Words for Artists

I answer questions this week as I prepare for my tour 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Gargle your ramen, you boulevard kiosks. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. This episode might be peppered with the laughter of employees from a pharmaceutical company that share, that share my office floor with me. They're having a meeting and it seems very jovial. Let's begin this week's podcast with a poem. I haven't, I haven't read out a poem in this podcast in fucking months. So let's read out a poem that was written by Hollywood actor Paul Meskell. This poem is called "My Celebrity Confessions." "I collect the yellow stuff that ladybirds put on your hand when you hold them and then

• 1:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  I rub it into my eyes so I can see the devil." I bury myself in mud beside the river and hold my breath all winter like a frog. I stick my head into the trunks of trees and wait until a squirrel has sex with my hair. I lay eggs on the surface of pans and they wriggle underneath the meniscus and turn into horseflies. I collect nectar from mayflowers and smash my face into your windscreen and then I die and you wipe me off like I'm an inconvenience. That was My Celebrity Confessions by Hollywood actor Paul Meska.

• 2:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna do a question answering podcast this week because this is actually pre-recorded. I'm on tour in England and Scotland right now and I'm doing ten dates in fourteen days, which is quite, that's a very intense tour, I'm gonna have to mind myself. But a tour like that, it's literally gig, car, hotel, car, gig, non-stop, which, to be honest, that's only stressful. That's stressful if you don't look after yourself. Performing on stage in front of a lot of people, it's, it releases huge amounts of adrenaline, huge amounts of adrenaline, and it's exhausting and you don't really notice it. You could

• 3:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  compare it to, I don't know, your wedding or your 21st birthday party. You don't notice that, you don't notice how exciting and overwhelming it is, you just don't. And then afterwards you're like, fuck me, that took a lot out of me. So touring is a bit like that, gigging is a bit like that, and it's completely manageable if you don't get shitfaced. You try to go to bed as soon after the gig as possible and then in the daytime, you need to make sure that you're active in some way, that you can get a walk in or go to the gym or a swim or a run. You treat the entire tour like a job. It's a job and if you wanna have a pint, have it at the end of the tour. I'm saying this because I wanna

• 3:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  do a question answering podcast this week and I actually do. I get a lot of questions from bands and comedians and people who tour for a fucking living and I get asked, how do I fucking do this? My mental health is in shit. You get some people, some acts.

• 4:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  So when you go on tour and you do gigs, the mixture of alcohol and gigging is pretty standard, even if it's a couple of pints backstage or a few bottles. Some acts are afraid of going on tour because if they're doing a, we'll say, six week or a two month tour, it means that for those two months, they have this really, really unhealthy relationship with alcohol that they're worried about. Like, I, I can relate to that. Years ago, when I used to gig with the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, or the last time I gigged Edinburgh Comedy Festival and did a full run, we're talking 2014 or 2013, and I was in my twenties. I'd gig thirty nights in a row. And after, like, no break, thirty nights in a row.

• 4:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  But after each fucking gig, after each gig at Edinburgh, you always had to meet someone. There might be a TV agent in the audience. There might be someone who wants to give you more gigs. You always have to meet somebody. So every single night after a gig, I'm having at least two to three social pints of alcohol. I'm not getting langers, just like two or three pints. Moderate alcohol consumption. But every single night, thirty nights in a row, I used to come off tour and I'd be back in Limerick. And I would get to about nine o'clock at night in Limerick and I'd be like, where's my little pint? Where's my drink? Where's my alcohol?

• 5:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'd go, fuck, what's this about? I don't wanna, I never usually drink at nine o'clock at night. What's this? So I'd have to have mindfulness around that. I'm like, fucking hell, you just did a tour of thirty nights in a row and every single night you had a couple of pints. You've just formed a habit here, buddy. This habit doesn't sound very healthy. So I'm gonna wait for two weeks. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna eat well, exercise, drink loads of water, focus on sleep and use my days off to do wonderful, enjoyable things like visit museums. And I know that sounds profoundly boring, and it is. That's very boring, but I'm a middle-aged man

• 6:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  and I'm very, very lucky to say that I've been touring since 2007. That's almost twenty years of.

• 6:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Creating something, creating art of some description and people going, yeah, I'll turn up and see that. And I do think having the self-awareness early on to go, you can't treat tours like a party. Having that self-awareness is definitely one of the reasons that I'm still going. And also, the acts, the acts that I was gigging with fifteen years ago, who used to go ape shit after every gig and turn it into a big, long session. They're not gigging anymore. They're not in the industry anymore. Why would you be? Why would you be? It's creating a very, a toxic environment for yourself. So, right now, I'm making my plastic bags for my tour.

• 7:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I do is, I do, I make a little batch of plastic bags every tour. I'm aiming for three bags. That's it. Three, I'm gonna take three bags on tour. I'll use two and I'll have one as a spare.

• 7:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have, like, a shopping centre closed down, like, ten years ago called J C's up in Swords in Dublin, and they donated to me several thousand single-use plastic bags. And I have those plastic bags. And what I do is, I don't, I don't use a new bag every gig. I get about maybe seven uses out of each bag. I get a single-use plastic bag, then I have a plaster cast of my head, and I shrink the bag using a heat gun to my plaster cast of my head, and then I cut eye holes and ear holes out of it. So, I'm repurposing single-use plastic.

• 8:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Single-use plastic that you can't throw away, terrible for the environment, that will never decompose. I take these single-use plastic bags and I repurpose them into masks that get worn seven or eight times. And then I don't throw those away. I keep all my used plastic bags. That's why I only make three. That's, that's why. Cause I'm running out of them. I'm, I didn't think my career was gonna last this long. I'll be honest.

• 8:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  I did not think that my career was gonna last this long, and now I'm running out of plastic bags. I'd be all right for another couple of years, I'd say, but I do need to start thinking about alternatives. On my last TV show, I used, I didn't use a single-use plastic bag. My last TV show, I had a costume designer make me a plastic bag out of silk, I think. So it looked like a plastic bag on camera, but really it was a silk bag. And we did this for two reasons. Number one, a silk bag doesn't make a rustly plastic bag noise on camera. That's really important. Number two, continuity. If I've got a reusable silk bag, then it

• 9:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  looks the same in every single shot. You see with my plastic bags, not every plastic bag is the same. The mouth might be different, the eye holes might be bigger or smaller. And this used to be a nightmare when I was shooting TV with my plastic bag, because sometimes you'd do a scene and something's wrong, and then you have to go back a month later and shoot other parts of that scene. And I'd be doing that with a completely different plastic bag. So in one scene, my mouth is this size, and then in another scene, I don't have ears. So for my last TV programme, which was, the fuck was it called?

• 10:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Blind by the Lands of Slaves and Scholars, it was my documentary about monasteries that I made last year. I actually had a silk bag, a silk bag, that I wore that was made for me. But I want to put out a call. If any of ye listening, if any of ye listening, work professionally in costume. If ye, if ye work professionally in costume and can make masks, give me a shout on Instagram, Blind by Ball Club, because I'd be interested in working with ye. So that, I kinda wanna move on from the plastic bag. I'm, so first off, I'm running out of plastic bags, right? So I'm running out of them. Making new ones

• 10:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  is a pain in the arse. So I'd love to have a professional person who can make me bags out of whatever fabric you think is appropriate. So if anyone is qualified to do that, give me a shout on Instagram and- I'll hire you and pay you properly. And also you'll have recurring business because I'll always be in need of bags or masks. I want a mask that looks like my plastic bag. I, I love my, I love my red and white plastic bag. I really love the design on it and I don't want to change that. And I like to stay faithful to J C's in Swords because they were an independent family business. That had been in Swords for a long time.

• 11:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then they were pushed out, pushed out by Aldi and Dun stores. So I like to keep flying that flag. I saw an interesting bee yesterday.

• 11:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was out in my back garden looking at, see anytime I'm making plastic bags. I became, I've become hypersensitive to bees and wasps. I've spoken about this before, but one of my greatest fears is a wasp or a bee flying inside my bag while I'm wearing it. It happened once, it happened once about eight years ago at a festival where a wasp flew inside my bag while I was on stage. And I had to punch myself into the face on stage and I don't think I explained it to anybody. So when I'm making plastic bags, I do become more aware than usual to bees and wasps. So I was looking at flowers and observing all the bees and flowers and this, this bee came along. And he looked different to the other bees. I hadn't seen this bee before.

• 12:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was definitely a honeybee, but it was, it was more orange than the other honeybees. So I got a photograph of it and went searching online, looking at biodiversity websites going, what type of bee is this? And it turns out it's called a Buckfast bee. I'm like, what? A fucking Buckfast bee? What type of fucking bee is a Buckfast bee? And I'm thinking, this is hardly related to Buckfast, the drink, is it? Because Buckfast, Buckfast is, is a.

• 12:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a fortified wine. It's in Ireland, very popular in Galway. Students drink it in Ireland. It's one of these really sweet, mad drinks. In America, the equivalent would be Four Loko. Like, if you're in Ireland and you're in England or Scotland or Wales, you know what the fuck Buckfast is. But if Zanny Yang's listening, it's like Four Loko. It's highly caffeinated, sweet alcohol that's cheap, that you drink just to get fucked up. That's what Buckfast is. In Ireland, it's mostly drank by students from Galway. I'd love to know the Galway connection there. They serve it on tap in

• 13:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  some places in Galway. Buckfast is lunatic juice. If you're drinking Buckfast, you're probably under the age of 25 and you're ready to go mad. And then in Scotland, Buckfast is, and this might be a moral panic, but Buckfast is associated with antisocial behaviour and street drinking and social deprivation. But I'm not buying it. Social deprivation, poverty and the issues that go along with poverty, they're not caused by a drink. They're caused by political policy and neoliberalism. But then a drink comes along like Buckfast and then the politicians get to go, oh, it's that thing, that thing over there, that's the problem, that bottle of drink there. But Buckfast as a drink.

• 14:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was actually made, made in an abbey, a monastery in Devon called Buckfast Monastery, which has been operating for near a thousand years. And in Buckfast Abbey, there's Benedictine monks and they used to brew Buckfast tonic wine as a little medicine. Like 150 years ago, maybe 130 years ago, Buckfast was only sold at this little monastery in small little vials, not as something that gets you shitfaced, but.

• 14:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  As a little tonic, almost like a rescue remedy, a highly alcoholic, full of caffeine. And I'm sure if you took a spoon of it in eighteen ninety, in a world where maybe coffee isn't readily available, sugary drinks aren't readily available. If you had a little spoon of Buckfast tonic wine in eighteen ninety, probably put a spring in your step. But over time, this became Buckfast tonic wine, and it used to be sold in chemists. And when it was sold in chemists, I believe it was mostly women who'd buy it. Women, at a time when a woman drinking alcohol was socially unacceptable, women would go

• 15:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  to the chemist pharmacy and buy their Buckfast tonic wine and get shitfaced at home. And then slowly, it just became a cheap fortified wine that you buy. And that traces its roots to the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey in Devon. But this fucking bee that was out my back garden, this Buckfast bee, it's actually an invasive species in Ireland. It's the cow of the bee world.

• 16:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a bee that was bred by the monks of Buckfast Abbey, because there was loads of beekeepers there, the monks were beekeepers. So they'd bred this incredible honeybee that was bred for long life, a huge honey production, brilliant at producing honey, and incredibly calm when handled by humans. So it's a super bee. It's a bee that was bred by monks at Buckfast Abbey over a long period of time to create this incredible, amazing bee that's brilliant at creating honey. But it's domestic, it's a domestic bee. This wasn't created by nature, it was created by humans. It was selectively bred.

• 16:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  So this domestic bee is actually a threat to the indigenous Irish wild honeybee. Now, why is the Buckfast bee threatening to the indigenous wild Irish honeybee? Well, they're fantastic bees, but they're bred to be handled by humans and they're bred for life in a hive. The indigenous wild honeybee, that's part of nature. That's resistant to cold, certain diseases.

• 17:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're talking millions of years of evolution. So when one of these Buckfast bees mates with an indigenous queen, you get genetic dilution. So you get these bees that are less resistant to the wild, to the Irish wild. So there's, there's a hive of Buckfast. Now, the thing is as well, it could have been, it could literally have been bees that a professional beekeeper was keeping. That's what these, that's what the bee up in my back garden could have been. Could have belonged to a professional hive. But if you see a swarm or a hive of Buckfast bees in the wild, you're supposed to report it so someone can take the hive away. Okay, let's answer some questions.

• 18:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Kelsey asks, you mentioned a few podcasts back that you'd like to come and see. Cities in the American Rust Belt. I live in Pittsburgh and you have listeners here in Pittsburgh. When are you gonna come and do a podcast here? Oh, Kelsey, my poor old yank. I don't think I'm gonna be coming to you anytime soon. It really is quite hostile, the fucking Trump administration. I called it wrong. I called it wrong. I remember, I remember saying, coming up to the election, that basically whether it's Trump or Kamala Harris, you're gonna get the same shit. You're gonna get the same shit, but a different tone.

• 18:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  I was very wrong about that. Um, I did not. I reckon Palestine would still be the same. Kamala Harris is a Democrat war monger. I don't think any mu- I don't think much would have changed with Palestine. The US would continue to enable that genocide regardless. Trump has pretty much withdrawn military aid from Ukraine. Kamala Harris wouldn't have done that. I knew a second Trump term was gonna be nuts with him making lots of irrational statements and lying, lots of lies, because we'd seen that before. But the thing is about the first Trump term. There was way more internal resistance.

• 19:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Whenever Trump would try to sign an executive order, or enact some type of sweeping powers,

• 19:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  there were judges, members of Congress, senators, people would would challenge his crazy decisions using the law and be like, no, you can't do that. But that's happening less and less now. And he's replacing everybody around him with loyalists, with people who are loyal to Trump above everything else. He used to even have pushback from all school Republicans used to give him pushback. Like in Trump's first term, his Secretary of Defense was a fella called James Mattis. He was a general. The Secretary of Defense is the person who oversees the military, the US military, by far the most powerful military in the world that has nuclear capabilities.

• 20:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm not a fan of the US military, but I'd like to think at least that the person running it has the capacity to say no to Trump. If Trump was acting on emotion, we'll say, well, James Mattis used to do that, like this man's name was Mad Dog, James Mad Dog Mattis, so you can imagine what a prick this fellow was. But when Trump was being emotional and looking for military solutions to his emotion, James Mattis would step in and go, can't do that. Why? Well, because my responsibility is to the Constitution, not to a president, to the Constitution. And the military's responsibility is to defend the Constitution. That's the whole point of it. But now the Secretary of Defense is this fella called Pete Hegseth.

• 21:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  He was an officer in the National Guard. Mostly, he was he was a Fox News host. And he's got neo-Nazi tattoos. And by all accounts, is an alcoholic. Nothing against alcoholics. I'm just saying, if you're if you're struggling with addiction, active addiction, then

• 21:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  Having one of the most stressful and responsible jobs in the world, overseeing the US military, might not be suited to you. And he's got a, he's got a tattoo on his chest of a Jerusalem cross. It's a Crusaders' Cross tattoo. It refers to the Crusades, Crusades where the Christian conquering, the European Christian conquering of Muslim lands in the early medieval period. But anyone who has a tattoo of a Crusader cross now, it's only white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have those tattoos. So that's who Trump chose

• 22:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  as the Secretary of Defence, someone who was absolutely loyal to him above all else. So this time round, it's different. It feels different to the first term. It feels like you just have to switch off because there's not much international pushback either. So yeah, I've been offered gigs, I've been offered tours in America and I'm just, I'm not taking them. I'm not doing them because it just doesn't feel safe. I did a podcast on this around 2018. I spoke about the powers that US immigration has when you try to enter the country. When you try to enter the country, they can detain you for whatever reason and

• 22:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  they can look through your phone. They can invade your privacy. They can do what they like if you're trying to get into America. And I did a podcast about that at the time and a few people thought maybe I was being a little bit paranoid about it, but I don't think I am now in 2025. If you're an artist and you're outspoken about Palestine in particular, or critical of Trump, especially if your views make it into the media, like you're going over to America to do tours, to do gigs, you're gonna get pulled aside. You're gonna get pulled aside and they're gonna go through all your shit, they're gonna go through your private data. You'll most likely be refused entry to the country. To perform, you won't be able to do your gigs.

• 23:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  But worst of all, it's just that grilling. I don't want that grilling. I don't want to be stuck in a room with a hostile yank in this liminal, extra-legal place between countries where my rights don't exist and an immigration official from the US can just completely invade my privacy. Like, it's happening. It's happening now with journalists, journalists who are trying to enter the US and they're going through that process of having their privacy invaded. And it's being done to intimidate, to intimidate. That's 100% why it's being done. It's intimidation to silence critical voices.

• 24:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it's working because myself and a lot of other artists are just like, "No, I can't gig America. I can't go to America. It's not worth the risk. I don't want to risk that. I'd rather continue being critical of Trump." And also me personally. Like, I keep forgetting this one, but this definitely. I haven't tried to get to the US since, but I'm definitely on a list because my TV show with the BBC that I made in 2019, Blind by Undestrikes the World, I literally made a fake version of Trump's piss tape. So there was a longstanding rumor that Trump was compromised by Russia

• 25:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  and that Putin and the Russians, they had a secret tape of Trump in a hotel room in Russia and that Trump had hired two sex workers to urinate on him and on a bed that Obama had previously slept in. And this was a widespread rumor about this tape. And this is a tape that the Russians have over Trump and they control him through this. But nobody's ever seen the tape. So when I was working with the BBC on my TV show, like, right, we have a budget now. Let's make the piss tape. Let's make as convincing as fucking possible. Let us recreate the Trump piss tape.

• 25:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  And we got a team of people together and did it fucking forensically. I mean, right down to finding out where the Russian hotel was, what the rooms looked like. Hired a body double for Trump, like big budget perfection. And I wanted to do this as an art piece that would show the dangers of misinformation and deep fakes. And what we're now dealing with, with AI, because this was 2019, remember? AI wasn't around the way it was now. But we full on, we made the piss tape. It was perfect. Made the piss tape, uploaded it anonymously around the internet. And literally, as soon as it would go anywhere, it would get deleted.

• 26:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the mad part. Even on websites that are considered the wild, wild west, like 8chan and 4chan. I'm talking about websites where where child sexual abuse material stays up and doesn't get deleted. I mean, the fucking, I'm talking the deep web. Places where you can buy drugs, places where complete anonymity, Bitcoin. You could hire someone to murder someone if you wanted. The darkest corners of the internet. And I've got to point out, this was all done with legal and ethical oversight. Like it was the BBC and I was working with a team of investigative reporters.

• 27:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  So professional journalists on a case were posting this tape on my behalf on these sites as part of their job. I wasn't wandering willy nilly around the dark web on illegal sites. When it came to trying to post the fake Trump piss tape and presenting it as real, like here's the real tape, we have it, we, we, we stole it from Russian hackers. When it came to like presenting it. Literally within minutes, it was gone. And I found that shocking because it meant that there's always someone watching, whether that's CIA, MI5, somebody, even when you think you're in the darkest corner of the internet,

• 27:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  there's always someone watching. And that Trump piss tape, that was obviously real high up, real high up on the agenda, because it simply could not be online. Gone in two seconds, just gone. Someone was there, ready to delete it every time, no matter what the website or where you were on the deep web. So it never, it never got the chance to spread. It didn't get the chance to spread and go viral. Cause the plan would have been to make the piss tape, let it go viral and then come clean. Then come clean and say, this is actually art. This is a stunt. This is to show how disinformation happens. This was commissioned by the BBC. Like, that's the other thing.

• 28:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's commissioned by the BBC, which means that it's legally solid. There'd have been teams of liars all over it, making sure that everything that's happening is legal and ethical and okay. Like, if I did that myself, without legal oversight, that'd land you in trouble. But the piss tape, the piss tape, the Trump piss tape that I made, like, it did work. It just didn't go widespread viral because it was being pulled down everywhere. But if you look up an article on slate.com, which is a very big website, journalist, journalism website, look up an article from September 2019 called, "The pee tape is real, but it's fake." And the byline is, there's a video going around that no one's really talking about.

• 29:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  What makes it most unreal is how believable it is. I made that piss tape. But the thing is, even in the article where they're trying to figure out if it's real or not, I came out loudly on the fucking BBC on the TV show and said, it's a fake piss tape. We made it, we made it here. They still haven't updated the article. But then COVID happened. So the fake piss tape went out. Then in late November, my TV show went out, where we showed the making of the piss tape and how it's art and how this is all fake. That went out and then fucking Covid happened. And when Covid happened, nothing mattered in the news.

• 30:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, we've forgotten all about that period, but literally, as soon as the news hit, there might be a global pandemic and it got worse and worse. Nothing else mattered in the news. But at the end of the day, I'm the person who made the fucking piss tape. If I tried to go to America, like I've done it multiple times. If I go to America to do fucking gigs, I have to do it legitimately. I have to go over there and do the Blind Boy podcast. I get to immigration and the first thing I meet is a person going, Blind Boy? Who's Blind Boy? Oh, okay, he supports Palestine. Right, okay, that's not good.

• 30:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, all right, okay, you actually made a, you made a big budget fake version of Trump's piss tape. Right, step in here, please, sir. So that's, I'm not going to America. That's why I can't go to America. I'd actually forgotten. I'd literally forgotten. Like, I know that sounds nuts, but I'm so busy all the time. And as well, I struggle to remember things that happened before the pandemic. I'm so busy all the time and things happen so fast. I had literally forgotten that I'd made a high-budget fake tape of Trump being pissed on

• 31:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  as a global hoax that got taken very seriously by intelligence services and the media. So too fucking right, too fucking right, I'm not going to America. So the Trump administration is really, it's imploding. Some of the headlines are just bizarre, like Robert Kennedy. Um, he's the Secretary for Health, commissioned a report last week, which is like the vision, the vision for America's future health policy. It's people's health, something which is based on science and evidence. His, his report contained fake citations.

• 32:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  So citations to studies that they're not only wrong, they don't exist. Imaginary citations, which to me says they generated the report using artificial intelligence. Like, that's, that's a bombshell. That's just today. I'm recording this last week, if you're listening to this now. That's just some mad shit that happened today. That'd be forgotten about tomorrow and some new mad thing will happen. We're bombarded with so many intense events that you just have to switch off from them in order to exist and to live. Like, the Watergate scandal happened in 1972. The Watergate scandal was when Nixon was the president of America. He was a Republican.

• 32:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  So it turns out that Nixon was using microphones to eavesdrop on the Democrats. It was a scandal that would have been the only thing in the news for about six months. It shocked America and the world to its core. Nixon had to resign as president. There were hearings about it, committees, the Supreme Court took Nixon, the president to court. No laws, no laws were created because of the Watergate scandal. And what happened in the Watergate scandal? President Nixon used microphones to eavesdrop on the Democrats. That's just a regular Wednesday now. That's just like a regular Wednesday.

• 33:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Trump's secretary of defense has a Nazi tattoo. So what? The secretary of health presented his scientific report about the overhaul, the overhaul of the US health system, based on evidence that doesn't exist, that isn't real, because they probably made it using artificial intelligence. That's just a Wednesday now. That's just a Wednesday. I'm pre-recording this podcast. I'm recording this five days ago. When you listen to this podcast now, the health report and the fake citations, you won't even remember it. It won't even be news. It'll just be forgotten because some other crazy shit will have happened. Like, if that was the nineties.

• 34:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or even the 2010s, first that Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy wouldn't be the Secretary of Health, just wouldn't happen, be unthinkable. And secondly, he'd have to resign. It'd be the only thing spoken about on the news for a week. Multiple people would lose their job. The president would be held to extreme account for hiring a lunatic. And there'd be all these hearings, there'd be these hearings to try and make sure it doesn't happen again. Now it's just a Wednesday, nothing's gonna happen, no one gives a shit, they're just moving on to the next mad thing. Paycheck set the fucking Nazi Secretary of Defence. Do you remember like, three weeks ago, when they discussed the bombing of Yemen?

• 35:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Using Signal, using an app that could easily be hacked by other governments, easily. That's Watergate level, that's a Watergate level of a scandal, did anything happen? No, people lied, no one was held to account. And then some more mad shit happened and we moved on from it. Remember someone, remember someone shot Trump into his ear there 10 months ago? Was that 10 months ago? I don't know, I don't know anymore. I don't even know if that happened or not, I'm not sure. Something has occurred and it's been getting steadily, I've spoken about this, I've spoken about this multiple times in the podcast, but

• 35:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  it just feels like the world is getting more extreme and more extreme. And I don't know why that is. One, one feeling that I have is, I think it's algorithms. Since the mid 2010s, when our data, the data of our behaviour, how much time we spend on smartphones and on social media. Since that data became a commodity that could be mined to generate billions. Our algorithms have become more extreme. So we tend to see more and more content that arouses anger, fear, disgust.

• 36:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  Where we know that's happening, we know full well that that's what social media algorithms do. But then that desensitizes us and we become overwhelmed and we collectively drop our standards as to what's acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

• 36:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Trump administration are, they're being brazen, they're being brazen. They're doing whatever the fuck they want because no one is really holding them to account. The journalists aren't really holding them to account like they used to. And then people aren't really holding them to account because all the conversation is happening in social media feeds. And even, why would you bother? Most thoughtful people won't bother. What am I gonna do? Go onto Instagram and write, "This is disgraceful, Robert F Kennedy should be, should resign." I'm not gonna do that because I'll just get 20 people wanting to have an argument with me. You can't hold people to account anymore.

• 37:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can't hold despicable behaviour to account anymore because the forums where it's done tends to be social media spaces which are designed and controlled by billionaires specifically to make us fight with each other so that we stay on longer and earn more money for the billionaires. Society is losing a sense of checks and balances and accountability because we've chosen to move all discourse, all discourse onto social media platforms at the whim of, of the fucking algorithm. And that then is driving more extreme and bizarre behaviour from people in leadership. I don't know.

• 38:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or else, my other theory, which is when they started the Large Hadron Collider in September 2008, it shifted us into a different, a different dimension with more extreme rules. But most likely it's since the mid 2010s, all public discourse has moved onto platforms where billionaires have decided that the only way we can communicate is in the form of turn and response combat. And the angrier you get, the longer you stay on the platform and the more money that billionaire makes from your behaviour. I reckon that's created a lot of problems. I'm gonna do an Akerina pause now.

• 38:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't have an Acorina, I have an empty, an empty tin of kefir. I've been drinking a lot of kefir recently. I've been really, I've been, I've been focusing on gut health. Ever since I spoke to Professor Ted Dinan about the relationship between the gut biome and mental health, which was a podcast about two months ago. I've really been focusing on, on gut health. So I've been drinking kefir, which is fantastic. I've been eating fermented sauerkraut, live yogurts, kimchi, including this stuff as a daily part of my diet. And then also looking after prebiotics.

• 39:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's just food that has a lot of natural fibre in it. So chia seeds, chia seeds in my yoghurt, making sure I'm eating lots of healthy vegetables with my dinner. So that's what I've been doing to improve my gut biome for overall wellbeing and mental health.

• 39:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I've got a, an empty tin of kefir here, kefir water, very tasty, very tasty alternative to sugary drinks. So I'm gonna tap this can of kefir water and you'll hear a fucking advert.

• 40:10Speaker 03

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• 40:41Speaker 04

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• 41:16Speaker 05

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• 42:22Speaker 06

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• 42:36Speaker 07

  Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.

• 43:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Was the kefir water pause?

• 43:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  All right, support for this podcast comes from you, the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if you like it, if you listen to it weekly, or it brings you what more merriment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. There's that other thing with, you know, advice for artists. After the Ocarina Pause, I'm gonna answer a question about how to be an artist, right? I, I, I ask for Patreon support every single week because I'm being, I'm just being fucking honest. The reason this podcast exists is because people who listen, they pay me for the work

• 43:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  that I'm doing. And that's why I've been doing this for, for eight years, for eight years. As an artist, as a writer, I've had an actual source of fucking income. I can pay all my bills. I can rent out my office. I can live as, as a professional artist. Because I started saying to people, do you like this work that I'm doing? Well, if you like it, I'd appreciate it if you paid me, but you don't have to. But please do if you really like the work. And I've been doing that for eight years. If you're, you're a professional writer, not as much anymore, the tightest, you know, things have shifted. But if you're a professional writer or artist or musician, part of the job is pretending

• 44:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  that you're more successful than you are to try and bring success, which again bullshit. It's like revenue streams have disappeared. So if you're making work, it's okay to ask people to directly support that work. So that's what I do every week, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. So if you do listen to this frequently, please consider paying me for the work that I do. I just want the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen for free. Listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast, the exact same podcast, I get to earn a living. Anyway.

• 45:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Gigs. I'm currently on tour, even though I'm talking to you from the past. You're listening to this on Wednesday morning, which means tomorrow night, I'm in Sheffield. These gigs might be sold out by the time I'm... By the time I'm saying this, right, these gigs might be sold out, but fuck it, give it a crack. Tomorrow, I'm in Sheffield, City Halls, then Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex, Bexhill, and Norwich, right? And that's what I'm doing over the next little while. Come along to those gigs and do check online in case they're sold out. And then in September, we've got Derry and fucking Vicar Street.

• 45:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, I said I was gonna answer some questions. Eva asks, "What advice do you have for somebody who wants to become an artist?" I get asked this a lot, and I answer it a lot. First off, if you're serious about becoming an artist and being a professional artist, no matter what that is, writer, musician, dancer, playwright, fucking anything, you must try to fail. Don't try to succeed, try to fail. The one thing that'll stop you creating anything is fear of failing. If you're afraid of failing, then you won't create, that'll stifle you. So try to make shit as much as possible. Try to write a shit story, try to write a shit song. You don't have to show it to anybody, but instead of sitting down tomorrow

• 46:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  and trying to write a good song, try to deliberately make something that's awful, that's terrible. Today, I'm trying to make something terrible. Find a song that you don't like that really annoys you and try and make something like that. Don't try and make a song that's like the band that you adore. Fuck that, that's probably causing you problems. Make a piece of shit. And, and the reason I say that is when you do that, you'll actually free yourself up, you'll free yourself up to think, create creativity.

• 47:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're just an adult who's playing. That's all the creativity is. Art and creativity, it's, it's, you're playing. It's playfulness. If you sit down to make a piece of shit, a bad song, a silly song, a foolish song. If you sit down to do that, you'll naturally relax. And before long, with enough practice, you'll find yourself in a state of play, in a flow state. And when you get to flow state, then that's your unique, authentic voice. That's what art is. When you dance, when you sing, when you write a song, when you paint a picture. Are you expressing a, a talent that, that's uniquely you? That's your voice.

• 48:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's really and truly you, and it's inimitable. It cannot be copied because only you can be the best you as an artist. That exists within you. That's there, but you won't be able to hear that voice and express it unless you're, you're in a state of play. Playfulness. And when you're in a state of play, you're not threatened, you're not frightened, you're not worried about failing. You're not thinking about whether this will be good or this will be bad. You're just doing for the sake of doing. That's what playfulness is in any art form. Deliberately trying to make shit, deliberately trying to fail. That's a great way to access a very free playful state.

• 48:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And eventually you'll come out of it with a piece of work that isn't a failure at all. You actually really like it and it's an expression of who you tru- truly are. And, and what I mean by that, how I put that into practice. When I'm writing short stories, writing short stories is, that's very difficult. That's a big undertaking. Stories don't come to me fully formed. I sit down with a blank page. Blank pages are terrifying. I sit down with a blank page or a blank laptop, knowing that there's gonna be. A 10,000-word story, that's a story that takes 40 minutes to read. I know that there's gonna be a 10,000-word story and I haven't a clue what it's gonna be about. So I often start with failure.

• 49:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  One of my favourite stories from my last book, my last book of short stories, Topographia Hibernica. One of my favourite stories in that book is called, "I'll Give Ya Barcelona." Now, I enjoy this story because on the surface, it appears to be quite silly and almost mundane. But underneath the surface, it's asking fairly solid questions about masculinity and the social construct of masculinity. And it also draws from Irish mythology and how Irish mythology was rewritten to be quite masculine. In particular, the character of Cú Chulainn and his warp spasms, so that he could enter war and kill.

• 50:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, if I sat down and said to myself, "Today", I think that story actually, it's 15,000 words. I don't think I could sit down and say, "Today, I'm gonna write a 15,000-word story", which on the surface is comedic and mundane, but underneath the surface explores themes of contemporary masculinity via Irish mythology. If I'd have sat down and said, "That's what I'm gonna do today", I'd have gotten writer's block. I'd have scared the living fuck out of myself. I'd have said, "That's impossible. How the fuck do I do that? Gone." So what did I do instead? I sat down and said, "Fuck it, I gotta write. Gotta write a 15,000-word story now. Don't think about it. Let's not think about it. What's it about?

• 50:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna write a story about a man biting another man's arse." That was my brief. So that there is trying to fail. That's failure. That's a silly idea. I'm trying to write serious literature. I've got a fucking book deal. I'm trying to get reviewed in The Guardian. Very frightening stuff, very scary stuff, but because I've failed so much in the past, because...

• 51:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I was in my twenties, when I was in my twenties, I was given a pilot on Channel Four, and what did I do? Oh my god, it's Channel Four, this has to be excellent, this has to be amazing. And the end result didn't land. It wasn't my voice, it wasn't my authentic voice. So now that I'm older, I know, no, if you want, I gotta write a story about a man biting another man's arse. And you see what that does to the blank page now. Now the blank page, it's not scary anymore. Why isn't it scary? Because I'm gonna write a story about a man biting another man's arse. Now it's a fun challenge. How do I make that happen? I know this has to be about between ten and fifteen thousand words. What a fun, enjoyable, stupid challenge.

• 52:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  No one's gonna review that in The Guardian. A story about a man biting another man's arse? Who'd fucking review that? That's stupid, that's silly, that's childish, that's not smart, that's not a literary idea at all, that's, that's slapstick, that is. That idea sounds like a failure, that sounds like a failure. Great, let's begin with failure then. Let's, let's begin with thi- this failed idea. A story about one man biting another man's arse. Let's begin with this failure and try and write ourselves out of that failure. And that's what I fucking did. It reframes what the blank page means. So the blank page now isn't a space to be filled with fancy words that could be reviewed in The Guardian, the blank page becomes a playground.

• 52:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  It becomes a space for fun and humour and silliness and enjoyment, because that's the only space where you can make art, that's the only space where art can occur. So then I begin to write the story, and the playfulness of that allows me to enter flow state. And once I enter flow state, then I'm in the waking dream. I'm fully in communication with my, my internal artistic voice that can't be copied. And the things that I actually want to say that are in my unconscious mind and the arguments I want to make. These things just come out, they just come out. I'm accessing the parts of my brain where my, my unconscious mind, where dreams live.

• 53:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that now is allowed to very safely flow out onto the page. Because what locks that away is fear of fucking failing. So there's my advice to anyone who wants to become an artist, any fucking artist. What'll make you a professional artist is, is your unique creative voice. That's it, that's it. We all have to go through years of making art and having heroes and our work being derivative of our heroes work. And you stick at it, you stick at it. And then eventually, oh, fuck, it's my own voice. You'll only access that through playfulness and you'll only get playfulness through consistent failure. Trying to fail and making failure your friend.

• 54:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  So instead of failure being something you're afraid of, you actively make it part of your process by trying to fail. No one ever made anything good by sitting down and deciding I'm gonna make something good today. Sit down and decide you're gonna make something good, you just freak yourself out and you procrastinate. Sit down and make something shit. And then the other thing, if you wanna be an artist, be cringe, be cringey. Okay, you have to be cringe. If, if work you're making is being cringe, then it's challenging people, it's making people uncomfortable. You're gonna have to do gigs where no one shows up. You're gonna have to do plays where no one's in the audience. You're gonna have to express yourself, you're gonna have to be vulnerable.

• 54:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're gonna have to be cringe and all of your friends are gonna laugh at you behind your back and think that you're having a mental episode. Anyone who, who begins creating art, that's literally them expressing feelings and putting it to a medium, some description. Whether you're writing your own songs, right? Whether you're doing your own paintings, stuff that's coming from your imagination and now you're putting it out there and showing it to people. At the beginning, it's always cringe and it's frightening to people and it's threatening to people. And they're gonna wanna put you back in your, inside your box. And they're gonna laugh about you behind your back, it's gonna be, it won't be nice. People are gonna be embarrassed for you on your behalf, one of the worst, like, talk about social shame.

• 55:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  You're gonna have to be cringe if you want to be an artist at the start. You're gonna have to be really cringe. Your, your immediate peers, who you would like approval from, they are going to laugh at you. If you're very lucky, you might have one or two supportive family members or close friends who believe in you. But mostly you're just, you're gonna be cringe and embarrassing for a while. And embrace the fuck out of it. Embrace the fuck out of it because that's how you build your armour. That's how you build your fucking armour and become better. Jesus Christ, when I was 21, doing gigs with a bag on my head, singing about the IRA. People used to throw bottles at me. I've had multiple situations in my life. Like even four fucking years ago during the pandemic, when I started doing.

• 56:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, I started that project where I was writing songs on Twitch to the video game Red Dead Redemption, which is something I really wanted to do it and I loved doing it. I was coming across threads where people were wondering if I was genuinely having a mental breakdown. Because to them, what I was doing was, I was, I was publicly embarrassing myself and, and they couldn't, they couldn't handle the secondhand cringe. And you know what I'd say to myself? I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not doing anything wrong. So if you, if you, if you're writing songs in your bedroom on a guitar, and you wanna go and do a gig to, to four people in the local pub, or you wanna get your songs and put them on, share them with your friends.

• 57:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Here I've, going to, going to one of your friends. And all of a sudden going, here I've written an album. It's on Spotify. Do you wanna hear it? That's fucking terrifying. That's fucking terrifying. Here's an album of songs about my feelings. Some of these songs are about my ex. You know them. Do you wanna hear this? Here's a lot of paintings I did. They're about a recent bout of depression I had. That's fucking terrifying and it is cringe. Unfortunately, according to the rules of cringe, that's really uncomfortable. And you're just gonna have to do that. You're gonna have to do that. You're gonna have to be cringe as fuck. And you know what you say to yourself? I'm hurting nobody.

• 57:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Nothing that I'm doing here is mean or nasty. I'm creating art and this makes people uncomfortable because we just have these rules in society about what it means to express yourself. And I'm breaking these rules and it's making people really uncomfortable. They're getting like a secondhand embarrassment. Mostly what's happening is they're, they're projecting their insecurity on me. But that's what you tell yourself. If you actually want to become a writer, a songwriter, a painter, whatever the fuck, and you want to be semi-professional or professional or get a name for yourself and begin that journey, you have to be cringe. You have to. That's it. And if, to fight that fear, you say to yourself, I'm doing nothing wrong.

• 58:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm hurting nobody. I'm creating things here. I'm creating art. I'm doing something positive. If that makes other people uncomfortable, it's got nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with me. And then if you don't wanna be cringe, then do cover versions of other people's songs or draw realistic portraits of celebrities. And I mean that as no disrespect to anyone who's doing cover songs or whatever, but there are ways to express yourself artistically that society does not consider to be cringe. One of them is, is being really good at cover versions. Being the person who can play guitar well with a half decent voice and do a good cover version. That's socially acceptable.

• 59:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's completely socially acceptable. If your voice is okay, if you can hold the note and you can play guitar, you can express yourself artistically that way and no one's gonna cringe on your behalf. Might get a bit of jealousy, but not cringe. And then visual art. Just draw brilliant, brilliant drawings of Bruce Lee. If you've got the, the skill and the craft to do a banging drawing or painting of a celebrity, then do that, that also.

• 59:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's not cringe. Demonstration of of skill and talent, for some reason, isn't seen as cringe. But expressing yourself, taking some type of vulnerability or even an idea and trying to express that through art, that is really cringe. And I think the reason is because you're taking a huge risk. It's the risk, the risk associated with it. But if you can do that properly, that's where the payoff is. The payoff artistically is the person who who has their own little unique voice and they're able to express that through art. And if you want a working example of this to give you a bit of faith. So Rage Against the Machine, one of the coolest bands in the world.

• 1:00:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, fuck me, Rage Against the Machine. Like, not only are they amazing, are they legends, and they did something incredibly unique. Rage Against the Machine came out with a sound that that hadn't really been heard before. They effortlessly mixed rap and heavy metal with fucking solid politics when Rage Against the Machine came out. Incredibly unique. No one really like them. Go on to YouTube and look up Rage Against the Machine first public performance. It's incredible to watch. It's fucking Rage Against the Machine doing their first album, the first album that that's like playing the hits.

• 1:01:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And no one knows who they are. And it's on like a college campus. And the video is like, it's like an hour long, they go through the whole first album. Look at the audience. People don't know what to do. They're kind of embarrassed. Their pe- people are, first off, there's, there's no crowd. It's Rage Against the Machine doing their first fucking album, like nailing it, incredible. There's barely any crowd. It's mostly people walking in and out of shot, a few people standing around, folding their arms defensively, because they don't know what to think, because the thing they're hearing and looking at is so unique and new and strange that they don't know how they should feel about it. Some people walk away.

• 1:02:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fucking cringe.

• 1:02:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, this is nineteen ninety-one. Rap music? Rap music was, rap music would have been seen as novelty music in nineteen ninety-one. It wouldn't have been taken seriously by, by journalists. It was seen as novelty music and there was racism around it because it was mostly, it was mostly black and brown people performing rap music. And now you've Rage up on stage, doing rap music and heavy metal at the same time? Some people are just like, no fucking way. And then the people that stick around, that are like, this sounds pretty cool. Look at their body language. There's very few who are really able to get into it. Most of the people are sitting back with their arms folded, trying to look around to see, is it okay to like this?

• 1:02:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  But it's a beautiful piece of footage for any artist because you get to see, incredible, unique, brilliant. Artists like Rage Against the Machine, you get to see them being cringe. There they are, being fucking cringe. Can you believe it? That's them right there. That's their cringe moment. And you know what? They don't give a fuck. They don't care because they love what they're doing. What's the third thing I could say? Advice for an artist, I answer this fucking question nearly every time I do a question answering podcast.

• 1:03:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Self-promote, self-promote your work, whatever the fuck you're doing, self-promote. Especially if you're a professional artist, if art is the thing. And when I, and when I say art, I mean any type of artistic expression, right? I'm not just talking about writing, painting, music, anything. The hardest thing about being an artist in twenty twenty-five is earning a living. Your favorite bands have second jobs. Promote your work unapologetically.

• 1:03:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  This expectation to be humble, this per-performative humility, leave that to the many artists who are lucky enough to have generational wealth. Like years ago, it was in London.

• 1:04:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd been moving around theatre circles and I I'd met loads of different artists. And there was one person, they were a writer and they used to publish books of poetry, short stories. They were doing a new thing every fucking month. And they were having, they'd have a little, they'd write a book of poetry and they'd hold an event. And they'd sell nothing. They'd sell six copies of their book of poetry, mainly their friends. And they'd hold this little event, cheese and wine, and they just kept sticking at it. It didn't matter that like only their friends showed up. It didn't matter that they sold fuck all books.

• 1:04:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  They just kept creating and doing and doing and holding events and stuck at it.

• 1:05:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  But then one day I was like, Jesus, fucking fair play to you. You have some work ethic. And I suggested that, why don't you promote your work online? Like if you had a Twitter page or if you were doing videos maybe, or you know, you could be plugging and promoting your work online and and reaching a larger audience than these small shows that are that you're doing where your friends are showing up. And it was clear that they didn't wanna be self promoting like that, that to self promote like that, it went against their values. And I was really young and I thought they were cool as fuck. I was like, wow, that's so cool. You're really putting the art first and you're sticking at it and and you don't care if you're

• 1:05:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  successful or not. And then I find out years later, they were like secretly posh London and had inherited about six houses. So we're living off the rent of about six houses. Writing was, writing was just the thing they did. They didn't, they didn't care whether the writing was successful or not. They were renting out six houses. Money earning a living, that wasn't a consideration. And when I found that out, I said to myself, fuck that.

• 1:06:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  Leave humility to the people who leave humility to people who inherited six houses. But if you're actually relying upon your work to pay your bills, fuck humility, promote the fuck out of yourself. Promote the fuck out of yourself at every opportunity. If you're not a gigantic artist with a big PR team. Because that's the other thing, you can have artists that are huge and that are signed to labels or have gigantic book deals. And they can just disappear for a year and release work. And there's an entire department doing all their PR for them. But again, that's, that's only 10% of artists. The other 90%, promote the fuck out of yourself and don't apologize for it. You're hurting nobody. Like if you follow me on Instagram.

• 1:07:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  I put out my podcast every fucking Wednesday and

• 1:07:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  on Instagram. If, if people like my podcast, so if, if one of my Instagram followers likes my podcast and then they post about it on their stories and they tag me and they're like, love today's Blind Boy podcast. I'll fucking reshare that praise. I'm fully aware how cringe that is. That's unbelievably cringe. Sharing your, sharing praise? Not supposed to do that. And I'll be honest with you. I kind of don't even want to. I don't want to because it's not very humble to share praise. But I do it anyway. A, I'm grateful that someone liked my podcast enough to share it on their story. B, it fucking works. It actually works.

• 1:07:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not everyone who follows me on Instagram listens to my podcast every single week or reads my books. But when I share someone else enjoying it or saying they like it, that actually works. And people go, oh, fuck it, I haven't listened to Blind Boy in a few weeks. Better check back, that sounds good. So I do it because it fucking works. I'm not doing the performative humility thing, the fake humility. I want to work on, on the actual humidity. And the actual humidity is just because I make a thing called a podcast and that person over there thinks it's good. That's just a reflection of my work this week and it's no reflection on me as a

• 1:08:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  human being whatsoever. So, I'm not a better person than anyone else because I'm making work that someone, someone likes and wants to tell someone about. That my behaviour has no reflection of my value as a human being whatsoever. I'm better than nobody else. Nobody else is better than me because I'm a human being and we're too complex to evaluate of against each other. As you can tell lads, I've had to pull this podcast out of my hope, alright. I don't wanna miss a week. I don't wanna leave you with no podcast for a week and the schedule is incredibly growing on this tour. So I had to, had to get this one out in a very short amount of time before I left for my tour. You can

• 1:09:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  tell that I'm freestyling. I'd have loved to have gone really deep into the Buckfast Bees. Buckfast Monastery is a thousand years old. I would have loved to pour over academic journals about Buckfast Abbey and try and find a roasting hot take about those bees. But the schedule doesn't allow it and I, I wanna, I wanna put out a podcast. Rather than give you fucking nothing, I wanna put out a podcast each week for the people who show up and listen each week. I might revisit the Buckfast Abbey podcast at some point, like I'm gigging in Cornwall. Cornwall is 15 miles from Buckfast Abbey. So maybe I

• 1:09:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  might even get a chance to visit Buckfast Abbey while I'm on tour. I don't wanna think about it in case I get too excited and it's not possible. There's 410 episodes that you can go back and listen to also if you wanted a more, a more rigorous hot take this week. In the meantime, rub a dog, gennyflick to a swan and take note of strange insects. If you see a bee or a wasp or a beetle and you're like, wow, what the fuck is that? Take a photograph of it, take a photograph of it and be curious about it. Do a reverse image search, see what comes back.

• 1:10:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Then if you find out the name of the insect, type it into biodiversityireland.ie. It's a great fucking website. It's a live biodiversity map. And if you identify a strange insect or an insect that might be invasive, you can then put your photograph into this map and you can log it in there for other people to see. And you could be doing a great service there. Like, I love that. I love that I saw a strange bee, followed through on finding out what the fucking bee was. And now it's like, holy fuck. This bee comes from the same place that Buckfast is made? Fuck me. Right, I'll catch you next week, you glorious cunts. Dog bless.

• 1:11:32Speaker 06

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• 1:12:01Speaker 08

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