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James Music | The Christian Reeve Podcast #331 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:03
  Podcast. Today's guests is a blind multi
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  instrumental instrumentalist, A producer and a sound engineer
• 0:12
  with over 30 years experience. His name is James Music.
• 0:15
  Welcome to the show. How you doing?
• 0:17
  Hello. Yeah, I'm OK.
• 0:18
  Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on the
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  show. Yeah, No, it's a pleasure to
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  have you here. You were a viewer suggestion, so
• 0:25
  thank you. I I can't remember who suggested
• 0:28
  you. I do apologise, but massive
• 0:30
  thank you to whoever did. Always awesome when you get
• 0:34
  people listening to the show and there's content creators, people
• 0:38
  that they like that they want to see on the show.
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  So yeah, it's awesome. I'm, I'm just going to get like
• 0:46
  right into the questions, just sort of delve right into them.
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  I hope you don't mind and we'll see where we go.
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  There's a lot of content. There's a lot.
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  Of there's a lot of ground to. Cover of course in my life that
• 0:59
  so you've you've on the from a TikTok point of view that I
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  present as a music musician multi instrumentals but there's
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  lots more classics in my life that we could go into as well so
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  yeah go. Ahead, I guess, and I know you
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  probably would have been asked this a million times, so I do
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  apologise. Were you born blind or did it
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  gradually occur over time? No, so I was, I was born with
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  cataracts in my eye. So when I was born, I was, I, I
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  don't know the exact details because I was so young, but the,
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  the gist of it is I was born with congenital cataracts and
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  they probably formed from like possibly German measles or
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  something that my mum might have had while she was pregnant and
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  they weren't too sure. But yeah, by 10 weeks old, well,
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  initially they didn't even realize I was born.
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  I was born into the world as you are.
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  You don't normally see that far ahead of you.
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  You see between where you need to see, get your food and all of
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  that. And then your sight develops
• 2:00
  over a period of time. So as that happened, they
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  realized I wasn't tracking things I wasn't able to see.
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  And they took, rushed me in. And at 10 weeks old, they were
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  like, Oh my God, this, this, this baby's got cataracts.
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  We need to, we need to operate now because there's, there's
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  only a so, so long period of time where before the brain, if
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  the brain doesn't see any image through the optic nerve and
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  through the eye, which is about 12 weeks, the brain will shut
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  off and never have that pathway anymore.
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  So at 10 weeks old, they realized at 10 weeks old they
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  operated on one eye, 11 weeks old, they operated on the other
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  end. They, they just hoped for the
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  best. But because they were fully
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  formed cataracts, my whole contact lens was taken out and
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  removed 10 and 11 weeks old. So they, they pioneered
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  something called contact lenders in babies with me.
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  So I was the second baby to have this brand new treatment of
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  they, they just plunked some lenders in and hope for the
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  best. Let's see if we can get this,
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  this child some site and paid off.
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  It worked a bit. I have some sort of site that is
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  usable enough to adapt around the world and, and do what I
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  need to do. And yeah, it's been difficult
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  through my years through growing up.
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  I can't say that it hasn't been. But what they did was give me
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  like a chance in life to, to see if maybe we could get some, some
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  better vision. Otherwise it was going to be no,
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  no vision whatsoever for the rest of my life.
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  Like nothing whatsoever. But still there's so many things
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  on top of that, like there's so many complications of operations
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  and, and other things that I've LED I've I've done later on in
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  life with my eyes that have been caused more and more problems to
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  still leave me in a situation where I am effectively blind.
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  So yeah, that's kind of like that's, that's, that's the
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  reason, yeah. So I have been blind since
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  birth. I've been registered.
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  I initially was registered as visually impaired, but as I
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  developed and as I realized what I could and couldn't see, they
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  were like, no, you, you seriously are blind.
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  So yeah. Where would the line draw be
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  drawn in terms of being considered visually impaired
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  versus being registered blind? Yeah.
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  So it's a difficult one. It's a real difficult one.
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  So the the the criteria to be registered blind is obviously a
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  complete, complete black, no connection from the eye and the
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  optic nerve. You, you would be plastered
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  blind. But there's also a scale, which
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  is what I try and spend a lot of time educating my audience on
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  that there is a scale of blindness and it's like a
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  spectrum just like any other, like autism or neurodivergence.
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  Like there's a spectrum of blind people and, and there's, there's
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  only a small percentage of them that see black.
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  The rest are this big spectrum of, of them that have multiple
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  problems. And this is the key point.
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  The key point to be classed as blind is multiple problems that
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  impact each other. If you have three or more, I
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  believe so. I have, yeah.
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  So if you have three or more you can you are then clusters
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  technically blind. So I have multiple on top of
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  each other. I have no lens, which is called
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  a fake ear. From my having those operations.
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  I have trauma to the eye which has caused a condition called
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  nystagmus, which means uncontrolled movement of the
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  eye. I don't see it like, but my eyes
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  wobble all the time, more when I'm nervous.
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  To me, it's just like I can't focus on something.
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  My brain doesn't see the wobble because it's always been there.
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  And then, yeah, there's multiple other things.
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  So because I don't have a lens in my eye, when I was 21 years
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  old, I kind of wanted to get away from putting artificial
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  lenses on on my eyes every night and taking them out every day.
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  I did that until I was 21 and I was like, I really want them to
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  be implanted. I really want to have a chance
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  at life that I don't have to have these lens solutions and
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  putts and things that I have to take with me and all these
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  precautions I have to do just to live a normal life.
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  As a young person, I kind of wanted to experience life
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  without that. So I had my lenses implanted in
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  my eyes. And yeah, it does sound that
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  crazy, like they do cut open the eye, put a lens inside and
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  stitch it to where the muscles usually would be.
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  So had that done at 21 years old and yeah, it changed my life.
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  I have, I've, I feel like I've experienced life those I guess
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  as much of a normal person words without having to put contact
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  lenses in every day and wear glasses and things like that.
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  But the downside of that is they would normally only put them in
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  people that are older. Like your grandparents might get
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  cataracts, they have them removed and then they do
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  secondary lens implants. So they adjust the lens slightly
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  and they might get 1015 years out of it and you know, they're
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  at the age where they might not need the treatment anymore
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  because they're coming to their end of their life.
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  I have that procedure, same procedure done.
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  So didn't really think about it that there is only maybe 10 or
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  15 years before they could possibly fail.
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  So what's happened now is my contact lenses have, are still
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  in my eyes and they've fallen out of position and the stitches
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  have like fallen. And now I'm kind of like, I've
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  got a lens in my eye that's turned and I'm looking through
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  that through both eyes. So I have double vision in both
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  eyes now in until I get further operations to remove the lens
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  and go back to where an artificial lens is and glasses
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  and things like that. And so in a way, it gave me 1015
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  years of fun. But yeah.
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  And now I have to wait. And now I have to wait and, and,
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  and have, you know, another set of operations which which could
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  take possibly up to a year to recover from in fullness of
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  getting my sight back. And before I can, you know, be
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  back on track without these, this double vision.
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  And although it, it, it, although it will improve my
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  sight a little bit, I'd still be pretty much clustered blind
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  because of all the impact of all the operations, all the messing
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  around with the eye. And there's a very big risk now
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  of losing my sight in any further operations because the
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  structure of the eye is very fragile and delicate.
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  And every time they go in, they have to like move more.
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  They do, they do this, this procedure, I don't even know the
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  name of it, but I always think of it in my head as like it's a
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  glue Peck to me. They like, they, they let a
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  little Hoover and remove more and more of the eye every time
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  they have to operate. So there's obviously more and
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  more complications each time. So yeah, I'm stuck in a bit of a
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  rock and a hard place at the moment of putting up with the
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  double vision and the the impact of the lens that has failed in
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  my eye versus a possibility of losing all possible sight that I
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  have left. And so, yeah, at the moment I'm,
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  I'm, I'm staying with the double vision's fine at the moment.
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  I've dealt with with problems all my life like this, like it,
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  it, it, it. I can adapt around it, but it is
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  getting slightly to a point where it's so bad that I'm I'm
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  having to consider this operation scene.
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  When you say double vision and explain it to me like I'm fired
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  for a second, do you mean that in each optic do you see like 2
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  versions of the same thing or two versions of it?
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  Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah, so sometimes on my stream,
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  I I depict like the the image, like I try and show it in a
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  thing and it is literally like taking the image, putting it
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  over it and like moving it down and left a bit, but then making
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  that completely opaque. So it's like I see two versions
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  of things. So if there's So what happens
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  there is like if I'm looking at a piece of paper with, with
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  black text on it, say the white lays over the black, so it
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  becomes Gray blurred out. And if you so I use a lot of
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  black background and white text, like through mobile phones, like
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  a lot of my, a lot of my things will be black.
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  But I see two versions of the white text.
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  Yeah. And they overlay each other.
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  I see two faces overlay each other and they almost merge into
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  one. It's really, really odd to try
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  and explain it I. Get that again.
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  And then also on top of all my other conditions I have because,
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  because when they, when, when I so, yeah, going back to when I
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  was born, because the operations happened at 10 weeks and 11
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  weeks old, the brain saw one eye 1st and went, oh, we've got
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  vision. And then a week later it went,
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  hang on a minute. I've got another source of
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  vision here. So what my brain did was go
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  you've got 2 images and you can control these independently.
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  So I've got what's called monophonic vision.
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  It means I can pick and choose, which I had to look out of
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  myself and control it myself, yeah.
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  What did you call it again? Mono.
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  In my head, I've always called it monophonic vision.
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  There's not a huge lot of literature out there on it or or
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  research, but it is called monophonic vision.
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  You see stereophonic vision. Yeah, just like stereo.
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  Makes sense. Well, I can choose.
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  So most So what they did was they fixed, they gave me fixed
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  focus points in different eyes. So I I look to read with my
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  left, but you're blurry in my left and and my right eye is
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  focused a bit further away. So I can like see faces and
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  computers a bit like. So so you kind of like sure and
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  long sighted at the same time. Yeah, but these are my focus
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  points. Wow.
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  OK, yeah. And here.
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  Oh, I think I kind of get it a little bit.
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  And then my brain knows, like it looks at you, it looks out of my
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  right eye when I'm speaking to you.
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  But when I go to read something, it automatically goes to my left
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  eye because they're focused. And I can pick and choose.
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  Like it's quite hard to see, but I can't look you out of my left
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  eye. And my right eye goes off and
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  goes lazy and goes, it just does what it wants.
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  And then I look out my right eye, my left one goes off and
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  goes lazy and goes. I'm not, I can't actually see
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  out of it anymore. It's really, really odd.
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  It took me a long time to figure out that normal people don't see
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  like this. No, I I get it.
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  It's I think there's. But it's really interesting what
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  the brain does. There might be something.
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  About building pathways. And like it realised because it
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  only saw, it saw one first and then it went, hang on a minute,
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  we've got another source here. Whereas the brain normally
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  merges that into one image and you see one.
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  I feel like there might be certain things to compare it to
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  with quote UN quote, like standard 2020 vision where
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  possibly, yeah. Because I know that like when,
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  when I'm looking like out of focus at something, it's like
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  obviously your, your eyes brain deliberately blurs the thing
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  that you're not paying attention to, but you're focused clearly
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  on this one thing. And then it, it can kind of
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  shift. And you can do that at will,
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  like when you're daydreaming. Yeah, I guess I've never
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  experienced. Right, right, right, right.
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  You've. Never had an eye that could
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  focus or a lens that could change focus.
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  I've always had a fixed focus. So yeah, that interests me a
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  lot. It's it's mainly from
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  daydreaming. Really zooms itself and and
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  focuses everything to whatever you're looking at, but you must
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  be noticing it's a bit around it where it's not.
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  Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get, I
• 14:07
  get what you're saying. Oh, it's fascinating, man.
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  It's fascinating. OK, so you mentioned that it's a
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  spectrum, right? This is something I learned
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  maybe like a decade ago because obviously there's jokes around
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  it, like people don't understand.
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  And obviously, as you say, you have to educate people because
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  people will automatically assume, oh, blind, you can't say
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  anything at all. And the first way I was
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  introduced to it was there was an older lady who was a relative
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  of a girl I was dating and she had a guide dog, which is pretty
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  common for people with like severe blindness.
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  But she was still able to see certain things.
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  And I in my mind I was like, OK, that's strange.
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  So you're not fully blind then? And she was like, no, it's it's
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  like partially by and I was like, oh, and then obviously I
• 15:00
  was like, oh, I see. It's like different levels.
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  Why do you think there's not? I mean, I'll, I'll just ask this
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  firstly, like, why do you think there's not enough awareness out
• 15:13
  there? Maybe that like it is a
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  spectrum. It's hard, it's hard to pinpoint
• 15:20
  why and where, but I, I strongly believe that our, our education
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  system and the way that it is currently run is an absolute
• 15:29
  mess. And I used to feel like that,
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  you know, that there's, there's things that should be covered
• 15:33
  that aren't covered and things that are covered that shouldn't
• 15:37
  be covered. It's just, I feel like, yeah,
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  education for things like this should be starting young
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  children, ability awareness, equality.
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  I mean, it all really boils down to that rather regardless of
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  whether it's blindness or not. But yeah, it's very hard to, I
• 15:55
  think. I think it's hard because also
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  we're depicted. We're also depicted either as,
• 16:01
  you know, when did you see something in, in a film or, or
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  whatever. A lot of the depictions of blind
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  people are the stereotype white stick, black glasses.
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  But they're not. They're not.
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  I mean, yes, yes, rare. It's it's rare.
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  And yeah. We're all types of people and
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  we've got varying degrees and yeah, I feel like it it it
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  really boils down to the education system we're in rather
• 16:27
  than anything else. It's, it's also interesting you
• 16:31
  just don't see a lot of it in society as well, because there
• 16:35
  was a lot that I learned growing up that I just didn't learn in
• 16:38
  school. And I was like, oh, that's
• 16:40
  weird. And for instance, sex education,
• 16:43
  big example school just useless really.
• 16:48
  You know, I also like little things as well.
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  Like I know as as a male, like I didn't learn about like female
• 16:57
  reproduction until like adulthood.
• 16:59
  I had to seek that out. They don't teach you that in
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  school. And it's like, OK, I might not
• 17:03
  immediately deal with that, but like I might one day have a
• 17:06
  daughter or I don't know, family members or I might need to help
• 17:12
  someone with that. I might need to have an
• 17:13
  understanding of that. And they just don't teach you
• 17:16
  that with blindness. I, I don't know, like where I
• 17:22
  first learned about that. I think it might have just been
• 17:26
  like, you see a person and they're blind and you get
• 17:30
  taught, OK, this is what blindness is.
• 17:32
  But again, no mention of the, the spectrum thing.
• 17:39
  Maybe to be fair, maybe that's something that's come later in
• 17:41
  life, you know? There's still such a deep thing
• 17:45
  rooted in it in education for me.
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  I mean, I went to a mainstream school through all of schooling,
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  I feel it did me well because most people don't even know I'm
• 17:54
  blind because of the way I portray myself.
• 17:57
  I understand the body language like I was, I was told when I
• 18:01
  was a child, you know, look at people when you're talking to
• 18:03
  them. And like, although I found those
• 18:05
  things difficult, I learned those things because I was in
• 18:08
  mainstream. But in some respects, I was also
• 18:12
  singled out. I had someone with me 24/7
• 18:16
  throughout the whole of my school.
• 18:17
  Oh, really A? Young child to 16 years old.
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  When I left, I always had a teacher with me, next to me and
• 18:25
  they were my eyes. They wrote everything, they
• 18:28
  supported me. Wow.
• 18:30
  Necessary in in some respects, brilliant.
• 18:32
  I had a great, great education from that because I would
• 18:36
  constantly had someone there learning with me at all times.
• 18:41
  But I was also singled out from the general gist of what you
• 18:44
  would experience through schools apart apart from the bullying,
• 18:48
  obviously. But, but I didn't have those
• 18:50
  friends circles and things like that.
• 18:53
  I didn't have that mingling because I always had someone
• 18:55
  with me that I had to behave for.
• 18:57
  And and I also my behaviour reflected their impact on them
• 19:03
  because they were there supporting me 24/7.
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  I mean, yeah, I also feel like it's a lot of people that have
• 19:15
  that I know that are blind were singled out as in taken out of
• 19:19
  mainstream and put into personally feel institutions
• 19:24
  that taught blind people. But they also like were kept
• 19:27
  away from society, which you know, if we go back 1020304050,
• 19:32
  even 100 years, it's pretty standard practice to push away
• 19:35
  the, the, the odd ones out and push them into asylums, whatever
• 19:40
  it was back then. But it feels the same for blind
• 19:43
  people. For a very long time, they were
• 19:45
  pushed away into specialist schools, specialist colleges.
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  I was offered them like the age of 11, go away and be bored at a
• 19:56
  blind college, blind school. And my mum was like, no, I want
• 20:00
  you to experience the world and not be.
• 20:03
  Pushed away from the world. The more I think about it, the
• 20:07
  more I I mean, I can't speak for the world, but like certainly
• 20:11
  the UK doesn't feel like it's really catered for blind people
• 20:15
  because when you look. At disabled people in general
• 20:17
  and any or anyone that isn't normal.
• 20:20
  I mean the whole schooling system, it's all about being the
• 20:22
  same, competing with each other and being the best.
• 20:25
  And then when you've got an disadvantage, you are left at
• 20:29
  the bottom, you are singled out. But they want, they just want
• 20:32
  people for that hierarchy system in schools and that's what
• 20:36
  they're programming. Factory workers.
• 20:37
  It was all designed originally around the the industries that
• 20:41
  they wanted to feed. They needed workforces like
• 20:45
  that. It's all designed for factory
• 20:48
  workers really line you up on tables and keep you doing all
• 20:51
  the same thing and then compete against each other like it.
• 20:55
  I got big, big, big views about schooling.
• 20:58
  Same. It doesn't equip you for life at
• 21:01
  all. I mean, we've, we've had big
• 21:02
  discussions about it on streams before where, you know, like
• 21:05
  things like taxation, home, home, what was it like life
• 21:13
  maintenance? Maybe that's a better way of
• 21:14
  putting it. There's this assumption that you
• 21:17
  just learn everything at home and it's like not everyone has
• 21:20
  the same home life buddy. Like not everyone has like the
• 21:24
  time, resources, parents that are able to show them everything
• 21:28
  you know? Yeah, it's just, I mean, I'm in
• 21:31
  this predicament at the moment. My partner's got 14 year old
• 21:35
  daughter and she's she's got neurodiverse problems.
• 21:40
  Absolutely. She doesn't fit into the normal
• 21:42
  system. And it's just been like banging
• 21:46
  your head against a brick wall. So we've finally decided that
• 21:49
  these are the most crucial years and she's got to be pulled out.
• 21:52
  And we do it ourselves, our way that focuses on her.
• 21:56
  So yeah, we are home educators now for a 14 year old.
• 22:00
  But she's interested in music, she's interested in business,
• 22:03
  she's interested in all the things that she could create a
• 22:05
  career out of very quickly. And she's extremely talented.
• 22:11
  So I'm just going to give her all my knowledge and be like,
• 22:14
  but what this has done is spurred me on to want to work
• 22:18
  with young people. Like the education system has to
• 22:21
  change. I feel like my pathway and what
• 22:25
  I've done in my life to make the best out of the worst situation
• 22:30
  is like the best way forward. I follow, you might have heard
• 22:33
  of Bashar. I follow his, his, his, maybe
• 22:37
  look him up. I follow one of his main
• 22:39
  mantras, which is do the most, do the thing that you love the
• 22:46
  most to the best of your ability.
• 22:48
  And that is all you need to do to succeed and have a fruitful
• 22:52
  life and have abundance. You literally just need to do
• 22:57
  the thing you love at the best of your ability.
• 23:03
  And that's what I follow as much as I can.
• 23:07
  And I don't particularly want to work for someone else.
• 23:09
  I don't particularly agree with this whole you educate, you get
• 23:13
  educated, you then go into a job and you work for someone else.
• 23:17
  We should be teaching people and financial literature, like
• 23:22
  financial literate, to understand business and to
• 23:26
  understand how to take an idea themselves and create it into a
• 23:29
  bigger thing. That's what we need to be
• 23:32
  teaching our kids. So yeah, I plan to hopefully do
• 23:36
  that around music. So in the last few weeks I've
• 23:41
  been working on launching a music Academy for young people
• 23:45
  and which will hopefully help them get to a similar position
• 23:49
  that I am. And they, you know, I've found a
• 23:53
  lot of therapy and music and I'm following my dreams more than
• 23:59
  any, any other thing in my, in my life.
• 24:03
  So yeah, hopefully. We'll, we'll, we'll return to
• 24:08
  the music because I want to kind of cover that in its own
• 24:10
  section. But you let's go put up on this.
• 24:16
  See, you mentioned that you had someone with you throughout
• 24:20
  school and I had a friend who had had muscular dystrophy and I
• 24:24
  remember it was the same thing. But I do also remember him being
• 24:28
  on his own here and there. You mentioned you got bullied.
• 24:31
  Is that right? Yeah, so OK, I would, I would
• 24:35
  have them there at most time like through every lesson.
• 24:38
  So I'd go to, I'd go to meet my teacher, my teaching assistant,
• 24:43
  and I might, but I'll just give her her name.
• 24:46
  She, she would love it. So I used to go and meet Trish
• 24:49
  every morning and she was my teacher through secondary
• 24:52
  school. But at breaks and dinner times,
• 24:54
  they would obviously, obviously go off and have their breaks and
• 24:57
  their dinner. So I would be then bumped in the
• 25:00
  fucking, excuse me, dumped in the pool and I had to kind of
• 25:08
  deal with all the, the insurance and outs of of school life, but
• 25:11
  I didn't have the the kind of bits in between.
• 25:14
  I didn't have the friend group, so I didn't have.
• 25:16
  So yeah, there was a lot of money in walking through
• 25:19
  walking, walking through the corridors and being tripped up,
• 25:22
  having your stuff taken off, you're thrown around the place
• 25:24
  and just constantly constant picking, picking, picking.
• 25:27
  I was in a very public Community College and and the area was it
• 25:33
  was OK, but the people that went to it were quite troubled.
• 25:37
  It was known as a very troubled school.
• 25:40
  So they in one they knew you were blind and they still
• 25:43
  didn't. Yeah, they knew I was blind
• 25:44
  because I constantly had someone with me at all times.
• 25:46
  OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:48
  Yeah, you, you. I was part of the VI department,
• 25:51
  the visually impaired department, and these teachers
• 25:54
  were the a part of the blind department.
• 25:56
  You know, the people that were there supported blind people.
• 25:59
  We had the odd like person with a disability or autism, but I
• 26:04
  think they had three or four or five students and we were all VI
• 26:08
  or blind and each of them had one.
• 26:11
  So yeah, it was quite black and white.
• 26:13
  What was the the? So my way to tackle that was to
• 26:19
  all my life I've introverted to deal with things and deal with
• 26:23
  trauma in my life, and that was one way I did it.
• 26:26
  I kind of went with the music, and that's what pushed and
• 26:29
  pushed me into the music, into drumming.
• 26:33
  And it changed my life. It changed the relationship I
• 26:36
  had with all these people that were bullying me.
• 26:39
  Because once they, I tell you, once they realized what talent
• 26:43
  was there, none of them wanted to bully me again.
• 26:45
  They all wanted to be like me. Yeah, it was a very strange
• 26:51
  change. I mean, so year seven, I was, I
• 26:56
  was into music. I played piano from the age of 8
• 26:59
  and guitar from a little bit older maybe.
• 27:02
  Yeah. So I started learning guitar in
• 27:06
  in my first year of secondary school.
• 27:09
  Found that quite difficult because of my sight, like
• 27:11
  following everything and too many things or like too many
• 27:15
  small things all at once and following music.
• 27:17
  So I pushed myself into drum and that would have been around the
• 27:21
  time that, yeah, volume was quite bad.
• 27:26
  It had a massive detrimental impact on my mental health.
• 27:29
  And yeah, don't like to say it, but at a very early age, drug
• 27:37
  abuse, because the only way to deal with the impact of what was
• 27:41
  happening, I wanted to find an escape and that that hadn't
• 27:44
  found anything. But I went into drums.
• 27:47
  I started going into the music rooms and rather than being out
• 27:50
  in the corridors and in the lunch wars and being bullied,
• 27:54
  they were like, OK, you can go in the music rooms.
• 27:56
  So I went in and found the drum kit.
• 27:58
  I found the piano. I started playing, but what
• 28:00
  would happen was all the kids would would come and start
• 28:03
  watching through the little slits in the windows until it
• 28:07
  got to a point where most of the school was in the corridor
• 28:11
  trying to get a view through the window at me drumming.
• 28:16
  So it completely changed this dynamic of who I was in the
• 28:19
  school. I wasn't just this blind kid
• 28:21
  anymore. I was this reasonably good
• 28:24
  drummer even though I was very new to it.
• 28:27
  But within, within the first year, I joined the band.
• 28:30
  I, I we've managed to put some songs together and win multiple
• 28:35
  Battle of the Bands. Our first gig was a Battle of
• 28:37
  the Bands. Our first 3 gigs were Battle of
• 28:39
  the Bands. We won every, every one of them.
• 28:42
  We got on the radio very quickly with all the songs we were
• 28:46
  creating in the band. And yeah, the the dynamic
• 28:49
  changed. I wasn't this like blind kid
• 28:53
  that was being bullied anymore. I was something clearly that so
• 28:56
  everyone wanted to be. Oh, there's so many directions I
• 29:03
  can go with this. It's always fun when you're when
• 29:05
  you're in this position. OK, One thing I've noticed
• 29:18
  online that you do is you lean heavily into it.
• 29:21
  You're like, I am a blind musician, etcetera.
• 29:24
  You're very open and candid about it.
• 29:28
  It's something I can somewhat relate to because as you can
• 29:31
  tell, I have a skin condition where and it's led to my eyes,
• 29:37
  my eyelashes going completely white.
• 29:38
  Yeah, I was thinking you must have some sort of level of the
• 29:42
  same reaction from the public. It's what I will say is the,
• 29:50
  what I think it's twofold. I think society always picks on
• 29:56
  anything that falls from the conceived norm, which is, is
• 30:01
  interesting to me because like more people have conditions than
• 30:06
  you realise. It's just, you know, think some
• 30:08
  things can be hidden, some things can't.
• 30:10
  But I always think like things shouldn't be hidden just because
• 30:14
  society is ugly. You know what I mean?
• 30:18
  And it is, I mean that right there, what you laid out people
• 30:22
  being horrible to someone that is struggling with something
• 30:26
  like it's hard enough being a fucking teenager, like Jesus
• 30:28
  Christ, but like having that as well as an extra battle.
• 30:32
  And like, I, I guess I what I want to go into my question, if
• 30:40
  you like, is that like what prompted the decision to sort of
• 30:44
  lean into it and fully embrace it as opposed to maybe not
• 30:50
  moving past it because that's the wrong way of putting it.
• 30:53
  But like some people choose to say, OK, I happen to be blind,
• 30:57
  but this is me. Whereas you're like leaning into
• 31:00
  it, like this is me. This is part of me.
• 31:03
  Ask away it. Was a hard decision to make.
• 31:08
  I've been streaming on TikTok for more than a year now just to
• 31:13
  change music and it wasn't until I changed the name, the people
• 31:20
  started staying and listening to my talent.
• 31:25
  But it took me writing on there. But I was a blind musician to
• 31:30
  even get anywhere. I feel that TikTok is is a very
• 31:34
  special platform in itself. Like you need something extra to
• 31:37
  kind of get where you need to be on it.
• 31:41
  That's true, I didn't get anywhere so I can I can relate,
• 31:44
  but what led me to make that? Decision what led me to make
• 31:47
  that decision was I had an interaction with some like I
• 31:51
  built some relationships freely up.
• 31:53
  I built a small group of people but there was one person in
• 31:57
  there that. I mean, we wouldn't go into
• 31:59
  detail of what's happened, but we fell out in, in the, the, the
• 32:04
  short story really is we, we fell out.
• 32:06
  But the way that this person responded to me and the the IT
• 32:10
  just, it just made me think of how how blind society are to
• 32:15
  blind people. And the ultimate irony.
• 32:18
  But yeah, you're completely right.
• 32:19
  To go, well, this is me, why should I have to hide myself?
• 32:24
  Yeah, if if this is me, then then why not all these other
• 32:29
  people are on this site? Like using whatever trauma,
• 32:34
  whatever, whatever thing they, they're using, they, they
• 32:39
  glorify it, add it as an extra thing to who they are and bang,
• 32:43
  they've got people coming in. So I was like, let's try it,
• 32:46
  Let's see what happens. Immediately, instantly,
• 32:48
  instantly. I had two interviews in my room
• 32:53
  and yeah, they were asking difficult questions and I I've
• 32:56
  got PTSDII didn't initially respond very well.
• 33:00
  Did not respond very well. I've had to learn a lot about
• 33:04
  myself just through this process.
• 33:05
  But it's it's been eye opening. I'm not sure if I will continue
• 33:09
  as the blind drummer forever. I feel like something will be
• 33:13
  created from it and then it will be, you know, that persona will
• 33:17
  kind of push be pushed away more.
• 33:19
  I mean, it's an it's an interesting concept.
• 33:22
  But yeah, the open my eyes, the amount of people that have come
• 33:26
  in and said you're not blind, you can do this or, and the
• 33:31
  amount of questions, but a lot of the questions are genuine.
• 33:35
  My, what I've realized is society don't know how to
• 33:38
  approach stuff. Society don't know how to
• 33:40
  communicate properly and say hello to each other.
• 33:42
  So I approach it very candidly. Yeah, I, I'm like, hi,
• 33:47
  personally, let's say hello to each other.
• 33:50
  Like somehow it seems to break the ice and then I just kind of
• 33:55
  reflect back to them. It's like I try and put a mirror
• 33:58
  up and I reflect back to them. What's actually happening here
• 34:01
  is not a conversation. It's just you having a bad day
• 34:04
  and you projecting loads of crap at people.
• 34:07
  And then somehow they see it and most of them stay.
• 34:11
  But then the ones that that that do stay are usually the ones
• 34:13
  that are watching from behind going.
• 34:15
  I like this guy. I like the way that he actually
• 34:17
  looks at life. So necessarily it's not
• 34:20
  normally, it's not always the sight thing that captures people
• 34:23
  or the drums. It could just be how I'm dealing
• 34:26
  with it. But I've realized, yeah, society
• 34:29
  needs educating, but it leads on to a much deeper problem.
• 34:35
  Go on. Sorry, people aren't aware of
• 34:38
  things like this, but they're also they're not aware that
• 34:41
  there's, there's, there's difficult like blind people have
• 34:44
  such deep difficulties with accessing things, specifically
• 34:49
  normal public services that you, you most people take for granted
• 34:53
  booking a taxi, but currently. So this leads on to something
• 34:59
  quite passionate about that. I'm quite passionate about
• 35:02
  equality and that, that everyone gets an equal access to, to, to
• 35:07
  everything. Well, as a musician, I've been
• 35:10
  working with TikTok for a little while and they approached me and
• 35:14
  asked me if they'd like me to manage, be managed by them.
• 35:17
  And so I started getting managed by them a few months ago as the
• 35:20
  blind drummer. So they've been overseeing these
• 35:23
  kind of interactions and, and then I've I've had pretty good
• 35:27
  response from them. The problem has been that we
• 35:30
  have an access issue with TikTok, quite serious access
• 35:34
  issue. A lot of blind people that are
• 35:37
  accessing the app can't access it in the same ways as other
• 35:40
  people. And here's an example.
• 35:42
  So as TikTok create under the TikTok creator program, they've
• 35:47
  approached me and pushed me as a music creator to do a global
• 35:53
  competition with them called music on stage.
• 35:56
  Now that consists of multiple rounds.
• 35:59
  So there's regions that obviously it's worldwide.
• 36:02
  So we, we start off locally, we fight against each other, it
• 36:05
  gets whittled down. I managed to make it to the
• 36:07
  regionals, but once we got to the regionals, TikTok told us
• 36:14
  you now need to be able to use this feature on the app.
• 36:18
  This will give you double points every night of the week.
• 36:21
  So every night that you're competing through the regional
• 36:23
  finals, you can get double points.
• 36:25
  What they didn't do was roll it out to the app that's on the
• 36:28
  computer version of the Tiktok studio.
• 36:31
  They did not roll it out to that, which means that for
• 36:34
  certain blind people like me who can only access Tiktok and
• 36:38
  stream through Tiktok through this app, I'm not able to access
• 36:43
  the competition anymore. So I got to the regional stage
• 36:46
  and had a lot of investment put into me, but at regionals, I
• 36:50
  could not have access. I was put at an unfair
• 36:52
  disadvantage to the other users and I I have I couldn't continue
• 36:57
  in in the competition. I've I like, although I don't
• 37:00
  want to be, you know, point and point and point your fingers
• 37:04
  that ticked off and being like you're this, you're that you're
• 37:06
  doing this wrong. You're doing that wrong.
• 37:08
  I feel like as a blind person, there's a huge access issue
• 37:12
  there. I've been stopped in my tracks
• 37:16
  because I'm using it as a disabled person and, and, and I,
• 37:21
  yeah, I feel like things like that need to be talked about in
• 37:23
  public a lot more. I think if things like that were
• 37:26
  talked about in public, a lot more people might have a lot
• 37:28
  more awareness of what blind people need and what adjustments
• 37:33
  they need to be able to access things, You know, put yourself
• 37:37
  in the situation of someone in a wheelchair.
• 37:40
  You would need to make sure that there's reasonable adjustments
• 37:43
  in place for them to be able to, say, get into your venue.
• 37:47
  Or. You know it's a lift.
• 37:50
  Don't they? It's funny you mention this
• 37:51
  because like I can think of several examples even recently
• 37:55
  where like venues just don't like have a ramp, have a lift,
• 37:59
  anything. And it's like like a really good
• 38:03
  example. I went to a gig recently and the
• 38:06
  area where the lift was, where this wheelchair usually needed
• 38:10
  to get downstairs was blocked. And like, I didn't work there.
• 38:14
  But I don't know, I guess I kind of look like I did.
• 38:17
  And they were like, hey, can you help me get access to that lift?
• 38:21
  And I was like, yeah, sure. And then I turned around and
• 38:23
  there's like 2 massive tables there in the way.
• 38:27
  So I had to move like all this shit out the way just so they
• 38:30
  could get in the lift. And I've got a story.
• 38:33
  And a half view. Oh my.
• 38:35
  God, go on, show your story. DWP.
• 38:40
  OK, it's. Disability assessment knows I'm
• 38:44
  in a wheelchair because I've applied for disability benefits
• 38:47
  explaining in a wheelchair for a period of time in my life as
• 38:50
  well. That's a whole other story.
• 38:55
  Go to this assessment for so it's a reassessment to be to to
• 38:59
  have my benefits continued. Is it physical assessments?
• 39:02
  You have to be there. Physical assessment, face to
• 39:05
  face assessment. And I turn up and they go, oh,
• 39:08
  you're in a wheelchair. Well, yeah, the, the, the
• 39:13
  meeting room is upstairs and you're not allowed up there.
• 39:17
  Why can't I just use the Because you'll be a fire hazard.
• 39:22
  So we're going to have to rebook this.
• 39:23
  There's me with obviously no money coming in, struggling to
• 39:26
  get anywhere. I've got, I've got, I've had to
• 39:28
  go. Like they, they make you jump
• 39:30
  through hoops just to do these assessments.
• 39:32
  Like they put it on the mid and in the outskirts of a city
• 39:35
  that's not even yours. Like if I'm in Nottingham,
• 39:37
  they'll put it in Peterborough. If I'm Peterborough, they'll
• 39:39
  give it in Nottingham and it'll be on the outskirts.
• 39:41
  So you've got to get to Nottingham, get a taxi there.
• 39:43
  Like you've done all of this and I've done all of this, got out
• 39:46
  and they've gone, oh, you know, you're a fire hazard.
• 39:48
  You have to come back. They had to, they had to
• 39:50
  rearrange it for a ground floor room.
• 39:52
  This they're like. But surely like you could sue
• 39:56
  them for discrimination, though that is blatant.
• 39:59
  So this is the point I'm trying to make.
• 40:02
  You've believed that we've got protection over discrimination.
• 40:06
  But we don't, yeah. Find a solicitor that will that
• 40:09
  will do discrimination cases. Is they won't take it no well.
• 40:13
  No, I've been discriminated by colleges that won't provide
• 40:17
  material in an accessible format.
• 40:21
  I guess in I guess it's. Discriminated by a landlord that
• 40:24
  that that just won't send me stuff in an accessible format.
• 40:29
  Wow. Nobody will pick up these cases.
• 40:32
  There, there. There's a law, yeah, but it
• 40:34
  really is black and white. And it it comes into play when
• 40:37
  there's my when there's like maybe a statutory body or a
• 40:42
  public company employing someone and then they discriminate them
• 40:45
  in employment. Like there's loads of case law,
• 40:47
  unemployment discrimination. Oh yeah, yeah, they find ways
• 40:51
  around that. Real discrimination, like I'm
• 40:54
  trying to access your service and I can't.
• 40:56
  No one will fight those cases. No one will fight them.
• 40:59
  So in reality we've just got to accept it like Uber.
• 41:03
  I have a huge problem with Uber. I have an assistance dog try and
• 41:08
  book a taxi with Uber. Drives off, they see the dog,
• 41:13
  they drive off. They literally speed off away
• 41:15
  from you. I have video after video of them
• 41:17
  doing this. But try and get anyone to fight
• 41:20
  that they won't take them on. Try and put them out publicly.
• 41:24
  So if I try and out TikTok now publicly and I become really,
• 41:28
  really, really harsh on it, but they'll just close my account
• 41:31
  down and stop, stop all my following.
• 41:33
  They'll stop me connecting. They've already they they do it.
• 41:36
  I speak about this stuff, my views go down.
• 41:38
  Yeah. They're quite shadow banning,
• 41:41
  don't they? Yeah.
• 41:43
  And I want to work with them, I really do.
• 41:45
  And I've, I really want to work through management to get a
• 41:48
  conversation. But when I've heard stories like
• 41:51
  another blind couple on there that they, they've got, I think
• 41:55
  they've got hundreds of subscribers.
• 41:57
  They have 500 people in their room at all times completely
• 42:00
  blind. They, they, they're brilliant
• 42:03
  singers. They're like, we will, we will
• 42:05
  not, we will not do any campaigns anymore.
• 42:07
  We will not do them. They would go so far in them.
• 42:10
  They would, their life would be changed forever if TikTok would
• 42:14
  just sit there and meet with them.
• 42:16
  But the report is they've been waiting for an accessibility
• 42:19
  meeting since January and no word yet.
• 42:23
  You know, they their, their whole, they, they literally
• 42:26
  could, could go very far and have a deep career on just on
• 42:29
  TikTok alone if TikTok would sit and talk to us.
• 42:34
  Anyway, I don't want to spend the whole talking about TikTok,
• 42:39
  but it's a very important, I think, I think that the point
• 42:41
  I'm trying to highlight really here is awareness of the
• 42:45
  disabilities goes much deeper than just just what they are
• 42:49
  and, and people having an awareness of what they are.
• 42:52
  It's how, how limited we, we are in the world that time and how
• 42:57
  limited we do feel. And then the impact of that on
• 43:01
  our, on our, like that's had a huge impact on my mental health
• 43:03
  all my life. I took a part time job recently
• 43:07
  at a hotel and it's it's a chain.
• 43:11
  I won't. I won't say.
• 43:13
  We've got any hotels left. And one thing that struck me, it
• 43:20
  kind of caught me off guard, but it made me think was they have
• 43:25
  Braille menus to hand. They're just there.
• 43:28
  And I was like, oh, awesome. And then it dawned on me, like
• 43:33
  every restaurant I've like ever been to just, I mean, I, I, to
• 43:39
  be fair, I've not asked, but like, it's not something
• 43:43
  advertised that they don't say like, oh, available because I
• 43:47
  know it's not just Braille as well, but like you can get like
• 43:52
  audio adjustments sometimes. Can't you like some sort of
• 43:56
  spoken out version or something like that?
• 43:59
  Most of it's large print or, or a Braille version.
• 44:02
  I mean, you'll be, I, I think most of it would be large print.
• 44:05
  Have you got a lot of print of your, of your menu?
• 44:08
  All right, 50% would have one. That's good.
• 44:11
  More than 50% would have one, but.
• 44:14
  Yeah. Is it more chain or is it
• 44:16
  independent? AIM would definitely have one go
• 44:18
  into customers for a menu that they will have one that they can
• 44:22
  hand to you and read. You can read.
• 44:24
  It still might not be perfect, but like at least they have that
• 44:27
  sort of reasonable adjustment. Yeah, that's what they should be
• 44:30
  doing. But yeah, there are obvious.
• 44:33
  Obviously there are places that are more advanced than that.
• 44:36
  I don't know if I've ever found women with an audio menu.
• 44:41
  I just I simple way to do it is to have a menu online.
• 44:46
  That's that that's accessible digitally because then we have
• 44:50
  accessible software on computers and phones we can then use to
• 44:54
  access it or zoom for like sometimes when you use my phone
• 44:58
  as a like a camera zoom and I'll zoom into menu use behind,
• 45:03
  behind the counter and things like that, like.
• 45:07
  I guess. There are other.
• 45:08
  Ways yeah, I was, I was thinking like maybe dictaphone style
• 45:13
  where you or text to speech style where you could have like
• 45:16
  your let's say you got headphones in and there was like
• 45:25
  an option in the menu where you could click it and it kind of
• 45:27
  dictates the menu to you, like and reads it out.
• 45:31
  So you could actually like fully understand like everything
• 45:34
  that's in it and oh great, cool. And you could skip.
• 45:37
  So like, do you know what I mean?
• 45:38
  Like it's something like that. I I don't know how that would
• 45:41
  work, but maybe something like that?
• 45:43
  I mean, I think it's something, I don't think there's enough
• 45:45
  people building technologies and and and building solutions to
• 45:50
  fix these problems and to bring awareness to these companies
• 45:54
  that is very, very simple to fix.
• 45:56
  You just take a bit of time to do it.
• 45:58
  Now there's a business opportunity right there for the
• 46:01
  future. Make it happen.
• 46:03
  I'd invest in it. I'd invest in that like if you
• 46:06
  if you, because I think that's the problem, isn't it?
• 46:08
  Like society is to cater to anyone that doesn't have a
• 46:12
  disability. And it's like, I think you don't
• 46:17
  see the problem until it's presented to you.
• 46:19
  Like best advert I ever saw that highlights this perfectly was it
• 46:22
  was a flip reverse situation where this people in wheelchairs
• 46:27
  were the the dominant, like like society was catered around them
• 46:33
  and not for people that can walk.
• 46:36
  So, and it was perfect visual metaphor for it.
• 46:39
  And it's like, oh, that's what it's like.
• 46:42
  Because I can't care how many times I see someone in a
• 46:43
  wheelchair and they speak to someone like the front desk and
• 46:47
  there's like, Oh yeah, sorry, no ramps.
• 46:49
  There's no way to get upstairs. There's like end of dialogue.
• 46:53
  And it's like what? Like this is a big problem.
• 46:56
  And I understand you can't just like rebuild the fucking bit
• 47:00
  wielding, but that does represent an issue.
• 47:03
  You know, we've, we've also got public services that that can't
• 47:07
  even keep up with it either. We've got people like that are
• 47:10
  being left on trains because they can't find a ramp.
• 47:14
  We built a system that doesn't work for disabled people, buses
• 47:17
  that like I'm not even allowed to get on in an electric
• 47:21
  wheelchair if I haven't been trained, if they haven't given
• 47:25
  me a license. Now you have to get a permit to
• 47:27
  go on a scooter and a proper big electric wheelchair.
• 47:32
  So we have to be trained. We have to.
• 47:34
  I would be refused if I went onto a bus in the scooter that
• 47:37
  would fit on like a mobility scooter, they would say no.
• 47:41
  Have you got a permit for that? What the fuck I?
• 47:48
  Know, I know, I know. It's madness.
• 47:49
  It's madness. It is madness.
• 47:51
  Like, and that's the public services that we're in, you
• 47:55
  know, it's, it's insane and, and like another accessibility issue
• 48:00
  that I'm just facing or supporting a friend to, to go on
• 48:06
  to Universal Credit. Well, they've gone through the
• 48:09
  whole system. Yeah, it's all online.
• 48:11
  Brilliant. Like they can use their phone,
• 48:12
  they can access it, whatever, get to the health questionnaire
• 48:15
  part. And it's just a form that gets
• 48:17
  sent in the post. How can a blind person fill in
• 48:20
  the form? They've got to then go through
• 48:24
  all these other steps. So why can that form be provided
• 48:27
  in a digital format? There's meant to be, there's
• 48:29
  like an act, there's a law that says by a certain date, all
• 48:32
  forms by government bodies and public sector companies should
• 48:37
  be provided in accessible format, a digital format
• 48:39
  alternative to everything else. Yet why is our benefit system
• 48:43
  which is 99% digital, but as soon as you get to the health
• 48:46
  part it's just an archaic form they send you?
• 48:50
  I don't know the. Whole system, like there's the
• 48:53
  it's, it's really deep. It's really deep.
• 48:57
  It's the same as like trying to get an appointment at the
• 48:59
  fucking GP and like our system. Like for anyone listening who's
• 49:04
  not from the UK, this is how our system works.
• 49:07
  I'd shit you know pretty much every GP only does same day
• 49:13
  appointments so you have to book a day off work and then wake up
• 49:19
  on that day before 8:00 AM so that you can be on the phone at
• 49:24
  8:00 AM you've. Got to start the phone call at
• 49:27
  8759 start ringing them because you if you if you missed that
• 49:31
  first spot. 15th in the queue and that's it.
• 49:37
  You just wait on the phone until they can give you a same day
• 49:42
  appointment. Think about what I'm saying.
• 49:43
  So if you're 15th, 20th in the queue, you could be waiting
• 49:46
  hours to then either be told one or two things.
• 49:50
  Either one, Oh yeah, we can do you an appointment today like
• 49:54
  3:00 and now you got to wait like four or five hours until
• 49:57
  then, right? Or you wait and you wait and you
• 50:00
  wait and you get told, I'm sorry, there's no more
• 50:02
  appointments today. You'll have to re book or
• 50:04
  recall. What the fuck?
• 50:07
  Yeah, or the other option, which is the receptionist then goes,
• 50:10
  well, what's what's wrong with you?
• 50:13
  And you have to explain it all to them for them to make a
• 50:15
  judgement whether you can have an appointment or not.
• 50:18
  Yeah, that's that's my surgery. If you don't get in the top
• 50:21
  three callers within one minute of 8:00, you don't get an
• 50:25
  appointment. Because we're quite a real, real
• 50:27
  place. But hold on, like who are they
• 50:29
  to dictate whether or not you, I mean the fucking doctor, should
• 50:34
  be the one who to dictate that? I know, I know.
• 50:37
  And then and then the appointments even after that.
• 50:40
  Yeah. You, I'll get the doctor to
• 50:43
  phone you. You'll then get a message from
• 50:45
  the receptionist that's clearly like the middleman because the
• 50:47
  doctor's so busy. Can you send a photo of the
• 50:51
  thing that you want to show the doctor?
• 50:53
  Can you send me a photo of it? And I'll show the doctor.
• 50:56
  And then I'll tell you what the doctor said, and I'll send it
• 50:58
  back. Yeah, it sounds.
• 51:00
  More constantly getting go to the pharmacist, go to the
• 51:03
  pharmacy, go to the pharmacy to get stuff checked like it's it's
• 51:06
  insane. Can you get stuff checked at the
• 51:08
  pharmacy? They're not.
• 51:09
  Yeah, you can. It's actually, they're actually
• 51:11
  much more well trained than AGP in medical conditions.
• 51:16
  If you've got things like ulcers or you know, things that you
• 51:19
  would normally be like, what's this?
• 51:20
  Go to the go to the pharmacist first.
• 51:23
  They'll look at it and they'll say I think it's this or they'll
• 51:26
  say I think you need to go to a doctor to just double check.
• 51:29
  But most small things they can deal with nowadays even though.
• 51:33
  They can do that next. Time antibiotics themselves, so
• 51:37
  like they can make the decision themselves and prescribe them
• 51:41
  for things like urine infections and things like that.
• 51:44
  So yeah, it's quite good. You know what, you're bang on
• 51:46
  because I remember I got, I prescribed something by the
• 51:50
  doctors and it was very unclear the information and I think I
• 51:57
  tried to contact them and it just didn't work or whatever.
• 52:00
  There was an issue and they just told me like, oh, call your
• 52:02
  pharmacist. And so I called the pharmacist
• 52:05
  and like you said, the pharmacist was fantastic.
• 52:08
  Like it was the classic thing of like the box said, take it like
• 52:16
  I couldn't discern whether or not it would take it every week
• 52:19
  or take it like every two weeks or something like that.
• 52:22
  And I was, I didn't want to like overdose, obviously.
• 52:25
  So I'm like, what do I do? And I called the pharmacist and
• 52:28
  the pharmacist, same as what you just said, had taken the
• 52:31
  prescription before. So they knew and they just knew
• 52:33
  because they're trained. They're like, oh, no, no, no.
• 52:36
  You get a certain degree of choice over how much you take
• 52:39
  it. And I said like, OK, well could
• 52:43
  I take it like every week the same day?
• 52:46
  And he's like, yes, or you could do it.
• 52:49
  Like a lot more knowledge over the usage of it.
• 52:51
  It was. Brilliant.
• 52:52
  It gave me like at least three different options of what I
• 52:55
  could do. I was like, oh, brilliant, thank
• 52:57
  you. I always.
• 52:58
  Try that first. Always.
• 53:00
  There you go. It's a bit of a yeah, gold mine
• 53:02
  of advice right there to check your pharmacist out.
• 53:07
  You mentioned TikTok and, and sort of your audience on TikTok
• 53:12
  and obviously the the ignorance and stuff.
• 53:14
  I want to have some fun. So in terms of the questions,
• 53:18
  let's go with the obvious one. What are the most common
• 53:20
  questions you're getting? I know there's going to be
• 53:22
  obvious ones, but maybe there might be some surprises.
• 53:26
  Yeah. How do you, how do you switch
• 53:28
  your stream on? How do you go live?
• 53:31
  How do you click the button to go live?
• 53:33
  How do you drum? How do you How do you drum?
• 53:37
  That's that's a very broad question.
• 53:40
  I always respond to that one with, well, I've got arms, legs
• 53:44
  and brain and I think it's those things I use to drum not my
• 53:49
  eyes, but I understand the question in like most people,
• 53:52
  right their eyes, they really do.
• 53:55
  What they mean to ask is OK, as a blind person, how?
• 54:00
  How can you? How can you play them?
• 54:03
  Remember. Where?
• 54:04
  They are. Yeah.
• 54:04
  Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Muscle memory.
• 54:08
  Do you, this is actually something I want to ask you
• 54:11
  earlier. You often hear with the, with
• 54:14
  blind people, their hearing tends to be bad because
• 54:17
  obviously you're more focused on honing that sense.
• 54:20
  But however, you have to hone that sense and, and work on that
• 54:24
  sense. Can you speak to that?
• 54:26
  Like do you have better hearing or because you've said like you,
• 54:31
  you've battled quite a lot over the years back and forth,
• 54:33
  focusing and putting a lot of attention into working with your
• 54:37
  eyesight and, and what it's been over the years.
• 54:41
  So how is it for you? What's your hearing like?
• 54:46
  Yeah, I would definitely say growing up pre pre musical
• 54:51
  career, perfectly brilliant hearing.
• 54:53
  I would I would hear stuff that was like I would hear TV like
• 54:58
  the TV sound like I would hear electricity.
• 55:01
  I would hear electronics and things that other people
• 55:04
  wouldn't be able to hear like monitors to me.
• 55:06
  I would hear them, I'd hear them frequently, but I'm a drummer,
• 55:11
  but I'm a most drummer that never protect the disease
• 55:14
  correctly, which would would put out there this claimer protect
• 55:20
  your ears at all cost. Like any music, even in in the
• 55:23
  music venue, I would say think about protecting your ears.
• 55:26
  They are extremely precious, especially if you lose these.
• 55:29
  And I have damaged my ears and and quite considerably from not
• 55:35
  using ear protection when I was, you know, a young musician
• 55:39
  playing drums. And it was as loud as I could
• 55:41
  get it and and the louder the better.
• 55:45
  And I kind of wish I didn't. As a sound engineer, it's very
• 55:51
  important that I've got hearing, I'm trying to represent a stereo
• 55:57
  image from 2 speakers. If these are hearing different
• 56:00
  frequencies, because some are damaged in this area, some are
• 56:02
  damaged in that area. It's very difficult to to
• 56:06
  actually mix a song on properly, you know, as a as a sound
• 56:11
  engineer. And So what I have to do, I, I
• 56:15
  went and had hearing tests and I am on the brink of hearing loss.
• 56:18
  So I'm literally on the brink of having hearing aids.
• 56:23
  What I have to do is tune my speakers to my ears.
• 56:26
  So I know I've got certain hearing frequencies lost in one
• 56:29
  ear, like some on this one. This ear is much higher because
• 56:32
  of the symbols that I had on that side when I was much
• 56:35
  younger and performing. And this one has a lot of bass
• 56:39
  loss and this one has a lot of high loss.
• 56:42
  So I have to adjust my speakers. And I didn't until I understood
• 56:45
  that my ears were hearing things slightly different to each
• 56:48
  other. And I adjusted my speakers to
• 56:50
  that slightly by putting slight adjustments.
• 56:52
  I couldn't mix anything. Every time I was in the studio,
• 56:56
  it sounded awful because I was mixing to my ears.
• 56:59
  So everyone was hearing the compensation of.
• 57:03
  So they. Yeah.
• 57:04
  To me it sounded perfect. To everyone else, it sounded.
• 57:06
  Gosh, like why is everything mixed to that side?
• 57:10
  Why do this mixed to that side? I didn't realise that I had
• 57:13
  quite considerable hearing loss and that is a result of exposing
• 57:18
  myself to high pressure sound pressure too long.
• 57:22
  I performed in but when I was younger I think at one stage I
• 57:25
  performed in seven bands at the same time.
• 57:28
  Gigging, practicing, gigging, practicing.
• 57:31
  I was doing multiple hours a day.
• 57:33
  That's why I could perform so much on TikTok.
• 57:35
  Now I do about 5 hours a day of drumming still and most of
• 57:39
  that's on TikTok at the moment. But yeah, back then I was moving
• 57:43
  equipment, travelling to another gig.
• 57:46
  Sometimes I do 2 gigs in one night.
• 57:48
  And yeah, I never stopped. But all the impact that
• 57:54
  practicing like never protecting my ears has had a huge impact.
• 57:58
  So I will be a deafblind man, absolutely going to be.
• 58:02
  I'm already a deafblind man. I can't hear my partner
• 58:04
  whatsoever. She's right next to me and I'm
• 58:07
  like, I'm sorry, I, I don't know what you're saying.
• 58:11
  But then in some respects, I also still have frequencies that
• 58:15
  are very high, like are very, I'm very sensitive to.
• 58:20
  So there are sounds that would just go through me and I cannot
• 58:22
  deal with because they're so loud.
• 58:24
  But then there's other things that happen that, that block it.
• 58:27
  So yeah, I do now have quite considerable hearing loss, which
• 58:30
  is quite hard when you want to be a sound engineer.
• 58:36
  Yeah. Are you able to continue to be
• 58:37
  your sound engineer? To an extent, yeah, to an
• 58:40
  extent. A lot of live sound is is mixed
• 58:42
  in mono. Oh, Andy.
• 58:45
  Stereo output and nice, so that isn't too much of an issue.
• 58:48
  Plus, my performances don't rely on me mixing stuff like a lot of
• 58:52
  what, when I'm performing on the stage, my, you know, my stuff's
• 58:55
  mixed by another engineer and yeah, it, it serves me enough to
• 59:01
  do the work I need to do in music and production.
• 59:05
  But I will. I've always been trained to
• 59:07
  never mixed stuff anyway. I was always trained, you know,
• 59:11
  give it to another set of ears and then when you master it,
• 59:13
  give it to another set of ears because you'll get the best
• 59:16
  result. No, I don't need it now.
• 59:20
  Just to be able to communicate with people would be good.
• 59:23
  Fair enough. Do you think I'm going to
• 59:27
  ecstine or read some language? So.
• 59:34
  Yeah, I'm quite, I'm quite, I find.
• 59:36
  Yeah, I'm quite. I make quite a lot of humour out
• 59:38
  of my sight and stuff. It took me a long time in my
• 59:41
  life, but you know, it is what it is like if you don't make fun
• 59:45
  out of everything and everything becomes so serious, like never
• 59:49
  going to have a good time. It's.
• 59:51
  Good. It's always.
• 59:51
  Going to be a problem, well I can't do that because of this,
• 59:54
  well I need this, well I need that well just get stuck in and
• 59:57
  do it and that's all the maths. Fair play.
• 1:00:01
  There you go great advice for life.
• 1:00:04
  Obviously it's one thing to to play drums on your own and to
• 1:00:08
  find a way to do that being partially sighted and you know,
• 1:00:14
  the battles that you're facing with hearing and everything in
• 1:00:16
  in between to perform live. Obviously whole other ball game
• 1:00:23
  like in bands and stuff, like so much of the performance tends to
• 1:00:27
  be being able to, you know, see the other musicians and and sort
• 1:00:33
  of accordingly adjust yourself. And obviously drumming is all
• 1:00:39
  about timing. You know, as we know you in a
• 1:00:41
  band, you are like the centrepiece.
• 1:00:42
  You are the thing that keeps everything together, the glue.
• 1:00:45
  So how have you managed to do that over the years and
• 1:00:49
  communicate with other musicians on stage despite being, you
• 1:00:53
  know, partially sighted and everything?
• 1:01:00
  So in some respects I would ask for adjustments to be made.
• 1:01:03
  So like at Firstly I found it quite difficult my bandmates
• 1:01:09
  would support me. I mean I think 1 main thing was
• 1:01:11
  a lot of my bandmates were good long standing friends from
• 1:01:16
  school, albeit a lot older than me.
• 1:01:19
  They, I spent a lot of time with them by the point of gigging
• 1:01:24
  and, and they knew my concerns and what the problems were and
• 1:01:28
  stuff. So they would, you know, walk me
• 1:01:30
  on stage. It would look all natural, just
• 1:01:32
  look like we walked them on stage.
• 1:01:34
  But to me they were guiding me on and helping me with my,
• 1:01:37
  making sure I wasn't tripping over a cable or like, but also I
• 1:01:40
  would ask for slight adjustments from the venues.
• 1:01:42
  So because because I had my contact lenses removed, you
• 1:01:49
  actually have the UV protection in your eyes.
• 1:01:51
  So for most of my life I saw UV. And to me you, you depict that
• 1:01:57
  as a black light because to you it's black and everything glows
• 1:02:01
  up that is reflected by it. But for me, I actually see the
• 1:02:04
  rays of colour from the light, which is actually deep, really
• 1:02:08
  deep purple like So instead of seeing black in a black light, I
• 1:02:12
  see deep purple. So instead of pure black, it's
• 1:02:15
  absolutely vibrant purple to me. So everything becomes purpose.
• 1:02:20
  So I used to say like, would you mind switching the UV lights
• 1:02:23
  off? I would ask them to have fixed
• 1:02:27
  lights on me so that this all the stuff was going on around
• 1:02:31
  me, all the lights, all the blah, blah, blah.
• 1:02:32
  But to me, there was always a fixed light source on me.
• 1:02:35
  So I. So yeah, I might have looked
• 1:02:37
  like big drummer with a big spotlight and but it gave me
• 1:02:40
  enough light to be able to do what I could do.
• 1:02:43
  I actually did not have this double vision problem and these
• 1:02:46
  these there's too much light going into my eyes at the time.
• 1:02:49
  So I don't really know what it would be like to be on a stage
• 1:02:54
  again since they've had these lens alias and I've had the
• 1:02:59
  double vision, but I can only imagine that it would be
• 1:03:02
  absolutely insane. I know that travelling in a car
• 1:03:05
  at night is just like. Oh, of course.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah, that's got to be. There and everything's like
• 1:03:10
  stars, like I see. They're like laser beams coming
• 1:03:13
  off every light in my eye as well.
• 1:03:16
  So I get a lot of, I think you get that a lot with astigmatisms
• 1:03:19
  because you've got an astigmatism as the viewer like
• 1:03:22
  you would be able to relate to the star like lights.
• 1:03:26
  Well I get it from like the tiny little lights that are on power
• 1:03:29
  supplies and things. So I'm walking through the house
• 1:03:31
  at night and it's pit, it's black and I see a little power
• 1:03:33
  light and there's a big bright green star in my eye, but I see
• 1:03:38
  multiple of them. So I've got 4 big bright green
• 1:03:41
  stars in my life. So yeah, going on stage now
• 1:03:45
  would probably be quite difficult.
• 1:03:48
  I might have to wear complete black, like dark, extremely dark
• 1:03:51
  black glasses. And I'd probably trip over
• 1:03:57
  things a lot more. But I would just ask for
• 1:03:59
  adjustments or work with people that know this problem and they
• 1:04:03
  would be able to support me in a way that, you know, I'm
• 1:04:06
  definitely not going to be the blind drummer that walks on
• 1:04:09
  stage with a white stick because I don't need that much
• 1:04:12
  attention. But yeah, maybe it would bring
• 1:04:17
  awareness to people. I don't know.
• 1:04:18
  I don't know. I don't know how I would fare
• 1:04:21
  now currently. So that's the next challenge is
• 1:04:23
  getting to back to live performance is a real, real big
• 1:04:27
  need for me inside Like it like I've truly found myself again
• 1:04:32
  back in music. It feels like I lost myself for
• 1:04:35
  many years and music is the only thing that I know is true to me.
• 1:04:40
  In fact, so much I wasn't originally named James Music,
• 1:04:44
  I've actually changed my full name to James Music because I
• 1:04:48
  feel like music is the only thing that truly, truly means
• 1:04:52
  something to me deeply inside, and the only thing I know is
• 1:04:55
  true in myself is music. So I've tried to adopt that in
• 1:05:00
  my therapy journey and move forward, and I'm James Music
• 1:05:04
  now. I am Mr. Music, beautiful man,
• 1:05:08
  thank you for sharing. Who has served as or who or
• 1:05:14
  where do you draw inspiration from?
• 1:05:21
  Obviously there are there, there's a whole host of drummers
• 1:05:26
  that from from a drumming point of view, but I spend a lot of
• 1:05:33
  time trying to understand people and their minds and their
• 1:05:40
  emotions and what they they mean.
• 1:05:42
  So I draw a lot of inspiration from people.
• 1:05:46
  I guess musically, obviously it's some specific drummers and
• 1:05:50
  bands that I grew up listening to and music that like we hear,
• 1:05:54
  but I'm not really necessarily set on one genre.
• 1:05:58
  I grew up listening to a lot of like 90s naughties, kind of rock
• 1:06:06
  metal in the punk kind of alternative, the alternative
• 1:06:11
  scene, popular and kind of underground as well.
• 1:06:16
  And I've taken a lot from everything.
• 1:06:18
  But in terms of drummers, some of the biggest influences I have
• 1:06:23
  are people like Dave Growl from the Foo Fighters, a multi
• 1:06:28
  instrumentalist that also played for Nirvana.
• 1:06:32
  Taylor Hawkins is another big big interest of mine, but
• 1:06:38
  there's some also some extremely other influential drummers from
• 1:06:42
  from like the 80s and 90s. Bill Bruford paid for King
• 1:06:46
  Crimson and someone who I am meeting in a couple of weeks,
• 1:06:52
  Thomas Lang. He you won't probably wouldn't
• 1:06:55
  know him by name, but the but the people that he has worked
• 1:06:59
  with, he has been one of the top musicians, top session musicians
• 1:07:03
  in, in the world for many decades now.
• 1:07:06
  And he has worked from everyone from Boyzone to the witch to
• 1:07:10
  like, I don't know, Megadeth. Like he, he, he's what I'm
• 1:07:14
  saying is he covered every genre and his discography is just
• 1:07:18
  insane. He has also created Brumming
• 1:07:21
  School where he coaches people and he's done that for many
• 1:07:24
  years and he's finally coming back to the UK and I have a rare
• 1:07:30
  opportunity to meet him. So in a couple of weeks I'll be
• 1:07:33
  meeting my idol and speaking to him for an hour and then doing a
• 1:07:37
  four hour master class with him. So yeah, things could only,
• 1:07:41
  things are going very well at the moment and I'm like I am
• 1:07:45
  meeting my influences. I've met Bill Bruford multiple
• 1:07:48
  times, Billy Cobbham multiple times and these are all people I
• 1:07:53
  draw quite a deep rooted kind of fashion of music and and my
• 1:07:57
  influence comes from, yeah, all these places.
• 1:08:01
  I don't know man awesome stuff, good to hear it.
• 1:08:06
  What advice could you give to other blind musicians based on
• 1:08:13
  like the challenges you faced and how you've kind of fought
• 1:08:15
  for it and where you are today? I guess I guess my advice
• 1:08:23
  doesn't just go for blind people, anyone, anyone with a
• 1:08:27
  challenge or anyone. I mean being a musician is just
• 1:08:31
  the challenge in itself. Just be true to yourself.
• 1:08:37
  You don't need to follow in the footsteps of other people to
• 1:08:40
  feel successful. I feel like is what I want to
• 1:08:43
  say. I spent a long time in my career
• 1:08:47
  feeling like I needed to get to a certain level before I would
• 1:08:53
  allow myself to enjoy it. Like it felt like I needed to be
• 1:08:57
  something before it was actually happening.
• 1:09:00
  But really what I learned was the process of getting there is
• 1:09:05
  the most important part and the most enjoyable part.
• 1:09:09
  And if you put too much emphasis on the future of what you're
• 1:09:12
  trying to get to, like if you create a product and nothing
• 1:09:15
  will, nothing will feel right until you've create and you've
• 1:09:19
  achieved that product in your head.
• 1:09:21
  So for me, it's like learn. My best advice for anyone is
• 1:09:25
  learn the like, learn to enjoy the doing part of it.
• 1:09:30
  Learn you are doing it. You are a musician.
• 1:09:33
  You don't need to get to this point to be seen as that
• 1:09:36
  musician. You are successful because you
• 1:09:39
  are doing it. That's the the most advice I
• 1:09:43
  could give to anyone trying to do anything, not just music,
• 1:09:47
  which really goes back to the to to the what I said.
• 1:09:50
  I follow, I follow this guy called Bashar, not, not
• 1:09:54
  religiously because you know, it's a bit here and out there.
• 1:09:58
  Apparently he's that he's channeling an extraterrestrial
• 1:10:01
  being that has all the knowledge of everything but the words in
• 1:10:04
  the way that he portrays. This is what I follow.
• 1:10:08
  Do the do the do the the thing you love most to the best of
• 1:10:11
  your ability. And that is all you need to do
• 1:10:14
  for abundance and success. And that's all I apply to life.
• 1:10:17
  So it's the same do the best, do your best of your ability.
• 1:10:21
  Do the thing you love most to the best of your ability.
• 1:10:24
  You will never don't work a day in your life or feel like you
• 1:10:28
  do. That's the dream, certainly what
• 1:10:32
  I'm working towards. And I guess, I guess my other
• 1:10:35
  advice would be through challenges and stuff.
• 1:10:39
  I mean, most people want to like skirt around it, around the edge
• 1:10:44
  of things. Like they, they come up to
• 1:10:46
  something that stops them in their tracks.
• 1:10:48
  They either try and go up and over it, they're over try and go
• 1:10:51
  around it. They're trying to try and dig
• 1:10:52
  under it. But there's this big thing still
• 1:10:55
  in the way. The only real way is through is
• 1:10:58
  literally carving that tunnel through the blockage because you
• 1:11:02
  will come out the other side and it, it will never be there
• 1:11:05
  again. You've made the channel.
• 1:11:06
  You can go back and forwards. That's my other advice to anyone
• 1:11:10
  trying to achieve something that they feel that there are these
• 1:11:14
  barriers in the way there truly aren't because the barriers are
• 1:11:18
  the learn are the you know, the barriers are the places you
• 1:11:22
  learn and the paces you strengthen yourself.
• 1:11:25
  Imagine trying to get through that blockage, round it up and
• 1:11:29
  over it, around it. It's never going to give you as
• 1:11:32
  much strength as you would get by plowing through it and
• 1:11:35
  building that hole, punching through it and having a way back
• 1:11:39
  through if it makes sense. Yeah, but what I?
• 1:11:42
  I try and look at life now. What about if you're never
• 1:11:45
  making any meaningful progress? What about then?
• 1:11:49
  Because I I feel stuck in my life.
• 1:11:51
  I feel like for all the effort I've put in, it's not really a
• 1:11:56
  matter to anything. I'm in the worst position now,
• 1:11:58
  five years later than I was then.
• 1:12:02
  Like would. Feel like we're easily no, I
• 1:12:05
  mean, I'm currently working on this this process with a friend
• 1:12:08
  Clint. He's on he's on a TikTok and
• 1:12:10
  every morning we try and come together at 11:00 and at 11:11
• 1:12:15
  we start saying affirmations for the day.
• 1:12:19
  And we go through this, these 10 affirmations that are very like
• 1:12:23
  very focused on you and self-care and and treating
• 1:12:27
  yourself that you are you're doing OK.
• 1:12:30
  And we try and do these things. And I think as humans, we don't
• 1:12:34
  believe that it is that simple to reprogram ourselves.
• 1:12:38
  We do something on repeat, right?
• 1:12:40
  So say, say you're a musician. Do you do one thing on repeat
• 1:12:45
  for 30 days? Ultimately, inevitably, you're
• 1:12:48
  going to be better at it at the end.
• 1:12:51
  Why aren't we doing that to ourselves about being kind?
• 1:12:54
  So I truly feel that when we're stuck in these situations where
• 1:12:59
  everything's getting to us, everything's at us, everything
• 1:13:02
  feels like it's being fired at us, we then turn that in and
• 1:13:06
  internalise that on ourselves. We've becomes maybe slightly
• 1:13:10
  negative but not not saying you're consciously negative to
• 1:13:13
  yourself and like beating yourself up, but.
• 1:13:16
  Oh, I am, I'll admit. I'll openly admit I try not to.
• 1:13:20
  I feel like it's. There is a level of of that we
• 1:13:24
  need to recognize. You're recognizing those things
• 1:13:27
  so far. So I feel like the steps would
• 1:13:29
  be to start being kinder to self each day.
• 1:13:32
  And although at first you might not feel like it, it means
• 1:13:35
  anything. Like I'm telling you, telling
• 1:13:39
  yourself something on repeat for 30 days inevitably goes in,
• 1:13:44
  something goes in and something changes within that process.
• 1:13:48
  And I'm trying to practice that right now.
• 1:13:49
  I know it's extremely hard. It's extremely hard.
• 1:13:52
  Everything seems to be going wrong for me as well at times.
• 1:13:56
  But again, the only way is through.
• 1:13:58
  The only way is through the TikTok issues with
• 1:14:00
  accessibility. Rather than me just walking away
• 1:14:03
  from it and letting it attack me, I'll go through it with with
• 1:14:09
  my head held high that like I'm being kind to myself still.
• 1:14:13
  I'm still doing the right thing even though it stopped me from
• 1:14:16
  doing what I want to do right now, which was hopefully succeed
• 1:14:19
  in a competition. I'm still achieving something
• 1:14:23
  from the situation, which is wider knowledge of accessibility
• 1:14:27
  issues, wider knowledge of blindness, and maybe, maybe even
• 1:14:30
  TikTok wouldn't actually fix the problem with us.
• 1:14:34
  And we come up with a solution where I can go next on next
• 1:14:38
  year's competition and possibly succeed.
• 1:14:41
  So yeah, I kind of feel like going back to your point, I feel
• 1:14:47
  like as humans wouldn't, wouldn't we're too harsh on
• 1:14:49
  ourselves. And we also don't see the the
• 1:14:57
  importance of practising things on repeat and that we can
• 1:15:01
  reprogram so much in ourselves just by telling ourselves and
• 1:15:09
  and believing in those words. And a lot, a lot of words have
• 1:15:14
  become so empty in the world. I kind of hope that answers your
• 1:15:19
  questions. I know I, I, I spit, I spin
• 1:15:22
  about a bit on different things, but like, it's still all, yeah,
• 1:15:26
  be kinder to yourself, man. It was a hard thing for me to
• 1:15:29
  do. It was a real hard thing for me
• 1:15:32
  to do. But regardless of whether it's
• 1:15:36
  going right or whether it's going wrong, you're still there
• 1:15:38
  and you're still doing it and getting up every day.
• 1:15:42
  I feel like the biggest thing for me, every day is a brand new
• 1:15:45
  day. It's a brand new possibility for
• 1:15:49
  achievement and if it doesn't happen, I don't beat myself up.
• 1:15:54
  I didn't stream this morning. I've stopped beating myself up
• 1:15:57
  about it. It's not my problem.
• 1:15:59
  I don't need to be there every 5 minutes on every occasion if I
• 1:16:03
  need that break. I'm self-care, so I'm going to
• 1:16:06
  feel a whole lot better tomorrow from it.
• 1:16:12
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 1:16:20
  That's a hard one. I'm going to have to think about
• 1:16:23
  that. I don't.
• 1:16:31
  I Yeah, I don't know, Probably always trust yourself.
• 1:16:36
  Always trust yourself. And you never did for many
• 1:16:38
  years. I always trust your instinct.
• 1:16:41
  I don't. Yeah.
• 1:16:43
  I guess I don't take much advice for people.
• 1:16:48
  Maybe I need to work on that bit?
• 1:16:51
  Oh, it depends what the advice is really, isn't it?
• 1:16:53
  Sometimes it resonates, sometimes it's good, sometimes
• 1:16:56
  it's bad, sometimes it doesn't relate.
• 1:16:59
  I don't know. It's there's a lot to it.
• 1:17:02
  I guess the the the basis of this, always follow your true
• 1:17:05
  instinct. Always follow your heart and
• 1:17:07
  your true instincts. It's kind of the best advice
• 1:17:09
  I've ever ever got from someone I guess.
• 1:17:14
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learnt so far?
• 1:17:27
  Biggest lifeless I guess that I am the most important person in
• 1:17:34
  this world and and yeah I guess that's my biggest life lesson is
• 1:17:42
  learning that I am the most important person in this world
• 1:17:46
  to me and nobody can ever no I can never be that important like
• 1:17:54
  I not explaining it very. Well, no, I get what you're
• 1:17:58
  saying. Yeah, but that says something
• 1:18:00
  similar. He says you are your own best
• 1:18:04
  friend. You know, like from the moment
• 1:18:06
  of birth till death. Like you, you know yourself
• 1:18:09
  better than anyone else. And as you were saying, there
• 1:18:13
  like no one is ever going to be. You're never going to be as
• 1:18:16
  important to anyone else as you are to yourself.
• 1:18:19
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:18:23
  Solid stuff. Final question for you in what's
• 1:18:27
  been the fantastic show? Do you have any upcoming
• 1:18:30
  projects or final thoughts that you'd like to share of our
• 1:18:32
  listeners? I think you've you've already
• 1:18:38
  asked the questions which would have been final thoughts.
• 1:18:42
  Oh yeah, yeah. I would say believe in yourself
• 1:18:45
  no matter what you're trying to do, no matter what hurdles are
• 1:18:47
  in front of you. I click my life is a testament
• 1:18:51
  and then it's not been perfect and I've got a lot of trauma
• 1:18:53
  from it. But the only way is through.
• 1:18:56
  The only way is to believe in yourself.
• 1:18:59
  Yeah, you've kind of asked me those questions to get that out.
• 1:19:02
  I mean, future projects. I currently, I've just launched
• 1:19:07
  a music Academy. It was going to be launched on
• 1:19:10
  Tiktok fully, but I'm having to kind of stem away from Tiktok
• 1:19:14
  some of all the issues that I'm having with them.
• 1:19:16
  But I'm launching A TikTok, sorry.
• 1:19:18
  I'm launching the Music Academy for Young People.
• 1:19:22
  And really it's open to anyone that seeks therapy and music in
• 1:19:25
  any way, shape or form. And I will be providing all my
• 1:19:32
  service, providing teachings for all my services.
• 1:19:35
  So music production, music competition, composition and
• 1:19:40
  grumming, drumming lessons, and also be supporting people to
• 1:19:46
  kind of follow similar pathways to me.
• 1:19:48
  If they're interested in streaming, I would also help
• 1:19:52
  them mentor them through a streaming pathway so that they
• 1:19:56
  eventually get to where they want to be in their career.
• 1:20:00
  And I will teach everything that I know about the challenges I've
• 1:20:03
  faced and how I've tried to, you know, get through them.
• 1:20:07
  So I guess it's, it's teaching in a different way.
• 1:20:11
  It's not sitting there. Learning grades in music, It's,
• 1:20:14
  it's about the industry, it's about learning from the
• 1:20:17
  experience of others, not just in music, but in many different
• 1:20:22
  respects. Yeah.
• 1:20:26
  So the music Academy is the main thing.
• 1:20:28
  But I'm also, I'm also, I've also got 30 years experience in
• 1:20:34
  in computer programming. So I'm launching myself as a as
• 1:20:38
  a software engineer. So yeah, just need to go to my
• 1:20:43
  main website, whichisjamesmusic.uk, and I
• 1:20:48
  should have all the links literally launching in the next
• 1:20:50
  week. So there'll be multiple websites
• 1:20:53
  and stuff there. You can connect with me
• 1:20:55
  musically as a software engineer or just just as someone you're
• 1:20:59
  interested in chatting to. So yeah, that's me.
• 1:21:02
  So anything you don't do, God damn brilliant.
• 1:21:06
  Love it. Yes, apparently do the washing,
• 1:21:09
  do the washing. But I was like please give me
• 1:21:13
  that. One, that's what I really care
• 1:21:14
  about. Oh, it's been an absolute
• 1:21:19
  pleasure having you on the show. Yeah, no, I'm really, really
• 1:21:22
  pleased that you invited me. I feel like it was an
• 1:21:24
  opportunity waiting to happen. It's really odd that I've seen
• 1:21:27
  you on the on the app a few times and I'm like, oh, that'd
• 1:21:31
  be interesting. One day I might get someone and
• 1:21:33
  then randomly it happened. I actually came into your room a
• 1:21:37
  few times and then one of your, your viewers mentioned it and
• 1:21:41
  maybe you should have a chat to this guy.
• 1:21:43
  So yeah, I think it was meant to happen.
• 1:21:45
  There you go. Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:21:48
  And yeah, if anyone's got any further questions, like there's
• 1:21:51
  I've got an e-mail address, jamesandjamesmusic.uk.
• 1:21:54
  Just find me an e-mail. And if you want to work
• 1:21:57
  together, I'm open for everything there.
• 1:22:00
  You go solid stuff. Thank you so much.
• 1:22:03
  Christian, if you want any support of anything let me know,
• 1:22:05
  there's a lot of things I do. I'd love that.
• 1:22:08
  I'd love to get together and do something.
• 1:22:09
  That'd be brilliant. Thank you, Sir.
• 1:22:12
  It's been, it's been a pleasure. It's been an honour.
• 1:22:14
  And yeah, thank you very much. I wish you the very best to all
• 1:22:17
  the listeners of the Christian Reef Podcast.
• 1:22:19
  I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I did.
• 1:22:22
  If you want to see bonus content, bonus episodes of the
• 1:22:26
  podcast, and everything in between, support the podcast you
• 1:22:28
  can do on patreon.com/christian Reeve.
• 1:22:32
  I'll make sure that all the links to James's stuff are
• 1:22:34
  included as well. Thank you so much for listening
• 1:22:38
  and I'll see you all in the next one.