The Blindboy Podcast - Gods Posture

Episode Date: February 20, 2018

Bebo and the Human Condition Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh God bless you sun-kissed cygnets, you baby swans, you baby swans on the pontoon getting a suntan, suntan baby swans, oh Long Johnson, oh Long Johnson, oh Long O'Long Johnson. O'Long Johnson. The words of a famous internet cat. O'Long Johnson. How are ye, you gorgeous cunts? It feels like I haven't spoken to ye in a while because last week's podcast was live. And that's kind of cheating on my part. Because all I have to do is fuck off to a live gig. Record it. And then just put that in the podcast.

And then just fluff it up. Put the decorations on it with some talking around it. But the bulk of it is essentially a pre-record. And it is not the intimate podcast hug that you are accustomed to but yes, last week's podcast was good crack it was a live podcast with Donzo from Northern Ireland and we spoke

about the troubles or the troublé. If you're from France. But this week we are back to normal. As scheduled. For some intimacy. But eh. Yeah I liked the podcast gig.

It was alright but. The odd. As you know I'm an audiophile. I like to have. I want to hear the full range of my voice. I want to hear the highs and the lows and the mids. And it's hard to get that with a live podcast. So I'm.

You know there's going to be more live podcasts. Like my next two guests. Like this Saturday Saturday I'm interviewing I'm very excited about it I'm interviewing the author Kevin Barry who is a limerick author but

one of the best writers in the world at the moment a writer who I admire greatly so I'm looking forward to interviewing him and having a bit of crack then after Kevin Barry I'm looking forward to interviewing him and having a bit of crack then after Kevin Barry I'm going to be

interviewing in a couple of weeks Vincent Brown Vincent is again another man from Limerick but he's a political pundit and an absolute gas cunt and don't worry this will not be a male centric podcast

it just so happens that my next two guests are men but I'm actively seeking And don't worry, this will not be a male-centric podcast. It just so happens that my next two guests are men. But I'm actively seeking some female guests on this podcast. And not only female guests. Just trying to include, which has brought to my attention recently, that I mention a lot of lads. Which is true. so for the album last week I gave you some I recommended Kate Bush

and that wasn't tokenism, Kate Bush is a fucking genius I just needed a little kick up the arse but if you have any questions for either Kevin Barry or Vincent Brown

I suggest you ask them and I will ask them to the lads If you have any questions for either Kevin Barry or Vincent Brown, I suggest you ask them, and I will ask them to the lads on your behalf, because I like to democratise the questions. And the best way to do this is either tweet at me, at Rubber Bandits, or if you're on the Patreon, you can put it as a Patreon comment or a message or maybe what I would suggest and it's more likely that I will read it put it into write a review

of this podcast on iTunes subscribe to the podcast first if you're not subscribed leave a review and in the review ask a question that you would like me to give either kevin barry or vincent brown and there's a good chance that i'll see it and again sorry to everybody who is mailing me and i'm not mailing back because i'm getting fucking loads

and i've mentioned it before i like to respond with quality rather than a performative response such as LOL or OMFG speaking of LOL and OMFG and ROFL which are

acronyms they're internet artefacts of a bygone era nobody fucking says LOL anymore or OMFG you just don't these expressions have been replaced by emojis

and for the better I fucking like emojis emojis are brilliant for a long time internet communication had and text message communication carried with it a risk of

being misinterpreted you could be having a casual conversation with someone and your sentence could come across could be read as passive aggressive because it is hard to emote correctly over a text or over the internet or whatever and emojis do a good job of that emojis do a great job of It is hard to emote correctly over a text or over the internet or whatever.

And emojis do a good job of that. Emojis do a great job of communicating emotion via text. And I think the emoji is a great way to de-escalate online conflict. Using old emoji here and there. But anyway, the reason I'm using archaic internet speak such as raffle and lol is a friend of mine sent me an audio clip there during the week and this pal is called kc and kc is a radio dj you might remember him he was on today fm what's his fucking partner's name for some reason I'm thinking KC and Jojo but that is not

the case that's an early 90's fucking that's an early 90's R&B band but KC anyway he was one of the first proper supporters of our career years ago I'm talking fucking 2004 I was only a sperm and at that point

I was a teenager and I was releasing prank phone calls via cd cds that were being passed around and Casey got his hands in one and he's first ever, we'll say person in the media, to actually reach out and go, these two young rubber bandits boys, appear to have some degree of talent, I would like to platform that talent, so he did, KC used to bring me on to Red FM,

which was a radio station down in Cork, I think he still works for them now, I'm not sure, it's a radio station down in Cork anyway, think he still works for them now. I'm not sure. It's a radio station down in Cork anyway. And KC used to have me on every so often. He would play the prank phone call CDs. And I'm forever grateful for that. But during the week.

KC sent me a very interesting. Recording. That I had made in 2006. I believe. And I'll play that for you now. So the Rubber Bandits are two friends and they do prank phone calls. Now, they're one of the most popular acts on Bebo.

They had over 100,000 hits, over 8,000 friends in total. You're going to hear them a lot on the Red Rooster. Liam Flagg, the main bandit, had his page deleted because he suggested that Bebo was becoming a popularity contest through profile views, that the person with the most profile views was deemed the most popular. He thought it was a bad idea.

He wrote to Bebo about it and they cancelled his page. They just simply said to me that they refused to discuss why the page was deleted and it cannot be brought back. To be honest, the way I feel at the moment is it's as if fascism has gotten democracy pregnant. It's left me with a child and it's suckling on my breast and there's no milk there. Brilliant.

The Red Rooster on Cork's Red FM with Harvey Nuland Cork. Back tomorrow. Oh, sweet mother of fucking God. Thank Christ I don't work on radio. There'd be no somber tinkling. Of jazz piano.

On morning radio. But em. Yeah. That's from. I think that's from 2006. And KC found it on his computer there. Last week and sent it on to me. And I'd completely forgotten about it.

I had fucking forgotten about it. How do I give context to that? It was about the Rubber Bandits Bebo page in 2006. And I started a Bebo page when Bebo came out. I think it was late 2005. Now I had been making prank calls. For. Since the year 2000 I think.

Possibly even 1999. I was very young. And then when Bebo came around. 2006. I was already fucking 6 years into my career, even though I was still a teenager, sure in that clip there, I didn't even go by the name Blind Boy, I went by the name Liam Flagg, who was one of the characters on the prank phone calls, Liam Flagg is like em, he was an older dude, very serious, very intelligent

but very paranoid and he would ring up places with absolute authority in his voice and he would say that he has lost his rare Polynesian wasp that he had kept in a matchbox in your bookshop but that was Liam Flagg and the name Blind Boy didn't exist yet

in 2006 but start to upload the prank phone calls to Bebo and the name blind boy didn't exist yet in 2006 but I started to upload the prank phone calls to Bebo which blew my fucking head because that was what we'd call web 2.0 right I remember the early internet

the early internet before social media was weird it was just if you wanted to find something online like your your friend had to tell you the name of the website um the web wasn't intelligent like it is now but bibo and myspace was web 2.0 it was social media when social media came about when you could upload an avatar of your personality and have that online as a way to actually socialize with fucking real people so we had a Bebo page that I was I was running and it got mad popular in Ireland, it got like, with 7 or 8 thousand friends, which in 2006 terms was pretty massive, you know,

it was class for the start of our fucking career, and then one day Bebo deleted the whole thing, reason they did it is because I was I would have been just recovering from severe mental health issues at that time I would have been on the the positive end of severe anxiety and then the depression that will go alongside with that anxiety. Because they tend to coexist with each other. And I started to notice. One of the things when I started to begin my mental health journey. Is that I became furiously interested in psychology and psychotherapy. Because these were the things that offered me solace and help. So I started to view social media back then. Through the lens of psychology and psychotherapy

and I found there was one thing with Bebo called profile views and if you remember what a Bebo page was like you had your little bit of bio about yourself you had your photograph there was no selfies which was weird there was no fucking selfies people's photographs on bebo were

um photographs that your friends would take on a night out you know there was no such thing as having a perfect selfie you had 10 shit photos and in one of them you might have looked okay 10 shit photos and in one of them you might have looked okay but anyway profile views on your Bebo page had the number of times that your page was visited by other people and

around Limerick or anywhere else in Ireland popular people had the most popular profile views lads who were good looking and cool or playing sports or doing whatever had very high profile view numbers and the girls that were good looking and popular had very high profile views. So it very quickly became a number, you know, a very strict number

that denoted your status in society. And that's all well and good if you had high profile views but if you had low profile views then that isn't particularly good for your self-esteem if a person in Bebo back then only had a couple of hundred profile views you'd click on their page and it would connote that that person might have been a bit of a loser. And I was reading about a psychologist at the time called Carl Rogers. Carl Rogers' theory. Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychotherapist. He's the father of modern psychotherapy and he had a theory called the real versus the ideal self.

I'll get on to that in a minute. So anyway, on the rubber bandits page which had a pretty fucking big audience for bibo in 2006 i wrote i think it was a blog post about what i was basically saying was this profile view business on Bebo is going to end up with somebody committing suicide. I said that to have a system whereby people in Limerick or wherever can rank each other's social status based on a number is detrimental to people's self-esteem and will result in mental health issues.

The administrators of Bebo saw this, obviously said, oh fuck, that makes sense, this is a bit of a red flag, and deleted our fucking Bebo page. Gone. My early career as a young fella, fucking gone overnight.

And it wasn't like with Facebook now, if your page gets deleted, you can appeal it, or you can contact Facebook support. This was early fucking social fucking social media lads Bebo got rid of the page boom gone done nothing and I was left with fuck me gone there was no way to contact the fans there was no so Casey I told Casey about this and because he had some type of you know a platform with the radio in 2006, I said, look, we've a new Bebo page, can you get some people to like it?

But it never recovered, it never really recovered, until I started using MySpace in about 2008. But that excerpt that I played you there from Red FM 2006 and the KC show, Red FM 2006, on the KC show, that's only a tiny snippet, of a full interview, that was about 10 minutes long, where I spoke all about,

spoke about what happened, I spoke about profile views, how people would be at risk, of mental health issues, and how suicide could become an issue, and I'd love to fucking hear it, I would love to listen back, and hear young teenage me talking that way about that stuff to see if I was on the ball but it's lost it's lost now and

that's a bit of a sickness so all I have left is that little snippet with the house music behind it but that early b-boy deletion was fucking terrible for the career then really really bad but what did happen after Bebo deleted my page within a week profile views became optional they were no longer a mandatory feature on your Bebo profile they became you could switch off profile views so if you didn't have a lot of them you could just switch that off and people would no longer go onto your page and go you fucking loser look at you with your

200 profile views because that was happening and yeah, I'm responsible for Bebo having profile views optional do you want to shift me? I'm pretty sure I did try and get the shift back then with that exact sentence, in a nightclub, did not work, and it's quite a bizarre claim, how are you getting on, I'm the guy who's responsible for profile views on Bebo being optional yeah ooh

but I mentioned there Carl Rogers I was reading about Carl Rogers at that time the work of Carl Rogers and the psychotherapeutic theory of Carl Rogers was massive to me in my

early mental health journey particularly because of a theory that rogers has called the real self versus the ideal self and this is one of the cornerstones of modern psychology i'll tell you what it is now. Actually first I'll tell you a little bit about Carl Rogers himself. Rogers was a psychotherapist that would have been knocking about around the

1950s. And I've told you before about Sigmund Freud. Freud is the a lot of what Freud kind of discovered is now discredited

but the core of what Freud the tenets of Freud's theories they still remain the main tenets and Freud was the person to first properly posit

the idea of the the unconscious mind I spoke to you about that a couple of podcasts back when when referring to Yorty Ahern that the human mind is made up of our conscious that we have immediate access to our pre-conscious which is the stuff from last week and the deep deep well of the unconscious which is the stuff from last week, and the deep, deep well of the unconscious, which is the stuff that we repress, every memory we've had. And Freud claims that human discomfort is when pain from the unconscious sublimates its way up to the conscious

in a very distorted way. And then, of course, you've got the mad bastard Carl Jung with his collective unconscious, which we've spoken about a lot. But Carl Rogers differs from Freud in one main way Freud believed that humans are essentially evil uh Young not far off Young Young always spoke about the shadow side of the human psyche but Freud believed that humans are murderous

animals that will kill and rape and that is our innate desire is for murder and rape and that's the rules of society keep us from ever doing these things and that this

continual desire for sex and whatever finds its way out in very paranoid defense mechanisms Rogers was quite different, Rogers believed that humans were essentially good that at the base level of humanity humans

are loving loving caring creatures and he's kind of what he based this on is the fact that all humans want to be loved you know we all want approval and love and warmth and care from the people around us we also want to give love and warmth to the people around us you know we experience that as pleasurable i mean being compassionate to someone is far less stressful and more peaceful than fighting with someone so rogers kind of used this as evidence that of the fact that humans are good if you want to receive love and to give love then at your core you must be essentially good and rogers claimed that you know when people develop mental health issues or when people become criminal or violent or whatever that it is the goodness the innate goodness becomes distorted and becomes blackened unlike

Freud who believed that the blackness and darkness is already there and it's simply winning so they're almost Freud's theory and Rogers's theory are almost like yin and yang and it's simply winning so they're almost freud's theory and rogers's theory are almost like yin and yang and rogers's theory is it's humanistic you know rogers is seen as a humanistic psychotherapist it believes in the power and the goodness of the human being not too far off uh buddhism and i prefer rogers' theory obviously it's nicer to think that humans are essentially good and we get distorted into badness rather than thinking that we are

fundamentally bad and get distorted into goodness by rules of society you know at the core of Rogers' theory of human personality is a thing called the actualizing tendency. It is our tendency to be the best version of ourselves possible. And he was looking at nature.

He was looking at the tropisms. Tropisms are the forces that plants use to guide themselves if you look at a you plant a seed in a pot the roots the seed will grow roots and no matter what way you place the pot or put it on its side or whatever geotropism. The force of gravity. Will cause the roots of that. Little seed to grow towards gravity. Downwards. Then when it pokes it's head up.

Phototropism comes in. That little shoot of that seed. Will grow towards light. And then. Hydrotropism. The roots. Will not only grow towards gravity, but towards water. And Carl Rogers viewed humans in a similar fashion.

He viewed humans as like little seeds in the dark searching for the light. in the dark searching for the light and he claimed that humans will always strive to be the best happiest version of ourselves that we can and no matter what we do whether it be in sport or art or whatever we always strive to better ourselves and this motivation is the known as the actualizing tendency. We tend to try and reach self-actualization. To a person who authentically reaches for what is genuinely the best version of themselves will most likely be a happy person. Because they're pursuing that real true authentic journey and that's the bones of Rogers's theory of human personality that's just the beginning but where Rogers kind of drifts off from Freud is Rogers kind of claimed that we'll say culture and society and rules of society and

rules that come from our parents or teachers or whatever can distort our journey it's not like Freud or Freud says that we're essentially bad and society creates the goodness, that Rogers is claiming that we can become our authentic self-actualization journey, the one that is authentic to each of us individually, that the goalposts can become distorted by society's rules that you can think you're actualizing in the right direction but because of some rules

that you learned from society or from religion or from your parents or from the law or from whatever cultural rules that the goalposts you're looking for

are actually wrong that you're going on the wrongposts you're looking for are actually wrong that you're going in the wrong journey and you can't tell and this wrong journey this wrong actualization this leads to human discomfort and sadness and emptiness and mental health issues now this is a very interesting theory of of of humanity so i'm going to go into it in as much detail as i can but at the same time keep it concise and simple if you remember two podcasts back i had a question from a listener and this listener was an accountant and they were very very unhappy in their daily life and in their job despite this job providing a very comfortable wealthy existence for him he woke up every morning feeling like a

piece of shit and really not enjoying where his life was going that's what i'm talking about not enjoying where his life was going that's what i'm talking about and he specifically mentioned that he became an accountant because his mother wanted him to become an accountant that's what i'm talking about right there this listener believed that he was actualizing in the right direction becoming an accountant but his goal posts of actualization became distorted by the desires and rules that were taught to him by his mother and that right there is you know that's the the actual is actualizing tendency kind of gone wrong a little so as a result of that he was writing to me saying that he felt very unhappy with his life because

it's like the it's it's a plant it's a plant growing towards a torch it's a plant they're the plant isn't growing towards the sun that will feed it and nourish it and cause photosynthesis to happen and create new leaves and growth the plant is being confused and it's growing towards a shitty torch and it's you know it's fucking its leaves are getting yellow and its stems are skinny because it's growing towards a false light that it believes to be the sun. That there is the actualizing tendency. And, you know, how does this happen? Well, Rogers has a thing called

organismic valuing, which is we as organisms, as humans, we understand what is good for us, you know, what we like. And one thing that humans fucking love is positive regard. Positive regard is approval from other people. We're social animals, we like approval approval so when a little child is quite young two or three years of age that child's life is its parent figure it doesn't have to be the ma or the dad could be older brothers or sisters it could be a teacher it could be whatever whatever that child looks up to so when a child is very young and it receives approval

from that parent figure for doing something such as I don't know accounting right or in my situation for me it was art if I did anything that was artistic as a kid I was given quite a bit of approval from

the older people around me now this positive regard which is a good thing when the child develops and becomes older the positive regard turns into what's known as positive self-regard the child learns that because the adult has patted it on its head for doing this thing, that the child then internalizes that information. And you begin to pat yourself on the head or pat yourself on the back for doing this thing. It can be being handy at sports. It can be, in my situation, being good at art. That leads to what's known as positive self-regard.

You regard yourself in a positive fashion when you do the thing that has given you positive regard from the people around you. I hope this is making sense. But anyway, these are simple things and it seems pretty straightforward. straightforward you're a child your parents tell you you're good because you do one you know because you're good at painting or because you're good at maths or because you're good at sports and then as a result you start to experience that as oh yeah i must be i'm good at this thing and i'm a good person when i do this thing well well where it can kind of go wrong and where we have to have awareness around it rogers has this thing called conditions of worth and this is where society can come in to distort our goal posts of self-regard

can turn into what's known as conditional positive self-regard right and this is when the child who is good at art whose parents says oh you're very good at art

and the child experiences that as pleasurable, the child can start to believe that they are only a good person when they are good at art, or they are only a good person when they are good at sports, or they are only a good person when they are polite to people. This is what's known as conditional positive self-regard you give yourself positive regard only on the condition that you are good at something and the flip side of that is that if you do not live up to that expectation

then you start to self-flagellate and believe that you are a bad person at that moment your self-worth has been placed in an external aspect of your behaviour. And we've spoken about that before. That's a recipe for poor mental health. So let's just say that the thing that you receive positive regard for. Isn't necessarily a value that's intrinsic to your actual personality let's take it back to that lad who wrote in to me a couple of weeks ago where his mother wanted him to become an accountant all his life and then he went to become an accountant and now feels terrible that right there is what

i'm talking about he was given conditional positive regard around being good at school and becoming an accountant and following the path that his mother wanted for him. But it would appear now that as a 33 year old adult

that this is not where his true self is at. His path is distorted. Society's rules have distorted his path of actualization and he's unhappy and that right there is

Rogers' theory as applied to a human being now how did I get I'm going to take a whip out of the vape how did I get to all of this from a conversation about Bebo and I'll tell you why because like I said the problem I had with Bebo in 2006 was profile views

and when I critiqued profile views I backed it up with Rogerian theory and the most important facet of Rogers' theory is known as the real and ideal self the part of you

that's founded in your actualising tendency, right the part of you that's founded in your actualizing tendency right the part of you that grows towards the real light the actual light your own light your individual light you know the sun that's your what rogers would call your real self it's the actual true you that you can grow and become luckily for me my real self is to actually be an artist I'm very lucky and privileged in that fashion that

when I you know when I'm writing or when I'm even doing this podcast or I'm doing anything to do with creativity and art that's genuinely who I am that's my personality I don't know how to be any other way, so it doesn't matter to me whether I'm earning a shitload of money or whatever, so long as I'm able to create, if I'm continually creating and I'm happy with my creativity, then I'm quite a happy person and i'm a very happy mentally healthy person

because i follow my my real self and i've identified what my real self is but on the other hand if you are actualizing right in the wrong direction if the rules that you learned as a child the wrong direction if the rules that you learned as a child such as our lad and his accountancy if you are have been told to actualize in the wrong direction you develop what's known as an ideal self okay the real self is the real you the ideal self it's it's the you that you would like other people to think you are. And our society very much places emphasis on the ideal self, not the real self. Advertising functions on the ideal self. Advertising appeals to your ideal self.

You know, if you look at an ad for dove soap or something they're not selling you soap that gets you clean they're selling you a better version of you our insecurities are in our ideal self and the thing with an ideal self is that it's always out of reach. We can never attain it because it isn't real. It's ideal. We're never going to be as beautiful as we want to be, as strong as we want to be, as tall as we want to be, but we will forever strive. And in that struggle,

and in that false journey, we will only find misery, and we will never be satiated it's like a dog with a hole in his stomach eating dog food it just keeps falling onto the ground do you know what I mean now Rogers claims that

when somebody's ideal self when somebody lives their life more in their ideal self than their real self there becomes what's known as an incongruence between the two and the greater this incongruity like

the further apart your ideal self is from your real self then the greater the suffering you will experience and this is what got my goat about profile views on Bebo here we had something as black and white as a number which could represent your ideal self

and if you were not as popular as you wanted to be or as beautiful or whatever to get this number to get this high profile views then you are forever reminded of the gulf between your read and ideal self and to have something as explicit as that on your social media avatar is very very detrimental for mental health and it still exists today in instagram facebook social media asks us to create an ideal self.

Who you are on social media is a very heavily curated, perfect version of how you would like to be. Instagram in particular, if a lad or a girl if if if they can create like you know you can use filters and angles and whatever to make yourself more physically attractive than you actually are online than you are in real life you're feeding that ideal self it is a false avatar of who you are which can ultimately result in a sense of loneliness and continual disappointment and isolation you know sure this is fucking evident you know that's why the body positivity movement is so important right now because the people in magazines not even magazines kim kardashian do you know anyone they're all photoshopping their fucking images they're

giving us their ideal self and we're trying to aspire to their ideal selves and an ideal self doesn't necessarily have to be physical it can be your fucking neighbor's car you know what if you want to own a mercedes what if your ideal self is being rich and powerful but you're not rich and powerful you can't attain wealth and power but you give that impression on your social media account you're feeding into that ideal self. And then you wonder why you're perpetually. Feeling. Empty.

Social media does not. Cater towards. Real selves. Should I wear a fucking bag on my head? What am I talking about maybe the bag for me allows me to name my ideal self

it allows me to take ownership of it and to truly separate it from my real self so I can live my real self walking down the road

as a nobody enjoying myself and then the bag can take all the bullshit i don't know one thing i do know is that my personal happiness very much does depend on not necessarily how good i am at creativity because that has led to issues for me in the past because not everything I create is going to be good obviously I have to allow for failure but the journey of creating something offers me great happiness the journey of reaching a goal

and then once I get to that goal moving on and starting a new one and truly embracing failure that's a huge one for me you cannot create failure is a very important and necessary part of the creative journey

all the great lessons that I've learned as an artist came from my failures making a bollocks of something i learned from that so therefore it is not negative there's only one failure the only one true failure is doing nothing because you were scared of trying because you were scared of failing but there is a victory in making a bollocks of something and that's not just for creativity that's for everything so one aspect of my mental health journey from a young age

along with the likes of cognitive behavioural therapy and all other types of schools of psychology that I'll speak about on other podcasts a huge aspect of my journey was the work of Carl Rogers and using Rogers' theory

to look back at my childhood and to it's hard it's hard to identify your real self but it is easy to

identify your ideal self because it's your insecurities it's you insecurities it's you know confronting your ideal self is a very painful thing that takes a long time

because your weaknesses are in your ideal self your defense mechanisms keep you believing that your ideal self is actually who you are so when someone says something to you or passes a comment. And if this comment makes you intensely angry. Or if this comment. Makes you want to lash back at them.

With an insult. Then chances are. They've offended your ideal self. Because your ideal self. Needs to have its armour up. It's fragile. So that's how I came to identify the parts of myself that were ideal. I looked at what caused me pain.

I looked at my insecurities. I looked at what I was jealous about in other people. Your jealousies of other people people that identifies your ideal self and the beauty of psychology and being an adult is it doesn't matter what rules you learned as a kid

once you become an autonomous adult you can identify any faulty rules or ideas about yourself or ideas about other people you can identify these things take ownership of them and no longer allow yourself to be defined by it you can gradually shed your ideal self through a long process of self-learning and looking inwards and self-compassion. And loving your flaws. Learning to truly love the parts of yourself that make you insecure. Embracing that you are never going to be what your ideal self wants you to be.

And it doesn't matter. It fucking doesn't matter a shit. Because human beings are too complex to evaluate off each other. You cannot evaluate human beings off each other. We're too complex. Every human being has the same intrinsic value. So it doesn't matter if you're tall, or if you're good looking,

or if you're good at soccer. These are just aspects of behavior. They do not define you as a human being. To drift into potential hot take territory. Love and companionship. You know, some people may find themselves perpetually in unsatisfying or dysfunctional relationships

based around conflict or continually searching for people and giving the relationship their all trying their best to find love

but never truly finding it and always having an emptiness or trying to find something somewhere else and our ideal selves can do that to us too our ideal selves if we live too much in our ideal self and we don't know our true self you can end up being attracted to partners that appeal more to your ideal self than your real self and that is one theory behind where kind of dysfunction

in relationships comes from you know sometimes when we fall in love or when we think we fall in love when we become utterly obsessed with somebody when you know when you fall for someone and you think, oh this person is perfect. This person is perfect, they understand me so much.

I want to spend all my time with them. But it doesn't work out, it ends in pain. Or it ends in a relationship that can grow bitter. Or a relationship that can grow angry and one that's based around conflict often what can happen there is what we initially confuse as love or what we initially confuse as this person understands me you're actually you're attracted to

your own insecurities in that person that person has the same flaws and insecurities as you do that you're unconsciously aware of and you become attracted to that in them so you have this sense of momentary belonging and

momentary relief but eventually what can happen with that type of relationship is it turns sour and bitter and angry because over time you gradually begin to hate that person for their very presence continually reminding you of what you don't like about yourself and so a toxic relationship grows and this is the type of situation that arrives when someone is continually living their life as their ideal self not all the time it's just one possibility depending on what that ideal self is and by trying to live authentically and finding your real self you then naturally find yourself becoming attracted to people who appeal to that real self and from there genuine true love and compassion and non-judgmental love grows. Hot takes.

Boiling hot takes. Let's take a brief pause so I can have a digital advertisement to appeal to your ideal self and sell you some bullshit that you don't need. Now, if you're familiar with this podcast you will know that when a digital advert is inserted depending on your geographic location you may or may not hear the advert. So some of you may hear the ideal self advert but for the lucky few you will hear the real self. And that real self, as you know, is the ocarina.

My Spanish clay whistle, which I bought on the streets of Cordoba. In Moorish Spain, outside the mosque. This little clay whistle on a string that I smuggled back from Spain through Malaga airport, down my foreskin. Listen please to the call of the ocarina. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge

to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's

sunrisechallenge.ca. 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, 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. What's not real?

Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. you either heard the ocarina there or a recruitment ad for the SAS as I've been told many of my listeners in Britain are fucking hearing the ironing I've got an awful squeaky chair. Did you hear that? Fuck me. I'd love to get a new chair.

Or even buy some oil. To reduce the squeak. This podcast is not sponsored by a sponsor. I don't know why. Because it's the number one podcast in Ireland. But there you go. It's funded by the odd little advert that gets dropped in by Acast which is quite meagre in its summations. Patreon account where you, the listener

can donate a small fee every month to keep me in shoes and pants and what I would ask is you know, for the

four hours a month of podcast hugging, actually longer because most podcasts are nearly an hour and a half or an hour and twenty for the five hours of podcast hugging, actually longer because most podcasts are nearly an hour and a half or an hour and twenty for the five hours of podcast hug you get every month would you buy me one pint

a month or one cup of coffee and if the answer to that is yes please go to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and give me four euros or five euros or whatever you can afford because that small little monthly donation is fucking massive to me and to this podcast and to my life it is huge i absolutely love getting patreon donations because i'm getting closer and closer to a point where i can actually earn a living out of making

this fucking podcast which is the dream that is uh fantastic to know that something that I love doing can actually pay the bills that's amazing so if you feel like contributing to that please do but if you don't if you can't afford it if you're on the dole

that's fine no problem you don't have to you're still going to get your podcast hug I'm appealing to your soundness em still going to get your podcast hug i'm appealing to your soundness um also as well please every week if you're listening to this on itunes

leave a rating just when you come out of the podcast uh there's a star system give it five stars or four but just give it a rating please um or a review if you're feeling like that and make sure you subscribe as well i really want to up the subscriptions because i don't trust putting my social media future in twitter and facebook sure look the start of the podcast is about how Bebo fucked me over. Because I pointed out some mental health shit. So subscriptions are good. So please subscribe or leave a rating. Yart.

So I just want to tip on something. Relating to the earlier theme. Because you know I was. Out of my head back in 2006 there, you know, talking about Bebo, and I was mentioning the prank phone calls. And as I said, that radio appearance I made in 2006, I would have been in a fairly positive place

in terms of my mental health. But as you know, as I mentioned before, when I was a teenager, I had unmercifully bad anxiety and depression. Working together as best friends to make my life misery. And I would, if I was having particularly bad anxiety and I didn't have the tools to deal with it. Before I knew what CBT was, I didn't have any tools other than to just live my life anxious one thing that would give me momentary relief and give me maybe a day's happiness or only a couple of hours

was to engage in artistic creative things and for me what that was back then when I was maybe 16 was doing prank phone calls because prank phone calls for me back then it was never I never saw it as taking the piss out of people like a usual prank is you ring someone up and you laugh at the person at the other end of the phone but that's never what I liked doing what I liked doing was inventing bizarre scenarios or bizarre characters and during the prank the person that you're laughing at is the character that I'm playing not necessarily the other person on the end of the phone what I used to it's like comedy the essence of comedy if you think of the simpsons like good sitcom written comedy you've got a crazy character and then a straight normal character Homer Simpson is crazy Marge Simpson is straight and in order for Homer's

craziness to work it needs to bounce off Marge it needs Marge's normal reaction because Marge is the viewer at home she is the rules of society and then Homer is the chaos so the other thing is within acting and comedy the hardest role to write for and to perform is the straight character that requires a lot of skill especially as an actor to play straight brilliantly is quite difficult um chris morris's brass eye he has some of the best straight characters that you'll ever see kevin eldon in particular played a brilliant straight character whenever he was used as the straight character in brass eye so i'd like to play for you now, mostly you might have heard this, but hopefully you haven't heard it in a while,

but a prank phone call, that's kind of dear to me, it's from about 2003, maybe, 2004, and the reason this is dear to me, is because, I would have recorded this,

at the height of a very bad episode of anxiety and the themes of my character Liam Flagg in this podcast they kind of let you know where my head was at in terms of what I was the paranoid thoughts that I was dealing with and the the anxious thoughts I was dealing with but I expressed it through this character and achieved flow and it gave me happiness it took me away from the fear and the depression just for a few hours and it brought me close to my real self and took me away from the darkness so this is a prank phone call called the bank Good morning you have a bank call, can you speak to me how can I help bank. How's it going? AIB is this?

That's right, yeah. I was in there yesterday, I was applying for a loan, right? And I sat down with one of the girls at a table, I'm not sure which one it was. What kind of loan were you looking for? It was actually a car loan, right?

I sat down with her, and what actually happened, as I was sitting down at the table, she gave me out the form anyway. Everything was going grand to sign away, you know? Now, as I put my head down to sign that form, she took out a big balloon and burst it in my ear. And it actually caused a ringing in my ear. And I had to actually leave. I didn't get any lawn.

I walked out and left after having a big balloon burst in my ear. Now, that's not the only point, right? The ringing in my ear is caused by that balloon bursting. It caused me to forget about an arrow that I had in my arse pocket and it melted and it just destroyed the back pocket of my pants. Now, I'm ringing you because I want my pants replaced. Right, can you bear with me one second? What did the girl look like that you were dealing with? You didn't get her name or anything, did you? I didn't.

Unfortunately, I didn't get her name at all. And what's your own name? My name's Liam Flagg. And do you have an account here, Liam? I don't. I just went in there yesterday. If I could talk to someone either in power or the girl who you think it might be, I think she might have had kind of an arm on her, you know?

Okay. in power or the girl who you think it might be. I think she might have had an odd hair. Was it out of the customers, or long hair? I haven't a clue. I sat down at the desk when she came out the farm, I signed it, looked down at the farm, everything going well and a balloon in my ear burst with a pin. I'd say it was a pin or a hair pin, I don't know, maybe even a comb. I couldn't imagine anyone bursting in the first place. Well... This is AIB William Street. AIB William Street. It certainly happened. Because I'm not making it up, right?

And my pants are destroyed. It caused me to forget about an arrow I had in my pants. The arrow actually melted. And it wouldn't have melted if there wasn't a ringing in my ear. I would have eaten it. My pants are ruined. Okay, just bear with me a second, thanks. Hello?

How's it going yeah um so i'm i'm just after asking all the girls out there at the customer service now none of them remember your name i remember having anybody in or definitely don't remember bursting the balloon well it definitely happened and it was it was an aib balloon no i'm actually after we don't have any balloons i'm after actually making a mistake i'm gonna have to have to go back on what I said to a certain extent because it wasn't actually an aero in my pocket. It was a Toblerone that actually melt. But listen, all right. Now, first of all, there's the incident of the destroyed pants, right?

That's number one. And I'm just having to remember on something now. This morning, I went into a shop, right, and I opened up a box of Smarties and I got a panic attack, right? And that's because of you bursting a balloon in my ear now. Let's not even talk if I went to a balloon factory what would happen, right? If I can't even eat Smarties because I get a panic attack, do you know what I'm talking about? Who's the girl that did it? Because I want to talk to her. Whoever was responsible for giving me that loan, right? I see she must be on her lunch. She's on her lunch now? Are you taking me seriously?

That's not very fair, all right? And you know what? I've three pairs of pants, right? I'd want from Monday to Wednesday, Wednesday to Friday, Friday to Sunday, right? What am I supposed to wear Saturday, like? Go down to my jocks? Or wear one of my wife's pants, like? What am I supposed to do?

I'm not supposed to wear a dress. It's not funny, all right? If a parrot, the arse pocket of the pants has got an ear, a Toblerone melted all over it, right? And not only that, it was the one with the honeycomb, honeycomb Toblerone, do you know them ones? I'm sorry, no, your story's very funny, so I'm sorry for laughing. I can appreciate that it is funny, right?

But please, I'm asking you now, not sympathy, but empathy. I need you to put yourself in my situation, right? My pants are ruined. They were Levi's, them ones, you know? I mean, how do you not... Levi's don't grow on trees, like, and not a matter of cotton, like, it's on theory they grow on a field. But I want new pants.

What are you going gonna do about it hello have you got a helicopter inside there as well have you got a helicopter in there are you having a party laughing at me with helicopters and balloons is that what you're doing eating lobsters i can't believe you this is absolutely terrible a man with no pants and you'll treat me like this is absolutely terrible a man with no pants and he'll treat me like this oh yes yes that indeed did uh drag me out of a bit of darkness when i made that and i don't know i think obviously it was engaging with creativity engaging with art and making something that I knew was good and I was in the zone and I was in flow but also it was almost like a diary saying out loud to a stranger on the phone that I was getting panic attacks now I know I was saying there I was getting a panic attacks

because of a box of smarties but that was my unconscious mind pushing that out there it's like I said to somebody. I'm getting panic attacks. And I hadn't said it to anyone. I hadn't said it to anyone at all. I hadn't gone to therapy. And. That was the person I said.

I'm getting panic attacks to. A fucking stranger on the phone. In a bank. And I didn't even know I was doing that. I didn't even know there was a degree of self therapy. in that process but I felt normal for a while after it every week I like to recommend a new album um they all tend to be quite old because like I said the art of the album is a it's hard to get albums now because the way people listen you just get a collection of singles

last week I recommended an album by Kate Bush The Dreaming fucking class this week I would like to recommend Crime of the Century by Supertramp now there's a tiny part of my head that thinks I've recommended that already and

I don't have time to go back through all the podcasts to make sure whether I did or not but I'm I'm pretty sure I didn't recommend that album yet but listen to it Crime of the Century by Supertramp unbelievable fidelity it's

prog rock but not up its own arse prog rock just some weird 70s shit and some amazing very good songwriting good tunes and I think you will enjoy it I'm slightly worried about next weeks podcast a little bit

because I'm in transit for the next while em I'm going to london for two weeks next week because i'm doing something i'm doing something for tv that i can't announce yet but i am writing it and i'll be involved in the editing of it and i'm looking forward to it it'll be good crack looking forward to going to london i enjoy london uh specifically chinatown near soho because there's a dish called dan dan noodles that i had the last time i was in london and i want to fucking eat them but because i'm going to be working on tv my schedule will be insane sometimes like 12 hour days is normal for television

so i hope i can i'm definitely delivering a podcast without a doubt you're getting a podcast next week but i'm going to bring my microphone over with me as well it depends on the acoustics of my hotel room if my hotel room has an echo it's going to be difficult for me to record a decent podcast. Now what I'm also bringing with me is my lavalier mic, which is a little mic that goes on my collar, which would allow me to record a podcast while walking. If you remember, I attempted a live podcast in the British Museum the last time, and it didn't record, it didn't go down.

So if I get the time, maybe next week, I will record the british museum live podcast um i also got a new mic this week that was kindly donated by hosier um and it's a it's a cool mic that goes on the end of an iphone so if i'm really stuck i can use that so slightly anxious about next week's podcast slightly anxious that I can maintain the podcast hug and then after London we have a gig in Italy in a ski resort

that should be good crack then gigging in Edinburgh for Paddy's Day then I'm back in Limerick then I'm off to Spain for the week to get very focused

on writing my second book I began writing the second book the past two weeks and I'm flying it it's doing well I just began the first story in it there and I haven't written now in about five months

so I'm getting back into it drifting back into flow I haven't written now in about five months. So I'm getting back into it, drifting back into flow. And a bit fucking, you know, a bit iffy at the start, writing in a very cognitive fashion. But then I did drift into flow quite successfully. So I'm happy to report that that is the case. So I think before we go, i'm going to take some questions i asked twitter last week any questions for the podcast so i'll pick a couple of out now and i'll answer them moose elaine who was a bit of a legend on twitter

he asked uh do you have any views on outsider art? Outsider art is a bit of a, in my opinion, a bit of a shitty term. Outsider art is art that's made by people who are viewed to be on the outside of society. People who are mentally ill, people who are homeless, animals, chimpanzees art would be viewed as an outsider art. And I just don't like the term.

It's, for me, it's like, it's like I spoke before, I hate the term novelty when referred to music. It's like the music that we've made as the Rubber Bandits. It's never given proper respect or given its fair dues as music because it is comedy. Despite the fact that I fucking play bass, guitar, keys and produce and record it all myself to a professional level. Doesn't seem to fucking matter because there's comedy involved. Therefore it's novelty fart. And that is bullshit.

In terms of assessing a creative work that is bullshit. And outsider art is the same thing. Outsider art is a way to call art novelty and outsider art is the same thing outsider art is a way to call art novelty because of who is creating it and what so just because a person is fucking homeless and they create art that it is somehow needs its own special categorization like what type of shit is that it's just an elitist term. That is. Used to refer to art. Created by marginalized people.

I completely disagree. With the term outsider art. I think art is art. And art is human expression. And I don't care. Like so what. If you went to art college. Your work isn't

outsider art it's a categorical system of saying that one thing is valid and one thing is less valid it's pure capitalism in art

that's all it is it's bullshit so yes I strongly disagree with the term outsider art if you want to listen to a musician who is often considered to be an example of outsider art if you want to listen to a musician who is often considered

to be an example of outsider art Daniel Johnson he was a big influence on Kurt Cobain but go and listen to the music of Daniel Johnson who was his mental health wasn't the best so as a result of this he was considered an outsider artist

he wasn't he was just an incredible fucking songwriter. Who had mental health issues. And I do not view his art as being outside. It is art. Lenny asks. Blind boy. I'm one of the many people who live abroad.

Who follow your podcasts on Patreon. Having lived abroad for a long time. What's the fucking story with the street violence in Ireland? Assaults, etc. I'm getting the night link home from O'Connell Street. It was like a scene from Mad Max. It doesn't happen in most other countries outside Ireland and the UK. What I would say

the only answer I have for that one there Lenny is after the last recession they really put a lot of cutbacks to the guards and a lot of guard stations were shut down in Limerick you will

not see police on the beat in the city center at any time it is very difficult to see that in o'connell street in dublin you will very rarely see guards if you're in london there's police everywhere so i would imagine the amount of assaults and fights that are allowed to happen in the streets of ireland are because the guards are underfunded and there's simply not enough of them on the streets and they're not getting enough hours for that to be a deterrent for twisting a pint bottle into someone's face I don't know that's all I can think of Lenny. Ed has an interesting one here that's more of an observation than a question but I'd like to address it Ed says I'm enjoying your podcast and I've ordered your book. Has anyone told you that Fisher and Paykel is a New Zealand company yet?

That's an interesting one. Ed is referring there to the a short story I have called Did You Hear About Erskine Fogarty and that's the first podcast. Actually anyone who's listening to this podcast and if you're new please go back to the first episode and start from there but on the first podcast it's about a lad called Erskine Fogarty it's a short story

where he drags a Fisher and Paykel fridge behind him because that story as well that's about the yeah I should have mentioned that earlier

that story is quite consciously kind of driven by Carl Rogers' real and ideal self. Erskine Fogarty had placed his ideal self in his possessions. He wanted continually the approval of these elitist Dublin pricks and went and got the trappings of wealth that he thought to get this approval,

but because he put his personality into these things when they were stripped away he had no choice but to go into madness he was left with nothing when when the when he lost his job and when all his possessions went because he constructed his personality around these things he was left with a void of nothingness and he had no core of self no real self to actually cope with the stress of his life but anyway Erskine held on to the Fisher and Paykel fridge which he continually referred to as the American fridge freezer that's a peculiar thing to Ireland it doesn't matter that Fisher and Paykel is made in New Zealand because if you buy one of these big large expensive silver fridges that have an ice

dispenser in Ireland they're generically referred to as American fridge freezers like the way a vacuum is called a hoover so that's a uniquely Irish thing. Big silver fridges are called American fridge freezers. And it's not a kind of a misconception on my part. They could be made on the moon and they'd still be called American fridge freezers in Ireland. Which is ridiculous and kind of insecure. But there you go, isn't it? Alright, I think we're coming to the end of the podcast this week. I've only dealt with a couple of questions.

Because I had quite a long rant. But I enjoyed this podcast this week. I really loved being back just talking. Just me and you. And there's nothing wrong with interviewing somebody. But I really loved being back just chatting to you. And having our bit of space every week and I hope you enjoyed it as well

and look after yourself, have a bit of self-compassion, have some compassion for other people and have a really lovely enjoyable week. God bless and yort and hopefully I'll get a few more sightings of yorty heron actually. I'm waiting to see what he's going to start doing now

as spring comes on. The thaw is happening down by his couch on Plassy River. So best of luck lads. I will 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 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.