My Mental health plan for 2025

A diverse ramble about cormorants, the cailleach and external aproval 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

  Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep

• 0:41Speaker 00

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• 0:58Speaker 01

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• 1:43Speaker 01

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• 2:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Paw at the gaping maw of Farrah Fawcett's westward jaw, you jaundiced mares. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. Before I begin, just a quick word on my UK tour. Well, my tour of England and Scotland. So I'm doing a live podcast tour. It's my only big tour of 2025 in Scotland and England this June. And I know June is four months away, which is a long time, but there's not a lot of tickets left for this tour and I don't want people being disappointed. So I know it's January, but if you are coming to any of my gigs in England and Scotland, please get yourself

• 2:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  a ticket now. The dates, it's June, from June 1st, I'm in Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, London, Bexhill and Norwich. If you really want to come to those live podcasts, don't leave it too late because a load of, a load of the tickets went at Christmas time. And also my Australian tour, which is in April, I believe, Australia and New Zealand, that's fully sold out like months ago. And I know loads of you have been asking me to put on extra dates. I can't unfortunately, because that's just not how it works, especially when you go to Australia. My visa, all that shit, I'm only there for a certain period of time. So apologies to

• 3:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  anyone who hasn't been able to get tickets for Australia and New Zealand. But I can't wait. I can't fucking wait to go to, to be driving up and down the length of fucking England and Scotland in June. It's gonna be really gorgeous. I think I'm looking forward to York most because I've never been there and it's unique Viking history. And also, please suggest guests. If there's someone you want me to speak to or think I'd have good crack with in the respective cities that I mentioned, give me a shout on Instagram, Blind By Boat Club, and let me know who you'd like me to talk to as a guest. And If you'd like to nominate yourself, if you're doing something interesting and you reckon we'd have crack in a podcast, please by all means nominate yourself.

• 4:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  But one request I do have, especially to influencers. If you want to be on my podcast, please don't ask your followers to ask me. Because that results in terrible situations. Um, one gig in particular, I'm not gonna say where, I'm not, I'm not even gonna say the country. Let's just say Manchester, it was not Manchester, it wasn't Manchester. But let's just say Manchester for the crack. I was looking for a guest, I was looking for a guest in Manchester, not Manchester. I was looking for a guest and I'm like, people of Manchester, who would you like me to speak to in your city? I'm coming for a gig, who would you like me to chat to?

• 4:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then I keep getting all these requests on Instagram for this one person, for this one person. So I'm like, wow, the people of Manchester really want me to speak to this person? My God, look at all these requests, they're mad for this person. So what I do is I contact the person and say, would you like to be on my podcast? Loads of people are asking for you in Manchester. Unbeknownst to me, this person had actually, they'd asked their own followers to mail me to suggest them. And this created an illusion for me where I'm like, oh, my podcast listeners in Manchester who are coming to the gig, they, they really want me to speak to this fucking person because they keep asking for them.

• 5:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm a bit like, really? You want me to talk to this person? I'm sure they're lovely, but it doesn't seem like we had to have a lot in common or a lot to speak about. But if my podcast listeners in Manchester want this person, then I'm gonna give them what they ask for. So. It wasn't a great podcast. First off, the people in the audience were palpably like, "Why the fuck are you talking to this person? We're sick of this person. The last person we want is this person." I'm clearly picking this up because at points, the audience are groaning when my guest is speaking. And then as I speak to the guest, I'm like, "I don't have anything in common here. What the fuck are we supposed to talk about?"

• 6:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  So it wasn't a great night. It was a missed opportunity. No disrespect to the person involved. It's just, "We've fucking nothing in common, nothing to talk about." They didn't even know who the fuck I was. They were lying. They were, "This guest didn't give a shit about me, didn't know what I was doing and probably thought I was a lunatic." That was the worst part of it. This person didn't listen to my podcast, didn't know I wore a bag on my head, wouldn't have enjoyed my podcast even if they did listen to it, definitely thought I was a big, giant, weird cunt. I think at one point in the conversation, I went on a tangent about the role of a certain breed of terrier

• 7:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  in medieval taverns, a complete tangent. Now, the audience were like, "Great. This is what we're here for. We listen to the Blind by Podcast. We're here so that he goes on a tangent about the role of terriers in medieval taverns." But my guest wasn't happy with this at all. They were like, "It's not that deep. Too much information. What, what is this guy on? Drugs? Is this guy on drugs?" And as an autistic person, I have to, I have to avoid people with that worldview. I have to, I go about my life trying to avoid people who have that particular worldview.

• 7:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  People who view divergent thinking or curiosity or tangents, people who view these things with suspicion, as strange, as weird, as eccentric. I have to be very careful around these people. I have to, I have to mask incredibly heavily and just keep really quiet, make sure I don't start talking about the history of kettles. Because some people are like, "Wow, I didn't know that about kettles." And then other people are like, "What the fuck are you talking about that for, you freak?" Deeply unpleasant social rejection because I haven't.

• 8:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Adhere to the unspoken rules of small talk. My view, sometimes I feel like they think I'm taking the piss out of them. Why are you talking about the history of kettles? Are you making fun of me? Are you trying to say I'm not smart? Why are you talking about the history of kettles? I didn't bring that up. This is really strange. What's wrong with you? And that's quite a large portion of the population. And I have to kind of pretend to be someone else around people who view, who view the world that way. So some people, wow, I didn't know that about kettles. How interesting. And then other people, this information about kettles is so unexpected that I experience it as a threat.

• 8:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the latter, I consider these people to be terminally neurotypical. That's what I'd call them, terminally neurotypical. And they're entitled to be that way. And that's absolutely fine, but I need to stay the fuck away from them. And I certainly don't want one of them sitting across from me. When there's like 2,000 fucking people in the audience. And then the people in the audience were offended on my behalf because they're like, we're here, we're here. The reason we've come here is to listen to him go on a tangent about the role of a certain breed of terrier in medieval taverns. Just in case you're wondering, it's an extinct breed of terrier called the turnspit dog,

• 9:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  which went extinct, I believe sometime around the 1500s. And it was a dog that was bred to turn meat that was cooking on the fire. And it used to go, the dog used to go up into a little hamster wheel on the wall and just turn the meat. And the dog was bred to have the discipline to turn the meat all day long, but not eat it. I find that tragic. Fascinating, beautiful, and a little bit sad that humans have bred a dog. A dog to ignore its basic instinct of eating a big tasty lump of meat. And instead, the dog is happy to just run around in a hamster wheel for approval,

• 10:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  to get pats on the head. I'm haunted by that because it speaks to the human condition. Humans will deny their authentic self and live unfulfilling lives to instead chase the approval of other people or society. And I lose myself in the truth of that, in the memory of this long-dead terrier, whose only purpose was to turn a leg of lamb. And I'll probably bring that up in conversation in lieu of small talk, whereas what I'm, what I'm supposed to say is, "Oh, I love your jacket. That looks great on you. So, any plans for the weekend?"

• 11:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's my learned impression of small talk, which makes my skin fucking crawl. Doing that makes my skin crawl because I'm lying, I'm lying. What I'm, what I'm not lying about, what I'm genuine about is the history of kettles, or the history of the turnspit dog, a dog that is extinct because its job disappeared. So yeah, this particular live gig, Manchester, we'll call it, it wasn't Manchester, this particular live gig, the guest was not suited to the podcast whatsoever. They weren't mean, they weren't a bad person, nothing like that. They probably considered themselves to be ambitious and very good at networking.

• 11:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  They just, they just saw, "Oh, there's this, there's a podcaster coming to Manchester, playing a big venue and it's sold out, and this podcaster has 200,000 followers on Instagram. That's all I give a fuck about." And then they basically created an artificial campaign where their followers came to me saying, "Please get this person on the podcast from Manchester, you're gonna get along so well." It was bullshit, it was all fabricated. It's never gonna happen again, cause I'm gonna be like an eel watching out for that shit. It didn't happen in Manchester. It wasn't Manchester. That's completely hypothetical. And I'm not gonna tell you the year it happened.

• 12:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  But yeah, if you're a fucking influencer, or a comedian, or whoever the fuck you are, and you wanna come on my podcast, you can ask me directly, ask me directly. But please, please, don't ask your followers to ask me on your behalf. Cause to be honest, if you did do that, you and me aren't gonna get along with each other. We're not gonna get along and have crack, because I wouldn't do that. I, in a million years, if there was a podcast that I wanted to be on, right? In a million years, I, I wouldn't ask my followers on Instagram to spam that podcaster and say, "You gotta have Blind Boy on." Do you know why I wouldn't do that?

• 13:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Cause it's, it's a bit fake. It's a small bit fake and sneaky and feels a bit inauthentic. I'd only ever go on to someone's podcast if they genuinely wanted to speak to me. Because then, if two people genuinely wanna speak to each other, then you'd put on a good show, you'd put on a good podcast. It, it's about the person fucking listening. So yeah, my tour of fucking Scotland, my tour of Scotland and England in June, I can't wait. And I wanna talk to wonderful, fascinating, interesting people. So please suggest those people to me. And you're more than welcome to pitch yourself, just do it to me directly, please.

• 13:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  So yeah, my tour of England and Scotland this June, come out ye cracking tens. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Usually I say, if this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode, or some people even go back to the start, to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. But I have a feeling, I think this week's podcast, I have a feeling that this week's podcast will be accessible and not too strange. You won't need to be a ten-foot Declan to listen to this episode, or a steaming Quiva, or a custard Bunter. It's the first week of February, and there's a deafness.

• 14:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Difference in the quality of light. You're not really noticing the longer evenings just yet. But that faint winter gloom is disappearing. And that's

• 14:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  that optimistic shimmer of spring is just subtly creeping in. I noticed it yesterday when I was out having my run.

• 14:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I looked around me and I was like, something's different. Ah, the light is more intense, brilliant. We're coming into spring, fucking fantastic. Now, it's too early. It's too early for buds to be appearing on trees or even for flowers to be sticking their heads up yet. I was running down by the river. The river in Limerick. And there were lots of people out walking their dogs, having crack. Bank holiday Monday. And I was loving this run. I was listening to good music. And I wanted to know what time it was. But I didn't want to reach into my pocket. I didn't want to reach into my pocket, take out my phone and then look at the time on my phone. So I decided, I'm gonna ask Siri what time it is.

• 15:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  I had my earbuds in, so I'm running along and I say, hey Siri, what time is it?

• 15:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Nothing.

• 15:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, now you can hear me. Now he can fucking hear me.

• 15:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Hey Siri, what time is it? I said a second time. Nothing. So now my wonderful peaceful run

• 16:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  is being a bit disrupted and becoming emotional now. I was getting the runner's high. I was listening to music. I'm like, I don't want to fuck with this by taking out my phone. I didn't want to look at the phone screen to see the time in case like an email comes up or a text message comes up. I just want to run, but I need to know what fucking time it is. Now I've just asked Siri twice, what time is it? And she can't hear me because I'm running. The wind is going against my face into my earbuds and they obviously can't hear me over the wind. But I'm annoyed, so I'm not thinking critically like that. But I'm angry now. I'm angry with Siri. So as I run. There's a bunch of dog walkers up above ahead of me, right?

• 16:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm real pissed off now, so now I scream. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" And then in the corner of my eye, I see, I see a woman jolt, she panics. And I can see, I can see her lifting her wrist up towards her face. Cause someone just screamed, "What time is it?" But as I looked to the right, she just let go of it. This fucking huge Saint Bernard dog. She, she ate a Saint Bernard on a fucking leash. Massive fella. And because I'd screamed, "What time is it?", she just freaked out. She let go of the fucking dog to read her watch.

• 17:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  But now the dog is barreling towards a lot of swans on the fucking river. So now the dog is, "Rar, rar, rar, rar", huge big Saint Bernard bark, running towards the fucking swans. Then the swans are like, "No way buddy", so the swans are standing up, doing their hissing shit. The dog gets freaked out by this. Something, something about his anxiety, the tone of his, his bark changes. And now every fucking dog in the vicinity is involved. There's two black labradors involved now. Fucking chaos, absolute chaos, swans, dogs. I'm running past just screaming, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was shouting at my phone." So I ran away, I kept running. I'm like, there's nothing I can do.

• 18:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I couldn't have predicted that, I couldn't have predicted that.

• 18:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's what happens when you get emotional. I, I shouldn't have gotten frustrated with Siri. You know, I asked her once, twice, third time. Now, now I'm angry with a fucking, with my, my robot assistant. And I'm screaming at her by the riverside. And then the poor woman who had the Saint Bernard. She might have grown up in a house with a father who used to shout. She wasn't thinking, she, she wasn't trying to tell me the time. She just heard a man, a grown man shouting, "What time is it?" The fright of that triggered her body into looking at her watch and letting go of a Saint Bernard. And like, I can't go back, there's nothing I can do, I just have to move on. But as I'm running on, I'm distracted now. I'm not enjoying my run, I feel, I feel foolish.

• 19:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  I feel guilty for causing all that chaos with the swans and the dogs. I'm beating myself up for, for getting so angry that I'm losing the rag in public, that I'm shouting in public. I'm still running alongside the river and I decide, you know what? I'm gonna stop this run and I'm gonna sit down on the bench over there. And I'm gonna do a quick five-minute meditation. Not even a meditation, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna check in with my body, do a full body scan and a little bit of breathing. And I start to think about just marveling at the ecosystem of emotions there.

• 19:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  The butterfly effect of my anger triggering the threat response in a woman, a Saint Bernard dog, a swan and two black labradors. So after I'm grounded and my breathing is nice and calm and I'm noticing the, the wonderful quality of the, the air by the river and the feeling of my feet on the footpath. I calmly get up and I walk, I don't run. I walk some of the rest of the river. I'm in a quieter part now, covered by trees. It's just myself, there's nobody else around.

• 20:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  And suddenly I stop walking, cause about 20 feet in front of me is a cormorant, black sea bird with this snake-like head. But Limerick, Limerick is at the mouth of the Shannon, it's near where the river opens up into the ocean, so we get quite a lot of cormorants, even though we're technically on the river. But this cormorant is not quite blocking my path, but if I kept walking, I'd disturb him. And he's doing that cormorant thing, a dance. He's got his wings out really, really wide. If I saw it at nighttime and it was a silhouette, it would scare the living shit out of me. These two wings stretched out wide, like Christ on the cross of X.

• 21:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  And usually the cormorants do this out in the water on a rock and it's a way for them to dry their wings, but this cormorant was doing it. On the footpath inland, where you'd never normally see them doing it. And I knew this was strange. It was, it wasn't typical Cormorant behaviour. I'd never seen this before. Now, because I'm all grounded, because I had my little five-minute meditation, I've checked in at my emotions, I'm nicely in the present moment and noticing everything around me. And then I have this wonderful moment of synchronicity. I speak frequently on this podcast about the, the value of mythology, not just Irish mythology, but any mythology

• 21:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  and folklore which is indigenous to the land. That folklore and mythology tends to hold stories about the land that are very relevant. And this is what was happening here when I saw this Cormorant outstretching its wings on the first few days of February. Now, before I continue, I'm not saying anything supernatural is happening here, or magic, or divine, or anything like that. What I'm gonna do is, as a writer, as a curious writer, I'm gonna describe to you how Irish mythology is able to explain what's happening in nature to me. And what I have to do is read the landscape and read the animals, which is

• 22:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  what our ancestors had to do when writing didn't exist. So the first of February, it's the beginning of what's known as Imbolc. Now, the first of February is also Saint Brigid's Day, but I'm not gonna be dealing with Christian shit here. The reason the first of February is Saint Brigid's Day is because it was obviously a very important date, way before Christianity, possibly going back thousands of years. So the first of February marks Imbolc, the beginning of spring. So Imbolc means in the belly. So from the first of February, the winter is pregnant with summer, the birth of the new

• 23:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  light. In fact, there's a, there's a beautiful theory that Newgrange, Newgrange is this, this big, huge passage tomb up in Meath in Ireland, and Newgrange is between four and 6,000 years old. So it's very difficult to know what Newgrange meant to people back then. But one thing we do know is New Grange was designed in such a way that on the 21st of December, the shortest day of the year, th- this structure was built so that on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the sunlight travels perfectly down this shaft and illuminates a central bowl, a central bowl in a chamber. So whoever the fuck built it four, six thousand years

• 23:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  ago, they knew what they were doing with the shortest day of the year. And one theory is that they were trying to get the land pregnant with the sun. That's what they're doing. That shaft of light into the bowl, that's impregnating the land goddess. And then on February 1st, Imbolc, in the belly, the new light is about to be born. Spring. The thing that you'll, you know, you'll notice at this evening when you walk outside, there's a different quality of light. There, there's more light. But also within Irish mythology, there's like two goddesses of the land. There's the Kailak and there's Bridget. And not Saint

• 24:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Bridget, who was probably a real person, but pre-Saint Bridget goddess Bridget. And in pre-Christian cyclical time, the year is understood to be this, this consistent ha- this handover of power from the Kailak to Bridget, to back to the Kailak, to Bridget again. These two land goddesses. Bridget is the goddess of spring and summer. She represents warmth, light, creativity, fertility, abundance, healing, inspiration. Bridget is portrayed as a young woman, a woman in her youth. But then you have the other goddess, the Kailak.

• 25:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the Kailak represents storms, ice, frost, darkness, decay, death, autumn, winter, wisdom, sovereignty of the land. And the shaping of the land, the Kailak makes mountains and lakes. But ultimately, the Kailak decides when she hands power over to the younger goddess, over to Bridget. Now, what Irish mythology says about the first few days of February, right? The start of Imbolc.

• 25:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Kailach, the divine serpent hag. If the first few days of February of Imbolc are actually nice, if the first few days are nice days and it's clear and sunny, that's actually a terrible sign. Because that means that the Kailach has made the day nice and sunny so that she can go out and collect firewood because she's not ready to hand power over to Bridget yet. So if it's a sunny, clear day on the first few days of February, then winter is gonna last well into March. It's gonna be shit weather well into March because the Kailach isn't ready to hand power over yet to the goddess Bridget.

• 26:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  But if, if, if the first few days of February are horrible and windy and stormy, that means that the Kailach is actually asleep and spring is gonna come early. If you're an American and this reminds you of Groundhog Day, yes, Groundhog Day comes from this shit. But here's the thing, this, this mythology, these aren't just nice stories. So I meditated and I was out by the river and then I was stopped in my tracks because right in front of me was a cormorant outstretching its wings by the riverbank where I never usually see it. Now, as I've explained before with Irish mythology, supernatural beings like the Kailach,

• 27:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  they don't present themselves to us in this reality because they live in the other world. The other world isn't heaven or hell. The other world is like a mirror of our reality. It's a parallel dimension. So when demons or fairies or entities from the other world in Irish myth, when they present themselves, when they show themselves to us in this spectrum of reality, they usually present themselves as animals. So they shape shift into animals. So what we're looking at is the animal, but in the parallel mirror reality of the, of the other world. Simultaneously, the fairy or the demon or the god or the goddess is in its true form. So when I was out for my run, it was a beautiful day, very, very clear.

• 27:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it was the second, second of February. So that's a bad sign. And after I meditate, suddenly this cormorant, this cormorant is in my path with its wings outstretched. Cormorant is a wonderful bird, black, large wings, snake-like head. It's also indigenous to Ireland. It's indigenous to that part of the river where I was. It's been there for, for fucking thousands of years. Whatever I saw the cormorant doing, it's supposed to be doing just that because it's in its ecosystem. Guess what the cormorant's name is in Irish? The Kailak Dove, the Black Hag, like the Morrigan is the Raven or the Crow. In, in the Irish language and Irish myth, the Kailak, she will present herself to us.

• 28:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  She will shape shift to us as the cormorant. So the Kailak presented herself to me mythologically. Now let's move into, into science territory, right? Not mythology, fucking evidence-based science. Cause obviously I spotted this connection in the moment. So as soon as I got home, I went, I went researching like a lunatic into cormorant behaviour. Trying to figure out what, what did I see? What was that cormorant doing? Why was it strange? So it was a beautiful, clear day. The cormorant was on the, the riverbed on my side where you, I, I see cormorants all the time. They're fucking never there. Last week we had Storm Owen. So the riverbed is in shit, like utter fucking shit. Mostly tiny, tiny twigs.

• 29:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  That storm ripped up the river and shook all the branches and knocked off big boughs. But also thousands and thousands of tiny little sticks and twigs are littering all that riverbed. What I most likely saw was a male cormorant. And what the male Cormorants are doing right now, February 1st, they're building nests. The male Cormorants are building nests. Well, specifically, they're collecting the twigs, the twigs for the nest to be built. And what they also do is they do their little dance. They do their outstretched wing Cormorant dance when they're collecting sticks for the nest to impress the women, to impress the females.

• 30:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's what I witnessed. In the land of evidence-based local reality, I saw an indigenous bird in its, in its ecosystem, in its habitat, doing what the fuck it's supposed to do, collecting twigs on the 1st of February and giving a little, a little mating dance. But now we shimmer over to Irish mythology. And what I, what I witnessed is the Kailak, she brings storms. She, she's the goddess of storms. And I witnessed the Kailak walk amongst the debris of the storm that she created in a beautiful, clear day as she collected sticks. She collected sticks and that told me, she told me, I'm not ready to hand power over

• 30:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  to Brigid yet, winter is gonna last until March. So that's the way you can, that's the story that the landscape and the Cormorant told me. And that's, that's the oral tradition. That's, that's the landscape holding our stories. If, if it was a thousand years ago and I was a fucking Druid or a poet or whatever, I'd be going straight back to the village and saying, I was out for a walk and the Kailak presented herself and I saw her collecting her fucking firewood. And I'm telling you, don't let those cows out the pasture because winter, winter's gonna be long. And as the village lunatic, I'd have done my job there as, as a Druid or a poet.

• 31:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  The king would have given me a free pig, but I'd go one further where, you know, all I'm doing here is that a Cormorant fucking presented itself to me in, in its typical behaviour, belonging to its ecosystem and environment. And there's two, two ways to read this. There's two different ways. There's the Irish mythology way and there's the evidence-based science way. So before I met the Cormorant, there was that incident. There was the incident with the fucking screaming at Siri. The Saint Bernard attacking the swans, the chaos of my run. Because of the emotion of anger, because the emotion of anger took over. And then I made the conscious decision to ground myself and meditate for five minutes. To calm myself down.

• 32:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't have noticed the cormorant. I wouldn't have seen the cormorant. I'd have been running. I'd have been pissed off about what happened with the fucking Saint Bernard and that woman. I'd be experiencing shame. I'd be living in my head and I'd be running. I wouldn't notice the cormorant. The cormorant would have flown off because it sees me running towards it. But because I'd chosen to meditate, ground myself, check in with all of my senses. I was more in tune with my environment and the, and the present moment. And only because of that, did I calmly walk upon that cormorant in the middle of its mating dance.

• 33:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  And was I able to notice it, pause, breathe, watch? And then critically think about it? And have that wonderful present moment, reality where I'm connecting it with Irish mythology. That shit only occurred because I'd grounded myself and I was living in the present moment. We call that mindfulness. That's all that is. That's mindfulness. I did a quick mindfulness grounding exercise. And the reason I practice mindfulness is, is so that I can have wonderful, little, beautiful, meaningful moments like that in my day. That's all I want. Little moments of meaning. And what I don't want is to be controlled by emotions like anger.

• 33:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  That make me scream, what fucking time is it Siri? And then I have to ruminate on the consequences of that. No, I'd prefer to be mindful and present. But in a manuscript written in the 10th century called Carmox Glossary. It mentions a type of mental state that the poet or druid must be in, in order to receive inspiration. And this state, it was known as imbas forasni. And it was protected by law. And what I love about that is. This is a 10th century manuscript where it shows that Irish society, they're speaking about poets here, so artists.

• 34:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what's being valued isn't necessarily the thing that the poet or artist creates, but rather their mental state, their flow. Is this artist in flow or not? And the glossary, it describes different ways that Irish poets enter this state of imbasforastney. To me, it sounds a bit, it sounds very mindful. Now, the first, the first stage of entering imbasforastney is that the poet has to chew a piece of raw flesh from a pig or a dog or a cat. Now, personally, I reckon they're talking about magic mushrooms there. Magic mushrooms that grow all over Ireland. I reckon that's what that's referring to.

• 35:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wonder was there a slang term for magic mushrooms which sounded like the raw flesh of a cat or a dog? Like, think of it this way, like, right now, people go to raves. And when they go to raves, they take ecstasy tablets. But most people call these ecstasy tablets yolks. That's the slang term for ecstasy, it's yolks. So you go to a rave and you take a couple of yolks. In 500 years' time, if someone is writing about young people going to raves now, there might be a historian and they're like, "People went out dancing and they ate eggs. They ate the yolks of eggs." They could easily misinterpret the slang term yolks

• 35:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  and assume that people went and went out to a rave and ate raw eggs. So this 10th century manuscript that says that the first stage of entering divine poetic inspiration is to eat the raw flesh of a cat, because that's going to do fuck all. I'd, I'd say they were calling magic mushrooms cat's arse or something. And then a thousand years later, we think they're actually eating cats. But then the second stage of imbasforastney is chanting, chanting over and over. Chanting is, is meditation, then sensory deprivation, and finally entering a, a dream state. And when in this dream state, that's when visions or inspiration is revealed to the poet

• 36:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  or the druid or whatever you want to call them. But I'd argue.

• 36:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  That little five-minute meditation that I did in the river, which allowed everything to slow down for me, for me to be calm, happy, engaging with my environment in the present moment. I entered a type of Imbasvarastani there, and the calm playfulness of that, the calm playfulness of that mindfulness, allowed me to notice the cormorant, to notice that cormorant and let it tell me stories about the fucking landscape and about the seasons. Thousand years ago, oh yeah, I entered Imbasvarastani and the Kailak presented herself to me in her shape as a cormorant, and I saw her collecting sticks for her fire, and winter is gonna last for longer. And I'm speaking about this shit.

• 37:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's about biodiversity, it's about biodiversity and climate change. I was relieved, I was relieved and happy to see that the cormorant was behaving in a way that was appropriate to how it should be behaving right now in its natural ecosystem. Whatever's going on in that little cormorant's body, the cormorant was able to go, oh yeah, it's the first of February, better do my nest mating ritual shit. And because of that, this story, these stories that are thousands of years old, it made sense. The land told me the story, the same way it did last year and the year before that and the year before that, going back thousands of years.

• 38:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I'm consistently on the lookout for this, I'm consistently on the lookout for our stories and myths becoming irrelevant because of a change in climate. You see, one day, the wind will be different, or the soil will be too warm, or the air will be too warm, and that cormorant won't recognise February 1st as February 1st. And it won't behave that way because the cormorant thinks it's a different time of year because of a change in climate, and then the stories become irrelevant, the stories lose meaning. When our stories, when the stories that are indigenous to this landscape stop making

• 38:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  sense, then it means that the climate is collapsing, the biodiversity is collapsing. When the cormorant doesn't know it's February 1st, that impacts everything, from the fish that the cormorant eats, to the fly that the fish eats. Just like me getting pissed off by a robot and a fucking Saint Bernard attacking a swan. That was an ecosystem of sorts, a dysfunctional one. These are their stories about nature, that's all it is. Mythology and folklore told our ancestors very valuable information about their survival. What is winter? What is autumn? Can you plant your crops? Can you not plant your crops? And respect the cormorant and its habitat and its behaviour and leave it the fuck alone

• 39:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  because in a separate shimmer of reality, that cormorant is the goddess of winter who brings storms. So, respect that animal. And, you know, I mentioned, if the kailak presents herself on the first three days of February, if the weather is nice because she's collecting firewood, then we will have a long winter. Well, the length of that winter can then be extended even more because the mythology tells us when it comes to the first three days of April, which are known as the days of the brindle cow. I speak about this every single year I mention this. The days of the brindle cow, it's known as. There's an Irish folklore story about a cow, about an old cow, and it gets to the end of March and the first day of April.

• 40:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then the old brindled cow, who's a little bit cocky, walks out into the field and goes, "First day of April, fuck winter." It's summer now and give a fuck about winter. Winter can go fuck itself. And then the kailak, winter, is listening and says, "The fuck did that cow say? Fuck winter? Fuck me? Fuck me?" And then the cow says, "Yeah, fuck you, kailak. Fuck winter. Bridget's here now, it's the summertime, give a shit about you anymore. I'm gonna go out and eat some grass and get some sun." She teases the kailak. The old cow teases the kailak. Now, the kailak at this point, the kailak has already decided it was gonna be a long winter, but it's the first of fucking April, like, it's the first of April, she's after drawing it out enough.

• 40:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  But when the Cailach hears this cow insulting her, the Cailach goes to Bridget, who she's just handed over. She said, now it's time for summer, Bridget, here you go, I'm handing power over to you. When the Cailach hears this cow taking the piss out of her, she goes to Bridget and says, hold on a minute, Bridget, I know it's your, it's your turn now and it's summertime, but is there any chance you can give me the first three days of April, just for the crack? So I can teach this cow a lesson about how dangerous I am. And then Bridget is like, fuck it, it's summertime, but you know what? We're both goddesses of the land and I've got your back. Okay, Cailach, I'm gonna give you the first, the first three days of April.

• 41:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  Meanwhile, this old brindle cow who's cocky, the brindle cow was out in the middle of the field going, ah, lovely summertime, summer, it's gonna be easy now all summer. I'm gonna start eating grass and I'm gonna go enjoy the sun. Oh, this is beautiful. But that brindle cow doesn't know that the Cailach just did a deal with Bridget. So now the first three days of April, the Cailach is real angry and she fucking, she brews up a massive freezing storm that skins this cow, batters this cow and kills her. And the poor old cow was going, I thought it was April, I thought it was April. And the Cailach is like, I fucking decide when it's April. I decide when it's summer, that's my choice.

• 42:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm after taking three days and you're dead. I'm, I'm teaching you a lesson. And then after those first three days of April, which are known as the, the days of, of the brindle cow in Irish folklore, after those three days, then the Cailach goes to Bridget and says, thanks for that, Bridget, I had my crack. Now I'm gonna hand power over to you. Now, now you can work away with your summer shit there and have some crack. I know that story because my ma used to tell it to me. My ma used to say to me, wear your jacket the first three days of April, it's gonna be cold. Think of the days of the brindle cow. But to our ancestors, that story was life or death. Before the monasteries, before monasteries in Ireland from the fifth, in the fifth century, Ireland didn't have towns.

• 43:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  So people lived pastorally, people moved with cattle. Cattle were hugely important. And there was a practice in Ireland known as bullying. Now, this existed up until the late eighteen hundreds. But there was a practice in Ireland called bullying, where people would move with their cattle to up mountains. So people would drive their cattle up mountains to take advantage of better grass. And they'd do this in the summertime. And people used to move their cows for bullying around the start of April. Now, cows were currency. Cows were people's livelihood, it's really important. And there was competition to get the best spot on the mountain to bring your cows to eat the grass and to stay there for the summer.

• 43:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  So sometimes people would try and leave early with their cows, leave early to get the best spot on the mountain. But occasionally, the people who left earliest, like the first day of April,

• 44:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  they risked taking their cattle out of shelter, out into the open, and then suddenly a storm comes and kills their cattle. It was a real risk. So this story about the days of the brindle cow, it exists, it existed because it was a matter, a matter of life or death, survival for our ancestors who moved around with cows. Don't be tempted to move your cows up the mountain on, on the first three days of April. Have you not heard the story of the brindle cow? No, I haven't. Tell it to me. And last year, on that same stretch of river where I saw the Cymru.

• 44:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I took a photograph of this and put it on Instagram, but then I deleted it because people were disturbed by it. I got too excited. But last year, it was like the sixth of April. I was jogging along that river and I looked into the water and what did I see? A fucking big cow, bloated, floating upside down in the river, dead. And it was sad, but also I was happy to see the dead cow floating in the river because I thought the days of the brindle cow. And I looked right across the river and right across the river is a farm, it's pasture. So the mythology held true.

• 45:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Some cow went to the edge of the river to get lovely, lovely fucking April the first grass. And a terrible storm blew the cow into the river and now I was looking at its dead body. And I'm like, that's it, that's the days of the brindle cow. I am staring at the corpse of a cow who was killed by the first three days of April. Isn't that amazing? I'm happy to see that the ancient mythology is aligning with the ecosystem. This is why this shit is important to me. It's not just beautiful stories. It's our art informing us about the, the climate. And when the stories stop making sense, then the, the ecosystem is collapsing. So let's have a little Ocarina pause now. I'm in my office. I haven't moved to my brand new office just yet. That's gonna start happening tomorrow.

• 46:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  So hopefully next week's podcast is gonna be coming from my brand new office. I can't wait to get into my new office. It's smaller, but as I mentioned last week, I'm gonna have a window to look out of. And the reason I'm moving is I've been told that I can move to a quieter floor where there's less people milling about all day. Past six months, I've been having to wait till like after five o'clock when everyone's gone home in order to record this podcast. And I don't wanna do that. I, I wanna do a nine to five. I got this office so that it could be a nine to five job. So I'd like, I'd like the collective energy of the podcast listeners, the collective psychic energy of the podcast listeners to be keeping me in your mind this week.

• 46:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I hope that the new floor upstairs actually is quieter and there's not like one fucking accountant up there who coughs all the time or something. Cause if I can get a nice peaceful office, I'm gonna start writing my next book too. So let's have a little Ocarina pause. I've got my base Ocarina here. So we'll give this a blow. This is very friendly to the ears of dogs.

• 47:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a bit condy.

• 47:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Come on.

• 47:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  There we go.

• 47:29Speaker 03

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• 51:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the bass, Ocarina. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If this podcast brings you entertainment, mirth, merriment, solace, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. Because this is my, this is my 100% full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. It's how I rent out this office. It's how I feed myself. It's how I pay my electricity bills. Without regular patrons, this podcast wouldn't exist. So, thank you to everybody who is a patron. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month.

• 52:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. The person who is paying, they're paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. I get to earn a living. I don't put out exclusive content for people who are paying. Everyone gets the exact same podcast experience, whether you, whether you pay for it or not. And I get to earn a living from doing what I absolutely love, what I adore. I've turned up every week for eight years with one simple promise. I'll endeavour to speak about whatever I'm genuinely passionate about that week. Whatever I, I really care about and what I actually want to speak about.

• 53:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And whatever is emotionally congruent with what I feel, that's what the podcast is going to be about. I don't think about how popular the podcast is going to be. I, I don't even, I don't consider these things. It's about the process. And also advertisers can't come in. Advertisers can't fucking come in here and tell me, speak about this trending subject. Have this platform, this guest, who's a fascist, because we'd like loads of views from that. Advertisers can fuck off. So, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. And if you have an iPhone, don't sign up on the Patreon app on your iPhone, because Apple will take 30%.

• 54:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  So, try and sign up to the Patreon on a desktop. Or just go to the browser on your iPhone if you have an iPhone. Okay, a couple of gigs. I'm not gonna mention gigs that are sold out, all right? So, Drogheda Crescent Hall on the 21st of February. Belfast, the waterfront on the 28th of February. March, the Ainek down in fucking Killarney. Come along to that, Killarney's always a great gig. Thursday, the 13th of March, Cork Opera House. Australian tour sold out. Then, April 23rd, Limerick Concert Hall, University Concert Hall. Biggest ever fucking Limerick gig, can't wait to do that.

• 54:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then June, my England and Scotland tour. Starting from the 1st of June. Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, London, Bexhill and Norwich. You can go to fain.co.uk forward slash blindboy for those tickets. And like I said, that fucking UK tour is setting out fast, so don't be disappointed, you cracking tens. I wanted the second part of this podcast to be about mental health while also staying on theme. So we were speaking about the, the Kailak, the goddess of winter. And how this goddess of winter, around February, she decides to hand power over to Bridget, the goddess of summer and spring.

• 55:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when, when the Kailak is handing power over, she recounts this, this big sad poem. And the poem is called "The Lament of the Hag" or "The Lament of the Kailak". And it's this, it's, it's, it's a lament, it's this poem from the perspective of, of an older woman who is approaching death, she's approaching death. And she's talking about the wonderful life that she had. And all the husbands she had and all the kings that she had. And all the wine she drank and the fun that was had.

• 56:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  And she recounts this, this wonderful, exciting, adventure-filled life that she lived, but now she's old. Now she's old and she has to see the younger, younger women living this life. And now she's old and she's ready to die. And she recounts this lament, this poem, on the edge of a cliff off the coast of Kerry or Cork, down near the Bair Peninsula, on a rock. And she, when she recounts this poem, she's waiting for her father to come and take her. Her father is Manon MacLeir, the god of the sea, who you'll remember from about three podcasts back, where I spoke about Irish myth and

• 56:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  quantum physics. I spoke about the voyage of Bran, and how on Bran's voyage, they went out to sea, and they met the god of the sea who was in a chariot. Well, that's the Kailax father, that's her dad. So she's waiting for her dad to take her at the end of her life, and then she hands power over to Bridget, this young summer goddess of fertility and light. A couple of weeks back on the podcast, the episode about where I accidentally dyed my hair too black and walked into a canteen holding a bag of lemons because I got distracted by a newspaper. I'd, I picked up some physical newspapers and brought them into my office. And I hadn't, I hadn't read newspapers, like an actual fucking newspaper

• 57:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  in ages. And I just got distracted by the newspaper while I was also dying my hair. And then I publicly humiliated myself. I walked into a canteen with excessively black hair and then black stains all over my face, holding a bag of lemons. I won't explain the lemons. Go back and listen to the podcast. But I told you that one of the things that distracted me was an agony aunt letter that I read in the Irish Times, which it just, it knocked me over, it bowled me over. And I promised you that I would revisit, that I'd revisit this agony aunt letter and read it out to you and speak about it. I haven't had that chance because the office has just been too noisy over the past three fucking

• 58:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  weeks. But I'm gonna read to you now, this agony aunt letter, that was in the Irish Times like a month ago. And-

• 58:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  It reads like a lament, not a lament exactly like the Kylax lament, but the tone of this agony aunt letter is so, it's so sad and it reads like a lament. And I'd like to respond to it. So the letter is, I feel that I've done everything I should have done to make my life a success. Why am I so dissatisfied? I worked hard at school. I got all the C A O pints, went to college and did a course that would land me a well-paid job. I even spent the year travelling the world. I did that thing. But I'm no happier than I was when I was fifteen. That year away was interesting,

• 59:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  but it did not entice me into living abroad and I have no longing to go away somewhere. I feel bored and weary most of the time. Nothing excites me the way I see others getting excited. And I know that people look at me with curiosity and wariness, but never really wanted one either. It seems too messy and hard work, but I do feel like I'm missing out on something. I have all the usual accoutrement of a car, house and holidays and I have no fears about future finance, but it's not enough. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, but surely life needs to have more to it than this. Perhaps this is the best that can be achieved.

• 59:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And if that's the case, then it's not worth all the effort and the promise of all the teachers and parents. When I was younger, I loved art, but my parents rightly told me that this would not support a life. So I took the route into finance and it has worked out well. I often wonder though, if I'd be happier living in the proverbial attic and underselling my work. Somehow I doubt it. I'm in my forties now and wondering if this is it. So that, that letter fucking knocked me for six. Almost because the person writing it, it's like they know what's wrong.

• 1:00:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's like they can tell what's wrong, the detail of it, but they can't see it. I'm pretty sure it's a woman. I think it was signed off with a woman's name. This is a person.

• 1:00:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who's in their forties now and they've done everything the way they were supposed to do it. They have done it all. She got a good leaving cert, she went to college, she got a good job, she has savings, she has everything, she has everything she was supposed to get and that she was told to get. And now that she has it, she feels empty. She feels empty and is asking the question, is this it? Is this it? Is this what life is? And it's a lament. It's a lament. I get the sense that she doesn't, she doesn't have a solid sense of who she is, or she doesn't have a solid, she doesn't have a solid sense of what makes

• 1:01:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  her happy or what she likes and has this vague memory of liking art when she was a teenager. But to quote, "I loved art, but my parents, rightly," and she wrote rightly in brackets, rightly, "told me that this would not support a life." I thought about this too down by the river when I was looking at the Cymru.

• 1:01:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  One marker, one marker that tells us that spring is upon us, that it's the beginning of February, is daffodils. Daffodils are gonna start emerging right now. Now, daffodils, they're not indigenous to Ireland. They've been here a few hundred years. They're not indigenous, but we associate daffodils popping up with, oh, it's spring, fucking brilliant. Like, as, as soon as you see those daffodils popping up, you feel good. It's like excellent winter is over, the fucking daffodils are up. Now, there's other indigenous flowers that come up now too. You've got snowdrops and white thorn bushes. But daffodils, that's

• 1:02:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  the one we look out for. Those daffodils, those beautiful yellow flowers that pop up right about now. And daffodils are fascinating because they're bulbs, bulbs that lie dormant under the ground. And every February, February 1st, that's the temperature of the soil just gets slightly warmer, up to February temperature, and the daffodil knows it's time to sprout. And the daffodil sprouts up out of the soil. And then, once the daffodil sticks its head up, because the warm February soil told it to do so, once the daffodil sticks its fucking head up, what's it looking for? That February light, the inbulb, the rebirth of fucking light.

• 1:03:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  The daffodil is looking for that, that February light. And it reaches up and it grows healthily up towards the light. And then it flowers with its yellow flower. And what's the daffodil looking for? Pollinators. The queen bee, the queen bumblebee, has been hibernating all winter, and she wakes up right about now too. And she needs those fucking daffodils. The daffodils are the early bloomer. The queen bee is all about establishing her new fucking bee colony, right? So she goes and she gets the nectar from the daffodil. And the daffodil, who pops up in February, needs the bee to pollinate it. So it's a lovely little daffodil ecosystem right there.

• 1:04:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  But something I've been noticing the past 10 years, and that you've been noticing too, that's quite unsettling, is sometimes daffodils pop up in December. The old December daffodil, looking out your back garden on Christmas Day. And that blue fucking dark December gloom is there. And amongst that blue navy gloom, you see something very unnatural. The bright yellow of a daffodil in fucking December. What's going on? That's, that's your climate change there.

• 1:04:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  The soil, the soil is warm enough in December that it confuses the daffodil bulbs. So now the daffodil, the little bulb goes, "Oh, it's warm, it must be February." But it's not, it's fucking the eighteenth of December. The daffodil wakes itself up from its dormancy, sticks its head above the soil, and now the daffodil is trying to grow. But when it sticks its head out, the daffodil head is like, "What's going on here? It's fucking navy and gloomy. What's the story? Where's the light? Where's that bright February light that I need? Where's it gone? It's not here, man, you're sticking your head out in December."

• 1:05:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then the daffodil is trying its best in that gloomy navy light, and then it farts out a little yellow flower. And then the flower is like, "Where's the bumblebee? I need to be pollinated, where's the bumblebee? The bumblebee isn't there, it's fucking December, man." And then the daffodil dies. The climate change December daffodil dies. Because there's not enough light, and there's no pollinators, it dies. And its genes die with it because it didn't get to fucking pollinate. What the fuck does this have to do with that agony aunt letter in the Irish Times? Well, there's a beautiful theory within humanistic psychology called organismic valuing.

• 1:05:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's not necessarily science, it's, it's a way of describing the human condition. And it's a beautiful way of describing the human condition. Organismic valuing, it describes being human i- in a way that's a bit like being, being a flower, like being a daffodil, right? So we have an innate biological tendency to seek out experiences that promote growth, wellbeing and self-actualisation. We grow towards what feels good and what feels nice. Just like that daffodil. That daffodil, if it grows up in a healthy environment of February, that daffodil will grow towards the February light.

• 1:06:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it will want the attention of the bumblebee. With humans, little children, we grow towards fulfilment, authentic experiences.

• 1:06:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  We grow towards, like, we gravitate towards activities that promote learning and curiosity and joy and laughter. And also as little children, we grow towards positive regard. We like it when, when our parents tell us that we're good, when our parents approve of us and tell us that we're good. We like that and we grow towards it. When our teachers tell us that we're good and that we're doing a good job, we like that and we grow towards it. When society, when the rules and conventions of society tell us that we're good, we grow towards

• 1:07:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  it. That's our sunshine. That's our organismic valuing. Like a daffodil reaching towards the February sun, we reach towards these things. And if we're really lucky, if we're really lucky, we're daffodils that are born in February. We are daffodils and our parents and our teachers and our environment is a healthy one, where we're provided with what's called unconditional positive regard. All right? Unconditional positive regard. We're not all lucky enough to grow up with unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard means that your

• 1:08:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  parents raise you with the genuine belief that you are good no matter what. You might misbehave, you might be bad at school, whatever the fuck. These are just aspects of your behaviour. But we're your parents. And you know what? You're good no matter what. We have unconditional positive regard for you. There's nothing here but pure love. We're like the sunshine. And sometimes there's clouds in the way, but there is consistent love here because we love you. You're a human being. You're just, you is enough. That's unconditional positive regard.

• 1:08:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Some people are lucky enough to, to grow up with that as little kids. And then those little kids develop into adults that have unconditional positive self-regard, which is basically, I love myself. I, I, I genuinely, I love myself and I believe and understand that I have intrinsic value, just because I'm a human. And nothing I do, or my job, or how much money I have, this shit doesn't matter. This shit, it, it doesn't affect my value as a human. That's unconditional positive self-regard. I would say that's quite rare. And those conditions, that's your perfect February daffodil.

• 1:09:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  That gets wonderful sunlight when it's supposed to get it and gets all the water in the world and bees come and pollinate it. That's, that's the perfect situation. But a lot of us grow up like fucking December daffodils. That poor little daffodil that sprouts in December, it sticks its head out of the soil. And the sun isn't there. It's gloomy and navy and faint. But that, that fucking daffodil, it's trying its best, trying its best to move towards that sun, no matter how faint it is. That sun is toxic. That December sun, there's not enough light. It's toxic. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work for that daffodil, but the daffodil still tries. It still tries to move towards that sun.

• 1:10:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  That daffodil is growing up under conditional sunlight. The sunlight says, it's December here. I'm really faint. You can grow towards me under the condition that I'm fucking really faint. I'm not enough, but you can try. So the daffodil tries. And I've watched December daffodils. I've watched them. They grow real long and spindly. They, they try and reach, they try and reach the fucking sun like Icarus because the light is so faint. And they grow real long and weird and then they collapse. They fall over because the, the fucking spine of it, or whatever you call it, the stem is too skinny. The sun is setting conditions. The sun is, the sun is basically.

• 1:11:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  The sun is saying, "You can try if you like, but I'm setting some impossible conditions here. So no matter how hard you try to grow towards me, you're gonna fail." And a lot of humans grow up that way, too. That's known as conditional positive regard. The woman who wrote that letter, she said it herself. "When I was younger, I loved art, but my parents, rightly, told me that this would not support a life." That's conditional positive regard.

• 1:11:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  "We know you love art. We know this is where your happiness is. This is where your curiosity is. We know that this is where you are. But if you want our approval, you're gonna have to go with finance. Art isn't gonna make money. If you want our approval, you're gonna have to go with finance and getting a good leave insert and doing things the real sensible way." And her parents, they're actually trying their best. They're parenting with fear. They're afraid that their little daughter is gonna end up a poor fucking artist or whatever. So they're parenting with fear, but they're, they're setting, they're the faint December sun.

• 1:12:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Conditional positive regard. And that little teenage girl, she's a teenager. She, she, she, all she wants is, is the positive regard of her parents. "I want Mammy and Daddy to tell me that I'm good. And Mammy and Daddy want me to go into finance and to get a good leave insert. So I'm gonna do that because I am chasing, I am chasing their approval." So she does, and now she's 40 years of age. And she's a spindly-stemmed daffodil who's crumpling in on itself. Conditional positive regard leads to conditional positive self-regard. "I'm only a good person." I'm gonna base it on, on what this woman wrote down. "I'm only a good person."

• 1:12:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  She, she's listing it out. She's basically saying it. She's going, "Look, I did it all. What, what's wrong here? I did it all. I, I fucking got a good leave insert. I have a good job. I've got savings. I go on holidays. I've got a good car. I have it all. I, all of the conditions of worth. I've done it. I have it. Here it is. Why am I empty? Why am I unhappy? Why am I empty? I've done it all." She's the equivalent of the December daffodil there. Her February sun. Her ideal conditions of growth are most likely, probably, something to do with creativity. She says it herself, "I often wonder if I'd be happier living in the proverbial attic and underselling my work."

• 1:13:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  She's saying straight up, "Would I be happier if I was like an artist, a painter, who sold no fucking work and I'm actually living in my parents' gaff at forty up in the attic with nothing to my fucking name, but at least I'm making art? I wonder would I be happier?" Now, the other thing as well is like her assessment there of that situation, her assessment there. What, what? Her only context for imagining what it would be like to be an artist is within the, is within the frame of failure that her parents have warned her about. Like, I can hear, like, why is she saying that?

• 1:14:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  She's, she's basically saying, "I wonder what I've been happier as an artist." But she is saying as fact that had she had chosen that path, she'd, she'd end up in the attic, living with her parents. Says fucking who? Says, "I'm a fucking artist. I'm an artist, I'm a professional artist, I earn a living doing it. It's, it's hard, it's difficult, it's a difficult thing to do." But what evidence does this woman have to say that had she chosen another path, that she would definitely, without question, be living in her parents' fucking attic selling no art? How does she know that she doesn't? This is what was said to her, I promise you, when she was sixteen, when, when she was drawing instead of studying.

• 1:15:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know it because that's, that's what, that's what was said to me as well. No one's parents want you to become an artist. No one's fuck, unless you're generationally fucking wealthy, your parents do not want. Do you think my parents wanted me to become an artist? No, do your fucking evens, sir. Knuckle down, there's no future in art. Get a job, become a teacher. No, I don't come from money, I don't come from generational fucking money. The idea of being an artist is insane. But I can, I can hear when I read this, this woman's letter, her lament, I can, I can hear the, the criticism and the parameters of, of worth, the conditions of worth from her parents. I can hear her parents saying to her, "You're gonna, no, stop painting,

• 1:15:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  stop drawing. You're gonna end up staying in this attic. You're gonna end up living in this attic and you'll have nothing to your name and you'll be a failure. Get a decent leave insert." When we live our lives, right, from, from being a child onwards, when we live our lives under conditions of worth that are set by other people, not just other fucking people, by teachers and by society, conditions of worth that are unrealistic. Like, listen to the state of this fucking podcast episode. Like, with all due respect, I've just spent an hour ruminating on, on Irish mythology and, and the significance between a fucking cormorant and biodiversity and now I'm comparing the human condition to a daffodil. I love

• 1:16:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  this. I, I fucking adore it. This is who I am. But how the fuck am I supposed to survive in an office? How, how, how do I, whatever about my neurodivergence, right? If, if I was doing something that didn't allow me to express that part of myself, I'd be genuinely miserable. I'd be really miserable and I'd have difficulty knowing who I was, understanding who I am. This woman here, she, she sounds to me like someone who just, she did exactly what her parents wanted her to do. She followed those conditions of worth and, and completely ignored her true self. Her true self, which is clearly creative. "When I was younger,

• 1:17:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  I loved art." How fucking, how, how upsetting is that statement? "When I was younger, I loved art." So she's forgotten the person that liked art because she doesn't know who the, who she is right now. So, so what, what humanistic psychology would say is that this, this woman is experiencing what's known as incongruence. We have our real self and our ideal self. Our real self is our true, authentic, playful, relaxed, comfortable self. Our ideal self is the person.

• 1:17:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  That we would like other people to see. Our ideal self is all about external approval. External approval. So what this woman, what she mentioned, you know, I've got a car. I've got savings. I've got the good job. I've got a good leave insert. That's all ideal self. Self-esteem based on external facets of our behaviour. Self-esteem based on achievement. The problem with that is you don't experience it as happiness. You experience that as a form of temporary reassurance. That's what it feels like. Temporary reassurance. That's our ideal self. It doesn't bring happiness.

• 1:18:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  But our authentic self, our unconditional positive regard comes from, where our self-love comes from. That's about living your life in accordance with whatever gives you genuine meaning. But sometimes when there's incongruence, when your real self, your authentic self and your ideal self are so far apart that you don't know who the fuck you are and you don't know what your authentic self is. So for this, for this woman here, a hundred percent, she needs, she needs to go to a therapist, a decent person centred humanistic therapist who can work on things like real and ideal self.

• 1:19:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that person would probably work with her and help her to, to come to the realisation, to help her to come to the realisation that your achievements, these things that you have, your, your achievements are never going to bring you happiness. The car, the fucking money, the job, they might bring you comfort. They might bring you the, the temporary reassurance of going, yeah, I've done it. My parents taught me to do this and I've done it. They bring you that, that temporary reassurance that you're not pathetic. They bring you the, the temporary pleasure of other people being jealous of you, but they'll never bring you happiness or meaning.

• 1:20:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's you're the daffodil in December growing towards the navy sun, searching for a dead bee. And I definitely think this woman. She needs to get herself a colouring book. She needs to begin anything remotely creative. Go back to the art. Go back to the art. You don't have to show anyone. Do art for the sake of art, for the joy of the art. Doesn't matter if it's good or it's bad. Do the art for the art. And slowly but surely you'll start to identify what meaning feels like, meaning. Like I've said before, I don't really believe in happiness. I don't think happiness is a state that we can achieve, but meaning is something that we can achieve. I know where my fucking meaning comes from. It's very, very simple.

• 1:20:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  I experience meaning from

• 1:20:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  practising mindfulness, right? So endeavouring to live as much of my life in the present moment, if I can, through mindfulness. That brings me huge fucking meaning. Art and creativity. Art and creativity brings me huge, huge meaning. Essential meaning, but not the end result. A finished book on my shelf does not bring me meaning. A good review doesn't bring me meaning. They bring little nuggets of temporary reassurance to my deeply insecure child. It's the process that brings me meaning. Writing the story, writing the book, writing it, the bit in the middle, the journey,

• 1:21:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  the privilege of being able to write a book, that's what gives me fucking meaning. The bit where it's finished, I don't enjoy that at all. I want to move past that and get on to the next fucking book. And the other thing that brings me meaning, fucking exercise, exercise. I love exercising. Now, exercising to look a certain way, that doesn't bring me any meaning at all. I exercise for the joy of exercising, for the doing, for the movement, for the adrenaline. That's what I like, the process of exercising, not to do it for any, for any goal. So if you, if this woman's letter, if that's ringing true with you, search for what brings you meaning, what brings you fucking meaning.

• 1:22:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Meaning is the February sun to a daffodil. Did you grow up with conditions of worth from a parent or a teacher or society that keeps you from achieving meaning? And when I say society there, What about gay people? What about trans people? What about people who experience racism? People who are marginalized by homophobia or transphobia or racism? Society says, "You cannot be your authentic self. There's punishment if you are your authentic self." So it's poverty, fucking poverty too, classism. And just remember, no amount of external praise and external approval, it's always only temporary reassurance. It never brings happiness.

• 1:23:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I say this, like, I'm an artist and I try, I try and extract meaning from art through the process, right? And I have, I've achieved a lot of external fucking approval shit, fairly heavy duty external approval shit. None of it brings me happiness. Like, like recently, just to put it into perspective, like when I was 16, 17, when I was 16, 17 and I fucking knew, "I'm gonna have to be an artist, there's nothing else. I need to be an artist. This drive is too strong. I don't give a shit about school. I need to be a fucking artist. There's nothing else that I can be." I knew this at 16, 17. I just didn't know how, how I was gonna do it.

• 1:23:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  Didn't know how I was gonna make it happen. And I used to listen to artists or enjoy the, the music or painting or work of artists, who I'd look up to as artists who were doing their own thing. They're being very authentic with their voice. I'd listen to these artists and I'd say, "They're doing something that I want to do. I don't know what that thing is yet, but something about what they're doing, I wanna try that." And there were lots of artists, weirdos, who were doing their own thing. Fucking Tom Waits, AFX Twin, Scott Walker. And one artist who I adored at 16, 17, a fellow by the name of David Sylvian. He'd been in a band called Japan from the 70s and 80s.

• 1:24:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  You could say that Japan invented new wave music, like an insane contribution to the field of music, right? But what I really adored was David Sylvian's solo work, because it was uncompromising and strange and weird. And I'm like, here's an artist doing exactly what the fuck he wants to do. He knows what his voice is, and here he is doing it, and he doesn't care if it's weird, and I don't even think he cares if it's popular. He's just doing David Sylvian, and I love this, I adore this, I gravitate towards this. I worshipped him, I worshipped him. David Sylvian listens to this podcast.

• 1:25:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  He contacted me on Instagram, David fucking Sylvian listens to this podcast and likes this podcast and likes my work. Now, I'm not showing off or bragging or any shit like that. The reason I'm giving this specific example, right? If you'd have gone to me at 16, 17 years of age, when I'm obsessed with art, and I didn't know what I was gonna do, and like a ghost, a ghost of fucking Christmas past or some shit like that, arrives to me and says, "How would it make you feel?" Right, 16-year-old blind boy. "How would it make you feel if one day you make a piece of art, and then David Sylvian finds it and says, 'That's good'?"

• 1:25:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  I would literally have told you, I would have said, "Well, that's better than winning the lottery." If that happened, right, if that happened, I'd have no, I wouldn't have to live anymore, I'd have completed life. If I made a piece of art and David Sylvian found it and said he liked it, what would be the point of going on living? I'd just, it would be eternal happiness, I'd be in heaven, there'd be nothing else left to do. That's it, that's the end. I would have completed the game of art and life and achieved eternal, never-ending happiness. That would simply be it. And that would have been my genuine answer, that would have been my genuine answer.

• 1:26:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you think, actually finding out that David Sylvian listens to this podcast and likes it and listens regularly, do you think that brought me happiness? No. Brought me that temporary reassurance, temporary reassurance. Like, obviously, I'm aware, it's like, I know, it's like, wow, fucking hell. I used to listen to this fella in my bedroom and now I'm making something that he likes. That's insane, that, that's nuts. I'm aware of all this stuff. And I'm kind of proud of myself a little bit, but the feeling is that temporary reassurance. There's something very insecure inside me.

• 1:27:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's some little child who feels he isn't good enough. And, and this just temporarily reassures insecure little me. Temporarily reassures it and then I'm looking for the next hit. And the reason I'm giving that example is technically I've, I've, I've won the game of art there. I've cleared the game. I've finished the game. If a hero of yours finds your art and says, that's good, then you've, that, that's, to me, I was like, that's it, the game is game over, done, can't do anything more, that's it. It do, it doesn't work. It doesn't work the way that you'd think it would.

• 1:27:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, external approval doesn't bring happiness. It does not. It brings temporary reassurance. The, the only type of external, external approval that can bring happiness is when you're kind to people. So if just simple acts of treating other people the way that you yourself would like to be treated and then kind of receiving back the, the empathic feedback that, you know, you're a kind person. But I don't know, is that external approval that's, that's just being compassionate? That's practicing compassion. I got one Christmas card this year. And it was from, it was from the president. It was from fucking Michael D. Higgins. Do you think that brought me happiness?

• 1:28:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, temporarily reassured my very insecure inner child.

• 1:28:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  External approval is Salsted's son to a December fucking daffodil. Now, that brought me, that brought me happiness because that actually sounds like a David Sylvian lyric. Salsted's son to a December daffodil. Cause he had an album called Secrets of the Beehive, which is one of my favourite albums of all time. And it's where I found, it's where I found Ryuichi Sakamoto. Cause he fucking collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto from Yellow Magic Orchestra. I've got an extended rant there. There's an extended rant now at the end of this podcast and I've forgotten what the original point was about. I hope he took something from that. Um, I'll be back next week, hopefully in my new office. I can't fucking wait to tell you about my new office when I'm up there.

• 1:29:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Hopefully I'm gonna have good news. I want you all using psychic energy and thinking of me. Or like my ma, my ma says prayers to Flann O'Brien. Actually, that brings me happiness. That, that's, that's a form of external approval there. That almost brings me happiness because it's not external approval, it's love. So my ma was never, my ma was never really supportive of me becoming an artist. Not in a mean way, but because in, in that way, we're, we're not generational wealth. So she was just afraid, she was afraid that, oh, he can't become a fucking artist. There's no jobs in becoming an artist.

• 1:30:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  He's not gonna inherit anything. There's no fucking money. I want him to be able to get a job and stand on his own two fucking feet. So I, I was very much discouraged. And my dad as well, I was very much discouraged from becoming an artist. Because of fear, my parents were afraid that I'd end up penniless, penniless in a desperate state with no qualifications. And to be honest, my ma still.

• 1:30:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  If she had the choice, she'd be happier if I had a job as like a teacher, something secure. Doesn't matter how, doesn't matter about tours, my podcast, my books, she would still be happier if I had like a secure fucking job. But my ma's not religious. My ma's religious in that old weird Irish Catholic way, which it's not religious at all. It's much closer to an indigenous spirituality. Like she'd have no time for the Catholic Church and the homophobia and the rules and all of this shit, but she'll pray to Saint Anthony. But also, my ma regularly prays to the writer Flan O'Brien to give me inspiration. She

• 1:31:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  prays to Flan O'Brien every week. She asks Flan O'Brien to give me ideas for this podcast. She'll be asking Flan O'Brien to make sure that my new office is quiet. And Flan O'Brien was one of my heroes. When I was saying there when I was 16, like listening to David Sylvie and Tom Waits, my other fucking, my god was Flan O'Brien, the writer. He's Irish and he died in the 60s. But Flan O'Brien's brother, and I've said this before, Flan O'Brien's brother was my family doctor. So my ma knew his brother really, really well. So in that weird, strange Irish folk Catholicism that my ma has, because she knew Flan O'Brien's

• 1:32:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  brother, that means that she has like a direct connection to him in the afterlife. And I love that because that's fucking gas. But I'm speaking about certain types of external approval that I can actually take on board. Even though my ma was never supportive of me becoming an artist because it would be difficult for me to make money, I know that as far as my ma is concerned.

• 1:32:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  In her eyes, I'm as good as Flynn O'Brien as an artist, or otherwise she wouldn't be praying to him. And I'm not saying I am, and I'd never compare myself to fucking Flynn O'Brien, but I'm saying my ma, as far as my ma is concerned, I'm as good as Flynn O'Brien, and that's why she prays to him. And it means too, I was supported and nourished as an artist. I was. I wasn't scolded. I was just simply directed away from an artistic career. But my ma did. My parents probably did believe in me as a creative person, and that stood to me. But also, when my ma prays to Flynn O'Brien for me, that's not external approval, that's love. That's genuine. That's proper love. That's real love. And I can't, I can

• 1:33:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  take that on board and feel it and, and bank it and allow it to nourish me. Whereas a good review, or even something like an artist who, who I adore and respect, liking my work, that's magnificent. It's lovely. But emotionally, it temporarily reassures a very insecure part of myself. That's, fuck me. 90 minutes of talking this week, that's because I had a quiet office. Okay, genuflect to a Carmarthen, startle a Saint Bernard, direct sunlight to a fucking daffodil. God bless.

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