The Blindboy Podcast - Vincent Fist

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

Sheela Na Gig, Blade Runner, calling out wrongs, Music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dust off your galoshes for the Christ Prize. It is Ash Wednesday. How are you getting on? What's the crack? Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. I'm recording this podcast in Dublin, in a hotel room. I think the sound isn't too bad. It's not disgraceful. There might be a very slight echo. too bad it's not disgraceful there might be a very slight echo also i'm recording this on my laptop for so for some reason i get kind of a strange digital noise it sounds like a like a door squeaking it sounds like a digital door squeaking you can't hear it now but it might pop in and out throughout the podcast it's it's very low sounding noise that's actually quite calming but just to give you a heads up

in case you think anyone's you know opening a digital door behind you and sucking you into another dimension speaking of uh heading off to another dimension very sad to fucking report that Kate Flint from the Prodigy died the other day he died by suicide which is utterly shit news

you'll have heard me mention multiple times on the podcast how important the music of the Prodigy was to me growing up massive massive fan as a child and even though

like Keith Flint wasn't involved in the music of the Prodigy well he was when he sung on Firestarter but Liam Howlett was the producer but I still used to fucking adore Keith Flint as a front man and I would have spent the first

because I would have gotten into the Prodigy when I was a child and I would have had their two first albums on tape Experience and Jilted Generation so I didn't really know what they looked like, I'd open up the tape and there was cartoons of them on Experience and I think there might have been one photo in Jilted Generation and then one day I went into Eason's it was, when they used to sell videos and I saw a Prodigy video, it was, it was a,

called Electronic Punks, and it was, it was a video collection of all the Prodigy's videos, and some live footage, and the Prodigy weren't being played on TV, you know, I didn't have MTV or anything like that, I just had RT1 and 2, so there was no, you never saw a Prodigy video, that I just had RT1 and 2 so there was no you never saw a prodigy video so I wanted to I saved up my money anyway it was about 12 pounds I think to get this prodigy video and when I went in they wouldn't give it to me because you had to be over 15 to be able to get the video and I was heartbroken so I went out onto the street and started asking adults Will you go into Easons and buy me a video that's 15? And no one would of course. Because they thought I wanted to see a set of tits.

They got freaked out. But then one lad. He was about 19, 20. I just said to him. Look I love the Prodigy. And I can't get the Prodigy video. And he then was outraged. That they wouldn't let me have a prodigy video just because I wasn't

15 so he went in and got it for me but that was the first time I saw Keith Flint and it was all these prodigy music videos but in between there was outtakes and I just know from a young age that he was a really kind kind of warm funny person you know you just got that vibe from him a very funny funny person so it's just really fucking sad to have him taking his own life at 49 but of course we all have to be you know you have to be cautious and careful when it comes to people who die by suicide. That we don't go searching for reasons, you know, we don't simplistically go searching for reasons. I mean, unfortunately, the Sun newspaper, which is a fucking red top rag, had Keith flint on their front cover today you know and

speculating as to the reasons why he would have committed suicide even though the samaritans have and amnesty international have very clear guidelines about based on a rigorous study as to how suicide should be represented in the media and speculating over why someone commits suicide or sorry dies by suicide is not on, that's not what we do em the thing

the thing is with suicide is the person who, the person who dies by suicide they're in a suicidal frame of mind. At that point, if you've ever been suicidal, you know what I'm talking about. It's a suicidal frame of mind. So we who are not in that frame of mind, we can't evaluate things from their perspective.

evaluate things from their perspective that's why even though for people who are bereaved it is um it's a normal part of the grieving process to wonder why those people are entitled to that they're entitled to their um how they process their grief but as a general rule a suicidal person is suicidal and you and I don't have a frame of reference for that if you get me so just sick and sick to see him go, he's someone I would have absolutely bent over backwards

to try and find to get onto this podcast he seemed like a gas con to the highest order so that was a rough couple of days, you know, for me, just to see a childhood hero gone like that so suddenly. The one kind of good thing that could emerge from this situation, from Keith Flint dying,

I'd like to see music journalists seriously reappraise the Prodigy and the Prodigy's music. from Keith Flint Dian I'd like to see music journalists seriously reappraise the Prodigy and the Prodigy's music like okay the Prodigy are they've sold loads of albums they're huge they're a massive band but when you hear

the Prodigy being spoken about it's very much about oh they have a great live show or they did a good gig here at this festival that seems to be the gist of it there's no one doubting that they're legends but they need to be spoken about in the same way that Nirvana

are spoken about or that the Beatles are spoken about or that Bowie is spoken about I never hear the Prodigies music spoken about, I never hear the importance of what they did for rave music, for electronic music spoken about by music critics. I never heard someone lauding their production, the songwriting.

This seems to be absent in any critique, proper critique of the Prodigy. It's all about their brilliant live shows and you know firestarter gets mentioned a lot firestarter is not even a good prodigy song the first two albums experience and jilted generation they're pioneering they're they came out of the rave scene but they blew the rest of rave music out of the water there's no comparison both of those albums each song new things are happening in music with each of those songs do you know

Apex Twin who's an artist that came from the same period not as popular now Apex Twin's a fucking legend I won't say anything bad about him but for some reason Apex Twin is critically

assessed as an important pioneer of music and is given artistic respect Prodigy it's not that anyone's calling him shit it's I just don't see anyone truly speaking about him as proper artist

I don't see that conversation happening and I think what it is it's it's really silly reason after when they when they got popular in 1997 after the album fat of the land they got big in america and when you think of a prodigy fan what comes to mind is an american who plays video games, spends all his time online and drinks Monster Energy drink. A kind of a nerd, an uncool white American nerd

who bullies children on the internet. That's what comes to mind when you think of a prodigy fan. So I think that connotation of the audience for some reason is causing people to not go back and reappraise their importance as musicians.

In particular, Liam Howlett's production. So I'm hoping, I'm waiting for the journalists to actually go, you know, because everyone's gone back listening to the Prodigy now, because Keith Flint has died. Everyone's gone on looking at old Prodigy videos, listening to the tunes. Someone's going to have to go, holy fuck, this music was important.

Really creatively important and innovative. I will be doing a podcast at some point that heavily features the Prodigy's music. I want to do, it's, Breakbeat Hardcore would be the name of that genre of rave. So I want to do a continuation from the hip-hop podcast in the house podcast onto that but that's another day but anyway last week's podcast which was fantastic crack boiling hot takes all over the gaff we went from fucking talking about the

the beheaded crusader mummy in dublin there was a skull stolen in Dublin last week went from there to fucking talking about Michael Jackson to talking about Robbie Williams ringing me up on the phone it was madness I am happy to report that today

the head of the decapitated Templar the crusader was returned to the church in Dublin so hopefully they'll sew it back on or something and mind their security in future so no one can go robbing fucking graves. The consensus seems to be, because they were asking academics

and they were asking everybody, why did someone steal the skull of a mummy from a church in Dublin? And the consensus seems to be that someone stole the skull for witchcraft purposes that either witchcraft or voodoo someone from the National Museum

said that and everyone in Ireland was like totally shocked it's like oh my god. Someone stole a skull. For witchcraft. How strange. How dark. And it's like.

Today is fucking Ash Wednesday. And loads of people around the country. You know. Are going to walk into a church. And the priest. Who's essentially a magician. Is going to draw a crucifix

on your head, what's a crucifix? only a fucking a depiction of someone's execution gonna paint that on your fucking head in the hope that it'll ward off you going on fire after you die

you know, the utter madness of you know, things within Catholicism in the hope that it'll ward off you going on fire after you die. You know, the utter madness of, you know, things within Catholicism or Christianity that are completely normalised within our lives. Drinking the blood of Christ, eating his fucking body as a form of bread, him being his own son and father at the same time. These highly irrational, crazy fucking things. And then we'd be judgmental

about someone robbing a skull for witchcraft do you know I mean it's not robbing graves isn't great it's creepy you have to touch a dead skull but eh you know is witchcraft any stranger than any other fucking religion I don't think so

I don't think many religions get to trump other ones with how mental they are so what I'm going to do this week with the podcast because of several requests from ye, I've been getting loads and loads of

people disappointed that I'm not reading out as many questions at the end of podcasts anymore because the reason being I'm just getting more immersed in the hot takes so I just end up talking and before I know it like an hour and 10 minutes has passed so I don't get around to answering questions anymore so for this podcast what I going to do to keep you happy, because so many people are asking, this podcast is just going to answer questions.

I'm going to answer the questions that you've been sending me in on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Patreon, public questions, fucking private questions. The last time I tried to do a fucking question podcast i think i answered one question really really long so i'll try and cover a good few questions this week so we'll see i don't even know but they are i'm gonna look through i what i did is i during the week i selected like 60 of them or something and i'll pick I'll just pick at random whatever's there and answer them

as I see fit and we'll see how we get on the reason I'm in Dublin by the way recording the podcast in a hotel is because I was gigging

last night in Vicar Street we had a sold out live podcast in Vicar Street it was unreal my guest I had

his name is Connor habib he's an occultist a gay porn star and an academic and we just had a fucking mad night speaking everything from the occult to sex workers rights it was a phenomenal live podcast. Everyone enjoyed it. So that was Vicar Street last night. There's two more Vicar Streets on the the 5th and 6th of April I believe. Am I right?

Let me check here. 6th and 7th of April in Vicar Street there's live podcasts. 6th is nearly sold out Whitley Hall in Belfast on the 12th of April what else have we got

coming up Monaghan on the 30th of March in the Iontas Theatre in Castle Blaney em I've Waterford on the 23rd of March

Letter Kenny on the 3rd of May Mullingar on the 4th of May and then Limerick Dolans on the 9th and 10th of May just getting them out of the way just getting those live podcasts out of the way before I answer some questions from ye. Glorious bastards.

Alright so here we go. Kayanesta. Asks. What is the crack. With them mad carvings. Of your one. Putting her fanny apart. Sheila Nagig. I think they're called.

What is the crack with Sheila Nagig's? Well. Do you know what a Sheila Nagig is? Off the top of my head. They're like. Sheila Nagig's are. These. Would you call them ancient?

They can vary in age. But they're Irish. They're little Irish sculptures. Right. stone carvings that commonly depict a female figure with her legs spread open and she's usually

holding the lips of her fanny apart and opening up her fanny, right? And there are these stone carvings that are found all over Ireland of varying ages is that the sound of it it's a very loud police siren they've gone quiet now because I mentioned it cunts but anyway that's a sheet and a gig a stone carving of kind of unknown origin kind of a folk origin they can be 500 years old they can be a thousand years old

and it depicts a woman with her legs open and she very much presenting her vagina and what's the crack with them you're asking well they were often found they would have been placed high above the altar of a church, of an Irish church, which you'd think is quite odd, you know, because it's like the whole morality of Catholicism. Now, here's the interesting thing with the sheet and the gigs. if you ask them what is a sheet and a gig, they'd say, oh, it's a fertility symbol. That we perceive it as this carving of woman with her legs open, that that is her wanting sex

and that, you know, we would use sheet and a gigs throughout history to make ourselves more fertile. You know, there were stories of, well, not only human fertility, but taking like a sheet and a gig and putting it into a field so that the crops will grow or putting a sheet and a gig into a trough of water if the cows were drinking for it to make the cows more fertile

so you have this narrative of the sheet and a gig as a fertility symbol that encourages sexual activity and encourages fertility and other scholars reject that and it's a problem you often see with ancient depictions of women number one we assume that it was made by a male no evidence whatsoever that's an assumption that we make number two we project the male gaze upon it we assume that this is an object for male pleasure so one reading of the sheet in the gig that i heard that i thought was very very interesting is that this depiction this ancient irish depiction of a woman with her legs open and clearly pulling her flaps apart quite cartoonishly and wide, that it had nothing to do with sex. It's not her pulling her legs apart saying, come on in, have sex with me. kind of like a protection against

dying during childbirth or a protection against infant mortality and this is an alternative reading of the sheet in a gig when you strip away patriarchy I suppose when you don't look at it from the male perspective when you don't simply assume a man made this and he's objectifying the woman take that away

assume that maybe women made the sheet in a gig or maybe it was made for women infant mortality was massive in Ireland I spoke about this a few podcasts back there was an evolutionary trade-off with the human body something to do with the the size of our brains where humans are essentially born kind of prematurely and there's an evolutionary trade-off with our giant heads that accommodate our brains but also human hips not really being wide enough to comfortably give birth to children

so infant mortality in in a naturalized environment that doesn't have modern medicine infant mortality is very very high in humans also death in childbirth is very very high in humans when you remove modern medicine so there's a theory that that's what the sheet in the gig was it was trying to rather than looking at it as as a woman with her legs open wanting a dick inside her it's granting a woman these this massive massive vagina that will allow her to give birth with ease so that she doesn't die and so that the child doesn't die. And that's an alternative reading in the Sheet and the Gig

which I find much more interesting than reading it as a sexualised object. I find that a much more interesting reading. Like Venus figurines as well. Venus figurines are some of the oldest examples of human art in the world. There's Venus figurines that date back, I think, 55,000 years. And what a Venus figurine is, is they're common across humans, human cultures. They're small little

stone carvings and they depict always a female figure this is the Venus, it's a female figure it's a female figure and the female figure often has hugely exaggerated

bodily proportions giant tits a huge arse like cartoonishly large okay and the traditional reading of this is again these were either fertility amulets or symbols or they were, you know, people say men would have carved these to create what 50,000 years ago would have been the ideal female body. You know, 50,000 years ago, that's before cities, we would have been hunter-gatherers, people wouldn't have been particularly well- farming wasn't invented transient tribes small groups of people eating berries very rarely eating meat because of the amount of effort required to hunt meat so someone who would have been overweight or even physically healthy and fully nourished that would have been quite rare but it also would

have been something that would be would have been massively coveted in a sexual partner so the reading is is that venus figurines were an idealized woman who's incredibly well fed and is very plump and overweight and that this was the hottest thing imaginable imaginable at the time 50 000 years ago so men just sat around carving this and maybe masturbating to it again that reading of it we don't know but that reading again is a very male-centric reading it assumes that only men were creating these things that they were only created for the male gaze. And it erases any female agency within it. So there's another very fucking interesting reading of the Venus figurines.

That if these figures that have hugely exaggerated breasts and big bellies and giant arses and huge thighs. The other reading is that they were created by women and these women didn't have mirrors because it's 50,000, 40,000 years ago. And this is how they saw their bodies when they looked down. this is how they saw their bodies when they looked down so if you think of it from the point of view of the human eye when a female looked down at her body at her breasts and her belly and her arse and her legs there's no mirror present so she tried to create this in her hand 3d representation of how her body looked and that's another reading that i've heard of regarding these venus figurines which again i find very fucking interesting and quite lateral and it points out as well how we have to be so cautious that we don't read history from the perspective of patriarchy and the male

gaze with no evidence whatsoever really you know let's take another question um brendan asks a few podcasts back you mentioned that big was a more accurate representation of 2019 than blade runner do you think blade runner got anything right about 2019 um I've been thinking about this a lot so the general gist of Blade Runner is a film from 1982 based on a book from the 60s and it's about 2019

it's a film that takes place in 2019 although the book takes place in 1991 but Blade Runner the film takes place in 1991. But Blade Runner the film. Takes place in 2019. And it depicts. You know like.

Every representation of the future. That we think about in science fiction. Modern science fiction. Basically comes from Blade Runner. 1982. From that film. Because it was so. Revolutionary. when we think of

Asian inspired cityscapes in perpetual darkness with a neon glow and rain you know that's Blade Runner's influence cyberpunk do you know and it wasn't really that like sometimes if you look at

photographs of Hong Kong now and stuff it does look a bit like Blade Runner but the main premise of Blade Runner is, first off, there's flying cars in Blade Runner. There's no flying cars in 2019, nor would they be practical. But also, the big thing about Blade Runner is that it's about what it means to be human. about what it means to be human in blade runner there are these things called replicants which are artificial human beings that are more or less completely indistinguishable to regular human beings except for the fact that they can't experience empathy but other than that, these androids and replicants are perfect human beings. Now, they're not present.

We don't have... Like, even if you look at that robot that the Saudi Arabians have, Sophia, and she has a certain degree of artificial intelligence, and her robot face tries to mimic emotions. Like, within two seconds you look at Sophie and you know she's a robot, you know she's not real. She's not going to confuse anyone that she's a human anytime soon. So in terms of physical replicants and androids,

Blade Runner did not correctly predict 2019. But then I started to think and what I started thinking was in our everyday life okay we have androids and I don't mean android phones. We have a version of ourselves that we kind of command and control. And this version of ourselves is smarter than us. It's more brave than we are. It's better looking than we are. It's more perfect than we are.

This version of ourselves will say things that we're too scared too scared to say in our normal lives and what that version is is your social media avatar how we use social media if you really think about it what we've essentially done we have created our own personal androids that live in a virtual space and it's an idealized perfect android version of us and the way things are going now with the face tuning we'll say face tuning is where just apps they're apps that you know you put your photograph into instagram and you can give yourself better cheekbones, brighter eyes, a nicer chin, whatever the fuck. A lot of people are doing this.

So this is now an unreal, a hyper real version of yourself visually that's online. That is an android. But then you think of the way we behave online. Like there's people online who come across as very confident confrontational fearless people online and in real life very very quiet reserved people who wouldn't say fucking peep to anyone who so when we're online when we're on or Facebook, we'll start arguments and make points and be assertive and be angry in ways that we simply would not in real life. So we've created a more empowered, you know, whether it's healthy or not, I don't know, probably not. But we've created an android of ourself that goes in into this virtual landscape against other

people's androids and we've completely compartmentalized like our real self is simply when our smartphone like if you're if you're ever on a fucking train like and you watch people on their smartphones, they're full-on zombies, like, we all are, like, we're all, we zombify. Like, watch someone scrolling through Instagram in particular, scrolling, and then pressing like, pressing a heart button, a love button, scrolling, love button, scrolling, love button, and internally, they're immersed in the joy of Instagram but their face is completely stoic people looking at their phones don't have expression they're so fully immersed

in the experience of being in their phone that all expression is gone so in a sense our motor faculties we shut down we go into a an immersive autopilot and we begin to live life through our android through the digital version of ourself that is better than us and curated to perfection in every possible way so if you think of it in that respect, Blade Runner is accurate to an extent. It's like as soon as that smartphone comes out, we shut down and we hook into that other reality where our perfect us does their thing.

So we do have personal androids that occupy a virtual space. And, you know, we call it social media, we call it Instagram, we call it Twitter. That's what these things are. That's simply what they are. call it twitter that's what these things are that's simply what they are um and to kind of add substance to this so that it's not just a roaster of a take like have you ever been just met someone online only online like on on twitter we'll say twitter is a good example because like with facebook you tend

to be friends with people you know in real life where with twitter twitter is where strangers go to meet each other and that's why twitter is so twitter is very extreme you know people say shit on twitter that they really wouldn't say on Facebook it's it's it's a very I don't I don't want to say false in in a negative way Twitter is like a a game Twitter is is a a massive multiplayer online role-playing game that's what Twitter is but if you've ever met someone in real life who you've had a you know a long friendship with on twitter and then you meet them and it's like fucking hell you're you're not the person you are on twitter at all you're totally different and you don't click with the person in real life

the way that you did on twitter and you could have had a very meaningful relationship on twitter you could have had the best fucking jokes, the best friendship, and then you're with this person in real life and it's like, fuck. Wow, this isn't... I don't think we'd be friends in real life at all. Because it was your avatars. Neither of us were being authentic.

It's that perfect, idealized, tuned up Android out there in the virtual space interacting. It's false as fuck. So how is that supposed to communicate in real life? That won't happen all the time, but I guarantee you, you'll probably have had that experience. I'm sure people who are using like Tinder or dating apps, same fucking thing, having mad crack online

and then meet the person in real life and it's like, no, there's no buzz here. Different person, completely different person. I guess my Android just met your Android and it's as simple as that. The other thing too too not necessarily from the film blade runner but the book that blade runner is based upon which is called do androids dream of electric sheep fucking beautiful name written by philip k dick and philip k dick

he's not a he's not a great writer to be As a writer, as someone who can construct a story, someone who can create prose, he wasn't great in that respect. But Philip K. Dick had a vision and an imagination that was unparalleled. The amount of science fiction films that are based on things that Philip K. Dick wrote. But he was also a very unwell man. He had severe mental illness issues and would

enter states of psychosis and paranoia and this is reflected a lot in his work but the levels of creativity and originality are fucking ridiculous so in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which Blade Runner is based upon

it's a world like I said whereby there's humans and there's also these androids who are more or less indistinguishable to humans except they don't have empathy just as

actually that's an interesting thing too when I'm talking about our own personal androids that we use today you know yeah suppose it is ironic that half of ye have phones that are called androids as well but our social media androids you know our version of ourself that's quite devoid of empathy too you know on twitter yes you can be a fucking savage yes you can have the perfect response to somebody you can edit your speech in real time you can, yes, you can be a fucking savage. Yes, you can have the perfect response to somebody. You can edit your speech in real time. You can take people down.

You can be witty in a way that you could only dream of in an actual real-life situation. But Twitter exchanges are often devoid of empathy. They're highly emotionally charged and they're lacking in nuance. They're black and white. They're binary. Yes and no. lacking in nuance. They're black and white. They're binary. Yes and no.

I'm right. You're wrong. I'm angry. You're upset. There's no gray area. Empathy is not present. So like in the book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The only way to truly know if an android is an android and not a human,

they fail an empathy test but interestingly what happens amongst humans in the book they all in their houses have a thing called an empathy box which isn't too far off a smartphone and everyone hooks into their empathy box where and on When everyone kind of joins into this mainframe, which is a bit like the internet, they partake in a new type of religion called mercerism. And what this new religion is, is everyone... It's like everyone gets off on empathy and sharing pain. Empathy within the universe in this book becomes fetishized because androids can't do it.

So humans fetishize and pedestal empathy. crystal empathy and they all hook into this mainframe empathy box so they can follow a lad called Mercer as he gets hit with rocks and Mercer the messiah within this world gets hit with rocks and when he gets hit with rocks everyone physically feels his pain and elements of that do remind me of certain elements of social media in particularly in particular how people's wounds and pain are very much rewarded on social media today now i'm not trying to criticize it and say it's a bad thing because social media is used for, you know, people who are victims, people who have marginalised voices, people who have experienced trauma and pain. They can now voice these things online. But often how we engage with them as people, it's fetishised.

people it's fetishized do you know like the mental health conversation is like this now i'm not critiquing it i'm not saying this is a bad thing but if someone goes on to twitter and opens up about depression or opens up about they might have been suicidal that will get a lot of retweets and likes units of social approval and we all then share in this pain we we all hook in we use our androids our replicants or our versions of ourselves to hook into this virtual landscape where we reward people who reveal their open wounds and that's where we're at in 2019 now I'm not trying to critique it good or bad I'm just saying that's the way the situation is but that is that is a very a good thing because you know conversations that weren't happening in real life spaces

are now able to happen in online spaces, people who didn't have voices have voices now the mental health conversation is there's a much greater vocabulary now, it's more comfortable for someone to say I have depression, I have anxiety and that's fantastic

but where there's a risk of dodgy I see certain people sometimes and they have constructed their online identity around their mental health issue or their illness and that's where it can get hairy so you have someone who you often see the start of it is is like a tongue-in-cheek jokes about their depression about their anxiety but essentially it's

taking that anxiety and depression and making it a fundamental aspect of their identity. And when that happens, that can get in the way of then becoming the healthy person who you deserve to be if you get me um we know that likes and shares they provide a dopamine hit so what happens when someone is excessively posting about their mental illness or their mental health. For an unconscious. Hit of dopamine approval. From the likes and shares that are guaranteed from it. Over and over.

That's a very destructive and toxic feedback loop. Quite a fucked up feedback loop. If I show these people my wounds. If I keep these wounds open. They will like me me that's not good it's rare and I see it but that's something that's not good

but anyway the book The Blade Runner was based on it did predict that a version of it quite accurately so yes to answer your question there are elements of Blade Runner and the book that it was based on that are accurate to 2019 but you have to scratch beneath beneath the surface to kind of kind of psychological things and sociological things we don't have flying cars but

like what's the difference between how you you like like a drone pilot a drone pilot a drone pilot gets into a little box somewhere in texas and then they hook up to a camera and they control a flying drone over in Afghanistan and they press buttons and people die in Afghanistan. Now, obviously, that's complete brutal murder. But how we use social media, the mechanics of it are similar. I'm not talking about death or killing people. talking about death or killing people well

if you think of how like when I spoke about stan culture a few weeks back and sometimes when people I was talking about the instance of Pete Davis, Ariana Grande's ex-boyfriend he posted a suicide note on Instagram

and a load of people underneath just started going, do it, do it, do it. You know, here are these, like I said, I clicked on their profiles, they appear to be well-adjusted, normal people, you know, with photographs of their families and their dogs and here they are underneath a suicide note saying, do it. There's no empathy in that interaction whatsoever.

Empathy is gone. So that person who's doing that, suicide note saying do it there's no empathy in that interaction whatsoever empathy empathy is gone so that person who's doing that they're not a million miles away removed from a drone pilot they've sat down on their smartphone they've entered a space that is outside the box that they're currently in and they're engaging in an act of brutality. An act devoid of empathy. Whereby. The actual physical human consequences of their actions don't matter. Because they're. Off the grid as such. They're in a different world.

Is that too hot a take? Is that a live roaster of a take? Too fucking hot. I don't know. Okay another question. There's a loud truck outside now. That's a garbage truck. Is it? Can you hear that?

Those loud Dublin rubbish trucks. Okay, before we take another question, we'll have the little pause. Now, last couple of weeks i've been doing a banjo pause i don't have a banjo with me in dublin but last night at my vicar street gig someone gave me a new fucking ocarina so i have a new ocarina it's significantly larger

than my old ocarina it appears to be a genuine peruvian one too so i have a brand new ocarina it appears to be a genuine Peruvian one too so I have a brand new ocarina so we can have a new ocarina pause this week the ocarina pause look you know what at this stage there might be a digital advert if you don't hear it you're going to hear me play an ocarina let's give it a go

how do I do this now? Hey! The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. It's not real.

Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. 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. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Oh. I'm going to wake up the fucking hotel, honey. Oh. I'm going to wake up the fucking hotel, honey.

That was the new ocarina pause. I don't know how I feel about that. A lot of deep end on that ocarina. And quite difficult to get some notes out of it. Hmm. Thank you very much to the person who gave it to me, though. Thank you so much. That'll be coming back to Limerick this podcast is supported by the Patreon page

okay if you'd like to be a patron of this podcast you know if you enjoy it and you want to you know like I said here's the thing with Patreon for the first time in my fucking life I have a regular source of income.

I know what my money is going to be next month. I've never had that in my career. It's one of the shittiest things about being a creative is the utter uncertainty of, you know, if you have a good month and you're like, oh, a couple of commissions came in or whatever i'm making money this month you don't know what next month is going to be you don't want you don't know is it going to be six months before i get another paying job so the money that i make this month can i buy something nice for myself or can i go on a holiday or must i squirrel this away so that i can pay my fucking rent patreon has removed that from my life i know what money i'm getting every

fucking month now and just thank you so much to everyone who is contributing to the patreon page it's changing my life and i can't thank you so much i now have the freedom completely to create on my own fucking terms to be able to turn things down if they're not right for me to truly work on what i care about and what i love and it's possible because of ye doing that so thank you so much um patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast ask yourself if you enjoy the podcast and you met me you met me out in a pub would you like would you like to buy me a pint if you would you can just give me a five or a month or whatever price of a pint price of a cup of coffee once a month on the Patreon page. It's a suggested donation.

If you don't have that money, you don't have to. You don't have to. You know, I have a lot of students listening to this who don't have that fucking money. It's grand. Someone else does, so they're paying for you. This is a model based on soundness.

But thank you so much to everyone who's fucking contributing to the Patreon. Seriously, I really appreciate it it god bless you bastards so before i get into another question as well what i'm doing recently with my time because i'm writing my book at the moment you know i'm also trying to spend a decent amount of time reading reading other books to just for inspiration and to keep on my toes

and to be aware of what good writing is so I'm reading J.G. Ballard I enjoy J.G. Ballard, fucking lunatic his short stories are fantastic and currently reading a set His short stories are fantastic. I'm currently reading a set of short stories by a guy called George Saunders. And George Saunders has a short story called Sticks, which is only one page long.

And it's one of the most brilliant pieces of fucking writing that I've come across in a while it's such a poignant hard hitting short story in under one page it's maybe 500 words so I posted it on Instagram there last week and everyone loved it so what I might do is I'll just

I'm gonna read it out for you I'm gonna read Sticks by George Saunders for you. Because I'd say it'll only take three minutes. Every year on Thanksgiving night. We flocked out behind Dad. As he dragged the Santa suit to the road. And draped it over a kind of crucifix. He'd built out of metal pole in the yard.

Super Bowl week, the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet, and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the 4th of July, the pole was Uncle Sam, and Veterans Day, a soldier, and Halloween, a ghost. The pole was Dad's only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmy for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying, good enough, good enough, good enough.

Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over, she said, What's with your dad and that pole? And I sat there blinking. We left home, married, had children of our own. Found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day

and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile, he laid the pole on its side and spray-painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as death and hung from the crossbar photos of mom as a baby. We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base. Army medals, theatre tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of mom's makeup. One autumn, he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth

and provided offspring by hammering in six cross sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying love and hug it from the pole and another that said forgive. And then he died in the hall with the radio on

and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day so that's Sticks by George Saunders fuck me do you know what I mean and the beauty of that story is

you know it's only a few words in those few small words we write a novel in our head what makes that little story amazing is that all the writer's doing is providing us with small little cues. Cues about the father's fucking pain and the father's trauma. You know, just a little mention of veteran lets you know that he was probably in a war, that he had internal demons.

And it's about demons slowly, slowly consuming someone until they lose rational reality. And it's exacerbated by the inevitable pain of existence. When his children leave leave it's interpreted as abandonment you know and the Paul's get a little

the Paul outside the house gets a little bit more mad and then when the Ma dies his partner he's on his own and the Paul becomes this incredibly irrational

you know it's just we're forced to write a novel in our heads. We have to get those small words and then create his backstory and all the stuff we're not seeing. It's like jazz, it's like fucking, that song is like, like Miles Davis would say about jazz is the beauty of jazz is it's the notes that you're not playing which sounds really fucking pretentious it's like what do you mean Miles how can music be about what you're not playing

but what that means is that it's participatory it engages the person who's appreciating it and that story, to appreciate it you have to go within yourself you have to continually ask questions you have to go within yourself. You have to continually ask questions. You have to continually probe and use empathy. And all of a sudden you've written your own book, this huge story about that man's entire life.

Do you know what I mean? I'll go for another question here now. This one was either anonymous or I failed to write down the name of the person who asked. I failed to write down the name of the person who asked. I'm in a job with an atmosphere of what I would call toxic masculinity. As a result, there is a lot of transphobic language used and many tasteless jokes made about gender identity that are made. I try and call them out, but I'm outnumbered.

How do I deal with this without sounding pompous or condescending? I'm guessing that that's from a lad. That sounds like a question that a man is asking in a group of other men. The trick there there I find it's I'm trying to think now when it comes to calling people out

and using like we said transphobic language homophobic language you have to do it from a position of compassion and empathy right if you go at that from

judgment judgment or a sternness you won't get anywhere it's think back to the fucking transaction analysis and it can be tough as well because if you're aware of the harm that homophobic language can do and transphobic language can do when you're aware of that harm you can immediately get a little bit pissed off and then you're stern and then you're giving out to another grown man or grown woman

and that rarely ends well because from a transaction analysis point of view you have now become the parent and they have become the child so they must either get equally angry or throw a tantrum or call you a prick or tell you to lighten up and if it's in a group situation everyone immediately now feels uncomfortable and because they're uncomfortable because there might be a fight there's going to be a big joke and nothing is essentially resolved the first thing i'd suggest is maybe don't call a person out in a group, right? Because with lads in particular, lads don't like it.

When something all of a sudden gets serious, lads get very uncomfortable because they then think of conflict. So jokes are made to diffuse it. So nothing gets done and you're called a sissy or a fool or an SJW or whatever they say to you. The way to call someone out is take ownership of your own fallibility.

If I'm having a chat with one of the lads, one of my buddies, if I notice that they're consistently saying homophobic things or consistently saying things that are transphobic or racist, the first thing I do when I speak to them is I open the conversation by admitting to them that I've used to say things that are homophobic, because it's a fact. Like, you know, I'm always honest about this. I grew up in a society that was transphobic, homophobic.

I can't pronounce the fucking words. Transphobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic. I grew up in a society that had these values and I was a beneficiary of these things. So in my life, my entire teenage years, like, if something was bad, I referred to it as gay. If I had an ice cream cone that wasn't nice and I didn't like it, I'd say, this ice cream is gay. I don't want that anymore. Do you know what I mean? So I go to my buddy and I say to them, do you know what?

I used to, I used to fucking make transphobic jokes. I used to think that trans people were just funny or that they were mad or that they were a novelty i used to be like that so you immediately open with an truly honest admission of where you used to be where you were in your journey that diffuses conflict because you're approaching it with a sense of vulnerability and you're going and as well it you're not on a high horse it's no longer judgmental now because you're going with i used to say that about gays or i used to say that about trans people or i used to say that about women and then you go with here's why i stopped and the trick for the here's why I stopped is what can you say that allows the other person to use empathy to put themselves into the shoes of the marginalized group that's being

disparaged I suppose do you know for me like what i would use the example of let's just say homophobia is the example when i was in school everything bad was gay that's it if it was bad it's gay and everyone said it not for one fucking second was I entertaining or considering that any of the lads in the class are actually fucking gay at a time when they are trying to understand their sexuality. So I'm there in a classroom, you know, harmlessly saying, this ice cream is gay, this pencil case is gay, you're gay, are you gay, do you fancy him, are you gay, the entire narrative all day long is that gayness is this really fucking bad thing

and then what about the lad who's being silent and every time he hears that gets a punch in the gut or gets an intense fear and then has to go home and experience shame because of the crack that we think we're having so explain things in those terms in terms of of pain never judgment if you go at it with fucking judgment and giving out, forget about it. What happens is that conflict ensues. Stop saying that. Who the fuck are you to tell me to say things? Who are you to raise your voice at me?

Now you've a feedback loop of two people being angry. Gay people have gone out the fucking window. It's no longer about homophobia or transphobia. It's about two people, one person being right and one person being wrong and it's now an argument and it's gotten emotional nothing is fucking resolved that's why calling people out on the internet can be shitty like a lot of internet calling out it's not really calling out it's people calling someone out in a very public forum so not so they can defend marginalized groups but so that they can get likes and retweets from appearing to be defending people in marginalized groups

and then the other person gets their back up to truly call people out in an effective way I find it's an honest private conversation where you self disclose about where you used to be in your journey and we all have to take fucking ownership we grew up in a society with these oppressions and if you benefited from

those oppressions chances are you took them on board as part of your identity it's like what am i perfect i didn't pick up any homophobia i didn't pick up any racism i didn't pick up sexism of course i fucking did but as an adult i have a choice and an ability to compassionately work with myself to become a better person to try and erode these things in me and to learn and to use empathy and to just try and not make being around me shit being around me shit for gay people when I was 16

being around me would have been shit because I'm going to call their shoes gay and the context and intent of how I was saying it, I didn't know I was hurting them, I didn't know I was doing anything bad

it had been completely normalized and that's a problem now for someone to come to me at 16 and scream at me and call me a fucking homophobe like the way it would happen on the internet that wouldn't have um done much for me I had to just listen to the experiences of people who were marginalized and try and use empathy and then try and become the change in myself just to be slightly less shit for someone around me

who's experiencing these marginalizations I suppose you'd call it so that's what I'd say to you don't do it in the here and now if you're in a group of lads and it's at work, pick your battle. No, battle's the wrong word. Pick the time to do it.

Maybe don't do it in the moment. Find a situation where... When you can open a discussion with your own vulnerability, when you can come straight discussion with your own vulnerability, when you can come straight out with your own vulnerability, it's very difficult for another person to not immediately engage in some degree of empathy. You know, you're stepping into a conversation and you're saying,

that thing you said earlier, I used to say shit like that and I learned not to what can the other person say then because that's the opposite of judgment you know it's the whole you're not coming in throwing the first fucking stone because

you know who said it was it Christ he who hasn't sinned throw the first fucking stone so it's like you're not going into the situation with a stone you're going I threw stones myself before i you know i have a load of fucking sin so i don't have a bag of rocks with me today so we need to have a conversation sands rock i don't know if that makes sense and one last thing on that lads um you know don't necessarily be listening to blind boy about all of this stuff I'm just parroting

what I've heard from through listening to gay people, listening to women listening to people of colour the end goal is for your buddy to walk away from the conversation not necessarily going another man just told me something The end goal is for your buddy to walk away from the conversation, not necessarily going, another man just told me something class. It's like you just be the initiating moment, and then the end goal is for you and that other person

listening to the fucking experiences of the marginalized person listening to the trans person listening to the gay person listening to the woman listening to the black person they're the authority on their own experiences and through listening we can learn the empathy to find out our fucking blind spots and just be a little bit nicer to be around to reduce the stress and pain of our immediate environment. Okay, hey blind boy, I am a huge fan of Irish music and I follow you on Twitter and notice that you are too. How do you and Mr. Chrome feel about young Irish artists who are influenced by the rubber bandits?

I'm talking about Kojak, Junior Brother, Versatile, Kneecap and Crackboy Mental. That's an interesting one yeah there's a few those artists that they're all fucking great Irish artists by the way um there's a lot of young like Irish music right now is in a fucking brilliant place it's the best place i've seen it in a long long time i don't know why i mean i think it's a combination of the artists now that are in the art their early 20s you know that the music production has gone up massively the ability to make music videos technology is more available um I think too the artists that are creating music now they know

they're not going to get record deals they know they're not going to become international that's not fair it's not that they don't know they're not chasing international fame because the music industry itself is gone to such shit 10 15 years ago when artists were coming out they were hoping that like

you know irish artists were going i might get signed by emi and i might become globally massive so that meant that irish artists were kind of kind of Americanizing their sounds or making their sounds more international whereas you now have this explosion of young Irish artists who are very much okay with being Irish and they're not trying to it's not that they're not trying to appeal outside of Ireland it's that they have the confidence to truly be themselves because they're not looking for that big record deal anymore because it doesn't exist the big record deal doesn't exist anymore like record company like anyone who signs with a record company is aatic. It's such a stupid thing to do.

What can a record company fucking offer you like. Do you know what I mean. With the internet and with social media. You can be your own record company. You can take complete and utter autonomy for yourself. But. Yeah so the artists he mentioned. Yeah.

Kojak. Unbelievable fucking rapper from Dublin. Junior Brother. Fucking genius if you want to play. He's from Kerry. yeah Kojak unbelievable fucking rapper from Dublin junior brother fucking genius of a young fella he's from Kerry singer songwriter versatile they're Dublin lads rappers kneecap they're from up in Belfast

they're they rap in Irish crack by mental he's from Cork he's only he's not new on the scene he's been around a while but only recently

he's getting a bit of traction but they're all artists who i know kojak has said in interviews he's influenced by his junior brother definitely has haven't heard anything from kneecap and versatile you can tell with kneecap and versatile like versatile would have been like fans of like Bag of Glue and Horse Outside Junior Brother is one now he's a truly truly fucking amazing Irish artist

like when I heard he's got a song called Hungover at Mass and when I heard that song knowing as well that he was he'd said that he was influenced

influenced by the Rubber Bandits when I heard his song hung over at Mass I could directly hear the influence of Spastic Hawk in that song and it was just a beautiful

fucking feeling, it was a beautiful beautiful feeling because that song for me like that spastic hawk is one of my favorite songs to have written because i felt i was truly expressing what i wanted to express in me regardless of what other people thought about it and it was savage at the time like people didn't like it but hearing Junior Brother channeling that and then taking that on to create something of his own was a magical magical feeling I was like that's the best I can do in my career like for me music that touches me music that makes me feel amazing is anything that makes me want to go and create if I hear a song like what made me want to make Spastic Hawk a song called Teenage Spaceship by Smog Smog is the former band of Bill Callaghan. But that made me, I heard that and then Spastic

Hawk came out of that. And then to hear then Junior Brother hung over at mass channeling elements of Spastic Hawk. That's the beautiful continuation of music as a conversation. That's the beauty of music. Music is a continual like genetic mutation that contains little bits of genes and they pass on through the ages and it's a it's a it's a conversation that transcends generations and i can speak with people that are dead and i can take elements of their conversation and include them in mine and carry it on forward and songs that I write contain elements of conversations that could be 600 years old because that's how music carries on and it was just beautiful to hear and know and see something I've done and to see how that slightly

inspired we'll say someone else's work it was an incredible feeling so that's how I feel about it I mean I suppose the other thing as well what makes me feel good is when we came out making music in 2007 2008 like we were really really not respected like the like re because we used humor in our music we were totally shat upon by journalists it was considered embarrassing to even consider as music do you know people didn't even i'd have journalists saying to me like what what's the backing music to your lyrics? And it's like, what do you mean fucking backing music? It's like they thought we went online and found tracks

and rapped over them. It's like, no, that's actual music that we make. Like it's our own music. And we ended up having, just spending an unnecessary amount of time defending really stupid points own music and we ended up having just spending an unnecessary amount of time defending really stupid points i shouldn't have to say i shouldn't have to say oh by the way i make the music or by the way i can play musical instruments what type of thing is is that for a musician to have to say it's it's like

if i with my book have you know if i was getting an interview for my book i was going oh by the way i actually i do actually write it i don't pick these stories up off online and copy and paste them but when you use comedy and humor in music if for some reason it's not taken seriously as the real thing. So we were lumped in with Jedward and Richie Kavanagh and the music was completely overlooked by journalists. A few journalists, Niler 9, Una Mullally, always gave us respect. A lot of other ones, it was just like novelty. That was the word that was used.

We were considered and called a novelty act. And because of that label, and I speak, you know, I speak a lot about internal locus of evaluation and not caring about what critics say or not caring about comments. But when it's early on in your career and you've got journalists not even with malice but out of sheer laziness when you've got journalists calling you a novelty act and not platforming you as an actual musician or an artist that really harms your career so it was very frustrating at the time. And now, of course, as well,

the worst reviews of our album and our music, they've all been taken offline. There's a load of reviews that I kind of held onto as things that I would go and look back at to inspire me. They just got deleted. Journalists would be like, oh shit, that review of the bandits where I called them novelty and didn't listen to the lyrics.

I'm actually going to take that offline now because it's embarrassing for me as a journalist. So a few bits of that have happened. So it's absolutely, it's wonderful and reaffirming to see that 10 years down the line, there's now like several young musicians who are doing brilliant things and they grew up listening to us do you know what I mean and we're not the sole influence but

we are a influence in these brilliant artists who I now look at and I really enjoy so it's a it makes me want to go back to young me when I was their age and I want to pat myself on the back and say look you're doing the right thing just keep doing what's in your heart because there's a few songs that we made that I don't really like

because I didn't make them from my heart I made them as a response to criticism to try and get people to like me and one or two songs I'm just like yeah that's shit because I didn't create it from the heart and there's things in it I don't like so yeah

that's what I think about it I'm proud I'm happy em it makes me feel like all the all the frustration and bullshit of being called a novelty act and having to explain myself and embarrass myself by saying to people,

oh, by the way, we actually make the music. Do you know? It makes all that worthwhile. Oh, by the way, Do listen to. Junior Brother. Hungover at Mass. And also a song called. The Back of Her. He is.

A fucking unbelievable. Irish singer songwriter. He's only a young fella. He's incredible. He's going places. And also. Kojak. Kojak's unbelievable.

K-O-J-A-Q-U-E. Just. A Dublin fucking rapper who incredibly skilled lyrically the beats are fantastic the visuals are out of this fucking world but somebody who isn't afraid to use humor in his music and that's the other thing now as well I'm seeing with all these artists they're now able to use humor as part of their expression and no one's calling it novelty nobody is saying that because Kojak's videos are amusing or that he might have the odd funny lyric that he's to be taken less seriously as an artist, or someone like Crackboy Mental down in Cork, who straight up says that he too sometimes experiences

a type of discrimination because he uses comedy in music. This is disappearing now. Do you know? And why not? Humour is an aspect of the human condition. What is it about music that once you express fucking humor, that it devalues? It's bullshit.

It's fucking bullshit. Do you know what? With books, if a book uses sex too much, because sex is also an expression of the human condition, you can't take it out. But when a book can comfortably express humor and still be taken seriously like my biggest fucking influence is flan o'brien and flan o'brien is pedestals up there with james joyce but flan o'brien's books are fucking

ridiculous he wrote a book about a man turning into a bicycle hilarious stuff and his novels are you know the humour is not perceived to take away from the art but if a book uses sex too much then all of a sudden that book is devalued and considered trash or erotica and is not considered worthy of art similarly if a book focuses too much on female relationships

all of a sudden it has no literary merit because it's called chick lit it's like no no no this this this can't possibly have any creative or artistic value it's just dumb bitches wanting to ride airline pilots and it's read by other silly women. This is chick lit. You know, every genre seems to have its thing that if you dabble in these areas, critics remove artistic value from it and it's bullshit. Sex is a part of the human condition. Humor is a part of the human condition. Relationships and desire are part of the human condition humor is a part of the human condition relationships and desire are part of the fucking human condition so they all have a place in art and their placement within art their presence does not strip value away from that art there's different terms that art must be judged by do you know what i mean the amount of fucking scraps I got into with bloody journalist lads

back in the day and interviews that never happened because I'd sit down with music journalists and they'd start talking to us and I could tell by him they'd start lashing out the novelty word and you know from my fucking podcasts like I care deeply about music but I also have a knowledge of music do you know I'm not only can I fucking play it but I care about the history of it its roots how it's being made so when I was with a fucking music journalist and they started getting you know using words like novelty or not taking it seriously, I would straight up challenge them on their knowledge of music. I would ask them, well, what's this? What's that? Where are the roots of this?

Keep it relevant to the line of questioning. They'd get all fucking defensive. And then I would say, you're not qualified to review my album because I've named a list of references there that are present in the music and you've never heard of them so what qualifies you to review my album and it would end up with one of us walking out in the interview never happened but fuck them not a fucking hope do you know what I mean that was really really frustrating at the start of our career and it had proper negative effects on how we were able to sell music

and how we were able how we were being perceived by the public at a time when 2010 like critics really they mattered more than you know a write-up in a magazine mattered more than it doesn't matter now on grand I've enough social media presence whereby I don't need journalists or reviews anymore or nothing like that no if there's nothing else

that was what am I up to now nearly 70 minutes it's a alright I'll leave you go I hope you enjoyed this questions podcast it was erratic

there was a number of topics covered but I enjoyed it I'll be back next week with a with a hot take with a hot take for you and I don't know I'll try include

one or two questions in more podcasts at the end, but I just, I don't want the podcast to be too long. Because then you're like listening to it over the course of a week, like fucking Joe Rogan podcast. And apologies for all the whispering that I've been doing this week. I'm in a different room, I'm not in my studio. And I don't want to be waking up cunts. Like it's three in the morning here, you know what I mean?

Alright, God bless bless go fuck yourself 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.