Words for Artists

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Welcome to the Blind By Podcast.

This episode might be peppered with the laughter of employees from a pharmaceutical company that share that share my office floor with me.

They're having a meeting, and it seems very jovial.

Let's begin this week's podcast with a poem.

I haven't I haven't read out a poem in this podcast in fucking months.

So

let's read out a poem that was written by Hollywood actor Paul Meskell.

This poem is called My Celebrity Confessions.

I collect the yellow stuff that ladybirds put on your hand when you hold them and then I rub it into my eyes so I can see the devil.

I bury myself in mud beside the river and hold my breath all winter like a frog.

I stick my head into the trunks of trees and wait until a squirrel has sex with my hair.

I lay eggs on the surface of ponds

and they wriggle underneath the meniscus and turn into horse flies.

I collect nectar from Mayflowers and smash my face into your windscreen and then I die and you wipe me off like I'm an inconvenience.

That was My Celebrity Confessions by Hollywood actor Paul Meska.

I'm gonna do a question answering podcast this week because

this is actually pre-recorded.

I'm on tour in England and Scotland right now and I'm doing 10 dates in 14 days, which is quite that's a very intense tour.

I'm gonna have to mind myself.

But a tour like that, it's literally

gig, car, hotel, car, gig, non-stop.

Which...

To be honest, that's only stressful.

That's stressful if you don't look after yourself.

Performing on stage in front of a lot of people, it's it releases huge amounts of adrenaline, huge amounts of adrenaline, and it's exhausting and you don't really notice it.

You could compare it to, I don't know, your wedding or your 21st birthday party.

You don't notice that, you don't notice how exciting and overwhelming it is.

You just don't.

And then afterwards you're like, fuck me, that took a lot out of me.

So touring is a bit like that.

Gigging is a bit like that.

And it's completely manageable if you don't get shit faced.

you try to go to bed as soon after the gig as possible and then in the daytime you need to make sure that you're active in some way that you can get a walk in or go to the gym or a swim or a run you treat the entire tour like a job it's a job and if you want to have a pint have it at the end of the tour I'm saying this because I want to do a question answering podcast this week and I actually do I get a lot of questions from bands and comedians and people who tour for a fucking living and I get asked how do I fucking do this my mental health is in shit you get some people

some acts

so when you go on tour and you do gigs the mixture of alcohol and gigging is pretty standard even if it's a couple of pints backstage or a few bottles some acts are afraid of going on tour because if they're doing it we'll say six week or a two month tour it means that for those two months they have this really really unhealthy relationship with alcohol that they're worried about like i i can relate to that years ago when i used to gig with say edinburgh comedy festival or the last time i gigged edinburgh comedy festival and did a full run you're talking 2014 or 2013 and i was in my 20s i'd gig 30 nights in a row

and after like no break 30 nights in a row but after each fucking gig after each gig at edinburgh you always had to meet someone.

There might be a TV agent in the audience.

There might be someone who wants to give you more gigs.

You always have to meet somebody.

So every single night, after a gig, I'm having at least two to three social pints of alcohol.

I'm not getting langers.

Just like two or three pints.

Moderate alcohol consumption.

But every single night, 30 nights in a row, I used to come off tour and I'd be back in Limerick.

And I would get to about nine o'clock at night in Limerick and I'd be like, where's my little pint?

Where's my drink?

Where's my alcohol?

And I'd go, fuck, what's this about?

I don't wanna, I never usually drink at nine o'clock at night.

What's this?

So I'd have to have mindfulness around that.

I'm like, fucking hell, you just did a tour of 30 nights in a row and every single night you had a couple of pints.

You've just formed a habit here, buddy.

This habit doesn't sound very healthy.

So I'm going away for two weeks.

What am I gonna do?

I'm gonna eat well, exercise, drink loads of water, focus on sleep and use my days off to do wonderful enjoyable things like visit museums.

And I know that sounds profoundly boring and it is.

That's very boring.

But I'm a middle-aged man and I'm very very lucky to say that I've been touring.

since 2007.

That's almost 20 years of

creating something, creating art of some description and people going, yeah, I'll turn up and see that.

And I do think having the self-awareness early on to go, you can't treat tours like a party, having that self-awareness is definitely one of the reasons that I'm still going.

And also,

the acts, the acts that I was gigging with 15 years ago, who used to go ape shit after every gig and turn it into a big long session, they're not gigging anymore.

They're not in the industry anymore.

Why would you be?

Why would you be?

It's creating a very a toxic environment for yourself.

So right now I'm making my plastic bags for my tour.

What I do is I do I make a little batch of plastic bags every tour.

I'm aiming for three bags.

That's it, three I'm gonna take three bags on tour.

I'll use two and I'll have one as a spare.

I have like

a shopping center closed down like 10 years ago called JC's Up and Swords and Dublin and they donated to me several thousand single use plastic bags and I have those plastic bags and what I do is I don't I don't use a new bag every gig.

I get about maybe seven uses out of each bag.

I get a single use plastic bag, then I have a plaster cast of my head and I shrink the bag using a heat gun to my plaster cast of my head and then I cut eye holes and ear holes out of it so I'm repurposing single use plastic single use plastic that you can't throw away that's terrible for the environment that will never decompose I take these single use plastic bags and I repurpose them into masks that get worn seven or eight times and then I don't throw those away I keep all my used plastic bags so that's that's why I only make three.

That's why.

Because I'm running out of them.

I didn't think my career was going to last this long.

I'll be honest.

I did not think that my career was going to last this long.

And now I'm running out of plastic bags.

I'd be alright for another couple of years, I'd say.

But I do need to start thinking about alternatives.

On my last TV show, I used, I didn't use a single-use plastic bag.

My last TV show, I had a costume designer make me a plastic bag out of silk I think so it looked like plastic bag on camera but really it was a silk bag and we did this for two reasons number one

a silk bag doesn't make a rustly plastic bag noise on camera that's really important number two continuity if I've got a reusable silk bag then it looks the same in every single shot You see with my plastic bags, not every plastic bag is the same.

The mouth might be different, the eye holes might be bigger or smaller.

And this used to be a nightmare when I was shooting TV with my plastic bag.

Cause sometimes you do a scene and something's wrong.

And then you have to go back a month later and shoot other parts of that scene.

And I'd be doing that with a completely different plastic bag.

So in one scene, my mouth is this size, and then in another scene, I don't have ears.

So for my last TV program, which was, the fuck was it called?

Blind by the lands of slaves and scholars it was my documentary about monasteries that I made last year I actually had a silk bag a silk bag that I wore that was made for me but I want to put out a call if any of ye listening if any of ye listening work professionally in costume if ye if ye work professionally in costume and can make masks Give me a shout on Instagram, Blind by Ball Club, because I'd be interested in working with you so that

I kind of want to move on from the plastic bag.

I'm

so first off, I'm running out of plastic bags, right?

So I'm running out of them.

Making new ones is a pain in the arse.

So I'd love to have a professional person who can make me bags out of whatever fabric you think is

appropriate.

So if anyone is qualified to do that, give me a shout on Instagram and I'll hire you and pay you properly.

And also, you'll have recurring business because I'll always be in need of bags or masks.

I want a mask that looks like my plastic bag.

I love my red and white plastic bag.

I really love the design on it, and I don't want to change that.

And I like to stay faithful to JCs in swords because they were an independent family business that had been in swords for a long time.

And then they were pushed out, pushed out by Aldi and Dunstores.

So so I like to keep flying that flag.

I saw an interesting bee yesterday.

I was out in my back garden looking at see anytime I'm making plastic bags I become I become hypersensitive to bees and wasps.

I've spoken about this before but one of my greatest fears is a wasp or a bee flying inside my bag while I'm wearing it.

It happened once, it happened once about eight years ago at a festival where a wasp flew inside my bag while I was on stage and I had to punch myself into the face on stage and I don't think I explained it to anybody.

So when I'm making plastic bags I do become more aware than usual to bees and wasps.

So

I was looking at flowers and observing all the bees and flowers and this bee came along and he looked different to the other bees.

I hadn't seen this bee before.

It was definitely a honey bee but it was

It was more orange than the other honey bees.

So I got a photograph of it and went searching online, looking at biodiversity websites, going, what type of bee is this?

And it turns out it's called a Buckfast Bee.

I'm like, what?

A fucking Buckfast Bee?

What type of fucking bee is a Buckfast B?

And I'm thinking, this is hardly related to Buckfast, the drink, is it?

Because Buckfast.

Buckfast is a...

It's a fortified wine.

It's in Ireland, very popular in Galway.

Students drink it in Ireland.

It's one of these really sweet, mad drinks.

In America, the equivalent would be for loco.

Like if you're in Ireland and you're in England or Scotland or Wales, you know what the fuck Buck Fast is.

But if there's any Yanks listening, it's like Forloco.

It's highly caffeinated, sweet alcohol that's cheap.

that you drink just to get fucked up.

That's what Buck Fast is.

In Ireland, it's mostly drank by students from Galway.

I'd love to know the Galway connection there.

They serve it on tap

in some places in Galway.

But Buckfast is it's lunatic juice.

If you're drinking Buckfast, you're probably under the age of 25 and you're ready to go mad.

And then in Scotland, Buckfast is and this might be a moral panic, but Buckfast is associated with anti-social behaviour and street drinking and social deprivation.

But I'm not buying it.

Social deprivation, poverty, and the issues that go along with poverty, they're not caused by a drink, they're caused by political policy and neoliberalism.

But then a drink comes along, like Buckfast, and then the politicians get to go, oh, it's that thing, that thing over there, that's the problem, that bottle of drink there.

But Buckfast is a drink.

It was actually made, it's made in an abbey, a monastery in Devon called Buckfast Monastery, which has been operating for near a thousand years and and in Buckfast Abbey there's Benedictine monks

and

they used to brew Buckfast tonic wine as a little medicine.

Like 150 years ago, maybe 130 years ago, Buckfast was only sold at this little monastery in small little vials.

not as something that gets you shit-faced, but

as a little tonic, almost like rescue remedy a highly alcoholic full of caffeine and I'm sure if you took a spoon of it in 1890 in a world where maybe coffee isn't readily available sugary drinks aren't readily available if you had a little spoon of buck fast tonic wine in 1890 probably put a spring in your step but over time this became buckfast tonic wine and it used to be sold in in chemists and when it was sold in chemists,

I believe it was mostly women who'd buy it.

Women, at a time when a woman drinking alcohol was socially unacceptable, women would go to the chemist pharmacy and buy their Buckfast tonic wine and get shit faced at home and then slowly it just became a cheap fortified wine that you buy and that traces its roots to the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey in Devon.

But this fucking bee that was out in my back garden, this Buckfast bee, it's actually an invasive species in Ireland.

It's the cow of the bee world.

It's a bee that was bred by the monks of Buckfast Abbey.

Because there were loads of beekeepers there.

The monks were beekeepers.

So they'd bred this incredible honey bee that was bred for long life,

huge honey production, brilliant at producing honey, and incredibly calm when handled by humans.

So it's a super bee.

It's a bee that was bred by monks at Buckfast Abbey over a long period of time to create this incredible amazing bee that's brilliant at creating honey.

But it's domestic.

It's a domestic bee.

This wasn't created by nature.

It was created by humans.

It was selectively bred.

So this domestic bee is actually a threat.

to the indigenous Irish wild honey bee.

Now why is the Buckfast bee threatening to the indigenous wild Irish honey bee?

Well, they're fantastic bees, but they're bred to be handled by humans and they're bred for life in a hive.

The indigenous wild honey bee,

that's part of nature.

That's resistant to cold, certain diseases.

You're talking millions of years of evolution.

So when one of these buckfast bees mates with an indigenous queen, you get genetic dilution.

So you get these bees that are less resistant to the wild, to the Irish wild.

So there's a hive of buckfast bees.

Now the thing is as well, it could have been...

It could literally have been bees that a professional beekeeper was keeping.

That's what the bee up in my back garden could have been.

Could have belonged to a professional hive.

But if you see a swarm...

or a hive of buckfast bees in the wild, you're supposed to report it so someone can take the hive away.

Okay, let's let's answer some questions.

Kelsey asks, you mentioned a few podcasts back that you'd like to come and see cities in the American Rust Belt.

I live in Pittsburgh and you have listeners here in Pittsburgh.

When are you gonna come and do a podcast here?

Oh Kelsey, my poor old yank.

I don't think I'm gonna be coming to ye any time soon.

It really is quite hostile.

The fucking Trump administration.

I called it wrong.

I called it wrong.

I remember

I remember saying

coming up to the election that basically whether it's Trump or Kamala Harris, you're gonna get the same shit.

You're gonna get the same shit but a different tone.

I was very wrong about that.

Um I did not

I reckon Palestine would still be the same.

Kamala Harris is a Democrat warmonger.

I don't think anybody I don't think much would have changed with Palestine.

The US would continue to enable that genocide regardless.

Trump has pretty much withdrawn military aid from Ukraine.

Kamala Harris wouldn't have done that.

I knew a second Trump term was going to be nuts with him making lots of irrational statements and lying, lots of lies, because we'd seen that before.

But the thing is, about the first Trump term,

there was way more internal resistance.

Whenever Trump would try to sign an executive order or

enact some type of sweeping powers,

there were judges, members of Congress,

senators, people would challenge his crazy decisions using the law and be like, no, you can't do that.

But that's happening less and less now.

And he's replacing everybody around him.

With loyalists, with people who are loyal to Trump above everything else, he used to even have pushback from old school Republicans used to give him pushback.

Like in Trump's first term, his Secretary of Defense

was a fellow called James Mathis.

He was a general.

The Secretary of Defense is the person who oversees the military, the US military, by far the most powerful military in the world that has nuclear capabilities.

I'm not a fan of the US military, but I'd like to think at least that the person running it has the capacity to say no to Trump.

If Trump was acting on emotion, we'll say, well, James Mathis used to do that.

Like this man's name was Mad Dog.

James Mad Dog Mathis.

So you can imagine what a prick this fella was.

But when Trump was being emotional and looking for military solutions to his emotion, James Mathis would step in and go, can't do that.

Why?

Well, because my responsibility is to the Constitution, not to a president, to the Constitution, and the military's responsibility is to defend the Constitution.

That's the whole point of it.

But now the Secretary of Defense is

this fellow called Pete Hegset.

He was an officer in the National Guard.

Mostly he was a Fox News host.

And he's got neo-Nazi tattoos.

And by all accounts, he's an alcoholic.

Nothing against alcoholics.

I'm just saying.

If you're...

If you're struggling with addiction, active addiction, then

having one of the most stressful and responsible jobs in the world, overseeing the US military, might not be suited to you.

And he's got a...

He's got a tattoo on his chest of a Jerusalem cross.

It's a Crusader's Cross tattoo.

It refers to the Crusades.

The Crusades were the Christian conquering.

the European Christian conquering of Muslim lands in the early medieval period.

But anyone who has a a tattoo of a crusader cross now,

it's only white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have those tattoos.

So that's who Trump chose as the Secretary of Defense, someone who was absolutely loyal to him above all else.

So this time round, it's different.

It feels different to the first term.

It feels like you just have to switch off.

because there's not much international pushback either.

So yeah, I've been offered gigs, I've been offered tours in America and I'm just, I'm not taking them, I'm not doing them because it just doesn't feel safe.

I did a podcast on this around 2018.

I spoke about the powers that US immigration has when you try to enter the country.

When you try to enter the country, they can detain you for whatever reason.

and they can look through your phone, they can invade your privacy, they can do what they like if you're trying to get into America.

And I did a podcast about that at the time.

And a few people thought maybe I was being a little bit paranoid about it.

But I don't think I am now in 2025.

If you're an artist, and you're outspoken about Palestine in particular, or critical of Trump, especially if your views make it into the media, like you're going off to America to do tours, to do gigs.

You're gonna get pulled aside.

You're gonna get pulled aside and they're gonna go through all your shit.

They're gonna go through your private data.

You'll most likely be refused entry to the country to perform.

You won't be able to do your gigs.

But worst of all, it's just that grilling.

I don't want that grilling.

I don't want to be stuck in a room with a hostile yank in this liminal, extra-legal place between countries where

My rights don't exist and an immigration official from the US can just completely invade my privacy.

Like it's happening, it's happening now with journalists, journalists who are trying to enter the US and they're going through that process of having their privacy invaded and it's being done to intimidate, to intimidate.

That's 100% why it's being done.

It's intimidation to silence critical voices and it's working because myself and a lot of other artists are just like, no, I can't gig America.

I can't go to America.

It's not worth the risk.

I don't want to risk that.

I'd rather continue being critical of Trump and also me personally.

Like I keep forgetting this one, but this definitely, I haven't tried to get to the US since, but I'm definitely on a list because

my TV show with the BBC that I made in 2019, Blind By Understroys the World,

I literally made a fake version of Trump's piss tape.

So there was a long-standing rumor that Trump was compromised by Russia and that Putin and the Russians, they had a secret tape of Trump in a hotel room in Russia and that Trump had hired two sex workers to urinate on him and on a bed that Obama had previously slept in.

And this was a widespread rumor about this tape.

And this is a tape that the Russians have over Trump and they control him through this.

But nobody's ever seen the tape.

So when I was working with the BBC on my TV show, it's like right we have a budget now.

Let's make the piss tape.

Let's make as convincing as fucking possible.

Let us recreate the Trump piss tape.

And we got a team of people together and did it fucking forensically.

I mean right down to finding out where the Russian hotel was, what the rooms looked like, hired a body double for Trump.

like big budget perfection and I wanted to do this as an art piece that would show the dangers of misinformation and deep fakes and what we're now dealing with with AI because this was 2019 remember AI wasn't around the way it was now but we full on we made the piss tape it was perfect made the piss tape uploaded it anonymously around the internet and literally as soon as it would go anywhere it would get deleted that was the mad part even on

websites that are considered the wild wild west like 8chan and 4chan i'm talking about websites where

where child sexual abuse material stays up and doesn't get deleted i mean the fucking i'm talking the deep web places where you can buy drugs places where complete anonymity bitcoin you could hire someone to murder someone if you wanted.

The darkest corners of the internet.

And I gotta point out this was all done with legal and ethical oversight.

Like it was the BBC and I was working with a team of investigative reporters.

So professional journalists on a case were posting this tape on my behalf on these sites as part of their job.

I wasn't wandering willy-nilly around the dark web on illegal sites.

When it came to trying to post the fake Trump piss tape and presenting it as real, like here's the real tape, we have it,

we stole it from Russian hackers.

When it came to like presenting it, literally within minutes it was gone.

And I found that shocking because it meant that there's always someone watching, whether that's CIA, MI5, somebody, even when you think you're in the darkest corner of the internet, there's always someone watching.

And that Trump piss tape that was obviously real high up, real high up on the agenda because it simply could not be online.

Gone in two seconds, just gone.

Someone was there ready to delete it every time, no matter what the website or where you are on the deep web.

So it never, it never got the chance to spread.

It didn't get the chance to spread and go viral.

The plan would have been to make the piss tape, let it go viral and then come clean, then Then come clean and say, this is actually art.

This is a stunt.

This is to show how disinformation happens.

This was commissioned by the BBC.

Like, that's the other thing.

It's commissioned by the BBC, which means that it's legally solid.

There'd have been teams of lawyers all over it, making sure that everything that's happening is legal and ethical and okay.

Like if I did that myself without legal oversight, that'd land you in trouble.

But the piss tape, the piss tape, the Trump piss tape that made

like it did work it just didn't go widespread viral because it was being pulled down everywhere but if you look up an article on slate.com which is a very big website journalist journalism website look up an article from september 2019 called the p-tape is real but it's fake and the byline is there's a video going around that no one's really talking about what makes it most unreal is how believable it is i made that piss tape but the thing is is even in the article where they're trying to figure out if it's read or not I came out loudly on the fucking BBC on the TV show and said it's a fake piss tape we made it we made it here.

They still haven't updated the article but then COVID happened.

So the the fake piss tape went out then in late November my TV show went out where we showed the making of the piss tape and how it's art and how this is all fake.

That went out and then fucking COVID happened.

And when COVID happened, nothing mattered in the news.

Like we've forgotten all about that period, but literally, as soon as the news hit, there might be a global pandemic and it got worse and worse, nothing else mattered in the news.

But at the end of the day,

I'm the person who made the fucking piss tape.

If I tried to go to America...

Like I've done it multiple times.

If I go to America to do fucking gigs, I have to do it legitimately.

I have to go over there and do the blind boy podcast.

I get to immigration, and the first thing I meet is a person going, Blind Boy, who's Blind Boy?

Oh, okay.

He supports Patton.

Right, okay, that's not good.

Oh,

oh, right, okay.

You, you actually made a you made a big budget fake version of Trump's piss tape.

Right, step in here, please, sir.

So that's, I'm not going to America.

That's why I can't go to America.

I'd actually forgotten.

I'd literally forgotten.

Like, I know that sounds nuts, but I'm so busy all the time.

And as well, I struggle to remember things that happened before the pandemic.

I'm so busy all the time.

And things happen so fast.

I had literally forgotten that I'd made a high-budget fake tape of Trump being pissed on as a global hoax that got taken very seriously by intelligence services and the media.

So too fucking right, too fucking right on that going to America.

So the Trump administration is really

it's implauding.

Some of the headlines are just bizarre.

Like Robert Kennedy,

he's the Secretary for Health.

He commissioned a report last week.

Which is like the vision, the vision for America's future health policy.

This people's health.

something which is based on science and evidence.

His report contained fake citations.

So citations to studies that

they're not only wrong, they don't exist.

Imaginary citations, which to me says they generated the report using artificial intelligence.

Like that's...

that's a bombshell.

That's just today.

I'm recording this last week, if you're listening to this now.

That's just some mad shit that happened today.

That'll be be forgotten about tomorrow and some new mad thing will happen we're bombarded with so many intense events that you just have to switch off from them in order to exist and to live like the watergate scandal happened in 1972 the watergate scandal was when nixon who was the president of america he was a republican so it turns out that nixon

was using microphones to eavesdrop on the democrats it was a scandal that would have been the only thing in the news for about six months.

It shocked America and the world to its core.

Nixon had to resign as president.

There were hearings about it.

Committees.

The Supreme Court took Nixon, the president, to court.

No laws, no laws were created because of the Watergate scandal.

And what happened in the Watergate scandal?

President Nixon used microphones to eavesdrop and the Democrats.

That's just a regular Wednesday now.

That's just like a regular Wednesday.

Trump's Secretary of Defense has a Nazi tattoo.

So what?

The Secretary of Health presented his scientific report about the overhaul, the overhaul of the US health system based on evidence that doesn't exist, that isn't real, because they probably made it using artificial intelligence.

That's just a Wednesday now.

That's just a Wednesday.

I'm pre-recording this podcast.

I'm recording this five days ago.

When you listen to this podcast now, the health report and the fake citations, you won't even remember it.

It won't even be news.

It'll just be forgotten because some other crazy shit will have happened.

Like if that was the 90s or even the 2010s, first off Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy wouldn't be the Secretary of Health.

Just wouldn't happen.

Be unthinkable.

And secondly, he'd have to resign.

It'd be the only thing spoken about on the news for a week.

Multiple people would lose their job.

The president would be held to extreme account for hiring a lunatic.

And there'd be all these hearings.

There'd be these hearings to try and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Now it's just a Wednesday.

Nothing's gonna happen.

No one gives a shit.

They're just moving on to the next mad thing.

Paith Hexet, the fucking Nazi.

Secretary of Defense.

Do you remember like

three weeks ago when they discussed the bombing of Yemen using signal, using an app that could easily be hacked by other governments, easily.

That's watergate level.

That's a watergate level of a scandal.

Did anything happen?

No.

People lied, no one was held to account, and then some more mad shit happened and we moved on from it.

Do you remember someone remember someone shot Trump into his ear there 10 months ago?

Was that 10 months ago?

I don't know.

I don't know anymore.

I don't even know if that happened or not.

I'm not sure.

Something has occurred and it's been getting steadily.

I've spoken about this.

I've spoken about this multiple times in the podcast, but it just feels like the world is getting

more extreme and more extreme.

And I don't know why that is.

One

feeling that I have is

I think it's algorithms.

Since the mid-2010s, when our data, the data of our behavior, how much time we spend on smartphones and on social media, since that data became a commodity that can be mined to generate billions, our algorithms have become more extreme.

So we tend to see more and more content that arouses anger, fear, disgust.

Well, we know that's happening.

We know full well that that's what social media algorithms do.

But then that desensitizes us and we become overwhelmed and we collectively drop our standards as to what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

The Trump administration are they're being brazen.

They're being brazen.

They're doing whatever the fuck they want because no one is really holding them to account.

The journalists aren't really holding them to account like they used to.

And then people aren't really holding them to account because all the conversation is happening in social media feeds.

And even why would you bother?

Most thoughtful people won't bother.

What am I going to do?

Go onto Instagram and write, this is disgraceful, Robert F.

Kennedy should resign.

I'm not going to do that, because I'll just get 20 people wanting to have an argument with me.

You can't hold people to account anymore.

You can't hold despicable behaviour to account anymore because the forums where it's done tends to be social media spaces which are designed and controlled by billionaires specifically to make us fight with each other so that we stay on longer and earn more money for the billionaires.

Society is losing a sense of checks and balances and accountability because we've chosen to move all discourse, all discourse onto social media platforms at the whim of the fucking algorithm.

And that then is driving more extreme and bizarre behavior from people in leadership.

I don't know, or else my other theory, which is

when they started the Large Hadron Collider in September 2008, it shifted us into a different a different dimension with more extreme rules.

But most likely it's

since the mid-2010s All public discourse has moved onto platforms where billionaires have decided that the only way we can communicate is in the form of turn and response combat.

And the angrier you get, the longer you stay on the platform, and the more money that billionaire makes from your behavior.

I reckon that's created a lot of problems.

I'm gonna do an ocarina pause now.

I don't have an ocarina, I have an empty an empty tin of kefir.

I've been drinking a lot of kefir recently.

I've been really

I've been focusing on gut health.

Ever since I spoke to Professor Ted Dinan about the relationship between the gut biome and mental health, which was a podcast about two months ago, I've really been focusing on gut health.

So

I've been drinking kefir, which is fantastic.

I've been eating fermented sauerkraut,

live yogurts, kimchi.

including this stuff as a daily part of my diet and then also looking after prebiotics and that's just food that has a lot of natural fiber in it so chia seeds chia seeds in my yogurt making sure i'm eating lots of healthy vegetables with my dinner so that's what i've been doing to improve my gut biome for overall well-being and mental health so i've got a an empty tin of kefir here kefir water very tasty very tasty alternative to sugary drinks so i'm gonna tap this can can of kefir water and you'll hear a fucking advert.

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that was the keffer water pause

all right support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast if you enjoy this podcast if you like it if you listen to it weekly if it brings you what mirth merriment distraction whatever the fuck as you listening to this podcast please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing.

There's that other thing with, you know, advice for artists.

After the Ocarina pause, I'm going to answer a question about how to be an artist, right?

I ask for Patreon support every single week because

I'm just being fucking honest.

The reason this podcast exists is because people who listen,

they pay me for the work that I'm doing.

And that's why I've been doing this for

eight years.

For eight years as an artist, as a writer, I've had an actual source of fucking income.

I can pay all my bills.

I can rent out my office.

I can live as a professional artist.

Because I started saying to people, do you like this work that I'm doing?

Well, if you like it, I'd appreciate it if you paid me.

But you don't have to, but please do if you really like the work.

And I've been doing that for eight years.

If you're a professional writer, not as much anymore, the title, you know, things have shifted.

But if you're a professional writer or artist or musician, part of the job is pretending that you're more successful than you are to try and bring success which again bullshit it's like revenue streams have disappeared so if you're making work it's okay to ask people to directly support that work so that's what I do every week patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast so if you do listen to this frequently please consider paying me for the work that I do I just want the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month and if you can't afford it don't worry about it listen for free.

Listen for free.

Everybody gets a podcast, the exact same podcast.

I get to earn a living.

Anyway,

gigs, I'm currently on tour, even though I'm talking to you from the past.

You're listening to this on Wednesday morning, which means tomorrow night I'm in Sheffield.

These gigs might be sold out by the time I'm

By the time I'm saying this, right, these gigs might be sold out, but fuck it, give it a crack.

Tomorrow I'm in Sheffield and City Halls, then manchester edinburgh glasgow york london east sussex bexhill and norwich right and that's what i'm doing over the next little while come along to those gigs and do check online in case they're sold out and then in september we've got derry

and fucking vicar street Okay, I said I was going to answer some questions.

Aoife asks, what advice do you have for somebody who wants to become an artist?

I get asked this a lot and I answer it a lot.

First off, if you're serious about becoming an artist and being a professional artist, no matter what that is, writer, musician, dancer, playwright, fucking anything, you must try to fail.

Don't try to succeed, try to fail.

The one thing that'll stop you creating anything is fear of failing.

If you're afraid of failing, then you won't create, that'll stifle you.

So try to make shit as much as possible.

try to write a shit story try to write a shit song you don't have to show it to anybody but instead of sitting down tomorrow and trying to write a good song try to deliberately make something that's awful that's terrible today i'm trying to make something terrible find a song that you don't like that really annoys you and try and make something like that don't try and make a song that's like the band that you adore fuck that that's probably causing you problems make a piece piece of shit.

And the reason I say that is

when you do that,

you'll actually free yourself up.

You'll free yourself up.

The thing,

creativity.

You're just an adult who's playing.

That's all that creativity is.

Art and creativity, it's your playing.

It's playfulness.

If you sit down to make a piece of shit, a bad song, a silly song, a foolish song, if you sit down to do that, you'll naturally relax.

and before long, with enough practice, you'll find yourself in a state of play, in a flaw state.

And when you get to flaw state, then that's your unique, authentic voice.

That's what art is.

When you dance, when you sing, when you write a song, when you paint a picture, are you expressing a talent that's uniquely you?

That's your voice, that's really and truly you and it's inimitable.

It cannot be be copied because only you can be the best you as an artist.

That exists within you, that's there, but you won't be able to hear that voice and express it unless you're in a state of play, playfulness.

And when you're in a state of play, you're not threatened, you're not frightened, you're not worried about failing, you're not thinking about whether this will be good or this will be bad, you're just doing for the sake of doing.

That's what playfulness is in any art form.

Deliberately trying to make shit, deliberately trying to fail.

That's a great way to access a very free, playful state.

And eventually you'll come out of it with a piece of work that isn't a failure at all.

You actually really like it.

And it's an expression of who you truly are.

And what I mean by that, how I put that into practice, when I'm writing short stories,

Writing short stories is that's very difficult.

That's a big undertaking.

Stories don't come to me fully formed.

I sit down with a blank page.

Blank pages are terrifying.

I sit down with a blank page or a blank laptop knowing that there's going to be

a 10,000 word story.

That's a story that takes 40 minutes to read.

I know that there's going to be a 10,000 word story and I haven't a clue what it's going to be about.

So I often start with failure.

One of my favorite stories from my last book, my last book of short stories, Topographia Hibernica, of my favourite stories in that book is called I'll Give You Barcelona.

Now I enjoy this story because on the surface it appears to be quite silly and almost mundane but underneath the surface it's asking fairly solid questions

about masculinity and the social construct of masculinity.

And it also draws from Irish mythology and how Irish mythology was rewritten to be quite masculine in particular the character of Cookurin and his warp spasms so that he could enter war and kill.

Now if I sat down and said to myself today

I think that story actually is it's 15,000 words I don't think I could sit down and say today I'm gonna write a 15,000 word story which on the surface is comedic and mundane but underneath the surface explores themes of contemporary masculinity via Irish mythology.

If I'd have sat down and said, that's what I'm going to do today, I'd have gotten writer's block.

I'd have scared the living fuck out of myself.

I'd have said that's impossible.

How the fuck do I do that?

Gone.

So what did I do instead?

I sat down and said, fuck it, I gotta write.

Gotta write a 15,000 word story now.

Don't think about it.

Let's not think about it.

What's it about?

I'm gonna write a story about a man biting another man's arse.

That was my brief.

So that there is trying to fail.

That's failure.

That's a silly idea.

I'm trying to write serious literature.

I've got a fucking book deal.

I'm trying to get reviewed in the Guardian.

Very frightening stuff.

Very scary stuff.

But because I've failed so much in the past,

because

when I was in my 20s, when I was in my 20s, I was given a pilot on Channel 4.

And what did I do?

Oh my god, it's Channel 4.

This has to be excellent.

This has to be amazing.

And the end result didn't land.

It wasn't my voice.

It wasn't my authentic voice.

So now that I'm older I know, no, if you want it I gotta write a story about a man biting another man's arse.

And you see what that does to the blank page now?

Now the blank page.

It's not scary anymore.

Why isn't it scary?

Because I'm gonna write a story about a man biting another man's arse.

Now it's a fun challenge.

How do I make that happen?

I know this has to be about between 10 and 15,000 words.

What a fun, enjoyable, stupid challenge.

No one's gonna review that in The Guardian.

A story about a man biting another man's arse?

Who'd fucking review that?

That's stupid.

That's silly.

That's childish.

That's not smart.

That's not a literary idea at all.

That's that's slapstick, that is.

That idea sounds like a failure.

That sounds like a failure.

Great, let's begin with failure then.

Let's begin with this failed idea.

A story about one man biting another man's arse.

Let's begin with this failure and try and write ourselves out of that failure.

And that's what I fucking did.

It reframes what the blank page means.

So the blank page now isn't a space to be filled with fancy words that could be reviewed in The Guardian.

The blank page becomes a playground.

It becomes a space for fun and humor and silliness and enjoyment because that's the only space where you can make art.

That's the only space where art can occur.

So then I begin to write the story

and the playfulness of that allows me to enter flow state.

And once I enter flow state, then I'm in the waking dream.

I'm fully in communication with my internal artistic voice that can't be copied.

And the things that I actually want to say, that are in my unconscious mind and the arguments I want to make, these things just come out.

They just come out.

I'm accessing the parts of my brain where my unconscious mind, where dreams live, and that now now is allowed to very safely flow out onto the page.

Because what locks that away is fear of fucking failing.

So there's my advice to anyone who wants to become an artist, any fucking artist.

What will make you a professional artist is your unique creative voice.

That's it.

That's it.

We all have to go through years of making art.

and having heroes and our work being derivative of our heroes work.

Then you stick at it, you stick at it, and then eventually, oh fuck, it's my own voice.

You'll only access that through playfulness and you'll only get playfulness through consistent failure, trying to fail and making failure your friend.

So instead of failure being something you're afraid of, you actively make it part of your process by trying to fail.

No one ever made anything good by sitting down and deciding I'm going to make something good today.

Sit down and decide you're going to make something good, you just freak yourself out and you procrastinate.

Sit down and make something shit.

shit and then the other thing you want to be an artist be cringe be cringey okay you have to be cringe if if work you're making is being cringe then it's challenging people it's making people uncomfortable you're gonna have to do gigs where no one shows up you're gonna have to do plays where no one's in the audience you're gonna have to express yourself you're gonna have to be vulnerable you're gonna have to be cringe and all your friends are going to laugh at you behind your back and think that you're having a mental episode.

Anyone who begins creating art that's literally them expressing feelings and putting it to a medium of some description, whether you're writing your own songs, right?

Whether you're doing your own paintings, stuff that's coming from your imagination and now you're putting it out there and showing it to people.

At the beginning, it's always cringe and it's frightening to people and it's threatening to people.

And they're going to want to put you back in your inside your box and they're going to laugh about you behind your back.

It's going to be, it won't be nice.

People are are going to be embarrassed for you on your behalf one of the worst like talk about social shame

you're going to have to be cringe if you want to be an artist at the start you're going to have to be really cringe your your immediate peers who you would like approval from they are going to laugh at you if you're very lucky you might have one or two supportive family members or close friends who believe in you but mostly you're just you're going to be cringe and embarrassing for a while and embrace the fuck out of it embrace the fuck out of it because that's how you build your armor.

That's how you build your fucking armor and become better.

Jesus Christ, when I was 21, doing gigs with a bag in my head singing about the IRA, people used to throw bottles at me.

I've had multiple situations in my life.

Like even four fucking years ago during the pandemic when I started doing

I started that project where I was writing songs on Twitch to the video game Red Dead Redemption, which is something I really wanted to do it and I loved doing it.

I was coming across threads where people were wondering if I was genuinely having a mental breakdown because to them what I was doing was I was publicly embarrassing myself and

they couldn't handle the secondhand cringe.

And you know what I'd say to myself?

I'm not hurting anyone.

I'm not doing anything wrong.

So if you if you if you're writing songs in your bedroom on a guitar and you want to go and do do a gig to four people in the local pub or you want to get your songs and put them on and share them with your friends here I've written

to one of your friends and all of a sudden going here I've written an album.

It's on Spotify.

Do you want to hear it?

That's fucking terrifying.

That's fucking terrifying.

Here's an album of songs about my feelings.

Some of these songs are about my ex, you know them.

Do you want to hear this?

Here's a lot of paintings I did.

They're about a recent bout of depression I had.

That's fucking terrifying and it is cringe.

Unfortunately, according to the rules of cringe, that's really uncomfortable.

And you're just going to have to do that.

You're going to have to do that.

You're going to have to be cringe as fuck.

And you know what you say to yourself?

I'm hurting nobody.

Nothing that I'm doing here is mean or nasty.

I'm creating art.

And this makes people uncomfortable because we just have these rules in society about what it means to express yourself.

And I'm breaking these rules and it's making people really uncomfortable.

They're getting like a secondhand embarrassment.

Mostly what's happening is they're projecting their insecurity on me.

But that's what you tell yourself.

If you actually want to become a writer, a songwriter, a painter, whatever the fuck, and you want to be semi-professional or professional or get a name for yourself and begin that journey, you have to be cringe.

You have to.

That's it.

And if to fight that fear you say to yourself i'm doing nothing wrong i'm hurting nobody i'm creating things here i'm creating art i'm doing something positive if that makes other people uncomfortable it's got nothing to do with me nothing to do with me and then if you don't want to be cringe

then

do cover versions of other people's songs or draw realistic portraits of celebrities.

And I mean that as no disrespect to anyone who's doing cover songs or whatever, but there are ways to express yourself artistically that society does not consider to be cringe.

One of them is being really good at cover versions.

Being the person who can play guitar well with a half decent voice and do a good cover version.

That's socially acceptable.

It's completely socially acceptable.

If your voice is okay, if you can hold a note and you can play guitar, you can express yourself artistically that way and no one's going to cringe on your behalf.

Might get a bit of jealousy, but not cringe.

and then visual art just draw brilliant brilliant drawings of bruce lee if you've got the the skill and the craft to do a banging drawing or painting of a celebrity then do that that also

that's not cringe demonstration of skill and talent for some reason isn't seen as cringe but expressing yourself taking some type of vulnerability or even an idea and trying to express that through art.

That is really cringe, and I think the reason is because you're taking a huge risk.

It's the risk, the risk associated with it.

But if you can do that properly, that's where the payoff is.

The payoff artistically is the person who has their own little unique voice and they're able to express that through art.

And if you want a working example of this, to give you a bit of faith.

So, Rage Against the Machine, one of the coolest bands in the world.

Like, fuck me, Rage Against the Machine.

Like not only are they amazing, are they legends?

And they did something incredibly unique.

Rage Against the Machine came out with a sound that hadn't really been heard before.

They effortlessly mixed rap and heavy metal with fucking solid politics when Rage Against the Machine came out.

Incredibly unique.

No one really like them.

Go onto YouTube and look up Rage Against the Machine first public performance.

It's incredible to watch.

It's fucking Rage Against the Machine doing their first album.

The first album that's like playing the hits.

And no one knows who they are.

And it's on like a college campus.

And the video is like, it's like an hour long.

They go through the whole first album.

Look at the audience.

People don't know what to do.

They're kind of embarrassed.

People are.

First off, there's no crowd.

It's Rage Against the Machine doing their first fucking album, like nailing it.

Incredible.

There's barely any crowd.

It's mostly people walking in and out of shot.

A few people standing around, folding their arms defensively, cause they don't know what to think.

Cause the thing they're hearing and looking at is so unique and new and strange that they don't know how they should feel about it.

Some people walk away, fucking cringe.

Like this is 1991.

Rap music.

Rap music was...

rap music would have been seen as novelty music in 1991.

It wouldn't have been taken seriously by journalists.

It was seen as novelty music and there was racism around it because it was mostly...

it was mostly black and brown people performing rap music.

And now you've rage up on stage doing rap music and heavy metal at the same time.

Some people are just like, no fucking way.

And then the people that stick around that are like, this sounds pretty cool.

Look at their body language.

There's very few who are really able to get into it.

Most of the people are sitting back with their arms folded trying to look around to see, is it okay to like this?

But it's a beautiful piece of footage for any artist because you get to see incredible, unique, brilliant.

Artists like Rage Against the Machine.

You get to see them being cringe.

There they are, being fucking cringe.

Can you believe it?

That's them right there.

That's their cringe moment.

And you know what?

They don't give a fuck.

They don't care because they love what they're doing.

What's the third thing I could say?

Advice for an artist?

I answer this fucking question nearly every time I do a question answering podcast.

Self-promote.

Self-promote your work.

Whatever the fuck you're doing, self-promote.

Especially if you're a professional artist, if art is the thing.

And when I say art, I mean any type of artistic expression, right?

I'm not just talking about writing, painting, music, anything.

The hardest thing about being an artist in 2025 is earning a living.

Your favorite bands have second jobs.

Promote your work unapologetically.

This expectation to be humble, this performative humility, leave that to the many artists who were lucky enough to have generational wealth.

Like years ago, I was in London.

I'd been moving around theatre circles and I met loads of different artists and there was one person, they were a writer, and they used to publish books of poetry, short stories.

They were doing a new thing every fucking month

and they were having they'd have a little they'd write a book of poetry and they'd hold an event

and

they'd sell nothing.

They'd sell six copies of their book of poetry, mainly to their friends.

And they'd hold this little event, cheese and wine, and they just kept sticking at it.

It didn't matter that, like, only their friends showed up.

It didn't matter that they sold fuck all books.

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

But then one day I was like, Jesus, fucking fair play to you.

You have some work ethic.

And I suggested that,

why don't you promote your work online?

Like if you had a Twitter page or if you were doing videos maybe or, you know, you could be plugging and promoting your work online and reaching a larger audience than these small shows that you're doing where your friends are showing up.

And it was clear that they didn't want to be self-promoting like that, that to self-promote like that,

it went against their values when I was really young and I thought they were cool as fuck I was like wow that's so cool you're really putting the art first and you're sticking at it and you don't care if you're successful or not and then I find out years later they were like secretly posh London and had inherited about six houses.

So we're living off the rent of about six houses.

Writing was just a thing they did.

They didn't care whether the writing was successful or not.

They were renting out six houses.

Money, earning a living, that wasn't a consideration.

And when I found that out, I said to myself, fuck that.

Leave humility to people who inherited six houses.

But if you're actually relying upon your work, to pay your bills, fuck humility.

Promote the fuck out of yourself.

Promote the fuck out of yourself yourself at every opportunity.

If you're not a gigantic artist with a big PR team,

because that's the other thing.

You can have artists that are huge and that are signed to labels or have gigantic book deals and they can just disappear for a year and release work and there's an entire department doing all their PR for them.

But again, that's only 10% of artists.

The other 90%.

Promote the fuck out of yourself and don't apologize for it.

You're hurting nobody.

Like if you follow me on Instagram,

I put put out my podcast every fucking Wednesday and

on Instagram

if if people like my podcast so if one of my Instagram followers likes my podcast and then they post about it on their stories and they tag me and they're like love today is blind by podcast

I'll fucking reshare that praise.

I'm fully aware how cringe that is.

That's unbelievably cringe.

Sharing your sharing praise?

You're not supposed to do that.

And I'll be honest with you, I kind of don't even want to.

I don't want to.

Because

it's not very humble to share praise.

But I do it anyway.

A.

I'm grateful that someone liked my podcast enough to share it on their story.

B, it fucking works.

It actually works.

Not everyone who follows me on Instagram listens to my podcast every single week or reads my books.

But when I share someone else enjoying it or saying they like it, that actually works.

And people go, go oh fuck it I haven't listened to blind boy in a few weeks better check back that sounds good so I do it because it fucking works I'm not doing the performative humility thing that the fake humility I want to work on on the actual humidity and the actual humility is

just because I make a thing called a podcast and that person over there thinks it it's good

That's just a reflection of my work this week and it's no reflection on me as a human being whatsoever.

So I'm not a better person than anyone else because I'm making work that someone likes and wants to tell someone about.

That my behavior has no reflection on my value as a human being whatsoever.

I'm better than nobody else.

Nobody else is better than me because I'm a human being and we're too complex to evaluate off against each other.

As you can tell lads, I've had to pull this podcast out of my hope, alright?

I don't want to miss a week.

I don't want to leave you with no podcast for a week.

And the schedule is incredibly growling on this tour.

So I had to

get this one out in a very short amount of time before I left for my tour.

You can tell that I'm freestyling.

I'd have loved to have gone really deep into the Buckfast Bees.

Buckfast Monastery is a thousand years old.

I would have loved to pour over academic journals about Buckfast Abbey and try and find a roasting hot take about those bees.

But the schedule doesn't allow it and I I wanna I wanna put out a podcast.

Rather than give you fucking nothing, I wanna put out a podcast each week for the people who show up and listen each week.

I might revisit the Buckfast Abbey podcast at some point like I'm gigging in Cornwall.

Cornwall is 15 miles from Buckfast Abbey.

So maybe I might even get a chance to visit Buckfast Abbey while I'm on tour.

I don't want to think about it in case I get too excited and it's not possible.

There's 410 episodes that you can go back and listen to also if you wanted a more rigorous hot take this week.

In the meantime, rub a dog, Jenny flick to a swan and take note of strange insects.

If you see a bee or a wasp or a beetle and you're like, wow, what the fuck is that?

Take a photograph of it, take a photograph of it and be curious about it.

Do a reverse image search.

See what comes back.

Then if you find out the name of the insect, type it into

biodiversityireland.ie.

It's a great fucking website.

It's a live biodiversity map.

And if you identify a strange insect or an insect that might be invasive,

you can then put your photograph into this map and you can log it in there.

for other people to see and you could be doing a great service there.

Like I love that.

I love that I saw a strange bee followed through on finding out what the fucking bee was, and now it's like, holy fuck, this bee comes from the same place that Buckfast is made.

Fuck me.

Right, I'll catch you next week, you glorious cunts.

God bless.

You check your feed and your account.

You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators.

So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are.

In this economy, next time, check Lyft.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratches from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.