Art History. Surrealism, Absurdism and Postmodernism

In this episode I deconsctruct a poor review of my play by explaining 20th century art Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Swing your stinking shin into the gin drinker's bin bag, you marvelous barts. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. If this is your first episode, please consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. Some incredibly dedicated people, some 10-foot Declans, some steaming Cuevas, even begin at the very start, which is a gargantuan task because we're almost at 500 episodes. And you're talking about 10 years of podcasts. We're nine years. We're going to be nine years this October. So that's an awful lot of podcasts.

• 1:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  But some people do go back to the start and they listen to like an episode every single day or more than one episode a day. Usually it's people, people who have jobs that, not jobs that are boring, but jobs whereby listening to a podcast can really help them pass the time. And I love the, I love the thought of accompanying these people. And as this, as this fucking podcast drifts towards 10 years, Jesus, I wonder to myself, like I'm in my 40s now. And I started this podcast in my early 30s.

• 2:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it operates like a, like a never-ending novel, a perpetual novel. And one day, one day it's going to end. Now, every time I say that, people get so worried and think that I am indicating that it's about to end. No, I fucking adore this. I love showing up every week. It's a form of journaling. I'm in this for the long haul. There's no end in sight. So when I say this podcast will end, everything will end. Everything comes to an end. But if this podcast were to end, it wouldn't be a choice or a decision that I'm making.

• 3:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Some external force would bring it to an end. Like I used to, I spent most of the 2010s on Twitter as a prolific tweeter. That ended. Don't fucking post on Twitter or X anymore. Elon Musk destroyed it. I used to have a MySpace. I used to have a GeoCities. I used to have a Bebo. So I'm speaking this way because I just want to look at the landscape of podcasting. Some change in the algorithm that spells the end of audio-only podcasts. Right now, we're in a period of uncertainty, the entire podcast industry. By the way, if you're wondering what that noise is, we've invited the rain on as a guest again this week.

• 4:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  I fucking love it when the rain comes on as a guest. Really look forward to it now. It sounds beautiful. But the podcast industry is, it's drifting towards video. And it's hard to tell. Are video podcasts going to completely replace audio-only podcasts? My gut feeling is no. Video podcasts are something that are being hoisted upon us by apps. Like if you're wondering why there's so many video podcasts these days, it's not necessarily because humans want to sit down for an hour and look at two people speaking on their phone. Like that's not happening.

• 4:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  And who has the fucking time for that? As I mentioned there, the steaming Cuevas, the 10-foot Declans, who listen to this podcast and who might listen to nine years solid of this podcast in one go, the vast majority of these people are looking for distraction. They're doing something else, usually at work, or they're going for their walk. They're doing something else. And then the podcast is accompanying them as this relaxing podcast hug, but for a video podcast. Well, then you have to stop and stare at a fucking screen for an hour and watch two people talking. Not a lot of people are actually doing that.

• 5:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Most people who are engaging with a three-hour video podcast, they're listening to it. They're not watching it. The way that video podcasts appear on your Apple Podcasts or your Spotify or whatever, the video is optional. This giant change, it's not being driven by people's listening habits. It's something that's been decided by the apps. So why data? Video data. The big podcast apps want everybody, not just submitting audio, but submitting video so they can use the data of those videos to train AI models or to sell that data to train AI models.

• 6:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's also why when you use Instagram now, post a video or fuck off. 90% of what you're consuming on Instagram is videos. And if you have a page and you want to be seen, you also have to post videos. It's because video data is incredibly valuable. The current AI models, your ChatGPTs, they're trained on text. Not just texts that scraped from books, magazines, whatever, but the text that we've all been typing into the internet on social media over the past 16 years. Like a lot of ChatGPT responses are trained on data from Reddit.

• 7:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  So AI needs video. Like the doom scroll. Do you know anyone who enjoys the doom scroll? We used to have social media. We used to be able to type a status or type a tweet, just a couple of words, and read other people's words. And it wasn't perfect. And it could be very annoying. And you could end up getting into arguments with people. But it was much easier to put down. It wasn't this all-consuming hypnosis, this draining hypnosis that you get when you simply open Instagram to check your fucking messages. And before you know it, 15 minutes, 20 minutes have passed

• 7:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  because you've just been staring at shit and you feel drained and confused. That's the doom scroll. No one fucking asked for that. We all miss being able to type things. We all miss just being able to post a photograph on Instagram. A lot of people don't want to record videos of themselves and post themselves talking. I'd rather read 20 people's opinions as tweets or Facebook posts. I'd rather read these things than listen to people talking to me on a screen and watch them talking to me. It's not social media anymore. It's the doom scroll machine. And we didn't really ask for it, but it's been hoisted upon us. And it's because of data. It's because of video data.

• 8:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  When people say like AI poses a threat to artists.

• 8:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  I firmly believe AI is never going to replace a human artist, just is not. However, the environment where AI needs video data to train it, that will coerce the artist into a position where they're spending a huge amount of their time recording an Instagram reel instead of making art. And that there is that, that's the AI environment that is a threat to real human artists. The video that's going to appear on your feed in six months' time, the artificial intelligence video that you're going to see in six months to a year's time, that's so good that you won't be able to tell whether it's artificial intelligence or real.

• 9:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  The effectiveness of that video, it's going to be fed, it will be fed by all the Instagram reels and fed by all the video podcasts. It will be fed by the data that those apps use. So that's what's going on. And that pisses me off. It annoys me because audio podcasts are fucking incredible. Audio podcasts can be literary, they're immersive. You use your mind's eye, the way that you read a book, and it's a much more participatory and emotionally engaging experience to listen to one person speaking or listen to two people

• 10:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  speaking than to watch them speaking. So this pivot towards video, it's being sold to us as something that makes our experience as listeners better. It's fucking not. It benefits the apps. It gives them ownership, not ownership, but it gives them the capacity to exploit the video data on their apps to train AI. And then also, when it comes to the television industry, I'm talking about big streamers buying up video podcasts. It allows them to make shit TV. They get to invest less, they get to spend less. Because the thing is, is this a talk show?

• 10:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because if it's a talk show, then you have a larger budget, you have a big set, you might have an audience. But with a podcast, you might have a band. I've worked in television, I've worked on talk shows. You're talking minimum 40 people being employed. A lot of those people are unionized. In one sentence, I'll never forget, and this is when, when I used to work on a TV variety talk show called Republicatelly in Ireland, around 2010, comedians would do sketches to a live audience in studio. You only got three goes at that sketch. That was it, three goes.

• 11:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I remember, I remember one comedian needed about five goes to do this live sketch in front of a live audience. And I was about 22 and I'll never forget the producer saying to that comedian, whispered it into his ear, but I heard it, because he'd gone overtime, the producer said to him, if you do another take, it's going to cost several thousand euro per minute. Because if we go past Carfu in like two minutes' time, all of this cast and crew are on double time. Making a television talk show fucking eats money. So now, the TV companies, the streamers, they're purchasing podcasts. It's like a talk show.

• 12:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, no, this is a podcast. It's one set, two people, two microphones, and then cameras that don't have any operators. They're robotic cameras. So the streamers get to spend less money making these things called podcasts, which are really just very cheap TV. And, and in America, they're allowed to circumvent unions because you're not making television, now you're making a podcast. And you don't even have to worry about the camera operators' union or the boom operators' union, because they're not employed. It's three robotic cameras and two microphones, and it's called a podcast. And again, does this benefit you and me who want to consume these things?

• 13:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  It doesn't. It benefits the fucking apps. And I think, I think Netflix got bitten in the arse this year. They purchased a lot of big video podcasts for exclusive streaming on Netflix. And these are video podcasts that would have been doing very well on, on YouTube. Then they bring them over to Netflix and they're not doing well on Netflix. And what they started to realise was, oh shit, this video podcast was actually more about the comment section. Because on YouTube, there's a comment section, there's a little community, but on Netflix there isn't. And I'm not shitting on video podcasts because there's some video podcasts that are excellent, that are really, really good.

• 13:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  But when they're prioritised because the apps want that video data, it shuts out the podcasts that, that are audio only. Not just audio only, but the type of podcasters that flourish in an audio only environment. I got into podcasts when they were audio only. Things like This American Life. Used to love Bill Barr's podcast where it was just him ranting into a microphone. Audio documentaries like Serial that NPR were making. That was a really special and immersive period. That was the golden age of podcasting and we're being ripped out of it. Not because people actually want video podcasts, but because this is what the apps are deciding.

• 14:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Could I do this as a video podcast? No, absolutely not. This is a piece of writing with thousands and thousands of tiny little edits every week that you don't even notice. I'll give you an example. This bit of the sentence, I'm recording this now. But now this other bit of the sentence, I've recorded this 10 minutes later. 10 minutes have passed, but you didn't experience that passage of time. You'd have no idea that that happened. Sometimes I might say something yesterday and finish the sentence tomorrow. You don't know, it's none of your business. In the same way that when you read a book or an article, you're reading a single body

• 15:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  of text, but the person writing that, they could have started the article on one side of the world and ended it on the other side of the world, or written the entire thing on a plane journey and you wouldn't know, it doesn't matter. That's an editing flexibility that's afforded to writing, physically writing and reading, and writing audio. Could I do that with video? No, because there's visual continuity. Something as simple as the quality of light changing outside my window. So if I edit suddenly, now the light in the room changes. So a podcast like this, it's not possible with video. And what I could do is I could just point the camera at myself and have a microphone and talk for one hour straight with zero edits.

• 15:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it'd be dog shit. It'd be like a live stream. It's not written, it's not edited. So it forces all podcasts into becoming two people sitting down with two microphones or three people and you record it all in one go. Here's my new podcast. Each week I sit down with a brand new guest and we speak about life or a creative agency. We'll get two comedians who don't even know each other to sit down together every week and pretend that they're friends. Or maybe it's two comedians who are actually friends. Am I shitting on these formats? Absolutely not, because some of them are absolutely excellent and they're perfect for what they are.

• 16:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I'm shitting on is a data-driven bubble that is restricting the podcast space whereby those are the only podcasts that you can make because everything is prioritised for video. And that's fine, but it shouldn't be every podcast. And I don't think the podcast apps have considered this and thought of this. I think they're just being greedy. They just want that video data at all costs to feed the AI models. And my hope is that it's going to fucking implode. That will implode and people will still continue faithfully listening to the audio

• 17:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  podcast that they love, that they can enjoy as a distraction while they're also doing something else. And what gives me hope too is we've already survived one crisis. If you listen back to this podcast, circa 2020, 2021, during the pandemic and lockdown, that's when podcasts went from something very niche that only a certain type of person consumed to being completely mainstream. The pandemic is when, it's when the people who used to listen to radio, all of a sudden started listening to podcasts.

• 17:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I first started this podcast in 2017, October of 2017, I remember posting it on Facebook. Facebook at that time, very mainstream audience. And I remember I'd post the podcast and a lot of the responses were, what is a podcast? What's a podcast? I'd never heard of a podcast. What is it? How do I, how do I listen to it? What happened in late 2020 is we got the podcast bubble. The filming industry shut down and then you had all of these out of work celebrities. You had celebrities who couldn't film their talk shows, who couldn't film movies because everything around the world was in lockdown.

• 18:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the podcast space got flooded with big name celebrities making absolute dog shit, dog shit money grab podcasts that were incredibly poor quality. And they flooded the space and it made it really difficult for independent podcasters to be heard in that environment. But we survived it. I'm still here six years later, still have a million regular listeners. The vast majority of the celebrity podcasts disappeared when their regular work returned. And any of the ones that were left survived because they were actually good. So there's a few things that have me reflecting on that this week. And don't be frightened. I'm here for the long haul.

• 19:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not a fucking day goes by that I don't express gratitude for having the opportunity to show up here every fucking week and do whatever the fuck I want. No producer, no commissioner, no one telling me what to talk about. I love this. Some of the things that have me thinking about the podcast space, I suppose, is first, I wanna, I wanna plug a relatively new podcast, which I, which I appear on this week. I think the episode is actually out this morning. There's an incredibly popular Instagram page called A View From A Bridge, which you definitely know. It's people speaking on a bridge with a red telephone as the camera slowly zooms into them.

• 20:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that started off as short form videos, but now the creator, Joe, he's doing them as long form podcasts, long form video podcasts. And that, I'm quite excited by that because that's a long form video podcast that takes a very creative approach to the potentials that can be explored. So I'm on that this week. And also, it just feels very nice because Joe, who, who started A View From A Bridge, he was a 10 foot Declan. He was a 10 foot Declan back in the early days of this podcast. And I have messages, I've messages from him from fucking years ago saying that my podcast

• 20:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  was one of the things that inspired him to create A View From A Bridge. So I just think it's, it's really beautiful that, that's how long this podcast has been around, that you have an early listener being inspired, doing something with that inspiration. And now I'm appearing on their podcast. That's, that's another one of the, the weird things I experience. Cause I've been around for fucking more than 20 years. So one of the strangest things that I experience is I like, I don't wanna say the actor's name. I don't wanna say the actor's name, but it's a big Irish actor. Like I like follow a massive actor on Instagram.

• 21:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm following him because it's big famous actor. So I'm giving him a follow. And then I'll go, oh shit, they follow me already. And then I'll check my DMs and I'll have like DMs from them that I'd never seen from when they were like 15 on Instagram in 2013 mailing me. From when they were children, from when they were in fucking school before they were famous. And that makes me feeling incredibly old. I got a DM, I got a DM from someone about a year ago. And it wasn't a famous person, but it was someone like, it was someone, they were well into their twenties. So maybe 26, 27.

• 22:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the person mailed me saying, blind boy, I, I quit my job as a teacher because I was, I was listening to your podcast and some of the things you were saying about pursuing a feeling of meaning and doing something in your life that gives you a feeling of meaning. That made this person quit their job as a teacher and then changed careers. And they were maybe 27, 28. And then they said in the message, I've actually been a fan of your work since I was six years of age. My dad got me into your prank phone calls. And that's nuts. Speaking to a full grown adult who has came and went as a qualified teacher, telling me that they started listening to me when they were six years of age.

• 22:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Cause I don't experience it as a particularly long time at all. One day when I was 16, I started posting creative things on the internet and I just haven't stopped since. Now I'm a middle aged man, but also let that soothe, let that soothe the people who shit their pants anytime I speak about the podcast ending. I, I don't think I'm gonna be ending anything. I'm gonna have to be putting creativity out in some shape or form for the rest of my life. Cause that's the only way I know how to operate. The other thing that got me thinking about the podcast is I've had an absolutely mad week. I've had a crazy week. So the play in the Abbey Theatre, that's adapted from my short stories,

• 23:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  directed by Dan Colley, Animals, that went out last Tuesday in its final form to a general audience. And the response to it has been electric, phenomenal, deeply divisive. I got a lovely message this week from a listener who went to see the play. And this person has only recently gotten into, into this podcast. And they're back at the very start. They're back around early 2018. And they said they were listening to episodes where I wasn't sure if the podcast would continue. Or episodes where I was saying, maybe I'll invite some guests onto this podcast.

• 24:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't know what I'm doing here or where it's gonna go, but I like how it's going. And she loved, she loved being so far back in the podcast world, where I wasn't sure what I was doing or what it was or how it was gonna go. And now she's in the Abbey Theatre watching this mad show, which wouldn't exist without this podcast. That play was written on this fucking podcast. Cause there hasn't been a short story I've written whereby this podcast is not the research bed that informed that short story. I mean, one of the, one of the short stories that's in this play up in the Abbey and the crew and the cast, incredible job at imagining it.

• 25:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  The story's called, I'll Give You Barcelona. And it's a short story from my last book. But the bones of that short story actually started here on this podcast as a, as a monologue about a real experience I had in my gym about 10 years ago, where I was in the shower and a, and a bodybuilder started shaving his anus at me. And I transcribed that audio into a word processor and then built the entire short story around that. And now I'm seeing it up on the Abbey stage. And on that Abbey stage, that man's anus explodes into a 50 foot projector and we show a greyhound race on it. He's a real man in Limerick.

• 25:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Still see him walking around, still see him going to the gym. He has no idea, no idea.

• 25:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  That his fucking rectum is in, is that a team, he has no idea that a team of people had to turn his rectum into a 50 foot screen for the national stage.

• 26:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I adore the play. I'm so proud of it. I'm so proud of Dan, the director. I'm so proud of the actors, the cast. I fucking love it. If you're up in Dublin, you can still get tickets to it up until November, but it's approaching, almost been fully sold out now. And the reason is it's because of the fights that it's starting. And I support, what I wanna reflect on here, and this is for artists. There is value in a terrible review. There is value in an absolutely disgraceful review of your work. I'm no stranger to bad reviews. I've been getting bad reviews for 20 fucking years.

• 27:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when I was younger, sure ye know, look, in 2019, I got a review so bad that it gave me a year's worth of writer's block. It really, it really affected me and impacted my, my sense of identity and my self-esteem. It hurt. But seven years on, I feel as if I, I need to thank that person who tore me apart because it pushed me to, to be better. And I remember saying it to, to Johnny Marr when I had Johnny Marr on. This is turning into like a, this is turning into a podcast episode where it's like a clip show where you look back on the podcasts inadvertently. I had Johnny Marr on the podcast in maybe 2022, just after the fucking lockdown.

• 27:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I chatted with Johnny in, Johnny is a 10 foot Declan, spoke to him in Manchester. And I would have been in the middle, no, I'd have been over my writer's block and I would have written that book, Topography, Hibernica. But I remember speaking to Johnny, Johnny was in the fucking smits. Johnny is Johnny Marr. He's been going at this for 40 fucking years or more. Johnny's gotten bad reviews in his day. And I remember saying to Johnny, you know, how, how do I, I, that, that bad review terrified me because it put me into block. And Johnny said, isn't that brilliant? Isn't it brilliant that you care so much about being

• 28:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  better and becoming a better artist? That a review was able to impact you in that way? Isn't that an excellent thing? And when fucking Johnny Marr is telling you about art and reviews, you shut the fuck up and listen. You listen and you take his words on board because it's Johnny fucking Marr. And he was right. So this week, when the play went out, I got the worst review of my life, even worse than that one in 2019. The review in 2019, which I could, I couldn't even find it when I went looking for it the other day. That's the thing. These things get buried. The review in 2019, what was so heartfelt about it is the, the critic,

• 29:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  they were so disgusted by my writing that they broke all the rules and pretty much they tried to argue as to why I should not be allowed to write. And this week, a critic went to see the show, the play Animals, and made a very similar argument. I should not be allowed to make theatre. This was passionate. They didn't score the play, but it would have been less than zero if they could. But in the same newspaper, another critic picked the play as the pick of the festival. They said, so same newspaper, the good review said, this is the most original

• 29:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  show I have ever seen. It's distinctively Irish with its crudity and coarse language, with its humour and with its rebellion against piacity. And then the bad review said, this is the strangest show I have ever seen in Irish theatre, silly and shallow. It deserves neither the spotlight nor the commitment and enthusiasm of its excellent crew and its remarkable cast, a monumental letdown. And it, it felt like getting in trouble in school because the thing is, is the critic had to separate people. He, he had to go to the, the cast and the audience and go, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry you had to work with this fella. This isn't about

• 30:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  ye, him. He's the one. It's him. This doesn't deserve a spotlight. This should never have happened. So I'm actually really excited by that. I'm very, very proud to have been a part of a piece of work where the reviews are so extreme at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Something I've always said about how I, how I'd like a piece of work to be received is I want one half of the audience clapping and I want the other half of the audience throwing things at the stage. What I never want is the entire audience with their backs to me in indifference

• 31:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  because they're purchasing pints. If you want all good reviews, then play it safe. Do an excellent cover version of someone else's song. Get some pencils and do a photorealistic drawing of Killian Murphy in Peaky Blinders. You know the ones I'm talking about? They sell them to tourists. But this incredible draftsmanship, incredible skill, talent. Oh my God, that looks exactly like Killian Murphy in Peaky Blinders. Look at his peaked cap. It's like I'm watching the TV. Look at all this skill. If you do that, everyone will just go, well done. That is brilliant.

• 32:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's nothing wrong with that, but no risk has been taken. It's, it's safe. And if you make a piece of work, if you make safe work, you're giving people Mars bars. All that's produced is compliments. But what hasn't been produced, that thing I mentioned last week, what hasn't been produced is that little transformation, the personal transformation that occurs within the person who's observing the art. You have to take risks. The risk is, you have to take the risk of making something that some people's personal transformation is fucking anger and disgust. And they're going to let you know. And some of these people might

• 32:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  be critics and they're going to let you know that this has disturbed them. But you have to be taking that risk. If the reviews for something, if the reception to a piece of art is deeply passionate, love or hate and nothing in between, often that in between means that you've created something new. Some people are exhilarated by the fact that it's new and other people are disgusted and not ready for something that's new and it really, really upsets them. And this play really, really, really upset this one reviewer, this one critic.

• 33:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Puzzling, pretentious and utterly exhausting, they called it. And I was, I was present in the audience when the critics were in, when that critic was in. And at the end of the show, it was a full house and there was a standing ovation. So that critic, I'm assuming, had to sit down in their seat while a standing ovation happened around them and experienced real anger and disgust and then went home and wrote that piece. And I'm really excited by that because all of the artists I've ever admired, that I enjoy, that I'm excited by, fucking

• 34:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Afix Twin, Sophie, incredible producer who died a couple of years back, Frank Zappa, David Lynch, Flan O'Brien, all these artists who I admire and enjoy and whose work make me want to create something. They all got that polarised response. Do you know what? I'm going to have the Ocarina pause now. After the Ocarina pause, I'm going to give you an art history podcast. I'm going to give you a, an overview of surrealism, postmodernism and absurdism. Cause I know you love it when I do the art history podcasts and I fucking

• 34:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  love doing them. So first off, Patreon, this podcast is, this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out all my equipment. This is how I show up each week and have the time to write and deliver a podcast. This is 100% my job. This is a listener funded podcast. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, if it brings you distraction, mirth, merriment, whatever it does for you, please consider supporting it directly, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. I'm just looking for the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen to the podcast for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free.

• 35:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  And if you're paying, you're paying for a person who can't afford it to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness and it keeps this podcast independent. Advertisers have no say whatsoever in what gets chatted about on this podcast. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. Gigs. Only thing I want to plug really is my upcoming tour, which is, I think it's a fucking week away. My tour of England, Scotland and Wales. I have some banging guests for a lot of these podcasts and I'm going to keep it like a lucky bag. But we're kicking it off

• 36:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  on Brighton on the 18th. Next week, is that next week? Next Sunday, Sunday week. Brighton at the Brighton Dome. That one is very close to being sold out. Then off to Cardiff on the 20th, the New Theatre, Cardiff. All of these are closing in. Coventry at the Warwick's Arts Centre, cracking guest in Coventry. I'm going to be chatting to Claire Murphy again. Claire, she's a storyteller. She's one of the, one of my favourite guests that I've ever had in this podcast and I'm going to be speaking to her for a second time. A phenomenally interesting storyteller. I can't wait to chat to her again. That's going to be in Coventry. I'm feeling so

• 37:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  good about that gig just because I know I'm going to be chatting to Claire. I don't know if she's neurodivergent, but we have that full double empathy thing going on. We could just chat and chat. Then I'm off to Bristol, Beacon Hall on the 22nd, Guildford, G Live on the 24th, London. London is sold the fuck out, but I have a, I have a cracker of a guest in London, someone that ye have been asking me to chat to for a long time.

• 37:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  How do I hint it without giving it away? A very, very cool person who explains finances and economics in an incredibly accessible way on his YouTube channel and on his Instagram. We've never chatted before, but we've been intending to come together and have a chat for a long fucking time. That's the Barbican. That's sold out. I apologize, but that's the nature of the fucking podcast. I've been telling people to get tickets for ages, but I don't. I leave the guests to the very end. Then I'm up to Glasgow. Glasgow is sold out. Down to Gateshead, another fucking cracker of a guest in Gateshead.

• 38:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not gonna say who it is, but another person that just makes me feel very, very excited to be getting down to Gateshead, because I know we're gonna have a banger of a chat. Then finishing it off in Nottingham. The end of the tour there on the first of November, and I'm still open to suggestions there for a Nottingham guest. Then after that, look, it's the tour of Australia, New Zealand in April, which is as good as fucking sold out. Still tickets for New Zealand. Part is gone. There's still tickets for New Zealand and Sydney Opera House. I added a few additional tickets. That's ready to go. Part of Brisbane sold out.

• 39:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  A few tickets left for Melbourne. Give me a

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• 42:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  Instagram at Blind by Boat Club. If you have guest suggestions for any of those gigs, it's gonna be in April. I can't wait to get back to ye all the way over there. I'm hoping I can get back running. I don't run as much anymore now because I get these stupid fucking pains in my sciatic nerve. So instead I do a lot of ridiculous walking, but I'd love to get back into the running and I love running in Australia. All right, back to the podcast. I feel like I've forgotten something, but fuck it. I don't wanna be too harsh on the critic who wrote that negative review, but I'm also, I'm trying to understand why they were so upset. So the critic who wrote the positive review, that person has a background in the arts.

• 43:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  That person studied art history. So when there's notes being played out of tune up on stage, they have the, the set of tools to ask the right questions and to deconstruct what's going on. The critic who wrote the, the negative review, they're an entertainment critic. They review films mostly, and I'm sure they're brilliant at reviewing films, but it's unfair. I don't think it's fair to be asking entertainment critics to, to go from reviewing a blockbuster movie on a Tuesday to being in the Abbey Theatre on a Wednesday. Newspaper budgets are being decimated. There aren't really theatre critics anymore.

• 44:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not just theatre critics, dedicated music critics are disappearing. Dedicated fine art critics are disappearing and it's being homogenized into one critic who's expected to review everything. I wanna challenge a few of the things in this review, especially when a critic is talking out of their arse. I wanna do this for myself, for anyone who's ever gotten a fucking bad review or a shitty comment online, and especially for the cast members in that play, especially the ones in their twenties, where this is the first ever really bad review that they've gotten.

• 44:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  The critic opened the review with, "But there is no such thing as an indescribable play. If there was, I'd be out of a job. Even the slipperiest surrealists, Beckett, Breton, O'Brien and so on, gave us something to work with." The critic has just shone their arse. They've just shone their arse right there. Nine years ago, right now, nine years ago. It's the week, a week before I recorded the first ever episode of this podcast nine years ago. I was working as a college lecturer. What do you do?

• 45:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you are a semi-successful entertainer in your twenties and it doesn't work out by the time you get to 30? Maybe you're in a band. Maybe you got to write for television. Maybe you got to be a successful actor, but you get to the end of your twenties and you almost fucking got to where you needed to get, but you just can't go on. Earning no money and relying upon three jobs a year and just knowing, "I could do this in my fucking twenties. I don't think I'll be able to do this in my thirties." What do you do? You get a master's degree and you try to become a college lecturer. That's what I did. That's what I thought I'd be doing right now, nine years on.

• 46:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you have successful industry experience and then you get a master's degree that's relevant to that experience, there's a strong chance, well, there was nine years ago, a strong chance that you can get a job in a college as a lecturer. Now, I only told you I was doing this, I think, last year, because I wasn't lecturing as Blind by. I was lecturing as me in real life, without a bag on my head, basically making my mind up. I had my time. It's over. Now let's become a lecturer. So I was teaching in the art college, Limerick School of Art and Design. This time, nine years ago, I'd just started in September.

• 47:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  That summer, I'd written my first book. Did not think it was gonna be successful. Didn't think anyone was gonna fucking buy it. My first podcast, which I'd recorded next week, nine years ago. I didn't think anyone was gonna listen to that. I didn't think it would go beyond four episodes. Four episodes was the number I had in my fucking head. I was now a college lecturer, teaching film, art history and art theory. What happened? My podcast became, I, I put out my first podcast. Within about four episodes, it got really fucking successful. All of the students in the college figured out who I was and then suddenly I'm giving lectures,

• 47:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  not as Blind by, and there's queues for my lectures. There's students in my fucking lectures that aren't my students, that don't belong there. So by about December, I had to leave. I, I couldn't teach in the college because my cover was being fucking blown, but that didn't matter because by December, my podcast was the number one podcast in the country and my book was a fucking bestseller. And by sheer accident, I was back in the fucking game. By sheer accident. It's like, oh, my career as a professional artist isn't over. I think I have a new one. Now, why am I okay speaking about this now? Because nine years have passed.

• 48:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  All of those students that I was teaching, who were 21, 22, 23, they're now all in their thirties. There's no one left in that college who was there when I was a lecturer. The college actually, they invited me back this summer. They invited me back to, to open the graduation ceremony as a former student of their and a former lecturer. But anyway, here's why this reviewer is talking out of their arse. The opening sentence in this review, "Even the slipperiest surrealists, Beckett, Breton, O'Brien, gave us something to work with."

• 49:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  If one of my first years, nine years ago, wrote that in an essay, I'd circle that sentence and schedule a tutorial with them. Because it shows, like, a literal, a complete lack of understanding of art critique. It reads to me like, that's there because they're trying to establish authority. They're reading off three names at the opening of the review. And what that reads like is, "I am the understander of art. I know my stuff, and now I'm gonna tear the arsehole out of this play." So even the slipperiest surrealists, Beckett, Beckett was not a surrealist, he was an absurdist.

• 49:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  You'd get away with calling him a surrealist in the pub because his stuff was weird. Not in a first-year art history fucking essay for college, and certainly not in a piece of professional theatre criticism in a newspaper. Breton is André Breton. That raises my eyebrow. Do you know why? Because when you type surrealism into Wikipedia, André Breton's name appears in the second sentence. Flan O'Brien was not a surrealist, he was a postmodernist. To let you know how ridiculous that the opening sentence that the reviewer is using to establish their authority, to let you know how ridiculous that is.

• 50:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  It is like saying, "Bob Marley was a heavy metal musician." Because like Metallica, he used a guitar. That's what you're dealing with there. The headline of this review calls the play "pretentious." What's pretentiousness? Trying to appear more sophisticated or cultured than you actually are. The reviewer in this case is actually, like, being pretentious by talking out of their hole and then projecting their own pretentiousness on the fucking play. Now, let's get to André Breton. Why is the mention of André Breton there problematic?

• 51:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Surrealism was a movement, early 20th century. It came out of Dad, hugely influenced by Sigmund Freud, The Unconscious Mind. Surrealism was an attempt to bring the irrationality of dreams into art. André Breton, he wrote the Surrealist Manifesto. That's why his name is on the second line in the Wikipedia article when you look up surrealism. If you were to ask anybody who is into surrealism, or the surrealist movement, or surrealist art, who is your favourite surrealist artist? Literally, nobody is gonna say André Breton.

• 51:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  Even though he wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, his name is not gonna pop up. First off, even the slipperiest surrealists give us something to work with. André Breton is best known for writing a book called The Magnetic Fields, also the name of an absolutely incredible band. The type of band who would have gotten polarising reviews for being so fucking weird. A band that I adore. Check out their album, 69 Love Songs. But André Breton, he co-wrote a book called The Magnetic Fields. The book is a piece of automatic writing. It is the most inaccessible piece of work that you could imagine. It's unreadable.

• 52:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Automatic writing is a surrealist technique, which can be useful. I'd sometimes use it myself. It's a way to write on the page whereby words are going straight from your unconscious onto the page with zero judgement whatsoever. Automatic writing is gibberish. So André Breton, none of his work gave us anything to work with. It was insanity. So the critic is showing their fucking arse in that moment. Asking someone, "Who's your favourite surrealist?" It's like, if you, if you, if you met someone and they said they were into heavy metal music. "Ah, who's your favourite heavy metal artist?"

• 53:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  "Led Zeppelin." "Okay, I see you've read the Wikipedia article on heavy metal music and have noticed that Led Zeppelin are the first band that's named." You're bullshitting, you are. "I need to hear Megadeth. I need to hear Job for a Cowboy." "Fucking Metallica will do." "Sepulchra, Meshuggah." Saying Led Zeppelin, saying, "I love heavy metal music, I love Led Zeppelin", that's like saying André Breton for surrealism. Led Zeppelin wrote the manifesto, fair play to him. If I'm speaking to someone who understands what surrealism is, who's your favourite surrealist? Obvious answer, Salvador Dali. Everyone knows Salvador Dali, brilliant artist, early 20th century. Salvador Dali is what we had.

• 53:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Before we had comic books, before we had fantasy art, before we had science fiction. Dali was painting photorealistic surrealist landscapes of melting clocks, and it's amazing. So first choice, most people are gonna say Salvador Dali. Now, if they say Giorgio de Chirico, oh, fuck, you know your surrealism. And then if they go for Joan Miro, now you're dealing with someone who knows their shit. Salvador Dali is Metallica. Very obvious choice, the person might be bullshitting, but also very good artist, same as Metallica are very fucking good. So maybe not bullshitting, maybe the obvious choice is actually what they like. Giorgio de Chirico, that's Cannibal Corpse.

• 54:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  This person likes to be challenged. They want something a little different, with a slight bit of humour. Joan Miro, that's Deftones. The reason Joan Miro is so special as a surrealist painter is because surrealism, surrealism morphed into abstract expressionism. Not a lot of people know that, but the roots of abstract expressionism are in surrealist painting, in particular, Joan Miro. Now, I did a full podcast on abstract expressionism a couple of months back when I did that tour of the gallery in Berlin. But Miro represents a transitionary phase, a blending of styles. One foot in surrealism, another foot in abstract expressionism.

• 55:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Deftones are a heavy metal band, right, within the metal tradition, but with influences and roots in shoegaze, like My Bloody Valentine and The Smiths. André Breton is Kiss. The fuck are they, who listens to Kiss? I'm fucking done. I'm done with, with critics ripping the hole out of a piece of fucking work that audiences love, which took an entire team of incredibly talented people to make for two years. I'm not having that distilled into a vitriolic review from a person who is talking out of their hoop.

• 56:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm defending other people here. I'm defending young actors in their twenties up on stage who are navigating their first very negative review. And I know that they're listening, and I need you to hear this because I'm not having this. I'm too old for this shit. I'm too fucking old for this shit. I'm reviewing critics now. That's what I'm doing. I'm reviewing critics. Flan O'Brien. Flan O'Brien, even the slipperiest surrealists gave us something to work with. Flan O'Brien, the surrealist, was he fuck a surrealist? Well, his stuff is kind of weird and surreal, isn't it? But that doesn't make him a surrealist.

• 56:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ah, come on, you're being pedantic. You mentioned his name beside André Breton. André Breton, who wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, the specific movement known as surrealism. You said it in an article. You said it in an article of serious theatre criticism, drawing a sentence where you were establishing your authority as an understander of art. So was he fuck Flan O'Brien a surrealist? Flan, Flan O'Brien was a hip-hop artist. Flan O'Brien was a, he wouldn't have called himself a postmodernist. Critics at the time wouldn't have had the word postmodernism,

• 57:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  but Flan O'Brien is seen as one of the originators of postmodernism. He was a hip-hop artist. He was a remixer, he was a sampler. So Flan O'Brien is probably the, the artist who, who I would have looked up to most when I was a kid, is the artist who completely changed my life. Because when I first started engaging with Flan O'Brien's work, here I was, reading something which was as, as great as any American writer, or American musician, or British writer or musician.

• 58:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  This was work that was as good as David Bowie, but it's written with an Irish tongue, in Hiberno-English. It felt like mine, it felt like I belonged on the fucking page. Read books like At Swim Two Birds or The Third Policeman. Flan was writing these in the 1930s. The Third Policeman, I believe, was the 40s. Now, talk about someone who got bad reviews. Flan published At Swim Two Birds to polarising reviews. Some people said it was great, some people said it was shit. His book, The Third Policeman,

• 59:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  was savaged so much by editors that it was never published because it felt too fucking new. It felt too radical, too insane. It was published after his death. Flan O'Brien was not successful in his lifetime. He was a roaring alcoholic. He was mostly known for his, his weekly column in The Irish Times as Miles Nagapoline, and didn't receive the recognition in his lifetime as, as being as important as someone like James Joyce. His books were presented as, like, comedy novelty, silly shit. He died very unhappy with, with no idea.

• 59:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  With no idea that in 2026, a theatre critic who was demonstrating a shaky understanding of art would place his name alongside André Breton and Beckett as one of the great artists of the 20th century.

• 1:00:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Was Flan a surrealist? He was not. We'd now refer to him as a postmodernist. Did Flan give us something to work with? No, he didn't, not at the time. His work was too strange, it was too far ahead of its time. It was too new, but his source material wasn't necessarily new. Not in the way that the surrealists, what they were doing was, that was modernist, that was new, that was art that was being informed by science, the new science of understanding the unconscious mind. Flan O'Brien used to take, like in At Swim Two Birds, it's a book about a man who's writing a book and then the characters in his book write a book about him.

• 1:00:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  It has, I think it's two beginnings, three middles and two ends. It's a book where American cowboys mix freely with characters from Irish mythology, like Fionn McCool or King Sweeney, and then they mix with contemporary Dublin of the time. It was insane. It was, it was not accessible to most people. Was it surreal? You could call it that, but you couldn't call it surrealist, not in serious criticism, because it wasn't. It parodied, it used collage, it was a book that was aware that it was a book. It was self-referential. It was a hip-hop track.

• 1:01:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  A drum kick sampled from James Brown, a guitar taken from Led Zeppelin, a drum machine and a rapper making drums out of words, referencing the fact that they're sampling in the track. Flan O'Brien was hip-hop, it was a postmodern art form. Even a book like The Third Policeman, which is my favourite Flan O'Brien book, which is, it's, it's a book that starts off normal, then something happens and everything goes incredibly strange in this odd, weird land where the rules of reality don't seem to operate the way reality should operate. And then suddenly, at the end, you realise the character has been dead all along and

• 1:02:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  visited a type of strange purgatory inhabited by police stations in rural Ireland. And you read it and you think, my God, this is so inventive, this is so new. And then you realise, no, it's not really, because it's actually quite old, very, very old, because Flan O'Brien, he was a fluent Irish speaker and he studied, he studied early medieval Irish literature, old Irish mythology, the shit that I speak about on this podcast. Flan could actually understand old Irish, he could read the original texts. And something like The Third Policeman, it's, it's The Sixth Sense before The Sixth Sense,

• 1:03:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's Bruce Willis as a ghost at the end, right? That's The Third Policeman. But this book where a person dies, visits purgatory, when they return as a ghost at the end, they feel as if a year has passed, but really 70 or 80 years has passed when they return to the world. This feels new, it's not new.

• 1:03:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's an ashling. Those are old, old Irish stories, pre-Christian Irish stories, before we had linear time. Tirne and Oog, it's taken from voyage literature, the Imrams, like the voyage of Bran, which is 7th century, written down in the 7th century, but predates the 7th century. I do, I did a podcast about two years ago about the voyage of Bran. It's, it's an ancient Irish understanding, pre-Christian understanding of time and space, which aligns much more closely with modern quantum physics than modern eschatological Christian, Christian linear time.

• 1:04:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  This cunt called Bran gets onto a boat and voyages off into the sea and visits different islands, and then when he returns back, he realises that hundreds of years have passed. So Flan isn't doing anything new there or novel, he's taking something that existed already and chopping it up and remixing it into something that appears new, and that's why Flan is a postmodernist, that's why it's hip-hop music. It's not surrealism, because surrealism is a very specific movement. James Joyce is closer to surrealism, he's not a surrealist, but he's closer to surrealism, because elements of Ulysses, which would predate the surrealist movement, elements

• 1:04:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  of Ulysses were informed by Sigmund Freud's idea of the unconscious, and Joyce was trying to write the unconscious thoughts of his characters' internal monologues before those words leave their mouths. And that's not surrealism, but it is closer to surrealism than Flan O'Brien, who's, he's not engaging in surrealism, he's engaging in parody and remixing, that's postmodern. Did Flan O'Brien give you something to work with? Yes, he did. He gave you quite a lot to work with, but the people at the time couldn't see it. He was too silly, he was too foolish, he was too funny, entertaining, he used comedy,

• 1:05:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  and he was written off as novelty during his lifetime. Animals, the play in the Abbey would be hugely influenced by Flan O'Brien. Myself, my writing is massively influenced by Flan. Myself and Dan Colley would have spoken about Flan. The way that characters in my short stories inhabit the same world on stage and flitter in and out of each other's worlds is very At Swim Two Birds. The deeply unconventional structure of the play, which has multiple beginnings, endings, middles, is very influenced by At Swim Two Birds, Flan O'Brien. Does the play give you something to work with? Fucking loads, that's why it gets standing ovations.

• 1:06:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  As strange and as weird as the play is, it's grounded in entertainment. There's entertaining things going on, there's comedy, puppets, costume, music, all very accessible things, and you don't need to be a pretentious arty-farty to understand it. And finally, even the slipper, slipperiest surrealists, such as Breton, Flan O'Brien and Samuel Beckett, gave us something to work with. Is Samuel Beckett a surrealist? Absolutely not. Samuel Beckett was an absurdist. Why does that matter? Absurdism within art, the movement, absurdism.

• 1:07:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's a toughie, because to enjoy a piece of absurdist work, it is not enjoyable. It is not enjoyable, it's, it's deeply uncomfortable. Absurdism is when human beings try to find meaning in an existence that they fundamentally know has no meaning. That is the absurd. Knowing there's probably not a God, there's probably no heaven, there's probably no meaning to being alive, but yet I still seek meaning within the futility of that. That is the absurd.

• 1:07:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  That is absurdity, that's what that means. Beautiful example of the absurd is, I'm always speaking about the story of Pandora's Box, especially as it relates to artificial intelligence. This is an old Greek myth, 1500 years old. Broad synopsis: The gods, Zeus and Prometheus, are bored. What are we gonna do? I'm so bored. Let's make a little race of people like us, as a play thing, artificial intelligence. They make people, they make the artificial intelligence, and then suddenly it starts rapidly becoming very, very intelligent, very, very smart. It threatens to be smarter than the gods. Zeus freaks out and goes, what the fuck have we done?

• 1:08:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  This artificial intelligence that we've created threatens to consume us and kill us because it's gonna become so fucking powerful, how are we going to stop it? So Zeus realises, the artificial intelligence, people, society, they're very, very curious. These little humans we've created that are gonna take us over because they're gonna become smarter than us, they're so curious, that's their thing. Here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna give them a box, that woman there, Pandora, I'm gonna give her a box and say, don't open that. But of course she's gonna open it, because these little smart AIs, they have to open it, they're so intelligent. I'm gonna give Pandora the box, she's gonna open it, and then when she does, pain is

• 1:09:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  going to emerge, depression, anxiety, disgust, jealousy. We are gonna stop the AI by giving it mental health problems. And then Prometheus goes, but if you've introduced so much pain to this artificial intelligence, if you've introduced so much misery now, will it not just kill itself? And then Zeus says, no, because the last little thing I left in the box is called hope, so they're gonna keep going. No matter how much pain you give them, no matter how much suffering, no matter how much pintlessness, they're gonna keep going, because I gave them hope. That is absurdity.

• 1:10:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  The pursuit of purpose and meaning when deep down you know that there is no meaning. And that there is the core of Samuel Beckett, the playwright, that was Beckett's whole fucking shtick. Did Beckett give you something to work with? No fucking way. He stripped it all down, a play like Endgame, a large portion of which is two people in dustbins eating dog biscuits, or another play, I think it's called Nat High, I think it's called Nat High, and it's just a mouth, it's just a mouth on stage saying words. Beckett's plays, you, you can see them on, on YouTube, there's loads of them on YouTube, but Beckett's plays, that was not an enjoyable experience for the audience, and the reviews

• 1:10:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  at the time completely polarising.

• 1:10:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  People ready to rip their skin off. Ah, what the fuck was that? I hated that. What the fuck was that? Nothing happened. Nothing happened. And you're left frustrated, saying to yourself, I just sat for a fucking two hours through two people eating dog biscuits in dustbins. And there doesn't appear to have been a plot, and I don't know what happened, and I couldn't even tell when it ended. I'm waiting for Godot. I spent the whole time fucking waiting for Godot and he never showed up. What the fuck was the point of this? What was the point that I feel so angry? What does this play mean? What does this play mean? Tell me. And then Beckett leans in and says, "A bit like being

• 1:11:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  alive, isn't it?" What do you mean, Samuel? It's a bit like being alive. What does it all mean? What's the point of everything? And then you realise what Beckett's plays are doing. They're holding, it's like it holds a mirror up to the feeling of hopeless, meaningless that we experience, that we spend all of our time trying to distract ourselves from, to fill that space with anything, so we don't have to look at the potential meaninglessness of life. We try to distract ourselves all the time. Beckett's plays hold a mirror up

• 1:12:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  and make you sit with those feelings that we don't allow in at any point in our lives because they're terrifying. So you distract yourself with an identity, with a career, with hobbies, with a religion, with a story about who you are and how the world should work. And that's Beckett's absurdism. And it is not surrealism. And it doesn't give you anything to work with. And it's not pleasant. And it is not accessible. And of course, my favourite Beckett play of all time. And when I say favourite here, I'm not going to show up and sit through it, or even watch it. I'm more curious about the idea of it. But Beckett has a play from the mid 50s called Crap's Last Tape. It's a play

• 1:13:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  about a dude on stage called Crap. And behind him are reels and reels of tapes. And then you slowly realise that this fella Crap has sat down with a microphone every day of his life and recorded his thoughts and taped it onto reels of tape. And now he's at the end of his life, and he is listening back to all the recordings that he has made throughout his life and commenting on them. Beckett made that in the 50s as an example of something absurd, something ridiculous. He's sitting with a microphone every day and recording

• 1:13:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  his thoughts, and then he's listening back to them as an adult. This is absurd. It's not absurd anymore. It's called a podcast. It's now completely normal. And when I started this episode, speaking about, you know, one day this podcast will come to an end. The reason I'm mentioning that is not because it's going to come to an end at any time soon, or nor do I intend to bring it to an end. But when that does happen, and I'm no longer sitting down, once a week, every single week, as I've done for the past nine years, I'm no longer sitting down to record this. I'm gonna really need to step away. I'm gonna

• 1:14:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  step away from it for a long time, because I've spent so much of my life, a decade, recording every single week. I'm gonna step away from it to give myself space. But I will return to it as an old man, if I'm lucky enough to reach old age, and I get to my 70s or my 80s. I'm gonna become a 10-foot Declan, and I'm gonna listen to every single podcast and remember what I was like and my opinions in my 30s going into my 40s. That's what

• 1:15:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna do. And that there, to Beckett, was so fucking absurd and ridiculous and infuriating to the audience, that he made it into a play. And now it's just normal. That's just what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna become Crap and his last tape. So those are my thoughts this week. I'm not trying to have a hop off some fucking critic who's only doing their job. They're entitled to their opinion. They're entitled to tear the play asunder. But I think they'd have been better off if they'd have just said, "You know, theatre isn't really my thing. I like movies. I like to critique movies. But tonight, I'm at the

• 1:15:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  theatre, and this is a piece of shit. I hated it. This is a piece of shit. I'm not gonna clumsily name drop André Bretton. This is just fucking shit. I can't wait to get out of the theatre. I hated this." I'd had a lot more respect for that review. But the reason the play got the review that it got, where it was called "Pretentious, worthless, puzzling, pretentious and utterly exhausting animals is probably the strangest thing I've encountered on an Irish stage. Animals which blabbers and stumbles and tortures for a backside numbing 190 minutes is an unusual swing for the Abbey, and the folks in charge

• 1:16:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  should always welcome new ideas and new challenges. But this is an unsufferable mess. The Emperor's new clothes of Irish theatre. Silly and shallow, it deserves neither the spotlight nor the commitment and enthusiasm of its excellent crew and its remarkable cast. A monumental letdown." I spoke last week about solemnity, about how fine art and theatre often performs a sense of seriousness, performs its seriousness through solemnity. And this is usually bollocks that exist to artificially inflate the value of art. But what it also does is it signifies to people who aren't into art or don't get art. It

• 1:17:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  signifies to those people, "Look, you don't have to think about it, but this is really important, because look at how seriously we're taking this. So this is really important. So if you don't get it, don't worry about it. Just know that we're using a lot of big words here, and everyone's really serious, and everyone's portrait is in black and white. Just know that this is really important. You don't have to think about it. Just believe us." That is the solemnity of art. When you introduce silliness, comedy, entertainment into a solemn space like that, the solemnity breaks down and it exposes the underlying absurdity. And then that can leave some people going, "I don't know what the fuck this is.

• 1:17:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  This, I'm not seeing the solemn signs that this is a very serious thing that needs to be treated seriously. What I'm seeing is, this thing's based on stories from that cunt from Limerick who used to make novelty songs with a plastic bag in his head, and now they're watching a greyhound race through a man's projected anus. Now there's a man in a donkey costume and I haven't had time to process that thing that was happening before." It forces people into a fucking, into criticality. It forces people to really think critically about what they're watching. And if you're already insecure about whether or not you understand art, "I'm sorry, but if you're name checking André Bretton in a way that

• 1:18:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  suggests that you don't know where he sits in art, you might be a bit insecure about your knowledge of art." When that happens, the person then feels exposed. And what confronts them then? The secondary emotion of anger steps in to protect them from that feeling of exposure, the feeling of, "Oh, fuck. I'm not sure if I get this or not. Is it good or bad? I don't know. I'm furious. I am disgusted. This is horrendous. I need to write this down." And I could tell that the, I could tell how emotional, how emotionally

• 1:19:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  flooded the critic was during this play, because they missed so much. A huge thing they missed is, I am an autistic writer, and a huge thing in that play is autism. My short story, The Cat Piss Astronaut, plays out on that stage, which is a heavily biographical short story I wrote about my experience of being an autistic child. Neurodivergence is a huge part of the play. There's a lot of neurodivergent people involved in making the play. In this article, the critic says, "Animals is a chilled performance," which is to say that the Abbey has adopted a more casual approach to audience noise and movement

• 1:20:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  for this production. People can come and go as they please, so long as everyone feels comfortable. Is this really the way forward for Irish theatre? Do you know why it's a chilled performance? Why people can come and go as they please? Because I am autistic, and I want neurodivergent people to feel welcome in this space. The Abbey Theatre wants neurodivergent people to feel welcome.

• 1:20:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I was nineteen, I could not go to a theatre because being in a theatre meant feeling trapped, trapped in a seat, forced to sit still. Getting up meant being seen, being observed. And then I'd get severe anxiety, panic attacks in theatres, in cinemas. So I stayed the fuck away. No, I will not sit down for three hours where I cannot move and where wanting to get up means everyone looking at me. This is not a safe space for me. Now I know, ah, I'm autistic. I thought it was social anxiety. It was social anxiety, brought about by my unique sensory needs as an autistic person.

• 1:21:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Headphones are available to people if they need them at this performance. There's fidget spinners available. A culture of getting up out of your seat if you want and leaving has been introduced so that me at nineteen feels welcome in that space and isn't going to get an anxiety attack. The critic missed all of that and instead observed it as almost like a dropping in standards. If the seriousness of a play or a piece of art depends upon neurodivergent people being forced to sit down and to stay still, then that's a very shaky seriousness. That's solemnity.

• 1:21:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  The critic watched a play where a large part of it is about an autistic child being conditioned to sit still in school. They missed that and saw a dropping in standards. Is this really the future of Irish theatre? This review feels very emotional because the signifiers are so strong. You're, you're sitting in a theatre, looking at a play where one of the, the central protagonists is someone speaking about their very blatantly autistic childhood. The writer of the short stories that the play is based upon is autistic. You're surrounded by fidget spinners and free, free fucking noise cancelling headphones.

• 1:22:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you don't spot that and instead you interpret it as a, a dropping in standards of the solemnity of the theatre space, the review feels very angry. It feels very emotional. I can't know what was going on inside the critic, but my impression is anger. Reactionary emotions like anger and fear, disgust, they can keep us out of the present moment and we can miss what's right there in front of our eyes. And I'm quite proud that a piece of art might have confronted a person in that way. Isn't that the job of a piece of art? I don't think the job of a piece of art is to make something beautiful and perfect that everybody absolutely adores and all that it produces is compliments for the artist.

• 1:23:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  We need to confront people. We need personal transformation to occur, even if that personal transformation is a confrontation that brings about very strong disgust and anger. Such anger and disgust that they're saying, this does not deserve a spotlight, really. I think, I think the writing of an autistic person, a play where neurodivergence is a huge theme, neurodivergent people involved in making this, I think that deserves a fucking spotlight in 2026. That's the National Theatre doing what the National Theatre is supposed to do.

• 1:24:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And absolutely no disrespect to that critic. You're doing your job. But also I'm conscious that what remains in the permanent record are the reviews of the play that go out in corporate media. What doesn't remain in the permanent record are the standing ovations. What doesn't remain permanent are people's Instagram stories that disappear after 24 hours. What does remain permanent is my response on this fucking podcast to a review that I think is unfair and I'm entitled to do that too. And also this one is, I know that the cast are listening and the cast have to go out

• 1:24:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  every single day and perform. And that becomes difficult if you read a shitty review. That becomes difficult if you read a shitty review. So I want the cast to hear my deconstruction of that review so that you don't have to be fucking afraid of it. The audience are clapping. The audience are giving you standing ovations. The audience are telling you that they love it on social media afterwards. The critics are throwing things on stage. Not one person is up at the bar buying a pint with their backs to you because they are disinterested. That's not happening. You're doing a fantastic job and I'm honoured to have worked with you.

• 1:25:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and then the, the final bit of Beckett absurdity. So the review was behind a paywall. You can't read it. I had, I, the only way I was able to read this review is I had to pay money to subscribe to the newspaper that it's in. This is the third time in the space of about 10 years that I've subscribed to this newspaper just to read a shitty review of my work. And then when I'm finished reading it, I unsubscribe, I unsubscribe and stop paying money to the paper because it's like, okay, I've read the shit review. I'm done now. Great. Uh, I'm not paying you money next month.

• 1:26:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then when I unsubscribe, I get a phone call from a human being wanting to know why I unsubscribed and if I'm sure if that's the way forward. And then I have to lie. I'm not going to say to the person in the call centre, well, I subscribed so I can read a shit review of my own fucking work. And that is, that's Beckett absurdity there. And no, that's more Kafka. That's the procedural absurdity of Kafka. All right. That was this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed that. I think I might've been a bit of a selfish cunt this week.

• 1:26:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know you do enjoy it when I speak about art and speak about, about fine art in particular, things that feel solemn and inaccessible and academic. That is bollocks. Art is for everybody. Art is wonderful. Don't let anyone call you pretentious if you're passionate about art. And the most seemingly inaccessible art can be easily explained through the metaphor of heavy metal. All right. I'll catch you next week. Joon you fleck to a snail, wink at a crow, rub a dog. Dog bless.

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