Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / The Art of Living: A Journey Through Art, History, and Freedom with Tom Parsons | Ep 23 Live Free Ride Free

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The Art of Living: A Journey Through Art, History, and Freedom with Tom Parsons | Ep 23 Live Free Ride Free · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:01
  Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:06
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
• 0:13
  audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
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• 0:16
  If you like what we do here, please give it a thumbs up,
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• 0:24
  To find out about our certification courses, online video libraries,
• 0:29
  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisakson.
• 0:33
  com.
• 0:34
  So now let's jump in.
• 0:36
  Alright lads, this one is a real treat for me, because I've got one
• 0:40
  of my oldest friends sitting on Zoom.
• 0:43
  Tom Parsons.
• 0:45
  Tom I have known for 40 years, I think?
• 0:49
  So clearly, obviously before, since before I was born, or he was born.
• 0:53
  And I've watched Participated in and cheered on the events of Tom's live
• 1:01
  free, ride free life decade by decade.
• 1:04
  And still am.
• 1:06
  And I wanted him on the show because, as you know, I don't always want
• 1:10
  people who are well known here.
• 1:12
  I don't want there to be this idea that to lead a self actualised,
• 1:16
  fulfilled or successful life, that somehow requires some public thing.
• 1:21
  It doesn't.
• 1:22
  We know this.
• 1:23
  It's much more personal than that.
• 1:25
  And so how do people fulfill their
• 1:32
  soul needs through the course of living the lives that are quite normal?
• 1:40
  You know, we, we go to school, maybe we go to university, we get this job,
• 1:45
  we get that job, we have, we meet someone, we have kids, then suddenly
• 1:48
  we're drowning in nappies for 500 years and then we look up and we're 80.
• 1:53
  And that is, I think, the story of many of our lives.
• 1:57
  However, what happens in between is
• 2:03
  Tom is, I think, the epitome of that for me.
• 2:07
  What has driven Tom is art history, but in ways that are maybe somewhat unusual.
• 2:16
  And this has brought him to, at the point of retirement, really now a whole new
• 2:24
  career with certain types of festival and certain types of production and
• 2:32
  encouragement of the arts with youth.
• 2:34
  And the next 40 years are going to be as interesting, if not
• 2:37
  more so, as the last 40 years.
• 2:39
  So here is a self actualised live free life, live free
• 2:43
  life, live free ride free life,
• 2:47
  right on a plate for all of us to eat from and enjoy.
• 2:51
  So, Tom Parsons, thank you for coming on the show.
• 2:55
  Tom Parsons: My pleasure.
• 2:55
  Thank you.
• 2:56
  Thanks, Rude.
• 2:56
  Nice to, nice to
• 2:58
  Rupert Isaacson: see you.
• 2:59
  Now what none of you can see, actually you probably can see because we're going to
• 3:02
  be putting this up on YouTube these days, is you might be forgiven for thinking
• 3:06
  that I got Bill Nighy on the show.
• 3:09
  And I couldn't actually get Bill Nighy, so I got Tom to stand in, because
• 3:12
  he looks exactly like Bill Nighy.
• 3:13
  And I think that Bill Nighy actually has been secretly following Tom around
• 3:17
  for the last few decades, copying him, and turning that into his acting career.
• 3:23
  Because I don't know anyone who, I don't think even Bill
• 3:25
  Nye is as Bill Nye e e as Tom.
• 3:30
  So, Tom, talk to us now about why you love art history so much.
• 3:38
  How did that start with you as a kid?
• 3:40
  Where were you born and brought up?
• 3:42
  How did it enter your life, and at what point did you know,
• 3:44
  Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do.
• 3:46
  I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but that's what I'm gonna do.
• 3:48
  Tom Parsons: Okay, thank you.
• 3:49
  I was born and brought up in a
• 3:53
  comfortable house in, in southwest London.
• 3:57
  I guess we had, you know, we had some nice paintings or posters and things at home.
• 4:02
  I went to the Tate at 15 in rather a sort of hormonal state thought and
• 4:09
  enjoyed it, didn't understand anything I was looking at, but enjoyed that.
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  We didn't do art history at school.
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  I ended up going to university to study English and got very drunk one night and
• 4:21
  The next day, I was in such a state that I knew that I couldn't really function, so I
• 4:29
  ended up, I thought, I know, I'll go to an art history lecture because I'm not taking
• 4:34
  the subject, I'm vaguely interested in it, but more to the point, it'll be dark
• 4:40
  and warm and I know I can fall asleep.
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  So I went to this lecture.
• 4:45
  And I did fall asleep, but when I woke up, the slide that was
• 4:50
  on the screen was a a, a Rothko.
• 4:53
  And I, I remembered I'd seen this or seen a painting by Rothko in the
• 4:57
  Tate and thought it was rubbish.
• 4:58
  It was just a big rectangle.
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  Anyone could do that.
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  So I listened, I was intrigued to see what the lecturer was gonna
• 5:04
  say, and I, I had a sort of you know, wrote to Damascus moment.
• 5:08
  I, it was.
• 5:09
  I converted on the spot to believing, still do believe, Rothko is rather
• 5:14
  amazing, completely amazing.
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  Anyway, wobbled out of the lecture, went to my department, the English
• 5:21
  department, and and said, please, can I change my degree to art history?
• 5:25
  So I ended up doing both.
• 5:28
  And Left University, and I suppose at that point decided, yeah, I'll try to make a
• 5:38
  living out of out of what I love, which, which by that point was European art.
• 5:46
  So, so yeah.
• 5:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, let's get, let's, there's a couple of
• 5:49
  things I want to ask you there.
• 5:50
  Okay, so Rothko, those of you who don't know Rothko, can you
• 5:55
  describe Rothko please, Tom?
• 5:57
  Tom Parsons: Okay, Rothko is a New York painter who died in the early 70s he's
• 6:03
  part of the abstract expressionist school, and he painted large scale well, his
• 6:13
  characteristic style that he reached in his maturity are large scale abstracts.
• 6:20
  Very simple on, on first viewing, sort of huge, rectangular,
• 6:24
  moody, pulsating Blobs of color.
• 6:28
  And and he made, he claimed for them A sort of spiritual eloquence.
• 6:36
  He never went that much further in terms of trying to explain.
• 6:41
  But but he did, he did make certain assertions.
• 6:44
  And you can, you can agree or not but I'm, I'm one of the ones who, who do agree that
• 6:50
  they have that sort of power and impact.
• 6:54
  And yeah, he's, he's good.
• 6:56
  Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting though, because I don't know
• 6:58
  you so much as an abstract dude.
• 7:00
  I know you much more as a high renaissance art, baroque art art historian, you
• 7:06
  know, I've, I've been with you in Italy and I want to go into this
• 7:09
  and the story of art and why it's so amazing and why it helps us understand.
• 7:14
  who we are and why we are and what we might do wrong again in the future.
• 7:18
  But you also said something about a road to Damascus moment there and conversion.
• 7:25
  One of the best ways I ever heard you describe yourself
• 7:29
  was as a died again Christian.
• 7:31
  Talk to us a little bit about you were that moody adolescent,
• 7:37
  then you got religion, then you went off and did some interesting
• 7:42
  stuff before university, and then.
• 7:45
  You changed a bit, and why?
• 7:47
  Talk us through that.
• 7:50
  Tom Parsons: Okay yeah, I did have a very sort of Christian
• 7:54
  phase in my later teenage years.
• 7:58
  Why?
• 7:58
  Because I
• 7:59
  Rupert Isaacson: know you weren't brought up that way.
• 8:01
  Tom Parsons: It was a, on the one hand, I think it was actually a form
• 8:05
  of rebellion and because it was quite a, it was a sort of evangelical form
• 8:18
  of, of the Christian faith, it was sort of, so it was, In, in, in one sense it,
• 8:23
  you know, it was sort of radical and, and ultra committed and, and so on.
• 8:29
  Anyway, so there was that aspect to it.
• 8:31
  It, but it also simultaneously fulfilled a a, you know, a kind of
• 8:37
  teenage longing for, for the ideal.
• 8:41
  And And on the back of that, I went, I had a year, a gap year, a year
• 8:50
  off between school and university and I went off to a phenomenal
• 8:56
  place as a volunteer in Hong Kong.
• 8:59
  And I met, I, I volunteered for a woman.
• 9:05
  Who ran a rehab center for heroin addicts Hong Kong Chinese, all
• 9:11
  ages, all backgrounds, but all, all of whom had in common that their
• 9:15
  lives had been destroyed by heroin.
• 9:19
  And she took them off the streets and, and put them back together.
• 9:22
  And I, as I say, I worked there for six months.
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  Yeah, I, it was that was, that was extraordinary.
• 9:37
  And I suppose, I suppose the, well, I don't know something about,
• 9:46
  I don't know, what I realized there, and I realize, I suppose there's a
• 9:52
  common thread through my life, is that for me, I ended up teaching
• 9:57
  but the, the mechanism is similar.
• 9:58
  In other words, When you put yourself in a position where you are,
• 10:07
  as it were, giving to other people, whether it's in a classroom or
• 10:11
  a rehab centre in Hong Kong,
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  you get so much back.
• 10:19
  And I and I So there's a sort of selfishness in, in in my motivation,
• 10:27
  there always has been or rather it's just a circle if you give you get back,
• 10:32
  and that's, that's a good way to live.
• 10:37
  Rupert Isaacson: I remember a story you told me about that time in
• 10:39
  Hong Kong a bit of a life or death situation, where, involving oil.
• 10:46
  Tom Parsons: Oh yeah, okay.
• 10:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Please tell that story and what that left you, what insights
• 10:52
  did you gain from that experience?
• 10:56
  Tom Parsons: I think the story is, it was the only time
• 11:00
  I've ever felt threatened I think whilst I was there, but the, I was in this, in
• 11:05
  this flat, we, there were what sort of, I made About 20 of us living in a, an
• 11:11
  apartment in a high rise in, in Hong Kong.
• 11:15
  And and my, my role there was, you know, I was the, the, the, the sort of odd
• 11:19
  job boy really just doing menial stuff.
• 11:22
  But anyway, one evening I should explain, all, all of the cooking was
• 11:25
  done by the by the guys, the guys.
• 11:28
  Cause they knew how to cook.
• 11:30
  I certainly didn't know how to cook and I certainly didn't
• 11:31
  know how to cook Chinese food.
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  So they did all the cooking.
• 11:35
  I had no idea what I was eating half the time.
• 11:37
  I did recognize bits of pig head every now and again, but anyway, whatever.
• 11:42
  But one, one evening there was.
• 11:47
  There was a row in the kitchen and I was the only, I think I was the only
• 11:53
  volunteer at that moment in the flat.
• 11:57
  And I went into the kitchen to try and sort this thing out, whatever it was.
• 12:03
  And the, the guy who was really, really cross and angry about
• 12:09
  whatever it was turned and he was holding a wok with smoking oil.
• 12:15
  It was very, very hot.
• 12:16
  And he, he was threatening to throw it all over me.
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  And at that moment, one of the other guys came up and just
• 12:23
  put his hand on my shoulder.
• 12:24
  I in, I think and just sort of said, Tom, just step back, step back and.
• 12:30
  So I did but I was quite shaken by that.
• 12:34
  It was the only, as I said, the only time there was any, ever, ever any
• 12:39
  sort of threat of violence to me.
• 12:42
  And yeah, I was a bit shaken at the time.
• 12:47
  It, it passed.
• 12:48
  It was fine, actually.
• 12:50
  The, the, the desire amongst the guys in that flat to straighten out their lives.
• 12:58
  overrid or overrode such moments.
• 13:03
  And so, you know, I was, I was immensely privileged to unfortunate
• 13:09
  to be, to be part of that.
• 13:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Those kinds of early experiences do you feel that they're
• 13:19
  actually quite important in the life?
• 13:22
  Of a young person.
• 13:23
  I'm, I'm, in terms of understanding your own resilience and
• 13:26
  understanding perspective taking.
• 13:29
  How do you think, I can think of similar things that happened to me, you
• 13:33
  know, at that age and over the years.
• 13:36
  And I can sort of see how I've drawn on those things.
• 13:40
  I, I, I believe now for many, many reasons, our youth, we, they
• 13:49
  live in a slightly more sheltered.
• 13:53
  universe than we might have done.
• 13:56
  Things were very different back in the eighties.
• 13:59
  What do you think an experience like that did for you as you became an adult?
• 14:07
  It's your subconscious.
• 14:10
  Tom Parsons: The whole experience that my experience there was, well, actually
• 14:15
  one of the things that's relevant is that I think I remember after about
• 14:17
  three months there, I was aware that other friends of mine were, you know,
• 14:26
  partying in India or Australia, wherever they were, or even back in London.
• 14:33
  And I wasn't, and I was very, my, my, my life there was, you know,
• 14:39
  very limited, very, very strictly organized and, and, and so on.
• 14:44
  I had no, I had, I had one, one day off a week.
• 14:49
  And after about three months, I remember saying to Jackie,
• 14:54
  who's the lady who ran the place.
• 14:56
  So Jackie, I'm finding this really quite hard.
• 14:57
  I got this urge to go.
• 14:59
  I still want to go traveling and, and so on.
• 15:02
  And she said, well, look.
• 15:03
  You know, you're a volunteer, you can go, you can leave anytime
• 15:05
  you like, anytime you like, but
• 15:09
  I just want to remind you that you, when you wrote to ask if you could come, you,
• 15:15
  you said you would stay for six months.
• 15:16
  And I said, yeah, I know, I know.
• 15:19
  And, and I know that I ought to, I know I ought to stay because
• 15:23
  that's what I said I would do.
• 15:24
  I'm just.
• 15:25
  I'm just saying, she said, well, look, you are free.
• 15:28
  My problem was that I had a ticket, my flight, my flight back, I'd prepaid,
• 15:34
  I didn't have the money to extend it.
• 15:37
  Anyway, I went off, had a think, went back to see her the next day and
• 15:41
  said, no, of course I'm going to stay.
• 15:43
  I can't, I can't, I can't break my promise.
• 15:47
  I can't, I won't be able to live with myself.
• 15:49
  So, and I think about a week later.
• 15:52
  She came back and said right, we're going to pay for the extension for your ticket.
• 15:57
  So that did, so I actually, I did get the opportunity to go, I
• 16:02
  went off into China at the end.
• 16:06
  So it was, it, that, so yeah, I, what did I learn?
• 16:09
  I just learned, yeah, if you make a promise, you, you stick to it.
• 16:12
  And for your own, so that you can look yourself in, in the mirror.
• 16:21
  Rupert Isaacson: You've spent now.
• 16:23
  Some decades working with kids who were your age, more or less when
• 16:29
  you had to make that decision.
• 16:31
  So I might circle back to it later when I met you, which was at university, after
• 16:37
  you'd come back from that you were a year above me, so you'd already, you were
• 16:41
  already a year in before I showed up.
• 16:43
  And I seem to recall that we didn't really become close friends until my second year.
• 16:49
  So you were already, you know, a couple of years.
• 16:53
  Past that experience.
• 16:54
  And of course, I knew you as
• 16:58
  Maybe not quite so straight laced a fellow.
• 17:02
  What changed?
• 17:07
  From that evangelical Christian thing.
• 17:12
  Why
• 17:13
  Rupert Isaacson: did it change?
• 17:14
  But what did it leave you with that you still draw on to this day?
• 17:21
  Tom Parsons: Okay.
• 17:22
  The
• 17:25
  going to university, I realized, I suppose I, no, I very consciously
• 17:29
  realized I could, I didn't know anyone there and you know one at, at university.
• 17:37
  So on arrival, I sort of, I, I realized, well, my God, I could be anyone.
• 17:41
  I could, I could become anyone that I, that I choose.
• 17:47
  And I, I certainly had, if you like, intellectual misgivings about
• 17:53
  about the Christian path I had been following and So it wasn't
• 18:00
  at all difficult to kind of park,
• 18:06
  to park my, my faith at all, no, that was great.
• 18:10
  Because it meant all kinds of activities I'd, I'd not allowed
• 18:15
  myself were, were available.
• 18:19
  And that, that was all very exciting and, you know, indulgent
• 18:22
  and so on, that was great.
• 18:24
  But what I kept was a, I sort of, you know, kept the idealism.
• 18:31
  The idea, yeah, the ideals that, that
• 18:36
  got rid of the dogma was quite a good deal, I think.
• 18:39
  Rupert Isaacson: To keep the ideals but get rid of the dogma, that's nice.
• 18:43
  What are the ideals?
• 18:46
  Tom Parsons: The ideals are of
• 18:55
  love, forgiveness
• 18:57
  the, the, the ideal of, of, of,
• 19:02
  oh God, you know, living for something which is bigger than you.
• 19:10
  Service.
• 19:11
  Yes, but bearing in mind that I had worked out that if you do
• 19:17
  that, you get a huge amount back.
• 19:21
  So, I don't want, I don't want this to sound Is
• 19:23
  Rupert Isaacson: that necessarily wrong?
• 19:24
  I mean, one, one has that No,
• 19:26
  Tom Parsons: it's not wrong at
• 19:27
  Rupert Isaacson: all.
• 19:27
  Spirituality presumably is an ecosystem like anything else, right?
• 19:31
  Tom Parsons: It's not wrong at all.
• 19:32
  I just don't want, I it's, it's a rather beautiful circuit that
• 19:38
  feeds, that feeds everyone.
• 19:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Also, a lot of the art that you take
• 19:43
  people to see is religious art.
• 19:46
  You know, I've been with you in, you know, the Renaissance art is,
• 19:49
  half of it is religious and half of it's allegorical, you know.
• 19:53
  Do you feel that that early ardour that you had, it gives you an insight into
• 19:58
  when you're explaining the, Emotion behind
• 20:02
  Tom Parsons: these things.
• 20:02
  Yeah.
• 20:03
  Yes.
• 20:04
  Yeah, no doubt.
• 20:04
  No doubt.
• 20:05
  And I
• 20:09
  interesting actually, I don't know all of that, all of all of
• 20:12
  that time I spent reading the good book has, you know, paid me back,
• 20:20
  Rupert Isaacson: As Because you know all the stories that are in the pictures.
• 20:23
  Tom Parsons: I know the stories, but, and I have a sense of, I have my own
• 20:28
  sense of what, of what they mean.
• 20:30
  Yes.
• 20:31
  And what they may have meant to a Renaissance artist or the, or
• 20:37
  the viewers in Renaissance times.
• 20:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 20:40
  I think that's invaluable to help people put themselves in the mindset of, not
• 20:45
  just maybe who the painter was, but who the people were who We're seeing
• 20:48
  that painting all that sculpture.
• 20:50
  All right, so we're at university and I remember some things
• 20:57
  Because I was such a diligent student I was working so hard of course I I couldn't
• 21:01
  really spare much time for Noticing other things that other people went on because
• 21:06
  I had my nose in my books so much But I do remember a few small things like
• 21:10
  I remember we went to university in York by the way listeners and in York
• 21:14
  York's very beautiful medieval town.
• 21:16
  It's still got a wall medieval wall around it and everything inside that
• 21:19
  wall is somewhat of a museum piece.
• 21:22
  And there's a big cathedral called York Minster.
• 21:24
  I seem to remember you climbing York Minster scaffolding
• 21:31
  one night, one frosty night.
• 21:35
  You know,
• 21:36
  Rupert Isaacson: what I've always found intriguing about you is
• 21:42
  you're my tweedy friend that wears suits and to some degree
• 21:47
  follows the societal rules.
• 21:50
  Except when you don't.
• 21:54
  Why did you climb the
• 21:58
  scaffolding of York Minster?
• 22:00
  Which is a huge building, very dangerous.
• 22:04
  Talk to me about that side of you.
• 22:06
  You also were going running up and down from London on this ancient old
• 22:09
  motorbike that was total deathtrap.
• 22:12
  And one, I guess what I'm trying to say, I'm trying to pay you a compliment.
• 22:15
  Is you, I think are one of the most insanely physically brave
• 22:21
  people I know, but you pull it out at really strange moments.
• 22:26
  Why, what's going on with that?
• 22:28
  And.
• 22:29
  How does that help with art, joy, expression, fulfilment?
• 22:34
  Why is it important to have this side of oneself, do you think?
• 22:37
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, okay, the, I mean, I did, I did climb up the
• 22:41
  scaffold wall around the back of the minster and That was great fun.
• 22:48
  It was really stupid.
• 22:50
  I wouldn't do it now.
• 22:51
  And yeah, the motorbike oh, goodness me.
• 22:54
  Anyway, no, there's obviously, there's a, there's a, there's a part of me, which
• 23:00
  still needs, I suppose, to do you know, well, stupid slash unconventional things.
• 23:10
  Despite actually, yeah, quite a conventional.
• 23:13
  Lifestyle as a, I suppose it's a release, but
• 23:15
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, well, you say it's a release.
• 23:17
  Is it, it's a release from what
• 23:23
  Tom Parsons: I haven't climbed up anything quite like that recently.
• 23:26
  No, it's a, it's a test, isn't it?
• 23:28
  It's sort of, can I, let's see what I can do.
• 23:31
  It
• 23:31
  Rupert Isaacson: where I'm going with this
• 23:33
  is
• 23:37
  Rupert Isaacson: you've, you've had a lot of, we're going to
• 23:39
  talk going to this in a minute.
• 23:41
  I've had to spend the last decades.
• 23:43
  Doing a lot of pastoral care, people who were the age that you were
• 23:48
  when you were off to Hong Kong and China and climbing up York Minster.
• 23:52
  This idea of, I, I, I, I'm a great believer that particularly when
• 23:57
  you're young, you need risk, you need it like you need oxygen.
• 24:01
  In order to, like a plant needs sunlight in order to grow at
• 24:06
  the same time, it is risky.
• 24:09
  We're hunter gatherers, we're supposed to at a certain point take the spear and go
• 24:14
  into the bush and see if we can come back with a wildebeest while dodging the lions.
• 24:20
  And if we don't do that, we may be don't achieve certain life skills, but we
• 24:27
  also got to stay alive while we do it.
• 24:28
  And you, you've been in this interesting position in the last few years of,
• 24:33
  of, of trying to help people in those years who are probably having that need
• 24:39
  navigate also while being responsible for them and, you know, staying within
• 24:43
  the legalities and all of that stuff.
• 24:45
  It's a, it's a very tricky line to tread whether we're
• 24:48
  doing it personally or whether.
• 24:50
  You know you're responsible for others.
• 24:53
  Talk to me a little bit about that, because I feel it relates to self
• 25:02
  fulfillment, it also relates to art.
• 25:04
  But just talk to me a little bit about that, from your experience
• 25:07
  personally, with your own three boys, and all the kids who've been
• 25:12
  under your care this last 30 years.
• 25:14
  This thing about risk, this thing about challenge, this thing about
• 25:17
  rule breaking, why is it so important?
• 25:20
  Tom Parsons: Okay.
• 25:21
  The I, yes.
• 25:22
  Okay.
• 25:22
  I, I ended up for 20 odd years as a working as a, as a,
• 25:30
  the term is housemaster.
• 25:31
  It's basically a pastoral role in a boarding
• 25:33
  Rupert Isaacson: school.
• 25:34
  He did actually work in Hogwarts, listeners.
• 25:35
  Yes.
• 25:36
  And Directly under Dumbledore.
• 25:37
  Tom Parsons: And so a lot of that, so I spent a lot of time.
• 25:41
  to teenagers as often as not, it was when they were in trouble because
• 25:45
  they'd broken whichever rule it was.
• 25:49
  Obviously, if you've done a little bit of that yourself then, you know, you
• 25:55
  can, you can relate, you can relate to the, to, to, to those who've,
• 26:01
  who've, who've made their own mistakes.
• 26:04
  And yeah, you know, those mistakes are useful.
• 26:07
  They, yeah, my, my own moments of madness certainly helped me understand,
• 26:14
  understand, or yeah sympathize with those who I was actually having to admonish.
• 26:20
  And so, yeah, I was able to, I think, I was able to come across as someone
• 26:26
  who, who understood whilst at the same time saying, well, that, you know,
• 26:31
  yeah, you're gonna, you know, here are the, there are school rules, la la la,
• 26:34
  you're going to have to suck up the, whatever the sanction is and, and, you
• 26:39
  know, and let's, let's learn from this.
• 26:42
  That sort of thing.
• 26:43
  Yeah, so all of that very useful.
• 26:45
  I suppose my own slightly ambiguous relationship with authority, you know,
• 26:51
  because on the one hand I do conform, on the other hand, it's sort of, that helped
• 26:56
  in terms of being being able to listen to a student's you know, when they were
• 27:03
  letting off steam and angry with the system, I could, you know, I get that.
• 27:10
  Anyway, yeah, it was that, as I say, that.
• 27:14
  a slightly ambiguous attitude.
• 27:18
  was helpful.
• 27:22
  Rupert Isaacson: After university you went and
• 27:27
  worked for and still do a company run by friends of ours called Art History Abroad.
• 27:35
  And very quickly started taking large groups of people, not much younger than
• 27:40
  yourself, around Italy on a sort of modern day version of the Grand Tour.
• 27:49
  Venice, Florence, Rome, the great works, the great culture.
• 27:57
  Suddenly, you've got A dozen or more kids all avidly rule breaking all over Italy,
• 28:08
  you're keeping them alive, keeping them safe, but also reveling with them and
• 28:15
  sort of showing them a bit how to revel.
• 28:18
  Revel responsibly.
• 28:20
  Ish.
• 28:20
  And exposing them to
• 28:25
  this type of culture of art, the love of art, the beauty of art.
• 28:33
  I remember when I first heard about AHA, Art History Abroad,
• 28:36
  I was pretty sceptical.
• 28:37
  I thought, well, these are just the sons and daughters of the privileged,
• 28:41
  going off and doing the Grand Tour, which is something that has existed
• 28:46
  in, You know, Western culture for the privileged scions of European
• 28:53
  society for a few hundred years.
• 28:56
  Okay, you know, that's good because then you get people like Goethe coming
• 29:00
  out of it writing poems and you get people like Byron coming out of it
• 29:02
  writing poems and great, we have these poems and that's wonderful.
• 29:07
  But, you know, is it really the same as Going and working in a heroin
• 29:15
  addicted place in Hong Kong or where's the value of it comparative to that?
• 29:20
  but then when I actually saw AHA operate firsthand and I we had Nick Ross on our
• 29:29
  mutual friend who runs it that company on this podcast so people listening go
• 29:34
  and listen to Nick Ross and his views on why exposure to this kind of art is
• 29:42
  actually very good for creating kind of compassionate adults, particularly
• 29:47
  out of people who are going to be decision makers and people who are
• 29:52
  going to be in authority to some degree.
• 29:56
  Why, why, why does it make them actually better softer people?
• 30:00
  And I sort of observed this at work.
• 30:01
  I saw how you and that team took People who could be, have turned into
• 30:11
  really arrogant arseholes and allowed the humanities to humanize them.
• 30:19
  It was, I saw it work every time and there's a sort of alumni of people
• 30:28
  who went through that AHA multi week.
• 30:31
  bonding experience who I Still know are this network of people who actually
• 30:36
  do a lot of good in the world It's a really interesting phenomenon and I
• 30:40
  think that aesthetics it's an overlooked
• 30:50
  I don't want to say virtue, I don't want to say quality, I want to say
• 30:53
  perhaps even necessity for the human soul, in terms of gentling it somehow.
• 31:03
  Give me your thoughts on that.
• 31:05
  Why does art matter so much?
• 31:08
  Why does exposure to art and architecture matter so much?
• 31:12
  Because I do think it does.
• 31:16
  Tom Parsons: Okay, I taught on those courses abroad in Italy with, as you say,
• 31:23
  with a sort of a privileged education.
• 31:27
  At the same time I was teaching in the National Gallery in
• 31:32
  the Tate Gallery in London.
• 31:34
  Same sort of job actually, which was basically taking younger
• 31:37
  groups around those collections.
• 31:40
  And in that, and in those cases, it was not the independent school crowd.
• 31:45
  It was.
• 31:47
  You know, ordinary kids.
• 31:49
  And the,
• 31:53
  in effect pitched, pitched in the right way.
• 31:59
  I, I remember, actually I remember something Nick saying
• 32:04
  to me years and years ago, right at the beginning of it all.
• 32:06
  Just pointing out that our culture and this was, this was true 30 years ago.
• 32:12
  It's more true now.
• 32:13
  More than ever.
• 32:14
  Anyway, our culture is, is an intensely visual one.
• 32:18
  Therefore, actually we all are, without necessarily realizing it extremely
• 32:26
  sensitive to visual information.
• 32:30
  And we're, we're, we're fluent, we're articulate.
• 32:33
  It's a, it's a language that we yeah, that, that we're fluent in,
• 32:36
  even if, even if we're not sort of conscious of the fact, so use that,
• 32:41
  use that as a, as a, as a way in.
• 32:44
  So that's one thing.
• 32:45
  Secondly so even in other words, even if a.
• 32:48
  You know, you're, you're showing a group of 15 year olds
• 32:53
  from you know, from a, a, a,
• 32:58
  who've never been to the National Gallery, you're showing them a 15th
• 33:02
  century painting, actually there are they'll be able to read it.
• 33:06
  They can, they can read shape, color, and design because of advertising and
• 33:12
  you can, so that's, that's a way in.
• 33:15
  Then the second way in is, is through stories either the story that's being
• 33:18
  told or a story relating to the artist.
• 33:23
  Third, third, you can, you can always hook, get people to listen to you if you
• 33:31
  talk either about violence or about sex.
• 33:34
  And both, both of those things are pretty
• 33:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Crashers and blowjobs.
• 33:38
  Yeah.
• 33:39
  It's all stories.
• 33:40
  Tom Parsons: Yeah.
• 33:40
  Endemic to, to the to the stories that, that animate European art anyway.
• 33:45
  So that, those are your ways in.
• 33:48
  And from there, actually, you then quite quickly arrive at
• 33:56
  conversations about About big stuff, about, about the important
• 34:03
  things about life, death suffering meaning purpose, moral truth.
• 34:11
  So, so whether I was doing that in, in, in Italy, in, in the, you know,
• 34:17
  beautiful surroundings, Florence or Rome or wherever, or in a gallery in
• 34:22
  London, it was, different audiences, but that was the, as I say visual, if
• 34:29
  you like, visual literacy leading to
• 34:37
  discussion, conversation, thought, and argument about
• 34:43
  about stuff that's important.
• 34:44
  And, and that's, that's rather a, rather a You think
• 34:49
  Rupert Isaacson: in particular that the number of pictures
• 34:51
  of the passion that people get exposed to when they go and see.
• 34:56
  Particularly Renaissance art.
• 34:57
  Do you think that does something to the brain?
• 34:59
  You know, some people would argue, God, all these pictures of a tortured
• 35:04
  man being tortured to death, you know, why are we allowing our kids
• 35:08
  to see these violent, violent images?
• 35:12
  I mean, he's being properly tortured to death in one of the
• 35:14
  nastiest ways you possibly can.
• 35:15
  There it is right there.
• 35:16
  You walk past it every day outside the Catholic church as you, you know, oh
• 35:19
  look, he's up there being crucified again.
• 35:21
  To the point we've become numb to it.
• 35:23
  Also, but at the same time I think that a lot of the, well, I have
• 35:27
  found that a lot of the depictions of that art, when they're done really
• 35:31
  beautifully, the idea of universal suffering somehow really comes through.
• 35:35
  Do you have a is there a picture that you have, or sculpture, that you've
• 35:45
  consistently found that when you bring those young people in front
• 35:50
  of it, you sort of see them go, you sort of see the heart crack open,
• 35:54
  you see, and you know, Now they're beginning to understand compassion.
• 36:02
  Like,
• 36:04
  are there certain images that you.
• 36:09
  That you can spring to mind, that, that, that we, and maybe
• 36:13
  ones we should know about.
• 36:14
  Tom Parsons: I would say Masaccio's Trinity, in Santa Maria Novella
• 36:19
  in, in Florence, as a crucifixion.
• 36:21
  Tell
• 36:22
  Rupert Isaacson: us that slowly for, for people that can't
• 36:24
  follow Italian names, so well.
• 36:25
  Okay,
• 36:26
  Tom Parsons: so Masaccio.
• 36:27
  Masaccio?
• 36:28
  Masaccio, masaccio?
• 36:30
  Yeah, M A S A C C
• 36:32
  Rupert Isaacson: I O.
• 36:33
  Well, I could do with a bit of a Masaccio right now, I've got
• 36:35
  my Tension in the shoulders.
• 36:38
  Miso.
• 36:38
  Okay.
• 36:39
  Tom Parsons: Yeah.
• 36:39
  And he, he painted a, a crucifixion.
• 36:43
  It's a, it's a fresco, so it's painted onto a, onto a wall in a, in a church.
• 36:48
  The church is holy Mary, new center, Maria Novella, Uhhuh and it's in where?
• 36:56
  In Florence.
• 36:57
  Okay.
• 36:57
  And when was it painted?
• 36:59
  1426.
• 37:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so it's 15th century, so 600 years old.
• 37:05
  Tom Parsons: And
• 37:05
  Rupert Isaacson: it
• 37:05
  Tom Parsons: is and it's a very, it's a very early example of, of,
• 37:10
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm going to look it up on my phone as
• 37:11
  Tom Parsons: you're talking.
• 37:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
• 37:13
  Tom Parsons: Renaissance art.
• 37:14
  It's one of the first one of the earliest examples of a European artist
• 37:20
  demonstrating mastery of perspective.
• 37:24
  And so in that technical respect, it's, it's of great historical
• 37:30
  significance, but more than, more than that is the way in which Masaccio has
• 37:36
  employed geometry because Perspective.
• 37:40
  When you arrange your diagonals to meet at a vanishing point to create the
• 37:48
  illusion of three dimensional space or depth it's basically a geometric technique
• 37:56
  and Masaccio has used geometry as a way, not only of creating the illusion of, of
• 38:06
  space, of three, three dimensions, which is, You know, which still fascinates
• 38:12
  us, it's magnetic, you know, we're still doing it with, with, with VR but anyway,
• 38:18
  back so there's, there's that sort of technical sort of tour de force aspect of
• 38:23
  that painting but more to the point, or on top of that, he's used, if you like, the
• 38:30
  language of geometry as a way of painting.
• 38:35
  expressing visually what I would call the, or relating or linking the language of
• 38:45
  geometry with the the sort of theological story that he's, that he's telling.
• 38:49
  And in this particular picture, it's the crucifixion.
• 38:51
  You've got God the Father standing behind and holding the arms of the cross.
• 38:57
  So it's not a description of what actually happened, it's a, it's an
• 39:02
  allegorical portrayal of the crucifixion.
• 39:05
  And God the Father's not even looking, he's looking straight
• 39:09
  out, not even looking at you, he's looking over your head.
• 39:12
  And it's as if the it's, to my mind at least, anyway, it's, it's as if What
• 39:22
  mass is communicating is, is this, that the, that the message of salvation,
• 39:27
  which Christ's sacrifice on the cross made real and available to those who
• 39:36
  choose to believe is forever is eternal.
• 39:43
  And
• 39:46
  similarly, if you like, the, the, the axioms of mathematics
• 39:53
  in within their own terms are.
• 39:55
  You know, eternally true, two plus two equals four, it
• 39:59
  always will, it always did.
• 40:01
  And, and Masaccio's put these two things together to give that
• 40:09
  message extraordinary impact.
• 40:12
  And it's,
• 40:15
  it's sort of deliberately absolutely unemotional.
• 40:21
  Deliberately so, and, and all the more powerful for that.
• 40:24
  So, yeah, that's, that's a work which tends to.
• 40:29
  Tends to work every time.
• 40:30
  I would say
• 40:30
  Rupert Isaacson: it's, it's interesting.
• 40:31
  I'm reading up on, I, I've been looking at the painting on my
• 40:33
  phone while you've been talking.
• 40:35
  It's beautiful, of course.
• 40:37
  But ma Macio, M-A-S-A-C-C-I-O is a nickname.
• 40:44
  it's a nickname.
• 40:46
  Do you want I, I, now I've read what it means.
• 40:48
  Do you want to say, tell people what it means?
• 40:49
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, it means slovenly Tom.
• 40:52
  Yeah,
• 40:52
  Rupert Isaacson: clumsy Tom or messy Tom.
• 40:54
  Yeah,
• 40:54
  Tom Parsons: yeah,
• 40:54
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 40:56
  Messy Tom's crucifixion.
• 40:58
  Clumsy Tom's crucifixion.
• 40:59
  I love it.
• 41:00
  And I think that's one of the things I love about the way you and Nick often
• 41:06
  bring these paintings to life is, you know, we get a complicated sounding name.
• 41:11
  We go through this with classical music as well.
• 41:13
  There'll be an Italian name or a German name.
• 41:15
  And what you don't know is that That kind of means old socks in, you
• 41:19
  know, German or something like that.
• 41:21
  And it, it humanizes everything.
• 41:23
  Yeah.
• 41:23
  So suddenly it's clumsy Tom's crucifixion.
• 41:26
  And then the other thing, which is so amazing is that he only,
• 41:29
  he didn't live very long, he only lived to be about 26 or so
• 41:32
  Tom Parsons: right.
• 41:35
  Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm
• 41:38
  an autism dad and we have a whole career before this podcast in helping
• 41:45
  people with neurodivergence, either who are professionals in the field.
• 41:50
  Are you a therapist?
• 41:51
  Are you a caregiver?
• 41:53
  Are you a parent?
• 41:54
  Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
• 41:58
  When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
• 42:03
  I really didn't know what to do.
• 42:05
  So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
• 42:10
  autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
• 42:13
  Temple Grandin.
• 42:14
  And she told me what to do.
• 42:16
  And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
• 42:20
  That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
• 42:25
  countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
• 42:29
  Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
• 42:34
  If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
• 42:39
  approach, it's called Movement Method.
• 42:41
  You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
• 42:45
  It's almost laughably simple.
• 42:48
  The important thing is to begin.
• 42:52
  Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
• 42:55
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• 42:59
  Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
• 43:04
  com Sign up as a gold member.
• 43:07
  Take the online movement method course.
• 43:11
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• 43:13
  Let us know how it goes for you.
• 43:15
  We really want to know.
• 43:16
  We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
• 43:21
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 43:25
  And then you, you look at what people like that did in their lifetimes.
• 43:29
  And you think, well, how did, how did, how did you, the son of an innkeeper.
• 43:34
  No money behind you Having to then go and find a bit of apprenticeship
• 43:38
  here and apprenticeship there and live on your wits How did you have
• 43:41
  time to develop skills to that degree?
• 43:46
  I've often wondered about this with musicians as well from the past Given how
• 43:50
  much effort had to go into just staying alive, you know, and then I look at
• 43:55
  myself procrastinating over work And I've lived decades longer than a lot of these
• 44:00
  people, because we do live longer now.
• 44:02
  It's a bit humbling, isn't it?
• 44:04
  To say, wow, you could actually, if you put your mind to it, you can do a
• 44:08
  whole lot more than you think you can.
• 44:10
  Okay, so that's it.
• 44:11
  That one's in.
• 44:13
  You have to take a trip to get there.
• 44:16
  The kids from the local schools that you've been taking around London for
• 44:19
  years into those free collections, which are such an amazing resource, anyone
• 44:25
  can go see them anytime free of charge.
• 44:28
  Is there a painting in the National Gallery in London
• 44:30
  that we should all go see?
• 44:31
  Look at that.
• 44:32
  You've also known is like that, that people stop in front of the young
• 44:35
  people stop in front of, and even that, and effectively kind of have
• 44:39
  to come out from under their hoodies and give it up for the human spirit.
• 44:43
  Like, is there again a particular picture which you say we should all
• 44:49
  actually, if we're listening from the UK, turn our cars around and drive
• 44:52
  straight to the Nat Gal and go look at.
• 44:57
  Tom Parsons: There are loads,
• 45:00
  loads and loads.
• 45:01
  The one,
• 45:05
  the one that.
• 45:06
  I would mention now, because it's possibly a little bit less well known,
• 45:13
  is by Bellini, a Venetian artist, 1505, and it's quite a small painting,
• 45:22
  it's called the Madonna of the Meadow.
• 45:25
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm looking it up as you speak.
• 45:26
  Madonna of the Meadow, Bellini.
• 45:28
  Okay.
• 45:29
  Tom Parsons: And so it's, it's actually a very, you know, it's a
• 45:31
  very modest, it's a modest work.
• 45:34
  Not painted for a public space.
• 45:36
  It's too small.
• 45:36
  It would have been a painted for, we don't know who, who paid for it.
• 45:42
  But it would have gone into a sort of wealthy Venetian household.
• 45:46
  And.
• 45:49
  Oh, I love it for many, many reasons.
• 45:51
  Not least actually, because Bellini's such an old man when he painted it.
• 45:55
  It's, it's he's in his eighties and he's taken on a new medium, which is oil paint.
• 46:05
  It was oil painting's
• 46:08
  Rupert Isaacson: not around before that, or he himself wasn't using
• 46:12
  Tom Parsons: one of, he's one of the first Italians to start using oil.
• 46:17
  What were people using before oil?
• 46:19
  They were using paint where you mix pigments with egg,
• 46:23
  so it's known as egg tempera.
• 46:26
  But the, basically the, the Northern Europeans pioneered a different type of
• 46:33
  paint where you're mixing the pigment with oil, and it's much more flexible.
• 46:38
  It's, it's very slow to dry, but but, but much, much more flexible.
• 46:44
  Anyway It came through, through sort of trade connections between
• 46:48
  the Netherlands and Venice.
• 46:51
  Bellini would have sort of found out about oil.
• 46:54
  And what I rather love is that, you know, in his old age, he says, right, great.
• 46:57
  Yeah, I'll, I'll start experimenting.
• 47:01
  And so he does anyway, he produces this picture and it is of, it's Mary seated.
• 47:08
  in front of a landscape.
• 47:09
  The landscape is Venetian, is the Venetian mainland.
• 47:12
  So, it's a, as it were, a contemporary landscape for, for Bellini.
• 47:17
  It's got nothing to do with Palestine or the Middle East.
• 47:21
  And she's got the Christ child in her lap.
• 47:23
  And she's, And he's asleep and she's looking down at him and got her hands
• 47:29
  sort of, fingers sort of pressed together in, in prayer, look very thoughtful.
• 47:36
  Anyway behind her, so to, to the left, there's a, a tree, no leaves,
• 47:43
  and a big black carrion bird sitting in, in the top of the tree.
• 47:48
  And so basically you, all you do is you, you sort of say to the class who are
• 47:53
  looking at it, you say talk to them about the tree and the bird, and it's, it's a
• 47:57
  crow or a raven, and what do they eat?
• 47:59
  Oh, they eat carrion.
• 48:00
  What's that?
• 48:01
  It's, it's things that are dead.
• 48:04
  And you say, okay, look, look back at the Christ child.
• 48:07
  The Christ child is asleep.
• 48:09
  But if it wasn't, if he wasn't sleeping, what might he be?
• 48:13
  And then they say, oh, he might be dead.
• 48:16
  And of course what Bellini's doing is that he's placed.
• 48:19
  The child in Mary's lap in such a way as to remind us of what we call the Pietà ,
• 48:29
  which is the, the depiction of Mary with the dead Christ in, in, in her arms.
• 48:36
  And then suddenly the whole sort of painting in a way makes sense.
• 48:39
  It's that she, she has her child asleep on her lap, but she's
• 48:44
  having some sort of premonition of.
• 48:48
  The future of his death.
• 48:51
  And then these references to death are there all over the landscape.
• 48:55
  With the tree, the dead trees.
• 48:59
  It's an autumnal landscape, the carrion bird.
• 49:02
  And there, there are more sort of correspondences
• 49:04
  between figures and landscape.
• 49:05
  As if to suggest that the message of, of Christ's life and passion, et cetera,
• 49:19
  are indirectly reflected in nature.
• 49:24
  And the two, the two are basically the same thing.
• 49:26
  Yeah.
• 49:27
  And it's, anyway, all done in the most unassuming, gentle, un un,
• 49:33
  rhetorical manner by a, by a man in his eighties who's mastered a new a new
• 49:40
  technique, a new, a new type of paint.
• 49:43
  It's brilliant.
• 49:43
  It's brilliant.
• 49:45
  Rupert Isaacson: What's interesting is that people obvious obviously
• 49:47
  didn't live that long typically then.
• 49:50
  I'm looking at, I've been looking at the painting while you've been talking about
• 49:53
  it and I noticed in the background there's also the landscape looks parched and
• 50:00
  there's a cow herd not wearing any pants who's clearly exhausted, who's kind of
• 50:07
  collapsed with his back to the fence post.
• 50:11
  Cow's up.
• 50:13
  around him and there's a, there's a, a water with a big, with a big sort of
• 50:19
  lever thing clearly meant for by hand, but behind that there's a figure who
• 50:25
  you think, well, is that the cow her?
• 50:26
  But no, it's wrapped in, it looks like death,
• 50:31
  Tom Parsons: wrapped in all
• 50:31
  Rupert Isaacson: sorts of weird shrouds, but equally it could just be
• 50:35
  someone coming to check out the cows.
• 50:36
  You know, I,
• 50:41
  what's interesting to me is that you've got.
• 50:45
  To 15th century.
• 50:46
  Well, I guess this guy's early 16th century people here What do you feel
• 50:55
  I've got my own feelings about this, but why is that such an important time?
• 51:02
  European culture, this, it's the high renaissance, so it's, but
• 51:08
  it's just before all the really big stuff takes off in the 16th century.
• 51:14
  What do you think it is about this 15th century stuff that Obviously,
• 51:23
  it's the beginning of perspective and there's some technical things in there.
• 51:26
  But why is that such an important time and place to bring people's
• 51:32
  attention to if they're Westerners, to understand themselves?
• 51:37
  Tom Parsons: I think that
• 51:41
  we, you know, we can, we can talk about the, if you like, the, the,
• 51:48
  the birth of the modern world occur.
• 51:50
  We can actually sort of choose lots of different starting points for the,
• 51:55
  for the, for the birth of the modern world and the world, the world with
• 51:59
  which we are, we, we are familiar, the one, the one we inhabit ourselves.
• 52:05
  At this you know, you could say, you might say, oh, it's the Industrial
• 52:08
  Revolution, it's mid 19th century, or it's it's the, all the, the, or, or
• 52:13
  it's, it's, it's the 20th century and, and, and sort of modern art and so on.
• 52:18
  But you can equally, you can say, ah, yeah, Renaissance, the beginning
• 52:21
  of, of, of the modern world.
• 52:23
  It's it, it, it's the when the, certainly in terms of economics and
• 52:31
  trade and commerce we have a kind of beginnings of a, of a continental a
• 52:38
  sort of coherent and and effective kind of banking system on the one hand.
• 52:43
  Yeah.
• 52:44
  We've also got the emergence of a, a scientific attitude towards towards the
• 52:53
  world itself and, and humanity So a, a breaking, well, an, an alternative way of
• 53:01
  looking and seeking understanding of how, of how the world works and how, and our
• 53:08
  place within it using, in effect, what we would call the sort of scientific method.
• 53:15
  And that's all starting with, that's all beginning to take,
• 53:19
  to take hold, and it's yielding.
• 53:22
  very, very significant sort of results, socially, scientifically,
• 53:27
  philosophically, in the
• 53:31
  15th, early 16th century.
• 53:33
  However, at that particular moment, it's not in conflict with
• 53:44
  Christian, the Christian faith, it's the two go together.
• 53:47
  And and all of that's going to get blown out of the water.
• 53:50
  That, that, if you like, marriage between a kind of rational scientific
• 53:56
  outlook, which in its In its own ways, is our legacy from the classical world
• 54:02
  married, married to the, to, to a a sort of Christian ideology and as I
• 54:07
  say, that, that moment is short lived and the, you know, the Reformation
• 54:15
  didn't help, the Enlightenment certainly didn't help the church and by the, you
• 54:23
  know, come the, come the end of the Industrial Revolution, and communism is
• 54:28
  et cetera, the church has never really recovered and the scientific or rational
• 54:34
  outlook has leapt, leapt forward.
• 54:40
  Rupert Isaacson: One of the things that always leaps out at me when I'm looking at
• 54:43
  those paintings from that particular cusp, mid late 15th century, first years, first
• 54:52
  decade maybe of the 16th, is that's of course when the new world comes into play.
• 55:00
  The New World couldn't have happened without that banking system, as you say,
• 55:04
  that emerges weirdly out of the sort of sleeping ruins of the Roman Empire,
• 55:14
  which has been, you know, smashed up at the beginning of the Middle Ages,
• 55:20
  and It's sort of, you know, a limping, wounded thing for a while until northern
• 55:27
  kings decide that maybe it's a good idea if the pope ratifies their rule
• 55:33
  so that they can say to other northern kings, sorry, I got to the pope first
• 55:36
  and he signed this bit of paper.
• 55:37
  So actually I'm king, not you.
• 55:39
  And then that kind of notarization.
• 55:43
  Brings all this money in, and then suddenly by the end of the
• 55:49
  15th century, the Church of Rome suddenly re emerges as a bank.
• 55:57
  Brilliant.
• 55:58
  And that bank subsidizes
• 56:04
  the conquest of the New World.
• 56:06
  The New World, of course, then re subsidizes Rome back through
• 56:09
  the Spanish and Portuguese.
• 56:12
  And we end up with the world that we know now.
• 56:15
  But it's, it's so interesting to, for me to stand in front of a painting
• 56:18
  like that and go, wow, that's right at the cusp of us, the, this kind
• 56:25
  of Western transatlantic thing that is the kind of economic and cultural
• 56:32
  reality of our culture, what we call the West didn't exist then.
• 56:39
  And it's just about to exist.
• 56:42
  Because these guys got it together as bankers, there, which
• 56:46
  meant that they could afford to commission these paintings.
• 56:50
  And, ba boom!
• 56:53
  I always find that intriguing to sort of see a historical moment
• 56:56
  like that and realize that you can still stand in front of it.
• 56:59
  Okay, so you're, you're, you're exposing people to this sense of perspective.
• 57:03
  And I, I guess what I was trying to Get out as to why it's so good for
• 57:09
  the human mind and the human soul is I'm a great believer And so is
• 57:14
  neuroscience, in the power of awe, A W E.
• 57:18
  There's an increasing number of studies being done into the mental and emotional
• 57:25
  effects of being faced with something that you feel is so much greater than you,
• 57:32
  that it makes you feel very, very small, while that is overwhelmingly beautiful.
• 57:38
  Now, of course, you don't have to look very hard for that, you just
• 57:40
  have to look outside the window.
• 57:41
  It's called Planet Earth, and it's anything that mankind produces,
• 57:47
  is always pales in comparison.
• 57:49
  Naturally, even though people have argued about this over the centuries, it's
• 57:54
  pretty hard to paint Niagara Falls better than Niagara Falls is Niagara Falls.
• 57:58
  Yeah, you can have a go, but you know, it's probably probably going to be a
• 58:01
  little bit better, you know, a bit like the Rolling Stones trying to be James
• 58:05
  Brown in the early 60s in their things.
• 58:09
  I've heard Mick Jagger say, yeah, maybe, maybe we were trying to do that.
• 58:12
  Maybe James Brown was just a little bit better than we were.
• 58:17
  So, okay.
• 58:17
  So art and nature and so, but nonetheless, you can get this with art, I feel too.
• 58:22
  And I do feel that when the humanities are at their best, art, literature,
• 58:27
  music, it doesn't have to be the old stuff, it can be the new stuff too.
• 58:32
  It does something to the human psyche, which makes us kinder, weirdly.
• 58:38
  And science seems to be supporting this.
• 58:40
  What have you noticed with the kids that you've been helping to teach,
• 58:45
  whether in London or around Italy, so in these last decades, and a lot of us are
• 58:49
  parents, some of us are grandparents.
• 58:52
  Why is this something that we should maybe be paying attention
• 58:55
  to in the upbringing of our kids?
• 59:01
  Tom Parsons: Oh, I think that if I mean it
• 59:09
  to feel a sense of connection even of belonging to something As you say,
• 59:22
  which is bigger than you, but as I say, but you, but it's, it's, it's not it's
• 59:26
  not alien and it's not inimical as I say something, but something bigger.
• 59:32
  But nonetheless at the same time, something that you in, in some
• 59:38
  small way you belong to, you are part of is inspiring, liberating,
• 59:45
  comforting something like that.
• 59:47
  Perhaps at it, at its best.
• 59:50
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm looking here at a study recently published study out of
• 59:56
  university of California as into, or as a pathway to mental and physical health.
• 1:00:03
  And here's, here were the, here's some fine, there's a ton of stuff.
• 1:00:07
  This is, this is published on pub med, you know, where you can go and get any.
• 1:00:14
  medical study published, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:00:18
  This is a great quote or then is associated with a profile of elevated
• 1:00:25
  vagal tone, reduced sympathetic arousal.
• 1:00:31
  Increased oxytocin release, and reduced inflammation.
• 1:00:38
  All processes known to benefit mental and physical health.
• 1:00:42
  This is in the abstract.
• 1:00:44
  So, those listeners who aren't familiar with what vagal tone means, your vagus
• 1:00:52
  nerve, meaning the wandering nerve, is your biggest nerve in your body.
• 1:00:56
  Connects your downstairs to your upstairs, and it touches every organ in your body.
• 1:01:01
  And it's a bit like the Northern line in London, because it's got
• 1:01:04
  two parallel branches that do hit the brain, but they can also go
• 1:01:10
  to different parts of the brain.
• 1:01:10
  So it matters which one of those branches you get on, because if you want to go to
• 1:01:14
  Edgeware, you might end up in High Barnet sort of thing, if you don't end up there.
• 1:01:17
  But they go from south to north through London, through the human body, just
• 1:01:21
  the same touching all the nerve centers.
• 1:01:23
  When you produce oxytocin which is the queen of our feel good hormones
• 1:01:28
  because it's the one that brings the feeling of connectedness and
• 1:01:31
  it makes you want to communicate.
• 1:01:32
  So it's very interesting that you, you, you talked about the
• 1:01:35
  feeling of belonging there, Tom.
• 1:01:37
  If you can create oxytocin in your gut cause you can create
• 1:01:40
  it in many parts of your body.
• 1:01:41
  As the vagal nerve brings it up through your body to your brain, it touches every
• 1:01:46
  organ in Tune and they begin to sing like a choir together so that by the time it
• 1:01:50
  hits your brain it hits your brain like a Join army or a joy army a joygasm, you
• 1:01:57
  know, we have that Feeling and we all have that feeling in front of powerful nature
• 1:02:06
  in front of the ocean in front of the sky in front of Somebody we love in front of
• 1:02:13
  great art great music like that shamanic Experience and but what's so interesting?
• 1:02:21
  Is that it has physical effects beyond that.
• 1:02:25
  Reduced inflammation, that's so interesting.
• 1:02:29
  Because so reduced sympathetic arousal is reducing cortisol,
• 1:02:33
  effectively the stress hormone.
• 1:02:34
  That's what it means.
• 1:02:35
  Sympathetic nervous system being That actually not sympathetic nervous is
• 1:02:39
  really annoying that scientists had to try and be clever and call the
• 1:02:44
  thing that isn't sympathetic The sympathetic one and the one that is
• 1:02:46
  sympathetic the parasympathetic one so annoying they should be shot but
• 1:02:51
  the idea that it reduces inflammation because irritation annoyance anger
• 1:02:58
  Irritation is almost always a result of inflammation.
• 1:03:02
  You talk about irritated skin, you know, so the idea of it calming
• 1:03:06
  and soothing one as well through this sort of oxytocin release and
• 1:03:11
  making us bond with each other.
• 1:03:13
  So it, I've definitely observed this watching you teach.
• 1:03:17
  And I've observed you connect people like this to very, very beautiful human works.
• 1:03:26
  I tend to do it with nature.
• 1:03:28
  And I see the same reaction happen in these people that I would expect to happen
• 1:03:35
  with the autumn colors in the forest or a beautiful horse or seeing the Serengeti
• 1:03:41
  migration or whatever, a great sunset.
• 1:03:46
  So it's interesting to know this.
• 1:03:49
  And then the, the other aspect, which I have.
• 1:03:54
  What I've always been so impressed by is your ability to bring play in, and I,
• 1:04:01
  you know, the climbing up the Minster, only one of your many great moments
• 1:04:06
  I always feel that you make it playful, and this is so important when we're
• 1:04:10
  learning you brought a great sense of play to these Italian things in particular.
• 1:04:18
  Could you tell us a little bit about the Colosseum Club, please?
• 1:04:25
  Tom Parsons: Yes.
• 1:04:26
  Oh dear.
• 1:04:27
  This is quite irresponsible.
• 1:04:29
  I wonder who's listening to this.
• 1:04:32
  Nevermind.
• 1:04:33
  This was something which
• 1:04:37
  I actually, I never did this with students.
• 1:04:40
  Because it really was wonderful.
• 1:04:43
  I
• 1:04:43
  Rupert Isaacson: remember doing this with you, but I wasn't a student.
• 1:04:45
  Tom Parsons: Wonderfully I mean, a wonderful experience, but it was.
• 1:04:49
  You know, it was kind of illegal and pretty irresponsible.
• 1:04:53
  Anyway, yeah, no, what it, what it involved was with, the first
• 1:04:59
  time I, I I climbed into the Coliseum was with my friend Robert.
• 1:05:03
  We're talking
• 1:05:03
  Rupert Isaacson: about the Roman Coliseum.
• 1:05:05
  Tom Parsons: Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Rupert Isaacson: In Rome, the big coine.
• 1:05:07
  Okay.
• 1:05:08
  Tom Parsons: Robert and I
• 1:05:09
  Rupert Isaacson: how do you climb into, how did you climb into it?
• 1:05:11
  What's climbing into it even mean?
• 1:05:14
  Tom Parsons: I would like to clarify that this is a num This is years ago.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah.
• 1:05:19
  And the Italian authorities are much, much more strict.
• 1:05:26
  And we'll get really cross.
• 1:05:29
  Yeah,
• 1:05:30
  Rupert Isaacson: this is before the days of video cameras and all of that.
• 1:05:32
  Yes, absolutely.
• 1:05:33
  Explain to us what it involved.
• 1:05:35
  Tom Parsons: What it involved was, was finding a, basically it had high, high,
• 1:05:40
  high metal, kind of like scaffolding pole bars, which actually were quite, were, you
• 1:05:46
  know, weren't that impossible to get over.
• 1:05:49
  Rupert Isaacson: How high were
• 1:05:49
  Tom Parsons: they?
• 1:05:52
  Three meters.
• 1:05:53
  I mean, quite high, but but you, but they, but you But scalable?
• 1:05:56
  You had a purchase on the you had, there was a purchase so you, you could get over.
• 1:06:00
  Anyway, Robert and I went in late, late, late, late, late, and climbed in
• 1:06:07
  the dark to the, towards the top where we sat and and read our Byron, read
• 1:06:14
  Byron's description of the Coliseum by moonlight, which was in fact Was it a
• 1:06:18
  Rupert Isaacson: moonlit night that you went up there?
• 1:06:19
  Tom Parsons: In.
• 1:06:20
  Yes, it was.
• 1:06:21
  And, and that, and that was our, that was our motor for
• 1:06:23
  going in, in the first place.
• 1:06:24
  It was knowing that Byron had been, been there by night, 200 years earlier, or and,
• 1:06:33
  and it was absolutely extraordinary.
• 1:06:36
  It was a ghostly, you know, it was empty, it was dark.
• 1:06:39
  And it was, you know, it was.
• 1:06:42
  It was also something of a relief to find a young Roman couple having a
• 1:06:47
  jolly good snog at the top who who broke away from their snog and engaged us
• 1:06:51
  in a really quite a loud conversation.
• 1:06:54
  They had absolutely no qualms about being, being caught.
• 1:06:58
  And and it did seem.
• 1:07:01
  As though the, there was a security guard who probably knew we were
• 1:07:05
  there and had no intention whatsoever of confronting, I guess, four
• 1:07:10
  people, four against one, whatever.
• 1:07:13
  Yeah, so we did that and then I know you and I went in and I have been back
• 1:07:19
  not for, not for a number of years now.
• 1:07:21
  I don't think I'd do it now.
• 1:07:23
  Well,
• 1:07:23
  Rupert Isaacson: here's, here's my, here's my Interpretation of it because
• 1:07:28
  I remember when you said, okay, Ru, there's this thing we got to do and we
• 1:07:32
  were there together and you, it was a moonlit night and we went to the Coliseum.
• 1:07:38
  There it is.
• 1:07:38
  It's vast.
• 1:07:40
  It's huge.
• 1:07:42
  And you said, look, you see that thing up there?
• 1:07:44
  We have to climb that.
• 1:07:45
  And I remember looking at it quite skeptically.
• 1:07:48
  You've always been the climber.
• 1:07:49
  I think, I think it was higher than three meters.
• 1:07:51
  I think it's more like four.
• 1:07:53
  And what you left out was there was a jagged.
• 1:07:55
  There was a break in the spiky fence.
• 1:07:58
  There's one spike that had broken off, so you could kind
• 1:08:01
  of climb between the spikes.
• 1:08:02
  But if you put one foot wrong the spiky bits of the broken
• 1:08:07
  spike were going to impale you.
• 1:08:11
  Then we, then we popped down on the other side, very, with this anxiety
• 1:08:17
  in my mind, thinking, I'm going to have to get out over that thing again.
• 1:08:20
  And That climb up through the Coliseum to the top and then looking
• 1:08:28
  down into the arena by moonlight and then having you read this poem.
• 1:08:36
  I'm now going to read it.
• 1:08:39
  It's a bit long, but it's worth hearing, people.
• 1:08:42
  And hear the buzz murmured pity or loud roared applause as man was slaughtered.
• 1:08:52
  And wherefore slaughtered?
• 1:08:54
  Wherefore, but because such were the bloody circus's genial laws, And the
• 1:09:00
  imperial pleasure, wherefore not?
• 1:09:03
  What matters where we fall, to fill the moors of worms, On
• 1:09:07
  battleplanes or listed spot?
• 1:09:09
  Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.
• 1:09:15
  I see before me the gladiator lie.
• 1:09:18
  He leans upon his hand, his manly brow consents to death.
• 1:09:23
  But conquers agony and his drooped head sinks gradually low and through
• 1:09:29
  his side the last drops ebbing slow from the red gash, four heavy, one by
• 1:09:35
  one like the first of a thundershower.
• 1:09:38
  And now the arena swims around him.
• 1:09:42
  He is gone.
• 1:09:43
  E'er ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
• 1:09:48
  He heard it, but he heeded not.
• 1:09:50
  His eyes were with his heart, and that was far away.
• 1:09:56
  He reck'd not of the life he'd lost, nor prize, But where his rude
• 1:10:01
  hut by the Danube lay, And there his young barbarians all at play.
• 1:10:06
  There was their Dacian mother, he their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
• 1:10:13
  All this rushed with his blood.
• 1:10:14
  Shall he expire and unavenged?
• 1:10:16
  Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!
• 1:10:19
  But here, where murder breathed her bloody stream, And here, where buzzing nations
• 1:10:25
  choked the ways, And roared or murmured like the mountain stream, Dashing or
• 1:10:30
  winding as its torrent strays, Here, where the Roman millions blame or praise, Was
• 1:10:35
  life or death, the playthings of a crowd.
• 1:10:37
  My voice sounds much, and falls to the star's faint rays, On the
• 1:10:42
  arena, void seats, crushed walls.
• 1:10:46
  bowed, and galleries where my steps seem echoes, strangely
• 1:10:51
  loud, a ruin, yet, what ruin?
• 1:10:55
  I'm gonna end there.
• 1:10:57
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, no, it's, it's something else.
• 1:10:59
  Rupert Isaacson: It's something else.
• 1:11:00
  And I remember you reading that poem and then connecting that, of course,
• 1:11:05
  with that marble statue called the Dying Gaul which I think inspired that poem.
• 1:11:10
  Tell us about the Dying Gaul.
• 1:11:12
  Where is it?
• 1:11:13
  And what is it?
• 1:11:15
  Tom Parsons: The Dying Gaul is a Roman, a classical Roman statue.
• 1:11:20
  It's in, it's in Rome.
• 1:11:21
  It's in the Capitoline Museum.
• 1:11:24
  So it's not that far away from the Codiceum itself.
• 1:11:28
  And it's been on view in that museum since the, or late 1700s.
• 1:11:37
  And it was, it's been copied.
• 1:11:40
  Yeah, countless times.
• 1:11:42
  So, but anyway, the, the original is, is there in Rome.
• 1:11:45
  Byron would have seen it, he would have known copies in you know, stately
• 1:11:49
  homes from, from, from England.
• 1:11:51
  So that statue, knowledge of the statue printed.
• 1:11:56
  illustrations of it and so on were very much part of an English aristocrat's
• 1:12:03
  kind of classical education.
• 1:12:06
  So an English aristocratic traveler such as Byron would it's on his,
• 1:12:15
  it's on his list of things to see.
• 1:12:17
  So he, he would have seen it.
• 1:12:18
  And therefore, yeah, he, he makes references.
• 1:12:21
  It's a, it's a basically a new male nude figure prone lying on the
• 1:12:25
  ground, but sort of propped up on
• 1:12:27
  Rupert Isaacson: dying gladiator, basically.
• 1:12:28
  Tom Parsons: Yeah.
• 1:12:29
  Possibly, yeah, no, actually no one knows if it, is it a gladiator?
• 1:12:33
  Is it a a warrior?
• 1:12:35
  No one really knows, but but certainly dying, there is a
• 1:12:38
  wound and that there are A
• 1:12:40
  Rupert Isaacson: barbarian crushed by Rome.
• 1:12:41
  Yeah, dying in an aesthetically beautiful way.
• 1:12:45
  Tom Parsons: So he, he takes the memory of the statue and imagines it as a gladiator
• 1:12:50
  dying in the, dying in the arena.
• 1:12:54
  But at the same time, he's also describing the the destruction of the Colosseum.
• 1:13:02
  And with that, so he's imagining what it was like.
• 1:13:05
  in its heyday, but he's contrasting that with its present condition.
• 1:13:10
  He's, he's there in about 1816.
• 1:13:15
  And He's using all of this to sort of meditate on if you like the transience
• 1:13:24
  of human achievement and the inevitable decline of all empires and, and the
• 1:13:31
  unspoken kind of presence in all of this is Napoleon, who's just lost,
• 1:13:36
  and his empire has just collapsed.
• 1:13:39
  And and that's the sort of filter that he's.
• 1:13:44
  Looking or experiencing the Coliseum through partly his own classical
• 1:13:51
  education and his awareness of the classical past and partly present, very
• 1:13:57
  present contemporary political events which makes that poem so evocative.
• 1:14:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Exactly.
• 1:14:03
  I've seen the Dying Gaul in its, in the museum, but also.
• 1:14:08
  As you say, there's so many reproductions of it because it's such a powerful
• 1:14:11
  statue and that thing butchered to make a Roman holiday, all of the references
• 1:14:17
  that go out from that, even like to, you know, movies like Roman holiday
• 1:14:22
  now is that, you know, classic movie.
• 1:14:24
  And the references from something like that go up and down history
• 1:14:28
  and then Arise ye Goths, because of course it's the Goths from the
• 1:14:31
  Danube who actually sack Rome in 410.
• 1:14:34
  Beginning of the fifth century.
• 1:14:35
  They actually leave it largely intact.
• 1:14:37
  It's the vandals, vandals who come along a few years later
• 1:14:39
  who actually finish the job.
• 1:14:41
  But that's why we have vandalism.
• 1:14:42
  But the, what I love about that experience of the Coliseum Club and
• 1:14:48
  that's why I wanted you to talk about it.
• 1:14:51
  The whole point is that, yes, it, was it, was it irresponsible?
• 1:14:55
  If you had said to those, that Roman couple up there enjoying their city
• 1:15:02
  and the freedom of being able to climb in there at night because
• 1:15:04
  they're probably also living, you know, with their parents apartments.
• 1:15:07
  And this is a place that they could go and be together.
• 1:15:09
  And this is open to everybody and freedom and that life is
• 1:15:13
  so much more restrictive now.
• 1:15:15
  They could not, as residents of the city, think about climbing in
• 1:15:19
  there without getting arrested.
• 1:15:20
  Yeah.
• 1:15:21
  Things have, the world I feel has in many ways got narrower
• 1:15:24
  since those days in the nineties.
• 1:15:26
  But.
• 1:15:27
  We, they, like Byron, like whoever Byron encountered in those ruins, could
• 1:15:32
  go in there and read that poem and feel it and have an adventure with it.
• 1:15:38
  Should young people in particular, but also oldies like us, not lose the habit
• 1:15:43
  of taking this playful approach to art and life and, you know, take that poetry
• 1:15:51
  book to the place Where it was done.
• 1:15:55
  Jump through some hoops to get in there.
• 1:15:58
  Take a bit of a risk.
• 1:16:00
  Isn't that what makes life beautiful?
• 1:16:05
  It's,
• 1:16:07
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:16:09
  Rupert Isaacson: If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm
• 1:16:12
  guessing you're somebody that, like me, loves to read books about not
• 1:16:17
  just how people have achieved self actualization, but particularly
• 1:16:21
  about the relationship with nature.
• 1:16:25
  Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
• 1:16:29
  And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
• 1:16:32
  If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
• 1:16:36
  you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
• 1:16:42
  and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
• 1:16:47
  what started Live Free Ride Free.
• 1:16:49
  And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
• 1:16:53
  Land, which tells the story of.
• 1:16:56
  My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
• 1:17:01
  there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
• 1:17:06
  Come on that adventure with me.
• 1:17:07
  Tom Parsons: It's, it's yeah.
• 1:17:08
  You know, a good lunch is also important, but, good lunch.
• 1:17:13
  Right, but the, yeah.
• 1:17:15
  What
• 1:17:16
  Rupert Isaacson: defines a good lunch?
• 1:17:18
  Oof.
• 1:17:18
  I seem to remember our mutual friend Robert Woodward had a very
• 1:17:21
  particular Definition of that.
• 1:17:24
  The same man who introduced you to the Coliseum Club.
• 1:17:27
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, yeah, well, it's as much the company as as
• 1:17:31
  anything else, but no, sorry, just going back, going back to, to,
• 1:17:34
  Rupert Isaacson: just quickly, Robert's, Robert's, go, go, go.
• 1:17:37
  Do you, what he used to say was
• 1:17:42
  lunch without wine is not lunch.
• 1:17:46
  It's a snack.
• 1:17:47
  Yes.
• 1:17:48
  Yes.
• 1:17:51
  Words to live by.
• 1:17:51
  Tom Parsons: Yeah.
• 1:17:54
  But that, that whole experience if you like, is.
• 1:17:57
  I would say again, it's one of belonging.
• 1:17:59
  Goethe Belonging
• 1:18:01
  Rupert Isaacson: to one's past and one's culture.
• 1:18:03
  Yeah, I see what you mean.
• 1:18:04
  Tom Parsons: Goethe's journal at one point has the entry he's just
• 1:18:08
  arrived in Rome and he says One becomes, as it were, a contemporary
• 1:18:13
  of the great decrees of history.
• 1:18:18
  So it is, it is about belonging.
• 1:18:20
  Not, not to, it's belonging to a culture, to a history.
• 1:18:24
  Belonging to something in its best and worst moments.
• 1:18:28
  And it's, so it, it's, it's in many ways.
• 1:18:35
  A question of identity, of, of finding or sensing that that your identity is, is
• 1:18:44
  inextricably linked to something way, way bigger than, bigger and older than you.
• 1:18:50
  And that's
• 1:18:50
  Rupert Isaacson: I want to go quickly a bit into how you draw on these types of
• 1:18:58
  experiences of treading the line between the responsible and the irresponsible,
• 1:19:02
  the play and the serious in.
• 1:19:06
  your work with young people because you've actually spent the last 20
• 1:19:09
  years in service to young people.
• 1:19:13
  And then I want to go into finish with Spoke and this amazing film festival that
• 1:19:20
  you And now poetry and art that you do for young people, which is the sort of
• 1:19:26
  beginning of your next career, which is sort of distillation of all these things.
• 1:19:29
  But there's two things I want to just go to just before we go there.
• 1:19:34
  You started with Rothko.
• 1:19:37
  We've been in the Renaissance and the Baroque.
• 1:19:39
  But I know that your great love is Matisse.
• 1:19:43
  Why?
• 1:19:44
  Why should we all pay attention to Matisse?
• 1:19:47
  Tom Parsons: I spent quite a long time researching Matisse for a postgraduate.
• 1:19:54
  Thesis and and yeah, he became incredibly important to me still and still is.
• 1:20:01
  Why?
• 1:20:01
  Because
• 1:20:02
  Rupert Isaacson: he why him and not Picasso?
• 1:20:05
  Why not him?
• 1:20:05
  Why him and not Dali?
• 1:20:06
  Why not one of those?
• 1:20:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:08
  Why Matisse?
• 1:20:09
  Contemporary guys.
• 1:20:10
  Tom Parsons: Sure.
• 1:20:11
  Matisse was an artist,
• 1:20:16
  actually very interesting, actually in some ways he left An awful lot of his own,
• 1:20:25
  of himself out of his art, or to be accurate he, that there are plenty
• 1:20:33
  of references to himself in his art, but they're disguised Picasso on
• 1:20:37
  the other hand, it's, it's sort of,
• 1:20:39
  Rupert Isaacson: he's front and center.
• 1:20:39
  He's the main character.
• 1:20:40
  Yeah.
• 1:20:41
  Yeah.
• 1:20:41
  Tom Parsons: So Matisse was not, not without a domineering sort of artistic ego
• 1:20:48
  but he, he did is more discreet about it.
• 1:20:52
  He was aware of it and he sort of, found ways to kind of duck
• 1:20:55
  and dive around it, let's say.
• 1:20:57
  So there's that.
• 1:20:58
  There's his okay, he took a decision early on in his career.
• 1:21:02
  He's quite a late starter, but he took his decision early on as an artist to
• 1:21:08
  concentrate on that, those elements of his, those elements of, of his life.
• 1:21:17
  Painting or sculpture or drawing, which offer a kind of consolation
• 1:21:25
  to the viewer and he deliberately Consolation, that's an interesting
• 1:21:30
  And he avoided confrontation with the darker aspects of human experience.
• 1:21:39
  And for this, he's, has been criticized for, you know, for being a little bit
• 1:21:45
  pretty or, or superficial or, or a bit almost sort of willfully naive which,
• 1:21:51
  which are not really accusations, I think, that are, that are justified,
• 1:21:57
  but but I can see why, because actually the way in which he deployed his chosen
• 1:22:12
  that sort of visual vocabulary very often actually leaves a trace of the,
• 1:22:19
  if you like, of the sort of creative effort it cost him to get there.
• 1:22:23
  So, so it's, it's not just pretty patterns.
• 1:22:26
  It's it's more than that.
• 1:22:29
  And that's, that's why I, that's why I love them.
• 1:22:33
  Rupert Isaacson: So Joy Matisse, why is this important?
• 1:22:39
  Tom Parsons: Okay.
• 1:22:39
  I'm thinking of a of, I'm thinking of a la a line in one of, well, in the, in
• 1:22:45
  the lin little gidding, one of the, the, the last of Ts Elliot's four quartets.
• 1:22:50
  Which in which he.
• 1:22:53
  A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.
• 1:23:03
  Wha?
• 1:23:05
  Can you just repeat that?
• 1:23:06
  A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.
• 1:23:16
  Okay.
• 1:23:18
  And that's a kind of, it's almost the final line, not quite the last
• 1:23:23
  line of, of the, the, the final quartet of the four quartets.
• 1:23:29
  And it seems to me that, that what Matisse is seeking is exactly that.
• 1:23:37
  It, there's an aspiration to a kind of purity or simplicity
• 1:23:42
  in his visual language.
• 1:23:47
  And that is what I would, I would equate that with, with
• 1:23:51
  joy freedom, liberty and so on.
• 1:23:55
  And he does Seek, tune, find, visual expression of those, that kind of
• 1:24:03
  ideal through, let's say, editing out everything that's unnecessary in
• 1:24:10
  whatever it is that he's actually making.
• 1:24:14
  But almost every time, whether in whatever medium he's using, and I think
• 1:24:23
  this was a deliberate ploy on his part.
• 1:24:26
  he leaves evidence of the effort and struggle that it cost him.
• 1:24:32
  So there are frequently rubbings out, scratches evident obvious corrections
• 1:24:40
  that are there on the particularly in the, in the paintings or or,
• 1:24:45
  or, or drawings, sculptures too.
• 1:24:48
  So the, the, so yes, his subject matter might be a dancing.
• 1:24:52
  A dancing figure or figures.
• 1:24:55
  And, you know, a DA dance in a, in a landscape, you know, that's a,
• 1:25:02
  a kind of trope for a, a a, a sort of paradise on earth, let's say.
• 1:25:07
  But but it can be very glib and and.
• 1:25:11
  and forgettable.
• 1:25:13
  But the way Matisse does that is is, is not and therefore, therefore,
• 1:25:21
  you know, he's, he's special.
• 1:25:23
  Rupert Isaacson: He has a particular painting called Joy of Life which
• 1:25:26
  I think expresses that philosophy.
• 1:25:28
  And I know that Picasso regarded him as a great rival.
• 1:25:32
  So he obviously made Picasso feel insecure.
• 1:25:35
  So Picasso had to diss him in the same way that Picasso had to diss Dali.
• 1:25:40
  And he called Dali the great masturbator.
• 1:25:42
  Because, you know, obviously, I guess he didn't like other
• 1:25:45
  people being as good as him.
• 1:25:48
  And Picasso, as we know famously, does deal with all the dark stuff.
• 1:25:51
  And I often feel that that's just too easy.
• 1:25:56
  Oh, I'm going to do the darkest, darkest, darkest, as if that was anything special.
• 1:26:00
  The world is full of darkness.
• 1:26:01
  We see it all around us.
• 1:26:02
  We know what's been going on in the last, you know, 18 months in the world.
• 1:26:06
  Just now, you know, it's darkest all as dark can be.
• 1:26:11
  But is that really where we want to put our attention all the time?
• 1:26:14
  And people who are going through darkness certainly don't want to.
• 1:26:17
  So to celebrate darkness, I always feel for its own sake is almost, it's just a
• 1:26:22
  bit like social media pricking people's amygdala so they'll buy your product
• 1:26:26
  and, you know, pay attention to you.
• 1:26:28
  Do you feel that when you're drawing people's attention to Matisse in
• 1:26:33
  particular, is that in the back of your mind that you're trying to make the,
• 1:26:40
  really, or promulgate that philosophy, I suppose?
• 1:26:43
  Be joyful.
• 1:26:46
  Life is short, be joyful.
• 1:26:47
  I, yes, I mean, I,
• 1:26:49
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, it, it slightly depends on the context in which I'm teaching
• 1:26:53
  him, but, but, but but certainly the,
• 1:26:59
  yeah, you know, the, the idea that that, that whatever beauty he however beautiful
• 1:27:06
  the, the image might be, it's, he, he does leave, as I say, sort of yeah.
• 1:27:11
  Traces of the, of, of the, of the price paid.
• 1:27:14
  No one
• 1:27:14
  Rupert Isaacson: said it would be easy, right?
• 1:27:16
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:16
  Which, so there's a sort of, a sense of,
• 1:27:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Got to put some effort into it.
• 1:27:24
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, it, it, it's a, it, it kind of validates
• 1:27:28
  or, or enhances the value.
• 1:27:31
  Yeah.
• 1:27:32
  Tom Parsons: Of of something which otherwise might be merely
• 1:27:38
  pretty or at worst, as I say, kind of glib and forgettable.
• 1:27:47
  Rupert Isaacson: There's a fairly unforgettable story you once
• 1:27:49
  told me about him and Picasso.
• 1:27:50
  I think listeners deserve to hear it.
• 1:27:53
  Tom Parsons: The, I think I know the one, the, the the, yeah, Picasso and Matisse
• 1:28:00
  recognised each other as rivals from the, from the, beginning.
• 1:28:04
  And, and the relationship was, was an uneasy one.
• 1:28:10
  But it morphed from rivalry and, and sort of, it never entirely lost, I
• 1:28:16
  think, a sense of competition, but but it morphed into, into a, into a a
• 1:28:22
  friendship, but, but not an intimate one.
• 1:28:25
  One that was absolutely based on mutual respect.
• 1:28:29
  Despite the, the, you know, despite the, the being so different as artists
• 1:28:37
  and I think as, as, as people, but anyway, the story is of as both
• 1:28:42
  now in their, in their later years.
• 1:28:44
  Picasso's about 10 years younger than Matisse, but, and Matisse
• 1:28:47
  is now an old man living down in Nice, Picasso's there as well.
• 1:28:51
  Anyway, they, they used to, they used to meet up, but every now and again, but,
• 1:28:57
  but such meetings had to be pre, pre arranged through their secretaries, you
• 1:29:02
  know, that and Picasso obviously broke that sort of unwritten rule one time.
• 1:29:10
  And turned up at Matisse's apartment with his, his lover was that Francoise?
• 1:29:20
  I think it was Francoise, she loved, anyway.
• 1:29:23
  And they're looking, they're trying to find where Matisse is.
• 1:29:26
  Matisse kept, kept the window shutters drawn to, to protect his eyesight
• 1:29:33
  unless, unless he was working.
• 1:29:34
  Anyway, so that.
• 1:29:35
  Picasso and mistress are wandering through the rooms,
• 1:29:41
  wondering where Matisse might be.
• 1:29:44
  And suddenly, the very elderly Matisse pops out from behind a
• 1:29:51
  cupboard and and says coo coo coo coo coo coo and then stops horrified
• 1:29:57
  because it's not his secretary and
• 1:30:03
  Ian.
• 1:30:03
  Yeah, but it's it's Lydia.
• 1:30:05
  Sorry, it's he, Picasso.
• 1:30:08
  Thought it was Lydia.
• 1:30:09
  And anyway,
• 1:30:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Matisse thought it was Lydia,
• 1:30:13
  Tom Parsons: Sorry.
• 1:30:13
  Matisse thought it was Lydia and, and and it's not.
• 1:30:15
  Anyway, so he's, he's . And so he's sort of discover, he's sort of, yeah, Picasso
• 1:30:21
  loved that story 'cause he'd sort of caught, caught out Matis who never let
• 1:30:24
  anything like that ever be known or seen.
• 1:30:28
  In, in public, whereas, of course, Picasso's reputation
• 1:30:31
  was quite the reverse.
• 1:30:32
  But anyway so yeah, that that, that, that, anyway, that, that, in the end,
• 1:30:37
  when Matisse died, there's Picasso
• 1:30:43
  went into a sort of mini depression and stopped working.
• 1:30:50
  Oh, I can't remember how long it was for, but it was, you know, he, he was
• 1:30:55
  So Mattis is dead, Mattis is dead, Mattis is dead, and then paints these
• 1:30:59
  very, these, these, a series of pictures that are sort of elegiac farewells.
• 1:31:05
  To, to Matisse, it's, it's.
• 1:31:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Ooh, I didn't know about those.
• 1:31:09
  Let me look those up.
• 1:31:09
  To Matisse from Picasso.
• 1:31:14
  Tom Parsons: No, you'd have, they're, oh, I can't think of the title off
• 1:31:19
  the top of my head, but they're interiors of his own studio space in
• 1:31:24
  a villa that was called La Californie.
• 1:31:27
  And that they, and there's more than one, it might be quite hard to find.
• 1:31:33
  immediately, but but they contain sort of visual little visual
• 1:31:37
  links to works by Matisse.
• 1:31:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Wow, I'm just reading this now.
• 1:31:40
  So when the older Matisse died in 1954, Picasso found himself
• 1:31:44
  struggling to cope with the sudden absence of his great rival.
• 1:31:48
  Yes, he is dead, Picasso said profoundly, and I am continuing his paintings.
• 1:31:52
  In the immediate aftermath of Matisse's death, Picasso did just that.
• 1:31:57
  Interesting.
• 1:31:57
  I had no idea.
• 1:32:00
  I feel also I just realized I was a bit mean to Picasso there about
• 1:32:04
  dealing with the dark stuff He was after all Living through the Spanish
• 1:32:07
  Civil War and all its atrocities.
• 1:32:10
  So, I stand a little bit Chastened.
• 1:32:15
  Yeah,
• 1:32:15
  Rupert Isaacson: sorry Picasso All right.
• 1:32:18
  So one of the things which I like about that story is of Picasso
• 1:32:22
  jumping out from behind the dresser thinking it was going to be his
• 1:32:28
  lover and it wasn't, it was Picasso.
• 1:32:30
  Is this idea of folly, and I can't remember which philosopher writes this.
• 1:32:37
  Is it Montaigne or is it somebody like that?
• 1:32:40
  Basically that there is no happiness that does not contain some degree of folly.
• 1:32:47
  That it's necessary, it's necessary for joy, it's necessary for the soul.
• 1:32:53
  And of course, we've talked about.
• 1:32:56
  We've, you know, edited a lot of the silly things that we've done,
• 1:32:59
  but we've alluded to a couple.
• 1:33:02
  But you and I have definitely gotten our PhDs in folly in many ways.
• 1:33:08
  And it's one of the things actually I respect the most about you.
• 1:33:11
  And I always respect this about people who are willing to not stand on their
• 1:33:17
  dignity, willing to let their dignity go.
• 1:33:20
  In fact, I remember once I wish I'd been there, but you had told me that
• 1:33:25
  you delivered a homily on dignity at a party of our mutual friend Robert,
• 1:33:29
  and then probably fell off the wall cause you were drunk and or tried
• 1:33:33
  to jump on top of it and fell over backwards and exactly as one should.
• 1:33:37
  It's that kind of thing, which I think makes people their most.
• 1:33:44
  Lovable and
• 1:33:46
  sparks are mutual.
• 1:33:47
  You know, our feeling of common humanity.
• 1:33:49
  And it's, it's so important PE that one can act with some folly in life.
• 1:33:56
  Otherwise.
• 1:33:56
  What is li what is life without that?
• 1:33:58
  I mean, what a gray desert.
• 1:34:00
  That sounds like otherwise.
• 1:34:04
  Okay, so we are moving towards.
• 1:34:06
  The last portion of this, you, you spent the last 20 years pastoral care being
• 1:34:13
  a housemaster at Hogwarts, I think, is it Hufflepuff or is it Ravenclaw
• 1:34:17
  that you are the hou, well, the house master of it, it was one of them.
• 1:34:21
  But for those listeners it was a school very much like that, that Hogwarts is
• 1:34:24
  kind of based around these ideas and, but of course, you know, kids off at
• 1:34:28
  boarding schools, they're lonely, they.
• 1:34:30
  They are cut off from their families.
• 1:34:32
  It's tough and it's not really how humans are ever supposed to do things.
• 1:34:36
  So when you find yourself in the pastoral care of these people, you know, the
• 1:34:40
  fact that you understand something about folly becomes massively important.
• 1:34:45
  Otherwise, what tools have you got?
• 1:34:47
  To to help them through.
• 1:34:49
  I also want to talk a little bit just about false starts So people often think
• 1:34:54
  when you're doing say a story like this, this is live free ride free I'm sort
• 1:34:59
  of celebrating your life because you've been living this self determined life
• 1:35:03
  based around following your passions Making those available to the world and
• 1:35:09
  I feel everyone who's come into contact with that myself included benefits It
• 1:35:15
  can feel like a retrospective often of Great successors, but I know that
• 1:35:19
  actually it's the follies and the things that are not successful that are often
• 1:35:22
  actually the most important that inform and then become successors later on.
• 1:35:25
  So I remember right after university, you were also booked to do a PhD and
• 1:35:30
  that's when Matisse came in and you wrote a very beautiful book on Matisse,
• 1:35:33
  which is still out there, I think.
• 1:35:35
  You should go look for Thomas Parsons book on Matisse on Amazon.
• 1:35:39
  Published by Studio Editions.
• 1:35:41
  Big, thick thing, and it's brilliant.
• 1:35:44
  And I'll plug that again at the end and all the other stuff you've written.
• 1:35:47
  Tom's written a lot of books.
• 1:35:49
  And then that PhD didn't happen.
• 1:35:51
  And then, right after, there was also a point where you had your first
• 1:35:55
  son, Hector, who's my, my godson.
• 1:35:57
  And you and Katie, your wife, who's also an old friend of mine.
• 1:36:01
  One of my oldest friends.
• 1:36:02
  Moved to Italy and made a kind of bid for happiness and you were working
• 1:36:07
  and making yourself a carving out a life there as a freelancer and then
• 1:36:11
  boom Katie gets Pregnant with twins and gotta go home and get a job.
• 1:36:16
  Some people would have seen those or interpreted say those two events.
• 1:36:23
  I start the PhD, I don't get the PhD.
• 1:36:25
  I want to move to Rome and do this big thing and I actually have to go
• 1:36:28
  back to England because da da da.
• 1:36:30
  In terms of well those, oh, acts of folly and okay they didn't
• 1:36:34
  work out or something like that.
• 1:36:35
  But I don't see it that way at all.
• 1:36:37
  And I think it's very important to look at.
• 1:36:40
  those types of experiences and then see what they give you in terms of how they
• 1:36:44
  inform perspective and Helping other people with what seem at the time to
• 1:36:51
  be great disappointments, but actually turn out to be gateways to other things
• 1:36:57
  Just talk a little bit about those experiences and how they've helped You
• 1:37:02
  do what you do and particularly spoke, which is your sort of next thing.
• 1:37:07
  How have those Seemingly false starts or one step forward two steps back
• 1:37:13
  type thing helped you put this other thing together, which you're now doing
• 1:37:19
  Tom Parsons: Okay.
• 1:37:20
  Yeah the well, okay, so briefly, the PhD that never got finished through doing
• 1:37:26
  that I I, I met two, well, three people, two of whom we've mentioned, Nick and
• 1:37:33
  Robert and Cargs, and it was through them that I started teaching in Italy.
• 1:37:38
  Cargs is Sarah
• 1:37:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Cargorm.
• 1:37:41
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:43
  Tom Parsons: And then, really, as it was through, well, God, through that,
• 1:37:46
  I, I, I got my first work contract.
• 1:37:51
  And Because of those, I would then, you know, got freelance work at the
• 1:37:58
  National Gallery in the Tate and so on and then when, when, when it was
• 1:38:02
  needed, or at least I felt it was needed it got me the job at, at the
• 1:38:08
  school when we suddenly had, had, had the prospect of sort of three kids
• 1:38:14
  and, and so actually it all led to
• 1:38:16
  It all led to, you know, a good end result.
• 1:38:20
  Anyway, yeah, so for now Spoke is, is
• 1:38:24
  Rupert Isaacson: What, yeah, what is Spoke?
• 1:38:26
  Tom Parsons: Spoke is something that, that I kind of began at school and will
• 1:38:30
  continue with now as I, as I've left.
• 1:38:34
  I will continue to sort of make it, make it, make it, make it grow.
• 1:38:38
  But basically it's a, it's a documentary competition aimed for school students,
• 1:38:45
  say up to anyone, different age, age age ranges up to, up to 18.
• 1:38:51
  And there are two competitions.
• 1:38:52
  One is to make a documentary about a, a work of art the other is to make a short
• 1:38:59
  film about, in response to a, a poem.
• 1:39:03
  So in both cases, the, the.
• 1:39:06
  students choose either a poem or a work of art and make a film about them.
• 1:39:12
  They, they send them in.
• 1:39:14
  I have a panel of judges.
• 1:39:15
  You've been a loyal, hardworking judge over the, over the years.
• 1:39:20
  And and then, and then, and then people win prizes.
• 1:39:23
  So, it's, always spoke is actually 10 years old this year.
• 1:39:29
  But it's always been quite a well, it's, you know, it's tiny.
• 1:39:32
  It's quite modest in terms of the numbers who enter, and I would love
• 1:39:36
  to make it something bigger, but I now have the the time to do that.
• 1:39:41
  And, So that's, yeah, so that's what Spoke is.
• 1:39:44
  Again, you know, that wouldn't have happened without, I
• 1:39:46
  guess, me being at school.
• 1:39:48
  I don't think I'd have thought of it.
• 1:39:50
  So, anyway, yeah, it's a good thing.
• 1:39:54
  Rupert Isaacson: What, where's Spoke going to go?
• 1:39:55
  What are you doing with it?
• 1:39:59
  Okay, so it's, it's, it's something, it's all about art for young people, and you've
• 1:40:03
  now added poetry, and you've added art.
• 1:40:06
  Tom Parsons: Where's
• 1:40:07
  Rupert Isaacson: it going?
• 1:40:08
  And why is doing something like this important?
• 1:40:11
  Tom Parsons: I think that okay, I mean, I need to focus.
• 1:40:15
  Effort and time into, into growing it and, and but the reason it's important
• 1:40:20
  is because it, it is it's, it's creative.
• 1:40:25
  It's not restricted by, by the syllabus and, or by the the, the, the, the,
• 1:40:32
  the, the exam boards and the sort of.
• 1:40:36
  That, that side of education in, within, within school.
• 1:40:39
  So you, you, the, the students are completely free to to do, to follow
• 1:40:46
  whatever path they, they, they choose.
• 1:40:47
  They can choose any barren, any work of art, and so on.
• 1:40:51
  They don't have to repeat what their teachers have told them.
• 1:40:53
  They can make connections to anything, anything at all.
• 1:41:00
  So that's, that's the sort of creative freedom that it offers.
• 1:41:04
  Secondly again, actually, it's almost where we began, but, you know, ours is
• 1:41:08
  such a visual, visual culture, and the, particularly with the smartphone now,
• 1:41:16
  the making of films is something which you know, we're doing it all the time
• 1:41:20
  and especially, I, but for any sort of student for whom the written word is,
• 1:41:27
  is not, you know, if that's not their chosen medium, if they're not comfortable
• 1:41:33
  there and it is still the main area in which our education system tests people.
• 1:41:41
  If actually you want to express your admiration and understanding of a panel
• 1:41:48
  or a work of art you can, and you, you would rather do that visually.
• 1:41:54
  Spoke gives you that, gives you that opportunity.
• 1:41:57
  So, so I thought, yeah, it's sort of, it, it fits the zeitgeist because it's,
• 1:42:02
  it's film and it's, and it offers, it's an opportunity to be analytical
• 1:42:08
  up to a point but and technically, technically competent up to a point,
• 1:42:13
  but most of all sort of creative.
• 1:42:18
  So that's what Spoken's.
• 1:42:20
  Rupert Isaacson: It's a really interesting trajectory, I feel, your
• 1:42:26
  life, and one that has been governed by
• 1:42:33
  the Loyal and relentless pursuit of what matters to your soul, knowing that that's
• 1:42:42
  going to matter to other people's souls, and making that available to people.
• 1:42:48
  And now with Spoke, it's so interesting to me.
• 1:42:51
  You're how old now?
• 1:42:53
  60.
• 1:42:54
  Okay, you don't look a day over 80, you look amazing.
• 1:42:57
  Just like me.
• 1:42:58
  Right, I'm so used to hearing people say, Oh, yeah, well, you know, I'm
• 1:43:03
  retiring now and that sort of like they're just gonna stop doing stuff
• 1:43:08
  and I've never understood that My own grandfather worked until he died.
• 1:43:13
  I why would you like my dad?
• 1:43:15
  He's 91 Okay, he's not doing as much as he used to but he's still doing a lot.
• 1:43:20
  Why would you stop?
• 1:43:22
  Doing stuff.
• 1:43:23
  I can see, you know, it's nice to have choice about things and it's
• 1:43:27
  not about how you put your time.
• 1:43:28
  Yeah.
• 1:43:28
  Great.
• 1:43:29
  Fantastic.
• 1:43:29
  The the desperate edge of working, relaxing.
• 1:43:34
  Wonderful.
• 1:43:35
  Bring that on.
• 1:43:36
  But to not work just seems to me we're born, I feel, to work.
• 1:43:43
  So I weirdly feel that with Spoke, even though I've been seeing you grow it
• 1:43:47
  for the last 10 years, I feel you're actually just on the cusp now of
• 1:43:51
  possibly the busiest period of your life.
• 1:43:55
  as you retire.
• 1:43:56
  And I think you've already actually helped some young people
• 1:43:59
  establish themselves with this.
• 1:44:01
  Have some, you, you actually told me of one or two who've gone on to
• 1:44:07
  become filmmakers having got a bit of their early start with Spoke now
• 1:44:11
  on your judges panel, for example.
• 1:44:13
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, there's, yeah, there's one.
• 1:44:15
  Tell me a
• 1:44:16
  Rupert Isaacson: little bit about her.
• 1:44:18
  Tom Parsons: Amber, Amber Bardell, and she won one of the
• 1:44:21
  very early competitions with.
• 1:44:24
  A film she made on a work by Banksy.
• 1:44:29
  Okay.
• 1:44:30
  And it, and you know, made, just beautifully filmed.
• 1:44:36
  Really very, made, and clearly made at home.
• 1:44:40
  And there's some great shots of the garden shed.
• 1:44:43
  And so on.
• 1:44:43
  But anyway so, you know, using using, just using what was available
• 1:44:49
  got actually quite limited sort of means available in terms of place.
• 1:44:53
  But, but in terms of the, the structuring of the film and the editing and the
• 1:44:58
  camera shots and so on and so forth, it was really good, really, really good.
• 1:45:02
  It's, it's up there.
• 1:45:04
  On the spoke website, the only problem being that you need to email me first
• 1:45:10
  to get the password to watch it because it's not on none of the films at the
• 1:45:16
  moment are immediately accessible because I'm slightly worried about copyright.
• 1:45:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 1:45:24
  Tom Parsons: But but anyway, but it's certainly viewable
• 1:45:26
  for, you know, anyone who Do you
• 1:45:29
  Rupert Isaacson: remember what year it was that she won?
• 1:45:31
  Tom Parsons: Tw
• 1:45:34
  no, not off the top of my head.
• 1:45:35
  16, 2016 maybe?
• 1:45:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:45:38
  Because I'm looking her up now.
• 1:45:39
  She's there on IMDB.
• 1:45:41
  Yeah.
• 1:45:42
  And there's a work by her called Art as Catharsis, you know,
• 1:45:45
  it's the healing part of art.
• 1:45:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Nature of Art on there.
• 1:45:48
  She's obviously well on her way.
• 1:45:50
  Amber Bardell.
• 1:45:50
  Yeah.
• 1:45:51
  Yeah.
• 1:45:51
  So it's interesting how all these experiences and all this pursuit
• 1:45:55
  of fulfillment and joy now you are helping people who are our age
• 1:46:01
  when we were beginning all this, get a hand up on top of the wall.
• 1:46:04
  So much of it I feel is about quality of life and we, we are in a day and age
• 1:46:10
  where it's a good thing that we're having.
• 1:46:13
  The discussions we never used to have about mental health.
• 1:46:16
  And at the same time, I sometimes feel that those discussions have become so loud
• 1:46:22
  that they almost drown out the value of.
• 1:46:28
  The pursuit of joy for its own sake, which of course is part of good mental health.
• 1:46:34
  What has been, I think, the untold story through your whole thing
• 1:46:38
  has been this thing of service.
• 1:46:40
  So you, you, you get religion because the messages of the Christ message, as well
• 1:46:51
  as a bit of a desire to rebel against your secular parents resonate on this deep
• 1:46:56
  ideological level, idealistical level.
• 1:46:58
  This leads you to go out and almost get burning.
• 1:47:03
  Walk oil thrown all over your face helping heroin addicts coming out of the
• 1:47:08
  street in Hong Kong and a lot of those would have been triad gang people and
• 1:47:12
  so on and then you put that down, but you keep your idealism and You take off
• 1:47:20
  after art and you pursue it and you open this up school kids in London Privileged
• 1:47:27
  kids in Italy everyone everyone who comes in front of you gets that side,
• 1:47:32
  it gets, gets their eyes open this way.
• 1:47:35
  And then you take on the pastoral care of the youth at Hogwarts and
• 1:47:43
  have to do that for 20 years, which is no mean feat to be a housemaster,
• 1:47:48
  effectively a parent in absentia, while making the world of aesthetics
• 1:47:54
  and awe available for those beautiful neurological effects we explored earlier.
• 1:48:01
  And now here you are with The Spoke offering young people a way,
• 1:48:05
  basically, to pursue their careers.
• 1:48:10
  My friend, that's a self actualised laugh if I ever heard one.
• 1:48:14
  So, we're right at the sort of two hour, probably gone over mark.
• 1:48:20
  So I think we should leave it there, but I want people to know how to
• 1:48:24
  Contact you get in touch with spoke.
• 1:48:25
  There'll be people listening.
• 1:48:26
  You've got kids who want to enter these competitions so If you will could,
• 1:48:34
  could you read out the various websites whereby people can find you and your
• 1:48:39
  work and your lectures in London, which are happening on a regular basis and
• 1:48:45
  are brilliant and entertaining and funny and wonderful, and just let people know
• 1:48:49
  where they can come and get a bit of Tom.
• 1:48:51
  Tom Parsons: Okay.
• 1:48:52
  Thank you Ray.
• 1:48:53
  So spoke is.
• 1:48:55
  Www.
• 1:48:56
  spokecompetition.
• 1:49:01
  com.
• 1:49:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Spokecompetition.
• 1:49:05
  com.
• 1:49:06
  Tom Parsons: And it's kind of bright.
• 1:49:08
  Once you're in, it's kind of bright and yellow.
• 1:49:10
  And, and, and, and then, you know, have a navigate around there,
• 1:49:14
  but there's a, there's an I think on the homepage, there's an, my,
• 1:49:18
  my kind of spoke email is there.
• 1:49:19
  So if you want to be in touch, please do, please, please do.
• 1:49:23
  Rupert Isaacson: You want to enter a film, if you want to enter a
• 1:49:25
  poem, if you want to enter some art.
• 1:49:27
  Yeah.
• 1:49:28
  Tom Parsons: So, and
• 1:49:32
  then, yeah, yes, there are lectures too that I'm giving.
• 1:49:36
  Tell us
• 1:49:36
  Rupert Isaacson: about the lectures.
• 1:49:38
  How do we come to see a Tom Parsons lecture?
• 1:49:40
  Tom Parsons: Lectures are in London once a month.
• 1:49:43
  And they are, and I have a different website for that
• 1:49:47
  because it's slightly different.
• 1:49:48
  Rupert Isaacson: What is that website?
• 1:49:49
  Tom Parsons: That's just tomparsons.
• 1:49:52
  org.
• 1:49:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Very good.
• 1:49:55
  Tom Parsons: And they, and they are, I'll basically, I'll give a lecture on
• 1:50:01
  an artist or artists.
• 1:50:04
  Re relate directly linked to, to an exhibition that's on in London
• 1:50:07
  at, at that moment, at that time.
• 1:50:11
  And you come along, we have, we, we have a glass of wine, something
• 1:50:15
  to some nice things to eat.
• 1:50:19
  And, and then I give
• 1:50:20
  , Rupert Isaacson: where do they take place?
• 1:50:21
  These lectures.
• 1:50:22
  Tom Parsons: And they take place just around the back of tape, modern
• 1:50:26
  in in an architectural, rather beautiful architectural office.
• 1:50:32
  Belonging to my friend, Tom, and, and then actually, and then the,
• 1:50:39
  the, the, the money that those raise goes partly towards Spoke and partly
• 1:50:46
  to a therapeutic project, which Tim McHour, who's, who's officers we use.
• 1:50:56
  Which he's, he's involved in, in creating for for young people
• 1:51:03
  with, with mental health problems.
• 1:51:05
  Yeah.
• 1:51:05
  So there's a sort of, there's a you know, a sort of charitable aspect to,
• 1:51:09
  to, to, to those lectures as well.
• 1:51:12
  Rupert Isaacson: So if you have never attended a Tom Parsons
• 1:51:15
  lecture, you'll laugh a lot.
• 1:51:17
  And you'll be informed and it will be joyful.
• 1:51:20
  Ooh, a lot of Renaissance stuff there.
• 1:51:24
  Someone I've never heard of you're talking about on Wednesday, the
• 1:51:28
  14th of May, Ithel or Ithel Cahoon.
• 1:51:32
  Tom Parsons: Cahoon, yeah.
• 1:51:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Who's that when they're at home?
• 1:51:35
  Tom Parsons: English surrealist artist.
• 1:51:38
  Oh, she's, she's great.
• 1:51:40
  She's really fun.
• 1:51:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Still around?
• 1:51:42
  Tom Parsons: Oh,
• 1:51:43
  Rupert Isaacson: that's
• 1:51:44
  Tom Parsons: it.
• 1:51:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, that's Ithel.
• 1:51:46
  I T H E L L.
• 1:51:47
  No, no, no.
• 1:51:49
  Ithel.
• 1:51:50
  Ithel Cahoon.
• 1:51:51
  Cahoon is also spelt weird.
• 1:51:53
  It's Colquhoun.
• 1:51:54
  For those
• 1:51:55
  Rupert Isaacson: people who know English spellings are impossible.
• 1:51:58
  Well, that's a Scottish name, actually.
• 1:51:59
  Ithel Cahoon.
• 1:52:00
  I'm going to look her up.
• 1:52:01
  And then on, Tuesday, the 17th of June, you've got Jenny Saville.
• 1:52:07
  Tom Parsons: Yeah.
• 1:52:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us about Jenny Saville.
• 1:52:09
  Tom Parsons: She's contemporary British painter.
• 1:52:12
  Very, very sort of interesting.
• 1:52:17
  Almost Dali esque.
• 1:52:18
  Personal presentation of the, of the, of the female body.
• 1:52:24
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm looking at a picture by her of her knees, presumably
• 1:52:27
  hers, or somebody's, in the bath.
• 1:52:31
  Like their little islands, and one of them has got a beautiful stone circle
• 1:52:35
  on it, like the one you see at Calanish in the Hebrides, going down into the
• 1:52:40
  bath water, and then there's other megaliths sticking up out of the bath.
• 1:52:44
  Well, it's great!
• 1:52:45
  Tom Parsons: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:52:47
  How'd you come across her?
• 1:52:48
  That painting, the one you're looking at, is It's in the
• 1:52:52
  tape, it's in the tape machine.
• 1:52:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah, super.
• 1:52:55
  Alright, well I've learned something, as I always do when I'm with you.
• 1:52:58
  And if you are listening to this not in 2025 you're coming
• 1:53:02
  across this, don't worry.
• 1:53:03
  All you need to do to get to a Tom lecture, there'll be more
• 1:53:07
  is just go to Tom Parsons Right?
• 1:53:14
  T O M P A R S O N S dot O R G.
• 1:53:19
  And Tom Parsons, art historian.
• 1:53:20
  Thank you so much for coming on Live Free, Ride Free.
• 1:53:24
  Tom Parsons: My pleasure.
• 1:53:25
  Really.
• 1:53:25
  Thank you very much indeed.
• 1:53:27
  Rupert Isaacson: I've enjoyed myself immensely.
• 1:53:29
  Tom Parsons: Great.
• 1:53:30
  Okay.
• 1:53:30
  Thanks.
• 1:53:31
  Until the next time.
• 1:53:33
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• 1:53:37
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• 1:53:41
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• 1:53:45
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• 1:53:50
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