S2E6: TBT: Audience Favorites
Episode Transcript:
[Evy:] Hey Webster. No?
BLESZ: Something like “Hey Webster when is our next episode?”
[Evy:] As if I’m so stupid and I don’t know?
(Laughter)
[BLESZ:] Or whatever you wanna say
(Laughter)
[Evy:] I’m like, I’m just here hanging out. I don’t know what is happening
[Webster:] Or you can do it tongue in cheek, like “Hey Webster when is our next episode?”’
[Mérida]: Wrong!
Intro:
[Evy:] Hello and welcome to Word Up Podcast. I’m Evy.
[Webster:] And I’m Webster.
[Evy & Webster:] So…
[Webster:] Yeah, let’s hear one of your poems?
[Evy:] What inspires you?
[Webster:] For the most part I enjoyed it.
[Evy:] What’s the weirdest that happened to you while performing.
[Webster:] You heard it here first.
(Laughter)
[Voice:] Season one, episode eight.
[Evy:] Hello hello and welcome to Word Up Podcast. I’m Evy.
[Webster:] And I’m Webster.
[Evy:] And today we’re with MP, aka GOD.
[MP:] That’s correct.
[Webster:] The one and only..
[Evy:] What does it stand for?
[MP:] MP? Matthew Paull. Surname Wamfam fam W.A.M.F.A.M. GOD just stands for God, like, you know... in case you didn’t know...
[Evy:] Very modest...
[MP:] Yeah, of course man, you need to know who you are, so...
[Webster:] So to our audience who don’t know who you are, haven’t met you, haven’t seen you performing live, can you describe what you do?
[MP:] Basically if they go to church, the mosque, you know what I mean, the synagogue, anywhere.. They’ll find me.
[Webster:] Okay
[MP:] Alternatively they can also go to SFP stage, yeah...
(Laughter)
[MP:] They can find me in London, in Luton, in Amsterdam....
(Laughter making the conversation inaudible)
[MP:] So yeah man, I just.. I do life, via poetry. With the Soul Food Poetry family.
[Webster:] Right.
---Transition---
[Webster:] What does a poet eat?
MP: What does a poet eat? He eats good life and she eats good life. Know what I mean like... This poet is on this no meat thing. That’s why I love these crackers and olives and hummus and apples and things you’ve got going on here. Like I mean, because what you put in is what you put out. That means that if I expect my poetry to be full of life, it has to be full of preserving life. It can’t be full of taking it, personally.
[Webster:] Personally?
[MP:] And what do other poets eat? I don’t know.
(laughter)
---Transition---
[Webster:] It’s interesting the relationship between the poets and the musicians. Can you explain that a little bit, for people who haven’t been to Soul Food Poetry?
[MP:] Relationships are special one because it’s kinda like a speed-dating process, you don’t know anything about them until they get up on stage and the first few seconds you just need to understand them. You need to get what they’re saying, you need to get their energy, you need to get whether they’re nervous or not, you need to understand whether to come in with three instruments or just one. Like, There’s... Let’s put it this way: the musicians rehearse just for that purpose, you know.. Pick up a random poem from the internet, start saying it and see how they’re able to connect, you know. But it’s down to the musicians, how they connect..
[Webster:] So they kinda create a mood based on what the persons vibe is, what they’re saying?
[MP:] Yeah, what they’re saying, their vibe, their characteristics, their tone, you know what I mean? Like sometimes a musician will.. An artist will come on and say “Give me this” Which kinda helps, because that’s what they want. But unless it’s an artist who has already written to that type of beat, you never know what the musicians are going to interpret for me, because it’s not just about the musicians trying to interpret and support the artist. It’s also about the musicians interpretation of what the artist is saying. So the poetry is being spoken through the music, also, you know. All starting from €6.
[MP:] Of course, of course. And the reason why there has to be a plug there is because I may not be able to afford €6. D’you what I mean. Or €12. or the €30 tables I am talking about. But I may be able to afford the €6 if I’ve been given 3 months to put €2 down each month to attend, you know? And because it’s all about inclusion, that’s why that’s available.
---Transition---
[Evy:] I’m very curious about, if you have any advice for people who are struggling to become an artist or to start creating? Like, what would be your advice?
[MP:] My advice would be: Come to one of our shows, or anywhere, come to Word Up. You understand me, come anywhere and just get on that stage. Because there’s nothing that you can do that time can’t sort out. D’you know what I mean? And everything’s a process. If you’re nervous, get on stage. If you’re exited, get on stage.
[Evy:] So just do it.
[MP:] Just, like, just do it. You know what I mean? Just do it, that’s the best advice I can give. Once you’re on stage, then future advice can come. You know what I mean? But it’s not ‘til you get on that stage that I can say... Like sometimes, a lot of the time I’d say to people “The audience” no disrespect, it’s just what I say to the artists to get them into... “The audience aren’t anything, you’re the person on the stage. They’re listening to you” you feel me? “So when you’ve seen all these faces, don’t feel like “Oh these faces...”” No, blank canvas them to begin with, if that’s what you need to do. Speak to them, you know that you’re the person up there giving that sermon. You feel me? Like, you’re the person that needs to deliver something. And hopefully, you can change something in someone. May not be your words, may not be your delivery, because you haven’t delivered in a certain way. It may be the fact that your nervous as heck, got up on that stage, did your thing and someone else who’s just as nervous as you, wouldn’t have done it, seen you and been like “you know what? yeah, I think I can try and do that because they overcame their fear and they did this and they did that and they the other”” That is poetry.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season two, episode three
Evy: Today, we're here with the underground artist of Amsterdam, Zino. Hi.
Zino: Hi there. Thank you for having me.
Evy: How are you today?
Zino: I'm feeling good today. I have a, finally, a day off after a long production period.
---Transition---
Evy: Your documentary is called "From the Streets to the Seats?"
Zino: Yes. Yes.
Webster: The trailer looks, dope as F. It looks so good.
Zino: Thank you. Thank you. I have to give a shout out to my man, Constantin. He's also a dancer in our collective but also the videographer, and he's working, he's been working on this documentary with a documentary maker from Swiss. His name is Flow. He works with a lot of German rap artists, and their skills together, it's next level, so I'm really blessed to work with those souls. Yeah.
Evy: What inspired you to actually make the documentary itself?
Zino: Well, all the work that we do, that we research, comes from a personal experience. We try to emphasize that so other people can identify themselves within those stories. I think, for now, this is our main focus.
Webster: I like it a lot. I wanted to know about the story of the documentary. It seems super gritty. Me, coming from London, like, I know the grit, you know, you see it in London, it's very obvious to me. But when you're in Amsterdam, it's hard for me to like to see it. It's like this pretty cute town with canals and, you know, people riding on bicycles and stuff. Tell us a little bit about the underground scene here in the Netherlands or Amsterdam in particular?
Zino: Yeah. Well, what I can tell about the underground scene is that it's very small. There's a big commercial scene because, for example, names like Red Bull, they are involved in the community, a worldwide community. I think everywhere in the world where is a big city like London or New York, there are hitters. And hitters, that's basically what our piece is called, that's about dancers that wants to make a living that decide not to be in that commercial community, but choose to develop within the raw, the raw underground circle. So everywhere, where are tourists, there are hitters.
Webster: Right, right. Make sense. I like it.
---Transition---
Evy: How was it to dance for Obama?
Webster: I wanted to ask about this.
Zino: We saw that. Well, we did not have the chance to see him sitting or whatsoever. But, guys, how much people were there in the audience? Like 5,000 people?
Webster: So you don't really know what's going on, you do the show, and when he claps, loves it. We hope he loves it.
Zino: It's like this rock star movie, you know, like, you see this rock star, and before he comes on stage, everything slows down, goes in slow motion. It's really like that. It's like, "Okay, I have to go on stage now," and then you run on stage, and you see this huge crowd. Then you get this moment of realization, "Okay, now what's gonna happen?" You have to switch on to dance.
Evy: Do you feel like your mindset doesn't change if you perform to, I don't know, like in the street for 50 people or 5,000 or 50,000?
Zino: At that moment?
Evy: Yeah.
Zino: Yeah, of course, it changes. Yeah. Yeah.
---Transition---
Evy: And how much like different cultures influence your productions also because you're quite diverse group? As in, like, I don't know. I was thinking now, like, you know, like Sufi dancing is a certain way of like, do you have any influences that you bring from your cultures that...?
Zino: Cultural dance.
Evy: Yeah.
Zino: No, actually not. Actually not. But an interesting question because last year we got asked to make a piece about our roots. And I was like, "Oh, nice. I'm gonna make a piece about Indonesian dance and... But wait, I'm also Dutch," and that has quite often a cruel history. So we decided to make a piece with our own dance language that is not cultural-related but to tell the story about our identity, how it was back then and what it brought to us now as human again.
Evy: Yeah. This is gonna be the ongoing thread in the story, everything as human, as human experience.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season one, episode six
[Evy:] Hello hello and welcome to Word Up Podcast. I’m Evy.
[Webster:] And I’m Webster.
[Evy:] And today we’re here with Ard Kok.
[Ard:] Yes, hello.
[Evy:] How are you today?
[Ard:] I’m uhm I’m... I’m pretty good. I’ve been very busy lately, ‘cause my girlfriend from America has been here...
[Evy:] oohh
[Ard:] So we have like six weeks together. So trying to fit as many nice things as we can in this period, you know.
[Evy:] Oh, so exciting. Thank you so much for giving your precious time to us then.
[Ard:] Anytime, really.
---Transition---
[Evy:] Could you please introduce yourself?
[Ard:] Ja, I’m an experimental electronic music producer, mainly right now. I think I’ve changed a lot in that since last year. I’ve.. I was in Iceland for a few months and after that a lot of my sort of musical direction changed. And that’s why now I would say experimental electronic music producer. Before it would’ve been more of like singer-songwriter and Dutch poetry or Dutch stories on music. Which I did under a different name. Uh and now I’m here I think as uh “either id” which would be my performance name now.
---Transition---
[Webster:] Do you think the audience looks forward to it being improvised or... How is that different to giving them something that they know has been practiced and you know, sorta honed and defined?
[Ard:] I think that’s where the spoken word part becomes very important because like... The texts have been rehearsed, obviously, because they’re.. they can be long texts, most of them are shorter texts and like when I.. We have a few texts for example that are dialogues. Sort of very abstract inner dialogues that would go like:
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because, feelings.”
“Just feelings?”
“Yeah, because feelings.”
“Why feelings?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then no.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Like, it will be things like that, that can be very easily improvised with, but still have a structure to them, so I guess that is something that the audience... I mean, ‘cause you do have to give them something that is rehearsed or prepared you know to otherwise it becomes too loose, also for me. Otherwise you can’t really push a concept in it, and I really wanted there to be a concept.
---Transition---
[Webster:] And do you prepare the audience and sort of say “hey guys, this is gonna be completely live” and you know tell them your process or do you kinda keep that under wraps?
[Ard:] I try to, I guess, like it’s I think it’s nice to tell people that it’s improvised because that... I’m not sure.. I‘m wondering about that, like if that works for I guess the general audience if there’s a general audience. But to put them in a mindset of "okay he’s really experiencing it for himself new, too", because I really do. And that’s why I get shakey, because I’m like so it get’s very fragile I guess.
[Webster:] Yeah, I think for me it adds an extra element of like “Oh my god I really need to pay attention because everything I’m about to experience I probably won’t get to see again in that order, in that way, with those emotions at the present time”
[Ard:] So it did that for you?
[Webster:] Yeah
[Ard:] Okay, that’s good.
[Webster:] Knowing you’re doing that sort of live, it’s like okay, sweet, I’m looking forward to this, you know..
[Ard:] Yeah, exactly
---Transition---
[Ard:] it starts growing into more and more complex systems in which you’re either not really sure how the input works, like with a TV or something, I don’t know what my remote control does but I think I have an idea of what the output will be, so I kinda understand. And then at some point there’s systems that are just so complex that you cannot understand because every time you give it an input, even if it’s exactly the same input, a completely different output comes out. So it’s completely unpredictable and I feel that’s how life is a lot and how social situations are a lot. Like you can do something again because you thought it worked last time, and then it just doesn’t work this time. But the idea of just keep poking it with a different input was nice. So like, uhh.. I guess when I get awkward in social situations sometimes I’ll just pick a random thing to do, and just do it, and then see what the output it, because then at least I’m taking a little bit of control over the situation where I’m in. And if you stop giving input, to that system, because it’s so chaotic, then you really lose every type of control.
[Evy:] So winning by confusion.
[Ard:] Yes, exactly. And, yeah... I mean, uh
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season one, episode four
[Evy:] Today we are with Ihaka.
[Ihaka:] Hello, kia ora, I'm Ihaka, I'm from New Zealand. I'm a freelance musician. I'm a singer, song writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist and I've been living in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, for three and a half years now. And I came on a one-way ticket all the way to Europe. Sold everything, and... and I've been just trying to build myself up as a freelance artist ever since.
[Webster:] For our audience who haven't - maybe haven't - heard your music, how would you describe it?
[Ihaka:] That's a tough question.
[Webster:] Yeah.
[Ihaka:] Because, as a freelancer, I'm involved in way to many projects to get started about here. Um, my own music would be a... it is a mixture of soul and jazz and electronics.
[Webster:] Right.
[Ihaka:] But that's a bit hard to look up, because I'm releasing this year. I've been working for the last three years on my own band, Heavy Faces. Um, yeah, and that's a kind of... think about a mix between... do you know Subtract? Or Sampha?
[Webster:] Yeah, yeah, yeah...
[Ihaka:] Sampha, a mix between Sampha and Jamiroquai, and, you know, maybe Matt Corby. Quarvocals.
[Webster:] Sounds delicious!
[Ihaka:] Something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good time. I mean, I'm involved in everything from reggae, to punk, to drum 'n' bass, to DJ X, with just deep house and stuff. I try and keep that as broad as possible, otherwise I would go crazy.
[Webster:] Yeah, I can imagine.
[Ihaka:] ...if I had to work on one thing all the time. Yeah.
---Transition---
[Ihaka:] The Dutch really only have like... if you want to say something, there's like that one way to say it.
[Webster:] Right.
[Ihaka:] And I think that was the most confusing, so.... I ... after a while, I kind of got surprised by how simple it is, actually. That was a surprise. But it was also, I had to learn quite quickly, because I got set up in Zwolle, not exactly in Amsterdam, and the level of English there just isn't that high. So, I kind of just got stuck... In my... in one of my first rehearsals - one of my first big gigs in the Netherlands was the final of the Clash of the Cover Bands, that's quite a big event that's over the whole Benelux - and I got flown in the day before to play with the band in the Klokgebouw in Eindhoven, it was 50.000 people, it was just massive. Fireworks and shit. Pyrotechnics and shit.
[laughing]
[Webster:] Sounds dope!
[Ihaka:] And I just kind of... had the rehearsal the day before. Everyone speaking Dutch, and I was like, sitting there like, whoa....
[laughing]
[Ihaka:] Like, I don't understand. And then someone said something, and everyone looked at me and I was like "Could you say that in English, please?"
[Webster:] It's embarrassing, isn't it?
[Ihaka:] Very embarrassing, yeah, yeah.
---Transition---
[Evy:] What is the strangest thing that happened to you on stage?
[Ihaka:] Wow. Wow. Good question. Damn. What... there's been some strange... people do strange stuff.
[Evy:] I know, right?
[Ihaka:] People are weird.
[Evy:] Tell us all!
[Ihaka:] Yeah, I was playing at Amsterdam Dance Event , yeah, this typical rock 'n' roll.. I was playing at Amsterdam Dance Event with Knars, two years ago, we were playing in the Pacific Park - Pacific Park, also a great place to see, like, random stuff, but I think that they're changing the focus there, but... - anyway, I was at Pacific Park, playing the Amsterdam Dance Event, great, it was packed, 18 euro chips on the Coke...
[laughing]
[Ihaka:] ...great, love it. And I had these two, like, girls, in front of me... and for some reason I just wanted them to start making out... so I was, like - it's like a punk band, as well, so I was like, [in a punky voice] "Yeaaah, go make out with each other!" And they fucking did it! And they kept doing it for the whole song. That was strange.
[laughing]
[Ihaka:] That was really strange, because what would you do if I told you to... You know what I mean?
[Webster:] Put your hair of fire! Yeah...
[Ihaka:] Yeah, put your hair of fire! Yeah, whaaat?
[Webster:] Such a trip.
[Ihaka:] Or, last… a couple of weeks ago, we were playing in Willem II, in Den Bosch, at a festival, and yeah, it's a great location, but the stage is low enough that you can, like, stand on the stage. So, at one point, we got... like, there were just people standing in front of the band on the stage, trying to crowd surf, but it was the same people that were trying to crowd surf all the time, and the rest of the audience was just kind of like, kind of getting tired of these people that were crowd surfing...
[laughing]
[Ihaka:] And at one point, I just kind of got pissed off, I was like "Get the fuck off my stage!" and, like, kicked them in the back.
[laughing]
[Ihaka:] Kicked them in the back, and he like jumped off, but no one caught him, and I just saw him like... [claps] Boom! Like...
[Evy:] Ohhh...
[Webster:] Oh, shit.
[Ihaka:] On his butt, like... I saw him walking off like "Oh, my back!"
[Evy, Webster:] Oh no!
[laughing]
[Webster:] Were the audience happy about this?
[Ihaka:] Yeah.
[Webster:] Ok, good!
[Ihaka:] Yeah, a lot of people afterwards were like "Yeah, I was getting so annoyed with the people that were on the stage, so, like, good job for kicking him in the back". I was like, "Ok..."
[laughing]
[Webster:] Looking out for the crowd, that's cool man.
[Ihaka:] Yeah.
[Webster:] I mean, those are crazy stories.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season one, episode ten
[Orator:] What’s good, what’s good it’s The Orator. You’re now listening to the Word up Podcast. How ya mean?!
---Transition---
[Evy:] Beautiful. Would you mind introducing yourself to the listeners who don't initially know you?
[Orator:] Wazzuuuuup. Hello man, what's going on, I'm The Orator, I'm a people's person sometimes, sometimes not. Poet all the time. Traveler, as much as time will allow. And yeah, just... I exist man, I just kind of... just exist and tell stories. Wazzuuuup.
[Webster:] You've been traveling recently, right?
[Orator:] Yes..
[Webster:] Tell us where you've been, what you've seen, what you've learned?
[Orator:] Since November last year, I've been to Jamaica, America, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Vietnam, Greece and The Netherlands.. So yeah, we're here.
[Webster:] Daaamn....
[Orator:] Yeah, it's been a good travel, it's been a good travel so far.
---Transition---
[Webster:] That's amazing. How were you influenced by grime at the time? Was that a big part of your childhood, growing up? Or ...
[Orator:] Yeah man, I'm a grime baby. Trust me, like, that was just the sound of the time, you feel me? On the back of UK Garage, like, garage still about when I was coming up. But grime, grime was like, by the time I got into like, secondary school, and halfway through, grime was the thing. Like, grime was life, you feel me? Them oldschool pirate radio sets people used to send sets and send tunes, infrared, Bluetooth, like... Back when like, you'd wait for like a radio set to come out or you'd wait for people to come on radio because you knew that was a place to catch them. Back when people were clashing each other and you'd say a man's name on radio, and he would just come to the radio station. Like, d'you feel me, like, none of these twelve fingers like, you've got something to say? we're clashing now. And then now you're on air, going on like you were burning the guys in front of you, or you're gonna clash and back it, or not. And if you do, it makes for some legendary moments, you feel me? So yeah, Ghetts versus Bashy, I was playing that earlier today, man, legendary moment. Where's Carlos, where's Carlos? Oh my nan knows exactly what that means "Where's Carlos?" So yeah... Grime, life, grime is life, trust me.
---Transition---
[Evy:] And I also wanted to ask you, because all your albums and book names are quite complex words for a non native speaker. How do you come up with that?
[Orator:] My project titles are just really cool words. I think the most appropriate or most apt, but they're not common words. I know even within the UK, they're not words you're gonna come across all the time.
[Evy:] But do you sit, like, and look for words somewhere. Do you have like a small book where you're like writing all the complicated words?
[Orator:] No, sort of.
[Webster:] Like, no sort of.
[Orator:] No, funny enough I do have a folder of words on my phone. I think there's just under 200 words on there. Every so often I come across a new word, and I'll add it.
[Webster:] That's wicked.
[Orator:] So, but yeah no, I love words. So the first project, Vernacular, it kinda means regional dialects. Like, it's similar to slang, but it's just like, in different places you use slightly different sets of words, right? Doesn't matter what country you're in, right? So, you'd refer to that as local vernacular. So, that one's called vernacular because I just talk how the hell I wanna talk. And I can use words like hiphoprthiwoudnbia yada yada yada. But, what's the point? I just wanna talk how I feel comfortable talking. Florilegium, because if you see the album cover, and the eventual book cover, there's a crest, and there's some flowers on it. and there's a pen, and a banana clip, two banana clips. And a crown. And Florilegium is gathering of flowers, the flowers on there are the regional flower for Leicester, national flower for montserrat the flower which happens to grow in Jamaica and the Gambia. So, all places that mean something to me. So yeah, that's what they mean. So they're complex, but like... Oh no, it makes sense.
---Transition---
[Orator:] But there's other poets, not even... They're... I won't call them poets, they can be spoken word artists. There's other spoken word artists out there, with quite a following and a name on the internet thing. But not really got that much respect for his payers, right? Got booked for a gig, in my city, come down to lend some story about how this poem allowed him to have breakfast with Will Smith, yada yada yada. And Leicester is great, because Leicester just doesn't give a f*ck about nothing. Alright? So he did his thing, and he performed, and it was an okay performance, he had his friend playing keys... It was nothing special, right? It was just light literary, yeah.. I made sure that I went on just before him. I tore the house down, I did my thing, I made sure I came out shooting, firing from the hip. Cool, I know he got paid almost ₤1000 to be there. And I, I think I got offered like ₤50. And I was just like: We're gonna have to wheel and come again. But like, but it showed me though: my set was three times as good as his. Alright? And he's getting paid a grand, all in. So therefore I must be able to ask for the same money. But because it's not normal, you don't do it. Do you feel me? We just get accustomed to, just you know, just covering expenses and blahblahbah. Which is cool, because 80% of the time, that's how it's gonna go, 'cuz you're working with your people. You're working with other people who wanna build, you're working with... But when you are working with organizations that have budgets, and you are working with multinationals, and you are working with huge organizations. Don't let them doing you on no money, if they ain't got no money, they ain't got no money, goodbye.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season one, episode three.
[Evy:] Today we are with David Chislett.
[David:] Yes, that's me!
[laughing]
[Webster:] Welcome!
[David:] Thank you very much!
[Webster:] Was that the best way to pronounce your...
[David:] Chislett, yeah. You don't have to overemphasize the "lett", but you can.
[Evy:] I try.
[laughing]
[Evy:] To make it more special!
[Webster:] Well, tell us about your spoken word. I actually haven't had the pleasure of seeing you on stage just yet. But would you say that there's a theme to what you talk about on stage, or where do you get your inspiration and what are you trying to share with the audience?
[David:] I always kind of hesitate to classify what I do with my poetry live as being "spoken word". I tend to feel that that term is most often used when describing a much more rhythmic rhyming style of poetry, kind of à la hip-hop going slam kind of thing. I don't do that. I'm an overeducated and middle-class navel-gazer, so therefore I tend to write kind of unstructured broken verse, stuff that doesn't necessarily rhyme. But I come from a performance background. I did a lot of acting in school, I've done a lot of singing vocal training and so, even though it's not technically, I guess, "spoken word", I put a lot into actually making that stuff come alive when I do it live. It's really my focus.
[Webster:] Oh, ok.
---Transition---
[Evy:] I'm just wondering, with you being born in UK and growing up in South Africa and now being here, does that change your perspective also? Does that help, or does that inspire, challenge your whole world view and the way you run business, and the way you write poetry?
[David:] I think changing your physical perspective cannot do anything else but change how you think and see things. I think that is inescapable. The role that's played in my life... Um, yeah, I've always pretty much felt like an outsider wherever I've been. I've never truly belonged, so that perspective has been quite different to many of my contemporaries and quite possibly is what led me to the desire to write about it anyway. It was kind of like a private processing system. And, you know, I haven't always had the easiest life, I mean not the worst or what have you, but... you know, shit happens, and I've always found that my writing has been a very efficient way to process those experiences and those things. Like there's a lot of poetry I write that I'll never show anyone, and I'll never publish, because that's actually not why I wrote it. I wrote it because I needed to figure something out. I tend to share the stuff where I've got something to say about something, rather than the stuff that I pretty much used as a tool for my own... I don't know...
[Webster:] Therapy.
[laughing]
[David:] Yeah.
[Evy:] Journaling and...
[David:] Yeah, yeah.
[Evy:] Ok.
---Transition---
[David:] What do you learn every time you do something right?
[Webster:] That it works? It's good, I like it?
[David:] Which you know already, right?
[Webster:] Yeah...
[David:] What do you learn when you make a mistake?
[Webster:] Don't do that again.
[David:] You learn something, like, that didn't work, I need to try something else.
[Webster:] Yeah.
[David:] So, it's actually a hugely valuable experience.
[Evy:] That's how wine was made.
[laughing]
[David:] And many other delicious wonderful things. What I want to know is who's the first guy who licked the back of a toad? Yeah. And how did that happen.
[laughing]
[David:] I mean that's clearly a mistake, right?
[laughing]
[Webster:] People be crazy out here.
---Transition---
[Webster:] Zam! Do you have any pockets of advice for people who are feeling in a rut, uncreative, as if they don't know where to go next?
[David:] I think, apart from what we've said earlier, if you are an art producing creative person, the important thing is just to not stop doing. Because, yeah, maybe what you're writing right now is drivel. Maybe you are stuck in a rut, maybe it's not great. But it's better to have that bad stuff outside of your head than still waiting to be produced inside your head. Work your way through it. All good art is supported by razor-sharp technique. And you don't get any better, if you only think about doing all your life. So, even when you're going through a rut, when your content maybe isn't so good, you are still sharpening your skillset for producing work by continuing to do. Whether it's painting, writing, singing, acting, whatever it happens to be, keep on doing. Nobody said ever that everything you did had to be a masterpiece. It's... we just don't know how much junk Michelangelo made.
[laughing]
[David:] Doesn't need to say that he didn't. And that's you too, you're no different. I mean, to think that you're never going to produce junk makes you, basically, think that you're better than Leonardo da Vinci and T.S. Eliot.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season two, episode five.
M: This is Mérida Miller from Project Fearless and you are listening to Word Up Podcast.
---Transition---
E: Can you tell us a little bit how it all started for you?
M: Sure. It started in a whirlwind of despair, to be honest. I spent 7,5 years as a corporate designer, which is amazing and I had a really cool, sexy title, but I realised eventually that that wasn't my end goal. So after a year of just... to be honest, despair and panic of "What do I do with my life? How do I help people? How do I make me... Come out and give the world what I'm best at?" I realised three things were really important, and that was 1: I loved creating communities where I could empower and cheer people on. I was never MVP on a team, but I was always the coach's award for being the biggest cheerleader. And I have to be in a place where I'm physically active, making things, doing with my hands. And then also: creating an impact. And so I thought about what was missing, and what I was really lucky to have as a young girl, growing up. And I wanted to bring that to future generations.
---Transition---
W: I wish I could... I wish I had stuff like that when I was growing up. For me it was... Being a boy, it was like: Al right, you're gonna do sports. You're gonna do hockey, rugby, football".. And my sisters got to do like dancing and theatre and stuff... Which I got to in my later life. But I always wished as a young kid, that I could try all those things. Because I think kids are curious, and I think a lot of the things they learn is because they look around, and they're like: "Oh, there's no other boys, or no other girls doing that, so I probably don't wanna do that because I don't wanna be an outcast"
M: I don't wanna be an outcast or who do I approach or what would that lead me to? you know, cause it's... For instance.... we wanna do a bike mechanic course. Like a bike engineering mechanic course. And I've been like canvassing the city for bike mechanics who are women. And it's not because we're anti-men, or we don't think men don't have a voice, it's more of the fact that part of our program is the "see her, be her" So, yeah, we could have a course taught by a guy, but at the end of the day, we really wanna show girls that there's jobs for her and it's such a simple connection, but it's really important. But also, back to your point about the idea of just having options to try things, without the pressure of being the best. So, one of the girls in our mind & movement lab, her thing that she was thankful for, was that she got to do, like try all this stuff, without feeling the pressure of having to be perfect or the best. Because a lot of stuff.. whether it's team sports, which offer so many great learning skills, I'm a huge supporter of team sports, I think it's really important. But at the end of the day, sometimes you just want to dance goofy, and not have anybody tell you that your toes need to be turned out that way, or you're not skinny enough to be on stage, you know? So it's just giving them a place where they like... You can be yourself and you can be your best, your worst or just your medium self, and we will support every moment of that.
---Transition---
E: Yeah, I think it's really important, because I think we are so stressed to just like lose opportunity, just in case it comes and you're not at home and it's knocking. And nobody is opening the door... And it's like, Dutch postal service, nobody leaves a message.
M: The worst. Oh my gosh, we could have a whole podcast on that alone.
W: Wait, what's this?
M: Have you ever had a package delivered, or attempted to delivered to your house?
W: Yeah
M: And it's okay?
W: I've never had a dud. As in I've never had something not delivered to my house.
M: What? Oh wow.
E: You're very lucky.
W: I don't order stuff that much though.
M: WHAT? you've got like a concierge at your apartment?
W: Yeah, James receives all my packages and...
[laughter]
M: I've considered it.
E: A butler
M: Yes seriously.
W: I guess I don't order stuff that much, maybe I've been lucky.
M: Oh wow.
W: But tell me more.
M: It's notoriously the worst, like... Notoriously that you just won't get stuff, and they're like, but we left a note, nah you didn't.
E: Or they leave it at like at someone you don't know like five houses down the street.
W: Yeah I've had that, for my... well, my landlord's had that. Where her stuff just goes to someone else's house, and then she gets a random guy knocking on the door, going like "I've got a package"
M: well at least they deliver it. I've had people at the door saying "It's here" Yeah but I've never got a note to say that it was there, or... I've had so many.... issues.
E: Yeah, I know.
M: Wow
E: This is like therapy for...
M: Yes seriously, like I said, it could be an entire podcast. I forgot where we were. Oh yeah, the opportunity thing. Yeah totally. And I don't know if that's a harder thing for women too, with the whole scarcity at the top situation of like.... Breaking the glass ceiling, and having to push forward always and pretend or prove that you've got this beautiful work-life balance, that you can be all the things. And at the end of the day, that's not possible. And it's okay, which is even harder to accept.
E: Amen.
W: I know the feeling. As like being a freelancer, I think when you start out, one of the things you do is just say yes to absolutely any project, any time, anyone.
E: "I'll sell my soul"
M: Yes, 100%.
W: Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes
M: awareness, great, love it.
W: But then, as you grow, and you start to see the value that you provide, you can start to kinda suss out like which opportunities or which clients or whatever, are worth spending your time with. And I think it's like that with you know, entrepreneurship, or anything that, you know, requires your personal time.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season one, episode two.
[Evy:] And today we're talking to Sydney Lowell.
[Sydney:] Hello, hello, hello.
[laughing]
[Webster:] Hi, Sydney.
[Sydney:] Hi!
[Webster:] How do we pronounce your name, is it L-ah-well? L-oh-well?
[Sydney:] L-oh-well.
[Evy:] L-oh-well, sorry.
[Sydney:] Yeah, yeah.
[Webster:] L-oh-well, cool. I thought that might have been... yeah.
[Evy:] Sorry.
[Sydney:] No, it's fine, it's fine, I got the message, I got the message, yeah.
[laughing]
---Transition---
[Evy:] But you are a spoken word poet, also.
[Sydney:] Yes, I am.
[Evy:] How do you introduce yourself?
[Sydney:] As a spoken word artist? Uuu... that's... that's... let me start broad.
[Evy:] Yes.
[Sydney:] Because, yes, I would identify myself as a spoken word artist, but, since I've always been a very creative person, that's just how I think of myself. I'm a creative spirit and spoken word is something that occupies most of my creative time right now. Um, and, for me, spoken word is... it's an outlet. It's expression for me, it's a way to share with people and to kind of create a platform for myself to talk on topics that I find really relevant. Activism-related topics, things like self-love, confidence, building each other up, that's... Yeah, I find that really important and, right now, that really expresses through my spoken word, but I know that once I graduate... you know, you have more time to do other stuff...
[Evy:] Of course.
[Sydney:] And that's, you know... It's kind of like playing Monopoly, just expanding on stuff, right?
[Evy:] Nice.
---Transition---
[Webster:] Would you say you're someone who has a lot to say? When we were speaking earlier you said like you were really confident, and you didn't really want to get off stage... Which is the opposite of what most people experience when they speak for the first time.
[Sydney:] I definitely have a lot to say. [laughing] People who know me... I can talk for hours. I can talk your head off. You know? I have a lot to say and I think anyone has a lot to say, it's just... Do you want to, do you find it necessary? Are the things that you talk about relevant? Do you want them to be? And I think that... I think... Yeah. It's one of my favourites... well, actually it's my favourite rapper, Milo, he says in one of his songs, "I owe it to myself to speak free". And this is something that I apply to my art as well, it's just... yeah, there is a lot to say. There is so much to say. And to be able to use your voice for self-expression, but also to motivate others, or to have them think, that's... yeah, I find really, really, yes, amazing. Yeah.
---Transition---
[Evy:] You sound very positive. But I wondered, is there something, like some art, that comes from your frustration, does something annoy you about the world, or... something that's around you?
[Sydney:] Definitely. Yeah. The world is so complex, you know? And I always say, like, there's an external world, but there's a whole internal world, as well, like a whole universe. And being an empath, I journey through that world every day, so... When I experience emotion, I experience it very deeply. So, it's... if I'm happy, I'm really happy, and if I'm sad, I'm really sad, you know? I will bawl my eyes out and it will be like... you know, tsunami in my bedroom. But it's all good. Like that's part of my journey and I learn really quickly, because I face everything right away. I don't hide from my emotions, so... The things that I write about can also stem from frustration or sadness or... maybe a feeling of... we don't actually have a word in English or Dutch for this, but it's a Portuguese word they also use in Cape Verde and other countries − it's "saudade", and it's a combination of longing, internal longing or missing, grief, you know, knowing that you won't probably get anything back, but it's this... yeah, this really ... uncomfortable feeling: "saudade". That's also a large part of where my sad writing comes from.
[Evy:] So it's more archetypal, like that sense of... something that you can't define?
[Sydney:] Yeah, but usually it's... Yes, I do write about dark moments, but usually it's to empower myself.
[Evy:] And it's kind of a therapy, isn't it?
[Sydney:] Yeah, it is. Really, because, I will have my jazz on, you know, or a beat tape and I know there is something on my heart that I need to get out and it's like your spirit is writing, you know, and...
[Evy:] Yeah.
[Sydney:] For me that's a moment where I'm releasing and, for me, documenting that is really powerful, because every time, after that, [when] I'm performing it, I get to live my resilience because I did that.
[Evy:] Yeah
[Sydney:] You know? So, yeah. That's, maybe... that's still kind of making it into a positive thing, but...
[Evy:] Yeah, it's transformative, isn't it?
[Sydney:] Yeah, it's very transformative.
[Evy:] Yeah.
[Sydney:] Definitely.
---Transition---
Joy
[Sydney:]
On a bar stool seated,
white wine quietly enjoying from afar,
comfortable in ease.
You can see full well from the bar, I know,
but there's even more to feel than see,
so dear man, be free!
Dear man, be free!
I'm not trying to have you in discomfort.
I'm not trying to have you be that which you're not.
But, kind soul, you're much, so be the whole lot!
The joy is free, the joy wants and persists, and it has come for you,
so loud and overwhelming, light, big, bright and strong, blinding, I know.
But joy is here for you.
Joy hums to you warm melodies of your favourite jazz and soul.
See how joy, back and forth and back and forth,
teasingly will parade.
Joy will ask you to come with,
join the chance of Buena Vista Social Club and Donny Hathaway.
Joy might be messy and uncontrollable.
At times it might feel like your body is too small a vessel to contain it.
But you know how to release, have it burst out, embrace the infinity of life,
transcend dimensions and spread so far and ride,
break the rules of spatiality.
And you'll smile!
You'll smile.
Because that's your spirit, giving thanks to your vessel for allowing it joy's encounter.
Dear man, your jaws and cheeks might even begin to ache,
but best believe you'll be surprised by how much more smile they can take.
So, you'll keep on smiling anyway.
So, when you see my hand,
know that I'm not trying to have you study the map on my palm,
or for me to point my index finger at all your flaws and judge, no, not at all!
Know that I'm not even trying to get a sip of that transparent poison called alcohol.
When my hand reaches for yours, know that I come in the name of joy,
and, barstool seated, you might bruise your ego by trying to choose it.
But you'll soon feel the joy and realize its familiarity.
Doubts and fears will string to be futile and you'll feel that you, dear man,
deserve to be free!
[Webster:] Wow.
---Transition---
[Evy:] That's beautiful.
[Sydney:] Yeah.
[Evy:] And I'm just wondering, do you have any advice for the artists who are in the place where you were before, doubting when is the right time or should you or should you not?
[Sydney:] Yeah, I think, listen to yourself, develop a good sense of self and know how to listen to your gut feeling − and we say gut feeling but gut is a physical way of putting it. I mean listen to your spirit, is basically what it comes down to. Because I don't think I ever doubted myself − it was the opposite, I knew when the time arrived. I knew. And so, I was ready. And I have people coming up to me quite often just before they are going to perform or whatever, and telling me they're so nervous, they don't know how to deal with it, like... But, the tone of their voice always surprises me. Because they will come up to me and say "I'm so nervous, like, oh shit, I don't..." And I'm like, "Ok, so wait, repeat that. You're nervous. So what?"
[laughing]
[Sydney:] It's... How do you interpret your own emotions? And this is, I think, a key part of listening to yourself, listening to your spirit or your gut. When you are ready, when your spirit is ready, whether your soul is ready − your mind might still be holding you back. Because that's your comfort zone talking. You know? Your mind might still be telling you that it's not a good idea or might be, you know... it's rationale trying to talk some sense into you, but art is not sensible, expression is not sensible. It just is what it is! So, when you develop a good sense of self and your gut feeling, you will soon be able to distinguish fear from incompetence. And it will be like, "Ok, no, I am ready, it's just I need to drag my mind along". And embrace that, you know? Even if I wasn't nervous, a lot of people are, that's, like, literally no big deal. Nerves are a sign that your body is aware that you're going to be doing something that you're passionate about. It's a thrill, and it's good energy, so use that to your advantage and don't be afraid that that's going to hinder your performance, right? Because no one will mind if you, like, just forget one word or whatever. So, I think that's... Yeah... and... Another thing, and it's a general message, but it also applies to art, yeah? As long as you act from a place of love and righteousness, anything you do will be valid, you know? Don't doubt that. And you'll see what comes from it, you know?
[Evy:] So, I hope a lot of new artists are coming after hearing this.
[laughing]
[Sydney:] Definitely! I'll be looking, I'll be looking for you! And credit me, you know? Like, "I heard that from Sydney Lowell on the podcast from Word Up, yeah, that's her!" Yeah! No, but, definitely, I always help my friends and people just manifest. That's it. Manifest.
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season one, episode one.
[Evy:] And today we have a guest... called Joshua... Baumgarten!
[Joshua:] Oh, wow. Evy! Wow, that's...
[Webster:] Quite an intro.
[Joshua:] That's quite an intro, thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Webster, good morning!
[Joshua:] Yeah, good morning.
[Joshua:] And you on the tech side of things. She's made as a ghost, we're not supposed to pay attention, so...
[laughing]
[Evy:] So, welcome to the podcast...
[Joshua:] Thank you, welcome to the Irrational Library Shop in Haarlem town. Thanks for coming out.
[Evy:] It's a great space, we're excited to be here and to find out everything, all the deep secrets you have for us.
[Joshua:] Deep secrets...
[Evy:] Dark secrets.
[Joshua:] I try to keep my deep secrets in the shallow end of the pool, so...
[laughing]
[Webster:] We're open, we're open.
[Joshua:] Let's share. Trust me, this is not a safe place.
[Evy:] Uuu, I'm intrigued.
[Joshua:] Like I said, this is not a passive-aggressive place, it's an aggressively-passive place.
[Webster:] For our audience listening, would you mind describing your shop? Cause it's really cool in here.
[Joshua:] Sure, we're now sitting in the back of the Irrational Library Shop on the Doelstraat 31 zwart, 31 black in the Haarlem town, in the Vijfhoek. And it's a sort of a second-hand record-book-comic-everything that is cool in life shop, with two barbers, Rob and Clemens, The MadDaddy's. We exist now seven years. And it's... I had once this sort of mantra slogan about the shop, if I remember correctly, it's sort of like, "Try to fill up the shop with the influences and references of yesterday, so the creators of tomorrow know best who to rip off."
---Transition---
[Evy:] I just wanted to go back to ask about your poetry. When do you think that you started writing - since we already heard your influences a little bit...?
[Joshua:] I was thinking about that this morning - and other people ask that to me... I have the vague memory of, like, when I was 13 or 14 and my parents had a party at the house for some holiday occasion, so there were a lot of relatives over and something happened that annoyed me, so it pissed me off. So, I remember going in my room and writing an angry piece. And I've never stopped. But then when I was 16 or 17 I was in this punk band in high-school and I was the singer front man and I wrote the texts, so... then I wrote the classic... "sexual operation, my mommy had a pussy, my daddy had a dick, I gave her a blowjob cause she is such a prick", something like that. It was about transgender. It was before its time, I think, transgender...
[Evy:] Yes, setting the trends.
---Transition---
[Joshua:] This one's called:
Leave it all as it should be, not as you think they might like it to be.
Leave the dictators to their piles of dirty dishes
the facists to their fascination with fractions
and the conservatives to their unhealthy concern for Kabbalah.
Leave the liberals to their lizard skin collections
the professional athletes to their contemplation of their own lifespans
and the orphans around the world to their opinions about prophylactics.
Leave the garbagemen to their cherry picking
the politicians to their arguements with their own spouses
and the Hollywood elite to their ever increasing lactose intolerance.
Leave the poets to their literary rubiks cube pastimes
the songwriters to picking peanut shells from between their teeth
and the exotic dancers to paying back past taxes.
Leave the junkies to their double dutch jump rope through a protein helix
the professional bowlers to their Saturday night Budweiser blue balls
and the weekend warrior badminton players to their uncircumcised shuttlecocks.
Leave the high school teachers to their stock investments in Kevlar
the lunch ladies to their frozen pizza perservative Fridays
and the school bus drivers to resisting every impulse to drive off a cliff.
Leave the Mexican day laborers to their salted margarita day dreams
the Orthodox Rabbis to their all you can eat kosher buffet at the Crab Cake Factory
and the Mormons to their insecurity when it comes to eating Swedish meatballs.
Leave the neo-nazis to their needle point swastika quilt crocheting
the Muslim Brotherhood to their bowtie community controlled chaos
and the Hari Krishna’s to their hopscotch game through a hostile universe.
Leave the punk rockers to their safety pin conformity safety net
the hip hop heads to their 8 point Scrabble word score for the N-word
and the country music fans to the chewing gum stuck under the seats at the Grand Ole Opry.
Leave the barbers to deal with the insecure vanity of all the manboys with beards
the tattoo artists to all the misinterpretations of life that a person can persuade into their own skin
and the piercers to all the loopholes in life that may help another get over their hang-ups.
Leave the storytellers to their fabled lives of imaginary nobility
the acoustic guitar slinging troubadors to all their songs strung out on cat gut
and the burlesque dancers to all their bellybuttons filled with boa feathers dust.
Leave the newscasters to their muppet like open and shut mouths
the journalists to their ever increasing fear of being murdered,
their graves labeled fake news
and the talk show hosts, to the horrors of polite silence after midnight.
Leave the shopkeepers to ponder what do with all their extra stock
the cafe owners to all the empty tables waiting to occupied by cockroaches
and the fast food franchises to their pockets full of cash smeared in human fat.
Leave the Gods to their congregations buttoned up with fear
the choirs with their vocal chords strung like nooses around their necks
and the atheisists to believing that they have the answers.
Leave the universe alone to manifest its own mayhem
Leave the distant planets as unhabited as they currently are
and please just leave the future of humanity
a whisper of peace and grant them success
with sorting out all of the mess
that all of us have up until now
done our best to scramble into
tiny little pieces
of asbest.
---Transition---
[Evy:] What's the weirdest thing... or what's the most interesting thing that happened on stage over the years?
[Joshua:] Oh? I wish there was a good story about that. I don't really... I don't know. Oh, well, it had nothing to do with poetry, but it does have something to do with poetry. It has to do with the time that Patti Smith called me an asshole.
[Webster:] That's always good.
[Joshua:] I'll try to make a long story short. I was working as a host at Down the Rabbit Hole Festival, the second year, and I was hosting the second stage there, and I asked to host this stage because Patti Smith was performing. And I'd never been a huge Patti Smith fan, but [I have] respect for her work, the people she's worked with, the fact that she's still doing it and she still does what she does. Power, you know. No doubt. So, I asked to host this stage and I knew the people running the festival, I'd worked there before, I'd worked for Lowlands hosting stuff, so they were like, "Yeah, sure, great, cool". So, the first day of the festival, we have a meeting and they explain to us, of course, you know, as a host, yeah, you make contact with the artist, the manager, so you let them know who you are and what you do, if that's what they want, if they want it or not, you know? And I'm like, I've been hosting stuff for a long time, so I know how it goes. It's cool, no problem. So, the whole day I'm waiting to see Patti Smith. I met with other bands and some performers really loved what I did, and others were, "No, we don't really want that" - "Ok, fine". You know? And I'd built up this whole intro about Patti Smith as the godmother of punk rock, of being influenced by the French romantics, and this whole sort of thing, you know, to really tell the people in the audience - who might not really know who they're dealing with - this is what you're going to get. So, finally, it gets towards show time and the whole hustle and bustle and I see my stage manager and I say, "Bart, have you met anybody from her crew yet?" And he's like, "Yeah, that guy over there, that's her manager". And I see this guy, this little dude, big black cowboy hat on, you know, shirt and black vest, open with the hair coming out and stuff like that, he looks like an elfin cowboy or something... [laughing] And he's like... what was his name again, shit... I forget his exact name. But he says, "Yeah, that's Eddie" - "Ok, cool". So, I'm sort of like, a bit nervous, you know, but I'm thinking ok, so... I see the guy barking orders at people, and he's walking towards me and I sort of like go, "Hey!", I sort of just jump in front of him, and go, "Hi, excuse me, you're Eddie, right?". He goes, "No, man, it's not Eddie, it's Edward!" - I forget exactly what his name was, but it was like I called him... and he was like, "No, it's Edward!"... I go, "Ok, hey, Edward, my name's Joshua, I'm the host of this stage, I'm going to be introducing Patti Smith in a little bit..." - "No, there is no introduction, it's just a walk-on", and he just walks right past me. And I'm like... Oh, fuck. All right, fine, that's ok. Sucks, but that's the way it goes. And you don't have to be a dick, but... But so it goes, so there's no introduction. So, I watched the show on the side of the stage, by the main tech panel, whatever you call it, you know, front house panel, or whatever. It was a brilliant show. I mean, she's 61, you know, playing all the classics, and she does these songs with all the shout-outs, the olds, like William Burroughs, and the crowd's like "Woooo!" and then she did Kurt Cobain, and everybody goes "Yeahhh!" and Jim Carroll, and everybody's like "Who?" [laughing] And she's like, it's Jim Carroll, man, that's the New York big... So, show's wrapping up, and she's pulling the guitar strings off - I think they did My Generation at the end - she's pulling the guitar strings off and show ends, crowd goes... [imitates crowd cheering]... and they're walking off on the other side of the stage, so I come from the other side of the stage and I grab the mike and I'm like, "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... Down the Rabbit Hole, let me hear it for the one and only godmother of punk rock, Patti Smith", [imitates crowd cheering]... and you know, I say a few other things about her and then I round it off with you know, "in the immortal words of French romantic poet Charles Baudelaire, who said that you have to go out and get drunk, get drunk off of life, drunk on the wine, drunk off the good times, go out there tonight ladies and gentlemen and get drunk on life and Down the Rabbit Hole, go out there and fuck like rabbits". Something like that, so I'm like punk rock crazy, fuck, and I also said we should know where we were at this moment, because we witnessed a legend perform here tonight. It's all I was saying. Incredible... [imitates crowd cheering] ... So, I walk off the stage, I walk behind the stage and then from the behind the stage, I see down there, I see Eddie screaming at Bart, the stage manager. Now, Eddie's a dwarf. Well not a dwarf, he's just a short little midget...
[Webster:] Small man...
[Joshua:] Small man. And Bart is tall, big Dutch guy, and he's... finger waving up and stuff, and I'm like, wooo... that doesn't look very good, I'm just going to walk the long way around. So, I go the long way around to the back stage and I grab a beer and sit down, and Bart comes down and he goes, "Dude, they're pissed". And I'm like, "Who's pissed?" He's like "Patti Smith, man, she called you an asshole". And I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah". I'm like, "What happened?" He's like "She walked offstage, and she heard... She sat down in a chair and this guy Eddie was putting on her shoes... cause her shoes were off. And she hears what I say, and she says what... I go out there and bust my ass for an hour working and this asshole goes on stage and says that?"
[Webster:] You impressed her.
[Joshua:] And I'm like "What?" So, then there was this ripple effect of, like, she's pissed, so her manager's pissed, manager's pissed, manager calls bookie agency, bookie agency's pissed and calls direction of the festival. Direction of the festival's pissed so he calls the guy who booked me, who's running the festival, and he's pissed. So there's this ripple effect and I didn't even really know what was going on until the next day, when they came and found me and, like, this guy who had hired me to do the job, who I knew from Haarlem, from Patronaat, he says, he asked me what was going on I said, "Well, great first day, but I guess you heard". And he's "Yeah, we almost had to fire you last night". And I'm like "Why?". He's like, "Well they told you there was no intro and no outro, and you just went and did it". And I was like "Waaait a second, let's rewind this. Who told you that?" And he's like, "This guy, the manager, Eddie told you that there was no intro and no outro". I said, "Now we can stop, because this asshole told me that there was no intro and said nothing about an outro".
[Webster:] Oh, jeez.
[Joshua:] And if it's in the contract that you guys signed with her, you fucked me. I didn't fuck you, I do what I'm told to do. I know what I'm doing. You know? I take the job seriously... And they're like, "Well yeah, all the people are saying, you're too busy on the stage, you're too invasive", and I'm like, "Oh fuck off"... So that's why I don't work for Mojo anymore.
[Webster:] Oh, jeez.
[Joshua:] And I hope not to, because I think they're a bullshit company putting on bullshit festivals.
[Webster:] Put it out there.
[Joshua:] No, I do, I think they book the big bands and they look so glorious and stuff but it's so tight-assed.
[Webster:] I think you have to be nice to people, you know, when you're working creatively.
[Joshua:] I don't think they understand what I do, and I think that has a lot to do with how I am as a person and it's just more honest than maybe most, I don't know. But anyway, that was a weird story. It's a long story, but that was the weirdest, probably, thing that happened to me on stage. That one of your heroes can, all of a sudden, call you an asshole for, like, just trying to inflate...
[Webster:] To elevate them...
[Joshua:] Make them look good. And now every time her music comes on, I have to turn it off or … she played at Paradiso sometime, sometimes people are like, "So, are you going to go, are you going to call, are you going to do this, are you going to do that?" I'm like, no, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to... I do wish maybe one day I'm on a festival of some type, to do what I do, with the band or alone and she's there as well for some reason, I could sit her down, and be like Patti, there seems to be a misunderstanding between us, you once called me an asshole and she'll be like, "Who are you?"
[Evy:] The asshole.
[Joshua:] "You, oh, you! You're no asshole, you're a dick!"
---Transition---
[Voice:] Season two, episode two.
Evy: Today, I'm with our lovely guest, Joseph.
Joseph: Hello.
Evy: Hi, how are you today?
Joseph: I'm very well, how are you?
Evy: I'm very excited to have you here.
Joseph: Good. Yes, it's been a long time planning. We finally made it, yes.
Evy: Yeah. And we are here in your lovely office overlooking an amazing Amsterdam panorama.
Joseph: We do have a really beautiful view. What a pity we're on the radio. We're just next to Central Station, very central location indeed. Yeah.
Evy: And you are, I heard, social media wizard here.
Joseph: That's what they called me. Yes, the social media wizard, the social media storyteller. These are the things that I do. Yes.
Evy: And how did you get to be here?
Joseph: How did I come to this job, or to this country, or to this place?
Evy: Yeah, both. Everything.
Joseph: How did I get to be here?
Evy: Yeah.
Joseph: Well, once upon a time, a man called Joseph went to a beauty pageant called The Rose of Tralee Festival in County Kerry in Ireland. And there, he met a woman called Guinan. And he really liked her, and she really liked him. And they continued to see each other until the point that he asked her to marry him. And so, because they met at The Rose of Tralee Festival, the flowers for the wedding were roses. So, I am here because of a beauty pageant. Because of The Rose of Tralee Festival, Joseph and Guinan are my parents. And when I learned this wonderful story of union, I got a tattoo of a rose on my ankle.
And I know tattoo roses are the tackiest of all tattoos, and I love my rose tattoo so much. So, that's how they made me, I suppose. I'm one of three boys. But then I grew up in the Southwest of Ireland, and I loved talking, as many Irish people do. And my dad is an amazing storyteller. And my whole childhood was spent listening to him tell stories as he would be driving back from work and we might be with him in the lorry or in the car. He did many different jobs, and we listened to many different stories. And I suppose I learned the tradition of storytelling from my dad, just by listening.
---Transition---
yeah, let's just jump straight into the toxic nature of social media, you know, the elephant in the room, and the toxic nature of excessive online activity in any sense, even in dating.
So, Instagram exists, and people love us. And you go on there and you take your best holiday photo. And you might have spent three days in, let's say, Vienna. And instead of enjoying Vienna and eating the food, and drinking the coffee, and talking to the locals, you're just checking out, "Where's my best Instagram location?" And you get a beautiful door, and you think, "Oh, this is gonna be gorgeous behind me in my selfie of my face in Vienna." And you've got it, and you put that up in line, but then you need to get another one, and another one, and another one. And so, you're not really on holidays in Vienna, and you're just at a photo shoot that happens to be in Austria.
Evy: Essentially, yeah.
Joseph: And a lot of people fall victim to that. And I myself have fallen victim to that so many times. And it's the way it's constructed and the way that social media works is that sometimes we can become removed from reality. And even though something was created to help you make connections and to find intimacy, removes it from you, and it's a bit of a paradox. So, I feel like engaging with that toxicity, you need to be careful at how much time you spend online, and you need to be careful with how you see yourself.
You should see yourself for real, which is very hard to do, and not see yourself as that person in the doorway in Vienna that got 6,000 likes. And so then, you look at your photo, and you put a filter on there, and the filter makes your skin better, or takes away the spots that you have, or hides your freckles. Or you can then doctor it to, like, fine details, that your hair can be nicer in your version. And I suppose that can be fun for a while, but then it can grow, and it can get out of control.
And not to pick just on Instagram. I mean, it's on Snapchat. It's just how we work in the world right now with photographs online and filters. So, one thing is to limit your time online. Another thing is just to do stuff that is in reality with people, like go for a run, go for a jog, jog with a friend, go for a swim, go to the gym. I look every week at how many hours I spend on my phone because my phone tells me, and I'm always competing with myself to get it down, and get it down, and get it less, and get it less.
But at the same time, I want to use these devices for the gifts that they bring, and the access to knowledge, and the access to information. I feel as long as it's fun and you're playing with it, and it's playful, it's good. But when the moment comes that you need to check these things, and you have to do these things before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning, or when you're out for lunch with a friend and you're not thinking about lunch and the friend, you're thinking about taking a photo of the lunch with your friend, I think this is where we're crossing boundaries.
---Transition---
Evy :So speaking about addiction, are there any other dangerous things in life that challenge you?
Joseph: Oh, my God, I have so many stories to tell you about addiction. I suppose we should start with... We were just mentioning there a moment ago, my father and how wonderful he is. I love my dad. My dad's amazing, and he's just done so many great... I'm so blessed and lucky to have such a great father, and he gave me his name. So, I'm Joseph Junior and he's Joseph Senior. And throughout our lifetime, by choices I have made, we have been less close.
And by choices I have made recently, we have been more close, and that's a very important. But he never distanced himself from me. He never closed off his love to me. I just couldn't find a way to speak his language as an adult because my whole life I was hiding that I was gay until I was 16 or 17. And, of course, he always knew because he's my dad, and he used to call me Josephine as a child. Like, there was no shock when I told him I was gay.
But for me, I felt so dishonest that I was hiding who I really was from my dad and pretending to be straight. And then this guilt, and this fallout, and the shame afterwards, and thinking that he could never understand, and removing myself from my family and moving far away, and having less and less to do with him over the years, and then wondering, "How can I speak to my dad? How can I have this attachment to this connection?"
So, I remember when I lived in Dublin, I bought a car because my dad knows everything about cars. And I thought, "Oh, this will give us something to talk about, where we can have a, you know, a similar interest," and so that was lovely. And then I stopped drinking when I was 27 for a year and a half when I was 28. And that was another moment where we rekindled our friendship because my dad doesn't drink at all.
And then when I was 30, I started drinking again. And I lied to him about it, and I was deceiving. And this put a wedge between us, but he didn't put a wedge between us. I did. And then I tried to move to the Netherlands and didn't move to the Netherlands. And then I did move to the Netherlands, and he was all the time watching on the side-lines, and loving, and supporting, and I got here. And then, I suppose, when I lived in Ireland, I had a support network.
I had family, I had friends, I had a nice job, I had a career and identity. And when I moved here, I gave all of that up, and that was quite destructive and chaotic. And I don't know why I did that. I know I wanted to live here to be close to my brother, but I came here without a plan. And for several months, I had nothing. I mean, I had my brother, and I had life, and I had partying, but, I mean, I didn't have an identity, or a signature, or a friend network, or much of a family network beyond myself and my brother.
---Transition---
And my housemate works for a TV company, and this TV company was looking for people to go into a reality TV show.
And so, at the beginning of my sobriety, when I was just getting grounded, when I was just coming off the drink and just coming off the drugs and there was light at the end of the tunnel, and hope, I applied to be on a reality TV show program. And I wrote down on the application form, "I recently realized that I was very, very sick, and I worked very, very hard to get back from that. And I'm so proud of it, and that's why I want to be in the show."
So, they brought me in for an interview. They asked what all this was about, they filmed us. I had a mini-breakdown on camera. I told them my story. They loved it, they loved me. They took photographs of me. They offered me the job. And then I thought, "If any journalist digs around to my background and find out that I'm an alcoholic or a drug addict, it could end up in a tabloid. It might not, but it could. And if it does, maybe people here at Romeo will read about it.
And maybe people here at Romeo would think, 'I wish you told us before. I wish you'd given us a chance to react.'"
So, I thought, "Okay, what can I do to manage the situation before it even happens?" So, I thought, "I need to come into work, and I need to sit down with someone and I need to open up to them about my drug addiction and my alcoholism and just face it and see what happens."
So, I came into work, and I said to one of my dear colleagues, Cary, that I need to speak to him privately. And he took me into a room, and we sat on a sofa. And I looked him in the eyes and I said, "Cary, I'm gonna be in reality TV show. I've been offered this chance. It's filming for two weeks in Spain." He said, "Congratulations, that's amazing." I was like, "Thanks very much." And I said, "Boss, stories might come out about me that you might not know about me. And I think I should tell you now."
And he was like, "You could tell me whatever you want." And I said, "But Cary it's not work-related, it's not professional, it's quite personal. It's quite private." And he said, "That's fine, Joe. Go ahead." And so, I said, "Okay, I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I've been in recovery for about three months. I go to these groups, I go to these meetings." And he said, "Do you think you're the first alcoholic that I've ever worked with? Do you think you're the first drug addict that I've ever loved?" And I was like, "Cary, thank you so much." It was so beautiful. And so, I hugged him, and he said it didn't matter. And if anything came out, it would come out and just to do what was safe for me.
And then he said, "If you're gonna go and be in Spain, and there's a problem when you're filming this show, if you feel exposed or if you feel on shaky ground, just call me." And he said, "I'll be there for you." And this is in the moment when he is trying to make children happen in Mexico, when he and his family are trying to grow, and he's got his own life to take care of. And he offered me this love and this affection, which is a really integrated path of my recovery. And one of the main reasons that I love working in Romeo so much, that we are a family and that we accept each other, warts and all. So, that was a really wonderful thing that Cary did for me.
---Transition---
Evy: That's intense.
Joseph: Yeah. I spoke that also I'm a newbie. I mean, I'm only coming up to... It'll be two years on the first of January. Oh, that's another thing. Gosh. How much time do we have?
Evy: Oh, we have all the time.
Joseph: Let's talk about love. I work in a dating agency, and we hope to help people find a friendship, and we hope to help people find love, and we hope to help people find a life and identity. And I myself, I'm always seeking love, and looking for friendship, and looking for connection. And two years ago, in December, I met this man called...I'm sure I can use his name, I'm sure he won't mind. I met this man called Barnaby.
And just by his name, I was in love with him. And we dated and had an intense connection, and it was really phenomenal and mind-blowing. And he was quite impressed that I wasn't drinking alcohol. But at the time, I'd given up alcohol and thought I could still do recreational drugs. No, I'd given up drugs as well. I met him. I'd given up alcohol and drugs, and he was impressed by it. And I was impressive, and it was good.
And then Christmas came, and he went to Berlin for New Years, and I was here. And I decided to go to a house party with strangers and just take drugs, I didn't use alcohol, and use drugs till 4 in the morning. And then I was thinking, "I'm dancing in a stranger's living room at 4 in the morning on New Year's Eve, not with friends, not with family, not with Barnaby, why am I doing any of this?" And so, I left that house, and I got back to my house.
And I woke up on the morning of the first of January and decided, "That's it. I am fully, fully sober." Now, I'd experimented with being sober, and I'd been to groups, and this is post the talk with the nurse and this is post-Mainline. This is me waking up at the first of January thinking, "That's it, I am now sober and fully committing to sobriety." So, Barnaby, the love of my life, we'd met two weeks earlier, came back from Berlin. And I met him, and I said, "I can't go on a love adventure with you and work on myself in being sober. They can't happen at the same time.
And I need to work on myself and be sober, so this has to stop." And he was so respectful and so mindful, and he gave me the space that I needed, and he gave me the love that I needed. I fully, truly believe, in that really short time of two and a half weeks that we loved each other, and it was beautiful. I know it's so short and so silly, but I believe it. And a year later, in my sobriety, we met again, just for him to check on me to see how I was doing. And a year later, he checked on me again.
So, he's a good one. He's a good fellow. Very respectful of my boundaries and my need for space and just checking on me because that connection was intense. But it was very hard for me to choose between myself or this love relationship, and I had to choose myself. And in the long run, it was the right decision.
And then, this company posted me the contract to say, "We need you to sign this to be in a reality TV show." So, I took it to a place and I read it. And they said they were going to own my image in perpetuity, ad infinitum. And so, I looked at that, thought, "What does that even mean? In perpetuity, ad infinitum, my image? I'm going to give you my image?" And then they said, "If you do anything that reflects poorly on the image or the values of the company, you will suffer a €10,000 fine payable immediately. If you Tweet, give away the location when we're filming, there's a five grand fine payable immediately.
If you do anything to cause the cancellation of the show, there's a €1 million fine payable immediately." So, I looked at this and thought, "I don't wanna go to Spain and be in a show and then be bankrupt for the rest of my life because I sent some revealing tweet." I mean, I'm a drug addict and alcoholic in recovery. Like, my boundaries are shaky at the best of times. So, like, I can't. I can't sign up for this. So, I sent them an email to say, "Look, I don't know what the values of your company are. I work for a dating agency. I interview topless guys. I put sexy photos online. What are your core values? What is your company about? What might I do that could reflect poorly on you?"
And so, we emailed over and back about what the conversation, what the fit was. And I hand-shaped this beautiful email that I'm so proud of that listed every bad thing I had ever done and sent it to them saying, "Is this the kind of guy you want to sign up for your show?" And then the email stopped, and then they rang me, so there's nothing in writing for proof, and says, "We have no judgments of the things that you've done, and we celebrate you. And we think that you're wonderful, but we're just gonna check how our investors feel."
So, off they went to check with their investors. And sadly, their investors could not get behind the joker any brand, and that's fine. And in reflection, I think going to Spain for two weeks and giving up my security and my friend network at this intimate moment in recovery would have been a terrible idea. So, in the long run, it all worked out okay. I didn't get to be on TV. I didn't get to be on reality television show, but I got to carry on my sobriety.
And now, two years later, if I got offered a reality TV show tomorrow, I think I'm in a much stronger place to do it. Would I sign away my image to perpetuity? No. Would I send them the email of all my wrongdoings? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I also sent it to a friend in Ireland and her response was, "To be the intern that opens that email, what a shocking and memorable day it would be for them?"
Evy: But it's also kind of very black and white. And that sounds like the way I'm listening, it's kind of like, it's a reality TV that cannot handle reality.
Joseph: Reality, yeah. But I suppose I've done some things, you know, I have lived. I have lived.
---Transition---
[Webster:] Cool, thank you very much. And as usual, guys, you know where to find us, it's www.worduppodcast.com, where you'll be able to find our social media and make suggestions about future guests etc., etc. Thank you very much, goodbye!
[Evy:] Thank you!
[Ihaka:] Word Up!
[Evy:] Bye! Doei!
[Ihaka:] Shout out to Word Up!
Transcript compilation BLESZ