The Blindboy Podcast - Lung Cousins

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

A rambling podcast designed for a Post Christmas pre New Years walk. I speak about pissing in a milk bottle for several years and the role of silliness in art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chone down your tubas, you boulevard owners. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I wasn't going to do a podcast this week. Well, I was. I've never missed a week. I haven't missed a week in the four years of making this podcast. Even though

every year around Christmas I always say maybe I'll take a week off. Maybe I'll take a week off. But it doesn't sit right it's bad practice I need to save one day I need to take a week off and that will only happen when there's an emergency when there's when when something urgent happens whereby I literally can't put out a podcast then I won't here's why I decided to put out a podcast this week so the reason I was thinking of not doing it is because like three days ago it was Christmas

so obviously I I didn't work at all over the Christmas period from like the 22nd of December to today I did fucking nothing i ate mince pies i drank beer in the mornings because you're allowed to do that at christmas i ate food and i filled my eyeballs full of shit from the television i switched my brain off and I just engaged in festive gluttony like a type of pop culture hippopotamus so I've no research done for this week's podcast I've zero preparation but the reason I decided to put the podcast out was it's the 29th of December

and ye really need ye really need this podcast right now because the 27th of December the 28th of December the 29th of December and the 30th of December are that period of limbo

where it's not New Year's Eve it's not Christmas time means nothing you don't know which shops are open which shops aren't open you're not at work the only reason you know it's Wednesday is because this podcast is out now

and I figured a lot of you would just be walking today you can't indulge in the senses you've indulged in the senses on Christmas day and a little bit of Saint Stephen's day and you're getting ready to indulge in the senses on New Year's Eve so now we're in sensual limbo where all you can really do is go on walks so i'm putting this podcast out because i figured a lot of you are going to be on a walk and need a bit of a bit of company i'm going to do a question answering podcast i'm going to do a nice relaxing question answering podcast where i've done no research I've done no preparation

we just answer some questions and see what happens I don't know if this is going to take an hour or whatever we'll see how it goes so I went on to Instagram earlier on today at blind by boat club

went on to Instagram and I said have you any questions so I got thousands of questions because everyone's at home looking you any questions so I got thousands of questions because everyone's at home looking at their fucking phones I got thousands of questions and I picked the ones that I liked so the first one I'm going to answer is Lewis asked me what's the most random

story that you swear is true but no one believes you before I even answer that I bet you lewis i'm gonna guess that lewis is in his mid-30s because i haven't heard the word fucking random in a long time do you remember man fucking 2006 was peak random whatever the fuck was going on with 2006. I used to get pissed off about it on Bebo at the time. Just before the recession.

Hide of the Celtic Tiger, 2005-2006. Everything was random. Everything. I met someone out last night. they were so random, the fuck do you mean they were random, oh did you, did you see that film, it's so random, total randomness, lol, total randomness, and everything was random, random, random, I remember getting into my head that like 2006 there was a huge economic bubble. We called it the Celtic Tiger in Ireland. There was a lot of money and Irish people had never had money before. And it was just a very excessive time.

Like I remember there was a block of flats, this student accommodation, right, in Limerick. There was a block of flats, this student accommodation, right, in Limerick. And the landlord who owned the block of flats used to arrive in a helicopter every week to, like, collect all the rent in a suitcase. A fucking, a man landing his helicopter in Limerick to collect the rent on this student accommodation nightclubs there was nightclubs in limerick and they just booked like dead mouse on a thursday night and fly him in on a fucking private jet and you'd go to a nightclub in limerick on a thursday night and they have like fire dancers and chocolate fountains and i spoke about this before, but people used to drink a drink called Goldschlager, which was a cinnamon spirit that had flakes of gold in it.

And people thought that if you drank it, the gold would slit your throat and alcohol would absorb into your body quicker. So 2006 was an extreme time when it came to opulence and wealth. And we didn't think it was ever going to end two years before the the great crash of 2008 and everyone was talking random random random this person is so random randomness and i always thought that the the the opulence and frivolity and excesses

of the culture and our lifestyles had found its way into our language to the point that now everything is fucking random even

there was sweets called fucking randoms I used to get upset about this I had terrible mental illness at the time but I used to get very upset

about round's randoms because it was just what is it? it's a bag of sweets and why are they called randoms? because when you open it up there's like there's a shoe

and there's a frog and there's a bicycle they're just random pure randomness for randomers and it used to make me really upset so lewis's question what's the most random story that you swear is true but no one believes you i'm just going to guess that lewis there uh lived through the chaos of 2006 and still uses the term random

as a vestigial term i'm surprised it hasn't been brought back. Ironically actually. Because people used to say lol as well. LOL. Because I remember when LOL started. This is pure old man shit now. LOL started. Because when you used to text each other back then. Before the fucking internet.

When you used to text each other. You used to have to text in the least amount of characters possible to save money. So you'd say LOL. But LOL now is used online, ironically, but no one's brought back random. So, Lewis asks, What's the most random story that you swear is true but no one believes you? Whew. So this thing happened to me right and i i i don't know if i've mentioned it before

it's it's one i've just stopped like telling people because it's just it's fucking mad and it's disgusting so would this have been 2006 no this would have been maybe 2009 pure recession shit so I was living in rented accommodation right renting a house renting like one room in a house with other people. No one had any money. And this was an old house. And it was fucking freezing cold. So I'm living in this.

This bedroom. In this house. And the house is freezing. There was no heating. Because no one had any money for heating. You just simply were like. We're not. Paying for oil.

In the tank out the back garden. Fucking forget about it. That's one bill we don't have to worry about if you're cold use your head make yourself warm so when you live in in in a place like that when it comes to night time and you go to bed you do what you can to keep your room warm usually you can't keep the room warm so what I used to do was double socks right or do you know those big fucking winter socks they're fantastic so you wear your big winter socks you have a nice big dressing gown over your clothes that you wear indoors and then a hot water bottle inside in a pillowcase inside your dressing gown and if you can do that you can create localized heat and it doesn't matter how

cold the house is you can stay warm and then of course a nice big cup of tea to keep your hands warm so this is what i was doing in this freezing cold house now the other thing when you're staying in a house that's freezing when you get up in the middle of the night and you need to take a piss it creates a dilemma so this particular house where I was as soon as I left my room

it was half as cold in the fucking or sorry twice as cold in the hallway and then when I went upstairs to the bathroom the window in the bathroom was it wasn't smashed but it had like a hole in it so the bathroom was full on it was like being outside fucking freezing there was no light bulb in the bathroom either not a light bulb there was no light fixture so the bathroom at night time was 100 pitch dark and utterly freezing so if i needed to do a piss in the middle of the night i'm simply not going outside my room not happening because to do so would mean waking up like properly waking up

now when you wake up in the middle of the night to do a piss part of the game of doing that is the zombie piss I like to call it so now I'm in my 30s and I live in a house that's warm and I don't have to worry about freezing, the freezing cold being a factor if I need to go for a piss in the middle of the night. So now what I do in my house that's warm is I walk. You figure out a way to walk to the bathroom in the dark, right?

So you have the path kind of laid out you don't want to be woken up by any light also this is when men go for the sit down piss if you're doing a zombie piss at night time and you're trying to walk through the dark you must sit down and do your piss if you do the stand up piss

then you piss everywhere and you risk waking yourself up so you walk to the toilet in the warmth sit down do your piss get back to bed and you can drift back into sleep without disturbing yourself but back in this gaff that wasn't possible it would have been too cold I'd have left the room and I'd have woken myself up so I had to be creative. So what I started doing back in this cold house was I'd be in bed. Now, I've got all this heat inside the bed because I'm sleeping in it. And I don't really want to lose it.

You have to keep that heat. I've worked on making it all night. So I had a three liter milk bottle beside my bed. And I'd perfected a means of pitch pitch dark I wake up I need a piss I lift the covers of my bed just enough but not so much that I let the heat out hang my mickey out of the bed like an airplane fueling another airplane mid-air and then piss into the three liter milk bottle there'd be no spillage it'd be perfect i'd insert myself directly into the spout of the three liter milk bottle had a nice wide mouth on it and i'd effortlessly do a piss into this three liter milk bottle no fear of overflow because it's three

liters and then i put the cap back on and then go back to sleep no heat lost not waking myself up and this is what i used to have to do in this freezing cold place that i was living in uh about 10 years ago now the thing was i wasn't necessarily replacing the milk bottle the next morning i'd get up and i'd pour the piss from the milk bottle into the toilet put the cap back on and put it back beside my bed so i was reusing this milk bottle to piss into it over and over again for months now why was i doing that i't know. I think I was kind of proud of it or something. Or. Because the milk bottle.

Because it was a creative solution. Number one. Because it was cheap. And because it genuinely. This milk bottle was a lifesaver. It was not only keeping me warm. But it wasn't waking me up up in the middle of the night. It had become like a fucking friend.

So I didn't want to like replace it and just get a new milk bottle. I was quite happy with this same milk bottle. And the parasocial feelings of camaraderie that I had projected on this milk bottle obviously overrided how disgusting the act actually was that i was consistently pissing into this milk bottle and not replacing it the cap was on it it didn't smell like piss it was just a thing i was doing at the time and it worked for me now lewis's question was what what's the most what is this what was the most random what's the most random story that you swear is true but no one believes you

so this is this is it because i usually lose people at this point because they're just like what the fuck you're doing pissing into a milk bottle repeatedly and not replacing the milk bottle at least so after a while of like just developing this narrative around this milk bottle where it just feels like a friend or a character in my room where i'm just like no i can't throw it out i can't throw it out can't do that we've been we've been through so much together this milk bottle has helped me on so many cold nights i simply can't throw it out so i developed this irrational narrative around the milk bottle

until one day I said maybe at least I can try and clean it now this is disgusting at the base of so each day I'm pissing into it and then throwing it into the toilet it had obviously a residue I'd collected around the bottom of the milk

bottle from months and months of piss, a calcified residue alright and I went fuck it I better rinse that out so then I was like okay what's the best thing to do here, bleach bleach that's what you do, bleach

cleans toilets so bleach is going to clean out my calcified piss milk bottle what i should have done is thrown out the milk bottle but i wasn't doing it because i developed an irrational parasocial relationship with the milk bottle where deep in my unconscious mind i thought it was a friend so i decide i'm going to clean the milk bottle so i open it up and I go over with some bleach and some water and I begin to pour the bleach into the empty milk bottle

to try and tackle the the calcified piss residue at the bottom and as I'm fucking doing it this like weird greenish yellowish smoke starts coming out the top of the milk bottle and then i start choking like absolutely cannot like couldn't catch my breath choking the most disgusting taste and smell i dropped it on the ground got out of the fucking room and was like what the

fuck was that ran back in with a jumper over my face and opened the windows and what what had actually happened was so the months and months of human urine and the bottom of the milk bottle had formed like ammonia i believe it was right there's ammonia present in piss it had formed ammonia and when i put the bleach on top of the ammonia now i ended up reading this afterwards i'd accidentally created a crude world war one poison gas so if you look it up ammonia and and bleach when you mix them together creates a gas called chloramine which is a deadly gas it can kill you and it will result in skin irritation eye irritation lung irritation so i'd actually i'd accidentally created a tiny amount of world war I poison gas

from a milk bottle full of piss by trying to clean it with bleach and nearly choked myself in my bedroom. And I remember thinking, what a way to fucking die. What a way to die. I don't think... I hadn't released Horse Outside at that time. The Robber Bandits would have been big enough underground.

2009. It might have been 2008. I'd have done an electric picnic gig or maybe one or two English dates. Kojak. The Irish rapper today, Kojak. It would have been Kojak's level of fame. So if Kojak today accidentally died by poisoning himself with a World War 1 gas. In a piss bottle.

It would make the papers. But imagine that. Imagine that's how I died. But that's the most. Random story. That's. I just stopped telling people. Because it's.

Mad. And then. I would have 2009 I wouldn't have had severe mental health issues but I wouldn't have been great so that explains the parasocial relationship with the milk bottle

I didn't literally think the milk bottle was my friend it was just an unchallenged assumption in my head an irrational unchallenged assumption that if somebody had stepped in if i'd used a bit of cognitive behavioral therapy and said hold on a second here no no no the milk bottle is not your friend i you've, the milk bottle has helped you out on cold nights. It's just a fucking milk bottle. Get a new one. Get a new one.

You don't owe the milk bottle anything. That was it. It's like I felt I had owed the milk bottle. Room and board. In my freezing cold gaff. And then what happened? So after the chlorine gas incident when I ran back into the room with the jumper over my face because I was like I don't know what this gas is but it's it's horrible I got the milk bottle and threw it out the window and it just the corpse of the milk bottle lay there for years in the side alleyway

of the house and I was afraid of it and didn't go near it actually now that I don't think my mental health was in tip-top shape at that point in my life and that's a lot of projecting onto a milk bottle right there but there you go there's a random story there's a random story that I've just stopped telling people because it's insane so Alexandra asks

how does it feel that the winners of this year's Turner Prize have cited you as an influence in their work? Oh, yes. I wanted to chat about this. It feels absolutely fucking fantastic. I'll be honest. Turner Prize, which is kind of probably one of the biggest art

prizes in the world for what you call contemporary art. If you think of like Damien Hirst with the fucking sharks cut in half, floating in formaldehyde, or Tracey Emin's bed

where an artist, Tracey Tracy Emin put her bed in a gallery and the Turner Prize used to, it used to be like tabloid fodder, the tabloids used to love reporting on the Turner Prize and saying oh the art world has gone mad, they have a bed in a

gallery but the Turner Prize is probably the most prestigious art award in the world, it's only for artists who make art within what you'd call Britain and this year it was won by a collective of artists from the north of Ireland called Array Collective and one of the pieces of art in this overall artwork was called colonial pineapple i think i don't know the exact name the piece of art was called colonial pineapple and the artist said in newspaper inspired by the blind boy podcast on an episode i did about the dual relationship between pineapples and potatoes and the history

of Ireland through the lens of a pineapple was a podcast I did so Array Collective said that this podcast helped inspire the artwork that they made that won the Turner Prize so for me that's that's phenomenal that feels fucking amazing that really and truly does feel incredible and the reason it does is I'm an artist and I spent many years in college studying art academically up to master's level and when you do that there's a limited paths that you're expected to go in within the art world and usually those paths are to continue speaking about art either academically or critically in a way that perpetuates high art as being incredibly highbrow. And inaccessible. To the average person. You know when you walk into a fucking art gallery.

If you're ever over in London. And you wander into the Tate or something. And. You see a fucking plaster cast of someone's cock inside in a wheelbarrow. And you go what the fuck is that? You walk over to it and you look at it. And then beside the plaster cast of the cock and the wheelbarrow is a piece of paper on the wall called the Statement of Intent.

And the artwork is called The Tears of Oedipus. And then the Statement of Intent says, this artwork explores the liminalities between our post-structural relationship with capitalism and our vision of ourselves as a collective body. And you're just going, I don't know what the fuck this means I just thought it was a cock and a wheelbarrow I guess I'm thick I guess I'm really really stupid

and I'm not allowed to have any opinion now on this artwork because the words that are being used to describe it are so fancy that I must just be stupid. So instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk around this art gallery really seriously and really quietly because I'm terrified that someone's going to look at me and think that I'm not smart enough to get this art. I don't like that about the art world. I think it's exclusive.

I think it's fucking ridiculous. It's utterly, it's pointless. A lot of the time I think it exists to inflate the prices of art so that different types of rich people can compete with each other. It allows very rich people to purchase taste so that they can differentiate themselves from equally rich people who want to buy a Ferrari who they look down upon. It's like you might have the same amount of money as me but you're not as educated as me because I know what the cock in the wheelbarrow really means and I'm gonna pay 10 million for it while you're over in Dubai doing coke off someone's taint and I don't think it helps people or it helps art

and that is is a path that I would be expected to follow to perpetuate that shit when you get like a master's degree in art and instead I went no fuck that I'm gonna do this podcast and I'm gonna speak about art or artists or cultural critique and I'm gonna to do this podcast and I'm going to speak about art or artists or cultural critique. And I'm going to speak about subjects which are considered highfalutin or highbrow or inaccessible. And I'm going to speak about them in a way that's fun and enjoyable and matter of fact to reveal to everybody. No, art isn't exclusive at all. Art isn't for really smart people art is actually for everybody and it's a really fun and enjoyable way to think about ourselves in society using a

different language and that's what i tried to do with this podcast but the risk of doing that when you do something like that when you speak about art but you don't use solemnity to do so solemnity being the insincere performance of seriousness when you speak about art using silliness and humor and fun you then run the risk of someone accusing you of lacking depth or not having decent critique or being lowbrow so for someone winning the fucking Turner Prize to say that this podcast influenced the work that won the Turner Prize it just feels really nice that's external praise that I can take to bed if you get me because I'm always cautious of any external praise because if you take positive external praise on board then the negative external critique hurts you twice as much so I try and

keep things internal how do I feel about what I'm doing but for Array Collective to say that about that my podcast inspired one of the pieces in that that's fucking amazing that feels absolutely wonderful and thank you so much to array collective for citing me and fair play to ye for winning the fucking turner prize holy fuck and to speak about the the artwork that array collective made so the turner prize is for artists that make art within britain the north of ireland is politically considered part of Britain. Array Collective are based in Belfast. I think they're all people from the North of Ireland. It's a collective of, I think, like 11 people. And what they made that won the Turner Prize is they made an installation and a film. They made a shibine. A shabine is that's an irish word it's also present

in africa it's also present in the caribbean via the irish diaspora but a shabine is an illegal pub it's a pub just that just pops up and array collective made this shabine that you can walk into and you can see a film that they made and all around the shabine is it's decorated with various pieces of like protest art i haven't seen it but it's basically like a bombardment of of anti-colonialism it deconstructs the colonization of the north of ireland it has pieces that address lgbtq rights in the north of ireland abortion rights the brutality of the british army against communities in the north of ireland the erosion of the Irish language the erosion of Irish history Irish culture the erosion of Irish mythology

and it does all this using fun and silliness and crack but also because it's an installation because it's a shebeen that you can walk into it now becomes a piece of participatory

art now what i mean by that is if you think of okay traditionally there's a painting on the wall you go into a gallery and there's a painting i'm the observer there's the art it's a very binary relationship where you're looking at the art and that's it with this installation you can walk inside it and all around you are these different humorous things nailed to the walls and by presenting it as the familiar fun space of a pub now you're not in a gallery anymore you're in a place where it's okay to speak to have fun to have crack and most importantly you don't have to be wrong. So in order to engage with this artwork, you're not just observing, you're participating by the act of conversation. And that's really powerful, because what you're speaking about is colonialism,

abortion rights, erosion of Irish culture, all these really important things that aren't spoken about in England at all and the English critics are fucking so pissed off that this won the Turner Prize like the Guardian made shit of it the Guardian called this they called this piece of work amateurish

they called it like they just said it was always a bit of fun and it's quite amateur but I don't think it has any real depth but the fact of the matter is what this work has done is it's confronted the type of of middle class art critic in england who likes to think of themselves as left-leaning and open- minded it's confronted them with the very real lasting

present traumas on an entire region which is technically in Britain as a result of the brutality of colonisation. A conversation they do not want to have so what they've had to do is say

I didn't pay much attention it's just some silly irish shit i'm not too sure like the guardian's actual headline when reviewing this piece of work was if only it actually served pints which i don't know why but there's an anti-irishnessness in there. It's almost like saying. Sure the only time I'd go to fucking Belfast is to go to a pub and get pissed like the Paddies. Why are you bringing it over here? Why are you giving me one of your stupid fucking pubs where you nail things to the roof. And I can't even get pissed you fucking mix.

Do you know what I mean? They're writing it off in that way. But the reality is this artwork is making you think about the colonisation of Ireland that's still happening and it's making you think about your uncle who was in the paratroopers and what he might have done

so let's just call it silly let's just call it some silly paddies having fun and you might be thinking there if the artwork is getting bad reviews why are you talking about it as if that's a good thing? Because the English critics who were refusing to engage with the artwork seriously have now become part of the artwork via performance. They're unknowingly playing out the historical role the British politicians have played by not taking the north of Ireland serious politically. Like it reminds me of one of the fucking maddest things that happened

during the period we call the Troubles would be like Gerry Adams who was leader of Sinn Féin was an elected MP but the Brits brought in a law that his voice could never be heard on television. So they hired a voice actor whenever Gerry Adams was on TV to say the exact words that he's saying, but a voice actor with a gnarly accent had to do it instead. Like, they'd dub over his voice with someone who just sounds like him to discredit the demands of Republicans as silly and absurd

and not worthy of engagement and now that's what those critics are doing they're just becoming the voice actors that were doing Jerry Adams' voice they're now part of the artwork, they're part of the shebeen they're the RUC on the outside slamming their truncheons against their palms, waiting for the excuse to shut it down

okay, are we going to have an ocarina pause like I said ladies and gentlemen truncheons against their palms waiting for the excuse to shut it down. Okay are we going to have an ocarina pause? Like I said ladies and gentlemen this is an off the cuff podcast this week. I'm going to answer a couple of more questions. Here's a shaker pause.

On April 5th. You must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen.

I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? It's the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real.

It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The First Omen, only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center 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. That's sunrisechallenge.ca There was an advert in there. Algorithmically generated advert. I hope you're enjoying your walk. I hope you're enjoying your December walk.

Thinking about New Year's around the corner, a couple of days away. Support for this podcast comes via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash blindbuypodcast. This podcast is my full-time job job this podcast is how I earn a living thank you so much to everybody thank you so much to everybody who has fucking supported me the past year with no gigs or nothing like that thank you so much

and please may it continue because I adore doing this podcast I love making this podcast so much and it's a pleasure to make it every week and to make what i want to make and you make that possible by being patrons and allowing me to do this as my full-time fucking job so that i'm not worrying about paying my bills i know where my money is coming from i can plan financially and i have my free time to do what i love doing and to make what i want to

make so if you enjoy this podcast if you like it if it's giving you any bit of fun if you listen to it regularly just uh consider signing up to the patreon page and paying me for the work that I'm doing but if you're out of work if you don't have money at the moment I know a lot of people are messaging me going fuck it I've been laid off because of Covid and shit like that that's grand, you can listen for free if you can afford it

if you can afford the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month you're paying for the person who can can afford it if you can afford the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month you're paying for the person who can't afford it so it's a lovely model that's based on kindness and soundness everybody gets a podcast i get to earn a living it's fantastic support all independent independent podcasts lads the podcast space has been taken over by big corporate podcast so if there's a small independent podcast that you like that's made by a small team like it share it leave reviews sign up to their fucking patreons whatever not just my podcast any independent podcast that you listen to and enjoy and by doing that keeping things listener funded we get Make the content. That you're here for.

In the first place. Like the Patreon also means that. I'm not reliant on advertisers. No advertiser can come in to me. And say. Speak about this. Speak about that. Change this bit.

They can go fuck themselves. Don't advertise on my podcast then. So. Subscribe to the Patreon. Thank you to everyone. Who's been doing it and i hope i get some new patreons in patrons in 2022 2020 fucking two men there's a futuristic sounding year christ i'm not even gonna make any predictions do i have any resolutions I'm gonna try and get more sleep

that's been my resolution every fucking year I never do it because I'm terrible at sleeping my brain always wakes me up to think about something I'm gonna make an effort to meditate more definitely

I need to be disciplined in my daily meditation checking in at my emotions checking in at my feelings grounding myself that's such an important tool that I have for the regulation of my emotions and my mental health and to know to understand the difference between to not allow my emotions. To dictate my thoughts. To dictate. I don't want my emotions informing my view of the world. Because emotions aren't always. Factual.

You know. If I'm living. Living life with the emotion of anxiety. And everything is threat based. And if then I behave. As if everything is a threat. I'm going to have quite an unhappy life. So.

I want to. Meditate twice a day. 15 minutes twice a day. I've done it before. It's just sometimes I get lazy. And if I do that. Then I'm emotionally present. I'm grounded.

I'm mindful. And I can make. Decisions. About myself. And about other people. That are informed in the present moment. So that's a new years resolution. I'm going to start getting into yoga.

Because I've got a fucking trapped nerve. I've a trapped nerve in my fucking shoulder lads. I don't know how I got it. But it's very unpleasant. And a trapped nerve in my fucking shoulder lads i don't know how i got it but it's very unpleasant and a trapped nerve is it's not like an injury it's just there's these long nerves in your body and i have one that goes from one hand to the other hand right across my shoulders and it's trapped somewhere which means when i go to the gym to lift weights it kind of exacerbates it a bit so i haven't been going to the gym to lift weights it kind of exacerbates it a bit so i haven't been going to the gym to lift weights as much which is disappointing because i love that

stuff for the the free head medicine so i'm doing these these movements called nerve glides they're like slow movements that floss the nerves in my body which sounds mad but it does work floss the nerves in my body which sounds mad but it does work but yoga is a fantastic way to do that so I'm gonna start doing yoga go onto YouTube and do some yoga shit to improve

my flexibility and the health of my nerves what else am I gonna do I think that's about it, more mindfulness meditation, some yoga and better sleep if I can if meditation some yoga and better sleep if I can if I can fucking

get better sleep I will but sure fuck it em I might be on Twitch this Thursday I probably will I might even do

something on New Year's Eve we'll see how it goes twitch.tv forward slash the blind buy podcast you can join me on my never ending musical

my never ending video musical my never-ending video video game musical where i write songs live the events of a digital online world as an ongoing piece of participatory art let's take another question actually you know what i want to i want to go back to a previous point about the role of silliness. And fun and crack. In art. And how it can be a very dangerous thing to do. Because. Whenever art is fun. Or silly.

It tends not to get credit as being serious. And this is something that always has gotten my goat. I've mentioned so many times like. With the work I did fucking. the years with the Rubber Bandits. Like, there's a lot of Rubber Bandits songs that I would have put a huge amount of effort into musically and thinking about what the song is about in the video. But because it uses humour and fun, it just gets called novelty music. And when something's called novelty novelty it's not taken seriously or engaged with critically at all and what used to bother me about that is

there's so many artists and acts in music in particular and their work is taken dead seriously they're seen as being so worthy of critique and analysis and if you strip it back some of it really isn't at all some of it really isn't it's it's there's not much going on with the lyrics the music is kind of thrown together but the band are able to perform a sense of seriousness if they use a lot of black and white photos if you see a band that has tons of

black and white photos and everyone on stage looks dead serious they could be farting into a fucking McDonald's cup and someone will give it this

incredibly solemn critical eye. And it's always bothered me. I think it's such a discredit that when art uses silliness or humour, that it's not taken seriously. And one thing recently that I thought was fantastic in this overall conversation is one band that are taken very seriously would be the Beatles, right?

Now I'm a huge fan of the Beatles. Yeah, I am a huge fan of the Beatles. I wouldn't listen to them loads. Now the reason I wouldn't listen to the Beatles loads is that their music was so influential in the 60s and copied so much that it's actually quite difficult to listen to the Beatles because you can't hear how original they are

because other bands copy them so much but I enjoy the Beatles and recently there was this documentary called Get Back it's on Disney I think and it's an 8 hour long documentary about the Beatles it's a documentary hour long documentary about the Beatles. It's a documentary made for the podcast generation.

It's just eight hours of the Beatles talking in a studio. Now that sounds shit, but it's not. It's fucking amazing. And you don't even have to like the Beatles to enjoy it. It was directed by Peter Jackson, who made Lord of the Rings. It's fucking incredible. I enjoy it. It was directed by Peter Jackson. Who made Lord of the Rings. It's fucking incredible. I loved it. But what I adored about this documentary. Is.

The Beatles are seen as this. Serious band. Very important artists. So much depth to their work. But when you watch. The Beatles. Recording their album over the course of 8 hours, there's no seriousness at all. They're non-stop.

When they're not fighting, when they're not fighting and they're actually creating, they're having crack. They're writing these really silly, foolish songs and most of the time they're just trying to make each other laugh. foolish songs and most of the time they're just trying to make each other laugh because the creative process has to involve play and fun and enjoyment and even art that appears to be dead serious is usually the result of playfulness and fun and I think that documentary does a great job as disappointing a lot of really kind of stuck up people who would view the Beatles as this really serious intellectual band with huge amount of depth behind what they do and then you see their process and you go no it's just a bunch of friends trying to make each other fucking laugh and trying to come up with silly lyrics that fit in the moment to make each other giggle and to do silly voices and all this stuff

and then at the end they refine it into something that's a bit more professional. Actually, this leads on to a question I wanted to answer. So Lauren asked, Can you speak about your involvement with the new devon townsend album so there's this there's an artist called devon townsend who is someone i really admire devon townsend he's a legend he's credited with inventing a genre called speed metal so devon townsend is a heavy metal artist he's been going since the 90s started off with a band called

Strapping Young Lad very heavy fast metal music that's quite theatrical and Devin he's Canadian he released an album like a month ago which was called is it called Jigsaw Puzzle

The Puzzle is the name of the album right and I'm actually on it and loads of people were going loads of heavy metal fans were listening to Devin Townsend's new album going why the fuck is Blind Boy on this on Devin Townsend's new album and the reason is devin devin became a fan

of the rubber bandits years ago and i was always a fan of strapping young lad and we kind of got chatting and we both love like frank zappa and the reason devin and i both love Frank Zappa is he's a musician who had no problem using humor and fun and comedy in his music while still being quite serious about the quality of the music and the integrity of the art that he was making so I also I interviewed Devin on this podcast about three years ago when I was over in Vancouver. But it didn't go down properly. It was the start of me learning how to record outdoors. And it didn't go down.

But I will chat to Devin again the next time I'm in Canada. So Devin got on to me last year and said, I'm making this new album. It's quite experimental. Would you be interested in making a track with me on it. And he sent me over a bunch of. Stems for tracks and stuff. Unfortunately my head was up my arse. It was right in the middle of lockdown.

My mental health wasn't great. I was stretched creatively. I couldn't do any more work. And I didn't. I wasn't able any more work, and I didn't, I wasn't able to complete the project with Devin, but instead what he did is, he took excerpts of this podcast, and put it over one of the tracks,

on this new album, The Puzzle, so, that's why I'm on Devin Townsend's new album, and it's a wonderful honour, because he's a fucking legend, and who else is on the fucking album? Steve Vai, I'm on an album with Steve Vai

fucking hell so that's why I'm on Devin Townsend's new album but Devin is someone I greatly admire because he uses huge amounts of humour in his work he's a legend of metal he uses huge amounts of humour absurdity, silliness all this in his work and i have huge

respect for artists that do that because it's a dangerous thing to do it's a very risky and dangerous thing to do if your work is silly for some reason people don't take it seriously and why does that matter because i'm always saying that external praise doesn't matter the only reason that gets my goat is because it's it's literally unfair it's unfair and any critic who would write off a piece of work as novelty or not worthy of critique just because it uses humour it means that that critic

fundamentally doesn't really understand art or in the case of music they don't really understand music they're listening to a band's haircut rather than listening to the actual music so when you have that as a dominant culture it can feel like banging your head off a wall so it makes you not want to make art at all that's why i'm always upset by that i'm going to take one more question

this wasn't even going to be a podcast at all this was just going to be a gentle accompaniment to a run or a walk um sean asks what mental hurdles have you had to experience in order to better yourself it's hard to gain confidence to go for a run because you don't want to feel like that twat that just started running now that's a common one there when it comes to let's just stick with exercise i know quite a lot of people who would love to better them better themselves we say by going to the gym i'd love to go to the fucking gym and get involved in exercise but i'm really self-conscious that people will stare at me or i look like i don't know what i'm doing similarly with running like i've been running now for six or seven years

I run a couple of times a week my Achilles heel is fully healed by the way it was giving me trouble for most of last year but it's fully healed now so I'm back running and one thing I used to know one thing I noticed over the past couple of years when I'm running. Every so often. Like once every three months. I'll be running along the road. And then it's always a man. Some man will be like in a car with his friends. And as I'm just minding my business and running.

Listening to my headphones. A man will stick himself out of the window of his car and start clapping at me like I'm in a marathon and I just get on up my run and I'm like why is there a grown man like clapping at me just because I'm running like why is he making fun of me and then I realize he thinks I'm showing off in his mind I couldn't possibly be out running because it's enjoyable I'm out there on the road showing off looking for attention and Sean when when you asked that question and you said it's hard to gain confidence to go for a run because you don't want to feel like that twat that just started running. What I would ask you to do there is to analyze the part of yourself

and to take responsibility of that part of yourself that's a little bit like that man in the car who's clapping at me when I'm running past. Because I remember I used to think like that too. I used to see people out running in all their running gear. And because I wasn't running. And the concept of running sounded terrible. I used to think. Look at him showing off.

In his high-vis jacket. And his tight pants. No one's looking at you. Cop onto yourself. And I had no empathy whatsoever that maybe the person's running because they find it enjoyable so if you sean want to get to a point so you're scared of if i go for a run i'm gonna look like that twat that just started running they're your own words you have to remove the part of yourself that thinks about that twat that just started running

and you have to confront your assumptions about who they are and what they're doing because if you're looking down on people or looking up at people that it's hard then to have a decent sense of self-esteem basically because you are thinking about that twat that just started running or when you look at someone who's running and you yourself are looking at them you're making the assumption that everyone else will then look at you when you start running and the reality is most people don't give a fuck most people really really don't give a shit if someone is out on the road running they don't give a fuck they're not looking at you once every four months a man will clap at you from a car that's it now i'm speaking of course

from the point of view of being a man and the privilege that goes with it um i don't know what the lived experience is for a woman who's out running which i can imagine like with anything that a woman has to do is going to be a lot more difficult so as a man who's out running the worst i have to deal with is some lad clapping at me once every four months but sean the next time you see someone out running and you feel contempt for this person which means you're judging them or you're cringing on their behalf try and have compassion for that person out running try and have compassion for them and say to yourself they're just doing this for themselves and me looking at them that's my shit and i'm gonna need to just accept that they're out running and ignore them and when you do that then you'll be able to go out and start running and then the obvious one as well just go out and fucking do it go out then and be that twat that just started running embrace the anxiety of

your own judgment someone who thinks like you might see you and think look at that twat out running he just started what a fucking prick embrace that and confront that and live through the fear and terror of that experience and once you do it the fear will get less and less and before i know it you're running and get yourself a couch to 5k app and one piece of advice as well which is good if you're a beginner runner or you're a beginner going to the gym then wear the clothing of someone who isn't the beginner that's a simple one like when you said that twat who just started running immediately the vision that comes into my head is it's usually someone running in a pair of tracksuit pants that are a little bit too big

or the odd time someone running in a pair of jeans very rare very rare but the person who's running in a tracksuit pants that's a little bit too big and a pair of runners that you know aren't really for running they're what they're way around wear around the house so start to dress like a person who's not a beginner runner get a set of runners that you like get a set of leggings or a t-shirt or whatever and look like someone who knows what they're doing and that will help with your confidence similarly if you want to go to the gym just dress like the person who's a little bit more experienced and that will put you under pressure as well to commit to what you're doing but with anything a simple rule for self-esteem if you're very critical of other people and contemptuous of other people then

you're going to be terrified that that same energy will be turned on you. I mean, it's like people online who are like serial begrudgers. You'll find people online who are very, very critical of people's music or people's sporting efforts. People who are continually cutting people down online. You rarely find that these people try to pursue any of their own dreams because if you're that critical of other people that's how critical you are on yourself when you even begin to attempt it and that's why you rarely find fucking extreme begrudgers doing anything worthwhile with their talents.

You just rarely see it. The begrudgery always turns inwards on themselves. Right, one more. Carrie asks, why is our culture so shit at honouring grief and how can we build the positive structure of making it a part of life carrie i believe is from england the english have a weird english funerals are quite different to ireland it's very sanitized there's a number when a person dies they almost wait like a week before the funeral occurs i don't know why this is but i think it's it's the the english thing about expressing emotions so it's giving the family a week to hide their emotions so that

when the church funeral part happens they don't have to have the public shame of tears so they can prepare for it for a longer amount of time also in england you don't have the tradition of viewing dead bodies in ireland i think we do have a healthy tradition around grief and death we have in ireland what we call the wake now wakes a proper rural wake now i don't know if this shit happens anymore but traditionally a real proper rural wake now i don't know if this shit happens anymore but traditionally a real proper rural wake the dead person is like brought to the house of the family and stays there overnight in the fucking living room and sometimes with a real fucking rural irish wake people literally get drunk around the corpse and have been known to pick the corpse up

and put alcohol into the corpse's mouth. Now, I don't think this shit happens anymore, but it used to happen in like the 1800s. So now you've got someone who's dead in the family house and people are drinking with the corpse and giving the corpse drink. I think this happened in Irish culture as a result of sellers. Now, I heard this somewhere. It culture as a result of cellars.

Now I heard this somewhere, it's unconfirmed. But in Irish villages, the only place that had a space cold enough to hold a corpse was the cellar of the local pub. So dead bodies used to be held in the pub cellar. And because there was alcohol present, people would just get drunk around corpses and that's the genesis of the Irish wake and how drink is involved with it now people don't really get drunk with corpses anymore in Ireland but what we do have is quite a lot of funerals you go and view the dead body of the person. You view the person who you loved, the bereaved person, you witness their dead body.

Not a lot of people like to do it. It can be frightening. But you're most definitely confronted with the certainty of that person's death. I was talking to my buddy recently in Spain. And he came back from Spain with his Spanish wife to Lerick and they went to a funeral over the summer and he never told his spanish wife about our relationship with corpses so she rocked on up to the fucking the viewing thinking it was a regular fucking funeral and now she's in a room with a dead body and she couldn't handle it because in spain the fucking coffin in spanish funerals especially around andalusia the coffin is like in a separate room behind glass i'm guessing because the

traditionally this area is so hot and there might be rapid decomposition or smells but in eng England I know that you don't get to see the dead body there's a huge amount of time between so maybe the English should start doing that start drinking with corpses start at least witnessing the physical dead body of the person that's bereaved

that might be a healthier way to confront the reality and certainty of what's just happened even though it's painful but life is painful life is suffering death is inevitable dog bless you all how long was that that was a big rambling podcast lads alright forgive me you know the crack this week I wasn't going to do one let poor old blind boy have a week off from hot take research

and do an old off the cuff podcast and next week hopefully I'll be back with something that I've put a bit of thought and research into I don't have a song for you this week alright I don't have a song for you this week. All right, I don't have a song for you this week. I will have a song next week.

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