The Blindboy Podcast - Patrick Freyne

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

I chat with the hilarious and kind Patrick Freyne, who is an author,musician and journalist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unhinge your chins, you whispering Vincent's. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. I'm sure you can tell there's something up but my vice. I'm in the throes of seasonal, cold or flu, whatever the fuck it is. The whole shabang. Sorethroat chills, pains in my bones.

So I need to be horizontal. I need to be horizontal today I don't have a full podcast in me I'll be grand in a couple of days but I do have an absolutely magnificent chat fee with a journalist and writer by the name of Patrick Frayne this one is from the vaults

I recorded this I think 2003 at the Dawkey Book Festival maybe earlier maybe even 2022 today I was like I'm really sick I'm not going to be able to do a monologue podcast So I went listening through just live podcasts I'd done over the years. And this one from 2022 jumped out.

I was like, fuck it, this was great crack. This was wonderful crack. Why did I not put this out yet? I think the reason is. So I'd recorded this, I'd say, two months after the, after lockdown ended. And I think this was my first, like normal gig. Like, no restrictions. although no it wasn't it was outdoors

so I think this was still recorded under the parameters of COVID lockdown so I'd kind of forgotten how to interact with human beings I'd forgotten how to chat with people so one thing I want to apologise for with this chat

that you're about to hear I'm quite interrupty I interrupt quite a bit something I need to say around that is so I'm I'm Nora Divergent and people who are autistic in ADHD we have serious trouble

when it comes to not interrupting people when we're having conversation because it's perceived as incredibly rude it's a rude thing to do it's perceived as arrogant it's like what I have to say is more important than what you have to say it lacks courtesy

interrupting people during the chat and speaking over people is a real social faux pa when you're nora divergent it's incredibly difficult to not do it nor a divergent people nor a divergent people interrupt other people in conversations

when we don't we just miss those little social cues we miss the little social cues we are supposed to stop and let the other person speak so it's not arrogance or rudeness the reason I'm doing a disclaimer is if ever I put out a chat and I interrupt people

I do get very negative comments people get really triggered by interrupting and I just want to ask you to give me a break when it comes to this I'm not being rude

I'm not trying to speak over my guest I'd just done three years of fucking lockdown and I'd forgotten how to talk to people so it was I was gone off on rants

and everything and now now I'm back now I'm masked again. Now I don't interrupt as much. I actively listen when I speak to people. Masking. I mask when I speak to people. I don't enjoy conversation because instead of enjoying the conversation I'm thinking about not interrupting or their eye contact or facial expressions and shit like that. So I do that in social interactions because it's the polite, proper thing to do. But

That then makes, it makes conversation kind of stressful, stressful and not enjoyable. Whereas what I'd like to do is make no eye contact, be looking all up and down the room, and then ranting about what, whatever the fuck is important to me. This is just a disclaimer. Please nobody, nobody write on Instagram, you interrupted a lot blind by. Trust me, I fucking know, I know when I do this, because I have to listen to the conversations afterwards and then feel like a prick. I even had someone right before on Instagram

I know that you're autistic and autistic people have difficulty interrupting people but you sure do interrupt a lot I know I know so much that I go out of my way to avoid people so please bear that in mind but other than that so I think that's the reason

this conversation I had it was the docky book festival 2022 and I listened back to it today and I'm like this is fucking great I had a wonderful chat with Patrick Frayne. We just spoke about art for 90 minutes. Patrick is an incredibly interesting person.

He's a writer for the Irish Times. His articles frequently go viral just because they're so funny. He wrote a brilliant memoir called OK, let's do your stupid idea. And this come in June, he's releasing his first novel called Experts in a Dying Field. On top of Patrick being incredibly talented, he's just a very warm kind, compassionate person

who I loved speaking with and I just have to play this chat because it's too much crack it's too much crack for me to not put out because I'm self-flagellating over interrupting you don't need to listen to my fucking voice when it's like this

look here's the interview with Patrick Frayne at the Dawkey Book Festival from about three or four years ago so that was uh yeah that was from my first book of short stories. I'm currently writing a, I'm writing my third book of short stories at the moment. I was writing a story about a woman who gets addicted

eating photographs. I don't know where it's going to go. But it'll figure itself out in the end. I have a fantastic guest tonight. He is a journalist, a critic, a writer and a all-around

sound man and funny cunt. Patrick Frayne I think someone's choking him All right, all right, Pat, you had to wear one of those fucking Yeah So you've got one of those mics That damn is a beard

Because they get stuck in my hair And I'm not really, like, I have long hair But I'm not really good at having long hair So my hair kind of gets stuck in anything And I've never interviewed someone who's wearing one and now I'm starting to worry if I'm hearing

your voice in my head which isn't great I'll be honest I had a small bit of happy grass beforehand okay so yeah I couldn't wear one

because I have a plastic bag on my head have you tried wearing one with the plastic bag oh yeah man I the experiences I've had with microphones

over the years the worst experiences are on the late show are you shushing me at my own gig oh there's It's probably just a can opening. We want to hear Patrick's beard against the microphone.

This is an ASMR audience. I love ASMR. Yeah, I have multiple terrible problems with microphones because of this plastic bag. When I go on to the late show, they usually give you a microphone that goes onto your chest. And it's RTE, so they're fucking idiots. So I say to them, don't put a microphone on my chest. I have a plastic bag on my head.

that's not in their manual sort of like we have to put it and so like okay grand and any interview with me on the late late is listen to it

I go out all you hear is crinkle crinkle crinkle like you're eating potatoes and then immediately they cut off that microphone and they have to resort

this emergency shotgun microphone that looks like a teenager's penis that's on tough stable and it's that's what happens and then I can't wear those

I can't wear those I can't work. Yeah, I find them really strange, and they hurt my ears. They didn't have a second one of these. I'm being greedy. Yeah, but that story was great. I was kind of listening to that going. I was listening to that going.

I'd love if that was the news. Like, if you turned on the radio and that came on, here's the news, and then you're talking about being a horse, goat, guitar player. I picture someone thought of it, like, I mean, what I end up getting ideas like that is people always say to me, why the fuck of your story is so fucked up? And for me, I'm making my anxiety, my friend. Okay.

So the thing with me is I have, I'm mentally ill. I'm mentally ill. So I have tremendous problems with my mental health. I'm doing all right now. Yeah. But when I was like 18, 19, I couldn't go to gigs. because I would get ferocious anxiety. And when you have anxiety, and I'm also autistic, which I only found out a month ago, anxiety, autism, and also being creative, not a great combination.

So I'd be there at a gig trying to enjoy it, and then I'm looking up at the person on stage going, what if I went up and killed them? Do you know what I mean? And anyone who has bad anxiety, you'll know, yeah, I can relate to that. So I used to, because when you get an anxiety attack, one of the themes for me was, what if I do something in public that would make everyone look at me, you know? And I'm doing all right now up on stage with a bag in my head. When I was younger, it was like, what if I do something crazy? It was either, what if I vomit in public or do something that will create a spectacle.

So I would be at a gig thinking, what if I went up and skinned, it was a flaming lips gig. What if I went up on stage and skinned Wayne Kine? And then I'd get a panic attack. But writing for me is therapeutic because when you're presented with that type of irrational anxiety and it can take over your threat analysis in your brain, a fun thing for me to do is to laugh at it. Because that's kind of hilarious as well. I think that's why I try to write funny stuff.

So I had a similar thing. Because you're fucked in the head as well. I take that as a compliment But you've mental health issues Yeah I do I have an essay in my book called brain fever And there's a bit about just that sort of thing

I did a thing in my 20s Where I'd kind of imagine Doing something terrible And then I'd go That would ruin my whole life Yeah And I'm going to And then I would spiral

And I could think about it For weeks and weeks and weeks And I had this thing Where A touch of OCD as well didn't you Yeah So I had this thing where this happened in my late 20s,

I kind of became obsessed with the idea. You know in action movies where Stephen Segal or somebody just reaches over to a guard and goes and breaks his neck. Yes. I swear it's funny now, but at the time I was going,

what if I did that to my girlfriend? Yeah. And then I... That's him cancelled. That's Patrick cancelled now. Someone's recorded that now when they've taken it out of context. Yeah.

And you're cancelled. it. Yeah. So, and I don't interview people who are cancelled, so. It was a very short interview.

Thanks for the opportunity. But I went on and I started thinking about it everyone I loved and I'd go, what if I did it? I'd be with my mother and she'd be driving me somewhere

and I'd go, what if I reached over and broke her neck like Stephen Segal? That would be awful. We'd probably crash and I might survive and I'd have to go to jail.

Yeah. And then I'd think about my sister and my brother and I ended up going to a counsellor, and I was explaining this to them and the counsellor said so you've mentioned

your mom, your girlfriend, your sister, your brother, your best friends, but you've never mentioned your dad. And I went oh yeah, you see my dad's a commando so I wouldn't be able to do it to him. But he trained in his... Yeah, and the counsellor went

you couldn't do it to anybody. That's impossible. That's like a TV trick. It didn't quite end it, but that was the start to me going, oh, right, the mad shit I imagine mightn't be real. But you know what? These are the mental health conversations we need to have.

Because I'm sick of going on to the late and just saying, I'm sad. You know what? What you're speaking about there is very real. It is funny. But it's also hilarious. Yeah. So you can bring that into your creativity and then that irrationality, then I call it making it my friend.

Okay. So the terrifying thing, which can give me an anxiety attack, I can turn my creativity, because essentially it is creativity. It's the part of your brain that thinks laterally, except it's deciding to attack you. Instead of it attacking you,

you go, fuck it, it's not real, I'm going to put it on a page and turn it into entertainment, and then there's a healing around that. Like, I'm not worried about skinning people at gigs anymore. Yeah. Because it's now in a book.

I found a lot of the stuff in my book writing about it. Like some people who write, my book is called, Okay. Let's do your stupid idea. And a series of memoir essays, some of which are funny. My job is to say that.

Okay. No, no, no. That's me being a shit interviewer. That's me being self-critical. I'm supposed to come out and say, Patrick, you wrote a book called, let's do your stupid idea. Tell us about that. I forgot to say it. And now you have to say yourself.

I'm just glad you didn't skin me when I came on to the stage. So don't worry about it. But I did find that writing about some of the more difficult things. What, like, it's, I spoke to other people who've written memoirs and they go, ah, no, it's not catharsis. It's like my creative art. But for me, there was definitely a bit of psychotherapy involved in it. Because the part of it is retraining your brain to think of the story.

Nore plasticity. Yeah. Yeah. And also, journaling, when you experience mental health difficulties, one of the problems is, is that these irrational thoughts are focused entirely in your own brain. And they get in the way of nice thoughts, like making your dinner. So I'm worried about skinning someone When I should be worrying about a stew But once you put that

Do you know what it's like Do you know when your friend is having mental health difficulties And your friend tells you This is what I'm worrying about recently And then you go That's fucking ridiculous But in your own head it's not ridiculous But when you put it on a page

You go actually that is a bit ridiculous When you first came out And I couldn't see your microphone And I heard your voice in my head Like, 15 years ago, I'd have to get off stage. Yeah. But instead, I just said, I named it, I took ownership of it, and now I know, no, I can see the microphone there underneath your beard.

Like, you're not magically inside in my own mind. Although it would be a really good way to interview people, is if I just stayed over there and you heard it in your head and you put it to the audience. Here's my guest, distant, distant Patrick. You could have a little echo on the voice. Can we put echo on my voice? Or just like a megaphone on my head that project. I think someone took you literally there.

Yeah, I know. I want to hear it. We don't actually need echo on Patrick's voice. Well, I could go over and see what it's like. See, that's the thing. They ironically told him to bring cans. So now, we're ironically saying he needs an echo on his voice. We don't actually require an echo.

Is it ironic? We're sick of this darky shit. Yeah. I could go over and just see what it's like. How'd you mean? Yeah, fuck it actually Don't do it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you put echo on my voice?

Go behind there, so there's a burlap sack there. The audience cannot see beyond the burlap. Okay. All right, Patrick. Hello. Is Jerry Adams in the... Hold on a second, Patrick, you work for the Irish Times. Patrick works for the Irish Times.

As an Irish Times journalist, is Jerry Adams in the IRA? We can't quite know. I think it was good. He is. He is in the IRA and you heard that from Patrick. Irish Times. A lot of people under my TV column, my favorite comment, we don't have comments anymore,

but my favorite comment was when I'd write something ridiculous in a TV column, and about three people would go, why is this news? which is, which I always thought to be a great name for a column why is this news?

Why is it news though? The Irish Times is a but it's very... Does news really mean north, east, west, south? I should have kind like this after... Like this after the question.

Real deep question. Does, does new... Does it though? no that's like golf means gentleman only ladies forbidden that's real

school yard shit that's like fucking prince removed his rib to suck his own dick so the PG version of that was did you know that news means northeast west south and golf means that

I'm so confused it's called a backronym I've been doing regular talkie events like where you kind of sit in and are going okay we're going to talk now about the future of the American culture war and for people discuss it

yeah but this feels like it feels like an upgrade but did you know if you mention throughout any talk at the docky book festival if you mention five books David McWilliams gives you a back massage

I didn't know that is he here but actually one thing I did want to mention because you know what I'm going to give you a wonderful compliment so I enjoyed your book and what I really like

your book is a memoir but to me you write it like fiction it's the right of a fiction writer it's the right of a fiction writer yeah that's that literally stuff it's the right of a fiction writer but your prose reminds me of Ernest Hemingway in that you have

the way that you do short sentences is beautiful and Hemingway jumped out of the page when I was reading it and one thing the reason Hemingway's sentences are short is Hemingway first trained as a journalist and he brought the prose of journalism to his literary prose and do you see a parallel between those two things

so we've got Hemingway we've got this it's someone who's when you write your memoir you're writing prose you're thinking about the sentence and you're thinking

about the beauty of that sentence but there's a brevity to your sentences that is beautiful it's really short and to the point and you do it in a way who else fucking does it that that's uh

Carmen McCarty that's the second book. Cormac McCarthy does it as well. He uses beautiful short sentences. When you say the five books, does David appear in the stage with a mass? No, it's a private. Okay.

Private carry on. Inside in that stone building. Yeah. Okay. McWilliams is a, he's capable of photosynthesis. Most people don't know. That's a greenhouse purely for David McWilliams. Wow.

And he's got photosynthetic chemical. on his skin in the back. He had it done in Croatia. So he's able to lie down and the sun comes in through the greenhouse onto his back. And the plants take the sun and they turn

carbon dioxide into sugars. Yeah. The sun goes into his back and he turns it into economics. And then... I don't know whether to answer the question. The question

was, right? Yeah, I remember. So the question was, I find parallels between your writing and Chris Hemingways. He both use sentences in a brevity. Hemingway does it because of his history of being a journalist. How does your training and work as a fucking journalist? There's someone who has to be

concise. How does that inform your prose? So I never thought about that before. So when I was, as a journalist, I never really wrote about myself. Like, I used to kind of write, I do a lot of reporting, a lot of interviews. and I do a column every Friday that's about kind of telly or pop culture where I'm being funny. And the thing with when I started to do the book, there was like loads of kind of

personal stories kind of backed up. I'd never really, I'd never read a personal column. So I think you're probably right that like one of the things when you're doing reporting is you kind of have to get out of the way of the story. Like sometimes I love writers like John Ronson who are kind of kind of in there in the story. And I can do that. I like doing that sometimes when it's a kind of lighter subject. But if you're interviewing people about really serious shit that's happened to them, you kind of want to do it in kind of as straightforward a way as possible.

So I definitely think it probably comes from that. But I never really thought about it in terms of the essays before. And I like some, I think that reporting stuff is really good for me as a journalist. I think it's probably a good thing for people to do, like general curiosity anyway because it teaches you to kind of get out of the way of stuff and there's a lot of the stuff we do

that is a little bit more like this like jazz hands and being interviewed by Blindbrook which is kind of cool so yeah it's definitely connected and when you're reporting like what is the number one skill

of a reporter like I'm up here as a person using a mic so now my number one skill is I don't talk from back here I make sure that I'm here. What is the journalistic or the reporting equivalent of that? What's the basic trick

that you learn in reporting school or whatever the fuck? I failed my leaving, sir. I don't know. Typing is the basic skill. Genuinely, the basic skill is trying to be genuinely curious because there's this weird thing that happens when you're doing a job

where you're kind of really conscious of the end product and you're really conscious of and you kind of need to be. But when I was a younger journalist, I was thinking too much about the article. I was like I'd be interviewing people and I like, as well as doing kind of funny stuff or pop cultural stuff,

I like to write about serious things. I like to write about, you know, social justice stuff. So are you saying, Patrick, that when you're doing your research and you're reporting, you shouldn't be thinking about the end piece? you kind of try and put that on automatic, which you can do after a certain point. And when you're sitting there talking to somebody, this sounds really highfalutin, but it's kind of simple and it's part of life.

You can't have to be present with them. So if somebody is telling you something very, like I did some interviews over the years that I thought were kind of important because of the people I was highlighting, people who've been through care or refugees or undocumented workers, and when you're talking to those people, you've got a bigger responsibility than when you're talking to famous people. Like, to be honest, if I interview a writer or an actor or a politician, I'm not that worried about them, you know.

But if you're talking to somebody who's vulnerable in any way, you kind of have to worry about the ethics of it. You have to worry about how they're going to appear. You've got to explain to them what it's all about because they don't really know. Like as soon as you interview somebody who's media savvy, they understand everything. They understand that what they say is going to end up in an article. And the thing I've learned over the years is to kind of be, like, it sounds a bit hippy,

but you have to be present with the person in the moment. And you have to allow them to say what they need to say. And then you have to be brave enough to ask the following question. That can be difficult. And it needs to feel to me like a conversation or there's some sort of connection being made. So in psychotherapy, because I trained as a therapist years ago, that's known as congruence. So a therapist, when they're with a client, has three things that they need to have. The first one is, what is it?

Empity. So empathy means that you're genuinely trying to feel the other person's emotion. The second one is unconditional positive regard, which means that whatever the person says, their words are merely an aspect of the behavior. So a therapist must never, ever judge somebody. And that's quite important when you were I were speaking. there about, I'm thinking a snap in my man's neck.

A therapist at that moment needs to not go, fuck off. Seriously, that is one of the core conditions of a therapist cannot do that. So is that the main skill of therapy, like the Mike's skill for podcast? 100%. 100%.

When someone presents with an idea that to them is irrational, a therapist must not give the social reaction, which is to go, that's mad. Really? A therapist has to go, oh, really?

Tell me more about that. And what that does to the client is it allows them to go, fuck it. This person isn't judging me. This person isn't judging me the way I'm judging myself. I now feel safe.

And then they explore, why do you think that? And then the third thing that a therapist has to have is what's called congruence. And congruence is what you're speaking about there when it comes to reporting. And congruence basically is that

what you feel, inside and the words that come out of your mouth are the one yeah that you're not spoofing you're not bullshitting if you feel sad or you feel angry that this comes out in your voice you don't pretend because that creates an environment for the client that's unsafe so what i'm hearing there from reporting congruence is it is an important part of that job yeah and the the mistake you can make as a new reporter a younger reporter i think is that you've got a list of questions and you're treating it very much as A, B, C, what you need to do, or what I feel, actually, it's more that for me it makes it more authentic, which makes it easy to write about, is that it becomes a conversation. And some

of that's about building trust. Like you interviewed me for my last book. Yeah. And we spent about four hours together. And I would say three of those hours had nothing to do with what ended up on paper. It was me and you chatting as a pair of human beings. Yeah, we talked about four. And we talked about our fucking lives and we had lovely crack and by the end of it I was like yeah I'll speak to this fella he's sound as fuck

and it was lovely for me because that was great to have that in the Irish Times because there was a second review in the Irish Times about my book where they said I don't believe in gatekeeping

literature but now don't tell anyone I said this but that's very Irish Times Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the examiner reviewed it and had to delete the review. Why? Because some fucking cunt.

Some person in the examiner reviewed my book and they didn't read the book because they just assumed, oh, it's that fucking idiot with the bag in his head and this is just a Christmas book. So instead of reading the book, he assumed what I would have written. So he wrote a review of the book that he thought I wrote. which was, I didn't like this book. There wasn't enough female characters one stars.

Which I then went, actually, lads. It's mostly female characters and I specifically got a female editor to avoid any internalized misogyny that I have, you pricks. And then they deleted it and it's gone and they're pretending it didn't happen.

That's a really interesting thing. So you got a female editor. So there's a kind of debate in books about sensitivity readers, which I 100% agree with. They're a good thing. Yeah. Like it's really important if you're writing something about which you have no experience,

it's important that you show it to somebody who has some experience of it. So they can point, not because it's censorious or they're going to go, oh, you can't do that. It's more, you show it to them and go, is that realistic? And they'll go, no, that just never happens. And I call that good writing. Yeah, me too. Do you know what I mean? Seriously, if you're...

Even Charles Dickens did it. Did he? Because Dickens used to show things to people who were different. I mean, he wrote about, I can try to remember the details. But he definitely... So he went to Fagin. He went to a Victorian prick. Yeah.

I need to know now what the dickens do, because all I'm thinking, Oliver Twist. I'm just realizing now I'm being a bit of a modern jackass because I can't remember the details, but I know that it wasn't invented in the last two years. It's something good writers did. That's good writing.

And if a writer is to write about something that is deeply outside of their experience, you want to portray that with care, sensitivity and realism like I was speaking to I was gigging in London there on Wednesday and I spoke to the podcast

of Scroobius Pip and Scroobius Pip is someone who has a stammer and stammering is a huge part of his life and he's consistently reading scripts and the script is written by a person who doesn't have a stammer and he turns up as an actor

and goes lads this is not how a stammer works So that's an example right there of hire people who actually have a stammer. Like for me, autism, for me, when I read any fiction about autism that's written by person who isn't autistic, I'm like, go fuck yourself, you silly boy. This is not what it's like at all. Did getting the diagnosis make a big difference to your self-understanding? So it's only two months ago. So it's like finding out I've had a big kick-me sticker on my back for my entire life.

life. Like, that's kind of what it's like. I mean, the thing is, all that's happened is I've found a new word to describe how I've been my entire life. So the weird thing is that I receive a diagnosis and it's kind of like, all right, I have a disease now. It's like, no, it's not a disease. It's not going to get worse. This is just how you are and here's some new words to describe it. For me, the one thing I'm struggling with is I failed my leaving cert. I did terribly in school. I was huge. hugely misbehaved. My time in school was fucking rotten and I'm in my 30s now and I've squared that with myself up until this point

I'd said to myself you fucked up school because you were unruly and you were a bald boy now no I was actually victimized by the system and that's a different thing

because now I have to go shit I could have been a doctor I could have been a scientist I could have pursued things that I actually care about these things I did not have access to any of these things

so I had to become an artist I interviewed some I didn't have to pass mats to get into our college but it's sad it's genuinely sad I love science there's so many things I'm interested in and these like you studied literature

in Trinity yeah I would have loved to do that not a fucking hope man I got 200 points in my leave insert and I was demonized and it wasn't even allowed I wasn't even allowed to repeat my leave insert

because I was so poorly behaved I was expelled I was fucked so now I'm angry about that I can't take ownership of that because it's because

I was autistic and I was called bold wrong misbehaving all of this shit from the earliest age and that's not how it was at all

I just had a different brain and I was the system didn't accommodate it and how did the when you look back now what were the things that they should have been doing in school to help

so the thing with being autistic is for me so I'm what's called Autistic Spectrum Disorder Level 1 which is I require the least amount of support so I present as someone who doesn't really appear autistic but the thing with my autism is I will focus on an interest intensely

to the point that I'll forget to eat and I fucking love it to me this is a superpower this is where my podcast exists I'll talk for one hour about pineapples I'll go into the history of pine I'll freak myself out about and that's my autism

I'd love it to bits but when I'm in school and I'm being forced to learn about maths and this I would be shit in school and then I'd go home and my focus that month would have been hip-hop music

my focus would have been art all of these things that I was deeply interested in I was told that's disruptive and instead what they should have done was okay if this is where your brain is going this week let's figure out a way to incorporate that into what you're doing

because what I did find in school any teachers that were good with storytelling they were the ones that got to me And one of the things that used to break my fucking heart about school do you remember

punishment I says do you remember when you were really bold in school what would happen is the teacher would say oh your job

now is you have to come in tomorrow and you have to write about the inside of a tennis ball I fucking want to write about

the inside of a tennis ball so I used to get in trouble so I'd have to write about the inside of a tennis ball and what you used to to they then would get my short story about the inside of a tennis ball and they'd go

I thought this fellow was thick what's going on here you know so all of that stuff is quite heartfelt for me now looking back what is it wasn't hurtful before I was able to go you were bold that's grandeur and an adult now now it's different I'm a victim so would autism be classed as a disability

or is it so it is classed as a disability but a lot of people who are autistic would disagree with that. I certainly don't experience it as a disability at all. It's a disability depending on the environment that I'm in. So I once worked in a call center and I was fired after one week for printing out 92 pages about CIA crack cocaine smuggling. So if you put me into an office, then because of the environment, it's a disability.

But if you give me a podcast or get me to write short stories or wear a bag in my head, then it is not a disability. it's like what I compare it to is you know that swimmer Michael Phelps so Michael Phelps won a shit on a gold medal he's a great swimmer but also his body he's got unnaturally long arms he happens to have very large lungs these are things that made him a great swimmer

so for me and my autism this is what makes me really good at what I do so have you come across so I interviewed some young disabled men because of the lack of they were looking for personal assistance and there's a huge problem in Ireland with people who need

personal assistance to get around their lives, they're just not, there's not enough of them, they don't get funded for it and I was introduced to the idea that there's kind of different ways of looking at it. So there's the medical model of disability which is, oh, it's all you and then there's the sociological political model

of disability which is why people who have, people who are disabled, now prefer disabled to, I have a disability because they see it as I am disabled by society. That's the kind of political way of looking at it, which is kind of what you

I'm not, it's kind of what you're experience. It's, it's a, I am disabled it, the environment does not suit my needs. And the other thing too is the severe social anxiety that I experienced, the depression that I experienced, my artistic

brain didn't make me anxious or depressed. The pressure of society and trying to fit in and be normal, that's what caused that shit. So it's not me, it's, it is difficult for me to survive in a world that is designed for neurotypical people.

But here's the other thing. Autism is, is referred to as neurodivergent and it is estimated that 40% of people are noradivergent. So 40% is fucking a lot of people, so therefore that is not abnormal. And within neurodivergence, you have autism,

ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, Tourette's syndrome, all of this stuff. So instead of looking at it as a disorder, you go, no, there's people with different brains. And the person who assessed me, the way that they assess autism is they have to use a manual called the DSM, which is the American Psychiatric Association. And that's the only way to diagnose it. But up until 1973, being gay was in that manual as an actual mental illness, which is absurd.

and the person who diagnosed me reckons in 10, 15 years time autism is not going to be in that manual it's just going to be here's some people with different, there's no such thing as a different brain there's multiple types of brains but the majority of neurotypical brains have defined the rules of what society is

and everyone else has to try and fit in and there's some things that should be in the DSM like being a billionaire that should be in the DSM like that's a deeply fucking weird thing to be like you're hoarding 100% you're hoarding stuff like if you were hoarding, I've said this before, but if you were hoarding like pizza boxes

or fucking cans or action figures, people would diagnose you as a hoarder. But billionaires are hoarding. Not even billionaires. Something that is perfectly normal in society, and that's a big problem, people getting themselves into personal

death because they need to have a Mercedes, because this Mercedes communicates something about them to other people. That's not healthy and it's harmful. But within capitalism, that's seen as oh that's grand absolutely of course you have a Mercedes to tell everyone how great you are

fuck that but here's an example I always use regarding nora divergence let's take dyslexia as an example so dyslexia is noradivergence a dyslexic person is someone who has difficulty with the written word okay

300 years ago most of society couldn't read okay do you know the way pubs are called things like the dog and duck or the horse and hound. You know that?

The reason pubs are called these names is because, many, many years ago when people couldn't read, the pub literally just had a painting of a dog and a duck. And within an oral culture where people can't read, you'd say, yeah, at the pub,

the one with the painting of the dog and duck. And that's why pubs are called the dog and duck today. But within that society, where it was normal to not be able to read, dyslexic people existed and no one knew. They just lived happy normal lives

and then around the industrial revolution we equated the capacity to read with intelligence now all of a sudden dyslexic kids are called stupid

because do you know what I mean so that society has created that issue I'm not saying we should all become illiterate but I'm just saying that's an example society was more accommodating

to dyslexic people 300 years ago when writing wasn't equated but intelligence the larger thing like the sociological thing is, like, I get really kind of annoyed by general conformity. Sorry.

I had to check the time. Is there, what's that? No, that's a fucking countdown timer, man. Okay. It's like Jerry Adams has come in and planted a bond. And it's, because you said earlier on in your capacity as an Irish journalist that he's in the IRA. Yeah. Like, a lot of the problem is conformity, right?

So there's a society that kind of prizes. everyone doing the same thing. So, like, another chapter in my, not to bring everything back to my book, but in, no, dude, you're here at the Docky Book Festival. So, um, I have an essay about not having kids. Patrick's book is called normal people. You have, you should, we, you should have just called me Sally Rooney and I'd have come out and I'd have been Sally Rooney. I saw Sally Rooney backstage earlier on. I didn't introduce myself because I referred to her book on a podcast that's something very neurotypical

so I felt but I didn't mean that as a I was using it as I love Sally Rooney's

writing but it is very neurotypical in that the thing with Sally's writing is

that it's very much about human relationships and me as an autistic person I don't

give a fuck about that so I prefer but but you know what I consider to be Nora Divergent writing.

Yeah. We both love an author called Ted Chang. Oh, yeah. Have you heard of Ted Chang? Do you know that film Arrival? Where, like, who's in it? I don't know names.

What's your one's name? Jennifer Lawrence, is it? That's a lot of American names all at once, lads, I'm sorry. But Arrival is that film where all of a sudden these aliens arrive, and they're like these weird squid creatures, and they have to try and translate.

that came from a Ted Chang short story. Ted Chang is a science fiction writer who will write the most bizarre, hard to comprehend ideas, and then he will write it in as much detail that you fucking understand. And they're like 70 page stories. Yeah, and he's spent 15 years writing it.

Yeah, he writes like one of them a year or less. He has a, until recently he had a day job. But the interesting thing about sci-fi, you know Ian Banks. So I was a big fan of Ian Banks. M. Banks. So I asked him because I got to interview him shortly before he died. Ian Banks wrote the Wasp

Factory. Incredible book. And he wrote under two names. The four books, man. We're getting our fucking messages. Yeah, yeah. I know. Could he do us both at the same time? Because we could... I don't want that. I want no, no, no, no. If I get David McWilliams and getting him on his own.

But go on. Ian Banks. So I asked him because I'm really interested. I mean, really interesting kind of genre, snobbery as well. Yes. And the snobbery around humor too. This is how I look at the snobbery within literature, right? If someone says it's satire, what they mean is it's comedy, but for smart people.

If someone says magical realism, it's fantasy, but for smart people. If someone says speculative fiction, it's science fiction, but for smart people. Yeah. And they're not that smart. Yeah. Like, so Ian M. Banks, I got, he died a few years ago and I got to interview him before he died. He didn't know he was ill, which is very sad. But he was, so the other thing is some of the best people have ever interviewed. Writers have been sci-fi or fantasy people. And that's partly because it's a kind of overlooked look down upon genre. And they are so appreciative of their fans. Like I did it, Ben and Neil Gaiman. And he spent like two and a half hours signing autographs. It's a bit like metal. is kind of like...

Very similar. Because metal within music is looked down upon unless you're the deaf tones. Like, oh, well, you're the radio head of metal. But most metal is like, this is not music. We have to rely upon these fans.

So tying into what you were saying about not being interested in personalities, characters, what was it? So what I don't like about, not that what I don't like, what I find difficult to relate

with Sally Rooney's books is it's all about human relationships and as an autistic person I don't see the world that way I don't care about friends.

Ian Banks put it really but that sounds awful but like literally I don't really have a lot of friends I've got acquaintances my friends are ideas and I know that

might sound lonely but it's not I fucking love ideas I love music and listening to an album for me is how other people if someone else goes to a wedding and has crack

that's me alone with an album and it's not lonely it's lovely I love it That's my life. So he said, because I asked him, because he did both. He did kind of literary fiction as Ian Banks and he did sci-fi as Ian Banks. So he taught a lot about it. And I was asking him about the snobbery and he said that the literary novel is the psychological novel.

Yeah. And the science fiction novel is the philosophical novel. Yeah. Which fits right into what you're saying because it's all about ideas. Yeah. It's about like, imagine if I skinned a horse and, you know, like, sci-fi stuff is often about, imagine if world work this way? Yeah.

Or I'm at like Ted Chang's stuff is like he's got... If our knees were on the backs of our legs like ostriches, what would bicycles look like? I am...

It's my new science fiction novel. It's going to... I'm trying to think about it. I know. So am I, man. I haven't figured it. What soon as I figured out it's going to be a story,

but... Can anyone picture that? So you tried to see if I could do... But that's science fiction. I'd love to give that's a Ted Chang. Ted Chang would spend a year and a half on that. And he would work out, what would the world? So first, what would the bicycles look like?

And then what would the world of the chairs, man? He would be the political parties in a world where our knees bent. That is Ted Chang in a nutshell. It kind of is. Yeah. Like he's got one about, I'm really bad with names, but he's got an amazing one about a world. in which kind of religious events happen all the time.

You know, the one where like angels appear and then like some of the people in the audience here will be healed, but other people will like go straight to hell and he kind of works through. What would the world be like? He obviously had a mad idea like you just had. And he went, I'm going to spend a year and a half of this because I have a publisher that will publish this. That's what he does.

And yeah, read Ted Chang if that sounds, he's one of those people too as well. though, that snobs try to take him. As in when someone brings up Ted Chang, you almost get someone saying, it's not science fiction, though. It's like a little bit more. It's like the deaf tones. Yeah, it's the radio

head of science fiction, they say. Yeah. And I don't know, like, I just think it's Ted Chang and he's fucking amazing and I love Ted Chiang. So how do you write like your stories? You start with something like that. How long do you work away at that? So what I do

is a huge part of my creative process is embracing failure. So what will stop you from writing is the fear of failing. The part of yourself that's like, I have to write a good story. As soon as I start thinking, I must write something good,

I'm going to write something shit. So the way that I get out of that is then let's write something shit. So I will start with an idea. Like for me, I was having a bit of block. So I wrote a story. story, I said, what if Amon de Valera

had Holy Mary's immaculate woman in his bowels and Michael Collins had to get him pregnant in his arse so that they would give Bart to these weird basketball skin children that will save Ireland as alternative

history. That's a fucking terrible idea. Let's stick with it for 12,000 words. So that's what I do. Similarly, I have another story about what if a woman just goes to Barcelona and becomes convinced that her neighbour is actually Donald Duck, like actual Donald Duck? And this is such a terrible idea that I say, yeah, let's stick with that for fucking

7,000 words, man. And when I do that, I've begun with failure. I've begun with a terrible idea, and now I have to work myself out of it. And that frees me up to write something, which is about mental health, about the human experience about the human condition and then I'm thrilled with it whereas if I start off going let's write something class

I'll just end up writing an episode of peeky blinders like is there a problem like one of the things I'm fascinated by we're supposed to do an interval four minutes ago Jerry Adams said so man we're supposed to be in flames blonde the bits right now I didn't know what I meant listen these people need a pint

okay go on have a little before we leave can we have a communal pint can opening please All right, get your cans out Three Two One Yes

All right We'll be back in about 15 minutes God bless I'd forgotten about that there I wish I'd recorded that in stereo I love doing that Whenever I play a gig And the gig is very rare

But sometimes sometimes you can be playing somewhere and it doesn't have a liquor license so people are invited to bring their own drink so what happens is you end up with like everyone in the audience has cans and something I've found over the years

is if I'm up there conversing with someone and there's cans being opened my ears hear it as totting it sounds like tutting and that distracts me so whenever I'm at a gig where everyone is drinking cans. I collectively get everyone to open the cans at once and it's actually a beautiful sound.

It's wonderful. I wish I recorded that in stereo, you cunts. Okay, I don't have a, I don't have it. Let's do an ocarina pause, but I don't have an ocarina. What I do have is a little Vix Vapo rub inhaler that I'm using for my illness. So maybe I'm just going to sniff this. I'm going to snort this wonderful eucalyptus and mental bam. that's too much no that's too much wait is this vix or no it's albis albisle and there's actually a warning on the albisle that you're supposed to do it every three fucking hours and i've been hoving into it non-stop all day which apparently i'm not supposed to do but it's the only thing that's giving me a modicum of relief all right support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page

patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. This podcast is my full-time job so I earn a living so I rent out my office and so I buy my albizile when I'm unwell it's how I feed myself

and so I have multiple underpants this podcast is it's my actual career and job so if you listen to it regularly please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing if it brings you marked or merriment enjoyment

distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to the podcast, please consider paying me for the work. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen for free. You listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model. I wouldn't change it. And it's also, it's why I show up and put out a podcast even though I need to be on the fucking couch right now

I'm really unwell I'm going to show up if I can show up and put out a podcast it's going to happen and it's going to happen because gratitude I'm so grateful unbelievably grateful

thankful and aware of how lucky I am that this podcast that I can earn a living from this podcast that I can earn a living from from our and creativity. Because I'm doing this for nearly 25 years. It's only the past 8 years with this

podcast that I'm actually earning a living, that this is my full-time job. So that's why I show up every single week regardless. Also because this is listener funded. I'm not beholden to any advertisers. Advertiser can come on here and they play by my rules. They can't tell me what to speak about what to talk about. They can fuck off, all right, because this is a listener-funded podcast. Okay, I'm contractually obligated to call out the following gigs that I'll be playing in 2026, beginning at the end of January. I'm in Waterford in the Theatre Royal. Then I'm in Kildare, Ness, right, at a thing called the Spirit of Kildare Festival. Then I'm up in Dublin in Vickers Street in February

which is a Wednesday gig gorgeous. Belfast Belfast is nearly sold out Waterfront Theatre there in February Leisureland in Galway you glamorous glamorous Galway cunts Let's go to Leisureland

Galway which are bloated footfall and tourism and working economy We envy you down here in Limerick And then what have we got Kerry Enoch We envy Calarney as well A lot of money down in Calarney. Very, very wealthy down in Calarney. All the fucking Yank tourists. The Inek.

Strange old venue there. They don't have a dressing room in that venue that's close to the stage. See, there's a hotel attached. So they're like, we'll give you a dressing room for the gig, but it's up in a hotel room, which means that in order for me to get the stage, I have to walk through the foyer of the hotel with a plastic bag on my head, which I don't do. I refuse to do that because I can't assume that everybody in the fire of that hotel knows who the fuck I am. So, and this has happened, this has happened. You can have tourists who just see a grown man with a plastic bag in his head in the fire of the hotel and then they start screaming because they think I'm ISIS or something. So that happens, not that specific thing, but when I gig in the eye neck

in Killarney because it's attached to a hotel, I never stay in the dressing room that they give me. So what I do is I stand upright in a fucking a broom closet basically, like a vampire. And I quite like the humility of it. So every time I gig down there in that venue in Calarney, for like a half an hour before going on stage, I'm just standing upright in a tiny broom closet with the door closed in the dark, pure nospherato. And you'd think that shit, but no, again, I enjoy the humility of it. I like the, you think it's glamorous

to be gone off doing gigs, you know? There's no glamour in standing up in a dark broom closet with your head beside a mop and that, that the cheesy violence of a mob. A mop that's been used to clean wet floors and hasn't had a chance to dry.

You know? So I look forward to gigging the eyeneck there down in Killarney. What fuck else have we got? March. Carlo. We'll deal with Carlo when it comes. Cork Opera House. Limerick there in fucking April in the University Concert Hall.

Look loads of shit. And then I'm over in England like a mad cunt. In October 26. Brighton, Wales. Coventry. Fucking Guilford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham, alright? We figure it out when it happens. A lot of those gigs are selling quickly.

Most of them are up at. 50% are over because people are purchasing them as Christmas presents, all right? So, don't be waiting until February to get a ticket if you're coming to a gig in February. Get your ticket now because some prick is going to get it for their sister as a Christmas present, all right? Dog bless. back to the chat with the magnificent Patrick Frayne this second half is just about it's just me and him talking about art

and having crack I had a lot of fucking questions but there's no point and before you got into journalism or anything like that you started off in a band yeah like tell us about the music that you used to make

in your 20s so I was so when I was in my teens I was really in to dire straits and middle of the road music and I used to try and write songs but they were all from the perspective

of a middle-aged man going through a divorce basically like I wrote songs like about I had one called like Skies of Blue which is about looking back at your youths from the age of 50 or 60. But you're 20 I was 14

I had another one called I could probably play it if I had a guitar but it's um I had another one about Why don't you bring out your guitar and play it I don't have you have it I have a ukulelea but it's a mandolin but I can't really play anything on it yet okay yeah you're welcome to if you want

but then I formed a band in school and then I met my friend Dara who I formed my later band with who was really into punk and he gave me like he was like there was this thing like I was oh I'm into Eric Clapton Dyer Straits Genesis, still into them. But he was like, oh, no, no, you can't be doing with that.

And he was like, he gave me like the Dead Kennedys and Krasse and all these like punk bands. What about the fall? He wasn't into the fall because he thought that was too arty. Ah, for fuck's sake. Are you familiar with the fall, Marky Smith? Yeah, amazing band. So we formed a band when we were in college and we kind of started to release records when we were in our early 20s because there was a really good kind of DIY scene in

Dublin. It was kind of post, like it's years after you too, so no one was trying to get signed anymore. Everyone was just trying to release records and be part of a community. And we couldn't play, which is the best way to start a band. And like, I strongly believe everyone should start to band, no matter what age they are. Like, I think you should all do it. Because what's... Even if you can't play instruments? Yeah. Like seriously, because what is an instrument? Just bang pots and pans and pull up with something. It's just something that moves air into your ear. I was, yeah, because I was thinking about what I love about music is

music is abstract art that uses symmetrical vibrations of air and time. That is what music is. What I love about music now is it, like music doesn't, we don't really know why music evolved and we don't really know like there's theories about how it was used

to bond people together and that maybe it must be part of who we are, ironically. this sounds like name-dropping, but before you arrived, I was literally shouting at Bono. Bono was backstage there, and I was sitting down with him. Yeah.

And I was shouting at Bono about the evolution of Gregorian chant. He was into it. This sounds like a joke. No, literally Bono was there backstage, and I was chatting to him about Gregorian chant. But one of the things that I love, about um so you know i said there that music is symmetrical vibrations of air right so you familiar

with gregorian chant it's like what monks do so so gregorian chant came about about the 1100s and the thing with music and the human voice it's very related to the spaces that we made it in so monks used to sing in monasteries in the 1200s of 1300s a monastery back then was like a warehouse. Just a very simple room with a roof and the monks would sing in a way that they want to hear their voice coming back to them. So there's this big echo

and they all sing together and how they used to sing in the 1200s and 1300s was Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. Long notes. Long notes because they're into the echo. Then, and this is fucking beautiful. They built do you know Notre Dame Cathedral

in France? So Notre Dame Cathedral, the one that burnt down there a couple of years ago. Notre Dame Cathedral, the mathematics of its architecture went in fives. So it's, here's the main church, then it goes up

and then it goes up and up in fives until it goes into a conical shape. So the monks started singing in Notre Dame and what fucking happened was, they started to harmonise with the fucking mathematical in the fucking building.

So they'd sing a note and I'd say, it would stay accurate and they go but then that doesn't work anymore in Notre Dame so then someone else goes and then someone else goes

and it's the fucking mathematics of the building and no one told them because music is symmetrical vibrations of air so why would it not correspond with the mathematics of the space that is fucking amazing so I love this shit

so what we want and Bono loved that he probably didn't because that was just me shouting at him so what used to happen was they'd sing a note but it would stay echoing every time we mention a band that takes away from the book we mentioned

so you can end up getting a minus massage which is just Dave and McWilliams kicking you into the testicles but I think Bono gives you a massage if you mentioned five bands isn't that what happens? I don't want a massage from Bono I'll take a massage from David McWilliams because of his beautiful blue eyes but I don't want Bano

who looks a little bit like a fly giving me a massage. I hope he's here. He wants to look like a fly. He did a whole tour where it's like, I'm a fly now. That was his thing. I'm a fly. So the thing I did a chorus in music years ago and all the

stuff was like psychoacoustics as part of it. Yes. So if you in Western culture what happened was these big cathedrals Yeah. So if you sang a note and somebody else sang the next note, your note stayed echoing. So harmony developed. And what happened in Indian music was they played outside a lot. So rhythm became more important. And they have really, really complex rhythms. So all this shit, like the thing I love about art is it's a combination of people who are kind of nonconformist, but also working with the physics of space and the accidents of the real world. It's kind of outside of the awareness. Like I find this. with um east coast and west coast hip-hop so if you think of east coast hip-hop from the 90s

like fucking public enemy wu tang it's the beats are quite close it's quite claustrophobic because this music was created in new york where they're debuting the music outside of their friends and their tower blocks all around so the music is quite close but then you listen to like dr dr dray from the west coast

where they don't have high-rise buildings and now the music has all this space and no one decided that it just fucking happened that's beautiful that's really beautiful isn't it though when you think about music from that respect and it makes perfect sense

it's symmetrical vibrations of air like I did a podcast before on the discovery of stereo sound so and this is hard to explain now because we take stereo sound for granted. Stereo sound is you've two headphones on and there's separate sounds coming from each headphone. This wasn't always the case. It used to be mono. Mono is

if you listen to it on your phone with no headphones, it's one speaker. So when stereo sound became a thing in the 1950s, one of the things that drove it was in New York, people used to live in the city of New York and they had access to live venues. So if when you're at a live event, it's naturally stereo. It's the entire room and it's multiple instruments. But when people in New York moved to the suburbs, they no longer had access to live music. So now they started to want to recreate the sound of live in their own homes via two speakers. But the human mind had not figured out what stereo was. So the first ever stereo records that were released, they weren't music. Do you know what they were? Recordings of ping pong matches.

seriously because if you said to a human back in the 1950s what do you mean like they tried it with musicians what do you mean stereo do you want me to get the guitar and move around stage they couldn't understand it so they would record ping pong match bang bang bang bang and you go wow left speaker right speaker but what I compared it to was how humans also discovered stereo visuals which is linear perspective this one is hard to explain do you know that father ted scene where these cows are in the distance so that right there that is perspective but if you look at the history of visual art we didn't have perspective only up until the 1300s humans have been creating art for 30,000

years and we only discovered those horses are small because they're in the background and the first person to do it was an artist called Jato. He was an Italian artist in the 12th century. Frescoes. And Jotto was the first person to paint

a painting and it was a battle scene and Jado said, those horses are small therefore they're in the distance. It took the human mind years to figure this out. Jato figured it out because he lived in a city. So because he lived in a city there was architecture

and as soon as there were buildings he was able to go oh linear perspective the buildings helped his eye to go things in the background are smaller this is it's hard to understand

but I'll give you a beautiful example of it when the French were colonising the Middle East in the 1700s the French were trading with Islamic tribes

and these Islamic tribes were strict Islam okay and this was the 1700s and these Islamic tribes also they dealt with horses as part of their life they lived and bred horses horses was all they give a fuck about but within strict Islam you're not

allowed to paint anything that God created that's why when you see Islamic art it's mostly just geometrical designs because within Islam mathematics is the language of God. But you don't paint a man. You don't paint a horse. You don't paint a cow because God created that. So it's a sin to paint that thing. So the French in the 1700s, the French were

doing a type of art called neoclassicism, which is a very realistic type of art. Is anyone familiar with the paintings of Jacques-Louis David? Okay. Let's just say he was able to paint horses really well. If you saw a Jacques Louis David painting of a horse, you'd go, fuck me, that's a good horse. Wow! That is the best horse I've ever seen painted. When the

French, they went to the Islamic tribes in the desert and brought them the gift of a beautiful Western painting of a horse, they couldn't see it. They literally, here's a class painting of a horse, lads. Their brains could not

see it as a horse. They saw it as just a lump of brown because they had never been exposed to a painting of a 2D representation of a 3D object. So that's the human brain. We need to learn it. We need to learn it to see stuff. And when we're kids, you're exposed to all this stuff and you think it's really natural, which is where cultural differences come in. And then you kind of learn how to do it and then you can do it.

But it's not natural. It's just different. It's learned and taught to us. That was a bit of a fucking tangent. No, it was good. Like, you were saying earlier about, like, you'd have loved to have gone to Trinity to do literature. But I don't think you lost anything by not going to Trinity. I think one of the, like, like, one of the things, I was saying it to outside,

like one of the things I find fascinating is a lot of the people I knew over the years who did those courses, they kind of just stopped learning. I was talking to Simon Cooper about his book Chums here yesterday. and he is really critical of, say, the Oxford education. And he says the problem with it is when you go to an inverted comma's elite school, what happens is a lot of people leave at 21 and go, I'm done. You know, I've learned everything now. And the thing that's really important, like I'm kind of fascinated with what I was going to say

about everyone should start a band, like lifelong learning, lifelong creativity is not encouraged. You're encouraged to just kind of find your space. become that thing and then just work away at that yoke. But learning, being able to do creative stuff is something everyone is capable of, but it's kind of been bet out of us. Like, do people recognize that? Do you know why it's been bad out of us? Yeah.

Because, so every single person in this audience played with crayons or Lego as a kid. Isn't that correct? Yeah. Then what happens is you go to school at about three years of age. and the teacher decides you're good at crayons and you're shit and then some people go

oh I guess I'm shit and then you have the artie kids and the not arty kids but the fact of the matter is creativity and when I say creativity I don't mean creating something I mean the act of play

because that's what like my job now and I'm a professional fucking artist my job is not to create good art but to find myself in a place of playing and if I'm playing and the beauty of play means

when you're playing with Lego as a kid you're not thinking about making something good you're thinking about I'm doing Lego and doing Lego feels amazing if I can do that with a short story with a podcast it will end up good but if I start thinking I need to make something good I'm going to write picky blinders

seriously do you not like picky blinders season one was good and then it turned into like just a perfume commercial what I don't like about Peaky Blinders is

if instead of like writing a script they go why don't we just have people walking in slow motion to a Jack White song instead and that's all they've fucking done

and now it's like how about we sell our own brand of Peaky Blinders Jane as well so I'm being a bit harsh now and I know fucking Killian Murphy as well so I shouldn't be talking about this shit. Name dropping again.

That's one point less from the David McWilliams massage. You were not going to get that massage. If you name drop, you end up getting a massage from Fintin O'Toole. Yeah. I'm in the Irish Times, so I've had his massages and they're, like he's quite

an important thinker, but he's not great at massage. What I was going to say... Yeah, I don't want to... Yeah, yeah. I can't... I'm imagining Fintin O'Toole give me... No. I'd have a chat with him. So when they've done studies, right? There's this kind of, I, studies. Studies. Studies. You need to no tools massage technique. Sorry. I keep getting distracted from my point. But making art, they've done studies on people. And so consuming art is good for it. Like,

it's good to an extent. You kind of got solace from it. But they have done studies. They've put things in people's brains. And when you're making stuff, it's properly good for you. And there was this kind of weird thing at the start of the 20s. century when the Arts Council was being started in Britain where I read a book called What Good of the Arts by John Kerry. He was talking about this and you were there's the fifth book lads. Go on. And at the start when they were starting the Arts Council in Britain and all the other arts councils kind of copied it. They had a debate about whether art should be for the people like to improve them you know because the people the people are idiots. That's the sea of

out there shaking up the can so you don't deconstruct society which are artistic message. So the debate was arts for the people or arts by the people and they went with arts for the people which is nice but it's a bit patronising and paternalistic and the more I think about it, the more I think

that it should have been arts by the people. Arts Council should have been about encouraging like people all over country of the Arts Council is aimed to do stuff and create and make stuff, not because they might be the best artist in the world, but because making art is

it feels good and it feels amazing. And there's this weird thing in our culture where it's decided that there are people up on stages. It's a bit of a self-destruction. And then there's the people who watch them. And the reality is art was never meant to be that.

Like the professionalisation of art is like 20th century. If you look at the history that it's the proximity of art with power. So if you look at the 20th century Western art you look at who were the patrons so for most of from the 1100s onwards

the patrons were the church and the church's job was employ a lot of artists like if you're kind of thinking how come there's so many paintings about the Bible it wasn't necessarily a bunch of artists going I'm into Christ lords like no

it's like the person who's paying for this is a bishop or a canon or a pope so i got to paint some bible shit to earn a living so that's why and and the thing with art in the middle ages is that people who were artistic were considered it wasn't their artistic ability god it was god channeled themselves through a human being because they didn't have fucking iPads didn't have photographs if you could paint a painting in the twelve hundreds first of all not many people would see it the only people who would see it would be rich people so they would find people who are artistic to go, God is channeling themselves through this person, they're touched by God and I am their patron and here's the wonderful painting of this scene from the Bible

and aren't I great that I funded this and then you get to the Renaissance and it moves away from the Pope and the cannons to bankers, the Medici family and then you get Renaissance art but at all times art has a proximity to power and what you have with that is the capitalistic relationship of you're deconstructing the dokey festival

I know I know I know but you have there is the art you are the observer and there is no fucking in between there is the art you're the observer and the art is something that can be bought with money whereas before that if you look look as the fucking stone age onwards.

But seriously, art was participatory. Every member of society got together with art. The Soviets got it right. But they did. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, if you look as before it got really toxic, when they were idealistic, the Soviets had the dilemma of,

right, okay, we're starting a communist society here, which means that we need to get a bunch of people from the countryside to come and work in factories. So what they would do, they would stage plays in factories where every single member of the factory was part of the play. There's no such thing as being talented, there's no such thing as being an artist. Everybody participates.

And the art isn't about one piece that you admire. It's process-based. This is what I try to do with them. Have you ever seen the shit I do on Twitch with Red Dead Redemption? I haven't seen your Twitch stuff. So over lockdown, I do this thing where I go on to Twitch, and the thing with Twitch is everybody can, I'm only knocked the poor old doggie wine.

Everybody on Twitch can participate. Everybody is looking and everybody can comment. So what I do on Twitch is I play the game Red Dead Redemption. You know that game, yeah? Yeah, you do. So I play that game, but then I have a bunch of instruments with me and I have a looping pedal. So I write songs and record them,

the moment to the events of the video game with people in the comments suggesting things to me. So therefore there's no more artist and observer. Everybody is involved collectively in the art. Have you ever come across Cornelius Cardi?

You'll see four claps at the back there from the... He was like a really political avant-garde musician in the 60s and he became kind of... He was like a student of Stockhausen and he became a little bit disenchanted

by how much it was controlled by the academics, the bourgeoisie, and he wanted to bring it to factories. So he decided that he started this thing called the Scratch Orchestra, which was, it would be made up of people like him who were like musically trained, but anyone else could be part of it.

And then everyone was involved, and the job of the musically trained people was to bring someone who wasn't musically trained along. So there could be an amazing fiddle player and there could be somebody banging stones. and the fiddle-pair would go, yeah, yeah, good, that's good, that's good, on the off-beat, yeah, and there'd be like this big collective endeavour. Trained and untrained.

Or trained and untrained. The story of hip-hop is similar enough to that because, so if you look at how hip-hop emerged in New York in the 1970s, so there used to be quite a lot of African-American inner-city artists in the 50s and 60s who were jazz players, they had instruments, they would play, but also at that same time there was actually funding for the arts within those communities then in the 1970s they removed this funding

so you had a group of kids growing up in areas like Harlem where they didn't have access to a fucking trumpet they didn't have a trombone it didn't exist they'd taken the funding under schools so what happens is there's no instruments so what we do have is my dad's records and what we do have is a set of turntables

So they made that the thing that they use as an instrument. And what makes that revolutionary for me as well is those artists were effectively stealing music from other artists before. When you sample, you're stealing someone else's work. But within the African-American community, it's not really stealing. And here's why. Throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, especially with like du-up music or soul music, what used to happen with African-American musicians

is some African-American musician would create a song then they'd go to a record label and the label would say to this person who's poor I love this song here's a hundred quid and the person whose poor is going oh my God a hundred crid

wow they signed the song away and then the record label steals it and it makes fucking millions that the artist never sees so that was happening with soul funk and doo-op so when hip-hop artists were sampling soul and funk from the 60s and 70s

they weren't stealing they were re-appropriating shit that was stolen from their community Isn't that amazing? Yeah it's also how folk culture works so I a few maybe a month ago I interviewed

a really good folk band two brothers ye vagabonds they're a really good band Where they're from? They're from Carlo but they're a real one person from I couldn't have

tell if that was one person or one person who could make themselves sound like two people it was like their vocal card split so what what

so they got really into the traditions from where their parents are from and are in Moore and Duny Gaul and they started going into the archive

and what a lot of folk musicians do is they find older songs it's not the tradition isn't about writing new music the tradition is about a new

interpretation of an old song so they'd be sitting in a folk session and they'd hear an amazing song and then they'd go into the traditional music archive in Dublin and they'd listen to all these versions and the thing they realized is when you find the earliest version and sometimes it's sheet music written by some guy in the 19th century because there was always these collectors the earliest version wasn't great and what happened is every singer who sang that song added a twist changed the verse added a new verse so it was like this cumulative collective

endeavour. So when I was at a festival So it's a consistent conversation. It's a constant conversation. It's collective. It's not, music wasn't owned, music was passed on. Yeah. Which is how it used to work before things were commercialised. Like recipes of food.

Yes. Because we don't, food is grand. It's like you can pass those things on and we don't try and take it. And we don't go, you just plagiarise that, the sound? Yeah. I want to ask you, like music is kind of where you started with creativity.

Yeah. So is music at the bedrock of what you do? Like it's still a big part of what you do. Is it different how you write? So the first thing I actually started with was painting. So I started painting and then I got into making music when I was like 15. But when I started making music, I used to make music the way I used to paint. So when I used to paint

I haven't painted now in fucking years because I just don't have time for it but if I was painting a landscape if I wasn't great at painting a tree I wouldn't call up my friend who's good at painting trees and say can you paint this tree in my painting I'd simply learn how to paint trees so then when I started producing music

the concept of I can't play bass let's bring my buddy in who's good at base didn't work so I was like I need to learn to play bass myself. So I made music the way I painted paintings, which is I do every single thing myself. But now that I'm writing, I write short stories the way that I made music. And I consider a lot of the rubber bandit stuff to be short stories. Like a song like Dad's Best Friend. It's a short story. That's a fucking short story. Not just the lyrics. The music. The music is there is not one snare beat or bass sound in that song that doesn't mean something and that isn't

in a conversation with another piece of work like Dad's the best friend it's half prodigy and half Sepul Chorda do you know what I mean and if someone was to say it to me what about that high hat

what about that noise I could tell you straight away that's exactly that album that came from that's what that came from and it was me bringing those influences in so I write stories the way I make music

and the way I paint and I make music the way I paint and this all makes total sense to me inside my brain. So do you feel differently when you're making a bit of music than when you're right or do you have the same feeling? So the thing for me is the feeling of flow. And flow for me is when I literally leave my body and I exist as like a vibrational thing. It's amazing.

That to me is the greatest feeling in the whole world and it's what I chase at all times. it's when I leave this world and I'm creating and I can't describe it it's beautiful, it's wonderful when I make music the flow that I feel is bodily so it's a bodily flow

it's not very cognitive when I write it's a cognitive flow so music to me I can't describe how it feels because it's a bodily vibration but when I write a story it feels like

I'm sitting in a cinema and I'm watching a film that's been made just for me and humor so I'm also fascinated but so one of the things I really like about your podcast and like you generally some people who make art

don't like to analyze it like some people I've interviewed people and they just go I don't like to think about it I've interviewed funny people I don't like to think about it I fucking love thinking about it and you love thinking about it right so with humor

where it does were you always funny and where does that come from I'd love if you went No, I was dead serious till 19 and a half I was always funny because that was my way of survival

when I was in school because I was called stupid because I was called disruptive I was thrown into the worst class in school and the worst class in school in Limerick contained quite a lot of people who are heavily traumatised kids who came from

environments where there was a lot of violence in their communities or the parents might have been violent or kids who came from their uncle might have been in a gang and I got thrown into these classes because I was I couldn't be put anywhere else because I was disruptive and I was called stupid

and when I found myself in these classes about the age of 12 I looked around and I said well I'm not fucking hard I can't fight and I don't want to fight and within this community violence was a language and there was a lot of fighting

so the one way around that is you'd be a mad bastard so if I don't want to get picked on I have to be funny so I learned at a young age be the person who makes everybody laugh and then no one will kick your head in that's pretty much

and from there then I turned my creativity towards humour so humour has always been a thing for me and as well humor is just amazing like the feeling of once you're laughing is a fucking orgasm of the brain

like laughing and coming are quite similar that they really are though you should try doing both at the same time you can't you can't unfortunately you can't you can't but laughter is a form of emotional ejaculation

and it just happens out and over it has a lot of bodily release you don't control it you feel amazing and afterwards, I can't wank out a laugh, though, can I? I think that's worth

for soon. That'll be my massage from Dave Williams afterwards. Can you make me laugh, David? Five minutes. All right. Oh, shit, okay. We got to put a microphone

out into the audience now, so kindly, the R&B singer, Usher, has come all the way from Los Angeles to hold a microphone tonight. So Usher is here.

We do have a mic for the audience, don't we? One minute. Usher. Where's Usher? I tried to get Cisco, but he wasn't available. Can I ask, did you, have you figured out when humor is useful and when humor isn't useful?

Because this is something I found fascinating when I was writing my book. Two seconds, Usher, I'm sorry. Humor is useful. in diffusing tension humour is useful when humour is useful in diffusing tension humour isn't useful in any

environment for solemnity as a rule so solemnity which is something I have serious problem with solemnity is the outward performance of seriousness and we see this a lot in society you see it in the art world you see it in the dokey festival you see it you know what I mean

you see it in the literature world you see it in religion you see it in the monarchy, you see it in the military. Did you believe there recently? Fucking ridiculous. Like seriously, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather was a violent, violent bastard. And now I own everything. And the way to show you all that I own everything is I'm going to wear this silly hat.

And you have to act dead fucking serious. And you can't laugh. You can't laugh That is solemnity Monarchy uses it Military uses it big time So any situation Where solemnity is a given

You must not let laughter in Art galleries Go to a fucking art gallery A modern art gallery And you've got a plaster cast As someone's cock up on the wall With a big long essay beside it I was interrogating the mechanics

Of society And this is why I plaster casted my cock the one thing you're not allowed to do is laugh so the art world uses solemnity too but surely that's where it's most useful is like oh yeah go straight go into it like Marcel Duchamp of the Dada movement had the right idea

he said go into a gallery with a fucking hatchet Marcel Duchamp Marcel Duchamp when he he was the person who put it tied it in a gallery and called it art so he was part of the Dada movement and he went in and said all right World War I is happening

this is mad this is the first time we've ever seen industry involved in war. We have machine guns that can take down a hundred people at once. We've never seen this before. This is so profoundly irrational that art is useless and the only rational response

is to put a toilet in a gallery. And that's da-da, that's absurdity, that's surrealism. And so humor I love the way like sporadic people really get certain days. So humor is

useless in any situation where salinity is the rule? So I find it really useful. I love funny stuff and I'm really defensive. You use humour a lot in your columns. Yeah, so humour is a really good way of explaining things, which you do a lot. So humour is a really good way of giving people an alternative framework for something solid to just go, here's the insane version of that. And I think humor, I think humor is.

is a teaching tool? It's a teaching tool and also I use humour quite a lot when I speak about mental health. I use humour when I'm speaking about suicide because here's the thing with solemnity. Sometimes mental health conversations demand solemnity

and all that solemnity does is it keeps us disconnected from ourselves. Here's a classic example. You go to your best friend's dad dies and you go to the funeral and this is your best friend who you've known your whole fucking life.

So you go to the funeral, you go to the front row where your best friend is sitting, someone you know your whole life or you have a lovely intimate relationship with, and you're expected to go, sorry for your troubles. That is salinity. What you should be doing is having a hug. What you should be doing is having crack. But instead, sorry for your troubles. That's solemnity. So sometimes when someone says, I've got anxiety, I have depression, I'm suicidal, all of us. goes go, uh-oh, it's really serious, better behave seriously,

but all that does is it creates an unauthentic relationship with the issue. So what I do is let's, I can still be very serious about something while also being humorous about it. I can care deeply about something while also being humorous. And the example I use is that we do have a healthy relationship with injuries. If your pal breaks their leg and they get a cast, what do we do? do we fucking sign it like that's gas

you draw fucking cock and balls on their cast that is amazing why can't we do that for someone's depression do you get what I'm saying let's put a microphone into the audience

you can ask a question about anything in the whole world as long as we do it as long as we do five minutes and don't ask any questions about the massage in case we jeopardize it

yeah can I go anyone you need to go first with the massage? side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone throw your hands up. What are we in 50? I see something. Look, do you know what? The person who reluctantly went like that. Oh, you're putting your jacket on. Okay. Come on, lad. Does anyone got a... There we go. This gentleman. Hold on me. Give him a mic phone.

Are you left-handed, right-handed? You have to say it into the mic or it's the people listening to the podcast, won't hear it. Are you left-handed right-handed? I'm right-handed. I seem like a left-handed person, but I'm right-handed. All right-handed. And Any more questions? Are you for real? How has this veil of selectity come across the entire room where you're scared? Why are I feel like we're back in school? We need to put a cock and bows on this cast. You can ask a co.

Sir, you just when you were saying, I forget the name and it was hard to pronounce anyway, but the artist two first came up with the distance. G-I-O-T-O. Another fellow is Paolo Ucello, yeah. And he said it was based on, because you live in the city and buildings. Yes. Or were you not looking at trees and mountains and stuff? So the thing is, no, but the thing is nature, nature is chaotic.

So nature, trees don't form in beautiful, perfect lines. Only human-made buildings do. So human-made buildings that had to adhere to the mathematics of architecture. all of a sudden now you had a perfect line perfect lines don't exist in nature so that's what's caused that advance that leap in thinking holy shit there's a perfect line

and that's what caused the human eye to attach to that any more questions there's a question on the front row we've got the three oh yeah over yonder here how long we get them over where's usher gone thank you usher there's someone in the front road I really wish that Timberland produced some of your songs

and he never, Timberland never got a chance to work with Usher and I don't know why. Go on? So when you were diagnosed with autism Yeah. Why did you ask the question? What were you looking to find out?

I was sick of people calling me eccentric in my real life, in my non-plastic bag wearing life. and everyone who knows me kind of just was like oh he's mad he's mental he's insane he's mad

and not in a bad way not in a way that he's harmful or he's mean it's just he's fucking crazy and the thing is when everybody says that to you all the time it's not very nice I'd quite like to be normal

especially at things like weddings like one thing I found weddings was a big example for me. Every time I get invited to weddings in Ireland I would slowly begin to realise that I'd go to the wedding and I'd sit down at the table and I'd look around

and I'd go, where are my friends? I don't know you. I don't oh I'm sitting with every fucking lunatic I'm at the lunatic table. This man has a ferret. And literally every wedding it's like a dude with a ferris I think this fella is a fucking

dissident Republican this person is clearly an alcoholic and I realised slowly every single wedding I got invited to even my friend's weddings I was separately at a table with a group of misfits and I'd realise slowly

what had happened when the person was planning their wedding they're thinking of who sits where and then when it came to me it's like can't sit him behind auntie mora no no he's going to start talking about art no you can't sit him but no no no

and slowly but surely I'm sitting at the lunatic table with every wedding and the more normal I try to act the more fucking insane I came across as so in my 30s

I just said fuck it maybe I'm autistic so I went and found out and it turns out I am so that's what did it just consistently continually being referred to as eccentric

and me saying to myself I'm not trying to be eccentric I'm trying my best to be normal I don't want to be eccentric I can be eccentric with a bag in my head that's my job but not when I'm at weddings I want to just be a nice normal person

I think we'll call it a night all right thank you so much to my guest Patrick Frane thank you that was magnificent Patrick that was lovely

we didn't get to talk about your career at all but we had a beautiful chat about art we did thank you to all of ye wonderful people from God skills this is the Blindby podcast God bless

that was a bit of a long one wasn't it but that's the beauty of podcasts don't have to listen to that in one sitting you can dip into it throughout the week that's what I like about a long podcast all right I'm absolutely fucked I need to take some pan at all and be horizontal I'm

I'm not well so rubber talk genuflect to a swan Wink at a snail I'll be back next week Hopefully with a hot take You glorious Christmas bastards

I'm not blowing kisses at you Because I'm sick Alright I know that doesn't make any fucking sense Doesn't make any sense at all But it just doesn't feel right Doesn't feel right to blow kisses while I'm sick I'll hug the microphone I'll bring you into my breast

Although you don't want to be doing that when I'm sick either I'll just gonna wave at ye you can't hear that would you can't have put my hand in front of my voice like that oh that's the sound of me waving in front you'd still get sick if I did that

wouldn't you? Because I'm making noise alright look I'll catch you next week dog bless Thank you. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be able to be. And...

...that... ...you're going to... ...and... ...you... ...but... ...and... ...and... Don't know.

Oh. And... ...whoe ...and ...you know ...and ... ...

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

I don't know. We're going to be able to be. I don't know.