The Blindboy Podcast - Crying and Shame and Underpants

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

How the purchase of Belgian underpants lead me to explore my shame around crying. The story of a scientist who put underpants on 75 rats and why St.Augustine removed boners from the Garden of Eden. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Endear yourself to the Madeira, you big-eared queevas. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first podcast, I recommend going back and listening to some earlier podcasts. Some people even begin at the start to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. After five years of writing this podcast each week, I realised that it's more like a novel than a podcast, which might sound a bit jarring, but podcasts are so new. I don't think anyone has really sat down and asked the question, what is a podcast? We tend to lump all podcasts into one. We don't think about the podcast critically. To me, a podcast is, it's another form of blank page or it's another

type of blank canvas but it's intangible and exists in the digital ether. The blank page used to be made from fucking papyrus and then it was made from vellum and then it was made from paper. And then it was made from paper. The blank page of the podcast is made out of time. Our attention and our data has been so fucking commodified by smartphones that podcasts are often our only little release from the excitement and anxiety of that. People used to read books to avoid boredom. They had a lot of free time and stillness in their day

so they'd fill that time with a book we kind of had the opposite problem I've forgotten what boredom feels like it's not possible for me to be bored while I have a smartphone and if I don't have a smartphone I experience separation anxiety from it but with multiple social media apps, or even something like WhatsApp,

boredom isn't the problem. The problem now is hyper-stimulation. We feel like we're giving too much of our attention to everything, and it's difficult to look away. The podcast appears to be the medium that allows us to look away for a short amount of time. The act of listening to a podcast using your smartphone is one of the few outlets we have left to escape the cacophony of the data-driven attention economy. When you put a podcast on that you enjoy enjoy we tend to focus on that and that alone

and it feels meditative and calming and cathartic and I can't do that with streaming sites if I sit down and try and watch some new streaming tv series even if I really fucking enjoy it, I still end up pausing it to check my phone. But what I found as someone who creates podcasts, the simple intimacy of the human voice and the primal, uncomplicated storytelling mechanics that using the human voice limits you to can actually command all of our focus. So that's why I think the blank page of the podcast is made out of time.

And it is a blank page. And I write it using my mouth. I use recording software the way that I used to use a word processor. Adding little bits. Taking them away. Editing on the fly. Having multiple drafts. And you read it with your ears what's got me thinking about fucking time

why am I thinking about free time I did a gig in Brussels did a gig in Brussels last week and when I got to Brussels for some reason I had no I had no 4G on my phone. Whatever was going on, my network was not working with the fucking network in Brussels.

So for two days, I didn't have a smartphone. Unless I was in my hotel room and I had access to Wi-Fi. But other than that, I didn't have a smartphone. So I was confronted with a kind of an old school sense of boredom. smartphone so I was confronted with a kind of an old school sense of boredom and I bought 30 pairs of Belgian underpants and 30 pairs of Belgian socks. I wasn't coveting Belgian undergarments, there's nothing special about them, they're the same jocks and socks I could have bought in Limerick but I had the time and space to realise that I needed new jocks and socks. I hadn't actually bought any new jocks and socks over the entire period of the pandemic. I didn't have holes in my jocks or holes in my

socks or anything like that. I had a fine collection of durable jocks and socks, very durable, cotton jocks and socks. Because of sheer distraction, I spent two years of the pandemic distracting myself from quite an unpleasant and frightening reality. It was a pandemic, let's be honest, it wasn't nice. And I used my smartphone to distract myself most of the time, usually with social media or news sites. But it took not having a smartphone for me to say to myself, Fuck it man, you need new jocks and socks. Loads of them. These ones have served their purpose. They're done. Let's get some new ones. And you know what? It felt fucking amazing. It felt fucking great. There's something about buying a new batch of

underwear that you're happy with how it feels and how it fits there's something about buying a new batch of underwear that actually feels transformative it feels like a ritual whereby you're leaving the old you behind and moving forward and I don't know why that is for other garments it's not the same with other garments I think it must have something to do with the closeness of socks and jocks to my body the closeness of those garments to my body and the intimacy like a good set of jocks or a good set of socks you're not really aware that you're wearing them they're so close to your body that they become part of your body and when you have an uncomfortable pair you really fucking know about it you're like get the fuck away body. And when you have an uncomfortable pair. You really fucking know about it. You're like get the fuck away from me.

But when you have comfortable undergarments. They become part of yourself. But when you get a load of new ones. A batch of new ones that you're happy with. It's like a fucking lizard. A lizard shedding it's skin. It's the human equivalent of a lizard shedding it's skin. So this new batch of Belgian jocks and socks that I'm very happy with, that feel magnificent, they give me this weird

feeling of hope for the future. They give me a feeling of leaving the past behind and moving forward to a new me. But it is also, it coincided with a feeling of personal transformation because two podcasts ago I mentioned that I was returning to psychotherapy because my self-help tools weren't working for me anymore and I've been to two sessions already with a therapist that I'm happy with just simple talk therapy not CB CBT, nothing directive, just a place to speak and talk with a professional where I'm exploring my emotions safely and I've started to positively notice the impacts of this already. Mainly I've started to cry. When I feel sad, cry. When I feel sad, I cry now. I've done more crying over the past two weeks than I've done maybe in two of therapy I've been able to sit with

sadness and that can be the sadness of something sad that's happening in my life or something sad that has happened in the past or it can be the sadness of seeing something on news which is which is very, very sad. I watched a documentary last night about mother and baby homes in Ireland, specifically a fantastic documentary called Mother and Baby, which is for free on Vimeo,

directed by an Irish director called Mia Malarkey. But it's about the institutional abuse and cruelty of the Catholic Church and the human beings of Ireland. And I watched it and I cried and I cried because it was sad. And I experienced it as being sad because I sat safely with the emotion of sadness

and I'm not particularly good at sitting with sadness. Usually what happens with me is the emotion of anger presents itself to protect me from the emotion of sadness. I'm afraid of being sad and because I'm afraid of being sad or what that means to me, anger pops in instead. I think I'm ashamed of sadness and I'm afraid of sadness and I think sadness is selfish

and I think sadness is unfair to the people around me. And of course, obviously, as a man, people around me. And of course, obviously, as a man, tears have been heavily stigmatized throughout my life. A man who cries is a weak, pathetic, useless man who can't get up and fight. A man who cries is afraid of anger. That's the messaging that I've been given by society. And for me, my own personal narrative, the reason that sadness is so difficult and tears are so difficult for me and why I'm so frightened of tears that anger steps in first, is because my father died suddenly at a point in my life when I didn't have the maturity or tools to be able to cope with that. One day my dad was healthy and then the next day a doctor said he's got six weeks to live. And if you've ever lived through an experience like that, your family tends to go into action

mode. We're told that a very important person is only going to be around for a short amount of time so everybody's energy becomes focused on distraction. Distraction through the act of doing, his energy becomes focused on distraction. Distraction through the act of doing. Finding a role so that a person's death becomes work. There's no room or space for tears because you have to make the most of a small amount of time that you have left with someone you love. And everyone has to be strong for everybody else. And tears and crying while someone is in the process of dying. Tears and crying in that situation. In a crisis tears become stigmatized. Tears become selfish. If you cry you run the risk of making everybody else cry and then when everybody cries you're making things unnecessarily sad for the person who's dying. You see, my dad got a brain tumour.

And every day he was becoming less and less cognisant of what was happening around him. And he was an incredibly anxious man. So we chose not to tell him that he was dying. Even though he probably knew. But no one was to say it to him. So it created a lot of pressure to not be too sad. And when you don't cry, you're actively rewarded. I remember my friends at the time going, wow, your dad's dying and you seem so together. You seem to be taking this so well. I don't think

I'd have that maturity because my friends didn't know what the fuck to say to me. My dad was dying. What else are you going to say? No one wants to be authentic because they're afraid that I'm gonna cry and then that would be awkward and that was the moment for me that my tears cut off. That's when I stopped being able to cry because I used to be able to cry as a child but when my dad died when I was 20 I couldn't cry. I'd forgotten how to cry. I didn't know how to cry. Because then when he did die, I didn't cry at all. And I didn't cry at the funeral. And I didn't cry after. And then I didn't know if I felt sad or not. And then I called myself a heartless monster for not crying. And I further stigmatized what crying meant for me. And I replaced tears with anger. Now anger

doesn't mean attacking someone or it doesn't mean kicking someone's head in. Anger can feel like motivation. Anger feels like action. Anger feels like you're doing something. And anger is useful and anger has its place. And I've used anger. I've used anger towards myself quite a lot to self-motivate and achieve goals. You see, if my dad didn't die when I was 20, I don't know what I have gone on to have the career that I have.

Because when it came to important decisions such as finish that song, make that album, put that music out, get up onto that stage. Don't work 6 hours a day, work 12 hours a day. Work harder than everybody else. Achieve the goals you need to achieve at any fucking cost. Don't work six hours a day, work 12 hours a day. Work harder than everybody else. Achieve the goals you need to achieve at any fucking cost. Don't be afraid. You're afraid of going out on stage? You're fucking dad-eyed.

You can do anything. Achieve what you need to achieve at all costs. That there is self-directed anger. Anger directed towards myself as a way to motivate. Kicking myself up the arse. And I made it work, but that doesn't mean that it was healthy. No more than if I'd have been using alcohol. But you can't use anger in place of another emotion. Not long term. It's a short term coping mechanism. When we mechanism when we experience a threat as humans we've got fight flight or fawn when I was younger I would use fawn or flight and that would be like an anxiety attack but as an autonomous adult who needs to feed himself fight was the most appropriate response because I can

turn it into action and motivation and convince myself that what I'm doing is healthy. When anger pops up to protect me from sadness and from my fear of sadness, then I start to lose a sense of connection with myself and who I am. I start to not know who I am and all of that too was one of the reasons why lockdown was so emotionally triggering for me. Because lockdown was a little bit like a family member dying. Lockdown was really sad. And lockdown was really frightening. And upsetting.

But we all had to just get on with it for the greater good. To stop the spread of a fatal disease during a fucking pandemic. greater good to stop the spread of a fatal disease during a fucking pandemic. For any of us at that time to have expressed our fears and our sadness to another person who's also going through the same shit would have been seen as selfish. So that's, I suppose that's why I'm talking about underpants. I've been crying a lot. And it's felt fantastic.

It's felt nice. I'm not like unbelievably sad. It's just sadness is a part of my life. No more than sadness is a part of your life. But I'm learning to sit with the sadness more. To sit with it, to feel it, to observe it. to sit with it, to feel it, to observe it and let that run its course until it emerges as the emotional response of crying

and the beauty of crying. Like the few bits of tears that I've had over the past few weeks when I cry I feel like me again. I'm not distracting myself with anger and when the anger pops up what do I do I look for who's making me angry and I'm replaying an argument I should have had two years ago with someone or I'm going on to social media and a negative comment that I see from a stranger is hurting me way more than it should because I feel like I'm in a fight and what I've

found so revelatory we'll say is last week's podcast I had Michael D Higgins the president of Ireland on the podcast so naturally loads of people who would never listen to this podcast listened to it last week and I was being spoken about quite a bit on social media. Mostly positive but also little pockets of real hatred towards me. Mostly people feeling deeply ashamed and embarrassed as Irish people that I sat down and had a chat with the president while wearing a plastic bag on my head and people who'd think that I'm an idiot or I'm a fool or whatever the fuck. My point is I received a fair amount of negative comments online. People talking shit about me and people really

wishing me harm. It was unpleasant but it didn't bother me. It didn't encroach beyond my emotional boundaries. I didn't experience it as actual hurt. I'm saying this because two weeks ago, you'll know I did a podcast where I spoke about returning to therapy, and I spoke about how when I receive negative comments online, they can deeply hurt me. about how when I receive negative comments online they can deeply hurt me because I'd been able to cry because I'd had moments of tears and emotional catharsis and how this process of crying helped me to connect with my true self with who I really am because the thing is when I experience sadness and then I cry because I'm sad, that's a fully authentic emotional expression. There's no defense mechanism in place. I'm sitting with an emotion,

an unpleasant emotion. I'm feeling it. I'm processing it and I'm releasing it through tears. And then I get that feeling you get after having a cry. It's a feeling that affirms your existence. It's a very human feeling. It's completely authentic. You confront and accept the givens of existence. And it feels like a little circle is complete. So because of that. When I got shitty comments online last week I wasn't emotionally

reactive to him. If someone wrote a comment saying this fucking moron this idiot with a plastic bag on his head is disgracing the country by talking to the president I didn't feel hurt. I literally was able to look at the comment and go you don't know a hell of a lot about me. You've never listened to my podcast. You've got a very shallow opinion of me based on what you've seen or heard. And you're writing a shitty comment because you're pissed off right now. Whatever. It's not very nice for me to read, but ultimately it doesn't define me in any way.

It doesn't define me. It doesn't matter. A man called Donal calling me a stupid prick with a bag in my head doesn't impact my day in any way. I left it at that and just got on with my life. I was emotionally regulated. The tears allowed me to return to a general feeling of calmness where my nervous system is regulated and calm and I'm not reacting to negativity I'm just noticing it and accepting it it didn't really change my emotional state and another thing I've noticed is when I go to the gym and I say to myself I'm going to go to the gym and do my exercise in one hour. It literally only takes

one hour because when I'm at the gym, I'm calm, I'm happy and when I do a workout, that's all I'm doing. But three weeks ago, a month ago, when I was very stressed and my mental health wasn't great, the same workout might take me two hours because I'm not present in the moment. The same workout might take me two hours. Because I'm not present in the moment. I'm worrying about what might happen. Worrying about what has happened in the past. Not focused on the here and now.

And that takes up a lot of time. That wastes a lot of time. Between doing sets. Or walking around the gym back and forth. Doing nothing. Scratching my bollocks. Instead of going there's a machine. That's free. I need to do my fucking pull-ups my emotional well-being has improved drastically because I sat with sadness or that whenever it presents itself I sit with it I stick with it

and I let myself cry and also when I was on the plane back from Brussels I was listening to music on the plane and I was able to truly enjoy the music I was able to lose myself in the music I was listening to a song called Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen it's a beautiful Bruce Springsteen song which sounds sounds like Motown and I was absorbed fully in the art. In a state of passive flow. Enjoying the fucking song and feeling it. Returning to what it is I adore about fucking music. As a fan. Something I've had great difficulty doing the past two years.

I wasn't able to experience joy. In things that would usually bring me joy. The reason I'm saying this shit. Not to have it specifically about me but to make it connect with the overall experience of fucking just being a human to ye who are listening is this is what I've learned from fucking years of having mental health issues years of going to therapy self, continually, consistently managing my emotional well-being. If you shut off one emotion, it becomes difficult to access all the rest.

So if I'm having difficulty experiencing sadness or fear, and anger steps in to stop me feeling these things, if anger is stepping in to protect me from sadness and I do it over and over again it limits my capacity to experience joy, happiness, laughter and after a while I just start to become numb and very stressed and that makes being alive not particularly enjoyable. It makes my day something that I get through rather than something I explore with curiosity and that's all I want I want to explore my day and the people I meet and the things I encounter and the music I listen to and the art that I see I want to explore

everything with the type of curiosity that a child has. That's all I want out of life. And that's a realistic goal. Like I'd never say to myself, I want to be happy. Because that's an illusion. There isn't really such thing as being happy. You're never going to get to a point where you're happy. Our mind always fucking tricks us into that.

Thinking that one day I will be happy. I will only be happy if. That's harsh shit. But what you can set as a goal is to live your life meaningfully. And to live meaningfully what you need is authenticity. The authenticity of understanding

what you're feeling at all times. Emotional literacy. I feel sad. So I'm going to experience this sadness. I'm going to sit with it. I won't push it away because it's uncomfortable. I'm going to sit with this sadness. And as mad as that sounds,

it's fucking lovely. As mad as that sounds, it's lovely. The pain of sadness is fucking lovely when you feel it. That's the necessary suffering of being alive. And think of it this way if that sounds a bit much. Imagine back to being a fucking teenager. Being 15, 16.

And your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with you. And you're heartbroken. That utter teenage heartbreak and you're crying all the time and you think you'll never love anyone else again and all you want to do is cry and listen to sad songs. I guarantee you most of you as adults would love to feel that pain again. Having your heart broken by a teenage crush is the greatest pain in the world. That's the pain that people try to tap into when they make art and technically that's a bad thing. Technically it's

a hurtful thing but there's great meaning in that art. But the issue with defense mechanisms, experiencing anger instead of sadness or experiencing sadness instead of anger. I mentioned gender roles earlier and how I said that me as a man, society told me that don't cry because to cry is quite a weak thing for a man to do. But society tells women and little girls the exact opposite. Don't get angry. Don't be aggressive. That's what boys do. You're a little girl you cry so someone who's raised with that message can actually feel anger but then express it through tears because the expression of anger has been stigmatized so the person can find themselves crying all the time

and they don't even know why. That shit is meaningless suffering. That's unnecessary meaningless suffering. You don't get a lot of learning from that. You don't get a feeling of catharsis from it. What you get is more and more stress and a further disconnection from self and a kind of a general anxious mood of I don't know who the fuck I am and when we don't feel like we know who we are we're emotionally reactive. If a person on the internet says a mean thing to me and I don't have a strong sense of self, a strong idea of who I am, when they say a mean thing to me I'm not secure in my identity, I'm insecure and then I have to scan their negative words for truth. I have to test it, I have to use a lot of energy to wonder maybe I am a fucking idiot, maybe I am a stupid fucking

prick because why else would this person be saying it to me when I'm experiencing my emotions authentically and having a strong sense of self and secure in who I am. When someone says something negative to me, I go, no, that's actually wrong. You're actually, your opinion about me is actually wrong. So I'm just going to leave that. I'm trying to investigate where the Belgian underpants come into all of this. And why I began this by speaking about 30 pairs of Belgian underpants and 30 pairs of Belgian socks.

Well, first off, 30 pairs of underpants and 30 socks seems like quite a lot to purchase. But my intention was to replace my entire stock. All of my underpants and all of my socks from the past two years, they're gone into that recycling bin. The one that you have beside the glass bin we put all cloth and clothes and fabrics they're going to get repurposed i don't think i don't think your underpants end up in charity shops i think they get underpants and socks and they send them off to a factory and they get repurposed into new fabrics they're gone so i replenished my entire collection i found one set

of underpants 100 cotton which was the right size and the right shape and I said, great, I'll have 30 of those in various colours. Same with the socks. Found socks that I like, 30 of those please. It's just a good number for an entire collection and I'm guaranteed the same wearing experience with each set of underpants. That's all I want. But when I was buying them, like I said, it felt like a moment of rebirth. I was far too excited about these underpants. I wasn't just buying jocks. It felt like I was leaving my old self behind

and looking forward to the future. And I'm a fan of Jungian psychology, which are the theories of Carl Jung, which means I look for meaningful coincidences. I'm not going to dismiss the fact that buying a lot of jocks felt like a personal transformation. I'm not going to dismiss that as being silly or ridiculous because on the one hand it is silly and ridiculous but on the other hand that meaningful coincidence for me can tell me something about myself if I'm willing to

interrogate it. I think the reason the purchase of these underpants had such a meaningful connection with me is because underpants mean shame. We use the phrase to hide our shame meaning to cover our fucking genitals underwear protects us from the societally imposed shame of nudity and I went back to therapy so that a therapist could help me find what I described two weeks ago as blind spots and a blind spot is something about my thinking

or a belief that I have, which is outside of my awareness because it's probably too painful. I thought that my blind spots would be around anxiety. I believed that I was experiencing anxiety and was using anger to hide the anxiety. But what I've actually learned, I'm ashamed of being sad. I'm ashamed of tears and crying. I'm afraid to show other people my sadness. I'm afraid of what my sadness will do to other people,

how it will make them feel. I repress and hide my sadness and hide my tears because I'm fucking embarrassed of it. Sadness is my emotional nudity and anger is the underpants of my brain that I use to cover it up. And this is why I think it felt very important to me why I purchased all these new underpants and new socks. I wasn't just solving a problem. I wasn't just going, yay, new jocks.

It didn't feel like that. It felt like I was on a ship at sea and I finally saw land. That's what buying these underpants felt like. No, I'm not telling this to the person at the fucking till. I'm aware how insane this is. But as an artist, as someone who's interested in learning about myself, as someone who's interested in metaphor and symbolism,

the underpants in society represent the hiding of shame. And me getting rid of all my old ones. And buying new ones. Gave me a feeling of control. And power. And autonomy. And a feeling of having the. Agency to rewrite my narrative. Around shame.

And just to shift the conversation a little bit. Towards art. Like this. That process of thinking there. Using. We'll say Jungian psychology to focus on the underpants that's that's surrealism specifically within surrealism that's known as the paranoiac critical transformational method the ability of the artist to capture the irrational symbols of the unconscious mind like what you'd find in a dream,

and then use that to create art. Like Salvador Dali, for instance, he made a telephone out of a lobster. He had a lobster telephone. Because for him, when he interrogated his dreams or his unconscious mind, lobsters meant something sexual to Salvador Dali for whatever reason. Lobsters meant something sexual to Salvador Dali for whatever reason lobsters meant something

sexual so the lobster telephone for him was like his desire to understand his sexuality or to be in dialogue with his sexual images or a desire for oral sex that he wasn't able to express within the sexual morality of the time like he was catholic and oral sex would he wasn't able to express within the sexual morality of the time. Like he was Catholic and oral sex would have been considered sodomy so it was wrong, it would have been heavily shamed. But that's why a lobster telephone isn't just mad for the sake of it. And what people at the time would say to Salvador Dali, a lobster telephone, this is your art, are you mad? He would say the only difference between me and a madman is that i'm not mad you see similar shit in the films of david lynch who is a surrealist filmmaker

who's also interested in jungian analysis around imagery but i interrogated the underpants because it meant something to me the underpants to me underpants cover the societal shame of nudity the way I use anger to cover the societal shame of sadness and one thing I do have to add when my dad died that was deeply deeply traumatizing for me I know know I was 20. I know I was an adult. I wasn't able for that. I didn't have the life experience or maturity for that. And there's one image that sticks out for me a lot. When someone is dying of cancer, they waste away very, very quickly until they physically stop looking like the person that you knew. And I mentioned previously, when a person close to you is dying

and you're in a situation of crisis, you don't focus on your own sadness. You start to work, you start to do, you start to figure out, what can I do for the person who's dying to make their final days worthwhile what can I do you go in you become very proactive and I was young so I was figuring out like what could I do I don't have any fucking money I have nothing what can I do so one day we'd gotten one of those fucking smoothie bars in Limerick it was the first ever

smoothie bar and my dad used to love yogurts and shit like that he used to love desserts so I went into one of these smoothie bars and I bought a smoothie with the intention of bringing it up to my dad who was in the hospital he would have had about three weeks left at this point now I'd have seen him the day before he wasn't talking he was like it was a brain tumor so he was unconscious but he was able to take drinks from straws and things so that's why I chose a smoothie so that this sweet fruity nice drink would just give him a tiny little spark of joy. And for me to feel like I was doing something in this situation where I was utterly, completely powerless. But he'd always been in the bed, you see.

Covered by, like, multiple layers of bed sheets. And all I could really see was his head and his shoulders and that was it. And this day that I bought the smoothie. I bought it. And I had to walk this smoothie. All the way up to the hospital where he was in. And I remember. It was about a 10 minute walk.

Holding this smoothie in my hand. And it was fucking freezing. It was so freezing in my hand that it was painful. And I held on to it. I held on to it I held on to it almost as if the pain of this freezing cold smoothie in my hand somehow the pain of that took some of his pain away or something and I'm walking with this smoothie thinking to myself this is the most important smoothie in the whole world I can't drop it I can't let go this is all I can do for my dad who's dying above in the bed in hospital and that's when the anger

came up I could feel that anger motivating me I could feel the anger of you're a fucking adult and you're going to get this smoothie to your dad and it doesn't matter how much it hurts your hand. I'm determined to get this smoothie to my sick dad. It would have been, it would have been around right now, however many years ago. It was late November, early December. But I got to the hospital with the smoothie and I walked up the corridor with it and I got to his room and the door was closed and they had those little round windows like you'd have on a ship. And I remember looking in the window and I just got one glimpse and a nurse was holding my dad up. He was walking from the bedpan or something. And I saw him from behind and it was the first time I'd seen how much his entire body had wasted away.

I saw him from behind and it was the first time I'd seen how much his entire body had wasted away. He looked like a baby. And just a few weeks previously he'd been my dad at home. And he was wearing a vest and these white underpants that were just really, really baggy on him because he'd wasted away to nothing. I don't know if I told you this story before, I might have. If the details are different, it's because this is a tough fucking memory for me. It's not something I can easily recall or something that's even lodged in my brain as reality. It's in my brain beside the nightmares and I remember at that exact moment almost like a hammer hit me in the head. Like a force hit me in the head. Like pushed my eyes away because that

was the saddest most upsetting thing that I'd ever seen in my life up to that point and it's also the exact moment that my brain decided you're not allowed to cry anymore because the sadness of what you're going through right now is too much it's fucking too much you can't handle it so we we're shutting off sadness. We're shutting off tears. And that was the moment. That right there and the imagery in my head is seeing him in his underpants that don't fit him anymore

because he's wasted away. And I never got to give him the smoothie because I realized at that moment it's too fucking late for smoothies. It's... Forget about smoothies now he's gone and I'm realising too

like I've never bought a smoothie in that gaff since it's the smoothie place in Archer's Quay in Limerick I've just never bought a smoothie there since

no conscious decision I'm just noticing I have never gone in there and that's probably why so I have to also take that on board. When I think about, we'll say, the significance, the imagery of underpants for me and why buying a bunch of fucking underpants

ties in with tears, sadness and fear of sadness. And I know this all sounds fucking insane. He's finally gone mad. He's finally gone mad, hasn't he? This is not insane at all. Why do you think dreams are fucking mad? Why do you think you have dreams? Why do you think you have a dream

where you go to an ice cream van and it's your teacher from third year when you try and buy ice cream, all his teeth fall out. Why do you think dreams are fucking insane our unconscious mind attaches deep emotional meaning to certain imagery because we don't have words to understand it and dreams and the unconscious mind doesn't doesn't care about the rational or what makes sense so it's actually perfectly healthy and sane for me to interrogate the imagery of underpants and what underpants mean to me

personally and why I should flag these things within myself and interrogate them and not write them off as meaningless and this line of thinking is how you end up with a giant set of underpants in an art gallery. Or for me most likely, underpants are going to start popping up in one of my short stories. And I won't know why. All I'll know is I'll experience a sensation of flow. But that sensation of flow is my unconscious mind driving me towards images and symbolism which tell me something about myself and the human condition. So for the second part of this podcast I'd like to focus on underpants.

I want to speak about a scientist who put underpants on rats. I want to speak about a third century theologian Saint Augustine who arguably invented the notion that underpants hide our shame. Before we do that, we're going to have a little ocarina pause. I don't have the ocarina with me because I'm inside my office. But I do have my keys.

I'm going to jingle my keys. Then you're going to hear an advert, an algorithmically inserted advert. 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 30 p.m 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 you're invited to an immersive listening party led by rishi kesh her way the

visionary behind the groundbreaking song exploder podcast and netflix series this unmissable evening features her way and toronto symphony orchestra music director gustavo jimeno in conversation Thank you. at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. The key doesn't wake up any dogs. It won't disturb any dogs that are listening. There's many dog listeners to this podcast and they get unbelievably upset when the ocarina comes on. So support for this podcast comes from you, the listener,

via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. This podcast is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. I adore making this podcast. But it's only possible because it is my full-time job, because of the scale of work and writing that goes into each episode and I want to have a little just a separate little few words on the nature of the podcast because that's how I opened this episode this podcast is writing and it feels like

wrong to say that it feels like I shouldn't say that because podcasters so new that we have as a society haven't defined or decided what a podcast is but a podcast is a blank page now how other podcasters fill in that blank page is their business but I fill this blank page in with the same rigor time time, effort and attention that I would if I was using a word processor. I use my recording software the way that I use a word processor. One hour of audio can take a couple of days. I don't just press record and talk.

I show up each week with about 30,000 words. And what has made me start viewing this podcast as writing, as something a bit more literary, because it's what I fucking do. And I've spent long enough studying and practicing as an artist to know that. I also write short stories on paper for them to be read with your eyes. And sometimes I ask myself, am I just doing that to get a pat on the head from the clever people? Am I just sitting down with a word processor and using my fingers and typing out words on a page to engage in a heritage art form that somehow using my fingers and using words on a page has more critical weight or says more about the human condition than using my mouth

and recording software and I'm starting to really think about that and I'm starting to more confidently say to myself no this thing that you've been doing for five fucking years and writing each week is my attempt at a gigantic novel I've contrasted my attempts before with this this huge novel in multiple volumes called the life and opinions of tristram shandy by laurence stern from the 1750s so that's what had me thinking about could a podcast be a novel but we don't say that because how could a podcast be novelistic because the literary world is very heavily gatekept but there's a few things that have just been changed in my mind, like recently, I opened up a literary journal, which would have short fiction and essays.

So everything within this journal would be considered literary. And what they also have in it is like pieces of dialogue between two writers. Two writers will sit down with each other with a microphone and talk to each other and then their words are transcribed onto the page and you read it as a back and forth of dialogue in a literary journal. And I'm looking at it going, this is just a fucking podcast. This is a podcast, but you've presented it as literature in a literary journal. Or similarly, quite a lot of contemporary fiction is in the genre of autofiction, which is a novel that is, it's fictional, but draws so heavily from

the writer's personal experience and their own life that is considered autofictional. So it's a hybrid between autobiography and fiction. And there's so many auto-fictional novels that I'm dipping in and out of. And I'm reading it and I'm going, this is just a podcast. This is a podcast. I know we're calling it a book, we're calling it a novel. But I'm reading this, this is a fucking podcast. And I bet you this writer actually wants to do a podcast. But what they're doing instead is they're writing a novel and I adore any work that challenges the form of that work like one of my

favorite books from the past two years is by an Irish writer called Keith Ridgway he wrote a book called A Shock which is neither a novel nor a short story collection Keith Ridgway himself said it's to be viewed as a polyptych, which is a word that's borrowed from the world of visual art. And a polyptych is, it's a little bit like a stained glass window. It's multiple panels with multiple scenes that we view, and the viewer kind of decides the order. And I found that really exciting, because it's like,

yeah, this is both a novel and a short story collection at once, depending on how you look at it. And this is controversial chat. It's going to piss a lot of people off. But I reckon, I think time will be on my side on this one. And I think whatever the fuck is going to be called literature in 50 years when we're looking back, assuming society exists, In 50 years, when we're looking back, assuming society exists, history tells us that whatever's doing the job of art right now, it doesn't look like literature.

It doesn't look like art. It could be a podcast. It could be someone spending six hours eating tins of beans on YouTube. I don't know. But my gut feeling about just about what I do each week, I sit down and I fucking write and I research, especially for the monologue episodes and the process. It feels like fucking writing to me. But if you enjoy it, it brings you comfort, it brings you solace,

it brings you enjoyment, it brings you distraction, whatever the fuck it is that has you coming back listening to this podcast. Just please consider supporting my work by becoming a patron patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and if you can't afford that don't worry about it you can listen for free all right because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free so everybody gets a podcast i get to earn a living it's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness and as you know it keeps me independent it means that advertisers can't come in and start telling me what to speak about advertisers famously don't line up for podcasts

about youngie and analysis of underpants i've no gigs left this year I'm chilling out on the gigs because I'm quite busy. And also. I'm not doing Twitch. Until the new year. Because I am very very busy at the moment. Especially writing my book. I'm incredibly busy. So I don't have Thursday night time anymore. I need to use that for other projects.

So I'll be taking a break from Twitch and I'll be back on sometime in January. Oh, also tomorrow, I'm giving you a bonus podcast episode tomorrow because there is a housing protest this Saturday, the 26th of November, a very important housing protest happening up in Dublin called Raise the Roof. And I'm bringing back on Rory Hearn who is an expert in social policy where we have a conversation about the housing protest what its aims are and why we should be protesting you're going to get that tomorrow as a little treat and I didn't want to put it out today because I don't want to do like two interview podcasts in a row. You need your little hot takes. So I wanted to dedicate the rest of this podcast to themes around the underpants.

I want to look at a scientist from Egypt who worked in the 20th century and a theologian from the 3rd century from Algeria. So the first person I want to talk about is a fellow called Ahmed Shafiq, who was a urologist and a sexologist, and he was from Egypt. And he operated in the 20th century. He died in 2007. It was very difficult for him to conduct his research in Egypt because of interference from the government, because his work centred around the study of human sex,

and the government of Egypt were quite religious and conservative. He ended up in prison because he was trying to make an artificial bladder. But despite oppression from the Egyptian government, his work was quite important to the world of urology, which centers around reproductive organs, the urethra, your bladder, the prostate, penis, vagina, testicles, reproduction and pissing. But some of his work was quite eccentric. In particular, a large study he conducted where he put underpants on 75 rats. He wanted to see if underpants made from different fabrics had any impact on sexual activity in rats. He made rats wear little underpants for 6 to 12 months.

Some of the underpants were made out of wool, other ones were made out of cotton, some of them out of 100% polyester, other ones made out of cotton and polyester, polyester, all the ones made out of cotton and polyester blend, but just all these tiny little rat underpants on rats. He wanted to see if the various underpants generated an electrostatic charge in the penis and testicles of the rats and whether this electrostatic charge would influence how successful the rats were in their sexual advances. He found that rats that wore underpants that were made of 100% polyester did in fact generate a small little electric charge on their rat cocks and this made them unsuccessful at finding a mate. Then he moved on to dogs and he started to put underpants on dogs and finally he started to put underpants on dogs. And finally, he started to put underpants on humans.

And he found that 100% polyester underpants on humans reduced sexual activity because the polyester would continually shock the penis and testicles with electric charges. But ultimately, his goal was to try and find a male contraceptive through underpants. He wanted to see if 100% polyester underpants when worn over a long enough period of time would render sperm completely ineffective through non-stop electric shocks from movement. His research was published and he received an Ig Nobel Prize, which is like kind of a joke award

that kind of acknowledges scientific research that's outside of the ordinary. But he's a fascinating character. And the thing is, we'll never know how effective his research was or how it could have been because he was doing it all under a regime that was fucking him into jail

whenever he tried to make an artificial bladder. Another thing about the history of underpants and their association with shame, the ideology of that originates in the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden and everything is perfect, everything is wonderful. And it says, and they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. That Adam and Eve were able to walk around the Garden of Eden

completely nude and this was absolutely fine. Now we all know what happened in the Garden of Eden. The devil came along in the form of a snake and told Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge. And she did. And then everything fell apart. Adam and Eve fell from grace and were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Now I've done a podcast on the book of Genesis before,

in particular the story of the Garden of Eden. I think the Garden of Eden story was written 4,000 years ago by an incel who hated women and believed that all women are cheaters. I think the snake in the Garden of Eden isn't the devil, it's another man's penis and I think the apple is Eve's womb, the fruit. So when Eve, when the snake told eve to eat the apple what it means is that eve was cheating and whoever wrote that whoever wrote genesis could we don't know well apparently god wrote it well technically they say moses wrote it but probably not but it reads like something an incel would write the type of person who calls people cucks. And in the book

of Genesis, Adam was the cuck. He was cuck-holded by the snake. And when that happened, paradise fell apart. But interestingly, one of the first things that happens when Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden by God, one of the first things that happens is it says the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. That's the world's first set of underpants. Underpants weren't needed in the Garden of Eden because nudity didn't connote shame. This again is why I think the snake was actually a penis. why I think the snake was actually a penis. All of a sudden as soon as Adam and Eve get kicked out their bodies, their nude bodies become something shameful and something to be hidden and something to be embarrassed about and you have to cover up your genitals with leaves as underpants. But the

person who took this further, the person who really introduced fucked up sexual shame into Christianity and also into Western philosophy is St. Augustine. Now Augustine left a lot of writing. And when you look at Augustine's writing, St. Augustine, the person, was an absolute sex addict who hated himself for being a sex addict. And he projected all his own sexual insecurity and shame on an interpretation of the Bible, which changed the entire Western view towards sex. Augustine was obsessed with the fact that he couldn't control his own erections. Now this appears to have started when Augustine was about 12 or 13. He went to a public bath.

Now this is the 3rd century. This is more than 2,000, not more than, this is almost 2,000 years ago. So this is the 3rd century in Algeria, in what is now Algeria. So Augustine goes to a public bath with his da where everyone is nude and then suddenly Augustine gets a boner out of nowhere because he's 13. He just gets a boner out of nowhere.

And then his da sees that he gets a boner and makes a big hullabaloo about it. His da is thrilled. He's thrilled. Look at my son. Look at my son's dick. He's going to give me loads of grandchildren. And then everyone in the bath starts staring at fucking Augustine's boner.

And he's mortified. Hugely embarrassed. And as he becomes an adult. He becomes a sex addict. He has mistresses. Wives. He becomes a sex addict. He has mistresses, wives, he was bisexual, he was having sex with everyone all the time but hated himself for doing it. He had great shame around his own sexuality and desire for it. Now Augustine became a priest and he became a bishop and a theologian. He was a deeply religious person but who was

obsessed with sex and couldn't stop doing it and he would interpret the bible with his own sexual shame and project it onto it in his writings. His huge obsession was he didn't believe boners existed in the garden of eden. He believed that in the Garden of Eden, you had full control over your penis, full control. It would be like an arm and that you could get an erection. Adam, Adam could get an erection in the Garden of Eden the same way that you could lift your arm up. And when Adam got an erection in the Garden of Eden,

it wasn't sexual. It was about as sexual as lifting up your arm. And if Adam and Eve had sex in the Garden of Eden in order to procreate, it wasn't sexual. There was no desire. There was no lust. There was no passion. These things didn't exist in the Garden of Eden. That having sex was as simple as putting your hand out

and shaking someone's hand. Desire, lust, these things didn't exist. But then as soon as the fall from the Garden of Eden happened, as soon as Eve ate the apple, and Adam and Eve were cast out, Adam was cursed with involuntary boners and Eve was cursed with the terrible pain of childbirth and all men and all women were cursed with these things going forward. So because Augustine, the

human being in the third century, was tormented with sexual desire, he was a sex addict, he was tormented with desire for sex. Because of this Augustine believed that this was a punishment. He hated that he could just couldn't tell his penis when to be erect and when not to be. So he believed that all sexual desire, all lustfulness was sinful. That the punishment from God from being expelled from the Garden of Eden is that the only way a man can get an erection from now on is through lust and through being tormented by thinking about sex. And this is why we need underpants. This is why they had the fig leaves. Because the genitals are full of shame.

The shame of the sin of desire and lust. And he rationalised this with the fig leaves. Because he's writing this in the third century and the book of genesis was written 2 000 years before him so he's thinking right well if moses wrote as soon as adam and eve got kicked out they became ashamed of their bodies and had to hide their genitals with leafy underpants then then that must be the reason. They're ashamed of sex. He's ashamed of boners. The thing is, we don't know, because sex isn't really mentioned originally in the book of Genesis.

Nakedness is shameful for some reason, but shame around sex isn't mentioned. That's Saint Augustine who added that. And throughout his writing, throughout his life, each time, Augustine himself is just going why why do I get these boners why why can't I control it who owns this Mickey why can't I just control it like I can my arm and it's quite clear that that experience he had in the bath when he was 13 and his da pointed at his dick and told the entire bats

look at my son's boner isn't this fantastic that obviously never left Augustine and stuck with him for the rest of his life and now we as a society are dealing with one man's sexual shame that he projected into Christianity

what's even more dark is Augustine's ma, Saint Martina. By all accounts, it appears that Augustine and his ma were probably having sex all the time. And wherever Augustine tried to go as a priest or a bishop moving around Christendom his ma followed him every single time Augustine had wives he had mistresses and his ma was involved all the time shaming him about this but also probably being his lover and the reason we think this is Augustine wrote in I think it was in his confessions, he wrote a few books, but I have a quote here. He speaks about him and his mother having a conversation.

Now it's not explicit, but the language that he uses about this conversation is deeply sexual. He speaks about conversing with his mother. And they stretch upward with a fiery emotion. And they climb higher and higher through degrees of pleasure and matter and heaven. And he says, while we were speaking and panting for it with a thrust that required all the heart's strength, we brushed against it slightly. Then it was over and we sighed. We brushed against it slightly.

Then it was over and we sighed. So a lot of people think that was Augustine basically trying to say nicely and trying to interpret the shame of throughout his sex addiction, throughout his life. He was also riding his mother and she was into it. So this is the man who started all the fucked up shit with Christianity and sexuality and shame. And this is the person too who interpreted the fig leaves and the shame of nudity in the book of Genesis as being the shame of lust and sex. So that was just like, that's like an overview of St. Augustine. I could have done a full fucking podcast on him. So that was just like, that's like an overview of St. Augustine.

I could have done a full fucking podcast on him. If you want to read a fantastic translation of Augustine's Confessions, buy a book called Confessions by Sarah Rudin. She's a translator. And she translated this third century book by a theologian. And what's so lovely about it is you read it and it doesn't feel like a translation of a book that's 1300 years old she translates it in quite contemporary language she's quite a rigorous translator and scholar but you read it and it feels like it's written now it's fucking fantastic it's heavy going she's also recently translated the Gospels that came out, I think, a year ago, which I haven't had a chance

to read, but I can't wait to read that because it makes these figures human. St. Augustine was the horniest man that ever existed and he shaped Western sexual shame through his own projections. western sexual shame through his own projections that's all I have time for this week I'll be back next week don't forget your little bonus podcast tomorrow where I speak to Rory Hearn

about the raise the roof housing protest that's happening in Dublin this Saturday the 26th of November alright go fuck yourselves rub a dog blow kisses at a jackdaw in Dublin this Saturday, the 26th of November. Alright, go fuck yourselves. Rub a dog, blow kisses at a jackdaw,

buy a scratch card for a snail. I'll see you next week. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. you