impressionism exploring the themes of science and using the advances of science with you know the technology of tube paint to create this new radical artwork and not all impressionists painters as well were lads. You had incredible female impressionist painters like Mary Cassatt. And what's interesting about Mary Cassatt's paintings is none of them happen outside the house because women weren't really allowed to leave the house. They're paintings of other women looking after children and stuff inside in parlours. And women were written out ofours and women were written out of

impression women written out of fucking everything women weren't allowed to participate and when they did participate it was written off and forgotten by history but look up Mary Cassatt's paintings because she's a fucking incredible impressionist painter but to kind of sum up the the major contribution that the impressionists did for art and not just art but human understanding is that they're the first ones to truly truly understand light and colour which you didn't really see beforehand, even if you go back to, you know, look at Caravaggio's paintings a few hundred years previously, like, Caravaggio

had established form perfectly, form being shapes and shit, but when you look at, you know, his skin tones and shit, it's clear that he was painting by candlelight. You know? And you can really see, it's not realistic. Impressionism is when, before impressionism, if you were to paint human skin, if you were to paint human skin painters before the impressionists used to paint light and dark the skin was seen as light and dark you had a lot of browns and peaches and creams to paint human skin but after impressionism we stopped seeing human skin as light and dark and started to see it instead as warm and cool and when you see impressionistic paintings of people or post-impressionistic

paintings you'll see that in in human skin tones there's blues and greens and yellows and things that we don't see with the human eye. Like we... We don't see these things with the human eye in every day. Our mind kind of will turn... We'll say a white person I'm talking now. It will turn a white person's skin. Our mind will turn it into this generalized pink. But impressionism is about truly seeing it in the moment as if you had a million

eyes and finding the tiny little pinks and yellows and greens and blues and all those colors that actually exist in there that's what impressionism does and when you start you yourself try and next time you're out on a lovely morning looking across at a load of hills language in your brain tells you that grass is green and tells you that the sky is blue so if you were a beginner artist and I said to you here paint those hills there you'll paint them green because your mind is telling you to paint them green but look at Monet's painting of the haystacks when he painted a haystack blue and purple and you're looking at that painting going fuck me that's more realistic than than reality it's because the impressionists were subverting how language tells your brain that things are a certain colour.

Your brain tells you that a road is black. But a road can be 50 different colours depending on how light hits it. Light creates colour. Do you know? And green in the distance is bright blue. It's only our brains and our language that tells us it's green. The Impressionists meant us to subvert that. And it's a ridiculous exercise in mindfulness.

That's what I see when i see an impressionist painting when i see something like monet's study of rowan cathedral or the haystacks i see complete and utter present moment mindfulness and a state of flow where monet it's like he's not even looking at a haystack he's simply looking at millions of blocks of color in in a single moment that when combined do actually create this vibrant haystack but he's not thinking of the haystack in his head he's just thinking of loads of blocks of color so take that on board the next time you're, if you come across an impressionistic painting, take some of these things on board and you're one step closer to appreciating and understanding painting. interesting and fun and it should never ever be something that should be make someone up fly up their own hall or make someone elitist artist for fucking everyone

simple as that and it's not complicated the only people who make it complicated are people who need to benefit from it financially. Okay, I'm going to now answer some questions that you've said to me on the internet. Lorraine asks, Is doing the podcast and the subsequent extra activity interfering with your flow for the second book? Do you know what Lorraine? I think it is a little bit. I'm not sure. Now I'm also at the moment ridiculously busy.

I'm doing a television thing and some other projects as well. So I'm certainly not getting the amount of time that I would like to be sitting down and writing the second book. Now I am going to Spain for nine days fairly soon to write the fucking second book and to really give myself, I'm going to give myself a space but it's just fucking book writing. I'm going to go into cafes, sit down at my laptop laptop i'm gonna drink spanish port and just write but yeah one thing i'm concerned of is you know when i make this podcast i go into a state of flow like everything you listened to previously in this podcast i didn't really prep that I kind of started off on a rant about otters which reminded me of that violent otter video and through the process of flow that allowed my brain to go from otters to violent human emotions to the psychs pick-out, to feeling that that was too harsh, and then that story about paint, so that was all delivered in flow, that's my, the free association of my mind triggering little things.

Now, I often, I do wonder if that subject matter should be going down into my second book, and I spoke with my book commissioner recently and I said to him I'm a little bit concerned that topics that are coming up on the weekly podcast are topics that should be going into the book or should be triggering a story and what he said to me which was great great advice, he said, so what? Consider the podcast as research material for the stories to happen. So I'm going to try and make myself start doing that.

There's nothing to say that will say today's episode that has to do with impressionism and the Sykes-Picot agreement who says I can't write a short story and these things are the backdrop to that short story you know so I might try and explore a bit of that but I certainly would like more free time on my fucking hands to write that second book because I'm pretty sure I have to have it out for fucking October so I've only got

a few months left so I need to work feverishly very soon but that's difficult when I've got so many other counting deadlines but that's the shitty thing about the job everything comes all at once. And you have to take every opportunity. That you get.

My voice is going now. Because of the stupid tickly cough. I want to box the throat off myself. Brendan asks. What's the most constructive way. To deal with criticism. It depends. It depends on who. It's coming from Brendan. It depends on who it's coming from Brendan

it depends on whether it's actual criticism or whether the person's been a bit nasty you know the key is I think Brendan is to judge how you are reacting to it okay if it's make the key is i think brendan is to judge how you are reacting to it okay

if it's make if the criticism is making you feel furiously angry right if it's me if it's really irritating you there's a chance that something about the criticism is actually right and unconsciously you know it's right but you're not ready to admit that to yourself so investigate that possibility if the criticism does irritate you makes you angry or keeps you awake or you find yourself replaying or focusing on the criticism too much or feeling angry with the person who delivered the criticism be real honest with yourself be really really honest and wonder fuck it is that is that maybe maybe that criticism is legit and i know that it is but i'm my pride won't let me admit it to myself and allow it in and

allow it to possibly be true because from from that. Comes growth. Okay. So. Consider that. It depends what it is you're doing. For instance. With the book. Like the second book I'm writing at the moment. The most.

Dangerous. Criticism that I'm trying to. Turn away from is the positive criticism. I've only received a couple of negative things about the book and I flat out disagree with most of them because it's like no this is how I wanted to do the book and this critique that you have is how you would have done the book if you wrote it and that's no good to me so I'm okay with the negative stuff but positive criticism that I've gotten for the book I'm finding quite I don't want to say harmful but I'm struggling with it at the moment because

people like things about my book that were not my favorite things and the things that were my favorite things people aren't noticing and that's throwing me off a little bit what I can't allow myself to do with an artist is listen to the things that people liked about book number one and then try and repeat them because then I'm not I'm not in flow then I'm not speaking from my heart so I have to try and ignore all criticism and only trust in my unconscious flow on my heart luckily I'm fucking 17 years in the game and that's something I'm quite good at now I was shit at 10 years ago I hope that answer helped bill asks how would you recommend someone go about learning about more critical theory in brackets cultural marxism

seems like an important and useful skill to have well bill um just go on amazon and buy a basic introducing book to critical theory that covers all the different schools of critical theory and all the different philosophers from fucking post-modernism to feminism to whatever the fuck you have. But there's plenty of books out there that cover the lot. And use the introductory book to give you a broad stroke armchair knowledge of critical theory and then once you find the ones that you find most interesting buy some original texts and go

into it in more detail i'd say that for anything by the way not just critical theory that's what i always do if i've got a new subject that i want to learn find the most basic introductory book learn that until i've got a broad knowledge in my head broad but shallow knowledge in my head and then from there you approach the original texts in more detail never pick up in a written like jesus don't go buying a fucking don't go buying a book that Baudrillard wrote do you know cause it'll just put you off

or fucking Derrida I did that years ago I bought a book by Jacques Derrida got about a a paragraph into it and put it down cause it was just too much

but that goes for fucking anything broad strokes usually what I say to myself, if I'm trying to understand a new subject, and I want to know, am I grasping it, okay, what I say to myself is, can I describe this new thing that I've learnt to somebody, right, can I describe it to them, using only metaphor, and if I can describe it to someone using metaphor and they understand it that means

I have a sufficiently broad understanding of it yart I'm sounding 10% more cynical this week but it's because I'm pissed off with my own tickly throat because I'm holding back a little cough so that's about one hour and 10 minutes of a podcast there of a very ranty

Bill Burr style podcast episode because I have the same time I have the same echo as his room does as well when he's recording his podcast in my temporary lodgings. So go in peace and enjoy yourselves. I won't be uploading those live episodes I recorded for a while. I'm still kind of on the fence about the live episodes. Do you know? I love them as something that's, because they're interesting, right, but I still can't tell if when I upload a live podcast, does that interfere with your podcast hug,

does it have the same intimacy, is it a different energy, because I don't want to be doing that to you, so, you know, you so you know you let me know let me know on Twitter or Patreon or whatever the fuck what you think em I might start because I'm going to be fucking cough again

I'm going to have a backlog of these live episodes as I do more and more live podcasts and maybe I should just release them you know every so often on a Thursday or something and you still get your Wednesday morning podcast hug also the other thing too though is I'm very busy and the podcast takes a lot of time to record so in the event that some week I'm like fuck it i could really do with not recording a podcast this week because i'm up the walls it is nice to have the um live ones as backup to have a few of them

ready to fucking lash out on a wednesday i haven't decided so you let me know what do you think but as always have a great week um the weather's fucking improving lads, you know, spring is upon us, so use your mindfulness, go out and enjoy that, watch the daffodils coming up, notice the increase in temperature, notice the general sense of positivity all around you because winter is disappearing and take that on board and i spoke to you about enjoying winter when it was around and embracing the the decay well now that decay is going and the fruits of that decay is turning into new life so enjoy it and enjoy it mindfully and don't be walking around you know replaying arguments in your head or focusing on something you're worried about give yourself a little space to be in the here and now and share that with nature and after the end of that don't be surprised

if you're a little bit happier do you know what I mean go in peace, God bless yart and smoke weed everyday Thank you. 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 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 for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play.

Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.