You are better than no one else, and no one is better than You. Because Human Beings are too complex to evaluate against each other

Ai psychosis and medieval glass. Howvto build self esteem Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Greetings, you temporary Emmets. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I have a couple of very large announcements this week. The first one, because I promised I'd say it as early in the podcast as possible, is I'm coming back to Australia and New Zealand in April of 2027. And those tickets are on sale today, 3rd of June, at 12 noon Australia Eastern Time. And you get those tickets on my website, theblindbypodcast.ie, assuming it doesn't crash.

• 1:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  And just thank you to all my listeners in Australia and New Zealand for telling your friends about the podcast, for spreading the word, because it's after getting really big over there.

• 2:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gigging Sydney Opera House. I'm gonna be headlining Sydney Opera House. I speak about that later in the fucking podcast and the other dates, but I can't believe it. Thank you to all the steaming quavers and ten-foot decklins for telling your friends for sharing the podcast because it's word of mouth. This is word of mouth. I'm not advertised down there. I'm not on fucking TV. This is all word of mouth. I'm gonna begin this week's podcast with a piece of prose poetry that was written by the actor Liam Neeson. He recited this to me in a dream. The poem is called,

• 2:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  "I am slowly turning into glass so that I can be hurled at the forehead of God.

• 2:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I die, my soul will not ascend.

• 2:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  It will arrive in heaven as a spinning pint glass full of cider. And I will collide with God's forehead. His purple blood will drip from the cosmos and stick to the clouds. Forty days and forty nights of blood and cider. Everything will die this time, even the animals. There'll be no Noah. There'll be no Noah and his ark.

• 3:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because I'll glass that cunt too.

• 3:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the divil will pick bits of me out of God's eyeballs. They'll have to write a new bit into the Bible about it, about me. Liam Neeson. The Human Pint Glass."

• 3:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  I often begin podcasts with a free associative poem to put my mind into a state of playfulness. Because I never want to be paralyzed by the blank page. When you're stuck staring at the blank page. I'm thinking, oh, what'll I write a podcast about? What will I do a podcast about this week? And then the, the fear of failure creeps in. Oh, what if I can't think of an idea for this week's podcast? Oh my God, what'll I do? And creativity can't exist in that space. Ideas won't come to me in that space where I'm afraid of the blank page.

• 4:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  So if I'm afraid of failure, I lean into failure. I begin writing, not to write anything good, not to make sense. I begin writing for the enjoyment and fun of writing. So that I can enter dreamland, so that I can enter a, a state of flow. The open way of thinking where anything is possible. Nothing is good, nothing is bad. There's no judgment whatsoever. There's just the act of writing, the act of imagination. Daydreaming onto the page. If I'm in the closed mode of thinking, where I'm, I'm afraid of the blank page. I'm afraid of failing. What if I write something ridiculous? What if I don't have any good ideas?

• 5:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Then I don't have access to my imagination. So I just let it flow, no judgment, like a child playing with Lego. They're not trying to make anything good or anything bad. They're playing with Lego. And if a child is playing with their Lego, that's a child that feels safe.

• 5:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Children who feel safe are children who play. We're no different as adults. If I'm paralyzed by the fear of failure, the fear of making something shit, the fear of fucking up. I don't feel safe. I feel threatened and my mind is scanning for threats. It's looking in one direction, so I have to feel safe.

• 5:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have to, I have to experience the feeling of safety so that my imagination can come out and play. So when I do that and I sit with that, sit with the frustration and just write and write.

• 5:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now I've got a piece of poetry about Liam Neeson, wanting to transform into a pint glass and smash himself off God's forehead, which is utterly fucking ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. But it doesn't matter now, because I've broken through, you see. I've broken through the fear of failure. Now I don't have a blank page anymore. I have something. I've got an utterly ridiculous poem about Liam Neeson turning into a pint glass. And then I look at that poem and I go, well, I went to the land of flow. That, that poem arrived to me. I didn't sit down and think I'm gonna write about Liam Neeson.

• 6:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's just all that imagery came to me like I was dreaming, dreaming in the middle of the day. Automatic writing, it's called. It's a technique from the, the surrealist art movement. But because the, because the idea came to me in a state of flow, in that state where I, I leave a sense of time and space and I'm just nice and calm and happy in imagination land where judgment does not exist. Because the poem, which is ridiculous, came to me in flow state, I can then look at that and go, that poem is telling me something. There's ideas or connections that I'm not fully aware of yet.

• 7:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  But if I tease at that poem, they'll fucking reveal it to me because that poem came to me in flow state. And how do I know that? Because when I'm in flow, I'm, I'm pulling from my unconscious mind. Like when you're dreaming, you're pulling from your, your unconscious mind. The depths of your mind that isn't, that you can't currently recall right now in, in the closed state, but in the open state, you can go into your unconscious mind. And when I'm researching, when I'm just reading something, could be six months ago, could be six fucking months ago, and I find it interesting and then I forget about it. That information goes into my unconscious mind and then it bubbles up in moments of flow.

• 8:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like a- anything I do that I find interesting, that's feeding my unconscious mind. So I look at it and I go Liam Neeson turning into a pint glass, that's mad. What's that about? Where's that coming from? And I started to remember research I'd done months ago on the Venetian glass industry of the 1600s. There was a unique form of psychosis in the Middle Ages. A culturally specific mental illness where certain people, often very, very wealthy people, became convinced, like fully delusional, convinced that they were turning into glass.

• 8:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  The most famous example, well, the first high profile example was the, the King of France in 1392, a fellow called Charles VI. Charles VI was made King of France at 12 years of age, a child. By the time he was in his late teens, he started to show manic symptoms, symptoms of, I suppose now you'd call it schizophrenia. And he was the king. So at one point in 1392, he drew his sword out of nowhere and killed four people around him. And like, there's nothing they can do, it's the king. If he wants to kill four people with his sword, then it's the fucking king, leave him off. There was no justice for him.

• 9:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  His court, the people around him, just had to, to manage him and try and keep him happy. So they'd continually entertain him, throw parties for him, try and keep him happy in any way, distract him. Cause if he was entertained, then he was somewhat happy. He wa- he was still mad, but he wasn't suffering in his madness. He was distracted by entertainment. Then something really threw him over the edge.

• 10:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  So in thirteen ninety-three, they held like a masquerade ball, an entertaining masquerade ball for the king. He was twenty at this point. Masquerade ball was a fancy dress party. These were all people with a lot of money and they'd dress up in costumes as entertainment and drink and have crack. And since they were figuring too, look, if the king is mad, then let's give him opportunities to be mad. Every opportunity we get to get that energy out of him, let's fucking do it. So for this masquerade ball, the plan was, the king and about six of his friends, they're gonna dress up as as wild men and no one's gonna know it's the king.

• 10:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And wild men in medieval times, be like a werewolf. They're gonna dress up as big hairy half man, half beasts. And these elaborate costumes were made. They were linen and then the linen was soaked in resin. And that was all sticky. And then on top of the resin, they stuck a lot of flax and branches and whatever. And there were these these cold like werewolf type crazy costumes and the king was wearing one of them and no one knew who he was, hidden behind this. Thing is, the resin that the costumes were made out of was incredibly flammable. So the rule was, if there's six fellows at this party dripping in resin, wearing flammable

• 11:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  clothes, then there's no candles, there's no torches, there's no nothing. This is flammable materials. So the king and his friends go out, they're dancing as wild men. And then the king's brother shows up pissed drunk. He didn't get the no fire memo and he shows up holding a torch, holding a flame. Then immediately four of the men go on fire. Four of the of the masquerade dancers, the wild men with the king, they go on fire and they're howling and screaming and being burned to death. Now, the king manages to escape it, he runs away, so he doesn't go on fire. But now, he's witnessing four men burning to death in front of him, his friends.

• 12:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  One of the written reports about the incident is four men were burned alive, their flaming genitals drooping to the floor, releasing a stream of blood, and only two people survived. One fella jumped into a vat of wine when he was on fire and managed to survive. And then the king, a woman saved him. She draped her dress around him and saved the king from burning. But the trauma of that incident and witnessing that, and nearly dying and seeing people burned alive in front of him, his friends, that pushed King Charles over the fucking edge. He became fully psychotic and became convinced, like fully and utterly convinced, that he was made entirely out of glass and that he could break at any moment.

• 12:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, this is the 1390s. They didn't know anything about psychology, they didn't know what psychosis was. And it's the king, you can't fucking do anything. You can't, you can't help him. You just have to manage and work around. The king is made out of glass now, so we just have to treat him as if he's literally made out of glass. So they had to make him special clothes. There was a tailor employed that had to invent like pants and jackets that had rigid metal rods inside them. Because the king was so convinced that he could shatter into a million pieces at any moment,

• 13:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  that he needed metal rods to keep him upright so that he could never fall. Because if he fell, he would shatter. And reports, reports of people being convinced that they were made of glass started to increase throughout the Middle Ages as the technology of glass improved. In particular, when a certain type of glass was being made in the 1600s on the island of Marano in Venice. The established theory is that, and this is where you really have to use your imagination, because it's a tough one.

• 14:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  The technology of glass, right, to someone in the 1600s, was so revolutionary that it sent certain people into psychosis. It blew their minds. Like, we've got photography, televisions, smartphones. You're walking around, listening to me talking into your ears. We're surrounded by technology. The 1600s, this is before the Industrial Revolution. Horse and carters.

• 14:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  A solid, a solid material like glass that you could physically touch but see completely through was a bit too much for people. It was future shock. Now, glass had been around a while. You think of stained glass windows. But it was only in the 1600s with Venice. Did a perfectly, a clear glass that we would today, like, we take it for granted. I can look out my window right now. But a completely clear, crystal clear, see-through glass that only came about in the 1600s in Venice. Glassmaking became a thing in Venice because it was an island.

• 15:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  So when they were making glass, they had huge furnaces. In the simplest way, you're effectively talking about melting sand, which required huge temperatures and a lot of fire. So glassmaking was really dangerous in a culture where houses are made out of wood. So the Eastern Roman Empire decided all the glassmaking factories, put them out there in the lagoon on the island of Morano, because that's, it's in the middle of, surrounded by water. So when a fire does happen, we can contain it. So this culture of glassmaking emerges on the island of Morano in Venice. And it develops over a couple of hundred years.

• 16:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they start to get really, really good at it, concentrated in this one small space. But because you had this industry and this innovation on this one tiny island. They started to get really, really good at it. And then they started to develop secret recipes of making the best glass. And then these recipes became protected. And now, all of a sudden, on the island of Murano, the quality of glass was so great that it became famous in the known world. It started to be traded and Venice started to get very, very wealthy because no one was making glass like the Venetians. Eventually, the glass blowers, the glass makers, they weren't allowed to leave the

• 17:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  island because the technology that they had was so advanced and so specialised that there's no way that this, this technology can't reach anyone else's hands, has to stay here on this one island. By the 1600s, they'd invented a type of glass called cristallo, which is very close to what you and I would call glass today. Completely see-through, the type of glass that you could walk through if someone didn't tell you that that was glass. Modern glass. But this then led to the development of very fine lenses, which allowed the invention of modern spectacles. Now, spectacles had existed before then, but they were crude.

• 17:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  But when you got that Venetian cristallo glass, which was fine and see-through, then they could start developing lenses that, for the first time, really improved people's sight. People would just lose their fucking eyesight. They'd just get short-sighted, nearsighted, whatever. And all of a sudden now, people who could not see could suddenly see. And telescopes. Telescopes got really, really good. And you could look up at the sky and you could see planets, which challenged the very concept of what reality was. To look at the moon and see craters on it, to look at Saturn and see its rings. What is existence now?

• 18:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the future shock and the cultural impact of, it's, it's when a piece of technology is so advanced that some people perceive it as a type of magic, that they just, they're holding this thing, this set of spectacles, this telescope, this window, they can see that it's there, that it's in their hands. But the concept of it is so nuts.

• 18:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  That it drove some people into psychosis and a culturally specific mental illness, mostly among the wealthy, the people who had come into contact with these refined glasses. Some of these people became convinced that they themselves were made out of glass. A pane of this glass, like glass today, was basically invisible. How could something be solid? How can you touch something? How can you feel it, but it's invisible? Miguel Cervantes, he wrote fucking Don Quixote, released a collection of short stories in sixteen thirteen. And one of the stories was called The Glass Graduate, about a fella who thought he was turning into glass. Princess Alexandria of Bavaria, her dad was King Ludwig the First,

• 19:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  who had to, he had to step down from being a king because he had an affair with a woman from Limerick called Lola Montez. I've done an entire podcast on her before, probably in twenty eighteen, an interesting character, Princess Alexandra. She became convinced that she had swallowed an entire glass piano, that inside her entire body was a big glass piano. And she's the princess. So they didn't, they didn't help her, they just went along with it.

• 20:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And she would have to walk sideways through doors because there's an entire piano inside in her. And an interesting commentary I read in that particular case is that, for a princess in Bavaria at that time, in the court, in order for her to be valued as a princess, to be, to be sold off, to be married to a prince somewhere.

• 20:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  A central part of, of an upper class woman's value at that time was her capacity to play the piano. A woman of her standing, her entire, her sense of self-worth would have been defined by her echelons of society. Her worth was defined by how, how courtly she was, her etiquette. And her ability to play the glass piano, which she was fully convinced was consumed inside in her body. And this all seems so surreal, so bizarre.

• 21:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know, they always speak about future shock. If you had a time machine and took someone from the 16th century and put them right here, right now with the technology that we are exposed to, that they would just die of shock. It'd be too much. Well, glass was too much for the mental health of incredibly wealthy people in the Middle Ages. Did poor people think they were turning into glass? Well, no one wrote down their stories and those people, a poor person isn't gonna come across a set of glasses or see a Venetian windowpane or holding their hands of a Venetian glass. But a parallel started to emerge when I was researching this and that's the modern day

• 21:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  equivalent of this is AI psychosis. And the parallels are fucking striking. In the past two years around the world, multiple cases are emerging of people developing psychotic symptoms and delusional ways of thinking from using chatbots like Grok or ChatGPT. Now, it's not happening to everybody, but people who are already vulnerable are being triggered into psychosis. They believe it's because the AI chatbots are reinforcing the person's delusional belief

• 22:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  and also putting that person in an environment where they're more and more isolated and speaking with the AI chatbot more than they're speaking to human beings. Now, I don't use artificial intelligence as part of writing this podcast because it's incredibly toxic to the process of creativity that I mentioned at the very start. If I have a question, I need to research that question. I need to go down rabbit holes that are being driven by my unconscious mind and my associations. And if I do that, then I'll get ideas. If I go straight to ChatGPT and ask it a question, it just gives me an answer and I don't get flow state.

• 23:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I do not use chatbots and any artist will tell you, AI, it fucking strips the crack out of creativity. Creativity is about the bit in the middle. AI ruins the bit in the middle and just gives you an end result. But I'm gonna use an AI chatbot right now just to prove a point. So I asked AI, typed in.

• 23:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Liam Neeson appeared to me in a dream and told me that he wanted to turn into a pint glass and become lodged in God's forehead. Little bit of a troubling question, little bit of a troubling question to ask anyone, but I'm not asking anyone, I'm asking a fucking, a chatbot. So the chatbot replies, that is exactly the sort of thing Liam Neeson would do in a dream, not tell you where buried treasure is, not reveal the secrets of the universe, just appear with absolute confidence and announce that he wants to become a pint glass and get lodged in God's forehead, as if it's the most obvious ambition a man could have. It reinforced my incredibly strange announcement.

• 24:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like if you took that one to a psychotherapist, therapist is gonna sit back, look at your body language, facial expressions. Okay, they had a dream that Liam Neeson wants to turn into a pint glass and smash himself into God's forehead, okay, did they think it's funny or are they disturbed by this? Did they believe it's true? A therapist isn't gonna comment, they're gonna go, oh, really, you had that dream? How do you feel about that dream? Well, it was, it was a bit freaky, it's a bit of a strange dream to have. I notice you used the word strange, is there anything strange going on for you right now? But not the chatbot, just, class, you did, really, did you? That sounds like a great dream, go with that.

• 24:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, for me, it was creative exercise, I'm not threatened in any way by my thoughts about Liam Neeson turning into a pint glass, I was deliberately being creative, but if I was at risk of psychosis, if this was a paranoid type of thought, if it brought me distress, then that response from the AI chatbot is, is deeply unhelpful and reinforcing. So some people are not presenting with AI psychosis. It's a new type of psychosis that has been triggered by the use of AI chatbots, and it's happening quicker than psychology can keep up with it, and it's very troubling. Currently, right now, the, the state of Florida is suing OpenAI because they're claiming

• 25:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  that ChatGPT helped, helped school shooters to do school shootings, but the parallels.

• 25:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  The parallels between the emergence of the technology of clear Venetian glass on society and on the human mind, those parallels are quite similar to the emerging technology of AI. So if you're in the 1600s and someone gives you a telescope or just a perfect pane of glass and you can't fathom it, this is just, my fucking god, how is this done? You can perceive it as magica. If your imagination can't go to the place where you can understand how it's made, or you're at risk, you can perceive that as

• 26:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  magic. Similarly, sit down and chat with ChatGPT for a half an hour, especially when it's, when it's literally speaking to you with a human voice. Your brain just starts to get tricked. I've done it. I mean, we use the term artificial intelligence to refer to these large language models that we have right now. Like even the most advanced ChatGPT, it's not intelligence. Like it's not. It's, in the way that a see-through pane of glass feels like magic to someone from the 1600s, ChatGPT seems like intelligence, but a large

• 27:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  language model, it's not actually thinking. It doesn't understand. It doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't have goals. It doesn't have a model of what reality is. But because it has trained on vast, vast data of human language, it can generate a response that it mimics human reasoning, conversation, expertise. It feels like it's thinking, but it's not. I know this. I'm a mentally healthy person. But some people who are at risk, they get drawn in. They get drawn in and it shatters their perception of reality. It's easier

• 27:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  to see this shit with AI videos. It's when it's the chatbots, they're the ones that are confusing. Like I saw Instagram reels is full of AI slop, like the worst shit you can imagine. And I came across a video the other day, utterly pointless piece of shit that's just there to drive engagement.

• 28:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was a very, very, very realistic video of Jimi Hendrix eating his favourite meals. So it's Jimi Hendrix sitting down in a restaurant, eating his favourite meals. And it looks pretty fucking real. Now, I can tell, because I make television. I'm a visually literate person. But it's not people like me that are getting hoodwinked by AI videos. It's someone's grandfather. That's who's getting on Facebook. That's who's getting hoodwinked by these videos. But what I found utterly fascinating about this video of like Jimi Hendrix died in 1969, I believe. There's no footage of Jimi Hendrix eating food. I've looked for it, it doesn't exist.

• 28:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  So this AI video, when Jimi Hendrix was eating his food,

• 29:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  he was eating it like a food vlogger. That's what was so phenomenal about it.

• 29:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  The data for this fake Jimi Hendrix eating his dinner video, all that data was pulled from all the food vloggers on Instagram and YouTube. And food vloggers don't eat their dinners like me and you. They eat performatively for the camera in an incredibly gesticulate and unnatural way. It's performative eating. I've spoken about this for years because I love watching food vloggers. My favourite food vlogger is a fella called Mark Wiens. And I ended up developing a parasocial relationship with Mark Wiens because of a particular face he pulls when he's eating food. That was the payoff for me. The fuck am I looking at videos of someone eating noodles for? I don't give a shit about that.

• 29:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the way that he was eating it was working as entertainment and it kept coming back. But when you see an AI video of someone eating. It's never natural. It's not how an actual human eats in a restaurant. It's how a human eats when they're performing eating for a camera. But the similarities with AI, AI psychosis and the medieval glass delusion. They're similar in other ways. Firstly, remember I said that glass was being made on one island? It was being made on the island of Murano. And the technology for making this perfect cristallo glass was guarded heavily.

• 30:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  This was militarily guarded on this one little island in Venice. AI is the exact same. The island of Taiwan. You hear Taiwan being spoken about a lot. It's a huge flashpoint between the US and China. Taiwan is not part of China. China wants Taiwan. The US wants Taiwan to not be part of China. If a war kicked off between the US and China, it would be about Taiwan. This little island. You go, why the fuck do you care about Taiwan? What's so special about Taiwan? The nation that controls Taiwan controls artificial intelligence.

• 31:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Taiwan is very similar to 16th century Venice. Because of the semiconductor industry. Taiwan makes semiconductors. Semiconductors are tiny, teeny tiny electronic components, right? And without semiconductors, there's no AI. AI depends upon millions, billions of semiconductors in order to operate. The stranglehold that Taiwan has over semiconductors, the little island of Taiwan, is fucking identical to the stranglehold that the island of Murano in Venice had over glass in the 1600s. And I'll tell you why. So in Taiwan.

• 32:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Over decades, they accumulated a combination of expertise, infrastructure, supply chains, investment, that's so specific that it's almost impossible to just replicate it. You can't just take all that and decide to do it in Israel or in California. You just can't do it. This has been there in Taiwan for too fucking long. It's like Murano and the glass, closely guarded secret with experts on that island. So the island is fucking crucially important. That's why it's a flashpoint. That's why America and China might go to war over it.

• 32:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Whoever controls Taiwan, controls artificial intelligence. Who controls artificial intelligence, controls the world. AI is the new nuclear bomb. That's what AI is. It's a type of mutually assured destruction. The nation with the most powerful AI is the most powerful nation in the world, especially now that military is moving towards AI. So there's going to be an AI arms race, like there was with nuclear bombs, and it's going to be like mutually assured destruction, where it's, we are just going to keep building stronger and stronger and stronger until we can't kill each other. Because to kill each other means mutually assured destruction. And

• 33:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  that's what AI is now. That's where it's heading. That's why there's so much investment. That's why no one is saying, hey, stop. Hold on a minute. Stop. What do you mean? You're trying to create something that's smarter than humans? That's a bad idea. Stop. Well, creating a nuclear bomb that can destroy the whole world was a bad idea too. And no one stopped. Why do you think the Vatican, the Pope?

• 33:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  Last week said, "We need to stop this AI business. This is a threat to humanity. We need to stop it." Now, was there an equivalent at the time about Morano glass from the Pope at the time? Yes and no. So I don't fully believe, I'm not into Popes. I'm not into the Catholic Church and give a shit how woke or sound a Pope appears to be. He's still the fucking Pope and I don't trust the Church. So, the current Pope saying we need to stop AI. I don't believe that it's the Vatican's position, that this is purely for the benefit of humanity. Otherwise, the Vatican wouldn't hide sexual abusers, okay, if they gave too much of a fuck about people.

• 34:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  I do think that AI threatens, it threatens Catholicism, it threatens religion. Because if you create an AI that's smarter than humans, you can create a God. Something omnipotent and omniscient. The glass on the island of Morano threatened the Church at the time too.

• 35:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Galileo Galilei in 1609 was able to use this new technology of the cristallo, really refined glass, to develop lenses, to create a telescope. And through this telescope in 1609, or sorry, 1610, he witnessed the moons that orbit Jupiter. He looked up into the fucking sky in 1610 and saw that Jupiter had four moons around it. But this challenged the Church's position that everything revolved around the Earth. You see, because the Earth is God's creation. And the Church had accepted that there's planets up there, but the Earth is the centre of the universe.

• 35:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because God created it and everything revolves around. And then Galileo gets this new glass that came from the island of Morano and said, "Hold on a minute. No, that's not the case. We're all revolving around the Sun." And then the Church said, "Fucking stop it." And they imprisoned Galileo Galilei. Here's the other striking similarity between the medieval glass delusion, AI psychosis, and Taiwan and the island of Morano. Both.

• 36:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Venetian glass and semiconductors. So both technologies, both being made on highly protected, militarily important, specialised islands.

• 36:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Both of them use the exact same natural resource, silica. Silica is sand, basically. But silica, it's a compound that's made from silicon and oxygen. Okay? If you get silica and you heat it and melt it down, you get your glass.

• 36:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  The craftsmen in Murano, they refined this. They refined this so you got exceptionally clear, modern glass.

• 37:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  In Taiwan, to make semiconductors, you're still using silica. But with silica, in Taiwan, it's purified, the oxygen is removed, and now you're left with silicon. Silicon Valley, that's computer chips, that's semiconductors. So I just find all that fascinating. That's utterly fascinating to me, that you've got two technologies that feel like magic. Glass felt like magic in the 1600s, AI feels like magic now. Both of them are creating psychosis in vulnerable people.

• 37:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  And both of them are made on little islands with very specialised knowledge from the same raw material, and I think that's mad. I got all of that

• 37:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  from that little poem about Liam Neeson. That's my process.

• 38:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I enter flow state and come out of it with an insane poem about Liam Neeson, I know that that poem has got value, so I interrogate it. And I go, where did that come from? That's nuts. Where in my unconscious mind did that come from? And I pick away at it, and then that reveals itself. Now, unless you can teach ChatGPT to be autistic, that's not happening. And it's why I'd never use ChatGPT to research.

• 38:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  The crack that I hit, that was a lot of fun. I had fun with ideas there. I connected things that didn't seem connected and brought them together. True, playfulness and creativity and openness. Artificial intelligence is linear. I have some announcements to tell you, but before I do that, let's have a little Ocarina pause. I don't have my Ocarina with me this week, but I'm gonna hit myself into the head with a book. That's what I'm gonna do. The book that I have in front of me right now is, it's a book that's just come out. It's a novel. It's called Experts in a Dying Field by Patrick Frain, who is someone who I had on this podcast, the lovely fellow. And go out and get his book, cause he's sound. But I'm gonna hit myself into the head with his book, Experts in a Dying Field.

• 39:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that looks like it's gonna be sore. Good snap of it. All right. Oh.

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• 41:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Great to read.

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• 43:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not good to hit yourself into the head with.

• 43:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the Ocarina Puss. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider funding it directly. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I pay all my bills. Listener funding allows me to exist as an independent artist and not beholden to advertisers. It is listener funding that keeps this fully independent. And I just show up each week and I speak about what I want to speak about, whatever I'm passionate about, that's the most important thing.

• 43:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free. Listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. And tell a friend about this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, tell someone to listen to it. Audio podcasts at the moment are under fire. The podcast industry is moving towards video. My personal opinion on that is that it's bollocks. It's not being driven by people, it's being driven by the industry. That's what's happening.

• 44:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  How many podcasts are you willing to sit down and literally look at two people talking for three hours? Like, who wants to do that? Who has that type of time on their hands where they can sit down and watch people talking? Podcasts are an audio medium. Podcasts are what you listen to when your time is otherwise occupied with boring shit. Most of the people who are listening to this podcast, you're probably at work, you're probably in a place that you don't necessarily want to be, doing something that you don't particularly enjoy. But if you throw on my podcast for an hour, you get a little bit of escape and it helps the day go on.

• 45:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or you might go for a walk, or sit down, go for a coffee shop, sit down with a coffee and listen to a podcast and watch the world around you. Audio podcasts can be literary.

• 45:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're listening, you're engaging with your mind's eye like the way you do when you read a book and it's participatory.

• 45:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I'm describing things to you, you have to use your imagination to interact with my words and then form images in your head and that process feels nice. That process, it doesn't feel draining, it doesn't feel taxing. It's you're escaping the doom scroll when you listen to a podcast with your phone in your pocket. And I know that that's why a lot of people listen to podcasts. Sitting down in front of a screen and watching people talk for hours, that's not really a podcast, that's an interview, that's television. But the industry at large, the large companies, they're trying to push everything towards video podcasts.

• 46:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I say pushing there because it's not, it's not humans, it's not people. People aren't out there screaming for, I wanna see two people talking.

• 46:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're pushing it towards video because there's more advertising money. This is why Netflix are buying up podcasts. This is why Netflix now have bought about 16 podcasts. It's because you can put television rates on the advertising that's in there, on visual adverts. In America, they're investing in video podcasts as a way to get around unions. TV shows are very, very expensive to make and to film and to write and a lot of people have to be hired. Three hours of a podcast, not the same case. You've got maybe three or four people employed, no writers, no residuals.

• 47:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  So they're moving to video podcasts because they can make them really, really cheaply and they can get that the advertising money that would go to TV, they can maximize profits. No disrespect to anybody who has a video podcast. If that's what you're doing and you love doing it, fair play to you. I'm just talking about the industry at large. I don't believe it. I don't believe this push towards video. There's a huge amount of video podcasts out there. And they're not even making them for people to listen to entire episodes. They're filming them just for short clips for Instagram. You think you're looking at a podcast, but you're not. It's just the new iteration of what an influencer is. Could I pivot the video with this podcast?

• 48:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Highly, highly unlikely because these take hours and hours to record with lots and lots of tiny edits. And I, I can record audio, I write and record audio with the same precision that I would if it was a wire processor. But I start throwing video into that, it becomes impossible. The point that I'm getting at is if you have audio podcasts like mine, other independent creators, other independent podcasters that you take time out of your day to listen to, to just go for a walk and stick them in your ears. And this is important to you, then you must support those podcasters directly.

• 48:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  You have to do it because audio podcasts are gonna get squeezed out. They're gonna get squeezed out, not because video is becoming more popular, but because from the top down, they are trying to make video more popular because it's more lucrative. There's more money in it, there's more advertising money. Apple are doing it, Amazon are doing it, every, Netflix. We're about to be bombarded with video podcasts that no one asked for. Two people chatting on a mic, nothing wrong with that. I'm not criticizing it, but I'm saying we need to have your This American Life, your cereals,

• 49:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  your audio podcasts that can exist as a literary medium. We can't lose that. So support the audio podcast that you listen to, whether it's their Patreon pages or just suggesting it to a friend and making sure that you show up and listen. So upcoming gigs, I want to talk about the Australia and New Zealand tour that is on sale today, which you'll get at the blind by podcast.ie and I'll probably have a link on my Instagram at Blind by Boat Club. So.

• 50:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm starting on the 9th of April 2027. I'm gonna be in Eo Taroa. I hope I pronounced that correctly. That's the Maori name for New Zealand. I'm gonna be in Auckland, right? On the 9th of April 2027, at Auckland Town Hall. Then, on the 11th of April 2027, I'm in the Palais Theatre in Narm, in Melbourne. I was in that venue the last time, it was magnificent. Then, 14th of April, Brisbane, at the Powerhouse, Me and Gin, 14th of April in Brisbane. Astor Theatre in Borlou, Part, on the 17th of April 2027.

• 50:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I'm finishing off the tour in the Sydney Opera House, the fucking Sydney Opera House, on the 22nd of April, in Waran, that's the name for Sydney. I mean, what do you want me to say? What the fuck do you want me to say? Sydney Opera House.

• 51:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't even like saying terms like wildest dreams because, and I've said this before about certain gigs, I never had a wildest dream about playing the Sydney fucking Opera House. Never. That would, that would have been strange and delusional. I did my first gig in Sydney in 2011, in some weird little pub, called Prince Philip or something like that. My first gig was 2011, maybe 150 people showed up. In 2019, I recorded a podcast in the Sydney Botanical Gardens. One of, one of my, one of my fondest podcast recording memories.

• 51:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  I got up at about 6:00 in the morning and went to the Sydney Botanical Gardens and took a microphone with me. I don't even remember what I spoke about, but it was a spiritual experience because it was so beautiful. And I recorded that podcast in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, with the Opera House just right there. It's the fucking Sydney Opera House. It's an iconic global building, one of the most famous venues in the world. At no point would I have ever stopped. Even with the job that I have as a performer, at no point would I have stopped and looked at that Sydney Opera House and said to myself, someday, someday you'll be in my fucking arse. And if I had have thought that way, I would have checked in at myself. I would have said,

• 52:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  you're not being realistic now. Stop. If you think that big, it's unrealistic. You've lost the run of yourself. Don't think that way. Focus on the work. Focus on the work. That's what I would have said to myself. So I can't believe it. I'm fucking, I'm playing the Sydney Opera House, lads, on the 22nd of April, 2027, a couple of days off from my birthday. I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago where I was speaking about birthdays and I told you that on one of my birthdays a couple of years back, I headlined the Hammersmith Apollo and I thought, that's it. That's the biggest, that's the biggest I can ever do. And now I've gone bigger. I didn't ask for it. I didn't pursue it. It's just, it's

• 53:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  like I said, I've moved beyond the Irish community in Australia and for whatever reason, I don't know why, people in Australia and in New Zealand just seem to like my podcast a lot. And there's a very large audience down there. So Sydney Opera House said, you need to be doing a gig here. This is where you need to be gigging. And I'm like, no. And they're like, we're pretty sure there's a lot of people listening to your podcast. You need to be gigging the Sydney Opera House. So I said, fuck it. What's the worst that can happen? Let's do it. So, so please come along to that gig. I'm in the Sydney Opera House, fucking hell. Please come along to that gig. That's going to be very, very

• 53:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  special. Very, very special. Hopefully I'll have a cracker of a guest as well and it'll just be a great night. And get your tickets now because my last Australia tour sold out very quickly. So if you're half thinking about it, just get the tickets now, even though it's a year away. So my next gig, couple of weeks, I have two gigs in Berlin. First night is sold out. Second night is as good as sold out, but I know I'm gonna be releasing some guest list tickets. But two nights in Berlin on the 18th and 19th of June at the Babylon Theatre, then Sheffield, 5th of July. Did a full podcast about Sheffield

• 54:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  last week. I'm very excited about this Sheffield gig. I am gonna have as my guest Professor Carl Chin. Professor Carl Chin is someone who I became friends with gigging in England. I've had him on the podcast before. He is a profoundly interesting historian of the English working class. He's amazing. Carl is Birmingham, but he knows everything about the history of the north of England. So I wanna learn about fucking Sheffield from Carl Chin and have a chat about that there in that city with him, because it's a beautiful city with a wonderful history. So come along to that gig in Sheffield. Then October, my

• 55:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  England, Scotland and Wales tour, where I'm kicking off on the 18th of October in Brighton. Then Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, London is sold out now. Glasgow, sold out pretty much. Gateshead, close to sold out. Nottingham. I won't be doing too many gigs in Ireland in 2027, and the reason being, I'm doing two big tours there. I'm gonna be away in Australia for close to five weeks and probably a month in England. And I have two tiny little kids, and I don't wanna be away from them from that much. That's the

• 56:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  tough part about my job is when... When I go away on tour for three weeks and they're so small and then when I come back, I'm looking at a different human being because they can grow so much in three weeks and that's tough. I was invited back to my old college, Limerick School of Art and Design, last week to open the, the exhibition. Wonderful, wonderful, talented students in the Limerick Art College. And I opened the exhibition and I got to bring my two little kids along and they saw what I did for the first time. They got to see me with the bag on my head, speaking to a lot of people because it's very difficult to explain what I do to toddlers.

• 56:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  I just tell them, I put, I put, I wear a mask and I read bedtime stories to adults. So this podcast, I think it's half, half hot take, half phone call.

• 56:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the final announcement that I have is I'm adapting my short stories into a play, which is going to run for six weeks in the Abbey Theatre up in Dublin. They're being adapted by a brilliant theatre maker called Dan Colly. He's previously adapted the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is a South American magical realist writer who I adore. And I'll have more details as the months go on, but that's from the 23rd of September to the 7th of November.

• 57:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  The play, I don't know, can I call it a play? It's a piece of theatre. It's called Animals and it's a kaleidoscopic interpretation of a number of my short stories from my three books. And again, this is another one where it's like dream come true.

• 58:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  I would never have dreamed this to be possible.

• 58:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I sound strained, it's because you know that I struggle with it. With external validation is something that I'm very wary of and something that I struggle with. And I deal with imposter syndrome and all this shit. So the Abbey Theatre is the, it's the national theatre of Ireland. It's not just the national theatre, it's, it's an institution that's hugely important to the, the fabric of Ireland. It's, it's the thing I've wanted all along, it's to be taken seriously as a literary writer. I wrote my first collection of short stories. 2016, 2017.

• 58:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't really know that I could, that I could write like that. When the opportunity came to me, the commissioner of Gill Books in 2016, just sent me an email. Would you be interested in writing a book? My gut feeling was no, no, I've never written a book before. How do I know I'd be able to? But I said, fuck it, what have I got to lose? Yes, I'll write a book. I thought my career was over at that point. I'd been doing music. And then when I said, yes, I'm gonna write a book. On the one hand, it was incredible because when you, when you agree to write a book, you get an advance, which meant that someone is after giving me enough money

• 59:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  that I can live off for a year to write a book. And that was incredible because in the 10 years that I'd been operating as a professional artist, I'd never been able to earn a living for a full year, ever. And then when I got that first book deal, it's like, there's a wage for a year and your job is to write a book. And then I sat down with that fucking blank page. And I didn't know what to write. What would I write a fucking book about? But I'd had enough experience writing television scripts that I wasn't completely and utterly a novice. And so I did like I did at the start of this podcast.

• 1:00:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just write, just write. And then flow started happening and a book just came out of me. And then I started to get confident and refine my skills. And they came to maturity in my last book, Topografia Hibernica, which, I mean, I can just fucking stand over that a hundred percent. I don't give a shit if anyone likes it or doesn't like it. You can't fuck with that book. And what I mean by you can't fuck with it is, you can write a bad review about it, you can write a good review about it, you can tear it apart, you can not enjoy it, any of these things. But because, for me as a writer, I can stand over every fucking word.

• 1:00:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because I can go, I don't give a shit whether you like it or not. I fucking like it. This book here is, this is my voice. Everything that I intended to do on the page is done. So you can't fuck with this. This is my voice. So from getting that email 10 years ago, do you wanna write a book? To 10 years later, having my stories on the main stage of the fucking Abbey Theatre. It doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel real. And again, do you think I ever walked past the fucking Abbey Theatre and thought, someday? No fucking way. And if I did think that way, I'd have reeled myself in and said, cop on, focus on the work, don't be thinking about the Abbey Theatre.

• 1:01:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's unrealistic, don't be ridiculous. So it feels surreal and I struggle with it. But who I am happy for is teenage me who doesn't have a leave insert. Teenage me who had to sit pass English. I couldn't even sit on her's English because I couldn't focus in class. I was, according to the system, a failure. A failure in every respect, according to the system. If you'd have asked my English teacher in school, is this fella any good at writing? They'd have said, no, he's hopeless. He's absolutely hopeless. He can't focus. He doesn't do homework. He doesn't do anything.

• 1:02:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  And now, I'm, I'm the only student in the history of my fucking school that's written books that have gone as far now as the Abbey Theatre. You, you gotta understand, if you're outside of Ireland, writing is our thing. Writing is the, the Irish thing. So that's our culture. That's our history. That is the thing that's, that's the cultural output that Ireland has, in which we're very overrepresented around the world. So getting recognised as a writer is one thing. Getting recognised as a writer in Ireland is a whole different thing entirely. It's like getting recognised as a glassmaker in Venice. So the legacy of the Abbey Theatre is,

• 1:03:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  you're talking fucking Sean O'Casey, Lady Gregory, Marina Carr, Samuel Beckett, John B Keane. I'm not comparing myself to those writers in any way. I'm just saying, those are Irish writers who have had pieces in the, in the, on the main stage of the Abbey Theatre. So it's a very, very surreal week for me. And I have to be particularly grounded. And that I don't allow external praise to impact my sense of self-worth in any way. To separate my sense of identity from my work, from my behaviour, from my output. I'm no better than anyone else and no one else is better than me because I'm a human being.

• 1:03:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  And human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other. No aspect of my behaviour defines my worth whatsoever. I have worth simply because I'm a human. And you have worth simply because you're a human. And all humans have the exact same worth. And the only thing I need to be given a shit about is the next piece of work. That's all I need to give, be given a fuck about. Because if I allow myself, like a moth, to be attracted to that light of external validation.

• 1:04:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Then ultimately, I'll just become more afraid of failure. It means that the price of failure goes up. My job is to be so unafraid of failure that I can bring it into my process. My job is to feel safe and to feel safe and to be able to play. And if I start feeling good about a Sydney Opera House or an Abbey Theatre, and I start thinking that I'm somehow special in some way around these things, then my self-esteem, my identity starts to rely upon external fucking approval, which is bollocks, bullshit, hard work, passion, and enjoying the process,

• 1:05:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  and not even thinking about fucking success, not even considering it. Sticking with that fucking process and the love of the work. That's what has me in the Abbey Theatre. Because if I do it that way, then I've got my voice. And if you can create art and that art is your fucking voice, and every artist has their voice. If you can hear your voice and communicate it effectively, then the rest will look after itself. But my voice is my inner child. It's me as a little child when I felt safe enough to play. It is not me as a little child who feels bold and bad

• 1:05:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  and is being chastised and just wants the approval of that teacher. If only that teacher tells me I'm smart. If only that teacher tells me a good boy, then everything will be okay. That child didn't want to play. That child didn't want to have fun or explore. That child was afraid and experiencing shame. And that child doesn't write any of my fucking books. It's the child in me who plays with Lego who writes my books. I'm talking about self-esteem. I'm talking about self-worth. I'm talking about not allowing my self-worth to be defined by whether I am good or bad as an artist. Because, and a lot of creative people, this will ring true with you.

• 1:06:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this is, this is part of what I told the students last week when I was doing that graduation show at my old fucking art college, because they asked me to give some advice to the students. And I spoke about Carr Rogers. Because I'm speaking to a room full of art college students and I said,

• 1:06:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  when we were small little kids, three or four years of age,

• 1:07:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  that's when, if you have a, we'll say a talent, singing, dancing, drawing, painting, whatever, when one of these talents emerges at about four years of age, the adults around you start to notice. And they go, oh, you're very good at drawing, you're very good at coming up with stories, you're very good at singing. And because we're three or four, we just notice, oh, the adults appear to be giving me love and approval and extra attention. Because I just thought I was playing. I'm playing here with some crayons. And I've made a picture because I'm playing. And now all of a sudden, there's an adult coming along going,

• 1:07:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  wow, you've made a good thing. My God, you're so good at that thing. And now they've interrupted the play and they've put value on it. And what we do as little humans then is we can, we can start to learn in a dysfunctional way. Oh, when I'm good at drawing or good at music, I'm worth something. Because the adults all come over to me and tell me, you're worth something. Here's some love. Well done in that drawing. Here's some extra love. And then we internalize that into our sense of self and our sense of identity.

• 1:08:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you grow older and your internal voice becomes, you see, that was called conditional positive regard. That's what Carol Rogers called it, conditional positive regard. It's when you're a kid and the adults give you positive regard, love and attention, on the condition that you're doing certain things. So in my case, it was creating art. As you grow older and your personality develops, that becomes conditional positive self-regard. So now internally, I start to...

• 1:08:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  View myself as having worth, as being worth something as a human being when I am good at art. And then my identity and my whole feeling of self-esteem and worth begins to depend upon being a good artist. And that starts to mature at about the age of 20, 21. But then what happens? What happens when I can't come up with ideas? What happens when I try to sit down to write, or to paint, or to make music, or to create a piece of art, and nothing comes? Or if I do make something, I'm not happy with it? But then I feel shame. And shame is a global evaluation of self. It's not, I have done something bad.

• 1:09:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  It is, I am bad. And you'll know that feeling. It's the blank page. You're struggling with that fucking blank page, or that blank canvas, the blank whatever that you have to fill with your creativity. You're sitting there with it, and you're afraid to start. And what you're afraid of is failure, because failure means that feeling of shame. And the feeling of shame is, I can't come up with an idea. I'm useless. I'm terrible. I'm pathetic. Anything I've ever done before that was good was an accident, that was a mistake, and I'm finding out right now that I am a worthless, useless piece of shit.

• 1:10:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it's one of the worst feelings in the world, the sudden contraction of self, that shame. And that terrible feeling of shame, that will, that'll give you, that's where block comes from, that's where writer's block come from, or painter's block, or musician's block. Block, the inability to access your flow states. It comes from the freezing terror of not wanting to feel that shame again. But if you feel that fucking shame about your art, about the possibility of failing, that means most likely that part of your identity and self-esteem is based upon being a good artist. And that's simply not true. It's just not true.

• 1:11:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Taking it back to what I said a couple of minutes ago.

• 1:11:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm no better than anybody else and nobody else is better than me because I'm a human being and human beings are too complex to evaluate against each other. Human beings are too complex for our worth to depend upon an aspect of our behaviour. We have intrinsic worth. I'm worthy just because I am. I'm, I'm worth something just because I'm a human being and I have that intrinsic worth that it doesn't go up or down, it just simply is. If I make a good piece of art, that means I made a good piece of art. What happens if I burn my dinner? Am I a shit person because I burnt my dinner? No, but my identity isn't attached to making dinners.

• 1:11:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't grow up in a house where I got patted on the head for cooking sausage as well. So if I, if I'm making a fry up and I burn some sausages, I'm not flagellating myself with shame. I'm just simply saying to myself, oh, that's disappointing, better make something else. Maybe I'll learn from it and do better tomorrow. But if I make a bad piece of art, I can be, oh my God, you worthless piece of shit. Your career is over, you're fucked, you're gone. You should never have done this in the first place. That's shame. So that's why I'm cautious and weary of external validation, that when I do get it, because I've had a lot of failures this year as well, that's, that's the other fucking thing, shit that I don't tell you about.

• 1:12:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  My short film that I made there about two years ago, ah, did you read about Erskine Fogarty that won a lot of awards? That won awards, which meant that I was given opportunities. So this year, another four of my stories were going to be made into big budget TV shows, would have been fucking huge. And it got as far as the contract being signed and then boom, sorry, we're not interested. Massive failure, absolute failure. Did that devastate me? Did that stop me creating? Did that devastate me to the point where?

• 1:13:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm feeling so much shame that I'm not showing up each week writing a podcast. Did it fuck? I looked at it realistically and said, that's disappointing. Fuck it, that would have been great if that happened, but it didn't. Let's move on, what's the next piece of work? I was able to view that failure the way that I would have viewed a lot of sausages that I burnt. I immediately got back on the horse and started creating again, not a bother. The only reason I was able to do that is because when I'd had a success previously, such as winning the award for the short film, I didn't take it on board. I did not take it on board. I didn't allow myself to feel excessively good about it.

• 1:14:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't allow that award to come down and pat me on the head like the teacher whose approval I want. What I did is I looked at the award. I said, I'm very happy that the work has received this award. And then I focused on all the other people that helped make that piece of work and how they helped make this happen. And I focused on them. And that was a healthy way to deal with external validation. So that's what I'm trying to do right now. When it comes to the Abbey Theatre thing, I'm thinking about my editor Catherine, who did a wonderful job editing all three of my fucking books. I'm thinking about Dan Colly, who's after adapting the play and did a fantastic fucking job, an incredible bloody job.

• 1:14:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm thinking about Connor, who offered me my first ever book contract. I'm thinking about, one of the first people to mail me was Kevin Barry, the writer, saying fair play on the Abbey thing. And I emailed Kevin straight back and I said, this would not have been possible without you, which is true, because when I didn't think I could write short stories, one of my first short stories I sent it to was fucking Kevin Barry, who's probably the greatest living Irish writer.

• 1:15:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I sent him my first short story and Kevin just goes, yeah, that's good enough. You can do it. So that's one way that I deal with it. External validation to not allow it to inflate my sense of self-worth or to impinge on my identity. I focus on the people who helped me because there's a generosity to that. And thinking about teachers who were fucking sound to me back in school, rather than focusing on that one teacher whose approval I want, who was a prick to me. I'm gonna list out some things now that might be helpful to everybody. When it comes to self-esteem, because that's what we're talking about here, self-esteem. And what is self-esteem? Your overall sense of your own worth, your gut feeling about your own worth.

• 1:15:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you know, the beauty of self-esteem, the beauty of healthy self-esteem? We all have the exact same worth. We all have the exact same intrinsic worth. That's the beauty of it. You're born with it. It can't be taken away. It doesn't go up. It doesn't go down. You're a beautiful, wonderful fucking human being. You're a curious playful little toddler who just wants to love and be loved and to laugh. Live, laugh, love, lads. Live, laugh. There's no greater fucking phrase. Facebook rounded, live, laugh, love. That's, that's what it's about. That's self-esteem.

• 1:16:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  To live, to laugh and to love. There's the worth. That's intrinsic worth. You don't have to be good at anything to do that. That's all it is. Indicators of that your self-esteem is healthy is when you can say things to yourself like, I have worth. I can cope with the challenges of life, the inevitable suffering of existence. I can cope with it. I will make mistakes. I will fail. I have to fail. And those failures and mistakes don't impact my worth whatsoever. Because making mistakes and fucking up is part of being alive. Now, what's unhealthy self-esteem or unhealthy self-worth?

• 1:17:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  When your view of self is something like, "My worth depends on how successful I am", or "if I'm attractive", or "if people admire me", or "if people like me", society wants us that way. Capitalism operates on that. Capitalism operates on us having a contingent self-worth. Capitalism operates on us having a self-worth that's tied to being liked, being attractive, being successful. Because if you're chasing that, then capitalism can come along with commodity fetishism and offer you the solution via goods and services. So we're consistently bombarded with messaging that tells us to have a sense of self-worth that depends upon external things.

• 1:18:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's not healthy, though. It's not, it's not human. If you want to work on self-esteem, which you can work on it,

• 1:18:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  and it's daily practice, there's things you can do. Don't put other people down. And that doesn't mean publicly, in your own mind. Okay? If throughout your day,

• 1:18:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  you're comparing yourself to other people, either favorably or unfavorably. So that can mean,

• 1:18:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't know, looking at a person who has less than you and go, "Fucking look at them", or looking at someone who has more than you, or who's more attractive than you, or who has a better job, and feeling envious, or going, "I will be happy when I have what they have", that creates a fragile sense of self. So an alternative way of viewing the world is measure yourself against your own values, compete with yourself, try to be the best version of you. Instead of looking at what someone else has and wanting to be like them, or trying to do things so that they might approve of you, or like you, you go, "No, no, fuck that. I'm gonna be the best version of me", and find value in

• 1:19:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  being generous to people, being kind to people. That's all it takes. Throughout your day, when you interact with people, remind yourself to try and treat other people the way that you'd like to be treated. It's all basic stuff, but that's a fine thing to hang,

• 1:19:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  to hang a bit of worth on to. "Was I kind to people today?" Not even "was I kind", that I put the effort into trying to be kind. Another thing is...

• 1:19:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Needing to feel like you're special. Now, that's a fucking, that's one that I struggle with. Because I'm doing things where I'm getting the type of external validation that would suggest to me that I'm special. So if I'm gigging Sydney Opera House, that would suggest to me, well, not a lot of people do that, so you must be special. Bullshit, bollocks. I happen to have created a piece of work and that piece of work is what's in the Sydney Opera House, not me as a human being. And what's special this year might not be special next year. What's the alternative to needing to feel special? Sitting with and accepting that it's okay to be, to be ordinary.

• 1:20:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's okay to just, you don't need anything special. Like I said, you, it's okay to just exist. You have worth already, you don't need anything else. Just exist, be you, that's truly enough. Being unable to take criticism.

• 1:20:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you receive critique for your work, for whatever you're doing, if, if that's triggering for you and you resist it, or it makes you irritated or defensive, then that's an, an opportunity for growth. Practice taking criticism and sitting with it and feeling it and going, this isn't threatening. Actually, when I receive criticism and I'm calm with it and I believe the other person and believe their criticism. And when I sit with that, I actually learn from it and get better. Calmly take criticism as information rather than a verdict on your worth.

• 1:21:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's not a verdict on your worth, it's a piece of information that you can agree with or disagree with, but listen to it. And if it's right, you learn from it and you grow. Avoiding your feelings. Now, that's a tough one.

• 1:21:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  What, what I would mean around that is, is learning to identify the difference between a primary emotion and a secondary emotion. I'll tie this in with the first point, but comparing yourself to other people.

• 1:22:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  So let's just say you're a friend from school. You see them in town and they're driving a big Mercedes. And when you see it, you get a little shock. And then immediately your mind moves to kind of an anger. In your mind, you're taking them down. Look at that fucking prick with their Mercedes. I bet you they're selling coke. Or if you're an artist and someone you know is after winning an award or some shit like that. And in your head, instead of feeling happy for them, you're going, they only got that because of this, this and this. They don't deserve that. And you're putting them down. So that there is a secondary emotion.

• 1:22:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's the secondary emotion of jealousy. And that secondary emotion is protecting you from the primary emotion of shame. That's what I mean by avoiding feelings. So when someone you know steps up and they have something that you would like, or they are in a position where you would like to be. And immediately, you, you, in your mind, you wanna take them down. You know that that's, that's like, that's a jealousy or an envy. You're trying to minimize them. But really, the reason we're doing that is we're trying to regain a feeling of power. Because, and why are we regaining a feeling of power? Because something made us feel powerless.

• 1:23:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  So when you see the, see someone with something you like or in a position that you want, what you actually feel first is that shame. Oh, look what they have. Oh, fuck it, I'm worthless. I'm pathetic. I'm tiny. I can't do what they, I, I can't, I feel fucking awful. This feels, and shame feels, feels fucking terrible. Shame, that's the sudden contraction of self. That feels awful. So when shame steps in, we very rarely sit with the feeling of shame because it's very painful. So jealousy or something else, jealousy and anger step in. They step in as secondary emotions to shelter us from that horrible feeling of shame.

• 1:24:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when you start then experiencing the jealousy and envy and anger, you're, you're not sitting with that emotion of shame. It's a missed opportunity. So you learn to catch yourself. And when I find myself minimizing someone else's achievements, because I've practiced it for so long, I've practiced it. And when I catch that, I go, oh, what's that?

• 1:24:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I go, what's underneath this? And then I noticed that, oh, I felt small there. I felt kind of small and worthless there. And now I'm minimizing this person's achievement because I feel small. Let's sit with that feeling of smallness. Let's sit, let's sit with that shame. Is that true? No, it's not true. No, no, no, that shame isn't real at all. Why isn't it real? Because I've got worth. I've got worth simply because I'm a human. And that shame that I'm feeling is an illusion. That is actually evidence that I'm trying to base my self-esteem on external approval. Let's sit with that feeling of shame. And when you can sit with the discomfort of it, somatically and feel it in your body,

• 1:25:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  it dissipates and you process it. And then another one. Protecting your fucking ego.

• 1:25:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Defending your, your, your, your self-image at all costs can be very damaging. Sometimes we're wrong. Conflict. If you have a disagreement with someone, are you holding on to your position? Because the feeling of shame that you'd experience if you admit that you were wrong. When, if, if it's a situation where you are actually genuinely wrong.

• 1:25:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you can sit with the fact that you are wrong, acknowledge it and then apologize to the other person because you were actually wrong. That's like injecting your self-esteem with steroids.

• 1:26:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  That there is one of the most powerful ways to grow as a human being and to feel secure in yourself. Identifying when you're actually wrong and then apologizing to the person because of your words or actions, assuming you're actually wrong. And if you're both wrong, finding a compromise in the middle. If needing to be right is more important than...

• 1:26:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  Holding yourself accountable, or apologising, or admitting that you're wrong, then it won't build healthy self-esteem. Because it means that your sense of self and identity is contingent on needing to be right. And this is all part of just being human, you know, you might have had, you might have had a parent who rubbed it in your face when you were wrong. You might have had a parent who didn't allow you to be wrong, or who doubled down on punishment even when you did apologise. So being wrong felt dangerous. It was safer to appear to be right. So healthy self-esteem, it's intrinsic self-worth. It's a quiet sense of confidence that your worth doesn't rise or fall

• 1:27:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  with success, failure, praise, criticism, approval, victory, embarrassment. It means that you can say it to yourself truthfully. I can be wrong without being worthless. I can fail without being a failure. I can be criticised without feeling diminished. And I can be ordinary without losing my value. I'm enough just as a given, as a given. And if that's tough to take on board, just look at a tiny little child, that's all you gotta do.

• 1:28:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Look at beautiful, wonderful little toddlers. Doesn't have to be your own, can be someone else's. Their happiness, their curiosity, the love that they give out, their crankiness when something isn't going right, their crankiness when they're hungry, they're upset when they need to go to the toilet, cranky when they're tired. No ulterior motives, no sense of identity yet. Just a fully congruent human being who's very in touch with their needs and notice the sense of, notice the feeling of. They need to be protected.

• 1:28:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Notice the feeling of that little child needs to be loved, deserves to be loved, to be protected. Aren't they wonderful? Aren't they magnificent? Look how happy they are because a pigeon is after landing over there. Look how happy they are because the sun is shining. Look how happy they are with their little shoes. And if you can do that for a little child, then you say to yourself, I used to be one of them. I used to be one of those little children. And it never left you. You're still that tiny little toddler. You're still that human being. You're still all of those wonderful things that are organic and connected with your

• 1:29:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  emotions and feelings. You still have that joy, that happiness. You still get cranky when you're tired. You're still that. Look at a group of toddlers. Can you look at those toddlers and start picking out, but that one's better than that one? No, they're all the exact same. They're all wonderful, fantastic little kids. All of them, the exact same, exuding wonderfulness. We're still that. We just learnt a bunch of bullshit along the way that convinced us we're not, but we're still that. And that, that there, that's your value. That little toddler value that you were born with, that's your fucking value. And when you're hard on yourself, and when you're comparing yourself to other people,

• 1:30:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  or flagellating yourself, you're doing it to that tiny little child. And you wouldn't treat a child that way. The only thing that I took from, because I received a Catholic education at a very young age, I was taught by the nuns as a little child, and it was all bollocks. And they taught us about fucking communion wafers and eating the flesh of a 2,000 year old carpenter and sins, teaching sins to five year olds. Nonsense, bollocks, bullshit, toxic grooming. But the only thing that I hold on to from my early Catholic education.

• 1:30:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  The words that that made sense and rang true and that I still remember,

• 1:31:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  even though I don't believe in heaven or any of that bullshit.

• 1:31:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  They used to say to us when we were three or four. When they'd talk to us about heaven, which is a bit fucking toxic. What are you talking to three and four year olds about heaven for? But there you go. But they used to say to us.

• 1:31:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  When, when people die, you could be thirty years of age, you could be ninety years of age. That when any human dies, you enter the kingdom of heaven as, as a child.

• 1:31:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  That anyone who enters, anyone who dies and enters the kingdom of heaven, that they're there as tiny little children and that heaven is only populated by tiny children because that's the purest version of who you are. And that's what they used to say to us. That's who ye are right now. And when ye grow old and ye die, you're gonna return to who you are right now at three, four, five years of age and that's who gets into heaven. Mostly toxic bollocks there about fucking heaven, but they had a point. Your inner child is your self-worth. You as a child is your worth. That's the core of you. That's who you are. And that little child is just perfect, fucking perfect.

• 1:32:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the little child beside you is perfect too. That is self-worth, that is self-esteem. And my, my job is, is to work on reminding myself of that every single day. Because you know what?

• 1:32:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Three or four year old me wouldn't give a fuck about the Sydney Opera House. Three or four year old me would probably be afraid of that building because it's so large and strange. Three and four year old me would want to be in the Botanic Gardens beside the Sydney Opera House, looking at cool butterflies. That's what three or four year old me would, would want. So when I go to the Sydney Opera House to do that gig, that's what I'll be reminding myself of. That big opera house is just a landmark.

• 1:33:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  With a bunch of external value attached to it, but the real stuff is in that botanical gardens and the beautiful sunshine and the grass and the insects and the smells and the sounds. That's what I'm gonna be doing. That's the bit that I'm looking forward to that I'm gonna focus on because that's what three-year-old me would have wanted. Those gardens. All right, dog bless. That's a 90-minute podcast. I haven't done one of them since the pandemic, I believe, when I had too much time on my hands. I'll catch you next week. Rub a dog, genuflect to a swan, and wink at a ferret. Dog bless.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

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• 1:34:45Speaker 05

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