Pod Insights The Blindboy Podcast Towards a thesis on the disproportionately gigantic penis of the Shrew About this episode I can't really explain what this is about, you'll just have to listen Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
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1:00 Blindboy Boatclub? Inch towards the sinner's bin bag, you twisted Fintons. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast. If this is your first time listening, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I'm going to deviate from the established structure of this podcast by beginning this episode with some gig announcements.
1:28 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm after getting myself in trouble by promoters. Not trouble, but I've pissed off some gig promoters because, look, when I do a live podcast, when I agree to do a live podcast in a venue, a promoter puts that on and I'm contractually obligated to promote that gig. And I always do it every week on the podcast for promoters. They keep wanting me to post videos on Instagram promoting the gigs. And I don't like doing that because it's boring content. Who the fuck wants to see videos of people promoting gigs? So I always push back and say, I'm not doing fucking social media videos telling people to show up to Killarney or wherever the fuck I'm gigging. I'm not gigging in Killarney.
2:12 Blindboy Boatclub? Limerick in Dublin, those are the gigs I need to get out of the way. I'll give you the details in a minute. I've pissed off promoters because if you've been following me on Instagram, you'll know over the past three weeks, I have been posting videos on Instagram, but it's been videos of me making music with my analog synths. But the videos, they went viral, if we still use that phrase. Videos of me playing synthesizers or doing numbers on Instagram. And then the promoters are ringing my agent and going, I thought he doesn't do fucking videos. There's videos of him all over my fucking feed playing synthesizers, but there's no videos of him trying to sell tickets for gigs, which is fair enough.
2:56 Blindboy Boatclub? But doing videos announcing gigs is no crack and no one wants to see it. And the way the Instagram algorithm is for the past year, you can't just put posts anymore. You can't just put a poster of a gig no one will see. You have to be doing videos so I can see where the promoters are coming from. Here's the thing, I'm just, I'm at the end of a fairly large Irish tour over the past two months and the gigs have sold out and I didn't post any of them on my main feed on Instagram at all and we were grand. So anyway, look, this Thursday, this Thursday, I'm in Limerick City, my hometown, at University Concert Hall.
3:38 Blindboy Boatclub? That's tomorrow and that gig is, that gig's nearly fucking sold out. So shut the fuck up promoter. So I'm in University Concert Hall, Limerick tomorrow. That's, that's a shrew's penis away from being sold out. I shouldn't say that about shrew's penises. I don't know. Well, on a second.
4:04 Blindboy Boatclub? Adult male shrews have an average penis length of fifteen millimeters. Which is...
4:13 Blindboy Boatclub? That's the length of about a fingernail, a small fingernail. But here's the thing. How big is that in relation to the shrew's body? How long... Hold on.
4:31 Blindboy Boatclub? Okay, so shrews themselves are five centimeters long, between three and five centimeters long. So a fifteen millimeter penis, so that means in proportion to their body, that's actually gigantic in relation to the shrew itself. Shrews are really interesting too because shrews have massive appetites. They eat like a hundred and twenty percent of their body weight per day. They're tiny like, so they have these... Their energy reserves are very, very low. And they have to eat like every three or four hours, they're consistently eating.
5:10 Blindboy Boatclub? So really, a shrew is like, they're like a fucking bodybuilder that needs to eat all the time or their muscles deplete. And then their mickeys are so big that when they get a bone or they go unconscious. So that's actually unfair to say that the tickets to my Limerick gig are a shrew's penis away from being sold out. Why am I thinking about shrews? Because a bat, a bat flew over my head about twenty minutes ago. And it's the first bat I've seen of the season. And the air outside is quite warm and there's little flies in there.
5:52 Blindboy Boatclub? And I just enjoyed seeing the bat because it's a phenomenologically congruent seasonal expression of bat behaviour. The bats are supposed to be coming out of hibernation right now and eating flies. And I just enjoy seeing nature behaving the way it's supposed to be behaving. As opposed to daffodils popping up in December because of a warming soil. So I'm thinking about shrews because I saw a bat.
6:20 Blindboy Boatclub? I have a gig in Limerick tomorrow at the university concert hall. All right, there's about thirty tickets left, that's all. I'm gonna be interviewing Pat Short, who is a legendary Limerick comedian, and also a brilliant actor, and a fantastic musician. He's a music nerd. He knows a few things about Frank Zappa. So that's gonna be a great chat with lots of laughs. Actually, do you know what, there? I'm just gonna take ownership of my behaviour, because something's coming up.
6:55 Blindboy Boatclub? I don't usually make penis jokes. Like, that's quite childish. That's, I don't, that's quite juvenile humour. And something about the promoters, I feel like I'm in trouble. I feel like I'm in trouble and someone is giving out to me because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And emotionally, that, it brings me back to being in school. That, I was very defiant and unruly in school, and I really disliked being told what to do.
7:38 Blindboy Boatclub? Because I wasn't particularly interested in the school curriculum, I was interested in other things. Music, that's why. So when I would have been a teenager in school, like failing my junior cert, failing my leaving cert, like my parents used to ask me, "Why aren't you concentrating?" And I'd be like, "I can't stop thinking about music. I can't stop thinking about songs that I wanna go home and listen to." I used to bring a tape player in my pocket, and I'd, I'd put one of the earphones, it used to go up my pants leg, up my jumper, out through my sleeve, and I'd have one earphone in the palm of my hand, and I'd lean against that.
8:24 Blindboy Boatclub? And I'd listen to like Cypress Hill in, in class and the teacher wouldn't know. And being artistic, I now realise that that was the only way I could stay calm and, and manage being in the classroom and feel okay is if I was listening to music in one of my hands. My place on the spectrum, I'm sensory seeking and sensory avoidant. So I was sensory avoidant because I had to wear that fucking jumper. And I used to get in trouble for taking it off, but when I was forced to fucking wear it, it was just so itchy that I couldn't concentrate. And then I was also overstimulated by simply being in a room with loads of people and all the different conversations.
9:08 Blindboy Boatclub? And I'd want to avoid those sensations, but by seeking the sensation of music, enjoying music, that would help me to, to cope and feel okay. I didn't know this then, back then that was just misbehaving. But also I just wanted to be at home, listening to music and then making music too. That was the age when I first started to learn how to make music on my computer, learn how to make beats and, and to play the guitar and learning how to play piano. The teachers used to assume that I, that I was stupid and they'd treat me that way.
9:49 Blindboy Boatclub? And I'd feel so angry because I'd think to myself, I could talk for two hours about Cypress Hill's music production, about the samplers that they're using, about the drum machines that they're using. And I've no way at all to express this in this classroom because we're supposed to be learning, I'm in business studies. I had to learn business studies because that was the only way that I could also do art in the, for the, as a leaving sort of subject. And my art teacher, I just want to give a shout out to him, Christie McGrath was his name. I, I don't know if he's still alive. When we had art class, I used to get to bring in my big headphones, huge headphones and
10:33 Blindboy Boatclub? put them on and I'd just listen to Wu-Tang Clan or Cypress Hill and draw. And, and Christie just let it happen, even though it was against the rules of the school. He's like, no, leave him off. He loves his art, he loves his music, he's creating, leave him off. Eventually by about fifth year. I used to just get kicked out of every single fucking class and would be made to stand, pointlessly stand in the hallway. I wasn't allowed into the classrooms and I'd just walk up to the art room and I'd spend the entire day missing other classes and just sitting quietly at the back of the art class while other classes are going on and I was allowed to draw and listen to music because of this one teacher who just, he just understood. But when I was in other
11:18 Blindboy Boatclub? classes like business studies and I'd get in trouble, I would get in trouble and they'd be giving out to me. My way of fighting back or being cheeky or disruptive is I'd go on a monologue about statistics about shrews' penises and make everybody laugh. So I just want to take ownership of that there. As I was speaking about shrews' penises, there was a little voice inside me going, "The fuck are you doing that for? You don't make dick jokes. That's quite low-hanging fruit. You don't do that type of humour. That's not very creative. That's not lateral thinking. Anyone can make a joke about penises. What are you doing that for? There's a million podcasters making jokes about willies right now." But that's what led to that
12:03 Blindboy Boatclub? there. The subtle opening of a childhood wound led me to give a childhood response. Promoters are giving out to me, taking issue with my behaviour because I'm making music, because I'm being passionate about music and they're saying, "You're not supposed to be doing that. You're supposed to be promoting your fucking, your gigs. Do your homework." A video of you messing with synthesizers isn't going to promote a live podcast. So I'm realising now that that's actually triggering a childhood wound and I'm experiencing that as the feeling of being in trouble, which,
12:45 Blindboy Boatclub? which is ridiculous because I'm an adult. Adults do not get in trouble. So I just want to take ownership of my behaviour there. And I'm glad to have that self-awareness and to catch those, those feelings and emotions in the moment and to assess my behaviour in relation to it. And I could have just edited out the shrew's penis content right there and re-recorded something more appropriate, but instead...
13:14 Blindboy Boatclub? I'd rather work with the failure. I'd lean into the failure of that and bring it into my process and reflect on it. The other gig that I have is Vicar Street. That's the 20th of April, two weeks away. It's a Monday night gig in Vicar Street. Vicar Street gigs are great crack, come along to that. So there you go, promoters, which has promoted two gigs in the first 10 minutes of the podcast. Are you happy? And I'm probably gonna have to do a video this week on Instagram as well, promoting the gigs to balance out the synthesizer videos that I've been posting. So about that music that I've been posting, I've been having a pretty mad couple of weeks.
13:58 Blindboy Boatclub? So if you've been listening to the podcast, you'll know, apart from just some analog synthesizers, the tactile, hands-on nature of these devices has very much reconnected me with my, my love of music and the playfulness, the act of play that is creating music. So once a week, I've been setting aside two or three hours to engage in the act of play, to play, and I have two little wonderful teachers, my tiny gorgeous toddlers, who I get to watch play, I get to watch them play with bricks of Lego,
14:41 Blindboy Boatclub? or they play with bits of Play-Doh or drawing and painting for the sake of doing it, for the act of play. So I get to observe that and they become my teachers. And then when they're gone off to bed, I emulate that behaviour myself with my synthesizers. There's no goal, there's no plan, I'm not trying to do anything. I'm enjoying synthesizers for the fun of enjoying synthesizers. But then, once I free myself like that, I free myself from, from the expectations of making a piece of work and I enter a flow state, then what happens is I end up making a piece of work. That's the...
15:27 Blindboy Boatclub? That's the paradox of creativity. You'll only really create when you're not trying to create. So each night I've sat down to play with my synths. It's resulted in me making a short piece of music. And then I go, fuck it. I'll record 30 seconds of this and upload it to Instagram. And when I posted the first video, I'm just like, fuck it. Who gives a shit? Maybe someone wants to see me playing with synthesizers. It's the worst that can happen. People won't like it. Who cares? I had fun. But what I didn't expect, like at all, is that the pieces that I put out on Instagram,
16:07 Blindboy Boatclub? independently, all of them went quite viral outside of my page. And Instagram is a bit more like TikTok now. It doesn't matter how many followers you have anymore. That's gone. That doesn't matter. You could have no followers and you could post a video tomorrow. And if it elicits a response in any way, a couple of million people could see it. So I posted three pieces of music in three weeks. The three of them, I think of about 700,000 views in a couple of weeks. Not intentional, not expected. I've been getting, I've been getting offers for gigs.
16:50 Blindboy Boatclub? I got offered a gig in a club in Belgium. And then I got offered another gig in Berlin. And what I mean here now is these are just people seeing a video on Instagram of a fella with a plastic bag on his head, playing with synthesizers and making a piece of music. These people, they don't know that I'm a podcaster. They don't know that I'm an author. They don't have context for what I'm at in my career at the moment. I know because I've been chatting to them. They just think I'm a musician. I was approached by a record label, a record label wanting to know if I'd speak to them about releasing music. I've had.
17:37 Blindboy Boatclub? Like professional musicians, like proper professional musicians who I listen to, send me DMs wanting to know if I'd collaborate with them. No context whatsoever that they don't know about my fucking podcast or that I'm a writer. They think that I'm a musician. Well, I was in a previous life, but I'm not actively a professional musician. I haven't been for for over a decade. Now, am I going to take any of them up on the offers? No, I'm not. I'm genuinely making music for the love of making the music. That's the bit that I like. I've done the career as a musician before in my fucking twenties.
18:19 Blindboy Boatclub? I've I've gigged fifteen people. I've gigged at festivals to thirty, forty thousand people. I gave myself permanent tinnitus from doing music gigs in my twenties. The thing is with music, it's really hard to earn a living with music. Really, really hard, even if you're if you're successful. Earnings from streaming and radio plays, they don't exist anymore. Even if you if you make the type of music that can make it onto the radio. If you're making anything weird or strange, forget about the radio. So it just means you have to gig music all the time. And I'm the type of, I love creating music, but I don't like gigging music.
19:02 Blindboy Boatclub? I don't like the live performance aspect of it. I'm not, I was speaking to Martin Ware last week, you know, and he was speaking about that period in the nineteen eighties where with his band Heaven Seventeen, they didn't have to gig. There was enough money from radio plays and record sales and being on MTV. That's gone. You got a gig. But what I've loved about the past week is just the novelty of that. I remember that from from two thousand and six, two thousand and seven. Making music in my bedroom on a shitty little computer, on a cracked copy of FL Studio,
19:43 Blindboy Boatclub? and making pieces of music that I thought I might show it to a couple of my friends. And then you go, fuck it, I'll put it online and it's going viral. And now you're getting offered these opportunities. Now, this time around, I'm saying no to these opportunities because I'm in the very fortunate position where I don't need to say yes. I'm already earning a living doing what I absolutely love. And what I absolutely love is writing this podcast, writing books. That's what I love and adore, and it doesn't give me tinnitus. And I don't like gigging live music, but I do love doing live podcasts. I enjoy that.
20:25 Blindboy Boatclub? I love sitting up on a stage in the darkness of it and having a conversation with a person. I really, I love doing that and that's why I gig so much. And also I'm saying no to these opportunities because I'm too fucking busy. I'm too busy with the podcast and I've, I've some big projects on the way that I'll be announcing over the next couple of months that I can't announce yet. So I'm busy as fuck. But what I have adored about the past week is the feelings, the feelings that it has brought up in me to, to be getting discovered as a musician twice. What it reminded me of specifically is, you know, I love that TV show, The Wire.
21:09 Blindboy Boatclub? Even though the writer, David Simon, is a Zionist who blocked me on Twitter and called me a shit piece, The Wire is still an incredible piece of work. And there's a plotline in it. And I've been relating to this plotline bizarrely because of the past week. Might be a couple of spoiler warnings, but look, The Wire was made in 2002. I, I think we've gone past spoiler warnings for The Fucking Wire. If you're literally just about to start The Wire, then spoiler warnings, yes. The Wire is about the, the city of Baltimore and the criminals and the police in the city of Baltimore. And there's a drug dealer by the name of Stringer Bell.
21:51 Blindboy Boatclub? And Stringer Bell is one of these drug dealers who's, if he'd grown up in different economic circumstances, wouldn't have been a drug dealer, he'd have been a very successful businessman. But he was born in poverty as an African American in a society that doesn't work for that type of person. And the whole time, his goal, his character arc is, he kind of doesn't like being a drug dealer. He doesn't like being a gang leader. He's just figuring out a way to earn enough money to become legit. To earn enough money from drug dealing that he can distance himself from it completely. And then launder that money via politicians or whatever into legitimate income.
22:34 Blindboy Boatclub? So that he can still be a criminal, but he's untouchable and he doesn't get to achieve that goal.
22:42 Blindboy Boatclub? And a no-drug dealer comes along, a younger fella by the name of Marlo Stanfield. Now, Marlo is a cold-hearted criminal. He's a psychopath, he's vicious. He's a gang leader, a drug dealer, a murderer, and he loves it. He lives off it, he lives off the power of it, he enjoys the power of it. He loves being feared in his community. There's no softness to his character. That's the, the beauty of the writing of this character is, at no point do you ever see a soft side to him. A gentleness, a fragility, a vulnerability.
23:26 Blindboy Boatclub? You don't, you don't even see evidence of a trauma that might explain why he's this much of a cold, hard criminal. The only time you see anything resembling this is when he's recruiting children to his gang.
23:44 Blindboy Boatclub? Because that's how the gang structure works in The Wire is you've got older gang members and then they recruit little kids to be runners on the street. I mean, that's not just Baltimore. I see that in Limerick City every single day. Like, there's crack dealers in Limerick that hang out on corners like in The Wire. And you've got lads there that are my age, who are clearly the leaders. And then you've got kids of 12, 13, 14. In Limerick, they're called penny boys. And they go around on the electric scooters. They go around on the electric scooters and those are the ones carrying the drugs. In The Wire, they're called corner boys, and they're like 12 and 13. So one day, Marlowe, this hardened
24:29 Blindboy Boatclub? gang leader, the toughest man in the community, gets his henchmen to hand out free money to little kids, kids who are 10, 12, to hand out money to these kids because they have nothing at home, to groom them effectively. And there's one little kid called Michael, and he refuses the money. He refuses the money from Marlowe, the gang leader. And then Marlowe steps out of his fucking car and walks over to this kid, and is like, is my money not good enough for you? And the little child throws a head at Marlowe that suggests that he's willing to stand up to him. And Marlowe steps back. And for the first time,
25:10 Blindboy Boatclub? you think, you see evidence of compassion in this Marlowe fucking gang leader. You think that he's laying off this child, that he's gonna show leniency. And he does, but not because of kindness, because he just got the thrill of identifying a child who has the type of fearlessness that can be groomed into making that child a murderer for his gang. If Marlowe can just figure out the right way to gain that kid's trust, which would be difficult because that kid, even though he's 12 years of age, is principled enough to turn down the money from the local drug dealer. And how they eventually do gain
25:53 Blindboy Boatclub? his trust is Marlowe has his henchmen called Chris and Snoop.
26:00 Blindboy Boatclub? They have them follow this kid, Michael, around and, and learn things about his little life. Now, Chris and Snoop, they're also cold-hearted killers, heartless murderers, and they shadow this Michael young fella and they figure out, oh, he's going home to an abusive household. And it's intimated that Michael's father is sexually abusing him. So Chris and Snoop get close enough to this little kid, Michael, that they kind of say, we're, we're gonna solve your problem, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna speak to your dad and he's never gonna be in the house again, we're gonna get rid of him. And, and then you, you and your little brother will be safe.
26:41 Blindboy Boatclub? So Chris, this, this murderer, this henchman of Marlow's, he beats Michael's father to death. It's one of the most profound spectacles of violence that you'll ever see in a film or a TV show. Because the way that Chris beats that man to death lets the viewer know, just by the beating, that Chris himself was most likely sexually abused as a child. And that by beating Michael's father to death, he's actually beating the person who did that to him when he was a kid. And then in that moment, even though Chris the henchman is a cold-hearted killer, the trauma is revealed.
27:25 Blindboy Boatclub? The trauma that underlies his cold-hearted behaviour is revealed. And now you have a softness for that character, but they never do that with Marlow. Marlow the leader is 100% evil all the time. His only values are power and the love of cruelty and the enjoyment of being feared. And what makes Marlow such an incredible character as a piece of fiction is it's very difficult to write a character that's that one-dimensional, that's that evil, and for that to work in a piece of fiction. That's why The Wire is incredible, that's why David Simon is an incredible writer, despite his political views.
28:08 Blindboy Boatclub? What the fuck does this have to do with me making music? So, remember I mentioned that, that other drug dealer earlier, Stringer Bell, who wanted to earn enough money as a drug dealer that he could make his money legitimate and clean and he could distance himself from criminality?
28:27 Blindboy Boatclub? Well, Marlowe is such an effective gang leader that he eventually gets to that point. He ends up working with corrupt politicians who don't care where his drug money comes from. And then these politicians take that money and put it into real estate, put it into skyscrapers. And then eventually, Marlowe finds himself in this situation where he's incredibly wealthy, he's incredibly powerful, and his money is clean. He doesn't need to be on the corner anymore. He doesn't need to carry a gun. He doesn't need to even see what drugs look like. He doesn't need to be on the streets of Baltimore.
29:09 Blindboy Boatclub? If a drugs bust happens, he's not gonna get arrested because he can go and live off in a middle-class neighbourhood. He has it all. He's reached the top now. He's untouchable. But he never wanted to be that. He wanted to be the hardest, most feared man on the streets. He wants people to be afraid when his name is spoken in the streets. So one night, he's out with these politicians who are cleaning his money, and he's wearing a fucking suit so that he can fit in with them in this alien world that he never asked for. And suddenly, you get a little bit of vulnerability. And that vulnerability is now he doesn't have meaning.
29:52 Blindboy Boatclub? He doesn't have purpose and meaning now. So he walks back into the streets of Baltimore, four in the morning, the most dangerous corner that you can think of. And he walks up to these two armed drug dealers who are standing on the corner selling drugs. And he's been so removed from that life, so removed from the neighbourhood, they don't know who the fuck he is. They just see a fellow walking along wearing a suit, and these are two hard gangsters now standing in the corner. And Marlowe walks up with his suit, and he goes, "The fuck are you looking at?" It doesn't matter where you are in the world, that that's the international signal for "I want trouble." "What the fuck are you looking at?"
30:36 Blindboy Boatclub? he says to the two drug dealers. Now, they get pure, pure fucking angry, ready to go. "I'm looking at you," they say. Then Marlowe says, "Do you know who I am?" One of them immediately pulls out a gun and pints it at Marlowe's head and pulls the fucking trigger. It goes off, but Marlowe's fast enough that he pushes that fellow's hand away so the bullet misses. And then the other guy pulls out a knife and swipes it across and cuts Marlowe's arm. And the two lads are so freaked out, even though they're armed, they just run away. Who the fuck is this mad cunt in a suit? And they probably work for Marlowe. They're prob- they probably work for him, but they haven't even a clue who he is, he's so high up. But the lads ran off and Marlowe just stands there.
31:20 Blindboy Boatclub? He's after taking the corner himself from two armed drug dealers, just by being intimidating and they don't even know who he is. And he stands there in the dark by himself, on his shitty little corner. And you see happiness come into his eyes and he smiles. And then he puts his finger on his arm where he's just been cut and he tastes his own blood. And you realise in that moment, he doesn't want money. He doesn't want any of that fucking shit. He gets his meaning and purpose from being the most heartless, fearless, most feared, psychopathic individual on the streets. And that's his thing.
32:05 Blindboy Boatclub? And we're left with that. We don't know what his arc is after that, whether he survives, we don't know, we're just left with that. Do I think Marlowe returned to the streets to expose himself to being arrested, to getting killed? No, I don't think so. I think he went back to the comfort of his legitimate money. But he just wanted that little taste of the streets. He wanted that little taste of his own blood. So me getting... So me...
32:40 Blindboy Boatclub? Me putting music online and getting rediscovered a second time. I've been here before, twenty fucking years ago. I know what it is. If you put out work and all of a sudden people who don't know you start coming with opportunities, like I know what that is. Not everyone who puts work out gets those opportunities. So I know what that is, that that's a little shot there, that's a chance. People who don't know who the fuck I am, there's a guy with a bag on his head making music. That must just be what he does. Asking if I'd like a record deal or if I'd collaborate with them or offering me gigs. That made me feel like Marlo Stanfield.
33:23 Blindboy Boatclub? And all I wanna do is taste the blood on my arm. That's what I want, but I won't return to the corner. Because I've been there, it's not fucking happening. It's misery. And in 2017, when I wrote my first book of short stories and became an author and began this podcast, that's when I started to have stability in my life. A regular source of income, a wonderful audience of people who really engage with the work. We still have a million regular listeners after eight years going on nine, doing live podcasts to,
34:03 Blindboy Boatclub? in venues that I didn't even think possible when I was doing music. Like last year, I sold out Usher Hall in Edinburgh. I used to stand outside that venue trying to sell tickets for music gigs where I was playing to 150 people. To stand outside Usher Hall, never thought I'd fucking gig there. A hammersmith Apollo, now there's nothing wrong with gigging to 150 people. Nothing at all. If anyone is showing up to enjoy art that you're making, that's a wonderful thing. But you better be in your twenties, where you have the energy
34:42 Blindboy Boatclub? to be gigging late, to be gigging in loud places. And if we're being honest, to not be able to earn a living from the job you're doing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of musicians, even ones that you would consider to be successful, are also working second jobs. That's how it is. Unless they're gigging to maybe more than a thousand people each night. Someone who's doing really good activism around this specific issue right now is a singer called Kate Nash, hugely successful, but she's very open about how she can do
35:22 Blindboy Boatclub? like a tour in America and end up losing money. I've been speaking with Kate and I'm probably gonna have her on the podcast at some point when we can make that happen. She's English with Irish heritage and she's been doing gas work at the moment, learning about Irish history and trying to educate English people on the colonial horrors that happened in Ireland on behalf of England. Just today, she was outside Big Ben, holding a giant sign that says the English don't know their history. But I wouldn't return to being a professional musician because it would be so distracting to the happiness and meaning and purpose and feeling of calm that I get from this podcast and writing
36:07 Blindboy Boatclub? books. All of that has given me a very solid, reliable, predictable life that's allowed me to have a little family that I can look after. But I have been enjoying tasting the blood on my arm this week, what I would possibly consider doing.
36:26 Blindboy Boatclub? If I found the time is I might release music, but that's it. I don't think I'd sign to a label, have any obligations whatsoever, and just put music out that people could listen to if they wanted to. But that would require me having the time, the time to put into that music. And currently, that's not what I'm doing. I'm just picking two hours a week to make snippets as such. And if you're thinking, why are you doing it? Why are you messing around with music? Why are you even bothering? For the joy of the process? For the playfulness? For the love of making music? And if you were to go to a lot of professional musicians,
37:10 Blindboy Boatclub? not every professional musician likes gigging at all, or even wants to perform. Like Enya, Enya's never done a gig in her life. What she did in the early days with Clannad, but not as a solo artist. The Beatles stopped gigging in 1966 so they could focus only on studio work, making the music, the art. ABBA stopped gigging in 1982. The Beach Boys stopped gigging in the mid 60s because Brian Wilson, who most likely neurodivergent, his nervous system just couldn't handle gigging. He just needed to be in the studio. Steely Dan stopped gigging in the mid 70s. And these were all artists who were, they were in it for creating the music,
37:52 Blindboy Boatclub? not necessarily performing that music. But what did they all have in common? They came from the era when you didn't have to gig. You could just make music and earn a living from royalties. But if I was to take up anyone on an offer, especially like a label, to put out an album, it's like, well, now you gotta go gig that album. And it fucked up my hearing. It gave me tinnitus doing all those gigs. There's no such thing as a record deal without extensive touring because the music itself cannot earn. So I'd rather be semi-professional as a musician if I was to release music. Keep doing my thing over here.
38:37 Blindboy Boatclub? And then if I felt like releasing music, I could, but I don't expect anything in return. But I do get a lovely kick. I get a kick out of the fact that. Like the thing is with, with, with music as an art form, a, a piece of new music has to operate like a conversation that you wanna be part of or wanna eavesdrop on. You know, when you're in a restaurant and it's loud and everyone's talking, but then one person over in the corner of the room says something and then the whole place goes silent and everyone wants to hear what that conversation is. And before you know it, everyone's eavesdropping.
39:21 Blindboy Boatclub? An effective piece of music kinda has to do that. Now, after that point, people can decide whether they like it or whether they hate it. But it does need to do that thing where it's like, what's that? Cause if it doesn't do that thing, then it's just background noise. But it needs to stand out and make people go, what the fuck is that? This needs a bit of my attention. So I'm happy to still be able to do that. That feels nice. Using only symmetrical vibrations of air that arrived to me via the playfulness of, of flow. And the practice of doing it has had tangible mental health benefits for me. It gives the, the chaos and the busyness of my neurodivergent brain
40:03 Blindboy Boatclub? a rest, to be away from words and thinking and to exist only as vibrations. And touching the knobs and the synth and the keys on the piano, not thinking, doing, playing. That's meditation. And I'm less anxious, less irritable. And I have the type of calmness where I can notice my emotions. And that's all I want out of life. Earlier on in the podcast, when I was speaking about, when I made that joke about the shrew's penis and that I had the awareness that this was actually triggering childhood pain.
40:44 Blindboy Boatclub? That was only possible because I feel still enough and calm enough to notice my emotions safely as they pop up. If I can notice my emotions, then I can observe them and choose how I respond to them. But when I'm burnt out and irritable and angry, when uncomfortable emotions step in, threatening emotions come in, such as feeling that I'm in trouble, thinking that someone's giving out to me, shame, we're talking about shame there, that's, that's shame. If I feel like I'm in trouble and I haven't done anything wrong, then I'm experiencing
41:26 Blindboy Boatclub? shame and that shame comes from my childhood and it's the shame of believing that I'm bad or stupid or dysfunctional or unruly or bold or whatever labels were put on me when my brain was too young to think critically. And shame is very threatening and frightening and it's not a nice one to feel. And if I can't sit with the feeling of shame and take ownership of it and observe it and recognise it, then I'm not responding to it, I'm gonna react to it. You know what shame is? It's a negative evaluation of self.
42:06 Blindboy Boatclub? Shame isn't, I did something wrong, I fucked up, I made a mistake, some aspect of my behaviour here could be improved, that's not shame. Shame is when that's triggered and it's, oh, I'm bad, oh, I deserve this, oh, this awful, terrible feeling, I have no worth, I'm worthless. When things trigger childhood shit for me, school shit, I experience shame, so I need to be able to notice it and observe it so I can respond to it. I react to shame through rumination. You stupid fucker, you're supposed to be promoting your gigs on Instagram like they asked, you shouldn't have been off making music like a fucking idiot, you're letting
42:50 Blindboy Boatclub? people down, people who rely upon you and you're letting them down. And that, that's a reactive way to encounter shame, you're reacting to it, you're treating it as the truth. What triggers shame is, is a perceived social threat or failure and that then awakens the global core belief that you might have about yourself. I'm stupid, I'm defective, I'm, I'm wrong, I'm bad. And then you experience. What you call a contraction of self. It's a rotten feeling. And you know, when you get that sudden contraction of self, when you then experience what's called cognitive narrowing, you suddenly make huge generalisations about yourself,
43:35 Blindboy Boatclub? as if they are the truth in the moment. I'm worthless, I'm a piece of shit, I'm stupid, I'm defective, I'm wrong. And then you feel exposed. And you assume that every other single person can now see this truth about you. And that shame, and it's rooted in childhood. And most of us carry around a bit of shame. You know, I mentioned The Wire earlier, and I was speaking about that scene of spectacular violence, where the character of Chris Paratland beats Michael's father to death. And through the intensity of his violence, you can pick up that Chris himself was abused in his childhood. What makes that writing so brilliant is that David Simon managed to communicate shame.
44:18 Blindboy Boatclub? This man, this abuser, awoke deep feelings of shame in the Chris character. His shame was the feeling of powerlessness he felt as a child. And he reacted to that shame with furious violence and murder. That's the extreme end of the shame spectrum there. I'd like to be in the headspace where I can use all those tools I just mentioned to spot shame when it pops up and then respond to it and go, oh, no, that shame there. Feeling the need to make jokes about a shrew's penis. That's defensiveness. Oh, I'm back in class now. And I think that this promoter is my economics teacher.
45:01 Blindboy Boatclub? And my economics teacher either called me a name or looked at me in a certain way. Or I couldn't answer a question. And the big, big shame for me in school, the big one, is when I would fuck up and it wasn't the teacher. It was the other students' reactions. The most shameful moment of my life.
45:26 Blindboy Boatclub? The one that probably reawakens every time I experience shame.
45:32 Blindboy Boatclub? It would have been when I sat my junior cert exam, so I would have been 14. I had to sit foundation maths, okay? Now, the way it worked back then was you had honours maths and pass maths. So honours is advanced, pass is what everyone takes. And then you have foundation maths, which was really difficult to even sit. Because no teacher would allow you to do it. You had to be so unbelievably poor at maths that this was the only option. And during my junior cert exams, we're all in a big massive hall and we're sitting doing the maths exam. And the teachers are handing out the papers.
46:18 Blindboy Boatclub? And I think the higher level maths was like green, green piece of paper. There was a big pile and there was a yellow pile and that was ordinary level pass maths. And then there was one little pink, I think it was. There was one little pink paper and that was the foundation maths. And that was for me, I was the only student doing it. And every student in the hall was sticking their head up, looking around just to see this. Oh, is that a foundation maths paper? Is that it? And then it goes down to me and I can hear everyone giggling and laughing. Cause it's like, look at him, he's sitting foundation maths. Oh my God. What's even on it? Is it just counting ones and twos?
47:02 Blindboy Boatclub? And the foundation maths paper came to me and I opened it up. I still couldn't do it, still couldn't fucking do it.
47:12 Blindboy Boatclub? And I was the first student to walk out of the hall. When you finish your exam, you walk out. You've got certain kids who are amazing at maths and they're leaving early after doing their higher level maths. I was the first student to walk out. And I'm the one doing foundation. And when I did that, I heard everybody in the whole fucking room snigger and laugh. And it felt like being stabbed in the back by a thousand knives. I felt that sudden intense contraction of self that I'm fucking worthless and now being entirely rejected by my peers. Cause I'm so thick, cause I'm so fucking stupid.
47:56 Blindboy Boatclub? And I can still barely count and I can't read clocks. But I internalized that massive pain as shame and it returns to me when failure is a possibility. So that's why I tried to fail. I make that shame my friend. Undiagnosed autistic child in an environment that doesn't suit my nervous system. That's what the fuck was going on. And one thing that I'd like to say to that little child who couldn't do foundation maths, mathematics. Music is mathematics. Music is mathematics having fun. Music is vibrations of air. It's frequency ratios, temporal ratios, pattern and symmetry recognition.
48:40 Blindboy Boatclub? There's scaling systems through tuning. I don't process all of these things through numbers or arithmetic or language. I process them through emotions and my body. When I make music, it gets enough attention that I could do it professionally if I wanted to. So I can understand mathematics. I just experience it and express it in a very different way. That isn't measured by the school system. Well, it is if you sit fucking music for the leaving cert, but I wasn't allowed because you could either choose art or music. Cause both of those were seen as silly subjects. But that assessment of my shame there, I can only do that when I feel calm enough and safe enough to be able to
49:24 Blindboy Boatclub? observe my painful emotions and respond to them and think about them critically. And creating music is what's allowing me to do that. And that's not me talking out of my hope. Neuroscience will tell you that. Music therapy exists as a legitimate form of healing. Right, let's do a fucking Ocarina pause now. A lot of people asking me if I'm speaking about my synthesizer so much, why don't I do a synthesizer pause? I have to put the synthesizers away when I'm recording the podcast because they're too distracting. So they have to get locked away.
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51:31 Blindboy Boatclub? When I'm in Podcast Zone.
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53:48 Blindboy Boatclub? So I have my little Ocarina here. We're gonna play this. You'll hear an advert for something, all right?
54:08 Blindboy Boatclub? Not particularly musical, not very dog friendly. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, relief, entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly via the Patreon page. 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, you want to listen for free, no problem at all, you do that, that's grand. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast, I get to earn a living, we're all grand.
54:52 Blindboy Boatclub? It's a beautiful model based on kindness and soundness, and it keeps this podcast independent. I was mentioning earlier about record labels. You know, a record label releases your album, but, under the condition that you pay them back via touring, there's no conditions here, because this is listener funded. If advertisers are here, they're here on my terms. Nobody tells me what to speak about, what I can or can't talk about, or directs the content in any way. And no, no fucking advertiser's gonna be comfortable with, well, what's this week's podcast about? Oh, it's about how a poorly placed joke about a shrew's penis led me to meditate on shame, and then I give the plot of The Wire in the middle, can I have a sponsorship, please? No, you can't. Right, gigs.
55:36 Blindboy Boatclub? University Concert Hall, Limerick, tomorrow. Fuck all tickets, a shrew's penis worth of tickets for that gig. I'm interviewing Pat Short, it's gonna be great crack. Come along to that, if you can get those tickets that are left. Vickers Street, 20th of April, Dublin. It's a Monday night gig. Monday, I can, because I'm doing a live podcast, I take the nights that no one else wants. Because, here's the other thing about the economics of being a musician. Most of the acts that are gonna be playing in Vickers Street are musicians, and musicians need to have a Friday or a Saturday. Because when people go to a music gig, they have a couple of pints, they're having a
56:17 Blindboy Boatclub? night out, has to be Friday or Saturday. No musician wants a Monday night gig, because a lot of people don't want to go to a music gig on a Monday night. It's too exciting and they want to pint. My live podcast is much closer to going to the theatre or going to the cinema. It's a quiet, relaxing, meditative evening. You sit in your seats, you have a lovely time, then you're home in bed, get a full night's sleep, and you're up for work the next day. And then for me, I'm off stage at 11, I'm back home in bed in Limerick at 1am, and then I'm up ready to make pancakes for a pair of tiny monkeys at 7am. Perfect.
57:00 Blindboy Boatclub? And none of it will exacerbate my tinnitus. 25th of April, Galway, Leisure Land, that's the rescheduled gig from when I got chickenpox. Nearly sold out, couple of tickets left for that, come along if you want. Then what have we got? May, I'm doing a daytime gig in May Noth, in May Noth University as part of the Arts and Minds Festival, which I thought it was only available to students, but it turns out the public can show up too. So if you want to come, that's a Saturday, so if you've nothing to do at half one in the day on a Saturday, on the fucking 9th of May, come along to that gig in May Noth. Then I'm over in Berlin in June for two nights at the Babylon Theatre. First night is sold
57:45 Blindboy Boatclub? out, second night, is that sold out on the second night? I'd say that's sold out on the second night, you could have a look if you wanted to. That's Berlin. I'm gonna drink some Czech beers in Berlin, that's what I'm gonna do in Berlin. There's a video again that I'm obsessed with called Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is set in 14th century, what is now the Czech Republic, and I've become quite obsessed with Czech brewing traditions. And there's specific types of Czech beers, which I can't get in Ireland, but I can get them in Germany. And that's what I'm looking forward to in Berlin, as
58:26 Blindboy Boatclub? well as my gig. If anyone in Berlin knows of bars that might be near the venue, that have a large selection of beer from the Czech Republic, please let me know on Instagram at Blind by Ball Club. July.
58:43 Blindboy Boatclub? See, I can't read dates. This is all fucking mathematics brain here again.
58:48 Blindboy Boatclub? Now, is that the 5th of July, the 5th of July? I'm in Sheffield at the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield City Hall. Is that what it's called? Come along to that Sheffield gig. I'll have a wonderful guest. It'll be great crack, middle of July. Then the big tour of England, Scotland and Wales, which is almost sold out. That's in October 26, right? Starting on the 18th of October, I'm in the Brighton Dome. Then I'm in Cardiff, at the New Theatre Cardiff. Then I'm in Coventry, at the Warwick Arts Centre. I'm in Bristol, then at Beacon Hall. Guildford, G Live. London, I'm at the Barbican. Very nearly sold out there in London.
59:34 Blindboy Boatclub? Pavilion Theatre Glasgow, also nearly sold out. Then I'm in Gateshead, right? I need to make clarifications about Gateshead because
59:46 Blindboy Boatclub? last week I said that Ridley Scott based the film, some of the scenes from the film Blade Runner, on Gateshead. A lot of people corrected me, that's not true. He based it on the area of Teeside, not Gateshead. So apologies to people from that area. And then finally, the Theatre Royal in Nottingham, you cunts. This was a bit of a phone call podcast. I don't know what the fuck this podcast was about, but I really enjoyed, I enjoyed this podcast. I liked the catharsis of exploring difficult emotions and being open and vulnerable about it. I want to leave you on a thought, a thought that I had, but I don't know.
1:00:29 Blindboy Boatclub? It's something I couldn't make a full podcast out of, but it's just an observation that I found very interesting. In reference to, and I was speaking about The Wire earlier. And I was saying that, you know, Limerick City, there's, there's crack dealers in Limerick City, there's different gangs that sell crack and you can see them, it's very obvious out in the open, and the structure of how it operates is visibly, it's the same as the wire. You've got older lads standing there, then slightly younger, and then little children who are known as pennybuys, zooming around on their electric bicycles. One of them tried to rob my phone earlier this week, actually, in quite a cyberpunk moment.
1:01:12 Blindboy Boatclub? I've got this leather belt that I wanted to get repaired. I hate this business of, if something like your belt breaks, you just go and buy another one. I don't like how capitalism has forced that upon us and now you don't get things repaired anymore. So the buckle of my belt broke, and I'm like, fuck this, I'm not gonna go into the shop just to buy a new one because I can. I'm gonna try and get this belt buckle fixed, that's what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna keep this belt in the name of sustainability. So I was walking around Limerick City, with my phone out, trying to find someone who
1:01:53 Blindboy Boatclub? can repair a belt, and I slowly realised the service doesn't really exist. Then I found one shop, one little leather shop, and I went in there to the back. And it was just this old school shack with a single old man in there who had the skills to repair belts. And I took my belt off, I was holding my pants in case they wouldn't fucking fall down, and I showed him my belt, and he looked at it and he said, "I can't repair this particular belt." And I said, "What am I gonna do?" And he goes, "There's nothing you can do. You're gonna have to replace it." So I left the shop, but my belt is fucking broken,
1:02:33 Blindboy Boatclub? so I'm holding it up, one hand, and then I have my phone out, I'm looking at it on Google Maps to see there has to be another shop that can repair my belt. So it's raining heavily, and I'm on the carb on William Street, it's busy, and I'm heavily distracted because one hand is holding up my belt, and then the other hand's got my fucking phone out in front of me in the rain with Google Maps trying to find another belt repair shop, and as I have my fucking phone out. This little fucker on an electric bike comes down the wrong side of the road and whips his hand out to try and take my phone out of my hand and he didn't get it. But he was one of those penny buys.
1:03:13 Blindboy Boatclub? He was one of those penny buys that they're little kids on, on electric scooters that work with the gangs. But after that happened, I was, I was reflecting on, that's like a 1980 cyberpunk story. If you wrote a cyberpunk story about 2026 of a fella walking around and he can't get his belt repaired, and then there's gangs of young lads on electric bikes stealing GPS phones. But the thing I wanted to speak about this, I don't think I can justify an entire podcast on, was last Halloween, I noticed something and it was, I'd call it folklore.
1:03:53 Blindboy Boatclub? We think of folklore as things from the past, but folklore is like orally transmitted, collectively shared traditions or beliefs that organically come out of a community and it's outside of formal institutions.
1:04:16 Blindboy Boatclub? So th- th- these gangs in Limerick, because the weird thing about Limerick is that Limerick has, um, like a, a gang tradition that goes back years, a gang culture. Dublin has it too. Cork doesn't have it. Galway doesn't have it. Limerick has this, this thing. And at the moment in Limerick, there's feuding gangs that sell drugs, mostly crack. Crack is, is a big problem in Limerick. Apparently, I read this in the newspaper, Limerick was specifically targeted as a market to test out crack cocaine about four or five years ago by this larger gang.
1:04:59 Blindboy Boatclub? I don't know who they were, but a larger Irish or international gang picked out Limerick and said, let's just see if crack works down there and lower the price. And there's a lot of it. Limerick in the newspapers is called the crack capital of Ireland. So there's a lot of crack cocaine and if you walk around the city centre, you see it being smoked openly. Now, that's changed in the past three weeks because now there's police on the beat. So there's physical police on the beat all over Limerick City to stop people smoking crack and to stop what they refer to as aggressive begging, which I don't know, that's just a deterrent.
1:05:43 Blindboy Boatclub? I go for walks in the middle of the day and the crack is still there. It's just more on the outskirts of the city centre now. But anyway, last summer, there was feuding between gangs. And there was one or two drive-by shootings. But what's changed about it now, and it's really weird, they film themselves doing the drive-by shootings. So they film themselves in the car, pointing the gun out the window and shooting at houses. And then the gang members who were doing it then are getting arrested because they appear to be filming their own shootings. But last Halloween, I noticed something.
1:06:28 Blindboy Boatclub? So I saw this gang of little kids, they must have been eight or nine years of age, hanging around a petrol station. And for their Halloween costumes, they were all wearing blue surgical gloves, nothing else, just like their tracksuits, their little electric bikes and blue surgical gloves. And I didn't fully understand what this was. And then I realised those drive-by shootings that happened over the summer, one of the videos, which went very viral locally in Limerick in WhatsApp groups and it ended up in the newspapers too.
1:07:05 Blindboy Boatclub? One of the lads in the car, he had a Glock pistol, was shooting it and was wearing blue surgical gloves. And those tiny little kids, that's why they were wearing the blue surgical gloves, because they were looking up or admiring the older gang lads that are doing drive-by shootings with blue surgical gloves. And I thought to myself, that's folklore. It's incredibly sad, but that's folklore right there. That's a shared cultural tradition that comes out of a community outside of institutions. And you need to understand the codes in order to know what that means.
1:07:48 Blindboy Boatclub? But it also reminded me of another brilliant scene in The Wire where
1:07:54 Blindboy Boatclub? there's a character called Omar. And Omar is, he's not in any gang. He robs drug dealers, incredible character. But unlike Marlo, who has no heart, Omar, he's a killer, he's a shooter on the streets, but he is all heart. And one moment in it where you see his regret and grief and compassion and humanity is when one of the police says to him, "There's little kids in the streets, dressing up as you, pretending that they're you, pretending that they're shooting the drug dealers. They're looking up to you. You think you're doing something good by robbing these drug dealers, but you're not because the little kids are looking up to you and they want to kill people like you do."
1:08:40 Blindboy Boatclub? And it reminded me of that. And having said all that, I'm still greatly disappointed that David Simon is a Zionist. What a shame. What a shame that a person with that much insight into the human condition is, appears to be supporting genocide, all right? Okay, that was a phone call and a half is what the fuck that was. That was all over the gaff, Jesus Christ. All right, I'll catch you next week. I don't know what weight. What am I doing this week? Oh, I'm making a music show, NTS, which is an online music station. And they've basically said to me, do whatever the fuck you want. So I'm going to do a radio show for NTS. It's going to be quarterly.
1:09:22 Blindboy Boatclub? My first one is April or May, I'm not sure, but I'm going to record it this week anyway. That's what I'm going to do. Okay, rub a dog genuflect to a swan, fillet the proportionally gigantic glands of a shrew. God bless.
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Previous A history of the synthesiser in pop music with Martyn Ware Next Have you anything to say about the Fuel protests Blindboy? Or are you a Government shill who is worried about losing his next Late Late show appearance? Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated