The Blindboy Podcast - Croatian Fathers

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

I speak about the process of how television is made. And I chat about grief and death. Dealing with the sadness of losing someone you love Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. We're going to start off this week's episode with a short poem called Your Father in Croatia. I want Tyrannosaurus Rex on a tricycle. He will have the hair of Luke Kelly, the wounds of Christ, the legs of Marilyn Monroe. Spit will trickle from his gums. He'll have golf clubs clenched in each fist. He'll have greasy, dark, curly hair on his chest. I don't care how much it costs and I want it on my inner thigh, full colour. That was a poem called Your Father in Croatia. If you're a brand new listener to this podcast, always recommend going listen to some earlier episodes. Some people even start from the very start. I've got people now quite a few people messaging me and they began from the start because we're nearly at 200 episodes. They began from the

start at the beginning of quarantine and only now they're catching up. And. They're feeling a sense of anxiety. Because they have to wait each week for a new podcast. But thank you to those people. And that's what I love about podcasts. It's nice to find a new podcast. And you like one episode. And then you're like fuck it there's loads.

I can listen to loads. I love it when that happens with a podcast. Regular listeners. You know the crack. Absolutely fantastic feedback for last week's podcast that I've been receiving online, which is good because it appears to have done exactly what I intended last week's podcast to be. I spoke to Dr Rory Hearn, who is an expert in social policy, and we spoke about the housing crisis in Ireland

with kind of an international leaning. And I wanted it to be a really simple, accessible, enjoyable conversation about the housing and rent crisis with an expert. And I wanted the people to connect with it emotionally and to feel what I wanted. And this is the reaction I got from a lot of people. I'm really happy with this reaction is. Huge amount of people are impacted by the rent crisis and the housing crisis in Ireland. A lot of people.

And a lot of people are experiencing stress and tension around it and emotions of feeling powerless. And for a lot of people, based on the feedback I got, listening to Rory speak about the housing crisis so simply it allowed people to verbalise their emotions

which is a really powerful thing when you have a tension inside you when you're angry about something or you're fearful of something or you're stressed out about something but you don't have the words to say what it is but you know it inside yourself when someone can give you those words and you can verbalize those emotions and you can see them

that's a lovely moment of awakening and it's that type of awakening that causes action and a lot of people signed Rory's uplift petition as well to make housing a human right in Ireland. So thank you for all the feedback. And I'm just really happy with last week's podcast. I'm really happy to have provided that space for the conversation to happen and for so many people to have been appreciative of that and for it to have had some type of positive impact. So thank you.

Also, I've been contacted loads this week by people who listen to this podcast who are doing their leave-in certs. The leave-in cert is the national exam in Ireland that you do when you're getting ready to leave secondary school. And the leave-in cert is on this week. Last week and this week, I think. And you know the leave-in cert is on when the weather is good. It's this ironic trick that the weather plays on Ireland.

Where when all the young people are stuck in classrooms doing exams stressed out. The weather outside is just unfeasibly hot and perfect. Like in Spain. And then when the Leaving Cert ends it starts raining. And that's just a tradition it's an ironic tradition in Ireland and it's a given each year some people might call it weather

I don't I don't I think it's the it's all the ghosts of Ireland dead anyone who died horribly under colonialism in the past 800 years it's their spirits rising up on the first week of June.

Like a type of inverted Halloween. And their spirits rise up into the sky. And they pull back the clouds. For a week and a half. And let all the sun in. Knowing that the young people of Ireland are stuck in a room. And they're just up there being miserable. Going we suffered and died for Ireland

and ye don't get to enjoy this sun why should we suffer why did I have to die in the famine and you get to enjoy this sun no you're going to get the sun during the leaving cert fuck you do some long division but yeah I got contacted by a lot of people doing the fucking leaving cert

because there was a question in the English paper about statues. And I had done a full podcast episode on iconoclism and Ireland's history of destroying statues and destroying icons of oppression. And a lot of Leaving Cert students were like, you answered the question for me. So people responded to that question with kind of a synopsis of some of the stuff I covered in that podcast,

which is lovely, and thank you for telling me that. That's lovely to know that I was a help. Because I failed my fucking Leaving Cert. But I do remember that feeling, the fucking feeling of walking out the school gates for the last time. Jesus, that was a good feeling of relief and freedom and lit up a

cigarette, silk cut purple on school grounds, because I'm a free adult now and I can and walked out the school gates smoking the cigarette we went up to an alleyway I walked out with a few other people, went up to an alleyway I walked out with a few other people went up to an alleyway, took off our school jumpers

fucked them onto the ground and burnt them burnt our school jumpers and it was fantastic and then that night and then that night, my leave insert night the night we finished the fucking or was it leave insert results night no it was the summer

so the night that we finished the leave insert most people were like because what was i was i 17 18 i think i might have been 18 finishing my leave insert so i would have been old enough to go into a pub but me and my friends were like no everyone will be in town it'll be too packed it'll be no crack so let's just drink in a bush like we always do and it started off like actually being the right choice, we got a lot of Dutch Gold, that was the drink

at the time, which were very cheap beer and it was only like 4% so it wasn't that strong, so we got Dutch Gold and there was about 16 of us in this field behind a petrol station

the other thing too is we'd managed to convince loads of lads from school who were from way way on the other side of Limerick to come with us to drink in our field

where we drink so we convinced a bunch of lads no no no fuck going into town you gotta come out all the way to where we drink so we convinced a bunch of lads no no no fuck going into town you gotta come out all the way to where we are drink in our field and I promise you'll have the best night and it'll be way better than a nightclub so a lot was at stake

here and it was going really well you know having this class time in a field with cans it was going really really well now it wasn't our field. We just called it our field because that's where we drank. That's where we would hide and drink on weekends. It's one of those small fields in a city where you just don't know who owns it.

Now, the first thing, this is Limerick City. It wasn't the countryside. So it was a small field behind a petrol station, which has got its pros and its cons. Pros, because you're very close to a petrol station which has got its pros and its cons. Pros because you're very close to a petrol station so if you need to buy more drink or cigarettes or you want to buy food you can just go five minutes into the petrol station. Cons because people can ring the guards so you're in a field but you're making noise near a petrol station and near people's houses, so it's not fully private like the way a proper field would be.

But it started off really, really well. I recall the sun setting and the feeling of freedom and the summer ahead of me and not having to worry about going back to school in September. And it just being really nice but then as darkness approached things took a bit of a queer turn the first one was I witnessed one lad give another lad an atomic wedgie which I'd never actually seen and an atomic wedgie. It's not like a regular wedgie where you just pull a person's jocks up. This was one lad catching another lad by the jocks,

lifting his entire body in the air, and then shaking him up and down like a bag of chips that you put salt in. And it completely ripped this lad's underpants up out of his trousers. It demolished him. He started crying for two reasons. The first of which is that his testicle was bleeding. The second of which is that the particular jocks that he was wearing were a present from his girlfriend. And he didn't want to have to explain to her why they were ripped completely off his body

and there's blood on him and it's funny now looking back but it wasn't funny because it's not a pleasant thing to see someone getting an atomic wedgie it's quite a a violent and extreme act to see someone's underpants

ripped off him while their jeans remain intact. That's quite a violent spectacle to behold. And it caused one lad to have a whitener when he saw it. Which is a cannabis induced panic attack. So that it all kind of put a damper on things. But we were able, you know, we were ready to get over it. Fuck it.

It'd be grand. Have a few more cans. Things were getting back to normal but then, just as darkness came down and it got a bit colder and you could feel the flies biting at your hair, this group of lads entered the field

and wrongly assumed that we were in the field to interfere with their horses so then we got chased and someone picked up a giant rock one of the lads who was chasing us picked up this fucking huge rock like a really big one

and lashed it at me and it walloped off the back of my neck and knocked me onto the ground and that was that was a shit end to my leaving cert night and I was just glad that like

if that had hit the back of my head it would have actually killed me because it was a huge rock and these lads were just like convinced we were interfering with their horses we weren't we were drinking in a field

weren't going near the horses and why would we but yeah it hit me on the back of the horses and why would we but yeah it hit me on the back of the neck and yeah so the end of my leaving cert

night was just me being happy that the rock had hit me on the bone of my neck so all it did was give me a massive

bruise but it didn't cause any injury but two inches higher and that's it into the hospital or possible concussion so that was my leave in certain night

this week I'm going to answer some of your questions which I asked on Instagram I asked questions that you'd like me to questions that you'd like me to answer or topics that you would like me to talk about and I do these every so often because they're good crack

I enjoy doing them and every time I do them I make a promise that I'm going to answer as many as possible and I never do I always only end up answering one or two but I'm really going to try this time I'm really going to try this time so

Ben asked can you speak about the process of producing something for television and things that never get made that's interesting um yes i can so when you make things for TV, okay, this week, for instance, this week, my buddy, who I write with for television, is coming down to Limerick. I haven't seen him in a few months. He's coming down to Limerick for a day, and we're going to do a day of writing for television. And what does that mean? I'll try and make this as simple as possible for people who want to understand what, for people who want to get into making things for TV. So first off, one thing I've learned,

I've been making TV for just a little over 10 years. And the most important thing I've learned with television is there is nothing, nothing else is more disappointing as an industry, There's nothing, nothing else is more disappointing as an industry. By which I mean, the rate that your ideas get rejected is fucking huge. And you could invest a year in an idea and all the signals that this is going to get commissioned and get put out onto television, all these signals can be clear and then at the last minute your idea gets shut down and this happens 90% of projects on tv 90% and so the main skill you have to learn if you're working in television is to expect disappointment you have to work you have to work really hard on something and you don't think about it whether it's going to get commissioned you think about i'm going to

work really hard on something that is going to get rejected and turn into nothing and that's the skill you have to develop and that's a hard skill to develop and i developed it the really hard way because the first proper tv commission I got about 10 years ago and it was a pilot for Channel 4 in the UK and I'd grown up watching Channel 4 programs, watching Channel 4 comedy like Reeves and Mortimer and Brass Eye. So getting a Channel 4 commission, especially in my fucking early 20s, it was, I couldn't believe believe it it was unfathomable I never thought I'd get to that level so I worked my whole off writing this thing for an entire year we filmed it we had an incredible director Declan Lowney and like it was it was the best I could have done at the time

looking back on it now I don't really like it but at the time it was the best I could have done at the time. Looking back on it now, I don't really like it. But at the time, it was the best I could have done. But like, all the signs, they'd said to us, Oh, don't worry, this is getting made into a series. This is surefire. This is guaranteed. We love it. We love it. And then, of course, what happens?

It doesn't get commissioned at all. And it broke my heart. It absolutely ripped the heart out of my chest, I was so disappointed so utterly disappointed and the reason it didn't get commissioned and this is the mad thing about TV they did love it

they actually did love it they actually did intend to make it into a series but what happened is that the commissioner, the person who decides what gets made into a series just before the final decision was being made they left the job and a new commissioner came in

and how it works in television and it's really cruel but how it works in television is when a new commissioner comes into a job in TV they generally scrap a load of shit that was commissioned by the previous commissioner. Because their job as a commissioner is to kind of put their stamp on the channel, to put their personal brand on it. So if something belonging to an old commissioner does really well or does really bad, the current commissioner can't really take credit for it so they just scrap more stuff unless they're madly successful things that are running so we fell victim to that

and looking back the crippling disappointment that I felt that was me being unprofessional I should never have allowed myself to feel in any way optimistic or sure that something was to get commissioned because what I've learned about the TV industry is that you have to expect something to get rejected because the rejection rate is so high and you have to work your whole off on a project even though and work work really hard on something that you know will probably get rejected and that's

the skill that I've had to develop and I definitely have developed it now I really have to the detriment of my personal life I've

I have great difficulty feeling excited being excited about anything which is a weird paradox, I just don't, I expect nothing from any work that I do, or not even any work, just good news in my personal life, I simply, I'm emotionally flat when it comes to getting excited about things. And I kind of miss that.

It's nice to get excited about stuff sometimes. But I've had to deaden that part of myself in order to work in an industry where the rejection rate is so high. But one positive thing is I've truly internalized the fact that just because something gets rejected in TV doesn't mean that it's bad doesn't mean that you've done a bad piece of work it just means that it doesn't fit with what the channel wants to put out at that moment and here's another fact

about television because TV is kind of a it's a dying medium TV is a dying medium streaming services and stuff I don't consider that TV that's streaming that's a separate beast but television stuff that mainly gets made for television that's a dying medium and advertising money is lower for it the budgets are lower so the actual TV channel

has to try and have a success rate that's quite high and success nowadays literally just means viewership and what gets the most viewers isn't necessarily the best piece of TV it's not necessarily something that has creative integrity or is artistic and you'll know if you've ever seen the TV that I make whether it be the rubber bandits documentaries or i had a tv show on itv a few years back called the almost impossible game show or the blind by undestroyed stuff on bbc if you've seen any of this shit you'll know that

i don't really make stuff that's going to be popular I try and make things that are a bit difficult and arty farty within reason so how I end up getting commissioned with shit is sometimes and this is the hardest thing to get commissioned sometimes a TV

channel or a commissioner specifically will want to commission a piece of work that they know isn't going to get a lot of views but it might get awards and that's the stuff that i make which is a really tiny window that's a really small window so that window is maybe open once every two or three years and it requires a commissioner to go I'm going to make something that no one's going to watch but it will get nominated for an award or it might get some good critical reviews. Now another downside to that is that the budgets for those type of shows are usually really tiny. When I get commissioned for a TV series,

it's often with money that's left over. A TV commissioner will have money that's left over and that's what gets put into making the type of stuff that I make. So what happens is you end up getting paid fairly for the work that you put in and so does everyone else who works on it and that's grand because I don't really make tv for money either i make tv because tv is fucking a hell of a lot of fun to

make when you do it properly and it has a huge amount of potential to make something really entertaining and really different and something you can't do at home on your own because you don't have the budget. And the benefit then for me for that is that it just works like an advertisement. It brings more people to listen to my podcast or to buy one of my books or whatever. So this week what I'm going to do in the writing room is me and my writing partner are going to write for an entire day and we'll come away with three or four ideas for a tv show and then you send these to tv commissioners and they

probably won't like any of them and they'll probably reject them all but you got to put your heart and soul into it and work hard on something that you know is going to be rejected but that's not a failure because the thing is if you come up with a good fucking idea even if it gets rejected now you can put it in the back pocket because the initial question was

speak about the process of producing something for television and things that never get made like I've got loads and loads of TV shows that never got made or never even got made into pilots. And a lot of those ideas ended up in my first book as short stories. And the short stories did quite well. So those ideas aren't failures.

They were just rejected at that time and then came back in another form and got to see the light of day then so there's no such thing as failure to be honest on a long enough time scale there's no such thing if you just the very act of trying and creating the very act of creating something is a success and the only actual failure is creating nothing because you were scared to try but if you're just creating creating even if no one sees those things or if they don't get commissioned the fact that you made them is the success and you can always rehash those things later. Now another downside to television as a medium is because a TV channel, like TV's very expensive to make.

Very expensive. So even a medium, so my BBC series, which was three episodes, that was considered small to medium budget. But that was still a million pounds. So BBC spent still a million pounds so bbc spent like a million pounds to make blind by undestroyed the tv series now does that mean that i got given a million pounds no it doesn't what you're talking about there is hiring 40 really qualified between 40 and 50

really qualified professionals for an entire year and as well TV a TV day could be 16 hour days easily 12 to 16 hours so if you've got 40 people

who are professionals working 12 to 16 hour days a million quid is going to burn up really quickly and that's what's necessary to make television it's really expensive and when you do it properly it can be absolutely wonderful but because someone is investing that amount of money in what you're making they expect a return for that money so what happens there is the artist the writer me I end up having to hand over not creative control yeah creative control so the initial idea that I have I know that

50% of that idea is going to have to be distilled down through the lens of a commissioner who's thinking of views and ratings so anything I make for television is most likely not the finished product I'll never be fully happy with because I've had to compromise on so many levels to accommodate

an organisation that's providing a huge budget for it because they'll just tell you to fuck off if you put your heels in the ground. Now in the olden days of television that's providing a huge budget for it because they'll just tell you to fuck off if you put your heels in the ground now in the olden days of television that wasn't a problem that's why something as creative as Brass Eye gets made because TV was making so much money

in the 90s they could afford to piss away a certain amount of money on an artist who had a true creative vision like Chris Morris so you end up with great pieces of work like Brass Eye because

he was able to dig his heels in the ground and go no I'm making the TV show that I want to fucking make and then the commissioner's going who cares it's only a million quid I'm making 20 million off this other TV show and this is why I love podcasting this is why I love making this podcast because when I do a podcast or a decent hot take

that's 100% what I want to make and I've figured out a way to do it whereby it's not mad expensive to make and things like the Patreon fund me to do it but it means that I'm getting out something I really really like and can stand over and hasn't been interfered with and that's absolutely magnificent, podcasting has provided me with that space that I was longing for

in TV for so long like the ideal TV show that I'd like to make I'd love to like get all the podcasts that I'd like to make. I'd love to like. Get all the podcasts that I've done on art history. All my art history podcasts. And to take that to someone like Netflix.

Who has proper budgets. And make a Netflix series of basically my art history podcasts. With all those hot takes. I'd fucking love that. But I'd be so scared that the commissioner would fuck it up because this is the type of idea that commissioners come forward with, commissioners don't necessarily

come forward with ideas that are creative they come forward with ideas that are based on what works in terms of ratings so if I was doing an art history program about Caravaggio the commissioner would say I love what you're doing

about the Caravaggio I love the hot take it's fantastic but is there any way we can make it a little bit more like carpool karaoke because that's really really popular carpool karaoke where James Corden gets fucking

Paul McCartney into the car to sing a song can we get that but but it's about Caravaggio and then

I have to go I don't really want to I don't I think that's a bad idea and then the commissioner goes well I don't know how I can release

the funds to make it happen and then before commissioner goes well I don't know how I can release the funds to make it happen and then before you know it Blind Boys series about art history is carpool karaoke slash art history and like an inverted

version of that happened to me recently and it was very disappointing and I'll tell you the story but I won't say who it was just for legal reasons just in case so a large broadcaster

in Ireland okay and there's only so many a large broadcaster in Ireland a commissioner up there was obviously hearing about my podcast

and had been aware that like wow there's more people listening to this podcast than are watching a hell of a lot of our tv shows blind boy's doing something he's doing something well he's he's been effective with it so i got a mail from this broadcaster saying can we send two camera people to your live podcast gig so that we can film it for internal research? And I immediately said, absolutely no way, because I know what that means.

What that means is, can we film your podcast, take that footage back to our broadcasting place, get a bunch of people to dissect it figure out what it is you're doing that's working and then develop our own idea that's inspired by it with someone else presenting it so i said no way not a fucking hope and the thing is if i'd have said yes if i was younger and more naive and i'd have said yes legally what I'm doing there is I'm I'm kind of granting them permission to pick ideas off me because if I was younger I'd be thinking of course come on in they might give me a shot but I'm too long in the industry I understand you're basically giving away consent there so when they copy what I've done and someone else is presenting it

then I don't have a legal leg to stand on if I say to them fuck it this new thing that you have there is very similar to what I'm doing the proof is there it's like you let us in you said it was okay so I said no now what they should have done

is they should have came to me and they should have said wow your podcast seems to be doing really well why is this and then i would have said well to be honest lads is because i've got full creative control there's no one distilling my ideas i can see things to their completion to the end and because of that it's authentic to the vision that i have there's no one interfering and then they would say how can we fund you so that you can do that for us and then we can both have a success but the thing is, I actually

don't hold that against them because you might be thinking, those bastards, that's so sneaky trying to take your idea, it's not sneaky, if they were being sneaky they wouldn't have come to me and asked for permission to film the industry is just broken they don't have the funds and the resources to take risks so it's

makes more sense to them to try and figure out what it is that i'm doing take that and then have someone from south dublin who doesn't wear a plastic bag on their head presenting it. Because that's safer and easier to sell to Middle Ireland. So that there is the, that's kind of what's wrong with TV at the moment, and it's often what goes wrong with television. And then every so often something really beautiful will slip through the cracks. Or you'll have a commissioner. Who is just. Believes in the artist.

And gives him freedom. And defends him. But like I said. That stuff is rare. Now one example recently. Of. Phenomenal fucking television. And loads of people were asking me.

To speak about this in particular. This week. Everyone wants to know my opinion. On this show. There's a. Netflix special. by a comedian called Bo Barnham and I forget the name of the

special, Inside Out or something like that it's called it's Bo Barnham's new Netflix special and loads of people are talking about it because it's amazing, it's 90 minutes and it's perfect it's a fucking masterpiece it's really really good And when I see a piece

of TV that's amazing, as someone who makes TV, the questions that I ask myself is how did this happen? How did this happen that this brilliant piece of TV was allowed to be made? And I can't see many compromises in it to make it more mainstream it's called Bo Burnham Inside you'll see it on Netflix so it's incredible 90 minutes long and it's really simple

and it perfectly sums up the experience of quarantine and it will be remembered this will be remembered in 20-30 years time as a standout piece of art that encapsulated the feeding of quarantine

it's just incredible Bo Burnham he filmed it himself on his own he edited it himself on his own, he directed it himself on his own, in one room and it's 90 minutes long and my hot

take on why it's so good and this is what I think that happened right because of the pandemic TV commissioners couldn't fuck it up they weren't able to get involved

to make it shit you see not a lot of TV has been made over the past year over quarantine, because it's hard to make television with social distancing rules. Your average TV show contains a crew of 30 to 100 people. That's a lot of people in close spaces for a lot of the day.

It simply can't happen under quarantine. So commissioners had their hands tied behind their back. They had to commission whatever could be made with the tiniest amount of people making it. So they went to Bo Burnham, and he too was restricted, because he's like, I can't really leave my gaff.

I'm under quarantine here, so what can I make in one room? And what Bo Burnham did is that he didn't necessarily make a piece of TV. What he did is he made a piece of theatre. Specifically, like an Edinburgh Fringe show and called it television. Like, I've gigged at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The Edinburgh Fringe is the world's largest. Is it the world's largest? I think it's the world's largest. Not just the comedy festival, but everything is on at Edinburgh in August for a month. Comedy shows, theatre shows, variety, whatever. I did it two years in a row with the Rubber Bandits doing a stage show in Edinburgh.

And while I was there, I would go to see a lot of other artists shows and one thing you notice with a good edinburgh show is they're made for a small audience maybe 150 people and when you see a good edinburgh show and you're sat down in a room with a small amount of people and then the budgets are low so you probably just have one or two people on stage but effectively you have this intimate space with not a lot of people watching and not a lot of people on stage when that's done really really well that show can emotionally impact you in a way that no other art form can the intimacy of that can lead to a

really really deeply effective piece of art that stays with you like for me I remember being in Edinburgh one year and I saw a show by uh an artist and an artist and a comedian called Kim Noble. And it's worth mentioning too that this Kim Noble show was produced and commissioned by a fella called David Johnson, who I mentioned a few months back. David Johnson was a friend of mine. He died sadly a couple of months ago. But he was a show producer. And he's who funded us to go to Edinburgh

because he was one of these rare people that was willing to lose money on an artist if he believed that they were good enough he was like if I love what you're doing I will fund this and let you make that art

and I don't care if it loses money because I'll make money somewhere else that's fine but I believe in your art. And you make what you want to make. And he was amazing for that. He's sadly missed because of that. He did that for us. But he also did it for this Kim Noble chap.

And I can't remember the name of his show. But it was just an hour long show. And it was just him on stage. And I have never been more deeply affected by a piece of art. Than those 60 minutes of being present in that audience. That show tugged on me emotionally. In a way that TV never has. And when I'd see that show or see other shows in Edinburgh that were of that level.

I'd always walk out saying to myself how can you make how do you make TV that has that amount of emotional impact surely I just sat there in an audience and watched a show and I know there was a physical person on stage but something about that performance I just saw surely you can figure out whatever that energy is and bring it to tv surely that's something you can do and Bo Burnham's Netflix special inside managed to do that it's just him in a room he didn't use a green screen, he just used one light that changed colours and one camera that was on a tripod. And it was so minimal and so stripped back that he managed to deliver the intimacy of a five-star Edinburgh fringe show on my TV.

And the only reason that was made possible is because of quarantine. TV and the only reason that was made possible is because of quarantine because Bo Burnham's show is basically it's him talking and then some songs and the whole thing follows a narrative and that's it it's very powerful

if quarantine wasn't a factor a commissioner or a team of commissioners would have come in and said Bo we really like that four minute piece where it's just you and a piano and one camera. We really like that.

But can we bring in some dancers? How about we do it outside? How about we have some fireworks? How can we make it bigger? How can we make a really big piece out of this? Because you're competing with people who are looking at their mobile phones as well.

And you're competing with people who have hundreds of other things to watch. You've got to be loud. You've got to be big. You've got to keep their attention. You've got to scream at them. And the thing is that the art may not have needed to be a big piece.

It might not have needed a lot of dancers. But commissioners are always thinking in terms of ratings so they'd have fucked it up and you you could have had Bo Burnham special as something that was still brilliant but not what he made he made a really vital and important piece of art that's going to be remembered in 20-30 years time I think coronavirus allowed him to circumnavigate. What's wrong with TV. And how TV is made. And now we have a brilliant piece of art as a result.

And I hope that like many things post pandemic. TV commissioners now are going to go. Maybe things can be smaller. More intimate. Don't have to be big, loud and shiny or carpool karaoke. Maybe we should trust the artist to fully deliver the art because they know what they're doing. Maybe we should trust that process. And this isn't me being shitty about individual people

or saying that, oh, this TV channel hasn't a clue. They don't know nothing. No. Like, I know commissioners, especially commissioners in the UK or people who've been ex-commissioners and I've had pints with them and I've worked with them. Most of these people are really fucking creative who like good art.

It's just the system, the industry, means that that's not how they can operate. They have to operate with a commercial mindset. And I'll tell you the best example of this. A buddy of mine in the UK, who I've worked with here and there on TV, and this person is a TV producer and they're a real rising star in TV production, by which I mean, within five years, they have a good shot at becoming a commissioner of a large TV channel. They're one of these people.

They might become the commissioner of a big TV channel at the top. And I was having a pint with this person and they're a buddy so if they're making something that's shit i can say it to him you know and we can laugh about it so i was saying to them jesus this thing you made here is fucking class i really love it but why are you making this other thing this is terrible why are you making that and you know This is terrible. Why are you making that? And you know what he said to me? And he meant it dead seriously.

He goes, One day I'd like to be a TV commissioner. So I need to be able to show the TV channel that I'm perfectly comfortable making absolute harsh shit. Because if I only make things that have artistic integrity they won't hire me they need to see me make terrible awful shit and then I'll get the job and I'm also being a bit of an elitist hipster here as well like I'm someone who is sensitive to art so I want to see things that really make me think things that speak to me in my language. As someone who is creative.

Most people don't want that. Most people. Just want loud shiny entertainment. And that's absolutely fine. That's fucking grand. Sometimes that's what I want. Sometimes I want to switch off. And watch loud entertainment.

That has mass appeal. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm not shaming anyone who's into it. But the problem is, it's not right to have an industry that increasingly only caters to that. And then you miss out on really tender and important pieces of art that not a lot of people will watch. But for the people that do watch it, it has a profound impact on them. We're losing the balance, if you get me. And the issue there then is that people who want to make art that's true to themselves are now moving towards complete independence.

Podcasting, YouTube. true to themselves are now moving towards complete independence podcasting youtube but then the downside of that is yes you can make something that's authentic to your creative vision but then you don't have that big budget to make something that's authentic to the creative vision but way better because there's a budget there to make it better so you get a stripped down version of a creative vision which also isn't necessarily the best version of that work all the time and that's the reality of it that's the reality of tv that's no spoofing and what's the solution to it i was recently asked uh so the government, the Irish government, did this, I don't know what would you call it,

was it a survey or a hearing? I don't know, I can't even remember. It was like this big, not a tribunal, it was a government-funded investigation into the future of media in Ireland, okay? And this panel, this government panel that was made up of, like, academics and people working in TV, In Ireland. Okay. And. This panel. This government panel. That was made up of like.

Academics. And people working in TV. They had selected certain people. In the media industry. To come and speak. On this government report. Officially. And to give our opinions. On the future of media.

In Ireland. So they'd ask like. The fucking. Someone from the journal.ie. Online media. And they had someone from like. The Irish Times. And like the fucking someone from the journal.ie online media and they had someone from like the Irish Times and then they had someone from RTE and they had someone from TV3 or Virgin or whatever it's called now and then for podcasting they asked me will you come and speak about on this committee how media should be funded in Ireland. Should it come from the TV licence or should it come from advertising?

And what I said was, we need a national broadcaster. Currently the national broadcaster is RTE. But I said, we need a national broadcaster that is properly funded so that it doesn't have to think about ratings. And I said, it doesn't have to think about ratings. And I said. It shouldn't rely on advertising. It shouldn't need ratings. It's funded.

To accommodate failure. Because currently when you have. A national broadcaster. That needs to have a certain amount of viewers. Or that needs to earn a certain amount of money from advertising. And the way you do that is bring viewers up. Now you have a certain amount of viewers or that needs to earn a certain amount of money from advertising and the way you do that is bring viewers up now you have a climate where creativity can't flourish because it's a climate of fear so only by properly funding a national broadcaster can you create space for creative people to truly fail every single day and if you allow and fund that space

for failure you will get excellence but if you don't have a space for failure you get very little excellence tons of shit and a little bit of mediocrity

and that doesn't mean the taxpayer having to spend way more money. It just means the national broadcaster changing its strategy to no longer care if anyone is watching it or not. Literally to make really good TV that nobody watches just because it's good and for the money to exist to accommodate that and if you do that you'll get occasional excellence and that's that's my opinion and and the the tv industry and the process of producing things for tv and how i think tv can fucking thrive

and if you're wondering like you know why is this important it's important for art I mean you think of the 20th century in Ireland and how Ireland produced some of the greatest writers of the 20th century really really important writers that was possible because most of them had patrons back in the day like someone like James Joyce who's considered the equivalent of Ireland's Picasso and one of the most important modernist writers that was made possible because James Joyce was funded by a very very wealthy woman called Harriet Shaw Weaver

she basically had a ton of money funded by a very, very wealthy woman called Harriet Shaw Weaver. She basically had a ton of money, and she said, this James Joyce fella, I don't think he's going to sell any books. I don't know, what he's doing is very complicated, but it's fucking interesting. It's really interesting, and he needs a lot of time to do this. So I'm going to fund him.

I'm going to give him money to do what he does. And I'm going to fund him so that he can fail all the time. And that's okay. And there might have been another 60 writers who had patrons who never did nothing. But you end up with excellence because that structure exists. You can still have your TV channels that want that wanted if they want to be commercial or pander to advertisers or make big blockbuster things you can still have that but there needs to be a space where things are being made for the sake of creativity rather than the sake of financial success and public funding is the only way to bolster that to allow that to happen

and we don't think about with art like think of it with sport it's easy to understand if you think of a professional soccer team or even the GAA

or someone training for the Olympics alright what 90% of their time is spent training training isn't the match

training isn't the final fucking game training is the space where that athlete fails every single day they're striving

for failure so that success comes out of it you how could you have a soccer game where the team haven't trained? You'd say to the soccer team, sorry, we don't have any money for you to train during the week.

We only have money for you to turn up for the actual game. What would sport look like then? It'd be shit. It'd be a pile of amateurs. And it wouldn't be excellence. So artistic spaces need the same thing. So that's one question I've managed to answer, lads,

and it took me 50 fucking minutes. One question, after I promised I'd answer loads. We're gonna have an ocarina pause, and I'm gonna see how many questions I can answer after that. Alright? I can answer after that. Alright? On April 5th you must be very careful, Margaret.

It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't.

The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It'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. 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 host 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. That was the Ocarina Pause.

You would have heard a digitally inserted advert. This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. And I think what I was speaking about before the Ocarina Pause, that made the case for the importance of patrons. So this podcast is independent, by which I mean, I have the occasional advertiser on it in order to honour my contract with Acast. But no advertiser tells me what to do. I can tell him to fuck off. But no advertiser tells me what to do. I can tell him to fuck off.

I make what I want to make. And I get to make sure that every week what I'm doing is something I'm genuinely passionate about. I don't have to change anything. I'm delivering what I want to deliver. And it's hugely enjoyable. And as a result of that model. This podcast is probably the most commercially successful thing I've ever made. Just in terms of the amount of people that consume it.

We're up to almost 30 million listens at this point. I've never had anything close to that with anything I've made on TV. I've never had anything close to that with anything with rubber bandit stuff. And I don't need to make loud noises or do something that's entertaining for the sake of it or try and look at other things that are doing well and copy them. All the things that TV would, commissioners would ask me to do, I don't have to fucking do it and surprise surprise it's actually working better than that process by being a patron you're providing

me with space to fail, space to take risks, space to explore and space to have creative integrity to do what I want to do so thank you for that and if you enjoy this podcast and you listen to it regularly and you take something from it just consider paying me for the work that i'm doing all i'm asking for

is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it and if you can't afford that if you're out of work if you don't have that money don't worry about it you can listen for free and if you're someone who is paying me, then you're paying for the person who can't afford to listen. I earn a living. Everybody gets a podcast. The creativity isn't compromised.

What more could you ask for? It's fucking perfect. So that's patreon.com forward slash TheBlindByPodcast. Catch me on Twitch, twitch.tv forward slash TheBlindByPodcast, where Catch me on Twitch, twitch.tv forward slash TheBlindBuyPodcast, where once a week, I'm making a musical to the events of a video game.

Again, something absolutely ridiculous that would never get commissioned, but I get to be very creative and fail in the moment and take loads of risks and sometimes make things that are really, really nice.

That wouldn't be possible otherwise. Like the podcast. Share it. Leave a review on whatever podcast you're doing. Or podcast app you're using. Not just my podcast. Any independent podcast that you're enjoying. Leave reviews and share them.

Because that's hugely important to independent podcasters. In this new environment where. Big money is coming into the podcast space. And kind of oversaturating it a bit. Follow me on Instagram if you have Instagram. Blind by Boat Club on Instagram. Because I'm trying to move away from Twitter a bit. The theatre of misery.

Hopefully it'll get better. When the pandemic is over. But. I like Instagram. People on Instagram. If someone on Instagram wants to say something mean. They just don't. In general they just don't.

And if someone wants to say something nice. They'll say it. Like in real life. Instagram is quite close to real life. I find. Twitter. Twitter is just a big theatre of misery where there's points awarded for saying mean things

so Twitter's no fun for someone whose job is using social media but Instagram's quite nice for me anyway so follow me there so back to the questions lots of people asking me to speak about personality disorders

there's a lot of people who want me to speak about personality disorders do you know what I will do that at some point but if I'm to speak about something like personality disorders I would only speak about that if I'm

chatting to an expert because personality disorders is far outside of my remit you know I like to speak about mental health my own personal mental health it wouldn't be responsible of me to start chatting about personality disorders you need a professional for that but I'm going to look into that getting a professional on to speak about personality disorders a lot of people ask me to speak about grief I can speak about

grief because I've got direct personal experience of it I lost my dad when I was young I was late teens, early twenties and it was devastating but what can I say about grief the one thing I can say is there's not really any right or wrong way to do it your experience of grief is going to be as

unique as the relationship you had with the person who died. Do you know? Sometimes, if you lose a parent or a sibling or someone who's really close to you, or even a pet, you can react in really different ways like when my dad died I didn't cry I went kind of numb

because the pain was too great so I didn't have catharsis it was too shocking because he got a sudden illness so it was too shocking for me to process and I couldn't get the grief out of me I couldn't cry I had difficulty to be honest truly feeling sadness instead what I had was a a numb shock which stayed with me for a long time and

one of the issues I faced around that is feeling like a bad person because my mind is going your fucking dad just died and you're not crying your dad just died and you're able to you're able to forget about it for a while

and enjoy something on TV you don't feel anything and I experienced a great deal of guilt around that and then started to blame and shame myself as being a bad person instead of having the compassion to go

you're in shock no you're in shock the pain is too big some element of your personality or your brain is protecting you from a pain you're just not ready for and this is what's working for you right now. And it took many, many years to get that realisation. To not beat myself up. To go going, you're a bad person because you're not bawling, crying. Like I didn't cry at his funeral. Because I was just numb. And it's more than a decade later now. And I still have a numbness for it

I still have difficulty like I tell you when I was a child when you're really really young when you're a child you can think about your parents dying and it brings on this deep deep sadness

but that sadness that's cathartic the one that brings on tears and when I was a kid because my parents were old you see like my dad was fucking 70 and he died when I was like 1920 so I always as a child.

Had this awareness of. Fuck it. My parents are old. My dad in particular. So I always knew. His mortality was always in my mind. It's like you've got an old father. So.

His death is something. That I would have thought about as a child. And when I think about it as a child I would get that huge sadness I could bring myself to tears and then when he did die I couldn't access that and I felt like a fucking bad person and I still can't really access it

I still can't really and I have a new type of grief now because grief is any type of loss you know any type of loss is grief and the new grief I have now as a fucking grown adult in my 30s is like

how do I describe this I never got to have a proper adult conversation with my dad. Like I know when I'm 19, yes I'm an adult. But I'm not an adult the way I am now. I can communicate with someone who's 70 now. And I can see them as a full human being. When I was 19,

yes, I'm looking at my dad as an adult, but I don't have the life experience to speak to him as a full human being with insecurities and fears and flaws because he's still my dad. So I have the grief of having never experienced that I have the grief of never really knowing my dad

and that's a tough one to be perfectly honest that's not loss of a person I knew I have the loss of someone I never got to know which is really tough that's really fucking tough because I don't know how to fully I never got to know. Which is really tough.

That's really fucking tough. Because I don't know how to fully. Emotionally verbalize that. What the fuck is that? And as well. The grief. And sadness of. I'm such a different person now.

Than I was when I was fucking. A teenager. Or a young adult. I'm such a different person. That that person who I was then. Feels different. It's like that's not me. When I was 19.

That's not me. Who I am now. With my life experience, and my different sense of identity, and my different sense of self-esteem. So my dad kind of becomes an artefact from that era. The sadness of forgetting, yeah, the sadness of kind of forgetting a person, who was once my fucking dad

this hugely important person in my life and now because I'm in my mid-thirties who are they? who is that person from so long ago? and I don't know how that person fits into my life and identity now. Because I've no context.

The context for my relationship is childhood and teenage and young adult. So that stuff is weird. That's weird. And it's just part of the inevitable suffering of human existence. That's the suffering of being alive. That's a very, very sad thing that happened, that has happened to me in my life, a really fucking sad thing. And there's nothing I can do about it.

But yet I can still experience happiness on a day to day. And the way that I healthily process and think about grief is through the process of what I'd call rippling. In that when someone dies who you love and you have a connection with, they have an impact on who you are. They have an impact on your beliefs, on your body language, on how you think about yourself and how you relate to the world, your personality. So elements of him still live on through me in my values and how I think about things and how I relate to other people. So I think about that. That means that he's not truly gone. Elements of him live on through me

and through everyone else in my family that he knew and also, and this is a weird one who I am today as an adult is different to who I would have been if my dad hadn't died because the shock of him dying at a young age

it also kind of hardened me a bit it really kicked me up the arse into adulthood and made me resilient because it taught me such a such a harsh fucking lesson about life

that devastating things can happen very suddenly without warning and it will change everything and the harsh reality of that hit me like a fucking ton of bricks and it shaped who I am today. And.

My resilience. And my drive. To get things done. And it got rid of a lot of. Fears that I had. And made me. It made me confident to be an autonomous adult. To stand on my own two feet

because when your dad dies you have to you simply have to so that's all I'd say about grief there's no right or wrong way to do it it's a very sad thing and you gotta go with the flow with it but

definitely don't cause yourself any undue stress if you're feeling guilty or judging yourself about how you are handling the grief because whatever fucking way you're handling it is what's working for you right now like

I also lost like I also lost I've had three kind of major griefs in my life the first one is my dad and then the second one and this might sound silly is a cat called Charlie who died about four years ago

four or five years ago and that broke my fucking heart. Because I raised him since he was a little baby kitten. And he was 100% reliant upon me. To look after him. And then he died. And that shredded me to bits. And the weird thing is.

I can. If I think of Charlie the cat, I can bawl crying. When I think about Charlie and the sadness and the loss of Charlie, I can cry. that proper cathartic cry where the pain just finds a way of getting out and it feels like processing and it feels good I can do that when I think of my poor little cat

but I can't do it when I think of my da and I think that my mind somehow has sublimated the grief for my da into the safe space of a memory of a cat do you know what I mean?

because of course it's sad losing a little fucking cat but the quality and intensity and meaning of a relationship I have with a little cat is obviously nothing compared to the relationship I have with my dad but yet I can sit down and have a good think about Charlie

and really start crying I can't do that with my dad and so I think that's whatever defence mechanisms my brain has done. There's the safe space for those grief tears to get out. Because I'm just, I don't believe that all those tears are for a fucking cat. It's too intense. It's too sad. My mind has created a safe space.

And that's. I have to accept that. I know that sounds mad. But I have to accept that. And then the other big grief I had in my life. And again this is another complicated one. A really really close childhood friend. Who I lost the fucking heroin.

And. The mad thing about that grief then. There's two things. With that grief I process a type of. Anger. Because it just doesn't seem fair. That one. It just doesn't seem fair. To one just doesn't seem fair to a young person because of fucking heroin. It just doesn't seem fair.

So I have an anger around that. And then what I also have around that particular grief, which is strange, is this friend that I lost. When we became adults, I didn't see them a lot. They were living somewhere else. So they were a person that I maintained contact with frequently over email and then maybe I met them once a year

or once every two years because that's what happens, people move away and you still maintain contact with them. But the problem there is that I can't it's hard to feel the loss

of their death because it's this dear friend who for the last few years I was just contacting through email

so the emails have stopped but I can't experience the physical loss of the human being because I physically was not around them a lot

so they're gone but it's hard to feel like they're gone but I know they're gone and that one is really strange as well and this is this is life

this is what this is life this is what happens in life and grief isn't just death grief is all types of loss you experience all types of grief

as you get older like one thing that that's I hate about getting older is I fucking love music I fucking love music.

I fucking love music so much. And I love sharing. Music that I like. With someone who I think. Will also enjoy that music. And as you get older. As you move we say from your 20s into your 30s. The pool of people.

Who still enjoy music. Gets smaller and smaller smaller until you just have a very small handful of people you know who still like music being able to maintain the passion for music as you get older you really have to be sensitive to music because most people just go I don't care about it anymore that's something I used to listen to in my 20s and that's the sense of loss that I have it's like who the fuck do I send this track to

I don't know I don't know who to send this fucking piece of music to who will appreciate it and that buddy I had who who died he was one of the people he was one of the people.

He was one of the people. If I found something online. He's the one I'd send it to. So every time I find a song. My brain still says. Send it to him. Send it to him. And it's like oh he's gone.

He's dead. But I don't feel that he is. Because I haven't seen him physically. And it's just the email that never responds and and I know that's a very sad way to be ending the podcast but that's the tapestry of human existence lads that is the tapestry of life and I don't want to answer a question about grief

without being authentic about it because you have to you have to be authentic yeah listen for every person that might have been slightly depressed by that little piece about grief I guarantee you there's another person who is trying to figure out their own emotions and that was helpful to him so that's why sometimes i i'll disclose like that i'll disclose my emotions because i don't know i'm comfortable i'm comfortable doing that i don't i've worked too hard over the years with personal therapy and stuff to not feel any shame

around expressing vulnerability i like to normalise the expression of being vulnerable and I sure as fuck need to do more of it because I definitely have emotional blockages especially around my da I have certain places within me where my emotions still

are just like no you're not going there we're protecting you from whatever the fuck no, you're not going there. We're protecting you from whatever the fuck that is. You're not going there today. You can cry about your cat if you want, but you're not going there. Do you know what I mean? So I have to work through that.

I have to work through that. And hopefully one day I won't have that blockage. And the reason I'd like to unblock a grief is because it's probably preventing me from experiencing some type of love or attachment somewhere else, if you get me. Because the pain of loss is too great. So I'll be back next week, most likely with a hot take because I'm looking forward to meeting my writing partner and spending the day talking about ideas and laughing and spontaneity

and fun with another human being which is something I haven't done in fucking months because of quarantine I haven't had big loud fun conversations about creativity with anyone and hopefully

that will spark my brain into the lateral places it needs to go to make up some hot takes alright dog bless I'll see you next week 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 center 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. Thank you. you