The Blindboy Podcast - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

I chat about upcoming projects and the epic of Gilgamesh Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Huff the September gusts you puzzled guff trumpets. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. It's still bright here. It's half-aid at night. It's still bright out my office window. But the leaves on the sycamores are crimping into their rusty curls. And I'm waiting for that first, that first bang of chimney smoke in the air. We'll give it about two weeks.

I enjoy plunging bollocks deep into a new season. Searching for beauty in the decay of autumn. We can have this tendency to... I mean look, let's be honest, fucking summer is gorgeous. Everything about summer is life-giving and wonderful. There's no effort required to appreciate a summer. But I try not to allow an internal narrative emerge within myself about autumn being depressing. I just have to reframe my parameters for beauty.

Autumn is death. The death of the leaves. The death of nettles. The death of sunlight. The death of wearing jarts. But it's cyclical. It's a cycle. That death informs life. I have some very exciting announcements this week. Should have been wanting to talk to you about for the bonds of a year. So first off, I have a new documentary coming out on TV. RTE, which is the Irish

national television channel, they announced these things during the week. But the online media landscape has, it appears to have collapsed into a dying galaxy made out of wet farts. So RTE announced its new TV season, which it does every September. And there's usually quite a bit of loads of news articles about this. But there wasn't really any this year because the media landscape is collapsing. The fall of Twitter has played a huge part in that. Twitter is now a very silly place. It's not even called Twitter anymore, it's called X. It's just a hotbed of racism, though.

I'm genuinely drifting towards the belief that Elon Musk bought Twitter specifically to collapse it. Like, Twitter was a very annoying place. It was often a very toxic place. But during the 2010s, something positive that could be said about Twitter, it was genuinely a space where ordinary people could speak truth to power and there were some consequences. The Me Too movement started on Twitter. It didn't end sexual assault, but some powerful

people were held to account and brought to justice. Harvey Weinstein's in jail. The Black Lives Matter movement started on Twitter and was perpetuated by Twitter. Twitter made it very difficult for quite powerful people who were usually protected to sweep things under the rug. And since Elon Musk took over two years ago, that's flipped on its head. Completely flipped on its head. Elon himself has made it clear that this is a deliberate thing that he's doing. He bought Twitter for 44 billion.

That wasn't all his own money. He raised capital from investors. And Twitter isn't making money anymore. It's literally being ran into the ground. Advertisers are running away. It's not as profitable as it once was. And if you look at the list of who invested, who gave money to Elon Musk to purchase Twitter, you've got Saudi Arabia gave a lot of money, Qatar gave a lot of money, P Diddy, Puff Daddy, someone who's been arrested on some horrendous allegations. If you look at the list of entities who funded Elon Musk's takeover, they all would greatly benefit from removing a social media platform where throughout the 2010s, people

collectively spoke truth to power. The conspiracy theorist in me has a feeling in my gut that Twitter was bought to collapse it, to destroy it. That the return on investment isn't money. It's the removal of a platform that allowed something like MeToo or Black Lives Matter to flourish. No one's really on Facebook anymore. Instagram's hanging in there. And then TikTok, traditional media, I mean newspapers, radio stations, TV channels, in Ireland anyway, none of them, none of them are really working on TikTok. So for the first

year that I can remember, there was very little coverage of RTE's new season, and if there was, the articles were buried in the algorithm. So if you're in Ireland this week, you probably didn't hear that I've got a new documentary coming out. I do. I've been making it all year long. It's called Blind By Slaves and Scholars. It's a one hour documentary. It's the biggest documentary I've ever made. And it's about the period of early Irish Christianity. It's me as a writer. It's me as a writer and someone who loves, adores the Irish writing tradition, trying to find out the place early Irish Christianity has in the Irish writing tradition. You know from listening to this podcast how much I love Irish mythology.

Stories which could be thousands of years old. Stories about Coe Cullen, Fionn Macaul, Bridget, the Salmon of Knowledge, the Tine. We only know these stories today because early Irish Christian monks wrote them down. When Christianity came to Ireland in the 5th century with Patrick, it wasn't just Christianity, it wasn't just news about this fella called Christ that was brought over. What Patrick brought to Ireland was the new technology of writing. We had Aum script, which was a system of writing, but Christianity brought the fucking Latin alphabet. And we founded monasteries and in those monasteries people were writing and

they weren't just writing about this fella called Christ. Irish monks were using Latin script to write down our mythology. While the Roman Empire was collapsing in Europe Britain, Ireland from the 500s onwards, was writing, learning, preserving texts, important Latin and Greek texts, preserving knowledge, preserving science, and we advanced writing as a technology. We invented spaces between words. I know that sounds insane. What do you mean we invented spaces between words? That know that sounds insane. What do you mean we invented spaces between words? That was invented in Ireland. Writing in Latin used to be inscriptio continua, which

meant no spaces. It was like a big long text message from your ma. And we introduce spaces. And when you introduce spaces into writing you get rhythm and you get melody and you get the foundation of writing as an art form you get the foundation of literature and my personal opinion on that and why we invented spaces is we had a mythology we had epic stories that were never written down because we didn't have writing, but we had other ways of preserving our stories by holding them in the landscape, or by holding onto our stories and remembering them through songs.

And when you invent spaces between words, you introduce rhythm, and drama, and feeling, and pausesuses and timing. Ways of communicating language that exist in oral storytelling, in speaking like I'm doing now. But once you once you create spaces on the fucking page you introduce the complexity of oral storytelling to the written word. So that's what my documentary is going to be about. And you might be thinking, blind boy, you're not an expert on early Irish Christianity. You're not a qualified historian.

How can you make a documentary about these things? The way you make a documentary, it's a thesis. Like a fucking essay in college. I'm a writer. I'm an artist, I'm an Irish writer, and I'm curious about writing. I have an auteural voice and authority around that. So when I follow my thesis, my curiosity, my line of inquiry in a documentary, just like an essay for college, I make sure that I back up every single one of my points by citing experts.

So this documentary is going to have loads of contributions from academics and experts who dedicate their lives to studying early Irish history. So I'm really proud of this documentary. And it's the closest I've ever come on television to bringing the podcast hug to TV. And what I really pushed for too with this documentary was for me to not be in it that much.

What I mean is my head, my head with my plastic bag on it. Like I've explained a million times, you know I wear a plastic bag on my head, because it allows me to have a private, normal, quiet life, while also doing things like making TV shows. But the plastic bag is also, it's a real pain in the fucking arse, because 95% of people just can't get over it. They just see me as a clown, and they don't take me seriously. Also, the plastic bag never brought me anything that I could call successful. It got in the way.

Like the rubber bandits 10 years ago. There was a few viral, a few viral YouTube videos, but I was never able to have it resonate with enough people that I could earn a living and got a job. This podcast and the books that I write are what allowed me to earn a living and live 100% as a professional artist. And neither of those things have anything to do with my fucking bag. It's either the words that you listen to or the words that you read on a piece of paper. So for where I'm at now and the type of stuff that I'm doing, this bag, this plastic bag actually gets in the way and it's confusing for a lot of people. And I just have to go, I understand it's a bit mad, but I found out I was autistic two years ago and this bag is the best way for me to keep doing my job and not be recognized on the street. But you're not even that famous.

I know. I know I'm not that famous. I'm cringe-level fame. I'm fully aware of that. But I am well known enough for maybe one or two people a day to stop me and try and have small talk with me. And because I'm an autistic person, that's actually too much. Unplanned small talk with even two strangers every day, even if they're the nicest people in the world.

That lifestyle would be overwhelming for an autistic person like me. So please just accept the plastic bag for those reasons. It's been 20 years now, I've been wearing this for 20 years, and I reckon the plastic bag is why I'm still here after 20 years. Because otherwise, the perpetual small talk of being recognized in the street would have caused me to quit ages ago. Or I'd still be here making work, and I'd be another one of the many strange and eccentric artists who's in the utter throes of addiction. How many artists whose work you enjoy were also eccentric personalities with horrendous addiction issues?

Loads. Maybe they were also neurodivergentgent and alcohol was a way to self-medicate. Huge amount of neurodivergent people are also artists or creative in some way. For some neurodivergent people, things like having a strength in pattern recognition, a propensity toward lateral thinking, and a capacity to focus very intensely on what you're interested in. That's a wonderful recipe for also being a creative person. So a lot of the artists that you enjoy who would have been a bit quirky in their personalities, they may also have been neurodivergent in a job where they love the bit where they get to create art, but don't like the bit where they're perceived and seen all the time. Anyone who's listening to this who's neurodivergent,

bit eccentric, bit of an introvert, getting drunk at parties is a great way to feel normal, isn't it? When I was in my twenties, and I'd be forcing myself to go out to parties to feel normal, isn't it? When I was in my twenties, and I'd be forcing myself to go out to parties to socialize, because there's a much richer social fabric when you're in your twenties, I was also the first person to get drunk, and I was the person who got drunk the most. Because when I'd get drunk at a party with tons of people, the anxiety went away. The fear of small talk went away. Everyone else is drinking.

There's no neurotypical people, there's no neurodivergent people, there's just drunk people. One thing with being neurodivergent is you don't know which one of your behaviours is strange or eccentric. You just don't know. And the more normal you try to be The more eccentric you get labeled. That's not pleasant. It's not nice Especially when you're trying to behave or perform what what is considered normal. Well when you're pissed drunk, you're not eccentric You're just a drunk person. You're a crazy drunk Hey, man, remember last night when the only thing you spoke about for three hours solid at the party was the history of oranges? You must have been so stoned or drunk, were you? Yeah, I was absolutely, I was piss drunk.

Really, I spoke about oranges for that long? Wow, that's alcohol for you. Nora Divergent people have to be so careful around alcohol in particular, I think, and how useful it can be in social situations and I consider myself to have a healthy relationship with alcohol and I've always had a healthy relationship with alcohol but I do wonder after all these years and the job that I've had if it would have gotten overwhelming. Like put it this way, I went to a wedding, like seven years ago.

I didn't know anybody at the wedding. I was there as somebody's guest. Now I'm not wearing a bag on my head. I'm just there as some fella, somebody's guest. Big wedding, no one knows who the fuck I am. Anyone asks, I just tell them I fixed computers. At this wedding, somebody knew that I was blind by. And they told someone else.

And then within 10 minutes, everything changed. Everybody knew. The wedding stopped being about the bride and groom, and became about, your man from the rubber bandits is here. Then all around, other people take out phones, and now they're on YouTube and they're showing their friends like you know this fella, that song, you know that song, or that they're this clip of him on the late late show

that fella, or the guy with the bag. That's happening in real time all around me. Everyone's staring at me with that that weird look and I was surrounded by by hundreds of strangers. None of them were fans of my work or anything like that. They just had a carcery awareness of there's a fella here and sometimes he's on TV and I think he wears a bag in his head. And everyone was drunk. I had people trying to get photographs with me.

That's the worst. That's I don't know who the fuck you are. I don't know what you've done. I might've heard the word blind by once in my life But everyone else is saying that that you're somebody. Can I get a photograph? No, I don't do photographs. Why what's wrong? Why won't you do a photograph? Just one photograph? What's the problem? But no, I don't do photographs. I wear a bag in my head. No one knows who I am Why do you wear a bag in your head?

Why do you do that? Do you know Jedward? I go on, just one photograph. I think my friend Paul knows who you are. But other people like physically trying to drag me, to pull me up on stage, to sing songs at the wedding, no bag in my head, they didn't even know what I sang. And I had to literally, I had to run away from the wedding.

I had to run out the door and run away from the wedding out the car park. I wasn't able for that at all. I couldn't leave my gaff for about three days after that. For someone else, that's like a fantasy. That's like a dream. The idea of going to a wedding and being the center of attention for all these people. Some people love that, and fair play to them. There's people trying to be influencers, who would kill their dog for a scenario as depressing as that.

I'm not built for that at all. So if I didn't have a bag on my head, and the past 10 or 15 years of my life meant realistically needing to worry about scenarios like that. I don't think I'd quit. I don't think I'd quit the job because my desire for creativity is too strong. But I reckon I'd have started to seriously abuse alcohol as a way to cope with that. Because if I was rat-harsed, utterly rat-harsed at that wedding in that scenario, that would have been manageable and bearable. And if you're listening to this and there's a part to you that's kind of thinking, oh here he is, he's moaning about going to a wedding and people recognizing him. Isn't life so hard? If you're thinking that way,

you're probably fairly neurotypical, extroverted, you're not autistic. The scenario that I've just described is probably not only bearable for you, but potentially exciting and thrilling. I believe you 100%. That's what's considered in society normal what society considers normal and desirable is to want recognition and to want a room full of strangers to bombard you with curiosity and interest nobody at that wedding was trying to fight me. Nobody was saying mean things to me. It was all positive excitement. So I believe you, if the possibility of that scenario for you sounds nice. But I need you to believe me when I say that for me, that's overwhelming and frightening.

And I can't really explain to you why. And it's not a choice that I'm making. And the best way that I can deal with it is not to try and cope with it, but to avoid it completely by wearing a bag on my head. And to me, as bizarre as that behavior is, as eccentric as that behavior is, to me, that's a very rational, logical, and effective solution to my problem. But I'm not moaning or complaining about it because I'd actually love to be able to

handle that and to just get on with it. And I think my plastic bag has protected me from abusing a substance to self-medicate for overstimulation. I'm just trying to tell you about a fucking documentary that I'm making. I'm just trying to tell you about a documentary that I'm making. This is turning into a phone call podcast. This has become a phone call podcast where I ring you up and check in. I'm talking about it because when you do something on television, even though it's fucking Ireland and Ireland is tiny and about one eighth of the people that listen to this podcast will

see the documentary on television, when you do anything on television then it means the media write about you for like a week. Traditional media, they ignore things like podcasts. They pretend that podcasts don't exist. And they only report when you do something that's on traditional media, such as television and radio. So when this documentary goes out, because I haven't been on TV in a while,

it just means that I'm going to have lots and lots of angry Irish people saying, there's that stupid fucking idiot with the bag on his head. Why won't that fucking idiot take the bag off his head? I can't take him seriously because he has a bag on his head. So I'm mentally preparing for that. So for this documentary, I'm only in it for, I'd say, 8 minutes in total. And the rest of it is just my voice doing what I do on this podcast

over a visual backdrop of very, very pretty cinematography. I wanna bring the podcast hug like into your mother's living room. Cause that's who's gonna be watching this. It's gonna be on RTE One. The people who are like that fucking idiot with the plastic bag on his head, that clown, who would never in a million years listen to this podcast,

I get to inject the podcast hug into their living rooms, and I'm really excited to do that. Also, I composed the entire soundtrack to the documentary myself. Now this is because when you're making a documentary, sometimes the most expensive part of making any piece of television is paying for music. And that budget didn't exist, which meant we would have had to have used what's called library music, which is very shit generic music that's made for television.

And music is way too important when you're making something like a documentary. So to save money, I said fuck it, I'll write all the music myself. So I'd wander for a crack making the soundtrack. It's inspired by Enya Vangelis, who composed the Blade Runner soundtrack, and Eno Maracone. So the documentary is called Blind by Slaves and Scanners. It's going to be on TV, on RT1, in, I'd say October, November, I don't know when. There's no actual date yet. So that documentary, that's not the only thing I'm announcing this week. I'm also going to be making a film. One of my short stories is being made into into a movie.

It's a story from my first collection of short stories. I'd have written it, I'd say in 2016. It's called Did You Read About Erskine Fogarty? Also, if you're a sweaty Brenda or a perpetual Michael, you know that that's also the first ever episode of this podcast. The first ever episode of this podcast back in October 2017. I read my short story, Did You Read About Arskin Fogarty. The story is set in around 2007, just at the point of the when the recession hits Ireland. And it's about a fella called Arskine Fogarty, who I now

realize years later after writing it, I think he might be a bit artistic because of how important facts, he uses facts as a way to cope with the stress of his reality. But it's a short story set in Ireland around the economic collapse. About a man from Limerick called Arskine Fogarty who went up to Dublin, made a bit of money during the Celtic Tiger, had a big house, a family, and then it all disappeared overnight. And he's left around 800,000 euro in debt because his wealth was artifice. It was Celtic tiger bullshit. And he'd built his identity around his possessions. So when everything falls apart and he's lost his job and he's lost his house and he's lost his family, he refuses to acknowledge that this reality is occurring.

But the one possession that he refuses to let go is his big American fridge freezer. Because during the Celtic Tiger in Ireland, in the 2000s, if someone had money, they got the American fridge freezer in their kitchen, like you'd see on MTV Cribs. And that meant you had arrived. So this character in the story, he's lost everything, and he has to go back home to Limerick to live in his mother's house. But he won't give up the fridge. And he drags the fridge down to

Limerick. Down the canal, down the Arties' couch, all the way through Limerick City, to his neighbourhood where he grew up, carrying this gigantic fridge, like Christ with his crucifix. And it's one of the first short stories I ever wrote. And I put it as the first episode of this podcast because back in 2017, the prospect of blind boy is writing short stories now. That was a bit strange in 2017 because people knew me mainly for music. So I started this podcast seven years ago to read my short stories for whoever would listen in the hopes that they would then maybe buy my book. And I didn't think this podcast, I didn't think it was gonna fucking have legs or be

popular or anything, but here we are fucking seven years later and technically the first episode of this podcast is now being turned into a film and the actor Robbie Sheehan, you'd know him from Umbrella Academy on Netflix and he was in Misfits as well. He was on this podcast as a guest, lovely fella, incredibly talented actor. Robbie's gonna be playing the part of Arskine Fogarty and we're gonna shoot it in Limerick, we're gonna shoot it on location. So Robbie's gonna be fucking dragging a fridge down the Limerick Canal, down the Arte's couch. I want to keep the locations faithful to the story. So that's another project I'm allowed to announce this week. And I just want to speak a little bit about failure, about the importance of failure. About, about seven months ago I did a podcast and I was quite disappointed and I told you that

one of my short stories was due to be made into a film, it had gotten to the final stages, ink was ready to be signed and then at the last minute the budget disappeared and the project was dead. And I was disappointed. But also I acknowledged when it comes to anything to do with fucking entertainment you have to expect disappointment because you'll get disappointed and rejected about 95% of the time. So the best thing to do is to seek out failure, seek out rejection, seek out disappointment, until you're rejected and disappointed so much that it just feels normal.

You don't really even interpret it as a painful experience. And when the feeling of failure and disappointment is so frequent and such a normal part of your job, eventually what happens is you're no longer afraid of it. And when you're not afraid of disappointment or rejection and failure, you just keep trying and you keep trying. Well, that's what happened here. Seven months ago, this short story was being made into a fucking film.

The arse fell out of it. The people who were commissioning it, their money just disappeared overnight. And it happened at a point, at a point where I'd allowed myself to get excited. I was like, this is definitely going ahead now. Just got to sign the contracts and then boom. But because I've had so many rejections, disappointments, failures over the years, I've had so many of them that when they hit, I acknowledge them and then move on very quickly, proactively. So basically, we got the script and said, okay, these people don't want it, let's just throw

it to as many other people as possible and see who bites. And someone did, and now someone wants to make it into a short film. And that documentary that I made. That's one documentary that got made, but there's probably 30 that never got made because the ideas were rejected at the earliest stages but if I'd have allowed any of those rejections to impact me emotionally and for those rejections to I could have taken any one of those rejections and then looked at it as proof of me not being good enough looked at it as proof of me not being good enough. This idea got rejected because it's a bad idea and I'm bad at my job. If I'd have thought that way then it would have made the fear of failure bigger and I wouldn't have tried again. But instead I reframed those rejections as

I must get rejected. I must fail. I have to fail because every failure is a learning opportunity and every single failure informs and fuels a future success. So I'm just going to keep trying and I want to fail so much that I don't even feel the failure. Like a professional soccer player who's training and they're kicking the fucking ball at the goals a thousand times a day and missing all the time so that failure just becomes normal. So if you're if you're a fucking writer, if you're anything, seek out rejection. Get your poetry, send your poems to every single poetry journal that you know, and expect

a rejection letter. Same with short stories, same with your draft for a fucking novel. Whatever creative thing it is that you're doing, send it off just to get rejected. Until you get rejected so much that it feels completely normal and then eventually you won't fear failure anymore. You'll become fearless and when you don't fear failure because rejection feels so normal, you'll become a better artist. You'll become better at your craft. The fear of failing is what will keep you from hearing your own unique artistic voice. Whatever creative field you're fucking around with.

As an artist, you have your own voice. Something that's uniquely yours. But if you still feel that your art is imitating, imitating other artists that you look up to, and you're still trying to find your voice. The thing that will have you imitating other artists is a fear of failing. Consistent failing and rejection will build the courage inside yourself to be able to hear your artistic voice and then express it on whatever fucking medium you're doing.

And then all of a sudden you're now making this art that is uniquely yours. And you do have that voice. Of course you have that fucking voice. Because you're a unique human being. A unique individual. So when you create art, the potential exists within you to be a unique artist. So I'm really looking forward to turning that short story into a short film. And it means being able to hire a team of fucking professionals, a crew, paying everybody properly, and we all work together

to make the best piece of art that we can make and I'm still I'm still pinching myself over that I can't believe I can't believe I'm gonna get to make one of my short stories into something I'll see on screen especially with Hollywood actor Robbie Sheehan playing the lead. Alright let's have an ocarina pause. I don't feel like playing a fucking ocarina this week. Just found a note on my desk. I don't even know what the fuck this note is. It has random, it looks like a set of codes. I found a piece of paper with a load of codes on it and I don't know what the codes are for and it doesn't look like my writing. I don't know what the fuck this is. It says 73182859 et al. Et al. Et al is what you write when you're citing

a reference in an academic essay and you don't want to mention all the authors of the book that you're referencing. So let's crumple the mystery codes. Let's crumple the mystery codes. And that will do with this week's Ocarina Pass while he here an advert. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day

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Save up to $20 per month on Rogers Internet. Visit Rogers.com for details. We got you, Rogers. Lovely sound. Lovely sound, I've never crumpled paper before. Very tactile. Wow. I should start crumpling paper more. Not offensive to the ears, I can't hear that. It's not gonna bother any dogs. That was me crumpling a piece of paper with mystery codes on it in someone else's writing

that's on my desk in work. Hope I'm not gonna be assassinated or something. I don't know what the fuck this is or why it's here. This week's podcast wasn't supposed to be... I spent 30 minutes there talking about the fucking documentary and the film that I'm gonna make. I did not intend to spend 30 minutes speaking about these things. I was gonna mention them briefly and then this turned into a fucking a phone call. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, solace, distraction,

whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast. Please consider supporting it directly by becoming a patron. This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I pay my bills. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I purchase the equipment to make this podcast. This podcast provides me with regular, stable, predictable income, Which, if I was relying on television I'd be fucked. Just to put it into context there. This documentary that I'm making with RTE, this is the first piece of television I've made with RTE since 2016. So that's two pieces of TV work in eight years.

But thankfully, I don't even have to think about that. Because for the past seven fucking years, because this podcast is going to be seven at the end of October, for the past seven years, I've been fully independent, turning up each week, never missed a week delivering this podcast, which I adore doing. More enjoyable than making television, more enjoyable than making films if I'm being honest. Making a podcast every single week. And year the Commissioner, the listeners of this podcast. I've been able to earn a living for seven years because of the patrons of this podcast so thank you so much if you're a patron of

this podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast, and I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind Boy Podcast. Okay, upcoming gigs. 15th of September, that's close enough now. That's close enough now.

15th of September I'm at the Cork Podcast Festival in the Cork Opera House. Come along to that, I have a fantastic guest. November, I'm up in Mayo in Clare Morris. Come along to that, I have a fantastic guest. November, I'm up in Mayo in Clare Morris. Come along to that. 19th of November, I'm in Vicar Street in Dublin. Come along to that, that'll be great, crack. And then my Australia and New Zealand tour in fucking April of 2025, this is nearly sold out out but should we call out the dates anyway because I got in trouble for not calling them out last week. On the 30th, Sky City, Auckland,

Powerhouse, Brisbane, Enmore Theatre, Sydney, Palais Theatre, Melbourne, State Theatre, Perth. That's the lot I think. So that's in fucking April 2025, Australia and New Zealand. Go to the the websites of the respective fucking venues there and you'll get your tickets. But I think a few of them are sold out but give it a crack anyway. What I wanted to speak about in this week's podcast, what my intention was, is I wanted to speak about the first gig I ever did in Belfast. What had me thinking about Belfast was I'm doing a gig in Belfast on the 28th of May 2025, like fucking ages away, I'm in the Waterfront Theatre on the 28th of May 2025. And they just went on sale last week. Now I love gigging Belfast. Everyone up there is unbelievably sound. But when I first started gigging Belfast, probably 2009, maybe 2010, I used to be fucking terrified, I used to be scared going up to Belfast because I grew up in what's called the Irish Free State, the 26 counties, the

Republic of Ireland, and Belfast is the north of Ireland, which is technically still under British rule. So when I was a kid, Belfast was just a very frightening place that I saw on television. On the nose, where you had the IRA and the UVF and there was bombs and shootings and it was a frightening place. So when I was doing my first gigs there, 2010 we'll say, that was my first time in Belfast and even though that was like 14 years after the Good Friday agreement and the end of the troubles we'll say, I was still mad nervous and when I was gigging Belfast back then, I would have been playing small venues and

we had a song called Up The Ra. This was a satirical song about free state ignorance, but we used to perform Up The Ra on stage and it had the lyrics, Ooh-ah Up The Ra, meaning Up the IRA. It had those lyrics, alongside utterly ridiculous lyrics, including reading out a ridiculously long list of IRA members, which included Morgan Freeman, and Winona Ryder,

and our DJ. Our DJ used to put on a batta clava and hold up a tricolour. Sometimes he'd have an AK-47. I would bring on dancers dressed as the IRA. And this was in like 2007 or even 2010. This was shocking to audiences. I mean, down south, it was shocking because some people were offended

and then you'd have other people going, are we allowed to laugh about this? Can you dress up as the IRA on stage and sing up the rat and it'd be a joke? And my argument was, you can, because this song, it's not about the IRA, this song is about people from the free state, like myself, who haven't a fucking clue about the IRA, who haven't a clue about

the Troubles, because we're witnessing it on television. We experience an immediate version of that conflict through the narrative of nose and that ignorance. That's fair game. Fair game for a bit of laughing. I'd just started reading about a guy called Jean Baudrillard and I'd become obsessed with the concept of hyperreality. And now today you have kneecap who are doing that and they'll be up on stage with tricolours saying up the rat in a tongue-in-cheek funny satirical way and it's a

bit more normalized now but in the late 2000s not everybody got the joke and even the ones who did get the joke were unsure if that joke was an okay one to make but that song up the ra got us a big following, a big following up in Derry and Belfast. So when I did my first Belfast gig extreme paranoia took over and I was genuinely concerned that I was gonna get shot by the IRA, by the UVF, by somebody. I'm like, you can't go up to Belfast and do a gig and sing up the ra, someone's gonna shoot you. Now I had no basis for this whatsoever other than uneducated, free-state paranoia. The reality was when I'd go up to Belfast and do that song, you'd have both Catholics and Protestants in the audience,

absolutely loving it, and feeling a sense of catharsis that it was like Catholics and Protestants roaring up the rire and everyone knowing it was a joke. And I'm basing that on, that was the direct feedback I was getting from people who were attending the gigs. But still, I was still mad paranoid. So I'd finished, I can't even remember where the fucking gig was, it was so long ago. I'm guessing somewhere near Queen's University. Probably 2010.

Late gig, finished at about 1am, went for a couple of pints and the B&B that I was staying in, it wasn't too far away so I decided I'd walk. Now I was nervous because it's like I'm walking Belfast, I'm walking Belfast at two and a half, three in the morning. The streets aren't empty, but all that paranoia comes up. And I walk past these gates and I hear the voices of young people, people in their twenties. And it's these very sober, cheerful group of people. And they're handing out cups of tea and soup. And they call me over. And they're so friendly and they're handing out cups of tea and soup and they call me over and they're

so friendly and they're so nice. It was a girl and a boy and they hand me a cup of tea on the side of the fucking road and I get talking to them and I'm like why are you giving me tea at three in the morning? What the fuck are you doing out here at three in the morning in the middle of Belfast handing out cups of tea. And then they're like, this is what we do. We just help people. We help people. If people are coming out of the pub or whatever,

we hand out free cups of tea. And then I start probing more and more. No, really, like, what's the crack? And then one of them mentions his Bible group. So then I'm like, oh, okay. This is some weird Christian shit. What ye do is you find people who've had a few drinks

or walking home at night, who might be a bit mentally vulnerable, and then you latch onto them and you try and convert them towards Christ. So I'm thinking this in my head. Now I'm wary because I'd already had a few run-ins with Mormons back in Limerick. Back in Limerick, fucking...these Mormons, you know the American Mormons come over and they knock on your door. They're all over from Utah. They're quite young. Most of them

are only 19 or 20. And these Mormons had knocked on my door and it was pissing rain outside, really raining bad and there were just two lads of about 20 and they were drenched wet and I invited the Mormons into my house, I invited the fucking Mormons in, and sat them down and made them a cup of tea and talked to them a little bit about what it was like in Utah and Mormonism, blah blah blah. They changed the bit of converting, didn't work out too well for them, I said, no, I'm not religious.

I said, straight up lads, it was raining outside, you were drenched. I'm just being a nice person, I'm just being a nice person. I'm just being a nice person and I'm aware as well that loads of people are probably rude to you because you're knocking on everyone's door all the time. So I'm just being a decent person. So they left, said goodbye, and then they wouldn't leave me alone

for like four fucking months. Those Mormons came back every fucking week, knocking on my door, looking for me by name. I was getting my brother to go to the door and say, tell the Mormons I'm not here, tell them I'm not here. Until eventually after about the fourth time that the Mormons called, looking for me, I went out to them myself and I said, lads please stop calling, I'm not going to become a Mormon, I'm not interested. The only reason that I invited you in a month ago was because it was raining and I was just being a nice person. And

you know what the Mormon said? That wasn't your decision. When you invited us into your house, that was God entering your body to tell us that we needed to find you. And that really pissed me off. Because it was like they were discrediting. They were discrediting my choice to be a nice person. I made a choice to be nice to the Mormons and bring them in. And now they're fully convinced. No, no, no.

That wasn't your choice. That wasn't your choice. That wasn't your choice. God entered you. God made that choice. And that's why we have to keep coming back. Because God led us in, not you. So I said, fuck off. You fucking silly yanks.

So back to Belfast. It's about three in the morning. I'm standing outside these gates on a road in Belfast and I'm talking to some very friendly Christians who are after giving me a cup of tea and I'm thinking in my head, don't repeat the Mormon business. Do not. You're already after taking a cup of tea off the Christians. I stopped, I stopped and spoke to the Christians because I was nervous walking around Belfast. And to be honest, when I saw lovely, nice, friendly, sober people with tea,

it made me feel good, it made me feel safe. So I went over to them. But they are now going to twist this, they will twist this into I didn't choose to walk to ye. God entered in my body and brought me to ye. Because this is what they do. This is what, I've looked them up since. Can't remember their name, but

they're Christians, they're Christians that hang around the streets at night time. And they go to young people who are drunk, especially if they're on their own, they offer them tea, and they try and convert that person, or try and get that person to come to their Bible group on Sunday. So I've got the Mormons in my head and I just said thanks so much for the tea Christians I'm gonna leave now and I

handed my tea back only after taking a couple of sips and then the lad says to me, Jesus it's very late it's very late how are you getting home where are you staying? Now me like a big fucking idiot I, I'm staying in a B&B, just a couple of streets down there. Now I would not have been spending a tenner on a taxi, just not back then, no fucking way, didn't have enough money. So the Christian says, we'll give you a lift home, we'll give you it, no problem, just down there, we've got a car there, Hop in and we will drive you back to your B&B. Now I'm very tempted, very tempted, because like I said, I'm not paying for any fucking taxis,

and they're offering me a free lift, and I'm kind of scared to walk home, because it's Belfast. And then I say, do you know what? All they know is that I'm staying in that B&B, they can't follow me back to fucking Limerick. Fuck it, do you know what? I'm gonna get that B&B, they can't follow me back to fucking Limerick. Fuck it, you know what? I'm gonna get into the back of the car with the Christians and let them drive me home

to that B&B. It's a short journey, they can't get into my head and convert me. So I'm feeling dead smart. Outsmarting the Christians, getting the free lift home. And then as we walk towards the car, this huge big paranoia comes over me again. As we walked towards their car, I just became aware of the sound of all of our footsteps, and I started to freak me out. And I started to say to myself, what if they're the shankill butchers? Now that was an utterly ridiculous thought, but this is free state paranoia.

The shankill butchers were serial killers. They were serial killers. They were loyalist paramilitary sectarian death squad that stalked the streets of Belfast in the 70s and 80s, searching for Catholics, lone Catholics, and they would often use a taxi as cover. But the Shankill butchers would roam the streets, find a Catholic, lob him into a taxi and then murder them brutally. These were serial killers. Very evil and dangerous gang. But this was the 70s, they weren't around in 2010. But I didn't have access to that type of rational thought. So as I'm walking towards the fucking Christians car in Belfast, I'm just fully convinced this is the shankill butchers.

This is their new thing. Their new thing is that they're pretending to be young Christians, but they're gonna murder me because they know that I'm a southern catholic. So I let the two Christians walk away a bit more to the car and then I turn and I just leg it. I run the opposite direction as fast as I possibly can. They're screaming after me, like really confused and rightly so because I was behaving like a lunatic. They were just, they were just giving me a lift home. They were just giving me a lift home. At no point had they tried to convert me to Christianity. They hadn't done any of that shit? It's quite possible. They were just giving me a lift home. Maybe at the end they'd have handed me a fucking business card or something? I don't know, but I would have been grand.

But I was halfway down the road now, my heart thumping, convinced. I can't believe I just got away from the Shankill Butchers. But as I was running, this was three in the morning, the only place that was open, it was this takeaway, a Turkish takeaway. And I had this strangest fucking name I'd ever seen in my life, it was called Gilgamesh. And I stopped to go, what a fucking mad name for a takeaway, what the fuck, Gilgamesh. I'd never heard Gilgamesh before in my life so I headed into Gilgamesh to get myself a kebab because I was feeling quite good that I'd escaped the fucking shanky the butchers so when I was there I got my food and I asked the lads behind

the counter they were Turkish lads I said why the fuck is this place called Gilgamesh? What does that mean? Because it's a strange, it's a strange word. Gilgamesh. It's a very odd word. It doesn't sound, I don't associate that with food. It doesn't sound tasty or appetizing. Gilgamesh is the sound you'd make if you were choking on your kebab. But when I asked the lads behind the counter why is it called Gilgamesh is the sound you'd make if you were choking on your kebab.

But when I asked the lads behind the counter, why is it called Gilgamesh? Tarkishvada says to me, Gilgamesh is the oldest story in the world. The oldest story in the world. And that's all he said to me. And I ate my kebab. Now this was 2010. I didn't have a smartphone. I didn't have an iPhone. I didn't own one. I just had a shitty regular phone. So I had to make a mental note in my head. Tomorrow, tomorrow you're gonna open up that laptop, you're gonna go onto Wikipedia,

and you're gonna find out what the fuck Gilgamesh is. And that's what I did. And I found out that this takeaway, this takeaway in Belfast was named after a thing called the Epic of Gilgamesh. I've mentioned this on multiple podcasts before. I've referenced the Epic of Gilgamesh. But back in 2010, I'd said this takeaway, this was the first time ever that I'd heard about the Epic of Gilgamesh. The epic of Gilgamesh is the first story that humans ever wrote down. It's an epic myth. It comes from what is now Iraq, but it's 4,000 years old.

And it's a story about a king called Gilgamesh. And Gilgamesh is the king of a city in Iraq called Uruk, like 4,000 years ago. And as a king, he's horrendous. He's an absolute fucking prick. Gilgamesh, he has any woman in his city who's about to be married. Gilgamesh goes into the bridal chamber and as king he has non-consensual sex with every woman in the city who's about to be married before their husband. And then he sends the husbands off to war. So he's a horrendous tyrant of a king in this city called Uruk. And he's so bad that the people of this city, the women in particular,

they pray to the gods to try and stop this horrible king Gilgamesh. And the gods listen. So then the gods decide, okay, we'll sort out Gilgamesh. And they create, like Gilgamesh's twin, this twin man called Enkidu. Except Enkidu lives outside the walls of the city, and he's wild like an animal, he's like an animal man, but he's Gilgamesh's twin. So Enkiduu he wanders the forest and frolics with the animals and is at one with the land and one with the trees, completely wild.

Until one day a woman shows up from the city of Uruk and she spends seven days with in Kidu And she spends seven days with Enkidu and she teaches him how to be civilized. And then after seven days Enkidu is civilized and he enters the city of Uruk to challenge Gilgamesh the king because they're like opposite twins and they're equally as powerful, equally as big as each other. So now Gilgamesh and Enkidu are kicking the heads off each other in the streets of Uruk, beating the fuck out of each other. And all the people are there. We prayed to the gods, we prayed to the gods that they would send send a champion who could fight the king and defeat him. But the thing is, is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu, they're perfectly matched. They're

equals. They fight and fight and fight, but no one can get the upper hand. And eventually they fight so much in the streets that they just stop. And Gilgamesh gains a respect for his wild twin that was sent by the gods and they become friends and Gilgamesh is humbled. He's humbled by this experience, by meeting someone who can match him and who can fight him. He's humbled by this experience and he decides, you know what, I'm no longer gonna, I'm not gonna have sex with every woman before she gets married in this city and I'm not gonna send their husbands off. I don't want to do that anymore. I found a greater purpose. I'm gonna go on adventures. I want to go on adventures with my weird evil twin in Qidu.

Instead of being a prick to my people, I want to be remembered for great deeds. So Gilgamesh and in Qidu, they go off on like a monster slaying journey. They go to the Great Cedar Forest and they confront a monster called Humbaba. Humbaba is like a pet of the gods. The gods love this weird monster. But Gilgamesh and Enkidu, they kick the fucking shit out of him and kill him and they're best friends and they have so much crack together beating the shit out of monsters.

But the gods are getting pissed off because now Gilgamesh and Enkidu are killing all their monsters. So one of the gods Ishtar, she decides I'm gonna punish these cunts. So she sends down what's called the Bull of Heaven, this bull from heaven, down into Gilgamesh's city of Uruk, and the bull brings disease. Disease and pestilence and earthquakes, and there's a famine in the city. And Enkidu, whose Gilgamesh's soul mate, his best friend, his wild twin, Enkidu comes down

with a sudden sickness and all his muscles waste away and he becomes frail and old all of a sudden. And Gilgamesh is heartbroken. He can't believe this. He can't believe that his big, strong soul mate Enkidu who looks exactly like him, his twin brother from the gods, he can't believe that he's seeing his twin waste away and turn to nothing and become all before his eyes and Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh is heartbroken. But seeing Enkidu die and become frail and waste away, it leaves Gilgamesh terrified of his own mortality. Gilgamesh realises for the first time in

his life, oh my god I'm going to die. I know I'm a young man and I can ride anything I want and I'm as strong as an ox. But I will one day become old and waste away and die. I don't want to do that. So Gilgamesh decides he wants to go on a quest for immortality. He wants to be immortal. So he wanders the deserts of Iraq in search of a fella called Utnap who's immortal. And Utnap is immortal because the gods sent a great flood. And Utnap had to build an ark in which he put two of every animal to survive the great flood. And as a reward for that, he was granted immortality by the gods. reward for that. He was granted immortality by the gods. So Gilgamesh goes to visit him to try and find the secret of how do I become immortal like you? I don't want to die. And then Utnap says, sorry Gilgamesh you're a human, humans have to die, humans have to

die. Like I'm not human, I'm immortal, but I built this giant ark and survived the flood and took two of every animal so that's why I'm immortal, but you're human, you're gonna die, there's nothing I can do for you. But what we can do is we can maybe trick death a little bit. What if I told you about a plant, a special plant, and if you get this plant, every time you eat from it, you'll stay young. So you can kind of cheat death, but you will die eventually. So Utnap tells Gilgamesh where he can find this, this plant of eternal youth. Gilgamesh says thank you and he goes off on his journey and finds his way to the plant of eternal youth and just as he grabs some fruit from the plant of eternal youth a snake appears and tricks him Tricks him out of eating the fruit and steals it from him

so Gilgamesh is Devastated and he returns back to his kingdom and he accepts I'm a human I'm going to die. I can't have immortality, I can't have eternal youth, I'm definitely going to die. And I just have to accept this. And I'm going to try and be a good king. And I want to be remembered, remembered for my good deeds.

Because one day I'm going to be old and I'm going to die. He learns that real immortality is the legacy that you leave behind. So that story there is that's known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. And that is the first ever story that humans wrote down ever story that humans wrote down 4,000 years ago in Iraq. The civilization, the Sumerians, back then they had developed a system of writing and a way of writing on clay tablets. So that's that's That's the oldest story that any human has ever written down, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Now first off what I love about it is, there was a real king called Gilgamesh from that area. They know this because they've looked at cuneiform tablets with lists of kings, so an actual real king called Gilgamesh did exist around that time and technically he's the first human to ever achieve what you

could call immortality through writing. It's four thousand years later and I'm talking about this man Gilgamesh on a fucking podcast. The story ends with him accepting his mortality, accepting that he's gonna die but appreciating the true mortality is about the legacy that you leave behind. And it's like, yes, because someone wrote your story, because someone wrote your story down, it was preserved and now we're still talking about you. But what I really love, I'd only thought about this this week. There's two bits in that story that are very familiar to you. The first one is the fella who built the ark to escape the flood and took two of every animal. You know that story

because that's the story of Noah and his ark. Then there's the bit where Gilgamesh finds the tree of eternal life, picks the fruit and he's tricked out of it by a snake. That's the bit where Gilgamesh finds the tree of eternal life, picks the fruit, and he's tricked out of it by a snake. That's the Garden of Eden. That's the Apple of Eden. And then there's a snake involved, and the snake tricks Eve, whatever the fuck happens. But you've got the Ark and the Apple of Eden. Two stories from the Bible.

What's going on? Because the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's about 1500 years older than the Old Testament. It's a much much older story that's written down. I thought the Bible was the word of God. That's the beauty of the Epic of Gilgamesh when it was discovered in the 1800s. It let the world know the Bible is just another story. Christianity is just another story. It's mythology. Whether it be Noah's Ark or the creation, the creation in the Garden of Eden and the Apple of Eden. They're just stories, they're just myths. And here is the proof. This Bible that you think is 1500 years old,

here you go, here's the proof. Here's something that's more than a thousand years older than the Bible, and here's the same stories. These are just stories, myths, created by human beings to make sense of the world and the human condition. And when the Epic of Gilgamesh was discovered, 200 years ago, it shattered religion to its core. Your foundational texts are just fairy tales, influenced by earlier texts, just myth. But what I find ironic, and it's the bit that I realised this week.

Those Christians who were handing me cups of tea, and who were offering to drive me home, lovely people, but they were definitely, they wanted me to turn up to fucking Bible class on Sunday. They were evangelicals, the same as the Mormons. Yes, they were being nice to me, but they wanted me for Christ. They wanted me to get stuck into the Bible. They were hoping, you know, they met this drunk lad walking home by himself and they were hoping that I'd ring them back and come into their church, I could have been convinced, I could have been convinced by their message. But the fact that when I ran away and I ended up at a takeaway called Gilgamesh, the next morning by that Turkish man who said, it's the oldest story

in the world, the next morning I end up reading about it and confirming to myself that the Bible is just mythology, it's bullshit, it's just stories. Stories made up by humans to entertain. That's all it is. And here's the proof. Because I was young, I would have still had that little doubt in me, because I'd been indoctrinated in school with Christianity. I would have still had that little doubt in me of, what if it's real? What if Christianity is real? And when I read the epic of Gilgamesh

and I saw Noah's Ark and I saw the fucking Apple of Eden, I went, there you go. Oh shit, it's just stories. And I kind of want, I wanted to speak to the Christians about it. I wanted to take the Christians to the Gilgamesh takeaway and explain the epic of Gilgamesh to them. But I didn't get that opportunity. Alright, that's all I have time for this week. This was a strange podcast. What an odd podcast this week. Half a phone call, half the epic of Gilgamesh.

I should have done the epic of Gilgamesh first. Rub a dog, kiss a swan. What I'm actually gonna do actually is we're fading out for the crack, right? Because remember I said earlier, with this documentary that I've made, that I've also composed a soundtrack for it. What I might do on the fade out of the podcast, I'd play ye one of the pieces that I composed for this documentary, because I never I've never gotten to fuck around with I suppose classical music, soundtrack music before, and I would have composed this using all synthesizers, but synthesizers are so good today that you can make it convincingly sound like an orchestra.

I'm going to play you an instrumental piece that I made for this documentary about early Irish Christianity. And the name of this relaxing instrumental piece is called Curious Otter Defiles a Prayer Book. The reason I called it this was, Irish saints are fucking insane. Our Irish saints and the mythologies we created for them are batshit mad. And there was an Irish saint in Glendalach called Saint Kevin in the 6th century. And apparently Saint Kevin, one day he was praying beside the river, and an otter, an otter came along and

stole his prayer book and wouldn't give it back to him. An otter stole his gospel. So that's the shit that we had in Irish Christianity, batshit stories like that. So I composed this classical piece, I suppose as an aural painting of the otter stealing the prayer book, the gospel, and taking it away into his couch, into his otter's couch, and frolicking with it and defiling it. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers Internet. Visit Rogers.com for details. We got you, Rogers. I'm sorry. Music I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

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