The Blindboy Podcast - The Testicular Musk of a Debs Pants Gusset

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

I interrogate the semiotics of other people's sweat on rented tuxedos and suits. Also, I speak about a short technique to increase your creativity, which anybody can use.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Accuse the dewdrops of breaking your laptop, you creaky breeders. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I hope you've been having a charming week. I almost got knocked off my bicycle last week by Ed Sheeran. That sounds like... That sounds like something I'd say at the start of a podcast or some type of introduction to a poem or I read a poem that Ed Sheeran sent me about knocking me off my bicycle.

But no, it's a real thing that happened, because Ed Sheeran was playing two gigs in my home city of Limerick, and he arrived into Limerick via a motorcad. A motorcad, like he was fucking Joe Biden or something. Ed Sheeran walking around Limerick like he's Joe Biden, in a motorcad, with all Garda motorcycles in front of his car. Now I've nothing against Ed Sheeran I just don't I don't keep abreast of Ed Sheeran news. Like obviously I was aware that Ed Sheeran was gigging

in Limerick. I was aware of this. I was aware of it in the way that I'd be aware of a passing seagull. You know, it's just a thing that's happening and it has nothing to do with me. So I hadn't allowed Ed Sheeran's gig to penetrate my conscious awareness. So imagine my shock when I was cycling along Clare Street and was then almost pushed off the fucking road by a lot of Garda motorcycles that were protecting his people carrier. It was one of those fancy black vans that would normally be afforded a foreign dignitary.

They were engulfing him, protecting Ed Sheeran like a loud moving pair of vehicular underpants. So I'm almost pushed off the fucking road. My bicycle wheel hits off the curb I managed to fix the situation and I was fine and I had to stop I was kind of shocked and my first thought was oh fuck it that must be Mary Robinson and I don't know why I thought that because Mary Robinson hasn't been president now in nearly 30 years and then I said ah it's Ed Sheeran

that's who must be in that car it's Ed Sheeran and he's afraid of being assassinated and then I had even more of a laugh when I thought fuck it wouldn't wouldn't that have been a pretty funny way for me to die

wouldn't that have been a very funny way for me to die knocked over by Ed Sheeran in Limerick I'd be like yeah okay I'll take that death

actually speaking of foreign dignitaries the we had a thing in Limerick there about two weeks ago called Riverfest it's like a

it's a little festival a food festival that we have in Limerick on the Maybank holiday weekend and there's these statues of two horses

that are outside there's a museum in Limerick called the Hunt Museum and they have these two large horse statues outside and the statues are called the horse outside statues they're two horses and they're the horse outside the museum and they were created they were created by school kids in limerick as an

art project in like 2012 i think so the school kids created them these big giant ceramic horses with beautiful artwork and designs on them and the kids created the artwork because they were fans of The Horse Outside, the Rubber Bandit song but on the arses of these horses are my handprints in paint

so when they unveiled these statues because it was called The Horse Outside they said to me and Mr. Crone will you come along and formally unveil these statues and also put your hands in paint and put your handprints on these ceramic horses arses so I said yeah so last week at Riverfest I think the ambassador for Denmark I think the I think it was a Nordic country, I can't remember the exact country but I'm pretty sure it was the ambassador for Denmark visited Limerick

to see Riverfest and when the ambassador visited, I guess Limerick were like fuck it, what do we do with ambassadors when they visit, it hasn't happened before, what are we supposed to do so they took the fucking ambassador of Denmark up to the horse statues

and got her to place her hand on my handprint and then they took a photograph of it. So I hope that becomes the new tradition. Like if the Prince of Monaco visits, there's a fella who wears a bag in his head from Limerick and his handprint is on the back of this ceramic horse's

arse. And now you have to place your hand on this handprint and say a prayer to Saint Munchen. Actually, I was almost killed by Ed Sheeran. Nearly in front of those statues, like on the same road. I'd have been killed by Ed Sheeran in front of my own commemorative horse statues. That would be a great death. That death would almost top the death of Antoni Gaudi. Who was one of my favourite deaths. He's an architect from Barcelona. And he was killed by a tram. When he was admiring one of his own buildings.

Which I always think is a wonderful death. Actually you know the best death is. There was a lawmaker in ancient greece called draco it's where we get the term draconian and draco gave some speech and people liked the speech so much that they started throwing their jackets at him because that's what they did in ancient greece if you liked a speech'd throw your jacket at the person giving the speech like instead of retweeting someone you'd fuck a denim jacket at their head

but they liked his speech so much that he ended up drowning in jackets and dying or Jack Daniels Jack Daniels who invented the whiskey Jack Daniels he had a safe in his office, a big huge metal safe that contained all of his money,

but he kept forgetting the combination of the safe. So one morning he got so angry, he kicked the safe so hard he died. And then there was this other fella, I can't remember his name, I think he was an Australian TV presenter, but he, he sat on his own balls he sat down on his own balls and died from the shock but yeah I had that you know that feeling when you nearly get hit by a

car you know that feeling where it's like fuck me I could have died there you pause you compose yourself and you start making little promises to yourself about how you're going to be more safer on the road because when you're cycling like you have to be extra careful when you're cycling

and Limerick is getting better with cycle paths but there's a lot of places where you have to cycle on the public road and that can be dangerous and when you're cycling your best friend is your ears really because with a bicycle you really have to be aware of the sounds of traffic around you because you can't check your mirror like you can with a car and this is why like I never have my earphones in when I'm on a bicycle I always use my ears so that I can hear everything around me when I'm cycling on a road in particular and I was thinking to myself fuck it what you know what could I have

done differently what went wrong there that I almost got hit by a car that I was pushed off the road what went wrong what could I have done better and really it was my fault because Ed Sheeran's motorcade was coming from behind me. And with all due respect, he had like four Garda motorcycles around him and they had their sirens on. So I had a fair warning. I should have been listening to go, there's four fucking sirens behind you, buddy. Move out of the way. But I didn't because my mind was heavily distracted

and I had to think to myself, what were you thinking about? What were you thinking about so much that you couldn't hear Ed Sheeran and his incredibly loud Garda escort coming up behind you? Well earlier that day my brother had to buy himself a suit in order to go to a wedding and it became very dramatized and I got quite involved in it unnecessarily so my brother had to buy a suit for a wedding which meant he was coming into the city center to purchase the suit and while he was in the city center he decided he'd visit me inside my office Now he was going to an outlet store to buy this suit. So they're good suits but you know it's an outlet store so something is off. There's something off. The suits could be old, the suits could be damaged, they might just be out of fashion. But

before he went to purchase his suit he parked his car but while at the car park. He found 50 euro on the ground. So he was like. Fucking 50 euro. I'm going to use this 50 euro. To put a deposit on a new suit. In the outlet store. So he did. So then I met him for coffee. And he was telling me all about the wonderful suit that he picked out.

And he put down a deposit for this suit. And he's going to go in and buy it next week. And he's so happy with this suit. It was a Hugo Boss suit. An incredibly discount happy with this suit it was a Hugo Boss suit an incredibly discounted Hugo Boss suit but a Hugo Boss suit and then I told him about how Hugo Boss suits were actually designed for the Nazis and he was telling me about the 50 euros that he found and then I said to him you found this 50 euros on the ground but did you ask anybody in the car park if they dropped it? Maybe that 50 euro was incredibly important to someone and they could have been in your immediate vicinity and you could have found them.

So I said this to him and then he started feeling guilty. So he left the coffee and went back to the shop where he'd put a deposit on the suit. Then he asked for the 50 euros back, took it and went to the car park to try and find the owner of the 50 euros. But enough time had passed that this was a fruitless endeavour. There was no way to find whoever owned this 50 euros. He even went to the security guard in the car park and said, I found 50 euros. But the security guard said, there's fuck all we can do. It's not in a wallet. There's no ID. It's just 50 euros. If you give that to me, anyone could collect it. If you want my advice, just take the 50 euros.

There's nothing you can do. So my brother's conscience was clear. And he went back to the suit shop and said, Look, it's grand. I'm ready to put the 50 euros back on that suit. And then the shop said, We sold the suit. It doesn't exist anymore.

It's gone. And then he was like, But I put a deposit on the suit. You can't sell the fucking suit. I put a deposit on it. And then they were like, you did put a deposit on it. But then you took the actual 50 euros back and took it back to the car park. So you didn't have a deposit on it. So he was like, oh, fuck's sake.

I really like that suit. So then they're like, we have another suit that's similar, but it's not as good. He was disappointed. He really had gotten lucky with the Hugo Boss suit. So then they're like, we have another suit that's similar, but it's not as good. He was disappointed. He really had gotten lucky with the Hugo Boss suit. There's not a lot of Hugo Boss suits in an outlet store. He'd gotten lucky. And all it took was 20 minutes to go to the car park and someone else had spotted it and bought it. He took the other suit, the inferior suit that he didn't want, but he took it and he said, fuck it, I'm not putting a deposit on it, I'm just going to buy it today because this was too stressful. Now you might be wondering, why do I know this information? Because I left my brother at coffee and said, you should

go back to the car park with that 50 euro. So why do I know this new information? I'll tell you why. I get a knock at my office door. I open the office and it's my brother and he's holding a suit. So I said, oh, you got the suit. Well done. And he goes, no, I had to get a different suit. The Hugo Boss suit is gone. This is a new suit. Then he says nothing, holds the pants into the air like it's the skull of an animal he just beheaded and says sniff that sniff the crotch sniff it tell me I'm not going mad sniff that now I knew immediately what was happening I didn't even have to say anything I knew what was happening so I took a sniff of the crotch of this suit pants and there it was the unmistakable testicular musk of a well-worn suit pants. A musk that you don't expect from a brand

new set of suit pants. He'd been sold a suit that another man wore for a wedding length of time. Now to fully understand the gravity of this there's a very specific reason that as soon as my brother bought this pants and sniffed it and got a suspicion there's a very specific reason that he came to me for a second opinion on the order of the trouser crotch so I grew up in a house with a lot of older brothers I had four older brothers and they were a lot older than me so when I was like four or five years of age every one of my brothers were in their 20s. So there was a lot of debbs, there was a lot of weddings, there was a lot of graduations. In my house as a child there was a lot of situations where my older brothers needed to rent out suits or tuxedos.

It was a large part of my childhood compared to other children. Coupled with the fact that my da was very passionate about this specific issue. He was quite an eccentric man, but he was very particularly serious when it came to the issue of a rented tuxedo or a rented suit smelling like someone else's sweat smelling like the sweat of a strange man and he had two theories about this which he took very seriously one of them I completely agree with the other one I think is a bit too far-fetched. So the first theory he had was, when you rent a suit, and it hasn't been properly dry cleaned,

and there's even the tiniest, tiniest hint of someone else's sweat on that suit, it must go back. There is no acceptable level of another person's sweat on a rented suit. And his theory was, and this is the one i agree with and if you've ever worn if you've if you've ever rented out a suit or a tuxedo that kind of smelt like someone else's sweat you'll know this to be true so my dad's theory was you get the suit

you rent it out you sniff it you sniff the underarm you sniff the crotch and you go it out, you sniff it, you sniff the underarm, you sniff the crotch, and you go, it's grand. Yeah, there's a little bit of a hum. There's a small bit of a hum of someone else's armpit. A little bit, but it's fine. No one will notice. But my dad's theory was that no one notices when the suit is on the rack, but as soon as you put on that suit, and then you go to the wedding, or you go to the Debs,

and then you have a couple of pints, and then you go to the wedding or you go to the Debs and then you have a couple of pints and then you start dancing what happens is is that the moisture and warmth of your own body awakens the sweat of the other person that's in the suit and now you've got a real problem on your hands now you start to really stink the The smell blooms as such. The smell was dormant and now you've awakened it with your own body heat. And it doesn't matter how much you've washed yourself. It doesn't matter how much deodorant you've worn. It's not your sweat. It's someone else's. And now you've awoken it. And that's true. If you've ever rented out a tuxedo or a suit and it started to smell like the sweat of the previous owner, you know that bit is true.

Your own body heat makes it bloom and then you really, really regret having done it. So my dad was right there. There's no acceptable amount of another person's sweat to have in a rented suit. Send it back and demand a freshly dry cleaned one. Now, that's not the reason my dad took this so seriously, because here's the second part of his theory, and this is the bit I don't agree with, this is the bit that I think is a bit too far.

I think he was watching nature documentaries, David Attenborough shit about lions, and how animals use smells, but my dad's theory went that, so if you arrive at a wedding, and the soup begins to smell like the sweat of another man, if that man was a bit of a prick, we'll say, if he was an aggressive man, and now you're smelling like his sweat, other people will act aggressive towards you.

Or worse, the smell of the other man's sweat can rise up into your own nose and cause you to take on elements of his personality and become aggressive or not even aggressive just a little bit rude or other people might start being rude to you and he was basing it on like I think the theory of pheromones you know it's a real animal kingdom thing

and he was claiming basically that when a human meets another human that we unconsciously take in information about that person using our noses. That a person's odor and sweat can communicate signals about that person's mental state or disposition or personality. And if you said that's bullshit, that's a bit far-fetched. He used to claim that when he was in his 20s he went for a job interview and rented out a suit and when he went to the interview

the suit started to smell like the sweat of whoever wore it before and he claims he didn't get a job because the interviewers smelt the other person's sweat and the other person didn't deserve the job but he did so this meant that

when I was a little child suit sniffing or tuxedo sniffing was a pretty big deal. So whenever one of my brothers would come back from the suit shop with a tux or whatever they'd come back in and then my dad would get dead serious and when my dad got serious he used to used to put on like kind of an English accent. He used to put on like a like a stage Shakespearean accent and he'd tap on the table and he'd say give me the suit and he wouldn't say

he wouldn't say smell the crotch he'd say did you inspect the undercarriage did you inspect the undercarriage of those trousers his accent would become not stage English it was the singer, the opera singer

John McCormack, how he sang. My dad would talk that way when he was referring to the smell of a trousers crotch. And when he would sniff the underarm or the crotch, he would sniff, you know, in a kind of a performative way that communicated a level of expertise and experience so he'd go like i think i think he was puffing out of his nose as a way to blow air at the fabric so that it would come up and amplify the smell. And then he'd get us to be quiet, which made no sense because why do you need to be quiet if someone's smelling? And he'd say things like, I'm trying to receive the olfactory information from the fabric. And everyone would be fucking dead serious

staring at him dead serious and quiet. So the rented suit or rented tux would be passed around to every member of my family and everyone would have to sniff the armpits or sniff the crotch to make sure that the suit was properly dry cleaned. Now like I said, most suits came back and they were kind of okay. If it was clearly you can smell someone's sweat that's it conversation over send the suit back you need a new one but most of the time it was really really faint and required everyone in the house to give it a little

sniff to give their verdict but when no one could decide when like two of my brothers are like I can't smell anything but then my dad and my other brothers are like I can kind of smell something when they couldn't decide whether the crotch of a suit smelled now my ma would just not participate she just was like fuck this you're all mad I am not smelling that fucking suit I'll wash it I'll wash the fucking suit just stop talking about it and then my dad be like get the child wake up the child bring down the child and I'd be like three or four asleep in bed and I'd be woken up and brought into the living room and now all of a sudden I'm fucking half asleep sniffing the crotch of a pair of pants and sniffing the fucking underarm of the suit jacket now it's worth pointing out no one was wearing the clothes i wasn't being called down as

a child to fucking sniff people's crotches that the suit was separate from the human that was wearing it and the reason that i was chosen to be the one to give the final decision on whether there was a tiniest hint of sweat in a suit, was because, A, I was the youngest, like I was a child, so technically I should have the best sense of smell, and B, because I'm a child, I don't have adult male body odour, I don't know what that smells like, so I would naturally have a greater sensitivity to smelling something that I'm no way familiar with. And the thing was I used

to just always say yeah I can smell I smell sweat I used to just say yeah because as soon as I said it everyone would just be pure relieved there'd be no more arguing about it and I'd get a bunch of praise and they'd be like well done you sniffed the crotch of the deb suit and the thing is too like this wasn't traumatic or anything this was fucking hilarious like yes it was my whole family dead serious gathering around the fucking undercarriage of a pair of pants smelling it yes they were dead serious but they were also aware that it was kind of fucking hilarious so there was a lot of laughter as well and some of my fondest childhood memories are being woken up out of bed.

You know, I'm supposed to go to bed and now I'm awake and it's 11 o'clock at night and I'm downstairs having a lot of crack smelling pants. I loved it. It made me feel like an adult, like I was important. But yeah, when my brother called to my office the other day with the trousers that he'd just bought and I had to smell them. office the other day with the trousers that he'd just bought and I had to smell them. That experience awoke all those memories in me that I'd completely forgotten about. I'd forgot about the tuxedo sniffing endeavours of my childhood. But the quagmire that my brother

has now found himself in is that he didn't get a rented suit. He bought a suit, but he bought the suit from like a sales shop, outlet shop so you shouldn't be they shouldn't be selling pants that someone else has worn for any great deal of time that's not part of the deal but it's difficult to return things to a shop when they're sale items so I let him go and I said look you gotta fucking bring that suit back you gotta bring the dickhands they shouldn't sell you that you gotta bring it back so I'd forgotten about it and then like an hour later i get a phone call it's my it's my ma on the phone and my brother's told her about the suit and now she's pure upset and what i loved about this is that when i was a young fella my ma didn't want anything to do

with the suit discussions or the crotch sniffing discussions she wanted no part of it but now that my dad's dead she's had to take on the mantle of madness so now my ma's on the phone to me with a conspiracy theory about the shop that's selling the fucking suits urging me never to buy a suit in there because she has a theory she thinks that the reason that the suits in this shop are so cheap is because they're secretly renting them out. Like there's this shady cabal, this secret club of sweaty crotch limerick businessmen and they're in this little club

that can rent out whatever suit they like from this shop and go and dance in it and wear it and then give it back to the shop the next day and it's put back on the rack as if it's new and that this is a grand conspiracy that's happening and I should never go into this shop and buy a suit and I know she's listening to this now terrified that I'm going to get sued or that she's going to get sued for this well I'm not because I haven't given away the name

of the suit shop there's many suit shops in limerick city that sell suits loads of them so i'm not giving away the name personally do i think that's what happened i don't think so i think what happened was the suit that my brother bought maybe someone else bought it wore it for a wedding and then returned it the next day and said i just don't want the suit. So I think one person did something. A little bit dishonest. And they didn't check it. And then a smelly crotch pants. Ended up on the rack.

That's what I think what happened. I don't think there's a secret cabal. Or a secret club. Where they're renting out suits for extra money. I don't think that's happening. So why am I talking about all this? Because. When I almost got killed by Ed Sheeran later that day and I was cycling along the road and I couldn't hear the sirens behind me I couldn't hear his

motorcat that's why that's the reason why that experience had unlocked powerful core memories. And I was just replaying all these things from my childhood and the crotch sniffing ritual in my head. I was focused on it so intensely that I failed to hear four loud police sirens and Ed Sheeran careering past me. And if I'd have been killed, if I'd have been killed by Ed Sheeran in that moment, and people would be wondering, I wonder what happened? How did it happen? That's the bit we'd never find out.

He was killed by Ed Sheeran because he was too engrossed in childhood memories of snorting the crotches of Deb's pants. I think it's time now for the ocarina pause. I didn't think that story was a 26 minute story, but here we are. I'm in my office so I don't have my ocarina.

What have I got? I've got a packet of chewing gums that can make kind of a shaking sound. I need to get an office ocarina, don't I? I don't know about having an ocarina in the office. That's a bit... That's a bit extreme. The sound of that would travel.

I don't think I can bring an ocarina to this office. I can shake chewing gums, though. That's what I'll do. I'm going to hear an advert for something. On April 5th... You must be very careful,garet it's a girl witness the birth bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all for you no don't the first omen i believe the girl is mother of what is the most terrifying 666 is the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real

it's not real it's not real who did that the first omen only in theaters April 5th will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever join the sunrise challenge

to raise funds for CAMH the center for addiction and mental health to support life-saving progress in mental health care from May 27th to 31st people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind.

So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. I can't shake it too hard or I'll fuck up my chewing gums. That was the chewing gum pause. Support for this podcast comes via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash

the blind boy podcast. This podcast is my the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. This podcast is my full-time job, and this podcast is how I earn a living. I adore making this podcast. I adore having this podcast as my work. But if you enjoy listening to this podcast, if it brings you a bit of entertainment, or a bit of escapism, or whatever it is you take from this podcast, please consider paying me for that work. What I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. If you listened to this and you thought to yourself,

she's a like that. If I met Blind Boy in real life, I'd buy him a pint. Well, you can via the Patreon page. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everyone gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model that's based on kindness and soundness. Also, the Patreon model keeps the podcast independent I'm not beholden to any advertisers no advertiser can come in and tell me what to speak about

what not to speak about it's that particular model that kind of ruins radio and ruins TV as soon as corporate money comes in and starts dictating terms of creativity then creativity is the first thing to fucking suffer and the podcast space is getting it's getting worse and worse at the moment the podcast space is getting

all these big apps are coming along and buying up podcasts and podcasts were always about small independent creators making things that they're genuinely passionate about that's what podcasts were always about now it's changing rapidly and podcasts are becoming making things that they're genuinely passionate about. That's what podcasts were always about. Now it's changing rapidly and podcasts are becoming quite commercial, quite similar to television and radio

and a lot of shit is getting made and all of this... And when I say shit, what I mean is podcasts that are being made just as a money racket. Big celebrity names being brought in just for the sake of it or true crime podcasts man true crime podcasts used to be fucking amazing and now there's loads of them and you can tell that the people making it don't give a fuck about what they're making like i'm terrified if i start

a new true crime podcast now because i don't know is this actually good or have they figured out how to edit it and use music that makes it sound like it's good so there's a huge amount of shit being thrown at a wall and all of this shit that's been thrown at a wall is obscuring small independent podcasters who are making shit they're passionate about and if it continues what's going to happen is the small passionate independent creative people just won't make that podcast they want to make because there's no point because it'll get drowned out by the big expensive noise so support all independent podcasts that you enjoy monetarily or simply talking about it sharing it online leaving reviews all that stuff really matters.

Like even podcast charts don't matter a shit anymore, unfortunately. It's very easy to get a podcast to the top of the charts now if it has the right backing and the right money. So the game has changed, and the small passionate creators that you enjoy definitely need support. And like I said, that doesn't have to be monetary if you can't afford that. Just some little gigs I'd like to promote I am in this month and I can't fucking wait

I'm gigging in Barcelona and Madrid I cannot wait to come to Barcelona and Madrid Barcelona's almost sold out there's still tickets left for Madrid I think I'm going to stick around Madrid for a couple of days and do a lot of writing in June then I'm gigging in Brussels I did not know I had so many listeners in Brussels but there's a few tickets left for that gig in Brussels in June and then

I've got my tour of England Scotland and Wales um I think we're making Manchester a bigger venue because Manchester sold out I think and also just a a bigger venue because Manchester sold out, I think. And also just a little thing regarding my London gig. If you bought tickets for the cancelled London gig in 2020, you are allowed to come along to the Troxy London gig in June. Your tickets are still valid and check your emails from an email from Ticketmaster. So what I'd like to speak about on the second part of this podcast today. This podcast isn't exclusively about crotch sniffing and dodging Ed Sheeran. I want to speak about creativity.

Because a lot of you asked me. I did two podcasts in the past three months. The first podcast I did is I interviewed an expert in creativity called Anna Abramson and we spoke about creativity. And then I recently spoke to the rugby player Keith Earls about the similarities between being an artist and being a sports player. And in both of those podcasts I mentioned techniques that I use as a professional artist to be more creative.

And I want to speak on this for everybody not just for people who are artists or people who consider themselves to be creative and creativity is for everybody creativity is a part of being human if you don't consider yourself to be creative I would challenge that assumption. I think what happened is, at some point in your early life you just decided, I'm not creative. You might have seen another kid in your class who was really good at drawing or really good at music. Or a teacher told you you weren't creative. But at a young age we kind of split off into different different camps of that person's creative and I'm not. I don't believe that if you daydream, you're creative.

Daydreaming is creativity. Anytime you use your imagination and doing this makes you feel happy and calm. And in another world, you're being creative. and in another world you're being creative even if you're like imagining a holiday that you're going to go on in two months and you're thinking about what it's going to look like on the beach and you're thinking about the sunset or the clothes you're going to wear or the food you're going to order and you're imagining and daydreaming about a potential future and this experience feels very happy and you lose a sense of time and place when you're doing it and it's a restorative experience that's creativity you're imagining and writing a little story in your head and that little story is how your holiday is going

to go or if you're thinking about a coffee you're going to have with your friend next week and the things you're going to talk about. And imagining this scenario in your head, predicting the future in a pleasurable way, that's creativity. You've just written a little story. But we tend not to call that creativity in society. We don't call that creativity because under capitalism, I suppose, we've confined creativity into, can you turn that daydream into a product that other people can consume for money or simply enjoy? And that is creativity. That's creating art. That's the creativity that I'm interested in. But really what that is, is it's using creativity in combination with a talent. Now not everybody has an artistic talent. And that's okay. But everybody has the capacity for imagination and creativity.

Even that story I told at the start of the podcast about sniffing the trousers. You listened to that. And if you enjoyed that. It meant you had to be creative to enjoy it. Because I gave you a bunch of words. And I used tools and talents of storytelling to make it a little bit easier but if you visualize that story in your head if you lost a sense of time and space and found yourself in this lovely calm world of imagination then you just used creativity to listen to a story that I told you. Now society

will say no I'm the storyteller so I just told the story so that's only my creativity on display. That's not the case. To listen to a story requires creativity and imagination. That's participatory creativity. To listen to a story or to read a story and then for you to visualize that stuff enough in your head that you really feel it and you kind of leave the universe for a little bit that's you using your imagination and being creative and really what creativity is is it's playing it's playfulness like because i'm a professional artist whether it be with music or with writing or whatever. I have all these skills that I've acquired, such as being able to play certain music instruments or learning how to write

or how to paint. These are all skills that I've acquired and I also have talents in these areas. They're worth fuck all to me if I'm not using them while in a state of play. And as adults, we don't have many playful spaces in the adult world. Adults don't really play. Playing as an adult is seen as shameful and embarrassing. And the space that we do have, which is playful as an adult, usually involves alcohol or drugs of some description. Like going out to a fucking pub or a nightclub and dancing and roaring and shouting and acting the bollocks and being silly these are all things that we do when we go to the nightclub or go to the pub and we think oh it's

the drink that was fun or it's the drugs that are fun these are the things that are fun and it's like not really it's that the drink and the drugs removed your sense of inhibition and also created a space where play is allowed to happen substances sometimes give us kind of social permission to be silly and playful because if you behave that way when you're sober it can be seen as we call it immature or we call it eccentric so I want to outline my process for being creative but not necessarily directed at artists directed at fucking everybody because when you're being creative what you're doing there is you're you're engaging with your inner child the part of you that used to daydream loads or the part of you that used to just play with Lego for the fuck of it

or the part of you that used to have an imaginary friend or the part of you that used to get two fucking dolls or two action figures and make them have a big long conversation with each other and act out all these scenarios we should be doing that as adults. Now you could make the argument, what about video games? Certain video games can be quite creative like SimCity or fucking Minecraft but a lot of video games, playing them isn't a creative

activity. It's not very particip participatory it's more a relaxing passive activity but you're not actively using your own imagination someone else is doing it for you what I'm talking about is making space in our day or our week where we engage in imagination for like an hour and most importantly there's no right or wrong there's not really a goal or an end product it's using our imagination because it feels good and also it's a playfulness that's driven by curiosity so what I'd like to do this week is help you find a space for creativity using techniques that I use as someone who has to be creative professionally so think of a time today or during the week where you found yourself daydreaming by which I mean you know you were at work today and your mind just drifted off and like I said

you thought about a coffee you're going to have with a buddy next week, or you thought about a holiday that's coming up, think of a time today, when your mind drifted off into imagination land, and the thing that you were imagining, was pleasurable, was nice, was something that you enjoyed,

and you had to pull yourself back from it, and come back into the room, but you're like that was a nice little daydream that I had there think of whatever it was that that daydream was about and make the decision that I'm going to take some time out deliberately today

and I'm going to revisit whatever it was I was daydreaming about now I want to make a distinction there between phone imaginative daydreaming about. Now I want to make a distinction there between fun imaginative daydreaming and ruminating because you might have found yourself today drifting off into a land of imagination but this land of imagination was painful. This land of imagination was filled with worrying about things that might happen or worrying about things in the past and this wasn't

nice this was an unpleasant experience now that's also a type of creativity because again you're imagining things but you're imagining bad things and what's interesting with that is that both of those scenarios the fun imaginative daydreaming and then the unpleasant ruminating and problems. Both of them come from our inner child. In the field of psychology called transactional analysis, there's actually two children inside of us. Well, they're the same. It's the same child.

It's us as a child, but it's split into two compartments. There's free child and adapted child. When you find yourself daydreaming about your holiday or conversations with your friends and you have that wonderful fun or you're thinking about a job that you'd like to have. When you're imagining the fun enjoyable things and it's nice that's your free child. That's you when you were three, four years of age, playing with your Lego or having an imaginary friend and you're playing, you're being curious. That's your free child. When you're ruminating, when you're worrying about the future and imagining terrible things

that might happen and focusing on fears and all these negative emotions come up. That's your adapted child. That's you as a child who is afraid of being abandoned. That's you as a child who is worried whether your parents love you or not. That's you as a child when you first started to compare yourself to other kids. That's you as a child who's wondering whether they're worthy of being loved. That's you as a child who's afraid of getting into trouble because when you think about it when you're worrying about oh no what am I going to be doing in two years oh no where will my career be oh what's going to happen when you think like that it feels like when you were three and you've done something bad and you're waiting to get

into trouble that's the emotional experience of what it is so when we ruminate like that that's our adapted child what we want when we're entering a creative space is only the free child the child that's curious the child that wants to discover the child that wants to play and have fun so here's a task that I propose that you do this week if you can find an hour or 90 minutes ideally to yourself. You want to find a way to experience the sensation of flow. Now flow is when you daydream. When you daydream and you imagine things you're in a state of flow. But the difference between just daydreaming and doing something creative is when you're creating you're experiencing the daydream the flow daydream but you're also

doing something at the same time so let's choose one of two things you can either do this visually which means you're going to create 90 minutes to draw something or paint something or create some type of visual marks on papers using colours or collage or whatever you want. You can do that, purely visual. Or you can use words by means of charneling. So here's what might be a good fun thing to do this week. And I'm basing this on, this is the approach that I use every single day to do my job to be creative but I'm suggesting that everybody do this simply as a means of discovering

yourself relaxing and exploring your free child so I suggest journaling is the best example here right but like I said you can also use paints or whatever but I'm going to stick with journaling. So you crack open a laptop or you use a sheet of paper if you want to write and you start with your blank page. Now blank pages are terrifying so in order to get past the blank page ask yourself honestly what was the last thing you daydreamed about? Fun enjoyable daydreaming not worry or ruminating. Was it a holiday you want to go on? Was it a conversation you're going to have with your friend? Maybe it's a sexual fantasy.

Is it a goal you'd like to achieve? Do you sometimes daydream and imagine yourself playing soccer in front of 60,000 people? Just be honest with yourself and think back. What did I last daydream about this week or today? And there's your starting point. So now you don't have a blank page anymore because

you know what you're going to write about. So that's it. Step one, you have your laptop or your blank page or your sketchbook that you want to use crayons on. Now what you got to do is you got to find space. And by space, I mean you need to find somewhere where there's no interruptions. Like I use cafes for this. A cafe is a place where I don't get any interruptions. Now interruptions also mean your fucking phone and your email. So your phone, your email, they cannot exist in this space. Get your phone and put it outside the room.

That's essential. You can't allow yourself to have any distractions whatsoever. You have to focus on sitting there with the page. And your goal is, I'm going to start writing about the thing I last daydreamed about. Now the second thing you need after space is time. You have to agree with yourself I'm going to spend I always think 90 minutes is the right amount of time because an hour is a little bit too short. I have my space no interruptions are allowed now I'm going to agree with myself that I'm doing this

thing for 90 minutes. Now we enter the next phase which is also time this is the part where most people give up this is where our adapted child will show up this is the scary bit you've just agreed on space now you've agreed on time and now you're going fuck what now and this is where all the negative thoughts are going to come in this is where your adapted child will show up so your task is i'm just going to write about what i last day dreamed about and thoughts are gonna come in and those thoughts are gonna be fuck it I don't know how to start

this is gonna be shit whatever I write is gonna have to be good why am I doing this I feel like a fucking idiot my phone's outside the door maybe I'll go outside the door and just look at the phone once fuck it this room is messy what if I just clean up that desk oh fuck you're such an idiot and all

these negative thoughts will come in at this part of the creative process this is known as the closed mode of thinking this is the way that we think most of the time in our everyday lives. All the rules that we've learned about, you have to be an adult, you must be this, you must be that, must, should, success, fail, all of these words exist in the closed mode of thinking. The closed mode of thinking is quite critical. The closed mode of thinking is fairly helpful when you're trying to be a respectful adult that deals with other people and that handles your responsibilities and that looks after your life. The closed mode of thinking is useful there but the closed mode of thinking has no place in a creative space because it's too

critical. So what you're trying to get towards is what's known as the open mode of thinking. Now your brain does not want you to get to the open mode of thinking. The open mode of thinking. Now your brain does not want you to get to the open mode of thinking. The open mode of thinking is your free child. That's the curiosity. That's the playfulness. That's the daydreaming. That's the fun. Your brain doesn't want you to get there because society has conditioned us to believe that that's bad. And in a way, if you're in the open mode of thinking all the time in your daily life, it's not very helpful. Like I'm autistic, so I've just learned that I spend a huge amount of my day in the open mode of thinking. Non-stop being creative and focusing on my thoughts in a playful way.

But I nearly got hit by Ed Sheeran's motorcade by doing that. But in the creative space, the open mode of thinking is a wonderful place to be. So how do you get to the open mode of thinking is a wonderful place to be so how do you get to the open mode of thinking by tolerating frustration for long enough that's the fucking skill so like i said you've got your blank page you're gonna write about whatever it is you last daydreamed about and you have to stick with the pain of your brain telling you this isn't going to happen and how do you do this this is where you engage playfulness you can't think about what to write we'll just simply start writing about the inside of your mouth or write about your holiday in carfu next month but instead of flying over on a plane you're inside in the belly of a giant rabbit and you're gonna hop to Carrefour

inside a giant rabbit. Instead of thinking that's ridiculous, that's bad, you ask yourself what if you last day dreamed about meeting your friend for coffee next week? What if you wrote about meeting your friend for coffee but you arrive in a Slipknot t-shirt and you're trying to convince them, utterly convince them that your new boyfriend is Timothee Chalamet and just start writing. And you're not looking for good, you're not looking for believable, you're looking for what if. Most importantly, there's no fucking rules, there's no criticality, there's no such thing as good or bad, you are simply writing for the sake of writing. Just like when you were a kid and you were doing Lego for the sake of Lego.

What if every time your friend opens their mouth, you can see into China? What if when you meet your friend for coffee next week, what if when you meet your friend, they tell you that your entire friendship up until this point has just been a bet that they've been having with your other friends? What if when you meet your friend,

you mention 9-11 and they've never heard of it 9-11 is just a thing that happened in your mind what if when you meet your friend they put their arms into the air to stretch and you notice that in their armpits are two arseholes what if when you meet your friend you're wearing a type of condom on your tongue that stops you from insulting them if when you write like that and you present yourself with all these what-ifs and there's no rules and also this is the other part of the creative process every single suggestion I made there was humorous and funny and ridiculous and absurd and silly because humor takes us out of the closed way of thinking that part of us that the adapted child that's self-critical worried concerned about whether what you're right is going to be good or bad humor gets us out of all of that so write about or create a painting whatever the fuck it is, you're not looking for good or bad. You're looking for ridiculous, silly, absurd, fun.

And before you know it, you've entered the state of flow. You're daydreaming, you're imagining, but you're doing something with your hands and it's really fun. And your aim is to stick with that until you reach your 90 minutes, agreed time and then you're finished you're done the time is up and what have you got you might have a piece of writing that makes you go wow fuck me this is actually amazing I didn't know I could do this or you might not but what

you will have is you probably spent a good 20 minutes there in a meditative state of flow and that's what you're looking for not necessarily the end piece if you got something out of it that's good fucking brilliant that's a happy bonus but that's not what we're looking for with this process what you're looking for is you just spent time in your day living in your free child in a way that adults aren't really supposed to do and within that came quite a bit of healing, quite a bit of self-understanding, quite a large amount of happiness. What you would have gotten there is a feeling that you don't get a lot of opportunity for in your everyday life.

Now for me it's different. I'm a professional artist. So I try and do that every day. And I want a hot take for this podcast. Or I want a short story that I can get published. So that's different. That's my job. So if you are a creative person,

you can take that exact technique that I use there and apply it to your job but I I want I don't want this for people that are professionally creative I want this for fucking everybody to connect with their free child as a way to feel good to heal to understand themselves better and most likely to find a talent in yourself that you didn't know you had so that's that's what I wanted to talk about because I was being asked a very simple process for how anybody can engage in a little bit of creativity and I took that process there from a psychologist called Donald McKinnon who I believe in the 1950s did quite extensive study on creativity and creative people and the state of flow and I've

added bits to it myself and mainly the transactional analysis bit with the free child and the adapted child that's a bit that I've brought into it because I found that through my experience of being creative it's all about the child in you it's a hundred percent when you when you create and you engage in play it's not a very adult state it's a childlike state it ties in with attachment theory too which I've done a podcast on but if you think of toddlers we'll say before the age of four you think of little kids the little child who's feels a sense of secure attachment by which i mean the little kid who isn't worried about where their love is coming from the kid who feels that they're loved

that they're loved. The kid who isn't worried about food because their belly is full. The kid who's warm. That kid who's, that little child who's secure. That's the child who plays with their Lego. Once their needs are met they play with their Lego. That's the free child. They're so secure in their sense of love and their sense of warmth and their sense of satiation that they're so secure in their sense of love and their sense of warmth and their sense of satiation that they're playing they have that space and that time and that desire for curiosity but the little child who has a parent who's in a shitty mood

and now the child is blaming themselves because their father is angry or the little child who is hungry or the little child whose parents are arguing and the child is figuring out how they can make their parents happy that little child doesn't create that little toddler isn't playing with their lego and if they are it's quite an anxious an anxious distractible type of play it It's not a curious, fun, enjoyable play. That's the frightened child.

That's the adapted child. That's the child who's afraid of getting into trouble. And all of us are a little bit of both of those children. Because no one was brought up perfectly. But the goal of creativity is to engage with that free child. The fun, curious, playful child who doesn't care about what they're making is good or bad they're just doing it for the sake of it unfortunately society makes much more space for us to explore our adapted child every time you imagine every time you use your imagination

to worry about the future or to worry about the past which is a lot for most of us when you experience mental health difficulties you know what i'm talking about you're worrying about the future or worrying about the past that's us spending a huge amount of time in our adapted child our sense of insecurity worrying feeling like you're in trouble but you're a fucking adult adults don't get into trouble but you feel like you're in trouble and you don't know why that's us spending all our time in our adapted child well being creative for the fucking sake of it is how you spend time in your free child and there's wonderful healing and fun in that okay i'm gonna let you go i tell you why i'm gonna fucking let you go because it's 12 o'clock on the button here in my office late at night.

And I just scared the living shit out of a fucking cleaner. The cleaners usually come in earlier, but for some reason the cleaner came in at 12 at night. And it's a new cleaner. She doesn't know who the fuck I am. So this building is empty. I mean fucking empty. And she walked into the corridor there and all she heard was me

talking quietly inside in a dark fucking room and she was outside going hello hello hello so I had to pause the podcast and go up and speak to her

and reassure her I'm just I'm just a man who's working late it's fine I'm not a ghost alright go fuck yourselves I'll talk to you next week. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.