The Blindboy Podcast - Towards a thesis on the disproportionately gigantic penis of the Shrew

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

I can't really explain what this is about, you'll just have to listen  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Inch towards the sinner's bin bag, you twisted fintens. Welcome to the Blindby podcast. If this is your first time listening, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I'm going to deviate from the established structure of this podcast by beginning this episode with some gig announcements.

I'm after getting myself in trouble with promoters. not trouble but I've pissed off some gig promoters because look when I do a live podcast when I agree to do a live podcast in a venue a promoter puts that on and I'm contractually obligated to promote that gig and I always do it every week on the podcast for promoters they keep wanting me to post

videos on Instagram promoting the gigs and I don't like doing that because it's boring content who the fuck wants to see videos of people promoting gigs. So I always push back and say, I'm not doing fucking social media videos telling people to show up to Killarney or wherever the fuck I'm gigging. I'm not gigging in Galernie.

Limerick in Dublin. Those are the gigs I need to get out of the way. I'll give you the details in a minute. I've pissed off promoters because if you've been following me on Instagram, you'll know over the past three weeks, I have been posting videos on Instagram, but it's been videos of me

making music with my analogue synths. But the videos, they went viral if we still used that phrase. Videos of me playing synthesizers are doing numbers on Instagram. And then the promoters are ringing my agent and going,

I thought he doesn't do fucking videos. There's videos of him all over my fucking feed playing synthesizers. But there's no videos of him trying to sell tickets for gigs, which is fair enough. But doing

videos announcing gigs is no crack and no one wants to see it. And the way the Instagram algorithm is for the past year, you can't just put posts anymore. You can't just put a poster of a gig. No one will see it have to be doing videos. So I can see where the promoters are coming from. Here's the thing. I'm just,

I'm at the end of a fairly large Irish tour over the past two months. And the gigs have sold out. And I didn't post any of them on my main feed on Instagram at all. all and we were grand. So anyway, look, this Thursday, this Thursday I'm in Limerick City, my hometown at University Concert Hall, that's tomorrow. And that gig is, that gig's nearly fucking sold out, so shut the fuck up, promoter. So I'm in University Concert Hall, Limerick, tomorrow.

That's a Shrews penis away from being sold out. I shouldn't say that about Shrew's penises, I don't know. Well, on a second. Adult male shrews have an average penis length of 15 millimetres, which is... That's the length of a, about a fingernail, a small fingernail. But here's the thing. How big is that in relation to the shrews body?

How long... Hold on. Okay, so shrews themselves are 5 centimetres long, between 3 and 5 centimetres long. So a 15mm penis, so that means... in proportion to their body. That's actually gigantic. In relation to the show itself,

Shrews are really interesting too because Shrews have massive appetites. They eat like 120% of their body weight per day. They're tiny like, so they have these, their energy reserves are very, very low. And they have to eat like every three or four hours. They're consistently eating. So really,

a shrew is like they're like a fucking bodybuilder that needs to eat all the time or their muscles to plate and then their mickeys are so big

that when they get a bone or they go unconscious so that's actually unfair to say that the tickets to my limerick gig are a shrews penis away from being sold out why am I thinking about shrews

because a bat a bat flew over my head about 20 20 minutes ago and it's the first bat I've seen of the season and the air outside is quite warm and there's little flies in there and I just enjoyed seeing the bat because it's a phenomenologically congruent seasonal expression of bat behavior. The bats are supposed to be coming out of hibernation right now and eating flies and I just enjoy seeing nature behaving the way it's supposed to be behaving.

as opposed to daffodils popping up in December because of a warming soil. So I'm thinking about Shrews because I saw a bat. I've a gig in Limerick tomorrow at the University Concert Hall. All right, there's about 30 tickets left, that's all. I'm going to be interviewing Pat Schart, who is a legendary limerick comedian and also a brilliant actor and a fantastic musician. He's a music nerd.

He knows a few things about Frank Zappa. So that's going to be a great chat with lots of laughs. Actually, you know what, there. And I'm just going to take ownership of my behaviour. Because something's coming up. I don't usually make, like, penis jokes. Like, that's quite childish. That's, I don't, that's quite juvenile humour.

And something about the promoters. I feel like I'm in trouble. I feel like I'm in trouble and someone is giving out to me because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing and emotionally that it brings me back to being in school that I was very defiant and unruly in school and I really disliked being told what to do because I wasn't particularly interested in the school curriculum

I was interested in other things. Music. That's why. So when I would have been a teenager in school, like failing my junior cert, failing my leaving cert, like my parents used to ask me, why aren't you concentrating?

And I'd be like, I can't stop thinking about music. I can't stop thinking about songs that I want to go home and listen to. I used to bring a tape player in my pocket. And I'd, I'd put one of the earphones.

It used to go up my pants leg, up my jumper, out through my sleeve, and I'd have one earphone in the palm of my hand, and I'd lean against that. And I'd listen to, like, Cypress Hill in class, and the teacher wouldn't know. And being artistic, I now realised that that was the only way I could stay calm

and manage being in the classroom and feel okay is if I was listening to music in one of my hands. my place on the spectrum, I'm sensory seeking and sensory avoidant. So I was sensory avoidant because I had to wear that fucking jumper and I used to get in trouble for taking it off but when I was forced to fucking wear it it was just so itchy that I couldn't concentrate. And then I was also overstimulated by simply being in a room with loads of people and all the different conversations.

And I'd want to avoid those sensations. but by seeking the sensation of music, enjoying music, that would help me to cope and feel okay. I didn't know this then. Back then that was just misbehaving. But also I just want to be at home listening to music and then making music too. That was the age when I first started to learn how to make music on my computer, learn how to make beats. and to play the guitar and learning how to play piano. The teachers used to assume that I was stupid and they'd treat me that way

and I'd feel so angry because I'd think to myself I could talk for two hours about Cypress Hills music production about the samplers that they're using about the drum machines that they're using and I've no way at all to express this in this classroom because we're supposed to be learning.

in business studies. I had to learn business studies because that was the only way that I could also do art as a leaving sort subject and my art teacher I just want to give a shout out to him. Christy McGrath was his name.

I don't know if he's still alive. When we had art class I used to get to bring in my big headphones huge headphones and put them on and I just listened to Wutang Clan or Cypress Hill and draw and Christy just let it happen even though it was against the rules of the school

he's like no leave him off he loves his art he loves his music he's creating leave him off eventually by about fifth year I used to just get kicked out of every single fucking class and we'd be made to stand pointlessly stand in the hallway I wasn't allowed into the

classrooms and I'd just walk up to the art room and I'd spend the entire day missing other classes and just sitting quietly at the back of the art class while other classes are going on and I was allowed to draw and listen to music because of this one teacher who just, he just understood. But when I was in other classes like business studies and I'd get in trouble, I would get in trouble and they'd be given out to me.

My way of fighting back or being cheeky or disruptive is I'd go on a monologue about statistics about shrews, penises and make everybody laugh. So I just want to take ownership of that there. Because as I was speaking about Shrew's penises, there was a little voice inside me going, the fuck you're doing that for? You don't make dick jokes. That's quite law-hanging fruit. You don't do that type of humour. That's not very creative.

That's not lateral thinking. Anyone can make a joke about penises. What are you doing that for? There's a million podcasters making jokes about willies right now. But that's what led to that there. The subtle opening of a childhood world. led me to give a childhood response. Promoters are given out to me, taking issue with my behaviour.

Because I'm making music, because I'm being passionate about music, and they're saying, you're not supposed to be doing that, you're supposed to be promoting your faking, your gigs, do your homework. A video of you messing with synthesizers isn't going to promote a live podcast. So I'm realising now that that's actually triggering, a childhood wound and I'm experiencing that is the feeling of being

in trouble which which is ridiculous because I'm an adult adults do not get in trouble so I just want to take ownership of my behaviour there and I'm glad to have that self-awareness and to catch those feelings and emotions in the moment

and to assess my behaviour in relation to it and I could have just edited out the Shrews' paintings this content right there and re-recorded something more appropriate. But instead, I'd rather work with the failure. I'd lean into the failure of that and bring it into my process and reflect on it. The other gig that I have is Vicker Street. That's the 20th of April, two weeks away. It's a Monday night gig in Vickr Street. Vickr Street gigs are great crack. Come along to that. So there you go promoters. It's promoted two gigs.

in the first 10 minutes of the podcast, are you happy? And I'm probably going to have to do a video this week on Instagram as well, promoting the gigs to balance out the synthesizer videos that I've been posting. So about that music that I've been posting, I've been having a pretty mad couple of weeks.

So if you've been listening to the podcast, you'll know I'll purchase some analog synthesizers. The tactile hands-on nature of these devices has very much reconnected me with my love of music and the playfulness, the act of play that is

creating music. So once a week I've been setting aside two or three hours to engage in the act of play, to play and I have two little wonderful teachers. My tiny gorgeous toddlers who I get to

watch I get to watch them play with bricks of Lego or they play with bits of play dough or drawing and painting for the sake of doing it for the act of play. So I get to observe that and they become my teachers. And then when they're gone off to bed, I emulate that behaviour myself with my synthesizers. There's no goal, there's no plan. I'm not trying to do anything. I'm enjoying synthesizers for the fun of enjoying synthesizers. But then, once I free myself like that,

I free myself from the expectations of making a piece of work and I enter a flow state, then what happens is they end up making a piece of work. That's the paradox of creativity. You'll only really create when you're not trying to create. So each night I've sat down to. play with my synths. It's resulted in me making a short piece of music. And then I go, fuck it. I'll record 30 seconds of this and upload it to Instagram. And when I posted the first video,

I'm just like, fuck it, who gives a shit? Maybe someone wants to see me playing with synthesizers. It's the worst that can happen. People won't like it. Who cares? I had fun. But what I didn't expect, like at all, is that the pieces that I put out on Instagram, Instagram, independently all of them went quite viral outside of my page. Instagram is a bit more like TikTok now. It doesn't matter how many followers you have anymore. That's gone, that doesn't matter. You could have no followers and you could post a video tomorrow and if it elicits a response

in any way and a couple of million people could see it. So I posted three pieces of music in three weeks. The three of them I think of about 700,000 views in a couple of weeks. Not intentional, not expected. I've been getting offers for gigs. I got offered a gig in a club in Belgium and I got offered another gig in Berlin. What I mean here now is these are just people seeing a video on Instagram of a fella with a plastic bag. on his head, playing with synthesizers and making a piece of music.

These people, they don't know that I'm a podcaster, they don't know that I'm an author, they don't have context for what I'm at in my career at the moment. I know because I've been chatting to them. They just think I'm a musician. I was approached by a record label, a record label wanting to know if I'd speak to them about releasing music. I've had like professional musicians

like proper professional musicians who I listen to send me DMs wanting to know if I'd collaborate with them no context whatsoever that they don't know about my fucking podcast or that I'm a writer they think that I'm a musician

well I was in a previous life but I'm not actively a professional musician I haven't been for over a decade now am I going to take any of them up and the offers. No, I'm not. I'm genuinely making music for the love of making the music.

That's the bit that I like. I've done the career as a musician before in my fucking 20s. I've gigged that 15 people. I've gig that festival's the 30, 40,000 people. I gave myself permanent tinnitus

from doing music gigs in my 20s. The thing is with music, it's really hard to earn a living with music. Really, really hard, even if you're successful. Arning's from streaming and radio plays, they don't exist anymore. Even if you make the type of music that can make it onto the radio. If you're making anything weird or strange, forget about the radio. So it just means you have to gig music all the time.

And I'm the type of... I love creating music, but I don't like gigging music. I don't like the live performance. aspect of it. I'm not, I was speaking to Martin Ware last week, you know, and he was speaking about that period in the 1980s, where with his band Heaven 17, they didn't have to gig. There was enough money from radio plays and record sales and being on MTV. That's gone. You got a gig. But what I've loved about the past week is just the novelty of that. I remember that from 2006, 2007. making music in my bedroom on a shitty little computer

on a cracked copy of FL Studio and making pieces of music that I thought I might show it to a couple of my friends and then you go fuck it, I'll put it online and it's going viral and now you're getting offered these opportunities. Now this time around I'm saying no to these opportunities because I'm in the very fortunate position

where I don't need to say yes. I'm already earning a living, doing what I absolutely love. And what I absolutely love is writing this podcast, writing books. That's what I love and adore. And it doesn't give me tinnitus. And I don't like gigging live music, but I do love doing live podcasts. I enjoy that. I love sitting up on a stage in the darkness of it

and having a conversation with a person. really, I love doing that and that's why I gig so much. And also I'm saying no to these opportunities because I'm too fucking busy. I'm too busy with the podcast. And I've, I've some big projects on the way that I'll be announcing over the next couple of months that I can't announce yet. So I'm busy as fuck. But what I have adored about the past week is the feelings, the feelings that it has brought up in me to be getting discovered as a musician twice.

What it reminded me of specifically is, you know, I love that TV show The Wire. Even though the writer David Simon is a Zionist who blocked me on Twitter and called me a shitpiece, the Wire is still an incredible piece of work. And there's a plat line in it, and I've been relating to this platline bizarrely because of the past week.

Might be a couple of spoiler warnings, but the Wire was made in 2002. I think we've gone past. spoiler warnings for the fucking wire. If you're literally just about to start the wire, then spoiler warnings, yes. The wire is about the city of Baltimore and the criminals

and the police in the city of Baltimore. And there's a drug dealer by the name of Stringer Bell. And Stringer Bell is one of these drug dealers whose, if he'd grown up in different economic circumstances, wouldn't have been a drug dealer. He'd have been a very

successful businessman. But he was born in poverty. as an African American in a society that doesn't work for that type of person. And the whole time his goal, his character arc, is he kind of doesn't like being a drug dealer. He doesn't like being a gang leader. He's just figuring out a way to earn enough money

to become legit, to earn enough money from drug dealing that he can distance himself from it completely and then launder that money via politicians or whatever into legitimate income so that he can still be a criminal but he's

untouchable and he doesn't get to achieve that goal and a new drug dealer comes along a younger fella by the name of Marlow Stanfield now Marlow is a cold-hearted criminal he's a psychopath

he's vicious he's a gang leader a drug dealer a murderer a murderer and he loves it he lives off it he lives off the power of it he enjoys the power of it he loves being feared

in his community there's no softness to his character that's the beauty of the writing of this character is at no point do you ever see a soft side to him a gentleness

a fragility a vulnerability you don't even see evidence of a trauma that might explain why he's this much of a cold hard criminal. The only time you see anything resembling this is when he's recruiting children to his gang. Because that's how the gang structure works in the wires.

You've got older gang members and then they recruit little kids to be runners on the street. I mean, that's not just Baltimore. I'd see that in Limerick City every single day. Like there's crack dealers in Limerick that hang out on corners like in the wire. And you've got lads there that are my age who are clearly the leaders. And then you've got kids of 12, 13, 14. In Limerick they're called Penny Boys.

And they go around on the electric scooters. They go around on the electric scooters and those are the ones carrying the drugs. In the wire they're called corner boys and they're like 12 and 13. So one day Marlowe, this hardened gang leader, the toughest man in the community, gets his henchmen to hand out free money to little kids, kids who are 10, 12, to hand out money to these kids because they have nothing at home, to groom them effectively. And there's one little kid called Michael, and he refuses the money. He refuses the money from Marlowe, the gang leader.

and then Marlowe steps out of his fucking car and walks over to this kid and is like, is my money not good enough for you? And the little child throws a head at Marlowe that suggests that he's willing to stand up to him and Marlowe steps back. And for the first time you think you see evidence of compassion

in this Marlowe fucking gang leader. You think that he's laying off this child that he's going to show leniency and he does, but not because of kindness, because he just got the thrill of identifying a child who has the type of fearlessness

that can be groomed into making that child a murderer for his gang if Marlowe can just figure out the right way to gain that kid's trust, which would be difficult because that kid, even though he's 12 years of age, is principled enough to turn down the money from the local drug dealer And how they eventually do gain his trust is

Marlow has his henchmen called Chris and Snoop they have them follow this kid Michael around and learn things about his little life Now Chris and Snoop they're also cold hard killers heartless murderers and they shadow this Michael Yonfila

and they figure out oh he's going home to an abusive household and it's intimated that Michael's father is sexually abusing him. So Chris and Snoop get close enough to this little kid, Michael, that they kind of say, we're going to solve your problem. We're going to speak to your dad, and he's never going to be in the house again. We're going to get rid of him.

And then you and your little brother will be safe. So Chris, this murderer, this henchman of Marlos, he beats Michael's father to death. It's one of the most profound spectacles of violence that you'll ever see in a film or a TV show. Because the way that Chris beats that man to death lets the viewer know just by the beating that Chris himself was most likely sexually abused as a child. And that by beating Michael's father to death, he's actually beating the person who did that to him when he was a kid. And then in that moment, even though Chris the henchman is a cold-hearted killer, the trauma is revealed.

The trauma that underlies his cold-hearted behavior is revealed. And now you have a softness for that character, but they never do that with Marlowe. Marlowe, the leader, is 100% evil all the time. His only values are power and the love of cruelty and the enjoyment of being feared. And what makes Marlow such an incredible character as a piece of fiction is, it's very difficult to write a character that's that one-dimensional, that's that evil, and for that to work in a piece of fiction. That's why the wire is incredible.

That's why David Simon is an incredible writer, despite his political views. What the fuck does this have to do with me making music? So, remember I mentioned that other drug dealer earlier, Stringer Bell, who wanted to earn enough money as a drug dealer that he could make his money legitimate and clean and he could distance himself from criminality. Well, Marlow is such an effective gang leader that he eventually gets to that point.

He ends up working with corrupt politicians who don't care where his drug money comes from and then these politicians take that money and put it into real estate, put it into skyscrapers, and then eventually Marlow finds himself in this situation where he's incredibly wealthy, he's incredibly powerful and his money is clean. He doesn't need to be on the corner anymore.

He doesn't need to carry a gun. He doesn't need to even see what drugs look like. He doesn't need to be on the streets of Baltimore. If a drug's bust happens, he's not going to get arrested because he can go and live off in a middle-class neighbourhood. He has it all. all, he's reached the top now. He's untouchable, but he never wanted to be that. He wanted to be the hardest, most feared man on the streets. He wants people to be afraid when his name is spoken

in the streets. So one night he's out with these politicians who are cleaning his money and he's wearing a fucking suit so that he can fit in with him. In this alien world that he never asked for and suddenly you get the, you get a little bit of vulnerability. And that vulnerability is now he doesn't have meaning. He doesn't have purpose and meaning now. So he walks back into the streets of Baltimore, four in the morning, the most dangerous corner that you can think of. And he walks up to these two armed drug dealers who are standing on the corner selling drugs. And he's been so removed from that life, so removed from the neighbourhood, they don't know who the fuck

he is. They just see a fella walking along wearing a suit. And these are two hard gangsters now standing on the corner. And Marlowe walks up with his suit and he goes, the fuck are you looking at. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. That's the international signal for

I want trouble. What the fuck are you looking at? He says to the two drug dealers. Now they get pure, pure fucking angry, ready to go. I'm looking at you. They say. And then Marlowe says, do you know who I am? One of him immediately pulls out a gun and points it at Marlowe's head and pulls the fucking trigger. It goes off, but Marlowe's fast enough that he pushes that fella's hand away so the bullet miss. And then the other guy pulls out a knife

and swipes it across and cuts Marlowe's arm. The two lads are so freaked out, even though they're armed, they just run away. Who the fuck is this mad cunt in a suit? And they probably work for Marlow. They probably work for him but they haven't even a clue who he is he's so high up. But the lads ran off and Marlow just stands there he's after taking the corner himself

from two armed drug dealers just by being intimidating and they don't even know who he is and he stands there in the dark by himself on his shitty little corner and you see happiness come into his eyes and he smiles and then he puts his finger

on his arm Or he's just been cut and he tastes his own blood. And you're realising that moment, he doesn't want money. He doesn't want any of that fucking shit. He gets his meaning and purpose from being the most heartless, fearless, most feared,

psychopathic individual on the streets. And that's his thing. And we're left with that. We don't know what his arc is after that, whether he survives. We don't know. who just left with that. Do I think Marlow returned to the streets

to expose himself to being arrested to getting killed? No, I don't think so. I think he went back to the comfort of his legitimate money but he just wanted that little taste of the streets. He wanted that little taste of his own blood. So me getting...

So me... Me putting music online and getting... discovered a second time. I've been here before 20 fucking years ago. I know what it is. If you put out work and all of a sudden people who don't know you start coming with opportunities, like I know what that is. Not everyone who puts work out gets those opportunities so I know what that is. That's a little shot there. That's a chance. People who don't know who the fuck I am, there's a guy with a bag in his head making music that must just be what he does.

asking if I'd like a record deal or if I'd collaborate with them or offering me gigs that made me feel like Marlowe Stanfield and all I want to do is taste the blood on my arm that's what I want but I won't return to the corner because I've been there

it's not fucking happening it's misery and in 2017 when I wrote my first book of short stories and became an author and began this podcast that's when I started to have stability in my life. A regular source of income. A wonderful audience of people who really engage with the work.

We still have a million regular listeners after eight years going on nine, doing live podcasts to... In venues that I didn't even think possible when I was doing music. Like last year, I sold out Usher Hall. in Edinburgh, I used to stand outside that venue trying to sell tickets for music gigs where I was playing to 150 people

to stand outside Oshar Hall. Never thought I'd fucking gig there. Hammersmith Apollo. Now there's nothing wrong with giging to 150 people. Nothing at all. If anyone is showing up to enjoy art that you're making, that's a wonderful thing. But you better be in your 20s where you have the energy to be gigging. late, to be gigging in loud places, and if we're being honest, to not be able to earn a living from the job you're doing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of musicians, even ones that you would consider to be successful, are also working second jobs. That's how it is, unless they're

gigging to maybe more than a thousand people each night. Someone who's doing really good activism around this specific issue right now is a singer called Kate Nash hugely successful, but she's very open about how she can do like a tour in America and end up losing money. I've been speaking with Kate and I'm probably going to have her on the podcast at some point when we can make that happen. She's English with Irish heritage and she's been doing gas work at the moment. Learning about Irish history and trying to educate English people on the colonial horrors that happened in Ireland.

On behalf of England, just the day she was outside Big Ben holding a giant sign that says the English don't know their history. But I wouldn't return to being a professional musician because it would be so distracting to the happiness and meaning and purpose and feeling of calm that I get from this podcast and writing books. All of that has given me a very solid, reliable, predictable, life that's allowed me to have a little family that I can look after. But I have been enjoying tasting the blood on my arm this week. What I would possibly consider doing if I found the time is I might release music, but that's it. I don't think I'd sign to a label have any obligations whatsoever and just put music out that people could listen to if they wanted to.

but that would require me having the the time to put into that music and currently that's not what I'm doing I'm just picking two hours a week to make snippets as such and if you're thinking why are you doing it

why are you messing around with music why are you even bothering for the joy of the process for the playfulness for the love of making music and if you were to go to a lot of professional musicians Not every professional musician likes gigging at all or even wants to perform. Like Enya, Enya's never done a gig in her life, which she did in the early days with Clannid but not as a solo artist.

The Beatles stopped gigging in 1966 so they could focus only on studio work making the music, the art. Abba stopped gigging in 1982. The Beach Boys stopped gigging in the mid-60s because Brian Wilson, who, most likely neurodivergent, his nervous system just couldn't handle gigging, he just needed to be in the studio. Steely Dan stopped gigging in the mid-70s. These were all artists who were, they were in it for creating the music, not necessarily performing that music. But what did they all have in common? They came from the era when you didn't have to gig. You could just make music and earn a living from royalties. but if I was to take up anyone on an offer,

especially like a label, to put out an album, it's like, well, now you've got to go gig that album. And it fucked up my hearing. It gave me tinnitus doing all those gigs. There's no such thing as a record deal without extensive touring because the music itself cannot earn.

So I'd rather be semi-professional as a musician if I was to release music. Keep doing my thing over here and then if I felt like release of music I could, but I don't expect anything in return. But I do get a lovely kick. I get a kick out of the fact that, like the thing is with music as an art form,

a piece of new music has to operate like a conversation that you want to be part of or want to eavesdrop on. You know when you're in a restaurant and it's loud and everyone's talking, But then one person over in the corner of the room says something. And then the whole place goes silent and everyone wants to hear what that conversation is before you know what everyone's eavesdropping.

An effective piece of music kind of has to do that. Now after that point people can decide whether they like it or whether they hate it. But it does need to do that thing where it's like, what's that? Because if it doesn't do that thing then it's just background noise. But it needs to stand out and make people. What the fuck is that? This needs a bit of my attention. So I'm happy to still be able to do that.

That feels nice. Using only symmetrical vibrations of air that arrived to me via the playfulness of flow and the practice of doing it has had tangible mental health benefits for me. It gives the chaos and the busyness of my neurodivergent brain

a rest to be away from words and thinking and to exist only as vibrations and touching the knobs and the synth and the keys on the piano not thinking, doing, playing. That's meditation.

And I'm less anxious, less irritable. And I have the type of calmness where I can notice my emotions. And that's all I want out of life. Earlier on in the podcast when I was

speaking about when I made that joke about the Shrews' penis, and that I had the awareness that this was actually triggering childhood pain. That was only possible because I feel still enough and calm enough to notice my emotions safely as they pop up. If I can notice my emotions, then I can observe them and choose how I respond to them. But when I'm burnt out and irritable and angry,

when uncomfortable emotions step in, threatening emotions come in, such as feeling that I'm in trouble, thinking that someone's given out to me. Shame. We're talking about shame there. That's shame. If I feel like I'm in trouble and I haven't done anything wrong, then I'm experiencing shame. And that shame comes from my childhood. And it's the shame of believing that I'm bad or stupid or dysfunction.

or unruly or bold or whatever labels or put on me when my brain was too young to think critically and shame is very threatening and frightening and it's not a nice one to feel and if I can't sit with the feeling of shame and take ownership of it and observe it

and recognise it then I'm not responding to it I'm going to react to it you know what shame is it's a negative evaluation of self shame isn't I did something wrong I fucked up

I made a mistake some aspect of my behaviour here could be improved that's not shame shame is when that's triggered and it's oh I'm bad

oh I deserve this oh this awful terrible feeling I have no worth I'm worthless when things trigger childhood shit for me school shit I experience shame

so I need to be able to notice it and observe it so I can respond to it. I react to shame. Rumination. You stupid fucker. You're supposed to be promoting your gigs on Instagram like they asked. You shouldn't have been off making music like a fucking idiot. You're letting people down, people who rely upon you and you're letting them down. That's a reactive way to encounter shame. You're reacting to it. You're treating it as the truth. What triggers shame is a perceived social threat or failure and that then awakens the global core belief that you might have about yourself. I'm stupid, I'm defective, I'm wrong, I'm bad.

And then you experience what you call a contraction of self. It's a rotten feeling. And you know when you get that sudden contraction of self, when you then experience what's called cognitive narrowing, you suddenly make huge generalizations about yourself. as if they are the truth in the moment. I'm worthless. I'm a piece of shit.

I'm stupid. I'm defective. I'm wrong. And then you feel exposed. And you assume that every other single person can now see this truth about you. And that shame and it's rooted in childhood. And most of us carry around a bit of shame. You know, I mentioned the wire earlier and I was speaking about that scene of spectacular violence

where the character of Chris Partland beats Michael's father to death. death and through the intensity of his violence, you can pick up that Chris himself was abused in his childhood. What makes that writing so brilliant is that David Simon managed to communicate shame. This man, this abuser, awoke deep feelings of shame in the Chris character. His shame was the feeling of powerlessness he felt as a child and he reacted to that shame with furious violence and murder. the extreme end of the shame spectrum there.

I'd like to be in the headspace where I can use all those tools I just mentioned to spot shame when it pops up and then respond to it and go, oh no, that shame there. Feeling the need to make jokes about a shrews penis. That's defensiveness. Oh, I'm back in class now. And I think that this promoter is my economics teacher. And my economics teacher either called me a name or looked at me in a certain

way or I couldn't answer a question and the big, big shame for me in school, the big one, is when I would fuck up and it wasn't the teacher, it was the other students' reactions. The most shameful moment of my life, the one that probably reawakens every time I experience shame. It would have been when I sat my junior cert exam, so I would have been 14. I had to sit foundation maths, okay? Now the way it worked back then was you had honours maths and pass maths. So honours is advanced, pass is what everyone takes. And then you have foundation maths,

which was really difficult to even sit because no teacher would allow you to do it. You had to be so unbelievably poor at maths that this was the only option. and during my junior's earth exams were all in a big massive hall and we're sitting doing the maths exam and the teachers are handing

out the papers and I think the higher level maths was like green a green piece of paper there was a big pile and there was a yellow pile and that was ordinary level

pass mats and then there was one little pink I think it was there was one little pink paper and that was the foundation mats and that was for me. I was the only student doing it. And every student in the hall

was sticking their head up, looking around just to see this, oh, is that a foundation mat's paper? Is that it? And then it goes down to me. And I can hear everyone giggling and laughing because it's like, look at him, he's sitting foundation mats.

Oh my God. What's even on it? Is it just counting ones and twos? And the foundation mat's paper came to me and I opened it up I still couldn't do it still couldn't fucking do it and I was the first student

to walk out of the hall when you finish your exam you walk out you've got certain kids who are amazing at maths and they're leaving early after doing their higher level maths

I was the first student to walk out and I'm the one doing foundation and when I did that I heard everybody in the whole fucking room snigger and laugh and it felt like being stabbed in the back by a thousand knives I felt that sudden

intense contraction of self that I'm fucking worthless and now being entirely rejected by my peers because I'm so thick because I'm so fucking stupid and I can still barely count and I can't read clocks

but I internalised that massive pain as shame and it returns to me when failure is a possibility so that's why I try to fail and make that shame my friend undiagnosed autistic child in an environment that doesn't suit

my nervous system, that's what the fuck was going on and one thing that I'd like to say to that little child who couldn't do foundation maths, mathematics music is mathematics music is mathematics having fun

music is vibrations of air It's frequency ratios, temporal ratios, pattern and symmetry recognition. There's scaling systems through tuning. I don't process all of these things through numbers or arithmetic or language. I process them through emotions and my body. When I make music, it gets enough attention that I could do it professionally if I wanted to. So I can understand mathematics. I just experience it and express it in a very different way

that isn't measured by the school system. Whether it is if you sit fucking music for the leaving start but I wasn't allowed because you could either choose art or music because both of those were seen as silly subjects. But that assessment of my shame there, I can only do that when I feel calm enough and safe enough to be able to observe my painful emotions and respond to them and think about them critically.

And creating music is a bit of music. what's allowing me to do that. And that's not me talking out of my hope. Neuroscience will tell you that. Music therapy exists as a legitimate form of healing. Right, let's do a fucking Okina pause now. A lot of people asking me if I'm speaking about my synthesizers so much, why don't I do a synthesizer pause?

I have to put the synthesizers away when I'm recording the podcast because they're too distracting. So they have to get locked away when I'm in podcast zone. So I have my little ocarina here. We're going to play this. You'll hear an advert for something, all right? Not particularly musical, not very dog friendly. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blindbuy podcast.

If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, relief, entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page. All I'm looking for is the preemptive. price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford it, you want to listen for free. No problem at all. You do that. That's grand. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. I get to earn a living. We're all grand. It's a beautiful model based on kindness and soundness. And it keeps this podcast independent. You know, I was mentioning earlier about record labels. You know, a record

label releases your album but under the condition that you pay them back via touring there's no conditions here because this is listener funded if advertisers are here they're here on my terms nobody tells me what to speak about what i can or can't talk about or directs the content in any way and no no fucking advertiser's going to be comfortable with what's this week's podcast about oh it's about how a poorly placed joke about a shrews penis led me to meditate on shame and then i give the plot of the wire in the middle. Can I have a sponsorship please? No, you can't. Right, gigs. University Concert Hall Limerick tomorrow. Fuck all tickets. A shrews penis worth of tickets for that gig. I'm interviewing Pat Short. It's going to be great crack. Come along to that if you can get those

tickets that are left. Vickers Street, 20th of April. Dublin. It's a Monday night gig. Monday, I can, because I'm doing a live podcast, I take the nights that no one else wants. because here's the other thing about the economics of being a musician. Most of the acts that are going to be playing in Vickers are musicians and musicians need to have a Friday or a Saturday because when people go to a music gig, they have a couple of pints, they're having a night out, has to be Friday or Saturday.

No musician wants a Monday night gig because a lot of people don't want to go to a music gig on a Monday night. It's too exciting and they want to pint. My live podcast is much closer to going to the theatre or going to the cinema. It's a quiet, relaxing, meditative evening. You sit in your seat, you have a lovely time, then you're home and bed, get a full night's sleep,

and you're up for work the next day. And then for me, I'm off stage at 11, I'm back home and bed in Limerick at 1 a.m. And then I'm up ready to make pancakes for a pair of tiny monkeys at 7 a.m. Perfect. And none of it will exacerbate my tinnitus. 25th of April, Galway, Leisureland. That's the rescheduled gig from when I got chicken pox. Nearly sold out. A couple of tickets left for that. Come along if you want.

Then what have we got? May. I'm doing a daytime gig in Maynooth. In Maynoot University as part of the Arts and Minds Festival, which I thought it was only available to students, but it turns out the public can show up too. So if you want to come... That's a Saturday. So if there's nothing to do with half one in the day on a Saturday on the fucking 9th of May

come along to that gig in Maynooth. Then I'm over in Berlin in June for two nights at the Babylon Theatre. First night is sold out. Second night. Is that sold out on the second night? I'd say that's sold out on the second night. You could have a look if you wanted to.

That's Berlin. I'm going to drink some Czech beers. in Berlin, that's what I'm gonna do in Berlin. There's a video again that I'm obsessed with called Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is set in 14th century, what is now the Czech Republic. And I've become quite obsessed with Czech brewing traditions and there's specific types of Czech beers, which I can't get in Ireland, but I can get them in Germany.

And that's what I'm looking forward to in Berlin, as well as my gig. If anyone in Berlin knows of bars that might be near the venue that have a large selection of beer from the Czech Republic, please let me know on Instagram at Blind by Boat Club. July. See, I can't read dates. This is all fucking mathematics brain here again. Now, is that?

The 5th of July. The 5th of July. I'm in Sheffield at the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield City Hall. Is that what it's called? Come along to that, Sheffield gig. I'll have a wonderful guest. It'll be great crack. Middle of July.

Then the big tour of England, Scotland and Wales, which is almost sold out. That's in October 26, right? Starting on the 18th of October, I'm in the Brighton Dome. Then I'm in Cardiff at the New Theatre, Cardiff. Then I'm in Coventry at the Warwick Arts Centre. I'm in Bristol, then at Beacon Hall.

Guilford G Live London I'm at the Barbican Very nearly sold out there in London Pavilion Theatre Glasgow Also nearly sold out Then I'm in Gateshead Right I need to make clarifications about Gateshead

Because Last week I said that Ridley Scott based the film Some of the scenes from the film Blade Runner On Gateshead a lot of people corrected me that's not true

he based it on the area of Tyside not Gateshead so apologies to people from that area and then finally the theatre royal in Nottingham you cunts this was a bit of a phone call podcast I don't know what the fuck this podcast was about but I really enjoyed I enjoyed this podcast

I like the catharsis of exploring difficult emotions and being open and vulnerable about it I want to leave you on a thought, a thought that I had, but I don't know. It's something I couldn't make a full podcast out of, but it's just an observation that I found very interesting. In reference to, when I was speaking about the wire earlier, and I was saying that, you know, Limerick City, there's, there's crack dealers in Limerick City, there's different gangs that said crack, and you can see

them. It's very obvious out in the open. And the structure of how it operates is visibly, it's It's the same as the wire. You've got older lads standing there, then slightly younger, and then little children who are known as penny buys zooming around on their electric bicycles. One of them tried to rob my phone earlier this week actually in quite a cyberpunk moment. I've got this leather belt that I wanted to get repaired. I hate this business of if something like your belt breaks, you just go and buy another one. I don't like how capitalism has forced that upon us and now you don't get things repaired anymore.

So the buckle of my belt broke. And I'm like, fuck this. I'm not going to go into the shop just to buy a new one because I can. I'm going to try and get this belt buckle fixed. That's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to keep this belt in the name of sustainability. So I was walking around Limerick City with my phone out, trying to find someone who can repair a belt.

And I slowly realised the surface doesn't really exist. Then I found one shop, one little leather shop, and I went in there to the back. And it was just this old school shack with a single old man in there who had the skills to repair belts. And I took my belt off. I was holding my pants in case they wouldn't fucking fall down. And I showed him my belt, and he looked at it and he said, I can't repair this particular belt. And I said, what am I going to do?

and you go, there's nothing you can do. You're going to have to replace it. So I left the shop. But my belt is fucking broken, so I'm holding it up one hand. And then I have my phone out. I'm looking at it on Google Maps to see there has to be another shop that can repair my belt.

So it's raining heavily. And I'm on the curb on William Street. It's busy. And I'm heavily distracted because one hand is holding up my belt. And then the other hand has got my fucking phone out. in front of me in the rain with Google Maps trying to find another belt repair shop. And as I have my fucking phone out, this little fucker on an electric bike comes down the wrong side of the road and whips his hand out to try and take my phone out of my hand and he didn't

get it. But he was one of those penny boys. He was one of those penny boys that they're little kids on electric scooters that work with the gangs. But after that happened, I was reflecting on. That's like a 1980s cyberpunk story If you wrote a cyberpunk story

About 2026 Of a fellow walking around And he can't get his belt repaired And then there's gangs of young lads On electric bikes stealing GPS phones But the thing I wanted to speak about that I don't think I can justify

an entire podcast on was last Halloween I noticed something And it was I'd call it full We think of folklore as things from the past. But folklore is like orally transmitted, collectively shared traditions or beliefs that organically come out of a community. And it's outside of formal institutions.

So these gangs in Limerick, because the weird thing about Limerick is Limerick has like a, like a, gang tradition that goes back years. A gang culture. Dublin has it too. Cork doesn't have it. Galway doesn't have it. Limerick has this thing. And at the moment in Limerick there's feuding gangs that sell drugs. Mostly crack. Crack is a big problem in Limerick. Apparently, I read this in the newspaper. Limerick was specifically targeted as a market to test out crack cook about four or five years ago by this larger gang. I don't know who they were, but a larger Irish or international gang picked out Limerick and said, let's just see if crack works down there and lower the price.

And there's a lot of it. Limerick in the newspapers is called the Crack Capital of Ireland. So there's a lot of crack cocaine and if you walk around the city centre you see it being smoked openly. Now that's changed in the past three weeks because now there's police on the beat. So there's physical police on the beat all over Limerick City to stop people smoking crack and to stop what they refer to as aggressive begging, which I don't know, that's just a deterrent. I go for walks in the middle of the day and the crack is still there. It's just more on the outskirts at the city centre now.

But anyway, last summer, there was feuding between gangs and there was one or two drive-by shootings. But what's changed about it now and it's really weird, they film themselves doing

the drive-by shootings. So they film themselves in the car, pointing the gun out the window and shooting at houses. And then the gang members who are doing it then are getting arrested because they appeared to be filming their own shootings.

But last Halloween, I noticed something. So I saw this gang of little kids. They must have been eight or nine years of age, hanging around a petrol station. And for their Halloween costumes, they were all wearing blue surgical gloves. Nothing else, just like their track suits, their little electric bikes,

and blue surgical gloves. And I didn't fully understand what this was. And then I realised those drive-by shootings that happened over the summer, one of the videos, which went very viral locally in Limerick in WhatsApp groups, and it ended up in the newspapers too. One of the lads in the car, he had a Glock pistol, was shooting it and was wearing blue surgical gloves. And those tiny little kids, that's why they were wearing the blue surgical gloves, because they were looking up, are admiring the older gang lads

that are doing drive-by shootings with blue surgical gloves. And I thought to myself, that's folklore. It's incredibly sad, but that's folklore right there. That's a shared cultural tradition that comes out of a community

outside of institutions. And you need to understand the codes in order to know what that means. But it also reminds us. reminded me of another brilliant scene in the wire where there's a character called Omar. And Omar is, he's not in any gang, he robs drug dealers, incredible character. But unlike Marlow, who has no heart, Omar, he's a killer, he's a shooter on the streets, but he is all heart.

And one moment in it where you see his regret and grief and grief and compassion and humanity is when one of the police says to him, there's little kids in the street dressing up as you, pretending that they're you, pretending that they're shooting at drug dealers, they're looking up to you. You think you're doing something good

by robbing these drug dealers, but you're not, because the little kids are looking up to you and they want to kill people like you do. And it reminded me of that. And having said all that, I'm still greatly disappointed that David Simon is a Zionist.

What a shame. What a shame that a person with that much insight into the human condition is... appears to be supporting genocide. Alright. Okay, that was a phone call and a half is what the fuck that was. That was all over the gaff. Jesus Christ. Alright, I'll catch you next week.

I don't know what with. What am I doing this week? Oh, I'm making a music show. NTS, which is an online music station. They've basically said to me, do whatever the fuck you want. So I'm going to do a radio show for NTS. It's going to be quarterly. My first one is April or May.

I'm not sure, but I'm going to record it this week. Anyway, that's what I'm going to do. Okay, rub a dog, genuflect to a swan. Fillet the proportionally gigantic glands over Shrew. Dad bless.