Blindboy Boatclub on the power of words

Musi­cian, come­di­an, pod­cast­er, writer and philoso­pher, Blind­boy Boat­club is a cul­tur­al fig­ure­head and one of Ireland’s fore­most artis­tic voic­es. He has pub­lished two num­ber-one best­selling books of short sto­ries: The Gospel Accord­ing to Blind­boy and Boule­vard Wren and Oth­er Sto­ries, and his show The Blind­boy Pod­cast reach­es more than one mil­lion lis­ten­ers month­ly. This win­ter sees the release of his third book, Topographia Hiber­ni­ca, which unrav­els the knot­ted threads of human­i­ty, nature and coloni­sa­tion, using sub­jects from a don­key being stuffed into the back of a Fiat Pun­to, to jack­daws peck­ing brains out through the roof of a con­fes­sion­al box. Just before he took the book on tour, we spoke to him to find out how words impact his life. Blind­boy Boat­club is Huck #80’s Artist-In-Residence.

This issue of Huck is the Pow­er of Words issue – what’s the most impact­ful or inspir­ing piece of text you’ve ever read?

“We are dis­turbed not by things, but by the views which we take of them,” from the Enchirid­ion of Epicte­tus. It’s a book from the sec­ond cen­tu­ry that col­lat­ed the lec­tures of Epicte­tus, who was a sto­ic philoso­pher from the first cen­tu­ry. Epicte­tus had a way of fram­ing the expe­ri­ence of exist­ing that I find echoed in a lot of mod­ern psy­chother­a­peu­tic posi­tions. ​“I can’t con­trol what hap­pens to me in my life, but I have con­trol over how I react to it,” is some­thing I work on dai­ly. I bring that state­ment into my aware­ness as much as pos­si­ble. It helps me to find great mean­ing in the suf­fer­ing of being alive.

Your lis­ten­ers tru­ly love your pod­cast. Is there some sort of meta ther­a­py occur­ring where you’re giv­ing peo­ple mind relief, and by doing the pod­cast it is help­ing you too? 

I trained to be a psy­chother­a­pist for a few years. I didn’t fin­ish my qual­i­fi­ca­tion though, because my music career took off, so I went with that instead. So I’d nev­er present myself as a men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al, I’m just an artist who incor­po­rates psy­chother­a­peu­tic the­o­ry into my prac­tice. But there’s this approach with­in psy­chother­a­py called ​“appro­pri­ate self dis­clo­sure”, where the ther­a­pist will dis­close their own expe­ri­ences and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, to cre­ate a feel­ing of safe­ty with their client. Some­times, I feel I do a bit of that with my pod­cast. I only ever speak about my lived expe­ri­ence when I dis­cuss men­tal health. I speak about my anx­i­ety, my pain as a form of self jour­nalling. I try to be as hon­est and vul­ner­a­ble as pos­si­ble, to speak open­ly about my fears and my inse­cu­ri­ties, to be raw with my emo­tions. I fuck­ing love doing that, it feels like throw­ing my soul into the show­er and wash­ing it like a mud­dy Labrador. But I do find that when I’m com­fort­ably vul­ner­a­ble with my emo­tions, the lis­ten­er feels com­fort­able and safe to reflect on their emo­tions, too. In their own space at their own pace.

How tight­ly script­ed are the episodes or do you just go off and see where it takes you?

I’ve reflect­ed on this a lot. A stu­dent at Trin­i­ty Col­lege over here in Ire­land did their master’s degree this year on my pod­cast. They argued that my pod­cast should be viewed as lit­er­a­ture. I’ve been say­ing for ages that my pod­cast is a nev­er-end­ing, process-based nov­el. I’m aware how much that sounds insane. But I write with my mouth for peo­ple to read with their ears. An hour of audio takes about three days to record, because the pod­casts are writ­ten rather than riffed. But what I’ve come to realise recent­ly, is that I use record­ing soft­ware like a word proces­sor. I edit sen­tences and words as audio, with the same effort and detail that I would if I was phys­i­cal­ly writ­ing with my fin­gers on Microsoft Word. And this process is rel­a­tive­ly new, it’s maybe a decade or so old. I couldn’t do this pod­cast back in 2010 for instance, because the PC I’d have been able to afford would have crashed with all the edits. In the past, spo­ken word was writ­ten out on a screen or page first, and then record­ed. Because edit­ing meant slic­ing up tape with razor blades. You had to edit on the page first. This had set­backs too. I can tell when spo­ken word is writ­ten on paper first. Lots of audio­books are clunky as fuck, because they aren’t writ­ten with an audio medi­um in mind. I write with lis­ten­ing in mind, an oral medi­um. With audio edit­ing soft­ware, pro­cess­ing pow­er, and big hard dri­ves, I can lit­er­al­ly write with my mouth. One sen­tence might con­tain mul­ti­ple takes of audio, but I can edit that quick­ly and seam­less­ly so that you’d nev­er know. The same way a sen­tence in a book con­tains lots of deletes, key­strokes, rewrites. You can’t trace the writer’s fin­ger­tips on the page like you can with a paint­ing. You just have a fin­ished sen­tence. My pod­cast is like that. It’s very heav­i­ly writ­ten and edit­ed over mul­ti­ple days, but the craft is then to make it all flow like a seam­less riff. I don’t want any­one notic­ing the edits, no one wants to see the hand going up Ker­mit the Frog’s arse. 

What’s worth men­tion­ing too, is that I come from a musi­cal back­ground, and I write and record my pod­cast to a piano track. I was writ­ing music on the same soft­ware I make the pod­cast on. I’ve been doing that since I was 17. There’s a musi­cal­i­ty to how I write and record the pod­cast, the piano informs my pace and tone. So while I’m def­i­nite­ly not call­ing my pod­cast music, my process is clos­er to song­writ­ing, than writ­ing out spo­ken word on a page with the inten­tion of read­ing it aloud after. A song­writer explores the feel of the music and lets that inform how the words emerge from their mouth. Con­so­nants are like drums and vow­els are like vio­lins. There’s a song called ​‘Shore Leave’ by Tom Waits, which I’ve prob­a­bly lis­tened to tens of thou­sands of times in my life. I hear so much of that song in my pod­casts some­times. I’m aware that a load of this shit sounds pre­ten­tious as fuck. But I’m gen­uine­ly curi­ous about the bound­aries of artis­tic medi­ums. I adore explor­ing a pod­cast as a nov­el that is informed by a song­writ­ing process. It’s excit­ing and fun, it feels more like play­ing than work­ing. I’d rather do that, than not do it because I’m scared of it failing. 

How do you deal with so many dif­fer­ent words swirling in your head when you’re prepar­ing for a tour, per­form­ing, record­ing pod­casts and writ­ing a book at the same time? Are you good at compartmentalising?

I don’t want to over­sim­pli­fy this. But I’m diag­nosed autis­tic, and it was sug­gest­ed to me that my high tol­er­ance for these things might be as a result of my neu­ro­di­ver­gent brain. I don’t real­ly have an off switch. I’m think­ing about writ­ing and cre­ativ­i­ty con­sis­tent­ly. I mean lit­er­al­ly non-stop with no break. I don’t want a break either, because I don’t expe­ri­ence it as any­thing oth­er than joy. What would be over­whelm­ing for me, is if I had to take a break from this so that I could be more social. I love peo­ple and hav­ing cra­ic, but my social bat­tery is quite low, so I don’t do it very often. All neu­ro­di­ver­gent peo­ple are dif­fer­ent, just like neu­rotyp­i­cal peo­ple are dif­fer­ent. But I’m quite lucky, I feel like the curios­i­ty that I was born with as a child nev­er left me, so I get to expe­ri­ence won­der as a per­pet­u­al state of exis­tence. How­ev­er, I com­plete­ly failed school and was fired from a job at a call cen­tre for print­ing out 93 pages about CIA cocaine smug­gling. This type of ener­gy does­n’t fly in most work­places. You get labelled as eccen­tric fair­ly quick­ly. My con­sis­tent, obses­sive state of curios­i­ty is in no way aligned with a soci­ety whose struc­tures are pri­mar­i­ly built around neu­rotyp­i­cal needs. It’s annoy­ing that I even have a diag­no­sis to be hon­est. One thou­sand five hun­dred years ago in Ire­land, neu­ro­di­ver­gent peo­ple were prob­a­bly seen as mys­tics or sto­ry­tellers, who had the capac­i­ty to retain infor­ma­tion that couldn’t be writ­ten down because we didn’t stop think­ing about it. We’d prob­a­bly get a free pig off the high king, too. But with­in 9 to 5 cap­i­tal­ism and the school sys­tem that trains you for it, being this way is seen as dys­func­tion­al and wor­thy of a med­ical diag­no­sis. Which just seems mad from where I’m stand­ing. I prac­tise grat­i­tude every sin­gle day. I am so pro­found­ly lucky to have a job that suits who I am, and I’ll nev­er take that for granted.

How do you visu­alise your audi­ence when you’re record­ing your pod­cast? Do you imag­ine them all in a hall like when you’re on tour or all sit­ting in rooms on their own?

When I record my pod­cast, I don’t real­ly think of any audi­ence. It’s an intrap­er­son­al con­ver­sa­tion with myself, and the audi­ence is wel­come to lis­ten to that. The only time I real­ly think of an audi­ence is when I announce tour dates, or ask for Patre­on sup­port. By keep­ing the chat between my exter­nal and inter­nal self, I get an inti­ma­cy and authen­tic­i­ty. The moment I start cre­at­ing some­thing that I think oth­er peo­ple will like, then I lose my artis­tic voice. I can only make what I’d lis­ten to if I wasn’t me. I’m lucky that a lot of peo­ple also enjoy that too. But I’ve had a fuck­load of fail­ures to get to that point. I was try­ing to suc­ceed in music, com­e­dy, doc­u­men­taries for over ten years before I arrived at pod­cast­ing and writ­ing. I had a series on MTV USA that was so shit it got can­celled after one episode. There’s not even any evi­dence of it exist­ing online. It was such a huge fail­ure that I sound like a liar when I speak about it. But as I said before, I’d rather make some­thing and fail, than make noth­ing because I was scared to fail. There’s no such thing as fail­ure when you oper­ate like that. All fail­ure becomes a learn­ing expe­ri­ence that informs future success.

Your new book Topographia Hiber­ni­ca is a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, can you give us a bit of back­ground on how you wrote and chose the sto­ries for this one – how did they manifest?

It’s my third col­lec­tion of short sto­ries. It’s slow­er and more med­i­ta­tive than my last two books. This is my first col­lec­tion that has a uni­fied theme. With these sto­ries I’m explor­ing coloni­sa­tion and bio­di­ver­si­ty col­lapse. Hark­ing back to what I said ear­li­er about my curios­i­ty around the bound­aries of artis­tic medi­ums. I view this short sto­ry col­lec­tion like a polyp­tych in a gallery. Like the scenes in Hierony­mus Bosch paint­ings. The view­er can decide what order to read the sto­ries in, or how to con­nect them to each oth­er. Even though the medi­um is writ­ing, I’m explor­ing that medi­um with a visu­al, painter­ly intent. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by Bosch. He was a mad bas­tard. He’d paint visions of hell and show them to rich peo­ple to fright­en them into pay­ing mon­ey to get into heav­en. They’d pay his pal who was a bish­op and they’d split the cash. He was like some­one sell­ing com­pounds in New Zealand to bil­lion­aires who are try­ing to escape soci­etal col­lapse. He was one of the first to drag the prose out of oil paint. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the vio­lence of his brush­strokes, and I sup­pose Tit­ian as well. They had a sim­i­lar vibe between the pair of them. The brush­strokes of a paint­ing are the same as the prose on a page. I want to have a crack at the bound­aries of these things with this book. Again, this all sounds pre­ten­tious, but I don’t care, fuck off and wor­ry about your own book like. I adore doing this stuff.

The title’s tak­en from the 12 cen­tu­ry Eng­lish man­u­script of the same name, which dehu­man­ised the peo­ple and cul­ture of Ire­land to facil­i­tate dom­i­na­tion – when did you first become aware of the orig­i­nal and are you reclaim­ing the title?

I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by that man­u­script for years. It was writ­ten in 1188 by a Nor­man called Ger­ald of Wales. The orig­i­nal Topographia Hiber­ni­ca is the first British tabloid. It’s like the Dai­ly Mail in 2002 run­ning arti­cles about WMDs to jus­ti­fy the inva­sion of Iraq. Or The Sun in the 1970s print­ing car­toons that depict Catholics and Protes­tants in the North of Ire­land as rabid mon­keys who kill each oth­er, to jus­ti­fy the pres­ence of British sol­diers as a ​“peace­keep­ing” force. Topographia Hiber­ni­ca is an account of the land­scape, peo­ple and ani­mals of Ire­land. It was writ­ten to jus­ti­fy the coloni­sa­tion of Ire­land by Britain. It por­trays the Irish peo­ple as being more ani­mal than human, through sur­re­al sto­ries of bes­tial­i­ty and shapeshift­ing. A peo­ple in need of civil­is­ing and con­quer­ing. A peo­ple who com­mit the crime of liv­ing with plants and ani­mals rather than con­trol­ling them for wealth. But when you scratch under­neath the sur­face, it’s a sur­vey of the land, it’s an account of all the wealth that can be extract­ed and exploit­ed through coloni­sa­tion. My col­lec­tion of short sto­ries is a nod to the orig­i­nal Topographia Hiber­ni­ca. Every sto­ry explores the rela­tion­ship between humans and ani­mals, and what it means to be human or animal.

When you do a tour do peo­ple expect it to be like the pod­cast or do you read from your book and then go off on tan­gents? Are your shows pret­ty loose or do you try to keep things the same every night?

Yes, I read from my book. Again, speak­ing about my curios­i­ty for the bound­aries of medi­ums. My live pod­casts bor­row from the lan­guage of the­atre. I fol­low a loose three-act struc­ture, and light the stage and audi­ence the way you’d light a play. My goal with a live pod­cast is to cre­ate a feel­ing of inti­ma­cy with my guest and the audi­ence. To cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where a con­ver­sa­tion hap­pens on stage. It doesn’t feel like being in a room full of peo­ple up on a stage. It feels more pri­vate than that.

Do you feel like your words have power?

I don’t think my words have pow­er. But if I say some­thing, and it real­ly con­nects mean­ing­ful­ly with a per­son, then it can help that per­son to engage with their own power.

What do you pre­fer writ­ing: pod­casts, books, songs, or com­e­dy? Or do you view each of these things as you cre­at­ing art?

I’ve just spent two years writ­ing a book, so I’m crav­ing music right now. Over the pan­dem­ic I was livestream­ing on Twitch. I was play­ing the video game Red Dead Redemp­tion 2, but instead of com­ment­ing on what was hap­pen­ing, I used musi­cal instru­ments and a loop­ing ped­al to write songs spon­ta­neous­ly. I’d love to go back and do a bit of that. The music part of my brain needs tick­ling again.

Topographia Hiber­ni­ca is out now.

Get your copy of Huck #80 here. 

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