The Blindboy Podcast - Michael Harding

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

I speak with the writer Michael Harding about leaving the priesthood and becoming a Buddhist for 17 years Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bow la bus you puss filled ultans. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. I'm over in Portugal. I'm in Porto doing some writing. But I have a fantastic guest this week who I spoke to recently in Waterford. His name is Michael Harding. He's someone I really look up to. He's a writer, storyteller, he's a philosopher he's published loads of books in his career fiction and non-fiction he used to be the writer in residence in the Abbey Theatre and in Trinity College he trained to be a priest

and then left that vocation to become a Buddhist for 17 years he's someone who connects with spirituality through art. And he's someone who I'd look up to as an elder, I suppose you'd say. And we had a cracker of a chat in a beautiful theatre in Waterford

that had the most magnificent sound. You wouldn't even think there was an audience there. And we spoke about Christianity, Buddhism, poetry, literature and the suffering of being alive. He has a new book out at the moment called All the Things Left Unsaid. And he's also on tour, touring this book in theatres up and down the country.

And if you want to see his dates, go to michaelharding.ie and you'll see all his gigs in one place. Which is something I should start doing to be honest. So before I get into the chat, he speaks about a story that I read out. So before this live gig, I debuted a new short story about a man who rescues an abused donkey. So that's what he's speaking about at the start of this. man who rescues an abused donkey. So that's what he's speaking about at the start of this. I can't show it to you obviously over the podcast because it's a brand new short story but it will be out this year. Without further ado, here's my chat with Michael Harding. How are you getting on? I'm alright. I'm not great. You're not great, no? I'm never well.

My life is about failures one after another. I had great compassion for your donkey. I was feeling like that sitting outside in the wings. It's a beautiful story. Thank you very much, Mikey. I mean, it really is very powerful.

And there's the donkey and the father. There's two kind of images in it, you know? Yeah. And you're struggling between the two. It's so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you.

And... I want to say before, you know, before this goes anywhere, I am so lucky to be here. I'm so, like I haven't been on a stage for about four years because it wasn't well, but I'm so lucky to be here because I'm here with you and you're here with Blind Boy. And I listened to this man, and he is such a consummate artist. He is astonishing in what he's been doing, and the kind of way that he's broken ground in storytelling has been amazing. I'm so honoured to be here. I'm so delighted.

Thank you very much, Michael. Thank you very much, Michael. What I'd love to start asking you about is, so you are also a writer. You're a playwright. You've written novels. You write nonfiction. You've had a crack at all the different forms. And one thing I always wonder with, even myself as a writer, is for me to write something that feels authentic, I have to bring a little bit of myself in there. So I've never rescued

a donkey or done that. Now, the donkey story is true. There's two things. My art teacher in school, he literally did that. He saw a donkey getting abused and he brought it into his tiny car and then brought it to school and was like, what the fuck is the teacher doing with a donkey in his car? And then it's also based on Frederic Nysch. He went mad when he witnessed a horse being beaten. So that was in my head.

But the stuff about the father, that's my experience at the age of 20 with my father who had a brain tumour. Now it's not, I didn't want to not visit him, but the feeling in that story was, it's a terrifying thing for someone you love, for their brain to change to the point that I'm looking at the body and I don't know who this is especially when they can be angry or the worst one for me is when I see my dad it's like he doesn't know who the fuck I am yeah literally yeah and the not knowing who I am expressed itself as I felt like I was serving him tea in a restaurant he knew there was a person but he was being polite

to me and that felt sadder than when he was being angry you're being polite to me like you've just met me like I'm a stranger so that's what I brought to that story in order to feel authentic when you were writing fiction how much of yourself

do you how much of yourself do you, how much of your own experience and the artist do you bring to the work? Like sometimes I think most fiction is a type of auto fiction. I think it is, yeah. You can't divorce yourself from it. And like there was a period, I suppose,

in the last century now, 30 years ago, with people, writers, they'd be writing this kind of post-modernist stuff where they'd tell you it was all artefact. You know, like, you'd say, I couldn't fucking understand the novel, John. And you'd say, well, it's really all artefact, Michael, you know. And you'd say, oh, I see, right. And that was like, that was a dead end.

Because it's like there's too much happening in the world. And there's too much suffering. And there's too much anxiety to waste the fucking trees making up stories. Yeah. Right? Right? Yeah. No, but why would you do that?

If you actually really look at writers, whether it's, we'll say, Marquez in South America, or Borges, or William Faulkner in America, or Saul Bellow, or... I'm only throwing out names that come into my head. And Virginia Woolf Flannery O'Connor you know there's

an endless amount of writers that are great whatever but actually if you check it out it is their story it is totally their story it's always your story And I think one of the amazing things for me, like when I was 16, I wanted to be a writer. Those two things

I wanted to be. I wanted to tell stories because I got bullied a lot when I was young. And the only way you could survive was by being the comedian. So I told stories and people laughed and I was gone out the door. So that was fine. But the other thing was that I enjoyed being on my own. I enjoyed solitude. And that, I think, is where I ended up going into religion. Because it was like, it wasn't so much the religion that I liked. It was more the solitude,

that the religions were saying, when you're on your own, there's something interesting happening. There's no need to be lonely. There's something fucking going on there. And you don't feel lonely from being on your own? No. Neither do I. Yeah.

And that, I would say, we're two monks, really. Reincarnated. But that, to me, was the key to sort of one path, which was maybe religion, and the other path was to be a writer, and that was because I just didn't know any other way to survive except telling stories. And so I got my uncle to buy me a typewriter.

He didn't buy it, he had a typewriter. And at 16 or 15 or 14, I forget, I got a typewriter. And it was like the tools of the trade. I've always seen writing as a trade, like music. If you were a musician, you have an instrument and you practice on it. It's as simple as that. And if you don't practice your instrument, don't be telling people you're a musician because you're no good even if your musical ability is superb, you'll still be no good because you're not fucking practicing it. It's as simple as that.

And I figured that I've always seen writing like that. It's a lovely craft. And Elizabeth Bishop, she was an American professor of creative writing, and one time they asked her, what should you give a young person who wants to be a writer? And she said, a typewriter. That's all. You know, just go and practice it.

And you'll find that you can do it because everybody in this room has as much narrative as I have. Your life is as full of your experiences as mine is mine. Your sense of loss and bereavement for your parents, your sisters, your brothers, your mothers, your daughters, whoever, is the same as mine. Your sense of loneliness and isolation when a relationship breaks up. Like, we're just full of narrative. And there's some dynamic happens when you practice narrative as a storyteller. And sometimes it's so liberating and joyful and funny,

and sometimes it's therapeutic, like you're saying. And I just felt there's no other life for me but that. And what I did was I tried everything else. And I proved to myself that I was a failure at everything. Right? So I ended up being a writer. 30 years after, or 15, 16. One thing I'd love to draw upon, you said there as well,

because when you said to the people here, like, we all have stories and we all have this capacity to tell them. And the thing is, at about the age of three or four, we get bro, like, everyone fucks around with crayons when they're a child. Everyone. Everyone plays with crayons, everyone plays with Marla,

everyone makes up ideas. Then you get to about four or five in school, and they decide you're good and you're not. And we break off into people who are good at doing this and people who are shit at doing this. I'm upstaging you, baby. I'm trying to hang me coat and there's no fucking coat hanger. That's like, there's a Spike Milligan story and there's a fellow who's wearing a hat all the time

and they say to him, why do you wear that hat all the time? And he goes, because I don't have anywhere to hang it. But you and I became storytellers for the same reason, which was basic survival. I got picked on a lot as a child. I was bullied frequently. I wasn't very good at fighting. So it's like a great way out of this is if I become a very funny person.

If I'm the person with the stories and the jokes, then the bullies leave you alone because they make you laugh. So I learned to become an artist and a storyteller as an act of survival as a child. But I'm always trying to get everybody and anybody to create just for the sake of it. You can become a writer as a profession, but you can also just write.

You can just journal. You can just do it for the sake of the sheer joy of fucking having something there. And if you don't like it, you can throw it in the bin afterwards. Because creativity isn't about the... Like that story there, that genuinely was very nice when I read that out. And I'm like, oh, people laughed, people liked it. That was lovely and it feels fantastic.

But the joy of this story was doing it. Like any creativity for me, like sometimes I don't even like finishing a book. It reminds me of death. I like the bit in the middle. The bit in the middle is what it's all about. And that's too, that's my critique at the moment as well of this artificial intelligence art.

Have you seen any of this yet? I have. I've heard of it, but like, yeah. You can just type in like Michael Harding crashes into the twin towers yeah and it will create that image in two seconds it's like a painting like that boom and the thing is is that the joy of creativity is i might say to myself i'm gonna paint a picture of michael harding crashing into the twin towers and i might start doing it as a human and then at the end of it it's not about you crashing into the Twin Towers at all

something completely different has happened in the process and now I've got a painting of Saddam Hussein do you know anything can happen AI removes the middle bit, the fun bit the process he was a good looking man Saddam Hussein

he was a very good looking man wasn't he he was a very handsome fucker Saddam he was now he had that, you fucker. Yeah, he was. He had that, you could tell as well when he was... Strong eyebrows. And he was charming. I saw him when he was hanging. Did you?

No, not really. I saw him on the television. That was awful, the way the Yanks did that, didn't it? Don't we... We lived through dark times sometimes, you know? Fuck me, the way the Yanks put that on television. They never did that in Fermanagh. Do you know

what they used to do in fucking Limerick, man, about 600 years ago? So we used to, there's a bridge, Toman Bridge in Limerick that goes on to the Toman Castle. And they used to have a public gallows where they would, they'd execute people. But they would chop someone's head

off and hang the body, right, over the bridge. But the really, really poor people used to go up with balls and make black pudding out of the blood. Okay. Yeah.

And you think you're fucking great with your blaze. I've always wondered the reason for the plastic mask, you know. He's staying fucking safe. Why'd you become a priest? It was a mistake. It was a mistake.

It was the biggest fucking mistake in my life what like what year was it no that was the biggest mistake until I left you're talking about like I wanted to be a writer and I'm going oh great tell me about this writing career and then like I think I'll become a priest I wrote

I'll tell you a poem it's not a good poem but it's a little child poem I wrote when I was about 15 and it was published in, David Marcus used to publish me when I was a teenager in the newspaper which used to terrify the shite out of all the teachers in St. Pat's and Gavin, I was only doing the

Intercept and I had poems in the Saturday paper, but one of them said someday I'll go to the city and I'll look at the filth and the dirt and I'll roll around in it for poets are a dirty lot and my jeans will be faded, my hair in a mess and I'll write of death and decaying matter and how I had an unhappy childhood. And all will say the boy has talent for he lives like a beggar and writes what he shouldn't. But I wish I could stay at home in the

field with the sun at half eight, alone with the evening. Gorgeous. And that was like... Jesus Christ, and you must have been 14 or 15. I was, no, that was...

Were you reading Patrick Kavanagh? Oh, I was, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Under the Desk. Yeah. Paddy Kavanagh? Oh, I was, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Under the desk. Yeah. Paddy Kavanagh's book, published by O'Keefe, the collected poems came out in 1966. And that was after struggles, because Faber and Faber wouldn't publish them in Britain at all.

Ignored them. T.S. Eliot was the head of Faber and Faber. Keep that in your mind. Couldn't stand the old Paddy's. Wow. Well, we'll have none of Faber and Faber. Keep that in your mind. Couldn't stand the old Paddy's. Wow. He wasn't just anti-Jewish, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Anyway, didn't like the old

Paddy's. So, Calvin was never published like that in Britain. But they finally, O'Keefe brought out an edition of all his poems in 1966. And that, I know because that was my first year in St. Pat's in Calvary. And instead of doing all the homework

that I should have been doing and I would have got a good leaving certificate, I just, you know the desks, you pull one up. And you could hide from, they used to have a cleric, a priest, like as a kind of sentry man. The only thing he didn't have was a Kalashnikov watching you.

I'd say if you were in, you know, certain Islamic schools, it might be similar. You'd have it up like this. You'd be reading the Contraband poems by Paddy Kavanagh. And it was astonishing for us

at that time in Ireland, because I come from a different planet. I come from Ireland of the 60s and 70s. We did not think it was possible that our voice would ever be in print anywhere. When a writer from Calvin by the name of Dermot Healy reported that he may have a book coming out, it was like an event.

It's like, that couldn't be true, could it? He's actually getting a book published. And so when we read Kavanagh, and we saw that these were poems... And he's Manahan, which isn't a million miles away from Kavanagh. Oh, it's the same, yeah. Did you identify... His language.

Because the thing about Kavanagh, like I adore Paddy Kavanagh, like I adore Paddy Gant. He's the great bogger poet. Ah. You know what I mean? Ah. That man shut up. But it's true.

Go on. He is like, he's the great, he's a culty representation. You know, I'm from Limerick. I consider, whoever Dublin calls a culty

is a culty. So you're culties. I'm, like, I know Waterford's a city. Don't try and explain that to Dublin. Limerick is a city as well, but we all cultures, Dublin's not a city it's just Galway on a horn

go to Toronto if you want to see a city but I always felt that Dublin fetishised Cavanagh like a noble savage do you know what I mean they felt like here's this wild animal from a bush.

And he walked barefoot to Dublin, didn't he? Yeah, he walked into the trap. I think that Dublin poisoned him with a sense of bitterness. He got too hung up on everything and destroyed himself. But his poetry,

out of the pure, pristine energy of Monaghan, talking, let's say, about his mother, I do not see you lying in the cold, wet clay of a Monaghan graveyard. Now, that's the way people who are friends of mine would speak to me about my own mother. They'd say, Michael, she's not lying in the grave. They'd say that at a funeral. You know, Kavanagh spoke like a real...

He spoke how you spoke. He spoke about the people. Yeah. And there's a great power in that because that's what turned me onto Flann O'Brien. Yeah. When I was a kid, and I'd be listening to people like Bob Dylan or Tom Waits,

and these, to me, were artists that were at the level of gods. Yeah. Like, the art they were making would make me feel so special that it's like they were unattainable. And then I read Flann O'Brien and it's like, I feel the same way about Flann's work as I do about Bob Dylan. But Flann talks like I talk. This is an Irish person with Irish thoughts.

And that moment made me feel like, I reckon I could try this. Like if it's someone from New York, like Bob it's like I can't I can't try that I don't think it would be on overstating it to see a Dan blind boy does in the English language now in Ireland what Calvin was doing because you're bringing it to another new level and I don't mean that in any hyperbolic way. Thank you very much. I'm going to tell that to the Irish Times. Yeah.

LAUGHTER When you decided to be a priest, where did you see your creative and artistic expression there? Were you thinking, right, at least I'll get to say mass, and in mass, like, a good priest is a good storyteller. Like, my ma, when she

listens to my podcast, she says, you remind me of a good priest. That's what she says. She remembers, like, in the 50s and 60s, she she said you'd go around Limerick and certain churches had queues and others didn't. And the one that had a queue meant this priest isn't just

reading, he's telling stories. So my ma goes, you remind me of a good priest. Your mother is always right. There's always a wisdom in what the mother says. Were you thinking that way where was your creativity going to come into

I wrote I wrote I wrote poetry I published poetry I was in college I went to Maynooth finished university with a BA then did H-Dip

and then got a job teaching in Loughan House, open prison. Met a lot of people from Limerick there. And I lived in West Cavan. I lived in Glangevlin in West Cavan, which is a mythic place, and I had never met rural Ireland before. I had been brought up as a kind of a refugee in, you know, suburban Cavan, a frightening kind of lonely place to grow up, I do think, and I didn't believe that rural Ireland was like it was to me, and Glangevillain,

the doors were open, and people were dancing half sets, and people were drinking, and people were singing, and people were having sex, and it was like fucking a great time. But it was also a community. It was like a total fabric. It was like one big family in the whole area on the mountainside. And I loved it and I was so happy and I was right in the way. moved, I got cynical about the prison service because I met complete hypocrites in the Department of Justice who did have,

like, I remember they had a big conference about 1973 about all, we were doing real adventurous stuff. Now, Loughan House wasn't for, it later became the Bugsy Malones, right? What happened there was that there was a campaign in the media against

kids who were, true or false, burning buildings in Dublin around Grafton Street. And there was just an organised campaign at them. And for that, they opened Loughan House. They closed it down, is what it was. It was an open centre for young offenders.

So like a bar still, almost? No, it was much freer. It was like the kids that we had were 16 to 23. As I say, many were from Limerick and they were beautiful young people and it gave me a complete insight into the sort of way that morality is culturally defined and that if your recreation is robbing cars,

your recreation is robbing cars. It's no more immoral than golf. That's what we do. We don't have golf courses. Right? This is where they were getting a sense of meaning. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Or maybe even deviance because young people do have to be deviant.

Posh boys are deviant as well. You just don't see it. Or they don't go to jail when they get caught yeah yeah yeah yeah no no I I really had a full of that and it was a beautiful thing we were doing as an experiment we I would take for example any evening at four o'clock I would say that you know there's three names of guys it'll be way until ten and I take them in the car and we'd go up to Glangevillain and I was doing that interconnection,

bringing them to country houses and they'd be seeing how people live on this other planet. Oh, wow, okay. And it was lovely. That all was closed down because of the... So they were seeing cows for the first time and horses and chickens.

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That was closed down because this campaign about what they called the Bugsy Malones, that there was these out of control, like there was tens of thousands of young Dublin five-year-olds out of control, had to be locked up somewhere. In actual fact, the millions they put into Loughan House at that time, about 1976 when it opened for that group, they lowered the age of criminality to 11. So, like, criminality responsibility started at 16, and that would

be the same in every European country. So the idea would have been that you should have stopped anything to do with the Department of Justice being involved with under-16s and give it to health. But they went the opposite way. They changed the law to make it legal for the Department of Justice to lock up 12-year-olds.

They ended up with, I'd say, about 10 kids for the first year or two years. There was nobody in it. And I won't say any famous names, but the hairs would stand on the back of your neck if you knew who those first ten as innocent kids were because they obviously made great careers and became famous in crime wars afterwards. So it didn't do any good. It was a bad thing. But I remember having a big row at a conference one time

with a secretary at the department and saying, like, we really need a therapeutic way to deal with people who are offending and he said Michael he said he took me aside and said you know Michael what you're doing here is really good and we really appreciate it but you know you must remember it's window dressing yeah right and he really said that I thought so you're you're you're actually the boss in the department and you're actually saying what we're doing is actually window dressing

to make the public think, oh, isn't that wonderful? But you don't actually believe in what we're doing. So I left. And what was his belief that these are just bad kids and fuck them? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They would say it. People who are cynical would always say,

actually, look, if you look, their fathers were in prison. Look at their uncles, they're in prison. Yeah, and no idea of trauma. No, no, no, no. But I walked out at that stage, and so suddenly I found myself working with the social services in Sligo. And at some point in the Sligo experience, I felt

there's something more in me life now, you know, that I'm looking for and I'm not getting. And I'm trying to find it in, if you like, activism. You know, I'm trying to find it like being a real right-on person. And at the time, and I nearly don't want

to go into this because it is so boring and it's so over. It's such an over-finished conversation, but I nearly don't want to go into this because it is so boring and it's so over, it's such an over-finished conversation, but I'll just quickly, in the 70s, and the 70s particularly, the trend was that we're going to have a very left-wing Marxist church in the future. We're going to have community churches gathered not in the institution but around social issues. We're going to have community churches gathered not in the institution but around social issues. We're going to have what they used to call a preferential option for the poor. This was like a radical position came out of South America. Oh, the liberation theology.

Yeah, yeah. And our icons were people like Gutierrez, big theologian, Leonardo Boff, Schillebeck, Hans Kung, Segundo, I could name a dozen of them. And that drew me into Maynooth with the notion that social justice and left-wing parties, they're all nonsense. They all end up just the same on politics. And that in some sense, the church was giving me a very authentic image of what church would be, but it was also giving me a sense where that solitary little person that wanted to be alone and listen to the sense of prayerfulness inside, that that was all going to work out. And it did for four years until just as I was about to be ordained, the Polish man became Pope.

Okay. And it was like he got on the bus and reversed it into the last century. And these... And so he created a church where people like me couldn't belong. So it was time to leave. And also as well,

now I might be incorrect with this, but I'm vaguely familiar with the liberation theology and South America where Catholicism there was very much about what Christ was into. Let's defend the poor and fuck the rich people. But as I understand

this, the bishops in America had a huge problem with this and America had a concerted effort in crushing any type of socialist slash priests that were happening. You're right, but the historical sequence is that... And by the way, people like Peter McVeary, they were the templates of ministry in Ireland at the time, and there would have been many people like Peter McVerry, right? They were the templates of ministry in Ireland at the time. And there

would have been many people like Peter McVerry and following his kind of concept that he was a complete activist for social justice in a really positive way. I think what happened was that in the 70s, the pendulum had swung totally towards liberation theology. So the entire South American bishops gathered in a place called Medellin in 1968, and they issued a kind of manifesto. And that's where they used that phrase, a preferential option for the poor. And it was very inspiring for a lot of of people and there was there was nuns working let's say in guatemala and they were really doing sort of um catechesis it was like you know they were kind of out there teaching young children what it was to have the eucharist

and have forgiveness and have prayer and all that but they were doing it within a very sharp edged context of social justice right and there was three, I think, two priests who were actually in the government in Nicaragua. The Minister for Culture and I think Minister for Education were both Jesuit priests. And there was a fellow called Helder Camero, who was a cardinal in Brazil, who was another very famous guy. So the pendulum had swung to a point where it was feasible even in Ireland to think, there's something deep here. There's something hopeful. But in the context,

the Cold War is going on at the same time. What's going on? The Cold War is going on at the same time. The Cold War is going on. We weren't paying attention to that. We weren't paying attention to how significant Carol Voitia was to European

politics. All we were looking is West. Now what happened was that the pendulum began to swing back once Pope John Paul II became Pope. Within 12 months, and I saw this, every book by all those authors that I mentioned were banned. Oh my God. So the very books that I mentioned were banned. So the very books that I had gone back and studied, like I got the lectures on them with four years studying those buys, like Schillebecks, they were all just taken off the shelf and banned.

And that was like as clear as you'd want where the church is going. And you then found yourself in a church where it's like, I don't belong here now. This isn't what I got in here for. I simply said it. I simply said it to the bishop, like, this is,

I have no place in this, so, you know, so I'll do four years because I got four years free education, but I'll be off. Yeah. It's time for a little interval, right? Here's a recommendation that I'd give to ye. I'm guessing a lot of ye are having a little pint tonight, yeah?

They only have one tap. So however, they're serving cans of grouch, which isn't a bad lager. So if there's a mad cue for the tap, get a can of grouch instead and then it means that the interval isn't a bad lager so if there's a mad cue for the tap get a can of Grolch instead and then it means that the interval isn't unnecessarily long

I'm not sponsored by Grolch I'm not getting any money from it it's just a little bit of advice alright we'll be back out in about 15 minutes alright now let's have a small little ocarina pause before we go back to the rest of the interview free fucking advert there for Grolsch who definitely

who could definitely be paying me a few quid they don't need any free adverts from me but yeah fuck it man Grolsch is I rediscovered it there recently a nice inoffensive lager if you're not into the fox's piss taste of IPA.

That's not an advertisement. If that was an advertisement, I'd be legally obliged to tell you to drink responsibly, so I'm not going to do that this time, so that's proof that that's not an ad. That's just my opinion about Grohl's Lager. You couldn't fucking escape it in the early 2000s. They used to plant it inside in films and everything

it had the distinctive bottle cap, that little thing at the top of the bottle of Grolch it was in every single film and you'd know it straight away, that's what we had before fucking IPAs Grolch was like the San Pellegrino of beers, because San Pellegrino

it's just fucking Fanta with tinfoil on top that's all it is, but the thing with San Pellegrino is's just fucking Fanta with tinfoil on top that's all it is but the thing with San Pellegrino is like you're paying for that bit of tinfoil at the top actually they got rid of that recently they got rid of the tinfoil I'm handing out the free ads

handing out free ads for giant companies that don't need it for fuck's sake have you ever heard of this place called McDonald's, lads? No? Have you heard of McDonald's? Takeaway place, yeah.

Lovely burgers. McDonald's. You know, you know. McDonald's. You never heard of McDonald's? Two burgers. They had a... A clown.

They had this clown with red hair and lipstick. Used to be the mascot and then... They kind of pushed him to one side after 9-11. Kind of just didn't see much of Ronald McDonald after 9-11. Which I don't know why. I've got now isn't the time. Now isn't the time but there'll be a hot take about that in the future. My personal opinion

I think Ronald McDonald disappeared at the time that the US became aggressively imperialist and invaded the Middle East because they peeled back the Ronald McDonald they hid him away

in case he became a symbol of US violent imperialism so let's have an ocarina pause now I don't have my ocarina it's under this pile here of Amazon Kindles, have you heard of Amazon? have you ever heard of Amazon?

you buy their they sell things on the internet so the ocarina there is hidden underneath some Amazon Kindles alright look I don't have the ocarina there is hidden underneath some Amazon Kindles alright look I don't have the ocarina I've got this fucking it's a piece of

Latin American percussion I think it's called a cabasa but it makes a nice shaking noise and you're going to hear an advert here for some stuff 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? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying

six six six it's the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that the first omen only theaters april 5th you're invited to an immersive listening party led by rishi kesh her way the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring,

followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder. April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. That was the Amazon Kindle pause. I'm not sponsored by any of those cunts. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. Do you enjoy this podcast?

Does it bring you solace? Does it bring you mirth? Does it distract you? Whatever it is that has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I put in to make the podcast. Because this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month.

Not Dublin pints. Pints outside of Dublin. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Because you can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living. And by keeping this podcast listener funded, it means that I'm not beholden to any advertiser. No advertiser can come in, dictate the content, ask me to change what I speak about. Influence the fabric and tone of this podcast in any way. It's fully independent. Have I got any gigs? I bet you I do and I don't have the gig page pulled up. Pretty chaotic this week lads. I could probably tell you the gigs off the top of my head.

Can I? Yeah because my internet's been a cunt. I'm gonna try and guess the gigs. Do you know the only one that's not fucking selling is that gig in Drogheda in the TLT theatre which I think is April 1st the rest are there's Canada I think Canada's sold out

Vicar Street man in fucking when is that March I think there's a few tickets left for one of those Vicar Street's like 10 tickets left they're announcing a new Vicar Street for

August so if you're interested in coming to Vicar Street in like August I think you can do that I need a fucking website I need a website that has all my gigs in it and I say to ye

there's my website go there and if you're interested in a gig they're going to be on this website it's been five years like of me not knowing where my gigs are and at one point a promoter's going to sue me at some point

okay back to the interview with the wonderful Michael Harding michaelharding.ie for his gigs and books all in one place did you all get a little pint? Do you know what I'd like to do tonight? Because I have been noticing like loads of people clearly brought

their own cans. But, which is grand, I don't give a fuck. One thing, right, when I'm doing a live podcast and there's cans in the audience, sometimes something that can happen is that someone will open a can, right? And it can sound like a person tutting. So I'd be there talking at my guest and then I hear, and I'm going, what went wrong? So what I like to do

to remedy this, and it's actually a beautiful thing. Everyone who has a can right now, let's all open them at once. I promise you, it's amazing. So take out your cans. Wait for the little shuffle. Quiet, please. Okay. Okay. Three, two, one. Isn't it amazing?

It's like being in a bar in a western and everyone takes out the gun. And I got my delicious can of Grulch. Something that I haven't appreciated this in a long time. Hold on, there's a camera over there and I've got to make sure the label is... I want to get sponsored by 3% Dutch Goldman. That's what I want to get sponsored by 3% Dutch Goldman.

That's what I want to get... Did you hear what they did with some of the beers after they brought in the new laws? So they brought in these new laws that minimum pricing for alcohol. So the real cheap beers like Dutch Gold, they made them 3%. So now everyone's

trying to drink Dutch Gold and you can't get drunk on it, not them 3%. So now everyone's trying to drink Dutch Gold and you can't get drunk on it, not on 3%. And did you see the poor old Linden Village? On a floppy, little small Linden Village. Who said Linden Village is rotten? It's not about how nice it is, it's about the memories. about how nice it is it's about the memories and that's the point the linden village i'm not going to willingly drink linden village that's not what i want but i will like if i want something nostalgic if i want to feel 14 if i want to i want to feel what it's like getting confirmed. I'll drink Linden Village.

So, we're not going to talk about Christianity or, no, we're not going to talk about the church anymore. What I would love to talk about, and this is something that I'm personally fascinated in, your journey to Buddhism. What drew you to Buddhism?

Confusion. I love, by the way, just when you're talking, but I'll drink. Wasn't it a podcast you did, the story of making the booze? Oh, it was making the booze, yeah. Have you heard that one? That's a masterpiece. It's a true story, man. Like, seriously, you know, from a literary point of view,

the way that blind boy can focus on one single image, like it could be the horse's body in the van, or it could be in the other one, it's like the actual waist wheelie bin full of... It's just unbelievable. That is writing at its absolute most masterful I guarantee you I really admire that writing

it's not flattery it's true if I didn't have a bag in my head I'd be blushing and Buddhism Buddhism yeah Buddhism I was in Mongolia, you know. Go away. Yeah.

I went with my teacher. My teacher brought me. I said, I would like to be a Buddhist. He said, come in now and we'll go to Mongolia. I said, fuck you. How did you meet a person who said... All that Western, I'll shite about being Buddhist. You come to Mongolia and drink the yak's milk.

Did you ever drink horse's milk, no? Did you ever drink horse's milk? No, no. Well, wait till I tell you now. You have a treat coming for you. What they do in Mongolia, and I didn't know this when I left Ireland going off to be a Buddhist.

I didn't know this at all about Mongolia. I didn't know Mongolia where it was from. But I got to Mongolia anyway and I realized that they're very fond of the horses and they love to drink the horses' milk. But they don't even drink it fresh. They drink it like after it's been about two weeks in a bucket under the bed fermenting. Ah, they do. And when you come to somebody's home,

their gear or yurt or whatever you want to call it, they'd be welcoming you, and they'd be welcoming the great Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama, right? And they'd be welcoming... Do you know what they'd be welcoming you and they'd be welcoming the great Rinpoche, a Tibetan llama, right? And they'd be welcoming, and do you know what they'd give you? A bowl of old horse's milk. And they'd look at you and smile. And there are big bowls.

And I remember one time, I was travelling two and a half thousand miles with my teacher. And we had nine people with us. And the only Westerner was myself and another woman. Another woman. A woman. Although maybe, who knows? Anyway, a woman called Heidi. She was the nurse for the trip.

And then the rest were Tibetan or Mongolian monks and two nuns. Well, every time we'd get the fucking big thing, like, you'd be sick for a day after. It was strong stuff. And you'd see little black fellas, like, you know, the tadpoles? Yeah. Not the tadpoles, but the spawn. You know the spawn?

Yeah, yeah. The little, like, a little globe with an eye in the middle of it. You'd see not one of them in it. And you'd be wondering, I wonder what that is. What is that? Yeah, what is that? Like, wish I was a scientist here, you know, an anthropologist or some fucking thing, you know? And... So it's not quite cheese yet? I don't think it ever becomes cheese. It's horses milk. See, I don't know,'t know I know everyone ate horses there in 2014 when we went to Tesco

but like I don't know about horses milk can you describe the taste I mean Jesus imagine a goat's milk do you ever smell a goat in real life once you smell a goat you can't drink goat's milk

or eat goat's cheese anymore because that's the smell of a goat's undercarriage. This seemed like the only way to describe the smell is that you'd have a consensus that this is something that should not be consumed. There are certain smells

that the human species knows. Don't touch that. Like birds know. We know red berry. Don't touch that. Like birds know, you know, we know red berry, don't touch that. Your smell would give you the idea that that shouldn't be taken. Right. So you get this bowl as a welcoming thing,

and the Rinpoche, that's the blessed one, he's my teacher, and he'd get his bowl, and then I'd get my bowl, and Heidi would get her bowl, and all the monks would get their bowl they didn't know sucking it up and we'd be there like I can't do this and they used to enjoy watching us you know there'd be 30 people from the little village or collection of tents you know and they'd be enjoying pretty good too And I decided one time that the only way

to do it, the way you take medicine, was to do it like quickly, like do it. And one day I just knocked it all back in one genuine, one gulp, like a real man. And I hadn't it down on

my knee. When your man was bending over pouring Oh my God! And he was saying to Heidi Oh he loves this! He like, he like it, he like it I give him more and I have this in a book

I wrote, there's a book called Staring at Lakes and in that book, I described the journey. And there was once, we were in Ulaanbaatar, and they used to lock me in a monastery at night. So the way they did that was, it wasn't that they were afraid I'd escape, but it was that the other real monks and the posh Rinpoche, they were

going off to stay in an apartment. And Heidi was going off with them because she's a woman. But poor Gobshay from Ireland, he can stay in the monastery. The monastery would be like maybe 100 monks and one single toilet. And the guest room was beside the toilet. Now in Mongolia all the monks go home at five o'clock, right? So it's a nine-to-five job and they go home to their families, their wives and their kids. And the reason is that when the Soviets came in they wouldn't allow monks, they wouldn't allow monasteries. So they made a compromise where if the Baais did it as a kind of a day job

and go home, they'd let them do it. So the Baais continued doing it. And three generations, 70 years... This wasn't a bad idea there for the Russians. 70 years later, in 1996, if you watched Rush Hour in Ulaanbaatar at half five of the evening, you'd see these hundreds of monks, like in Tibetan clothes, heading off with a not briefcase, heading home for the evening to watch the telly and eat crisps and drink beer and come back in the morning and go, and when they're doing that, one of the frightening things when they're doing that is that

they fart. And farting is kind of good in Buddhist philosophy, apparently. They call it for meditation. No, no, within meditation it's called the settling down of the winds.

I don't know how to say that in Tibetan, but in English it would be, you know, I am doing the settling down of the winds. And they actually do it so that there's a hundred monks in a room with no window open. And they're literally going, you see it on television, it looks so romantic. And there's always a kind of a white American woman with a scarf sitting with them, you know, it's beautiful. If you fucking were there, it's fucking rough. Anyway, they used to, they'd all go home, they'd all go home and there used to be big high wire fence all around the monastery to keep it

safe I don't know from people who were trying to rob it and that could be possibly true but they'd lock me inside they would actually lock the door from the outside and laugh at me through the little window see you tomorrow and I'd be in this tiny little room, just the size of my body, and the whole monastery, and all these images of Buddhas, and like devouring Buddhas, and Kali Buddhas, and dark Buddhas, and all the rest of it.

And butter lamps. The butter lamps have a fierce smell to them. What's a butter lamp? A butter lamp is their lights. You know the way we'd have night lights by them in the deals or something cheap? Their night lights are big bowls that they hand make with butter.

Again, I think they like rancid everything. Rancid butter, very good. So that gives you a smell as well. So the farting in the day, but then at night you'd have the butter lamps. And I'm there, and every day I used to get fed and one of the ways I was fed I used to get what's called momos and momos were what we call

in the West what you call them dumplings yeah but in in Mongolia they called momos and I used to love the momos with soy sauce but the only thing they give you to drink was horse's milk. So I'd get a bucket. The woman would come around to the cell, and she'd leave you a bucket and the momos. And that was it, and you'd get fed the next day again. I'm sitting there this evening, and I'm looking at the bucket of horse's milk. And I said, the only way to do this

is the way you did it with Guinness when you were young. And that is, go for it. Train your palate. And I took a full bowl of it, and I thought, I couldn't imagine anything worse. I said, the next bowl will make the difference. And I took a second bowl of it. And what I was beginning to realize was the fermentation was actually giving me alcohol.

And by the end of the second bowl, I thought, will I have a third bowl now or keep it for later? And whenever anybody tells me that I had a good, milky, creamy pint, I say to myself, you don't know what you're talking about, baby. I know what cream is in a fucking pint. And I have this in the book, and I'm only telling you because it's in the book.

I wouldn't say this publicly, but I went asleep. I walked around. I got drunk and I was walking around the whole monastery looking at these amazing images. And the only images were these female Buddhas, these warrior kind of female Buddhas looking at me with big swords. And I went to sleep and I woke up. I'm only saying, I would never say this in public, but I woke up with the biggest erection I ever had. I'm not joking.

It's in the book called Stern at Lakes, a full description of the size of it, the length of it, and how long it lasted. But I tell you, if they could fucking bottle the horse's milk, you'd make a lot of money. No wonder I'm a Buddhist.

Do you ever get nostalgic for the milk? Do you ever be like, I wouldn't mind that now? I get nostalgic for that beautiful time. You know, it was like five years of my life, give up drink, give up smoke, and give up... Like, I didn't give up sex, but I gave up nearly everything for five years of meditation with this man. And he still is my teacher, even though that's 27 years ago. And part of it, I went to India to visit a monastery that he had students in,

and then I went to Mongolia with him for about five weeks of this tour. And it was... I cut his fingernails one day with a scissors. We were in the desert, and he asked me, would you cut my fingernails? And I was cutting his fingernails, and to me it was like he was the Christ.

I was overwhelmed with the honour he was doing me. I was looking at his fingers and thinking, and I think of the way that people do that for an old person, lovingly, or the way nurses, I've seen a lot of nurses because I'd be in hospital, but the love and care they give give in the middle of the night you know, you're awake in the bed in the middle of the night and there's somebody beside you

and the nurses come and they say like, will we give her a massage? And they don't have to do this, it's not on the pay sheet. And they spend half an hour and they clean her up and freshen her down and give her a lovely massage and she goes to sleep. They're doing that in secret. Yeah.

So like I'm just saying that I had that moment and when you say, do you feel nostalgia? I do feel nostalgia for every bit of that Mongolian experience, but I feel blessed even for that short moment that I kind of got so outside all the kind of flow of my mind distractions to be able to see the world from a different point of view. How much meditation were you doing on a daily basis? At its height? Yeah. Okay.

I'd often meet people, still do, but even at that time, you'd meet people and they'd say, oh, you know, I do a lot of meditation. I do an hour a morning and say I'm a deepener. I do half an hour. This never worked for me as a concept. And the teacher that I'd be talking to, you know,

would kind of laugh at that. You see, do you mind me going around in a circle about that? Oh, whatever you want. Go in a circle it's like the great wonderful wonderful gift of Buddhism is that to grip anything is a mistake

and a lot of people in the West grip Buddhism it's the same thing you might as well be gripping Volvo cars and loving them you know when somebody says I love the teachings But it's the same thing. You might as well be gripping Volvo cars and loving them. You know, when somebody says, I love the teachings.

But in some sense, you get an intensity. And people like the Dalai Lama will say to Western people all the time, he said, don't be changing your religion. There's no need to. If you're Buddhist, be a Christian. Wow. Because to be something different defeats the concept of what Buddhism is. It's what Rumi says, you know, be washed away like the snow washes itself away.

Be gone from yourself. Be nothing. There's no need to go somewhere. And religion is not about a journey. Religion is not about finding love in your heart. It's actually just getting rid of all the things that block your realizing there's love in your heart. You are love. This is God. Again, in Islam,

the beautiful, beautiful Sufi tradition in Islam where they say there is nothing but God. There's nothing but God. I have a dear friend, Idris, he's Syrian. And he lost one, I think, niece in the water, in the Mediterranean, out of the boat, dead. And his family are scattered all over the place, and he's in Ireland. And he's a young man, but he's so wise about the evils of institution and religion, but the utter beauty and poetry of Islam.

And so many times he'd be up in my studio, you know, where I have an old stove, and he'd say, Michael, this is God. This is God. You don't have to find God. God is what we're looking at. It's the moment we're in is God. We just keep filtering it out with

complexity. So that the great thing about Buddhism is it's not reaching for a new teaching. And the Heart Sutra in Buddhism, the Heart Sutra says the ultimate teaching is there is no teaching. Now, when I say that, like in relation to Christianity, people think I'm acting the bollocks. You know, where I would say sometimes I'd be talking enthusiastically about how I love Christian tradition and then I'd say but I don't really believe it.

And they'd say no you're acting the fucking bollocks. But I'm not really because it's like nothing is really true in the way that we grip the truth. That's all. So I don't know what the question was at this stage. I got lost when you say grip in there is that what the Buddhists refer to

as attachment yeah and the ultimate is that you get attached to the idea of Buddha about meditation my teacher would always say that the word meditation in Tibetan is a dum. Dum means familiarity with.

So it's amazing how things get changed in translation. That meditation is being with something. So you could be with a single beautiful concept, analytical meditation, let's say in Buddhism, you know, a concept of compassion. But you're really at a very intellectual level of meditation. So you're, you know, you're meditating analytically. The other way to do it in Buddhism, in Tibetan Buddhism, is what they call compassion. And that is to actually really meditate in a compassionate way. So I think for somebody I don't like, there's somebody in my life that I really don't like.

I feel it's obviously their fault and they did things wrong to me and they're a bollocks. Yeah, that's what I think. But it leaves me with a hardness to fuck her. If I hear his name mentioned, right? Now you try, you try be with that person as like being present with you there. And try thinking of your heart,

seeing with the eye of your heart, and wishing everything of happiness for him tonight. Now that's... That's hard work. That's compassionate meditation. Do you know something?

It's very therapeutic. It's very good. If I have someone like that who I'm angry with, I imagine them as a baby, as a wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful baby, which they were at one point and they were just gorgeous fucking babies going,

everything's amazing, isn't everything brilliant? I'm a baby. I know nothing other than happiness. And we were all that. And then you get pain, you get rejection, you get all these things and you become a goal. And, but like everyone is still that gorgeous little baby. So if I'm, like I know

myself, if I fucking hang on to a resentment, that's going to come back on me as well. It will come back as an unhappiness. So I always try and work on resentment and I always try and use resentment as... There's an opportunity for me to learn something about myself. If I'm resenting a person,

what is the anger and where's the threat to me, to my self-esteem, my sense of self? And how can I use compassion, love, forgiveness, recognising that person's fallibility, the fallibility that we all have as humans, to then notice it? That's the word I take from meditation. When I meditate and I think, if I feel anger,

I don't react to it, I notice the anger. The way that I'd notice a cloud or a fucking leaf floating down a stream or a can of coke getting kicked down the road, I notice it. So that's what I try and do with noticing my emotions, not reacting to them.

I think, let me just go Are we okay here? Yeah, we're grand. Let me just go further from that. Because, you see, when you start to do that, that your meditation is kind of in some way healing because it's unblocking you, then the time doesn't matter.

You know, the slots... If you think, well, that guy does half an hour meditation morning and evening. I can't do that, so I'm no good. That's the only place you'll end up. Whereas to realize it's just familiarity with. It's something that comes into your mind and goes out of your mind. It's like if I say this to you now, that there is nothing inside you but God,

then you can never get away from that. So it's like you don't even have to make an effort to meditate. In fact, the only way to practice meditation is to practice not doing everything else. And then you're meditating. And then that consciousness of heart, the river of anger, the river of resentment, very often that you validly hold, you really validly hold, this is an abuse that somebody did to me. And the great person on this, to me, is the English poet Lem Cissé. Oh, yeah, he's class. Wow, he's so wonderful. He quotes the Buddha on this issue, and he says, quoting the Buddha, that anger is the only poison you drink yourself and expect it to kill your enemy.

It's from one of the Buddha sutras. So meditation, from my teacher, became this sort of kind of thing of just living your life, freeing you from even concepts of, you know, I should be doing this and I should be doing that. That, again, to go Islam about it, there's a beautiful thing, when I walk towards God, God runs towards me.

That once you turn, there's some presence or energy already there. You're already getting support. So that means that meditation is something that it almost will come to you, to your fingertips in the morning. You just let go of other stuff and you'll begin to notice it. You'll begin to notice there's something there with you all the morning. You just let go of other stuff and you'll begin to notice it.

You'll begin to notice there's something there with you all the time. It's not you trying to grip it and say, I must try and get more focused there in my, you know, I was wandering off. You'll hear people saying they'll go to a meditation session and say, I was wandering off after three minutes.

But that's okay. Because even wandering off, what you wandered off to is God. Everything is God. It's kind of everywhere. It's like in the air. You can't get rid of it. But we do an awful lot of effort in 70 years trying to get rid of it, trying to ignore it. And we fill it with the wounds and the hurts that we have. And we say, well, I'm justified in feeling like this. Now, you may be and fine, but if you keep drinking that poison, it will

damage you. And the alternative is just not to, you're not trivializing your own wound or your own abuse or your own heart or your own injustice that you've suffered, but you're finding there's something unnameable that every religion seems

to touch on about being here now. And so that's why I feel like I don't like talking Christianity because I'm an old man, right? I'm an old folky. I'm from the last century. And the lives that young people have in Ireland at the moment are on the edge of amazingly new adventures and new ways of imagining community and love and faith and everything, right? And I wouldn't be bringing people back. I'd be saying that my religion tells me, go forward. You will find a new way to imagine the same things. Because it doesn't change.

No. No. The first time I met you, it was just before I'd written my first book. And you put into my head the idea of, I think I was saying to you, geez, I'm thinking of writing a book. And you go, I find that traveling somewhere,

going abroad and putting aside three weeks in a different place is a good way to write. So I said, fuck it, I'll try that. I'm going to head off to Spain and write. But you told me a mad story about, you gave me some solid advice on Airbnb actually tell me a story you told me about going to Romania

did I tell you that? you told me it but I want you to tell them I agree that you need to as a writer, you know why I said best advice for a writer get a typewriter you know why I said, like, best advice for a writer, get a typewriter. You'd say get a laptop now.

And just use it. And just put it aside an hour a day and do it. And it will work. Now, the way to do that in a big sense, if you're at a kind of a turning point in your life, is take three weeks somewhere. Get away and do it. There's art centres, but there's also, like...

I used to go... I began places like Anna McCarrick, but over the years I used Warsaw a lot. I used to go to Warsaw. I was there before Christmas, right? I go and I get an Airbnb for around maybe €30 a night. I have a beautiful apartment that's fully heated in the winter. You wouldn't buy the fucking briquettes where I live. The briquettes would cost you more than the entire apartment, right? I get a 70 euro to 80 euro return flight.

It is very, very economical for me, especially when I didn't have much money. And you're alone. You're alone. You can do nothing but write and walk around and have coffees. So one winter I decided, well, I've been to Warsaw so much, wouldn't it be lovely to go somewhere else? And I decided to try out Bucharest.

And maybe what got me to Bucharest was I was getting the romantic notion about Romania would have a very strong theater tradition. And maybe what got me to Bucharest was I was getting the romantic notion about Romania would have a very strong theater tradition. So I thought it'd be a beautiful place to go. And I saw this apartment and it was like palatial. It was like something that Putin had been living in. It was like 17th century gilded pillars and all sorts of stuff and fucking big sofas. And it was for like maybe, you know, some ridiculous 15 euros a night.

And I says to myself, that's for me, right? And I'll go on the 6th of January, just after Christmas, and I'll have an amazing time in the snow. And so I booked it. And when I had booked it, after about two days, I got an email from the owner who's a manager at a whole lot of apartments in Bucharest and he said we're terribly sorry but that shouldn't have been up on the site because it's already booked for January and so we really like to keep

your business so we give you an alternative which I think you'll actually find is better and I thought sometimes good things happen to you you know I and I I emailed him back I said that's perfectly fine forget the other booking I cancel it give me the details and this one and he gave me the details and all the rest of it at the price and all the rest of it I know price and all the rest of it. And off I went. He said at one stage, do you want a lift from the airport? He said, my chauffeur can pick you up. And I thought, you know, it can happen. And I went on the 6th of January to, and this is in the book too, by the way, called Talking to Strangers. But I went to Bucharest and I landed, and I was waiting at the, there was a little cafe

outside where you arrive at the airport. And it was about minus 25 outside. It was very cold. And I waited a long time until everybody who had come through on the plane was gone home and in their bed, sleeping happily. And I was still there, and there was nobody around, maybe a fella going up and down in one of these kind of lawnmowers that cleans the stuff, you know, the inside of a hall.

And eventually a fella, I saw a fella in the window, like outside, and he was obviously poor, I thought maybe homeless, maybe desperate, he sees me, he thinks I'm an American, and he's kind of, you know, beardy, like unshaven and very blue in the fingers, and it's minus 25, and he's going like that. And I'm thinking, oh, fuck. Now here's, by the way, here's the Buddhist, right?

Here's the Buddhist. Fuck, keep him away from me, you know? Please don't let him come in. And, you know, and sure enough, he waddles over to me. And he starts to get out, and he took out a cigarette package. And he opened the cigarette package, and he showed it to me. And my name was on the cigarette package. And I knew this is the chauffeur. He brought me into the middle

of town, rounding circles and snowy streets till I did not know where I was. At this time I realized it wasn't Booking.com. When your man emailed me, we conducted the whole affair on the email with him. When your man emailed me, we conducted the whole affair on the email with him. So I wasn't on any official site. I had been lured by an anonymous email to Bucharest. And we parked on a curb waiting for this woman to come who was called Mrs. Alexandria. And Mrs. Alexandria would show me the apartment. And so eventually this woman arrived, a young enough woman,

and a young enough woman in long boots and nothing between the top of the boot and the forecoat. And a dog on a leash. And she brought me into an old 1950s kind of Stalinist or Ceausescu apartment block. And a woman opened the door into an apartment and it was brought into this room with this woman like she was ironing clothes in her kitchen in the little apartment and at the back of the apartment there was another door and in that door they opened the door and I went in it was kind of straight out of a Stalinist movie from 1950. And they said, that's the apartment.

And I had no way out. I was kind of hijacked. I was alone in this apartment. If I ever tried to come out of it, I had to get across the woman to get out her door. And I didn't know where I was. And Mrs. Alexandria said, we'll be back tomorrow for the cash.

There's no end to that story, except like I ran like fuck up the road. That was my podcast with the wonderful Michael Harding I'll catch you all next week for a little hot take when I'm back from Porto and hopefully I'll have written a bunch of shit

in Porto dog bless Porto. God bless. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rockcity at torontorock.com. Thank you.