The Blindboy Podcast - The Quantum bones of St Rosalia, floating in the artists shit

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Art History podcast. A quantum theory reading of a 17th-century holy relic and an artist who canned their own feces Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bring your neighbour to the sauna, you barefaced shawnas. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. I hope you all had a charming week. I got bitten by a mosquito on the inside of my earlobe. And the worst part of that, it's not even the bite. The bite isn't mildly irritating. It's the intrusive experience of the mosquito being inside my earlobe and then hearing its wings amplified 30 fold because of its proximity to my eardrum so for a split second the mosquito

sounds like a helicopter flying through helium. Actually I wouldn't mind trying that. I'm fascinated by helium. You know when you inhale helium from a balloon and then your voice goes all squeaky. It's because helium is lighter than air. The atoms of helium are smaller than the atoms of oxygen that would normally be in your lungs. So when you inhale helium, your lungs. So when you inhale helium sound travels twice as fast through helium than it does in air and then we hear this as being high pitched. So if you could fill an entire room with helium and then you put a helicopter inside of the room the helicopter would sound high pitched like a mosquito. I wonder what a helicopter got twice as fast if it was in a room full of helium,

because technically there should be less resistance on the blades. And then there's this other gas. It's like the opposite of helium. It's heavier than air. It's called sulfur hexafluoride. And when someone inhales a balloon full of sulfur hexafluoride, their voice goes all low-pitched, because sound, which is vibrations of air,

travels slower through the heavier gas. But inhaling sulfur hexafluoride can be pure dangerous, because it's heavy and it can get stuck at the bottom of your lungs and you can't breathe it out. Your lungs aren't designed to breathe out a heavy gas. But I wonder if I could put that heavy gas in my earlobe and it was just there localised in my earlobe and then a mosquito came down to bite the inside of my ear.

Technically, the mosquito's wings would sound low-pitched like a helicopter. The fuck am I talking about? Do you ever look up at the sky and you just see a single helium balloon floating away, floating higher and higher towards the clouds? Isn't it always very poetic and sad? Like I've never looked up and seen an itinerant helium balloon floating through the air and not felt an existential sadness. First of all you're wondering who lost their helium balloon and you immediately think

of a weeping toddler. Some poor upset weeping toddler whose helium balloon has floated away. Why is that so upsetting? When a child's, when a toddler's helium balloon floats away, that's the first time a toddler has to think about their own mortality. That's the first real lesson in the disappointment of life. You get this helium balloon. It's like a normal balloon but better. You can't believe that this balloon is capable of standing up by itself. Bright, shiny, round and red.

Remaining erect on the end of the time. That it doesn't float down to the ground. You marvel at how it seems to defy all known physics. This doesn't make sense. This balloon shouldn't be standing up like this. And then you let go and it flies away. And you look around to all the adults around you and they can do fuck all about it. Your parents are powerless

because there's something more powerful at play and that force is the suffering of existence. Everything beautiful dies and there's nothing you can do about it. Also, when your helium balloon floats away and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller up into the distance, when you focus on it, you reach a point where you experience what's known as megalophobia. It's that uneasy feeling you get.

It's the opposite of vertigo. It's the uneasy feeling you get when you look up at a very tall building. You feel dizzy looking up at your balloon getting smaller and smaller in the distance. And then you get this anxiety. And the anxiety is, I am tiny. I am insignificant insignificant and I can be crushed and that feeling is megalophobia and a toddler is confronted with the certainty of their own mortality when their first helium balloon floats away

and then I'm on the other side of town looking up at that helium balloon floating away and that's all I'm thinking about a disappointed toddler who just learnt about death. And then the worst part about seeing an untethered itinerant helium balloon floating towards the clouds is you get that little moment of fucking hell fair play to that balloon, Jesus Christ it's really holding its own. It's gone very high. Wow, I wonder is it going to make it as far as Tipperary. That's miles away up into the sky.

And then you see the balloon. It goes up too high. And it can't handle the atmospheric pressure. And it bursts. And I used to get pure upset as a child looking at that. I'd see the helium balloon float into the air and then burst in the clouds. And I was in school at the same time learning about heaven and souls. And I got it into my head that when you die and your soul leaves your body and you float up to heaven,

that you'll burst before you get to the clouds like a helium balloon. The only time seeing a helium balloon in the air doesn't fill me with a sense of existential sadness is when there's multiple helium balloons, like if a car dealership releases 50 of them at once. That's enjoyable because when you see all the helium balloons together, there's a sense of community, and they just look like very amusing rotund birds. There's a sense of community. And they just looked like very amusing

rotund birds. There was an incident in America in 1986. It was called Balloon Fest. Where they tried to release 1.5 helium balloons into the fucking air. And it was a terrible idea.

It was this local advertising company or something wanted to release 1.5 million balloons into the atmosphere to get press. Now 1.5 million helium balloons, that's a lot. So when they had them on the ground all filled up with helium, they put a mesh over it to keep them down. It was three stories high. It was the height of a three-story building. So what happened was they were about to release the 1.5 million balloons but they heard that it was going to start raining. So they released them all early. So these 1.5 million,

it had never been done before, went up into the air in Cleveland and it was fucking terrifying. It blocked out the sun. Everything became dark in Cleveland. 1.5 million is the population of Dublin. Now remember I mentioned earlier that when you see one lonely helium balloon in the air and it goes up and up and up towards the clouds and then it bursts. So it turns out helium balloons are designed like that. They're supposed to burst when it gets up to a certain height and then the little bit of rubber descends to the earth. But in Cleveland at Balloon Fest 1986, the cold front created by the rain meant that the balloons couldn't ascend high enough to burst. So 1.5 million balloons descended to the earth, fully inflated. There was a storm. The balloons were clogging drains. There was flooding. There was car crashes.

There was balloons for miles. There's this lake called Lake Erie and hundreds and thousands of these balloons descended and remained on the surface of Lake Erie. But on the same day two fishermen had gone out on their boat and they went missing. So when the coast guard went out with their helicopters into the middle of Lake Erie to try and find the fishermen and their boat they couldn't because there were several hundred thousand balloons on the surface of the water. They couldn't, because there were several hundred thousand balloons on the surface of the water. They couldn't find a boat. They couldn't find two people if they were in the water looking for help.

It was a very tragic real life version of Where's Wally? And the two fishermen died. I didn't want to talk about balloons this week, not that much. I wanted to talk about the bones of a saint. Do you ever see in.

In mafia films. Like in the Godfather part 2. In particular. Which is my favourite Godfather film. The first half in particular. But in the Godfather. And also in the Sopranos. They'll have.

An Italian American neighbourhood neighborhood in New York and there's this street party and then they have this procession where people are like carrying this Holy Mary or whatever the fuck it is and there's music and sometimes people pin money onto the statue of Holy Mary. Well one of the the statues that's carried, it's not Holy Mary. It's this saint called Saint Rosalia. And Rosalia is the patron saint of Palermo, which is the main city in Sicily, in Italy. Sicily is like, I don't think it's an island. It looks like an island. The very, very bottom of Italy. if Italy is shaped like a boat Sicily is the helium balloon that it's kicking

but a huge amount of Italian American immigrants are from this area of Italy the southern area of Italy known as the Mezzogiorno because it was traditionally quite a poor area where a lot of people would emigrate

this is why in like Brooklyn, Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, when they have the feast in September, they have a procession with a statue of Saint Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo. Now, I know about Saint Rosalia because of an absolutely gorgeous painting of her that was done by the Dutch master, Anthony van Dyckck in the 1600s. Who was Saint Rosalia? She was this young girl that was born of like a really posh family, a Norman family in Sicily in the 1200s and she was a very religious child and her story is kind of similar to the story of Buddha.

And her story is kind of similar to the story of Buddha. She was just this religious girl in a very wealthy rich family who grew up in a castle. And she renounced pleasure and money and food and all the trappings of wealth to instead live a spiritual life. So when Rosalia was about 12 she fucked off up to the mountains on her own and said I'm gonna just live in a cave for the rest of my life in prayer and apparently two angels led her up to find this cave and Rosalia who was a little child spent her life as a hermit praying and meditating in this cave where she eventually just died up there and that was it that was her life in the 1200s but how did Rosalia this girl become a saint well fast forward about 400 years to 1624 so the painter Anthony Van Dyck who was Dutch now he was a really really famous painter at the time he was a baroque master

he was a portrait painter he used to paint the portraits of kings and queens and would have been one of the most important painters at the time. So Van Dyck gets called down to Sicily to paint a member of the Spanish royal family, I think it was. But as soon as Van Dyck arrives in Sicily, in Palermo, he can't paint the Spanish royalty because the city is in lockdown. Like fucking COVID lockdown. Bubonic plague has come to Palermo and Van Dyck is stuck on the island.

However one of the reasons that Palermo goes into quarantine and lockdown so early so the story goes is because the ghost of Rosalia started to appear to people and warned them that a plague was coming. So Rosalia who was this little girl who died in a cave 400 years previously now starts appearing. She appeared to a sick woman and she appeared to a hunter and when she appeared to the hunter Rosalia said to the hunter I'm gonna lead you to the cave where I spent my life and that's where you're gonna find my bones so this is the talk of the town and this is the reason Anthony Van Dyke didn't paint Spanish royalty instead during his period of quarantine he painted this beautiful beautiful painting called Saint Rosalia interceding for the plague stricken

of Palermo. So anyway, a team of people go up the mountain to the cave where the ghost of Saint Rosalia told this hunter to go and they start digging in the cave and they find her fucking bones. 10,000 people die in Palermo of the plague, but everyone starts to say it would have been so much more if Saint Rosalia didn't reveal herself and warn us of the plague. So her bones become a relic within the Catholic Church. Not only do her bones become a relic, but because Rosalia revealed herself and warned about the plague, she's performed a miracle, which means she becomes Saint Rosalia and these are not the bones of a saint. When the pandemic is over her bones are paraded through the city of Palermo around August September and they start to call

her the little saint and now the procession of Saint Rosalia is born which is the same procession you see in the Godfather and in the Sopranos. It becomes an Italian-American tradition too because of emigrants from Sicily. So this tradition continues and continues in Sicily. Now relics were very, very important in the Middle Ages and the late Middle Ages. Relics effectively were, serve as tourism if a small little town or a city had a relic and a relic is the body part of a saint or the body part of a holy figure i did a full podcast before about christ's foreskin and how that became a relic even though it wasn't real

but the bones of saint rosalia were a very popular relic. And Christians would travel from all around Europe to Palermo to see the bones of Saint Rosalia and to pray beside him. These little bones of a child displayed on a piece of velvet or whatever. But in 1825, which is 200 years after the plague where Rosalia becomes a saint, this English geologist called William Buckland decides to have his honeymoon in Palermo. So he travels there. Now William Buckland is quite an important person. He was a geologist and also a paleontologist. He was one of the first paleontologists,

which is the study of dinosaur bones. And what Buckland pioneered was the study of fossilised dinosaur shit, caprolite as it's known. And the reason fossilised dinosaur shit is so important is that it was one of the... First off, it told us what dinosaurs ate that it was one of the first half it told us what dinosaurs ate and it also gave us

the first clue that dinosaurs are more closely related to birds than lizards because birds don't piss. Birds piss and shit all at once and that's what bird poo is. Dinosaurs were the same just massive so William Buckland goes to Palermo

and he's a religious man, and while he's there, he wants to see the bones of St. Rosalia. So because he's a famous geologist, the local priests are like, yeah, we'll show you her bones, come on. So Buckland goes to see the bones of St. Rosalia, so that he can get down and pray and venerate the relic. And then he looks at them and he goes,

these aren't the bones of a child. These are the bones of a fucking goat. You've been worshipping the bones of a goat for 200 fucking years. This is a goat. I've lived with goats my entire life. I dig up dinosaur bones. I know about bones and these are the bones

of a goat. Now the catholic priests are fucking mortified. The fuck do you mean you English cunt? These aren't the bones of a goat. These are the bones of Saint Rosalia who revealed herself in the 1600s and warned Sicily about a plague. Because here's what happened. Do you remember the start of coronavirus lockdown? When people started hoarding toilet paper and blaming 5G telephone poles for spreading coronavirus. Like a mass hysterical distraction from what's actually happening. But that's what happened in 1624 when the plague hit. People were like, oh fuck, there's a plague, there's quarantine, this is terrifying. Better distract ourselves. Oh class. Turns out an early medieval 12 year old appeared as a ghost,

told us about the plague and then led us to our bones in a cave. So everyone just got on board with that to distract themselves from the fucking pandemic. They dug up the bones of a goat in a cave and then decided that they were going to worship him for 200 years. Now Saint Rosalia's bones were world famous. The priests can't go to the people of Sicily and say sorry about that lads it's actually a goat. We got it wrong. Yeah there shouldn't actually be a Saint Rosalia at all. It's a goat's bones. So the priests had to make a decision quickly. When William Buckland was like these are goat's bones they said no. Here's what happened. You William Buckland are a non-believer. So Saint Rosalia turned her bones into the bones of a goat

because you were looking. And when a believer looks at her bones then they turn back into the bones of a small child okay that's what happened and from that moment on Saint Rosalia's bones were kept locked away in a wooden casket so no one could see them because they didn't want any other cunt coming along who knows about bones to say they're the bones of a goat lads so they locked them away but what they did inadvertently is they created a type of quantum experiment long before quantum theory because William Buckland wasn't quiet about this he told people here lads they're over in Sicily worshipping the fucking bones of a goat. He wasn't quiet about it. So the church said here's the deal. The bones are in a box. You can't see them. You can't see them.

But if you were to look into this box they are either the bones of a goat or the bones of a saint depending on who's looking. If you look into this box with belief in your heart then they change into the bones of a saint but if you look into it with disbelief then you're going to see the bones of a goat and that there is near identical to Schrodinger's cat which is a thought experiment in quantum physics. So within quantum mechanics you have what's known as a quantum superposition. So basically, a subatomic particle can be in one of two states, and it changes depending on whether someone's looking at it or not. Now that's mad because it challenges everything we fundamentally know about objective reality. What is objective reality when on a subatomic level,

reality appears to be subjective? The particle changes behaviour depending on whether it's being observed or not. And in order to show how bizarre this is, a physicist called Erwin Schrodinger in the 1930s. He came up with this thought experiment called Schrodinger's cat. Basically you place a cat in a box. The box is closed. You can't see anything in there and there's also radioactive poison. There's a 50-50 chance that this radioactive poison will release and kill the cat. But if you don't open the box, how will you know? Under quantum mechanics, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time

in a quantum superposition of probability. And only when that box is opened will you know is it dead or is it alive. But if you don't look in, it's both at once. Now that's mad. But quantum mechanics is mad. But the Catholic Church had effectively created that experiment in the 1800s. With the bones of Saint Rosalia.

So they could avoid looking like fucking agents. Here's a box. Inside this box is either the bones of a goat. Or either the bones of a child or either the bones of a child depending on who's looking. I'd like to take things back to the balloons now because I knew there was a reason I was speaking about balloons. Specifically speaking about balloons and how losing a helium balloon and watching it float away confronted me as a child with the certainty of death. In art, that's known as memento mori. Throughout history in art and paintings,

if there's a skull or a skeleton or a grave, this exists in the artwork to remind the viewer of the inevitability of death. Memento mori, remember you will die. There was an Italian artist in the 1950s and 1960s called Piero Manzoni and he was an avant-garde artist which means as an artist he would be forever pushing the boundaries of what art is and he was a pioneer of conceptual art. Manzoni's work as an artist was a critique of consumerism and a critique of value especially within the art world. Who decides that this painting is worth several million quid? Who decides that that jacket over there is a very

expensive jacket because it's a designer jacket? He was critiquing the fetishisation of commodities. And one of his first works of art to do this was known as The Artist's Breath. Where Manzoni basically, he got a lot of red balloons, blew them up with his own breath. And then nailed them to a wooden plinth and exhibited it in a gallery and called it Artist's Breath. But what would happen is that the balloon would deflate. The sculpture would effectively disappear.

The piece of art would disappear. So how can you buy a piece of art? Why would someone spend a huge amount of money on this sculpture of a balloon if it's going to deflate and die and Manzoni was doing two things there he was critiquing value within the art world by creating something that you can't invest in there's no point in buying this it'll disappear by the end of the day. And also he was using the deflating balloon as a memento mori. It was symbolism within art to go, you will die. Nothing is permanent.

Everything decays. But it was his next sculpture that made him most famous and which reminds me of the bones of St. Rosalia and the Schrodinger's cat experiment. His most famous and which reminds me of the bones of Saint Rosalia and the Schrodinger's cat experiment. His most famous sculpture is known as Artist's Shit. Manzoni got 90 small cans like tins of tuna and on the outside he wrote Artist's Shit and on the inside of this sealed can which can't be opened is his shit that's the artwork a sealed can of human shit and this is art and manzoni valued them at the exact same value as gold that these 90 tins of my shit which can't be opened are the same value as gold and they will inflate in value in accordance with the market value of gold do you want to buy them so of course the art world said yes and he sold all of his 90 cans of shit and it's a very famous and radical

piece of art now if your first reaction is that's silly, that's so stupid, that's everything I hate about modern art. An artist taking a shit into a can, sealing it and calling it art. I hate this. That's so pretentious. But here's the thing. You're not supposed to admire it. You're not supposed to say this is brilliant this is great think of it instead as protest satire

joking critique by Manzoni shitting into tin cans sealing them and selling them for the same price as gold he's asking the question

how fucking far will this go how ridiculous and selling them for the same price as gold. He's asking the question, how fucking far will this go? How ridiculous has capitalism gotten? How stupid, silly and irrational is the art world? Are they willing to buy tins of my shit and pay good money for it if I just call it art? It asks the question, when does this stop and at what expense and yes it is absurd and yes it is offensive and yes it is shocking and yes it is ridiculous.

It's human shit in a can called art. It's all of those things I just mentioned. But you know what else is? The fact that consumerism only exists when people in the global south and poor countries are exploited and abused so that we can have cheap things. Here's what else is ridiculous and offensive and absurd. We have completely destroyed our planet so we can have things we don't need. The complete destruction of the environment didn't happen to meet our needs, it happened to meet our desires, our fetishization of commodities. Expensive clothes are made in sweatshops where people die. To exist in society, in capitalist society, in the West, the global North, each of us relies on the slave labour and exploitation of 70 people. And that was a finding that was arrived at.

I can't remember who arrived at that, but it was like a global report on exploitation and slavery. I made a documentary in 2019 for BBC about modern slavery and it contains hard facts and statistics around that if you want to see it. I think it's on YouTube now. It's called Blind Boy Understroys the World. Slavery. Even not right now. Even going back 200 years, empire, colonialism, the extraction of wealth, misery, genocide, slavery, enacted on one community to service the material desires, not needs, of the colonizing community. These things are real. So now look at Piero Manzoni's human shit

in a can called the artist shit that he's charging the price of gold. Now look at that as effectively a mirror. A mirror that he's holding up to that shit I just mentioned there. That's what that artwork is and that's the purpose that it there. That's what that artwork is,

and that's the purpose that it serves. It's a satirical question. And it was answered. Yes, we will pay the price of gold for your shit. And where are his cans of shit today? Because the thing is, with his previous sculpture in 1960, the Artist's Breath, this is a balloon filled with his breath and it dissipates these cans of shit are permanent that's the point it's preserved canning is a very reliable

way to keep something fresh for a long long time that's why he chose that vessel for the sculpture. Well, the cans of shit are still around today. Are people buying them for the price of gold? No, they're buying them for far, far, far more the price of gold. Manzoni's cans of shit are still being sold at art auctions for up to 300 grand each today. And here's the thing is there actual human shit inside

in the cans we'll never know because Manzoni quite cleverly made them out of steel so you can't x-ray them the only way to find out if these cans actually contain Manzoni's shit

is to open them. But the second you open it, it loses all its value. It's worth nothing. You've just destroyed a piece of art. And people are paying 300 grand for them so nobody is opening his can of shit. they're schrodinger shit they're rosalia's bones it's a quantum artwork one of manzoni's assistants has gone on record and said that it's not shit it's clay but we don't know the contents of those cans is both shit and not shit at the same time and it will only reveal itself when an observer looks

but to do so eradicates the value of the work and it just reminds me of the bones of that saint that are goat bones and human bones at the exact same time depending on who's looking and whether you believe it or not personally I don't believe that there's human shit in the cans on who's looking, and whether you believe it or not. Personally, I don't believe that there's human shit in the cans.

But I won't know. Now, I was thinking, what could someone do? The only thing I can think of nowadays is, if an artist could buy one of his cans for 300 grand, then film themselves opening it but to do so as an act of performance art and then sell that as a one-off NFT that can't be copied

and sell that for 300 grand that's the only thing I can think of whereby a performance- based artistic intervention occurs to find out whether they're actual shit or not. Because there's something in there. Okay let's have a little ocarina pause

and you'll hear a digitally inserted advert from Acast. Will you rise with the sun Thank you. across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th,

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

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

It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the Ocarina Pause. You would have heard an advert there. Hopefully for something that meets your needs and not your desires. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. This is a patron sponsored podcast.

This podcast is my full-time job. Existing as a writer and an artist is my full-time job. In order to deliver this podcast each week, I need space to fail, space to think, space to research and the time to do all this. I adore this work. I love delivering a new podcast each week, a monologue essay for you to eat with your ears. So if you're enjoying this podcast, if it brings you entertainment, if it brings you solace, if it brings you joy, if it brings you distraction, just please consider paying me for that work. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. This is how I earn a living. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free.

So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. It's a lovely model based on kindness and soundness. If you met me in real life, would you say, fuck it, I like Blind Boys podcast, I'd buy him a pint? Well, you can via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. Also, what it does is it keeps this podcast independent. Acast hosts this podcast, but my content and how I make this podcast is 100% independent. I record it, I write it, I produce it and most importantly I decide what goes out and I have full 100% creative control over the content. This is only possible because you the listener are funding it. If I was relying upon advertisers to fund this podcast I wouldn't

be able to maintain independence because an advertiser is going to come in and say, I don't think all that stuff about the saints bones and the tins of human shit aligns with our brand. Here's a list of 10 things that were trending on TikTok this week. Do the podcast about those. So I don't want to do that. I want to do a podcast about what I'm genuinely legitimately passionate about each week and that there is the reason that you're listening to this podcast because I get to be emotionally

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You can do that monetarily or simply by liking, sharing, leaving reviews and fucking word of mouth. I can't thank you enough for word of mouth and this podcast. The reason I have this fucking podcast is because of word of mouth. People enjoying this podcast and then telling a friend. So thank you. I'm going to answer a couple of questions for the second part of this podcast because I think the first half, that was a well-rounded hot take. So I'm going to answer a couple of listener questions

because I haven't done it in a couple of weeks. Kev asks, Blind Boy, can you do a podcast about gambling addiction specifically? I would like to do one down the line but again this is not something I would speak about myself I would speak to an expert about it. I'm not into gambling I have never been into gambling. I don't believe in support in gambling. I won't have a gambling company fucking advertise on this podcast. I won't do a gig if it's sponsored by a gambling company. I'm just not into gambling at all. I don't think there's such a thing as responsible gambling.

Like with alcohol, you can drink responsibly. You can drink responsibly. That such a thing as responsible gambling like with alcohol you can drink responsibly you can drink responsibly that's a thing gambling is just such a fucking slippery slope i tell you what very much turned me against gambling i was speaking to a mental health professional a few years back and they told me that they wouldn't work with clients who suffer from gambling addiction because the rate of suicide is so high and that sent shivers through me. So Karstie asks, I think you've mentioned before that your autism makes casual conversation difficult. All of your live podcast conversations seem to flow very naturally and I wondered if you have to do any specific prep for these. Each one is a high-stake conversation so I would have expected these to be very triggering yet it's clear you're enjoying them.

Well that yeah that's an odd one because so I'm diagnosed as autistic. So I'm diagnosed as autistic. When I'm doing a live podcast, I'm speaking to someone about ideas. And when I'm speaking to a person about ideas, I'm able to have really enjoyable conversations. Where I struggle is with small talk. Like, I was in a lift the other day. And I got into a lift, and it was me and there was a woman in there and the lift journey was just long enough where you kind of have to engage in small talk and she asked me something along the lines of what are you doing for a living

and then I froze and then walked out of the elevator without saying goodbye now that specific question is difficult for me also because I have to lie obviously I'm not wearing my plastic bag in the lift so I don't like it when a stranger says what do you do for a living because I have to think of a lie I'm not going to come out and say oh I'm I'm your man blind by because that unleashes a flurry of small talk situations so I have to think of a lie and come up with the most boring job possible that won't lead to further questions and then of course I walked away feeling like a prick and all the shame of that and the embarrassment it. And why the fuck did you do that? Jesus Christ.

And it's not. It's not a nervousness. It's. I have great difficulty with the spontaneity of small talk. And knowing what that give and take is. But. If we're speaking about ideas. Concepts. Then I can talk for hours and I love it and I can listen and there's back and forth it's what are you up to how about that weather did you

see the match last week that's the shit that I have difficulty with I get confused I freeze I notice the other person looking at me strange, then I get social anxiety, that makes it worse, and then I walk out of a lift without saying goodbye to someone, and afterwards beat myself up for an hour, because I'm worried that I might have just hurt or offended a stranger for no reason, because walking away from a conversation in the middle of it is not socially acceptable behaviour, but those rules of social acceptability are neurotypical rules that people who are neurodivergent don't necessarily grasp. But if that lady in the lift had said,

have you any opinions about the bones of Italian saints, then we'd have had a wonderful conversation. Bones of Italian Saints. Then we'd have had a wonderful conversation. Brendan asks. Do you have any opinions. On these new. Artificial intelligence.

Art generators. Like Mid Journey. And Dali. And Dali 2. Yes. So recently. If you were online. So there's these. Artificial intelligence engines online

and you can type into these any visual suggestion you want like i was using an artificial intelligence generator called mid journey and i typed in kurt cabane riding a bicycle in the Book of Kells. And within five minutes, it generated for me an absolutely brilliant image of Kurt Cobain in the Book of Kells looking exactly like how you'd think that would look. And it was phenomenal. And I went on, kept thinking of prompts,

kept thinking of ideas for mad paintings I'd like to see or mad images. I asked it, Mr. Tato autopsy photos. And it gave me autopsy photos of poor Mr. Tato. But what happened was, I soon grew bored. It felt like eating two Mars bars, one after the other. The first bite is incredible, then by the time you get to the second Mars bar, you're sick, and you wish you never did it.

My problem with these artificial intelligence, how they work, basically, is they use a neural network. They use artificial intelligence. So when I type in, Kurt Cobain riding a bicycle in the book of Kells the artificial intelligence goes to the entire of the internet drags up images of the book of Kells

images of bicycles images of Kurt Cobain and then uses its neural network to put it all together into something that looks kind of like a human painted it and it does it all in under five minutes. Now I'm a professional artist. I write short stories for a living. I make songs. I can

paint and draw. I'm a creative person and creativity is very important to how I achieve a sense of meaning in life. And these artificial intelligence apps suck all the fun out of creativity. You have a start point and an end point. And it's ironic that one of these things is called mid-journey. One of these AI apps is called mid-journey. The joy of creating art isn't in the finished piece and it isn't in the in the initial idea the whole joy of creativity is the bit in the middle it's about the mindful present process of creating something and losing yourself in a sense of play and the deep personal meaning that you

achieve from that and the accidents and discoveries that happen along the way. So if I was to decide right now I want to do a short story about Kurt Cobain and the book of Kells that's the initial idea but when I sit down with my laptop and get into a state of creative flow and write, I'm going to end up losing myself in that process. And the end result mightn't have anything to do with the book of Kells or Kurt Cobain. And when I do get to that end result and I have my 2000 words there in front of me and I'm happy with the story, that end result, that's not the fun bit. That bit's actually a little bit depressing. I spoke about memento mori earlier on. Remember

that you will die. When you're creating something, finishing it actually feels a little bit sad because it reminds you of death. The joy of creativity and the joy of art is the bit in the middle. It's the process. And if you're a creative person, you know this. If you're not someone who takes creativity too seriously, then those apps are great crack if you're just doing it for a bit of fun. But if you know what it feels like. To spend hours and hours and hours. Working on something. Because doing this is fundamental to who you are as a human being.

Then using those apps. It feels like a sugar rush. It feels like eating a load of Mars bars. It strips all the joy and wonder and love that I have for creating and reduces it into an experience that feels like using a vending machine. And I'm not saying that to denigrate or shit on anyone who is enjoying using these apps. That's just me and my personal experience of it. I could definitely see them as being useful

as part of your creative process like if you use a mood board for instance some people when they're writing or creating a song or making a painting will begin with a mood board and a mood board is where you grab lots of random images that are related to the ideas you're exploring, and you place them all together on one board. And then you look at this, and this inspires your process. Sometimes I'll do that from writing a short story. I'll have images of nature, people, buildings, animals, clips from movies. And when I'm writing, I look up at this, and if I get stuck and I'm like what do I

write about I'll start to write about what I see in front of me on the mood board so that I'm staying in a state of flow and I'm not engaging my critical brain if you ever watch me on twitch on Thursday nights I'm on twitch I write songs to the events of a video game I'm playing Red Dead Redemption but what I'm doing is writing music and writing lyrics as I'm doing it I use the video game to keep me in creative flow

to keep my mind in a state of play and to keep me away from criticality if I'm writing a song and then I start to think, what will I write a song about? Oh, that's a shit idea, that's a good idea. Then I'm out of the creative zone. So I just write about what unfolds before me to keep myself in flow. That's the process of creativity and that process is what's enjoyable,

not the end piece. But I can definitely see AI image generators as being beneficial for creating a mood board for yourself. Like in the way you might use collage before. When I was back in art college and I used to be painting, what I would do is I'd take loads and loads of photographs, print them out as A4s in the printer down in the library in college, cut them up, stick them together so that it might inspire me and get me thinking laterally. Similarly, you can use the cut up technique. It's brilliant for lyrics in particular, for songs and also for prose writing.

Like David Bowie used to do that. When David Bowie was writing lyrics to his albums, he would write diaries and diaries and diaries of thoughts. And then he'd get these pages and cut them up into individual lines and then take these lines, put them into a hat and arrange them. That's called the cut-up technique. Tom York from Radiohead does it as well. So AI generators, whether it be image-based or text-based, can definitely have a beneficial input to a creative person in that way, to feed the unconscious mind, but not as a way to achieve an end result.

It's zero crack. It's no crack. And it can also, it could fill you with a false sense of achievement pretty quickly. Jackson asks, can I speak about the law of attraction? I think I've mentioned this before. So the law of attraction, it's kind of an esoteric, is esoteric the right word? Some people believe that if you ask the universe for good things, the universe will give you good things. So personally, I don't believe that on a supernatural level. I don't believe that asking the universe for positivity will bring positivity into your life. What I do believe is when my mental health is in check and my self-esteem is healthy and as a result,

I'm a happy person. I'm a positive person, I like who I am and then I'm a confident person. When I'm that way not only do more opportunities present themselves to me, I'm more likely to see opportunities when they do present and I'm more likely to take opportunities. and I'm more likely to take opportunities. When I'm depressed, anxious, low self-esteem, negative, poor mental health, opportunities won't present themselves because I'm not speaking to people, I'm not being friendly, I'm not being curious, I'm not being inquisitive, I'm not sociable, I'm withdrawing from people and places. So the amount of opportunities

start to disappear then because I have a negative mindset when opportunities do present I mightn't even see them because I'm worried about some other shit and then when an opportunity does present I'll turn it down

because I don't have the self belief to take it or I might be feeling so shit about myself that I have a self-fulfilling prophecy and I'm seeking failure to prove to myself what a bad person I am because that's how I'm feeling so that's my attitude towards the law of attraction I don't think it's a supernatural thing. When I'm mentally healthy, good shit tends to happen to me and I'm positive enough to take those opportunities and to achieve goals. When the opposite is the case, I'll do fuck all. Okay, that's all I have time for this week. I'll catch you next week. This Sunday I'm at that festival All Together Now

down in Waterford. I'm doing a live podcast I think about half twelve in the day. I'm in I gigged there before about two years ago before the pandemic. It's like this outdoor space thing. I don't know.

Look, if you're at All Together Now I'm there on the Sunday at about half twelve doing a live podcast. this outdoor space thing. I don't know. Look, if you're at Altogether now, I'm there on the Sunday at about half twelve doing a live podcast. Come along and have some crack. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game

and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. you