How I found a bag of Heroin on the ground because I thought it was a dead Bird

A mental health podcast about how clothes are a form of music 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

  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.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honour and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.

• 1:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Eyeball the pie ball toilet, you joyful kinselus. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. As I record this, it's Sunday morning.

• 1:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  I usually don't come into my office on Sundays. I'd stay at home. This week, I've one less day to work because this Tuesday, I'm in London. I'm in London at the Grierson Awards. A documentary I made has been nominated for an award, which if you're listening to this on Wednesday, that means that was last night. So I don't know whether I won the award or not. But realistically, that doesn't really matter.

• 1:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I absolutely wasn't expecting to get nominated. And just being nominated, that's enough for me. And I'm really excited about going to the award ceremony. Not necessarily to win the award. What I'm looking forward to is I know that I'm gonna, I'm gonna meet loads of people in the documentary industry, in the television industry. And I might have a conversation that will lead to a new piece of work. I mean, that's why I'd do it. That's why I'd do anything. You know, why do I write books? Why do I make documentaries? Why do I do any of it? Because I love the doing. I love doing it. I love the bit in the middle, the process. It's not necessarily about the end result.

• 2:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's nice to have books that are written and documentaries that are made. But that's not the goal. The goal is the bit in the middle. The experience of meaning and purpose that comes from waking up every morning and doing the thing that I love doing. So I make documentaries and write books so that I can have the opportunity to write another book or make another documentary until such time as I'm ready to die. Also, I managed to pick out an outfit for the award ceremony. Thank you to everybody who was mailing me with advice. I had a quite enjoyable few days, operating outside of my comfort zone,

• 3:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  challenging assumptions about myself. You know, I have an assumption about myself that I can't dress myself. Now, what's true is I don't think about clothes. I don't think about fashion. I don't really notice what other people are wearing. The language of fashion isn't a sea that I swim in. It's not a skill set that comes easily to me and it's not a comfort zone. So these things are true. But a statement such as, "I can't dress myself. It's impossible. I'm shit at dressing myself. I'll only fuck it up." Those are negative assumptions and I can challenge those flexibly. So that's what I did for the past couple of days and it was really enjoyable. And I got myself a lovely kind of powder blue fucking single-breasted blazer

• 4:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  and bluish-looking chinos. I started to view outfits not just as clothes that I put on my body to communicate things to other people. See, that's the bit that was freaking me out and that's my own insecurity. Probably, probably from just being autistic my entire life. But that was what was freaking me out. Fuck it. Wearing clothes is about communicating with other people in a system. What happens if I fuck it up? But I started to look at an outfit as an internal conversation, like the shoes that I wear. Like my shirt is white with little blue dots. So if my shoes have just a little hint of blue,

• 4:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  even around the, the holes where my laces are, now my shoes are having a conversation with my shirt. And learning about how a belt, a belt can mediate a conversation between your jacket and your pants. So if I've got like a blue blazer and then bluish trousers, and I throw a black belt into the middle of that, that black belt is like going, you can't have a chat with each other, get fucked. No, no, no, you're not friends. A black belt there is like, like a passive aggressive prick that doesn't want two people to become friends with each other, like a toxic individual. Why? Well, well, just colour theory, but black, black isn't a colour. Black is a shade, black i- in, in,

• 5:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  black doesn't exist in the colour spectrum because black is the absence of light. So when you put a black belt down the middle, you're creating a hard boundary there. Black belts tend to work when, when you're dealing with shades. A grey suit, charcoal, shades. But if I bring in a brown or a tan belt, then that's a very friendly person who does want my jacket and my trousers to have a conversation with each other. A brown belt is like, not only are ye gonna have a chat, I'm gonna point out what ye have in common. Because brown is in the same kind of colour temperature as blue. And even you look at the sky, the sky is blue. Then you've got a little brown strip of earth in the middle.

• 6:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then underneath that, you can have the ocean, which is also blue. This conversation is already happening in nature. And I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed looking at an outfit as a conversation between multiple garments. I started to view an outfit the way that I'd view a meal or a pi- or a piece of music. Like I'm a music producer. I mix and arrange songs. And I know when I'm mixing a song.

• 6:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  Let's just say you've got your guitar and then you've got your drums. Now, the guitar, that's harmonic. That's about harmony, that's making the sweet sounds that you hear. It's rhythmic as well, but it's got chords and you've got your drums. Now, your drums, that's the rhythm, that's the percussion. But very rarely, almost never, I actually can't even think of it off the top of my head. You'd rarely hear a song that's just drums and guitar. Because usually in the middle there, you have the bass. And the bass, it's about rhythm and melody. The bass makes the drums and guitar talk to each other.

• 7:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  It mediates, it mediates between drums and guitar. And then you have something now that's sounding like a song. And then I started to view belts as a bass guitar. I'm like, holy fuck. I've got a blazer and a set of trousers and this fucking belt here, that's the bass guitar. My pants are Ringo Starr on drums, walking, and my shoes, of course, that's setting the rhythm, right? My fucking jacket, that's George Harrison playing guitar. The belt, that's Paul McCartney on bass, mediating everything that's happening above the belt and below the belt. And then John Lennon, the singing, that's... Maybe the accessories or the tie are possibly just the colours.

• 8:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I couldn't fully figure out what part of the outfit was John Lennon. It's something possibly intangible, maybe he's the hat, if I wore a hat. The point is, I started to view putting on an outfit and dressing myself as a song. I said, this is no different to a fucking song, this is a song. And thank you very much to the very helpful lady in Dunce Stores, who listened to me as I told her about how my outfit was a song. I didn't, I didn't fucking do that, I kept it inside my head. I did not do that. But reframing the mechanics of fashion as a song.

• 8:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That made it very accessible and not and and less intimidating and enjoyable and fun because I'd reframed it in a language that I do understand. And then it got me thinking, because you don't hear a lot of songs that are just guitar and drums. You don't hear a lot of that. Then I thought, the fucking White Stripes, the fucking White Stripes, the White Stripes. It was Meg White on drums and then Jack White on guitar. There's no bass, but yet it works. The music works. The White Stripes music is fucking banging. However, yes, there's no bass guitar in the White Stripes music, but what Jack White

• 9:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  does, he plays his guitar through a bass amp. So his guitar has lower bass tones. That's why when you listen to the White Stripes, you're not like, something's missing here. It's like, no, he's playing his guitar through a bass amp. Very, very clever. It works. And then I started thinking, what's the fucking fashion equivalent? It's dungarees, dungarees. Dungarees, it's pants and a top, all as one with no belt, but it still works. It'll give you a weird looking arse, but still, it's it's works. It's dungarees. So the White Stripes music is dungarees. And also too, if someone's listening to this, I know from

• 10:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  the messages I got on on Instagram, I get messages from people who are who listen to this podcast, who are fashion designers, professional stylists, who this is their bread and butter. This is the art form that they are skilled at and fluent in. And I know some of ye are listening, and I'm saying something like, you can't wear a black belt with a blue blazer and blue trousers. And you're probably saying, well, you can. You could do it this way. You could do it that way. I bet you I could fucking do that. And I'm sure you can. And that there is talent.

• 10:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like if anyone's, anyone who's speaking about any art form, as a guideline for myself, as soon as I hear a person say, "You can't do that. There's a rule here." As soon as someone says, "You can't have a song with no bass guitar," an exceptionally talented person will step up and say, "Hold on a fucking minute. Don't be telling me I can't. I'll figure it out. Don't be telling me I can't. That's a challenge." And that talented person will make it work. The White Stripes being a perfect example of that. "You can't have a band and it's just guitar and drums. You can't do that. Wanna fucking bet?" Same with Gary Newman, Gary Newman.

• 11:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Late seventies, he was a punk musician and Gary Newman, who's artistic, which is relevant because of his, his capacity to think outside of the box. But Gary Newman was like, "I want a punk band, but, but there's no guitars." And it's like, "You can't fucking do that. You can't fucking do that." It's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna use a synthesizer. Instead of guitars, I'm gonna use a synthes- You can't fucking do that." And what does Gary Newman do? He goes, "I'm gonna get synthesizers and I'm gonna put them into the type of effects that you put guitars into." And then he makes a song like Cars or Our Friends Electric and, and literally changes how we think about what music can be.

• 12:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  So don't listen to me if I say you can't wear a black belt with a blue suit. What the fuck do I know? I'm following guidelines, but I'm sure there's an incredibly talented person out there who'll make it work. Like fucking hip hop music, hip hop music.

• 12:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like in, in the 1980s, you can't make songs out of bits of other people's songs. You can't do that. You can't make a piece of music and your music, the music that you're putting out is made from little bits of other people's music? That's unthinkable. That's preposterous. A rule exists that you can't do that. That wouldn't be art. That wouldn't be creative. And then hip hop musicians come along and go, "I'm sorry, what?" And you get sampling. You get fucking Public Enemy making beautiful chaotic noise.

• 13:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Out of 20 bits of someone else's music, making something you've never heard before that completely redefines how we think about what music can be, but then to take it back to fashion at the same time in New York, when hip hop was being born and sampling music was becoming a thing for hip hop music at the same time. There was a fella up in Harlem, a fashion designer in Harlem called Dapper Dan. Now, Dapper Dan, he used to own a shop in Harlem, probably 1979, 1980, 81. And in the 80s, you had your labels like Versace and Gucci, and these were luxury

• 13:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  brands. We now take these brands for granted, like we now associate these brands with hip hop fashion. But Gucci and Versace and fucking Louis Vuitton or whatever the fuck you have, this was posh people clothes. This was for very, very, very rich people in the 70s and early 80s. And also, luxury designer brands at the time, let's just say Gucci, it was rich white people who were buying Gucci bags. And the Gucci label, that wouldn't have been on like the outside of the bag. If someone had a Gucci handbag in 1979, only another rich person might be able to spot that's Gucci or know what Gucci is.

• 14:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's, it's a classist, it's a classist code system. And in the American context, it's racist. It's referred to as old money taste or quiet luxury. So if you had a Gucci bag in 1979, only another person who's rich enough is gonna know that that's a Gucci bag, because the Gucci logo, that's on the inside of the bag, in the lining of the bag, there's your Gucci logo everywhere, but not on the fucking outside. And it's a form of hoarding, hoarding of cultural capital, hoarding of knowledge. It's exclusionary. It excludes no money. It excludes working class people, middle class people.

• 15:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  In this specific context, it intersects with the exclusion of black and brown people who might have made money through their work. And it's a way of going, you might have the money, but you don't know what this brand is, you don't know what this is. These are secrets that we share amongst ourselves in a little elite club. We all know what Gucci and Prada is today. The cultural value of those brands has changed. But Tuesday night at the awards ceremony, I might, I might find myself in conversation with like a proper posh English cunt, cause it's, it's the awards television documentary you tend to find, especially over in England. You will find some profoundly posh people in those circles. And when I say posh, I mean

• 15:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  someone's, someone whose great grandfather owns an eighth of Scotland posh, someone whose ancestors brutalised and evicted my ancestors posh, but they're probably, they'll be wearing a jacket or a set of shoes or pants. And I don't even know what the fuck, I've never even heard what the label is. I don't even know. So anyway, New York, Harlem, 1980, hip hop started a few years previously, just up, up a bit in the Bronx and the Gucci, Fendi, these labels, they would have been on the inside of handbags, in the lining. But what happened with this Dapper Dan fellow in Harlem? So all the, the local, the drug

• 16:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  dealers and pimps who were making a lot of money and wanted to show off, and I'm basing this on information that the Dapper Dan himself has said, you had hustlers, pimps, drug dealers, the beginning of the, the crack epidemic, starting to make a lot of money. They went to Dapper Dan. And what Dapper Dan used to do is he'd get like a Gucci handbag. And on the inside of the handbag, in the lining, the bit you're not supposed to see, in that lining, there it says, Gucci, Gucci, Gucci. Dapper Dan would then take the lining of about 20 handbags and make a tracksuit out of it. He'd make a custom tracksuit out of the inside of Gucci bags. And then the local drug dealers wearing it, the local drug dealers

• 17:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  wearing a tracksuit made out of the inside of Gucci bags. And his entire body is Gucci, Gucci, and then fucking Versace all over his pants.

• 17:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And he's walking around in, I'm walking around in fifty handbags stitched together and each one of them costs ten grand. So I'm walking around in two hundred grands worth of a tracksuit. What the fuck do you think of that? And look at these gold chains. But this was real. This is the early nineteen eighties, up in Harlem. But then what starts happening? Rappers, the likes of LL Cool J, Eric B and Rakim, eh, the boxer Mike Tyson, start making a bit of money and now LL Cool J is wearing these Dapper Dan tracksuits. Here's a nice example that, that if, if you're not a fan of hip hop, that you'll definitely understand. If you're a millennial or older Gen Z, we all grew up watching The Fresh Prince

• 18:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  of Bel-Air. If you were a kid in the nineties or the repeats of the show up until the mid two thousands, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air defined your fucking childhood. It did in Ireland anyway, and probably over in the UK. So in this TV show, The Fresh Prince, played by Will Smith, he's from West Philadelphia, which is east coast, hard working class, African American area in Philadelphia. He ends up living with his aunt in Bel-Air, which is a posh part of fucking Los Angeles, right? But anyway, do you remember? Will Smith used to have to go to private school, posh private school. But when he was in private school, he would get his blazer, his posh private school blazer, and then he'd turn it inside

• 18:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  out, so that the lining of his blazer is now on the outside. And within the context of the TV show, that was his individualism and his bit of street culture, his bit of street culture in this posh, white person environment. I'm gonna wear the fucking inside of my jacket and the outside. Cause he's going, the, the outside of this jacket is boring. Look at the inside, it's class. Whether intentional or not, that's a, that's a reference to what Dapper Dan was doing in Harlem in the eighties with clothes. Probably intentional because people forget about fucking Will Smith. We grew up watching The Fresh, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which was early nineties. Will Smith is there at the foundation of hip hop. He's, he was The Fresh Prince with Jazzy Jeff before that TV show, releasing albums

• 19:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  in nineteen eighty-four, I think. So without a doubt, he was, he was swimming in that sea. He'd have been hanging around with LL Cool J. And the modern fashion culture of like- A tracksuit or a hoodie that has the label all over it. Like now it's just been absorbed into mainstream culture. You don't take any notice of it. You can trace that right back to Dapper Dan. And what Dapper Dan was doing, and this is what's so fucking beautiful about it. Just that analogy about music and fashion. Dapper Dan, at the same neighborhoods and at the same time that hip hop artists were sampling other people's music and making something new, making a new piece of art. Dapper Dan was sampling fucking handbags.

• 20:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  He was hip hop sampling, but with fashion. And someone said, you can't do that. You can't make a fucking tracksuit out of fucking handbags, out of luxury. You wanna bet? Yes, I can. And now that's just mainstream. Because it's been appropriated into the mainstream and the African American roots of it are forgotten through that appropriation. And if there's a part of you that's thinking, your hip hop music, sampling other people's music and making it your own. Or Dapper Dan, taking handbags that aren't his and making it his own. Is that not just stealing? No, that's revolutionary. It's revolutionary.

• 21:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a revolution against the system of racism. America is a racist country. Now, race, race isn't real. Human beings are human beings. We're all human beings, but racism is real. It's an exclusionary system of power based upon the pseudoscience of race being real. And a lot of 20th century music has its roots in African American art. But the vast majority of successful 20th century musicians weren't African American. They were white people. And they became successful because the system of racism, which went hand in hand with capitalism, that didn't work against them. So sampling was like a revolutionary way of remixing a stolen past

• 21:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  to create a future using art. And with Dapper Dan effectively sampling Gucci handbags. Like African American people in the late 70s in New York, no matter how much money they had, they weren't getting into the Gucci shop. They weren't allowed in there. So Dapper Dan goes, fuck, that's so. I'm gonna sample your handbags and I'm gonna make a tracksuit out of it. And we're gonna do it in Harlem. And that's a way there of. Recontextualising the dominant culture and taking power away from it. You think Gucci were happy at the time? No, they spent years sewing Dapper Dan. The power of that little hidden code, the hidden code that operates on classism and racism.

• 22:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  The quiet luxury, the old money taste of only one rich white person can spot a Gucci bag. And if you want to prove that it's a Gucci bag, you just have to show the inside very subtly. Dapper Dan ripped all that apart and said, no, the inside is now on the outside and the labels are everywhere. That's revolutionary because it strips power away. That takes the power away. There's no difference between that. And the IRA in the 1920s, waiting until all the British soldiers are asleep in their barracks, arriving at night time, burning them out, stealing their guns and then shooting more British soldiers with stolen British guns. Now that there is violent revolution, there's a violent system in power, a military power.

• 23:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  So we're going to take their guns because we don't have any because we're poor. And then we're going to shoot them with their guns. Cultural revolution, it's the same dynamics. It's, there's a power structure. I'm going to strip that power away and make it work for me. And then the Dapper Dan style, it stopped becoming revolutionary. It then became absorbed into the mainstream. And now if you saw a Dapper Dan tracksuit from the 1980s with the Gucci labels on the outside or the Fendi labels, it doesn't look as shocking now because it's been absorbed into the mainstream. And I think eventually Gucci stopped sewing Dapper Dan and he ended up as a board member in the 2000s. They had to give up and just go, look, come on board, you'll make us look cool.

• 24:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Anyway, look, I'm happy with my fucking outfit for the award ceremony. I don't look fantastic. It's just, it'll help me blend in nicely and I won't look like an absolute prick. But these are some of the thoughts that helped me to get over my anxiety of dressing myself. I'll have a plastic bag on my head anyway. Before I begin the second part to this podcast, because I have a story that I don't want to interrupt. Let's have a little Ocarina pause. I'm going to blow into an empty bottle of sparkling water and you're going to hear an advert for some bullshit. All right.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  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.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans, and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms, and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  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.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans, and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms, and conditions apply. Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/TERMS. Subject to change.

• 28:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Not working for me this week.

• 28:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing, because this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I pay all my bills. This is what I do for a living. And by being listener-funded, it's how I have the time and space to research and show up and make this podcast each week, and to fail. I don't deliver a podcast each

• 28:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  week without several failed attempts beforehand, until I find the right groove. So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. So that's Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. And also by staying listener-funded.

• 29:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  It means I'm not beholden to advertisers. If advertisers step into the space, they can, but they can fuck off if they try and change the content in any way. Let's very quickly fulfil my contractual obligations and plug some gigs. Don't have any gigs left in 2025, but I do have a few gigs there in 2026, beginning in the end of January with the Waterford Theatre Royal. Then on the 31st of January, I'm at the Spirit of Kildare Festival there in Naas, good old Naas. Then February, up in Vickers Street, which is a Wednesday gig, wonderful Wednesday gig.

• 30:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  I like to do midweek Vickers Street gigs, the gigs that no one else wants, because I like lovely, quiet, relaxed Dublin gigs. Come along to Vickers Street there in February. Belfast, of course, that's nearly sold out on the 12th of February. Then we've got Galway Leisure Land, fucking Killarney, I'm up in the eye neck in February.

• 30:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  March, Carlow Cork. And then I've Limerick there in April, is it? Limerick University Concert Hall in April, come along to that. And then finally, my big, giant, massive tour of England, Scotland and Wales in October 26, which is ages away, but these gigs are setting out. Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, fucking Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham. Cannot wait for that tour. You'll get those tickets at fan.co.uk forward slash the blind by podcast. And then the Irish dates, my own website, the blind by podcast dot ie, assuming it's working, all right? If not, just go onto Google.

• 31:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Consider getting those tickets as Christmas presents, Christmas presents for a loved one, all right? And then what else?

• 31:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Recommend this podcast to a friend because social media is collapsing, all right? Social media has gone to shit. So if you love this podcast and you have a friend who you think might like it, just recommend it to them. From what I can tell, that's mostly how this podcast spreads. It's a real word of mouth podcast. So this week's podcast.

• 31:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'd planned on speaking about, about mental health, not just my mental health, but to speak about emotional wellbeing in a way that would benefit everybody. As you know, because I mentioned it about three weeks ago, a month ago, I got an EEG scan, which is, it's a scan of my brain activity. It's like a little, a snapshot of my brain activity. And it was done for me by a, a very kind neuroscientist called Dr. Michael Keane, who just wanted, he wanted to do a scan, a scan of my brain activity to see what the crack was. The scan showed a very stressed out brain,

• 32:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  a brain that is quite hypervigilant and doesn't experience the feeling of safety. And that also aligns with, with how I feel, that aligns with how I feel. I am, I'm fairly stressed out. I spend a lot of my day worrying about the future or ruminating about the past and not experiencing a feeling of, of calm, joyful safety in the present moment. Now that has fuck all to do with autism because I didn't always feel that way. I wasn't always

• 33:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  like this. I can remember a time when I was not like that. And that time was before the pandemic, before lockdown. We're coming into 2026 now, but the pandemic and fucking lockdown, that was what, three years ago? We don't talk about it. We don't talk about it.

• 33:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  A lot of us don't remember a lot of it, even though some of it was deeply intense. I'm talking about pre-vaccine, the daily terror, the daily terror of waiting for.

• 33:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  The figures, how many cases, how many deaths? We did that every day for months and it was legitimately terrifying. Those first months were... We were disinfecting our groceries because we just didn't know. The uncertainty, we did not know. How dangerous was this? Was it gonna kill us? Trucks full of dead bodies on the news in Italy. Every facet of our lived experience, the proximity that we must have towards other human beings, am I standing too close? Am I standing too far? Would being close to a stranger kill me or someone I love? We all experienced like terror. I experienced terror.

• 34:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  I had a number of, there was a number of times, especially the, the early pandemic, where I had a fear response that would have been... If you're rating fear between one and 10, I had a couple of 10s. I had a couple of 10s where I, I was living in a reality where somebody that I love or myself was gonna die. And to think that way was not irrational or it wasn't overreacting because this is the information we had at the time. The sudden change of wearing masks. Then there was the financial aspect of it. I mean, speaking for myself, I work in the entertainment industry. So for a while I was like, oh, my career is over.

• 35:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  My, I don't have a job. My career is over. How will I survive? Now, I'm only speaking about my experience because I'm an expert in my own experience, not someone else's. There's people listening and you literally, you lost someone very close to you, they're dead. It was awful, okay? That whole pandemic lockdown, it was awful. I, I genuinely, I haven't felt...

• 35:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  Calm and safe since I've been happy, I've been having crack, I've been getting on my life, but I do remember a different type of calm happiness before the pandemic. I remember that. And even as I speak about the pandemic and lockdown now, I'm kind of half tiptoeing around it because of the utterly insane messages, direct messages that I'm going to get on Instagram, from the few people that are left that are listening to this podcast, that when I bring up lockdown or masks or vaccine, it's so triggering for some people that I'm actually going to get abusive messages. I'm gonna get, "You pushed that vaccine. You told people to wear masks."

• 36:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because another section of the of the population retreated into conspiracy beliefs, into conspiracy beliefs. There are people who were just regular, everyday people, and then the pandemic hit, and they, the uncertainty, the feeling of uncertainty and terror, they found certainty within conspiracy beliefs. And now you have people who think that the earth is fucking flat, or that airplanes have chemtrails. And I would argue that these people are, they're also, they're traumatized. These people are traumatized. The thing that gives it away is,

• 37:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  whenever I'm contacted by these people, it's pure and utter rage. It's not measured argument, it's rage. If I get a fact wrong on this podcast, I say something, and I fuck up and get a fact wrong about whatever. I don't know, earlier on, I'm speaking about the history of hip hop. If I get a little fact wrong there, Someone will mail me and go, you're blind by that thing you said earlier. That was actually wrong. I'm going to correct you on that. And they're very nice about it and there's no emotion because A, they're right. B, they're not hurt by me being wrong. And C, they genuinely just want to help me.

• 38:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the conspiracy belief people, the anti-vax people, anti-science, anti-mask. They fly into a rage because their sense of identity, their, their self-esteem and identity has become, become tied up with this new belief system that gives them a feeling of safety and certainty. So when I contradict that, it's experienced as an attack. And that's not, that's not rational. And that's why I have a level of compassion for these people. I view them as they're traumatised. I'm also traumatised in a different way. Now, when you use the word trauma as well, be careful about using that word because not everybody's trauma is the same.

• 38:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when I'm mentioning trauma generally, I've had on this podcast before Dr Sharon Lambert, and she's an expert in trauma. And something she uses is big Ts and little Ts. So you've got your big T trauma that might be experienced by someone who's endured profound abuse or has been in an accident or experienced some huge level of violence or grief. That's your big T trauma. Then you've got your little T trauma, which is, that's me. I'm, I'm still able to get on with my life, but I'm on edge. I'm on edge all the time since the pandemic.

• 39:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that EEG scan that I got of my brainwaves, it showed it to me. It showed it to me and went, all right, that is the brain activity of a person who isn't switching off, who is not returning to a state of calm and safety. Now, I've been living with it for so long that it just became normal. And I'd have this vague memory of, jeez, I remember before the pandemic.

• 40:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  I used to just listen to music and go for walks and, and feel euphoria just being alive. Haven't felt that in a while. Haven't felt that since about 2019, to be honest. I wonder is it because I'm getting older? What's this about? My hunch, my own personal hunch, speaking for myself and my own lived experience. My hunch is that during the pandemic, I just had too many very big frights. My anxiety was up at 10, quite a lot for weeks on end, sometimes months, like during lockdown.

• 40:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I used to just wake up. I used to wake up in the morning sweating with heart palpitations as if my door was being kicked in. That's just how I would used to wake up every morning, every single morning in, for a lot of 2020. That's how I would wake up. Sheer and utter terror and then having to go, it's okay, it's okay. Sheer and utter terror because of, it's the uncertainty, the not knowing. How dangerous is this? How worse is it gonna get? When is it gonna end? And I've been on a slow curve since then. I'm still jumpy. There's still an underlying hum of terror.

• 41:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, I know you might be saying, look, the fucking Russia-Ukraine war, climate collapse. There's all these things bubbling away too.

• 41:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  But there was shit like that before the pandemic as well. It was ISIS. There was the consistent fear of terror attacks. The world has always been unsafe. But my lived reality, I'm fucking, I'm fortunate enough to be healthy. I have a roof over my head. My belly is full. My actual reality is one of safety. I'm, I'm actually safe. But most of my life is spent living in my head, worrying or trying to predict or create certainty in the future or ruminating about the past. And not doing a hell of a lot, hell of a lot of enjoying the right now.

• 42:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I don't like that because that feels hazy. It feels like going around on autopilot. I don't like getting on my bicycle and cycling into work. And I don't really remember the journey because I was worrying about the future or ruminating about the past or walking into a shop to get my groceries. And somehow I've just left the shop, gotten all my groceries, paid for them, but I don't really remember any of it. Because I was ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. And my, my brain scan showed that the snapshot of my brain activity was like, yeah, that's the lived experience, that type of lived experience, that type of brain activity you'd expect to see out of a person with that lived experience.

• 43:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that's not just me. I could pull you up a study, a 2025 study in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology. And there's a study that they did this April. And it's called Mental Health During After the COVID-19 Pandemic, A Longitudinal Study Over Forty-Two Months in Five European Countries. And what did it show? And like, this is a systematic review. This is a huge study. It just showed that the rates of anxiety, depression, cognitive impairment remain elevated globally in the post pandemic era. And loads of people reporting persistent symptoms of stress, rumination, poor attention and slowed down presence.

• 43:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  So it's not just me, it's a lot of people. And I'm guessing a lot of ye who are listening. Now, as I mentioned, I'm lucky enough and privileged enough to be able to say, I'm actually safe. My lived reality. My belly's full, there's a roof over my head. I'm healthy. That's all you need, that's all I want as a human being. I could get hit by a car tomorrow, that's always been the case. But that means that the suffering and pain that I'm experiencing on a daily basis and the stress, it's, it's not actually rooted in any objective reality. Now during the pandemic, different story. Because the nose is telling me my ma's gonna die if I give her a hug.

• 44:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  Legitimate cause for misery and severe anxiety. But now, no, I can live my life the way I could in 2019 before the pandemic.

• 44:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  So my brain was coping for too long, was in protective mode for too long. And some shit just didn't switch off. My brain is still scanning for threat, which means, you know, I receive a piece of bad news and instead of looking at it flexibly, I'll jump to the worst case scenario as by default. And being that way consistently throughout my day.

• 45:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  The bit about it that pisses me off the most is that it robs me of the present moment.

• 45:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it narrows my emotional palate. Feel a lot of anger, feel a lot of anxiety, a lot of irritation.

• 45:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  What I experience as happiness is when I have a rest from that. I'm not getting a lot of calm moments of joy, joy, joy being.

• 45:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Whatever the, I love being alive right now. This is fucking brilliant. That's joy. Many things bring different people joy. Music used to bring me daily latherings of joy. I used to go for a run and listen to tunes and experience euphoria, euphoric feelings of, of, my God, this song is incredible. I love this and isn't it so wonderful to be listening to it while I'm out having a run? I still go for the runs and I still listen to the music, but I don't get that explosion of joy. The thing is, that's actually completely reversible. It's reversible.

• 46:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the first radical way to make, to reverse that, and this, this is, there's a huge body of evidence in neuroscience that shows the mindfulness and meditation, regular daily mindfulness and meditation can retrain the brain, using neuroplasticity can retrain the brain.

• 46:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  To experience that slow calmness where joy is allowed in. I mean, why isn't joy coming in? Joy isn't allowed into the experience when you're scanning for threat. When you're consistently scanning for threat, worrying about the future, trying to control it, or thinking about the past, that's threat scanning. And joy isn't allowed in because joy is playfulness. Just think of a little fucking kid. No child is going to pick up the Lego and sit down and play while there's an adult shouting in the room. So, long story short, over the past three weeks, I've been meditating daily.

• 47:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, I've always chatted about meditation. If you listen to this podcast, I've always mentioned meditation. But I do it every so often, once a week, or when I felt like it, or when I was particularly anxious. Now, what I've been doing is I've been meditating every single day as practice, like I'm going to the gym, nothing fancy. Fifteen minute mindfulness meditations where I'm checking in with my body.

• 48:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  And most importantly, I'm focused on my breathing and making sure that my breathing is is full and diaphragmatic. That means when I breathe in through my nose, my stomach expands. And I do that daily as practice. I make sure I don't allow any excuse because of course what happens is my brain says, stop wasting time, you can't waste time and and take 15 minutes just to sit down. You need to work, there's a podcast that needs to get done, you need to work. But sure, of course, that's hypervigilant. That thinking is hypervigilant because I'm afraid, but I stop that, I don't allow it in. I get my 15 minutes every single day to do a basic mindfulness,

• 48:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  body check, breathing meditation, that's it. And the first five or six days were difficult. I was getting distracted, my body didn't want to do it, my brain didn't want to do it. And then after about five or six days, it starts coming back to me and I'm experiencing.

• 49:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  The level of calm, that a level of calm that I didn't think was possible. And my breathing slows down to a level where I'm, I'm wondering how I'm even alive. I'm breathing so slowly. And that happened after about six days. And then what started happening last week, and this was fucking fantastic because this is, like neuroscience says, it only takes like about maybe six weeks or eight weeks of this to really start, for the brain to start changing pathways.

• 49:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I was cycling home last week.

• 49:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  And lovely little winter sunset, clear sky.

• 50:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it was just that beautiful moment, like the sun is weak in winter. But whatever it was at this particular time of the evening.

• 50:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  The sky just illuminated in this dark orange. And it made the blue of the sky look green. And then it made all the trees look the most beautiful, brilliant green. And it was one of those fleeting moments of sunset that lasts maybe 30 seconds. And in those 30 seconds, the world as I was cycling home was just stunningly visually beautiful. And I experienced what's called a glimmer. I didn't just visually notice the beauty of the world around me. I didn't just look at it like I just described there. And was like, fuck, look at the color of the sky. Wow, that's beautiful.

• 50:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  This wasn't just a cognitive process. I felt a little tingle go through my body, a euphoric tingle. Where I was excited about being here now and seeing this. And I felt just thrilled to be alive. I felt a little spark of joy that was enough for me to go, fuck.

• 51:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Haven't felt that in a while. Fuck me, I missed that. Wow. And that's called a glimmer. And it's not esoteric, it's not spiritual, it's...

• 51:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  My brain felt safe. My brain experienced that calm feeling of, do you know what? Nothing about your environment is threatening. So chill the fuck out. It's okay. You're allowed to feel safe. This is safe. You're cycling home and the sunset is beautiful. Yeah, this is safe. You're alive. Enjoy it. I felt it. I felt that. And I haven't felt one since, but it doesn't matter. I felt that like, I think a week ago. It let me know. The work, the daily meditation, the daily meditation, it's fucking working. The neurons in the brain that fired together, wired together.

• 52:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  And during the pandemic, the terror neurons that were firing, that's a terrible way to describe whatever the fuck the neuroscience is. I don't, I'm not a neuroscientist. Anxiety was flying all over the gaff during the fucking pandemic. And it was happening for so long that the neurons that were firing together decided to wire together. Let's stick with a permanent state here of scanning the environment for threat, because threat is all around you. Now I'm rewiring that. I'm rewiring that through daily fucking meditation. And that glimmer, it's no different to, if you go to the fucking gym, if you go to the gym and you lift weights, or if you start running, right?

• 53:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  But let's just say the gym, you go to the gym and you lift fucking weights, right? And it's shit at the start and it's sore. And you're like, what's the fucking point of this? I'm just lifting heavy shit and I'm in agony the next day. Why the fuck am I doing this? And then after two weeks, you just notice, shit, my arms are way stronger than they used to be. Or you see evidence of a muscle that didn't exist before, or an awakening, an awakening of a part of your body which you weren't aware of before, but now you are because of the muscle where there wasn't one. And that little moment of, ah, progress, I see it. That's hugely motivational. And that's what I had last week with my fucking glimmer. It's like, it's working. It's fucking working.

• 53:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the next day then I said, okay, I'm gonna keep sticking with this fucking, meditating once a day and I'm gonna be very self compassionate and make my time to do it. But then what I also did is I decided, So I'm gonna have one meditation, non-negotiable, that's happening every single day, one meditation. But then what I'm also gonna do is, I'm gonna have two moments in my day where I'm making the conscious decision for this to be mindful. And what that means is emptying my head, having an empty head. So what I decided was, my cycle into work and my cycle home to work, that both of those spaces,

• 54:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's not just to cycle home, but those are my mindful moments of the day. And that means I'm not listening to headphones, I'm not gonna listen to music or listen to an audiobook, none of that. When I get on my bicycle, by the way, I got my bicycle fixed, alright? I no longer slam my testicles on the, on the crossbar. When I cycle anymore, I got the gears replaced, everything fully fixed. I had to go to the black market. I had to get a black market bicycle repair person who's operating the way that drug dealers operate through a covert network, uh, on, on the, the text messages, like he's selling crack. But I had to go, and that's a whole different lore. You have to go to an earlier podcast to understand this lore, brings neoliberalism into it.

• 55:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  The bike is fixed, I got it fixed on the black market. So anyway, cycling mindfully, I get on the bicycle, put my foot on the pedals. The first thing I do is I ground myself. I notice my feet are on the pedals. I notice the feeling of my hands on the handlebar. Then I begin pedaling, focusing only on what I'm doing. Then I start to breathe. And the breathing that I do is, we'll say three seconds in, and then six seconds out. And I do that throughout the whole journey. And that gets my,

• 55:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  if, if you do that, if you do the breathing properly, that just calms the brain down. But then as I'm cycling, when any thoughts come in, thinking about the future, worrying about the past, because the breath has me in that state of calm.

• 56:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can go, oh, there's a, there's a rumination loop there. Oh, I'm thinking about that opportunity I missed there from six months ago. Or that argument that I had there from three months ago, where I should have replied differently. That's a rumination loop and I'm not gonna go into that loop. I'm not gonna arouse the emotion of anger and irritation by going into that loop. Instead, I'm just gonna notice, oh, there's that rumination loop. Let's start thinking about my pedals, my feet on the pedals again. And let's start opening up my ears and listening to the sounds of the city. And noticing every sound that's there and noticing what's in front of me, the colour of the sky.

• 56:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  And just clocking all of this stuff and bringing it into my present experience. And that's my exercise. That's how I fucking cycle. And I do it until I get home and I do that twice a day. And I'm gonna do that until.

• 57:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it'll take a few more, more weeks, maybe a month. I'm gonna keep at that until I return to the, a base level of calm. And then, once I start experiencing, experiencing this calmness as, as a default. The way I used to be in twenty fucking nineteen, I was here before, you see. The way I used to be before the pandemic. Once I start experiencing that base level of calm. Then I'm gonna start revisiting my thoughts. Negative beliefs that I have about myself, other people or the world. Because why?

• 57:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, what do I want out of life? All, all I fucking want, all I want out of life. Like I was mentioning there, look, I'm off to London because I've been nominated for a giant award. That doesn't bring me happiness. That doesn't bring me a shred of happiness. It makes me feel strange and I appreciate it and it's wonderful. This doesn't bring me fucking happiness. No award nomination is even comparable. To the little glimmer of joy that I experienced. Because the sunset looked beautiful in that way and I'm not being pretentious legitimately. So.

• 58:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Awards are fucking nice. All I want, I wanna be able to earn a living doing what I love. Okay? Fair enough.

• 58:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  All I want from life is, is to, to be able to feel joy in the present moment. That's it. Sunsets are beautiful. Cats are beautiful. Rivers are beautiful. We're surrounded by beauty and I just want to be able to notice that and then experience the joy of it, the joy of the present moment.

• 58:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's all I want, to be calm enough, to experience the joy of the present moment and to be calm enough so that when emotions pop up and when suffering comes into my life, that I can respond to it and not react to it. I don't really want much more than that. And you're thinking, do you not want food and clothes and, and fucking a roof over your head? These things look after themselves when I have that sense of calm, but I don't want them as goals. That shit will look after itself. The goal is the calm. So this morning, because as you know, I came into my office today, it's a Sunday, came in very, very early.

• 59:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  I cycled in this morning, just after seven AM on a fucking Sunday and it was beautiful because I was the only person around and I was having my mindful cycle, wasn't listening to music, I was in the present moment on my bicycle. Just thrilled, thrilled to have a beautiful crisp, clear blue November morning where I'm looking at my breath, one of them mornings freezing fucking cold, looking at my breath. And I get into town, I, I, I lock away my bike and I start walking through town and I turn a right in into the bird shit district, which is Bedford Row in Limerick City Centre.

• 1:00:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you know the bird shit district from listening to this podcast, you know about the drama of the bird shit district where it's a pedestrian street full of trees, but there's thousands of starlings living in the trees and they shit all over the street. But starlings aren't there now because it's winter and there's no bird shit, there's no bird shit on the ground, so it's clear pavement.

• 1:00:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  And because I'd just done the mindful cycle, I was quite calm and I was in a mindful state, which means that I'm observing my surroundings, I'm looking, I'm not on autopilot. I'm connecting with my environment, noticing the smell in the air, the colour of my breath as it floats up towards the sky, the temperature, all of this crap. And I notice in the Bardshit district, the council had pruned the trees, the cunts. Their solution to the starlings, which are gonna return in the summertime, is to chop down their fucking trees. So they butchered the trees of Bedford Row, and pruned the bollocks off them.

• 1:01:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, if you know anything about trees, if you prune the bollocks off a tree, it's gonna grow back twice as strong and more dense. The council decided the best thing to do is, let's chop the bollocks off these trees, and then the birds will show up and go, "Uh-oh, better move on", that's not gonna happen. The birds are just gonna pack themselves tighter in a smaller space and have a more concentrated waterfall of shit, that's all that's gonna happen. But anyway, as I'm walking along the Bardshit district, in a very mindful state,

• 1:02:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  I look on the pavement and I see a little black dot. And my initial thought was negative, I thought, "Oh, fuck, that's not a little dead starling, is it? Because starlings are tiny, they're about the size of a golf ball. That's not a little dead starling, is it?"

• 1:02:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I walk closer, now the streets are empty, this is seven in the morning on a fucking Sunday, I'm the only person around, Sunday morning in town. And I walk towards the dead bird. A little black ball, and as I get closer, it's like, "Oh, fuck, great, it's not a dead bird", "What is it?", and I get closer, and went, "Oh, it's a bag of heroin."

• 1:02:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm standing now staring at a a little brown bag of heroin on the pavement of the Bardshit district.

• 1:03:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the first thing I say to myself is I'm thankful, I'm like,

• 1:03:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  I only noticed that now because I was in a state of mindfulness, because I was living in the present moment and experiencing my environment.

• 1:03:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I'd have been ruminating about the past or worrying about the future, I'd have walked past that, probably wouldn't even have noticed that the trees had been pruned. I'd have just walked past on autopilot with my negative thoughts, but no, today I was present enough to think that it was a dead bird and now I'm looking at a small bag of heroin.

• 1:03:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  It wasn't that small, it looked about half the size of a golf ball, big enough. The little corner of a baggie it was, plump. Brownie tan colour, I knew it was heroin.

• 1:03:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  A little elastic band tied around its neck.

• 1:04:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm just there staring at the bag of heroin.

• 1:04:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Nobody around.

• 1:04:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Thinking, what'll I do? Because I started to feel bad, you see.

• 1:04:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's a lot of addiction in Limerick City Centre, all right, and the Birdshit District in particular, drugs are sold there and I know a lot of the addicts. I know them because I work in the city centre, I see them every day and I regularly

• 1:04:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  approach the addicts and I say to them, do you want something to eat? Do you want something to drink? I don't offer them money because if you offer someone who's in active heroin addiction money, they'll spend it on heroin. But if you offered to get them food, they might eat the food. And the addicts of Limerick City Centre, they're familiar faces to me now, I've been buying them food for fucking years and I can tell at this point.

• 1:05:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know who's addicted to heroin because when I ask them what they want, they want a milkshake or a hot chocolate. And I can tell who's addicted to crack because they want chocolate or fizzy drinks. But when I was staring down at the bag of heroin, I thought to myself, fucking hell, that's one of theirs now. And I thought about what they must have, because it wasn't massive, but it was a decent sized bag of heroin. It wasn't tiny ones. It was, like I said, about three quarters of the size of a golf ball. I just thought to myself, what did the person have to do to get the money to

• 1:05:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  afford it? Because they're a street addict. And imagine them actually managing to get that on a Sunday, freezing fucking cold, and now they've lost it. And also knowing that someone who's addicted to heroin, when they don't have their fucking heroin, it's like an illness. It's like a sickness. They are, they're not just taking heroin because it feels nice for the fucking laugh. Their body now depends on the fucking heroin. So I'm thinking, fuck it, maybe I can find the person who owns the heroin. So I pick

• 1:06:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  the heroin up and put it into my pocket and start walking around going, I'll have a look around the spots now where the lads usually are. And if I see one of them, one of the lads who I know is on heroin, I'm going to walk up and say, did you lose your heroin? So I do that. And then as I walk around, I'm like, I'm walking around with heroin now. I've now got heroin in my pocket. So this is all right. Okay. This is enough heroin that I'd probably go to jail if I got caught with this. I'm walking around with heroin. What the fuck am I doing walking around with heroin? Shit, I gotta throw it in a bin. Fuck it. But I've seen how the dealers around here do this. Sometimes

• 1:07:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  one dealer will leave something there and then another one is there because the dealer with the cash is never the dealer with the drugs. What if I put this heroin into a bin, but the guards are secretly watching? And now it looks like I'm like a runner, a heroin runner for one of the gangs of the dealers. So now I'm kind of freaking out a bit, going, what the fuck do I do with this heroin that's in my pocket now? I'm fucked if I'm caught with this. And now getting rid of it might be difficult because I don't know if someone's watching. There could be guards up in the buildings with cameras and they're surveilling the area. What if I just walk around and if I see one of the addicts, I'll just drop it in front of them and then they'll

• 1:07:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  see it. But then that's dealing. Even though now I've given it to a person and even though I haven't received money for it, that's legally dealing. I'm not giving someone heroin. So then I think, do you know what? I'm gonna give the heroin to the police. I'm gonna walk down to Henry Street Garda Station. It's about five or 10 minutes down the road. I'm gonna walk down there, go in the door, I'm gonna ask to see a policeman and I'm gonna say, I found this heroin, please take it. And I go, no, that's not gonna end well. That's just mad. That's too mental. The guards aren't gonna take that pretty well. I'm gonna, they're gonna question me. Don't just show up to the Garda Station with a bag of heroin

• 1:08:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  and ask them to take it. That's not gonna go well. I could, I could end up in, in court, in the newspaper with that. Blind by Boat Club in court, defending why he arrived at the Garda Station with a bag of heroin. We don't need that. And then I start to think farther and I go,

• 1:08:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  how do I know this is safe heroin? How do I know this isn't laced with fentanyl? How do I know that this bag of heroin isn't the one that's gonna give the person who's addicted the overdose that kills them? So I make the decision that the, the, the smartest, most ethical thing to do is to get rid of it, to dispose of it safely. So I walk down to the bottom of Bedford Row.

• 1:09:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Down to the, the fucking Terry Wogan statue, the Terry Wogan statue by the river. Beautiful, nobody around.

• 1:09:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  Seven in the morning, fucking crystal freezing ice in the air. Seagulls sleeping, seagulls sleeping on the rooftops and little ghostly bits of fog wisping. And just on the surface of the Shannon River, I walk past Terry Wogan and reach into my pockets.

• 1:10:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I get the ball of heroin and I fuck it into the Shannon, I fuck it into the Shannon River. And watched it float off down towards the Atlantic. For a small, it nearly went towards a swan and I was thinking, oh for fuck's sake.

• 1:10:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  I hope the swan doesn't think that that's bread and then the swan eats heroin, but it doesn't. The heroin just floated off, floated off down, down the fucking, down the Shannon. So that's the morning that I've had.

• 1:10:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's the, that's the, that's the queer, the queer, the queer morning that I've had and it made me.

• 1:10:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  What struck me is that there was a psychologist called Lawrence Kohlberg, Kohlberg.

• 1:10:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  He studied morality, moral development in human beings. And he came about with a, a model of moral development, a three-stage. Model of how humans develop a, a sense of morality, starting in childhood. And my heroin journey there, I'd gone through all three stages of Kohlberg's moral development. The first stage, the first level is, is the pre-conventional morality. When, when a human is faced with a dilemma, this tends to be the morality that, that little tiny kids have. Will I get in trouble? Will I get hurt?

• 1:11:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I find the heroin and I go, oh fuck it, how, how is this going to impact me? How, how is this going to impact me? Am I gonna get arrested? Am I being a bad boy? Will I get in trouble? Self-preservation.

• 1:11:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I moved on to level two. And level two in Kohlberg's model is conventional morality. It's slightly more mature than pre-conventional morality. Conventional morality are the rules that we absorb from society, laws. I start thinking, do you know what? The right thing to do here is to bring it to the Garda station. To be, uh, that's the rule. I, I've found an illegal thing and the people who deal with illegal things are the police. So I'm going to bring the heroin to the police station. What would people think? What's the rule here? What does society expect me to do? That's level two of Kohlberg's model.

• 1:12:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's conventional morality. And then beyond that, you have your post-conventional morality. And post-conventional morality is where? It's level three of the moral development where the person uses empathy, imagination, critical thinking skills to arrive at a moral decision. And level three is very important because it's how you arrive at deciding what justice is and what propriety is and proportionality around justice. So when I start using empathy and thinking, this is somebody's heroin.

• 1:13:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm thinking, uh, using imagination and empathy to think about the addict who has lost their heroin. To think about, see, even though society, the rules of society would like me to label that person a junkie, to label them as a criminal, as bad, as doing wrong. See, that's level two. That's your conventional morality. Level two wants me to go, those people there are junkies, they're breaking the law, they're bad, they're doing a bad thing. So what I should do is give the heroin to the police and while I'm down there actually rat a few people out. But I don't, I don't feel drugs that way. I feel drugs as being a...

• 1:13:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a health issue and people who are using heroin and who are addicted to it, that's a form of self-medication for pain and trauma. And a system, a system that has failed that person. And I don't think that the criminalisation model where drugs are bad and everyone who uses drugs is a criminal, so lock them up. I don't like that level two morality thinking. That's more about, that's about control and efficiency.

• 1:14:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  So when you move to level three, which is post-conventional morality in Kohlberg's model, now you're thinking, you're using critical thinking, imagination, empathy, asking questions like, is this just? Is this rule just? What reduces harm? What protects dignity? What is ethically right, even if it's not socially approved? And that's when I start to think, someone's after losing their heroin. But then I go, hold on a fucking second. Because we live in a, in a society where drugs are criminalised and it's in the hands of the black market, there's no such thing as safe drugs, whether it be heroin or fucking

• 1:15:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  cannabis, because it's criminalised and in the hands of drug dealers, you don't know if any drug is actually safe. So the ethical thing for me to do there was just dispose of it, fucking dispose of it, throw it into the river. And I was reflecting and I was happy with myself because that was further evidence for me that my brain was healing. If I'd have been in an anxiety loop, I wouldn't have left level two there. I'd have obeyed the rules, anxiety would have taken over and I'd have been down at the Garda station with the heroin.

• 1:15:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  But instead I had the mindful calmness to engage empathy, critical thinking skills, to actually arrive at a solution that was safe for everybody. And I think too, that's what got me thinking about hip-hop sampling and Dapper Dan.

• 1:16:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  When I was speaking earlier about why what Dapper Dan was doing wasn't stealing, and why what hip hop artists, when they sample music that wasn't theirs, why that's not stealing.

• 1:16:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's operating at a level three of Kohlberg's morality. You see, at level two, don't sample music, don't, don't steal someone else's music because stealing is wrong. Don't steal Gucci's brand identity and make your own clothes and sell them because that's illegal and wrong. Instead, Dapper Dan and hip hop artists are thinking, actually, no, there's a very unjust system at play, and this system is called racism and classism. And this is actually, this should be illegal, but it's not, it's how the world operates.

• 1:17:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  So because that system is unjust, this system of racism works against people like Dapper Dan and African American hip hop artists, because it works against those people. They're going, no, I can float above that level two into level three. And now making clothes out of Gucci handbags and selling them, it's actually reclaiming power. It's actually a moral act. It's a fight against something that's a deep injustice within society. I'm gonna end it with a quote from James Baldwin, who was an African American writer who really,

• 1:17:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  that revolutionary, that revolutionary way of thinking is all through his writing. And he's got a book called Native Sons, Collection of Essays. The quote in it where he says, "The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it." And it's just beautiful because that, it predicts what would happen with, with hip hop and the likes of Dapper Dan. Like, if the system is fucking racist and the rules work against you and the laws work against you, well, who says you have to obey those fucking laws? Rip them up and make something new that works for you. All right, I'll catch you next week.

• 1:18:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  With another hot take, I don't know. I'll catch you next week. In the meantime, rub a dog, throw a bag of heroin at a swan, wink at a pig. Dog bless.

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