Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “Gay Sex on Stage” with Tony nominee Samuel Barnett & Marcelo Dos Santos

Transcript

“Gay Sex on Stage” with Tony nominee Samuel Barnett & Marcelo Dos Santos · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
• 0:06
  Here's a dangerous idea for you. You open an app on your phone.
• 0:10
  You identify someone who you might like to have sex with.
• 0:13
  You chat with them briefly. You give them your home address.
• 0:17
  They come over. You have sex with this random individual.
• 0:21
  They leave and you expect that to fulfill you.
• 0:25
  To fill you up and provide you with some sense of meaning and connection in your life.
• 0:29
  That isn't has been the modus operandas of many a young gay person for the past few decades.
• 0:38
  And where is it leaving them all?
• 0:41
  Is there something to be said for the social conservatives' call for fidelity and monogamy to be somewhat elevated as an aspiration, as a better way of life?
• 0:52
  These are the kinds of issues that are being wrestled with in a new play at the Sydney Opera House.
• 0:57
  It's been a smash hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, produced by the same people who brought you flea bag and baby reindeer to humongous British television shows
• 1:06
  that also began as one person shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
• 1:11
  And so the star of the show, who is a two-time, Tony-nominated actor, and the writer of the show, or someone award-winning playwright and screenwriter,
• 1:24
  came by the uncomfortable conversations studio on the day of their opening night at the Sydney Opera House to wrestle with these ideas, with promiscuity and fulfilment and grief and self-worth and mental health and cultural malaise,
• 1:38
  sex on stage, and why Australians and Brits seem so allergic to American notions of self-help.
• 1:46
  This was a wonderful chat. I hope you enjoy, as much as I did. Oh, the show, of course, is called Feeling Afraid as if something terrible is going to happen.
• 1:55
  That's feeling afraid as if something is terrible is going to happen. The writer is Marcelo dos Santos, and the actor, Samuel Barnett.
• 2:06
  It's fascinating and lovely, and very sweet, actually. It was a sweeter play than I thought it was going to be.
• 2:12
  And a more beautiful one in a way. How much of this is Marcelo, and how much of this is a fictitious character, and how much is Samuel, maybe?
• 2:24
  I think there's definitely, because when I was writing, I'd already worked with Samuel on a workshop, and we'd become friends, and I sort of knew his voice, and I could hear it.
• 2:35
  So I think some of the intonations and some of the ways that the jokes I felt should or could land, that sort of sound, like I was like, oh, he'll do that.
• 2:45
  On that line, and that'll work. The content is a sort of composite of, I was thinking about this the other day, that I think the commitment issues of the main character is not me.
• 2:58
  I'm a bit attached to you, I kind of kind of grew up.
• 3:00
  All right. Are you a serial monogamous?
• 3:02
  Yeah, kind of, and sort of struggled a bit with the single life.
• 3:06
  So the sort of commitment stuff is sort of more a couple of my friends and things I'd sort of felt.
• 3:11
  And then actually I suppose a little bit of me as well at points, I'm sure.
• 3:17
  And then the just more general neurosis is probably more me.
• 3:21
  And Samuel, are you a serial monogamous or a JT little horror?
• 3:26
  Well, I too have been a serial monogamous. I think we're quite, Marcelo and I quite similar emotional types and relational types as well.
• 3:36
  So yeah, I've definitely had, you know, anxious attachment. I can't even say it. I'm so anxious about it.
• 3:42
  I mean, I have to say though, you know, I got out of one relationship and was single for a year.
• 3:50
  And that was probably one of the best years of my life.
• 3:53
  Not because I was being a dirt little or, but because it was necessary to sort of, you know, find myself finally at the age of 30 something.
• 4:02
  Okay, this is who I am when I'm on my own. And that was great. And actually I think that set me up much better for the relationships that I subsequently had.
• 4:09
  But yeah, definitely. I mean, it seems like the big theme, one of the big themes is that is the attention between is is meaningless sex liberating or is it shameful?
• 4:20
  Is it shame inducing? Is it like, is it a fruitless quest to fulfill yourself that's never going to provide you with fulfillment?
• 4:27
  Or is it a form of self expression and like casual freedom that normies don't get to experience?
• 4:33
  So that doesn't fall on part of the fabric of your gayness or your relationship?
• 4:36
  Oh, yeah. I mean, definitely. Yeah, no, that's a very good reading. I think I wrestle with that a bit in myself.
• 4:44
  So I was in a really long relationship for nine or 10 years when I was like early 20s and all that.
• 4:50
  I mean, that's what are you doing? That's the best time of me single.
• 4:53
  I know. And then like, young and beautiful on the heart. It won't want you. I know.
• 4:58
  That wasn't my experience.
• 5:02
  Comparatively.
• 5:04
  I remember hearing I've got better as I got older personally.
• 5:07
  I think I think I think David St. Ares says like when you know commencement address to university students, he was like, I know that you don't think that you're beautiful right now because you're comparing yourself to all of your peers.
• 5:17
  But trust me, once you're my age, you'll look back on photos of yourself now. I can't believe I was there.
• 5:22
  No, I'm absolutely the opposite. I look back at photos of myself and go, gosh, they're a much better production values these days.
• 5:28
  And I know after myself better, I was an amoeba for years is how I felt about myself.
• 5:34
  And the shame thing is so interesting. I don't think it has to be, I don't think it has to be either or there was that brilliant Instagram guy who did a roundup of his hookups on the apps.
• 5:46
  And what was so great about him was the kind of out and out. Here's what I did.
• 5:51
  Here's the year I've had in hookups and you know, the amount of hookups he had and stuff.
• 5:56
  Plus he went and here's how I feel about myself about it and the whole kind of panoply of sort of good and bad shame and joy and all of that.
• 6:05
  And it was all in there. And I was like, that's a good way to do it because there is this thing of like, oh, if it's casual hookups is that just shame inducing and awful.
• 6:13
  And we don't really talk about it and we feel bad about ourselves. Or is it complete joy and actually it's just all of it.
• 6:19
  It's the full human experience. That's what I like about the play is that actually I think he's grappling with the full human experience.
• 6:26
  Yes.
• 6:27
  And I think it is. And I was after my long relationship and then I was single for five years.
• 6:32
  But that was tough after such a long period. And intellectually I was like, I need to sort of like experience things and go out.
• 6:40
  But it is quite exposing. And did you feel like a duty to have fun? Yeah, a little bit.
• 6:46
  But now I look back and be like, oh, God, I should be more fun because actually, but you don't know what's going to happen next.
• 6:51
  So actually, you don't know.
• 6:53
  Is this going to be forever feeling a bit shit about myself? Right.
• 6:57
  Or actually, you know, I'm going to meet some at some points.
• 7:01
  So I don't have to enjoy this period. You don't know.
• 7:04
  No, and the grass is always greener, isn't it?
• 7:06
  I mean, if you're having lots of sex and you're unattached, then you want the security of love of a relationship.
• 7:11
  And if you have the security and love of a relationship, then you want the freedom and boys' trust us and no strings attached.
• 7:16
  Exactly.
• 7:17
  And then sex.
• 7:18
  Yes.
• 7:19
  Have we got it all wrong in making it a binary?
• 7:21
  Yeah, I think we have. Yeah, I really think we have.
• 7:24
  Because I also think it's so, it's such a personal thing that I remember wanting to feel the joy and the freedom of kind of unattached, no strings sex and being able to be out there and all that.
• 7:36
  But I was too scared to go to clubs. I was too scared to go on the gays scene.
• 7:39
  I found everything so frightening and sort of scary.
• 7:43
  And it wasn't about feeling threatened by other people. That was my own thing.
• 7:47
  And who knows where that comes from, nature nurture, I don't know.
• 7:50
  But so it's so individual and what would be way more freeing is if it wasn't binary.
• 7:55
  And if it was, you can just kind of express the way you want to express.
• 7:59
  Yes.
• 8:00
  Why are we afraid of going to gays clubs?
• 8:02
  I felt not good enough, insecure.
• 8:06
  I looked really young for my age.
• 8:09
  But everyone's got a type.
• 8:11
  Like there are people who are really young looking.
• 8:13
  Yes.
• 8:14
  I grew up in an incredibly sheltered town, little town in the North of England.
• 8:21
  Homophobia was rife.
• 8:23
  There were no role models. This was like the 80s.
• 8:26
  There was nothing positive. Like nothing.
• 8:30
  In fact, all that was on TV was negative as well.
• 8:34
  So then at the age of 18, having experienced that, I went to London.
• 8:37
  And you would think I might go, oh my god, I'm completely free.
• 8:41
  But actually, I was in a year at drama school where, at the time, I was the only gay person in that year.
• 8:47
  And you would think, well, sure, there's going to be loads of gay actors.
• 8:49
  And drama school in London.
• 8:51
  So I still didn't feel like, basically what I didn't have for what was better words is a mentor in that way.
• 8:58
  I didn't have someone to kind of take me out and show me the ropes or kind of take me onto the gays scene.
• 9:03
  I mean, it's right because all drama school students are gay.
• 9:06
  And all Londoners are gay.
• 9:08
  Until they're not or until they are again.
• 9:10
  Absolutely.
• 9:11
  I mean, my friend Mark is the glass.
• 9:14
  You say, you see gay and he says, and we helps out when we're busy.
• 9:18
  So, you know, a lot of people are straight until they're not, you know.
• 9:22
  But I did not have the sort of mentorship, the role models.
• 9:28
  I would never have gone into Soho on my own.
• 9:30
  But that's the way I'm built as a person.
• 9:32
  That's what I mean.
• 9:33
  I think it's so individual.
• 9:34
  Someone else coming from my background would have been like, I'm out there.
• 9:36
  What does a role model mean, though?
• 9:38
  Because I mean role model friend.
• 9:40
  I don't know.
• 9:41
  Someone to just kind of take you out.
• 9:43
  But you were aware of the existence of this community.
• 9:45
  Like it existed.
• 9:46
  You knew about Soho.
• 9:47
  You knew about gay clubs.
• 9:49
  Was it that you didn't find it welcoming or didn't feel that you had a place in it or that you weren't one of them?
• 9:56
  It wasn't to do with, it was nothing to do with Soho or the clubs or anything.
• 10:00
  It was very much a personal thing going, I don't feel brave enough to do this.
• 10:03
  I could not go on my own.
• 10:05
  And it would have been on my own.
• 10:07
  And someone else might have gone on their own and found their people.
• 10:11
  I just didn't.
• 10:12
  So I found my people elsewhere.
• 10:14
  It's not like I didn't have support and friends.
• 10:16
  It was more that in terms of experiencing what I thought I was meant to experience as a gay lifestyle.
• 10:22
  And I think that's the key here.
• 10:23
  I was like, oh, that is what it is to be gay.
• 10:25
  Therefore, I should experience that.
• 10:27
  And I think that's where the binary doesn't work.
• 10:29
  Right.
• 10:30
  Because it's so individual.
• 10:31
  To some extent, that's sort of what I'm pointing to when I say like it didn't feel like.
• 10:35
  For me, the community, the community quote unquote with a capital C,
• 10:39
  seemed so rigid and preset and had such a clear way of walking and talking and thinking and speaking and voting and dancing.
• 10:48
  That it was like, well, I don't have, I'm not, I'm not, I haven't been issued with a proper card to be admitted to that.
• 10:56
  I didn't have the handbook.
• 10:57
  I didn't know what I was meant to do.
• 10:59
  There was no invitation in the mail from her majesty saying what you idea by cordially invited to be gay.
• 11:03
  Yeah.
• 11:04
  I went through phases, I think, when I was in my sort of late teens and early 20s where it was a bit more relaxed about stuff.
• 11:10
  But the sort of spectra of HIV was really big, you know, growing out.
• 11:16
  And I think a lot of my like sing five year single period was kind of just before prep kind of came in.
• 11:23
  So my sense of of that, I think was, yeah, it was informed by that sort of shadow, I think.
• 11:29
  Right.
• 11:30
  And I don't know if you felt something similar, but yeah, sex wasn't entirely problem free potentially, you know, and that was sort of...
• 11:40
  Well, I wasn't apogrid full of condoms just the solution to that.
• 11:43
  I don't know.
• 11:44
  Because of the adverts on TV in the 80s, which basically had the gravestone that said essentially gave you the message that if you have gay sex, you're going to get AIDS and die.
• 11:52
  That is what I grew up with.
• 11:53
  Didn't they include the bit about unless you use a condom?
• 11:55
  No.
• 11:56
  No.
• 11:57
  No, it's not enough.
• 11:58
  I mean, it's interesting.
• 11:59
  Yeah, I mean, maybe later on that education came in, but in the 80s when we were kind of...
• 12:02
  I mean, that was literally a slogan here.
• 12:04
  Australia had one of the most successful anti HIV public health campaigns.
• 12:07
  And they had terrifying ads that would scare the shit out of everybody and their tagline at the end of the ad was always use a condom.
• 12:14
  Always.
• 12:15
  I mean, maybe that was on there, but as a kid watching it, that's not the message I took.
• 12:20
  I think I saw a gravestone and heard about gay people and that and those connections.
• 12:24
  Absolutely.
• 12:25
  Imprinted a certain level probably.
• 12:27
  Plus we had section 28 under that show, which meant that it couldn't be talked about in schools.
• 12:31
  You couldn't be educated about it.
• 12:33
  So you were basically seeing negativity from the TV, whatever you got from your family.
• 12:38
  And from my family, I mean, there was no homophobia, but there was just nothing.
• 12:41
  It wasn't even talked about and considered.
• 12:43
  So that was the messaging I grew up with.
• 12:46
  Right.
• 12:47
  Right.
• 12:48
  Yes.
• 12:49
  I mean, I'd moved to England's in 1990s from here from Australia, from Sydney.
• 12:55
  And yeah, I think somewhere in my brain, I don't know whether it's because of what I was.
• 13:04
  My family very accepting.
• 13:08
  But there's sort of outside and as the other otherness.
• 13:13
  It lingers more than, I mean, I hope younger people now have that less.
• 13:17
  I don't know.
• 13:18
  Oh, sure they do.
• 13:19
  Yeah.
• 13:20
  And it did make me just a bit nervous.
• 13:22
  And actually also what's in the play is that thing of not him not quite being able to trust himself to do the right thing.
• 13:28
  And potentially self sabotage in some ways.
• 13:31
  And I have that and I don't know where that comes from because generally I'm really nice.
• 13:37
  And hopefully respectful and nice to other people and hopefully, but I'm not always nice to myself, maybe.
• 13:42
  So I sort of worry somewhere in my brain that I'm going to get this wrong.
• 13:45
  And then it's, you know, I was trying to do that.
• 13:50
  I was trying to have fun.
• 13:51
  And then I got caught out.
• 13:52
  You know, that was, that was also the messaging.
• 13:54
  I think there was quite a lot of like shame around how kind of safe sex was presented to us.
• 14:00
  That felt nerve wracking.
• 14:02
  I actually, I think it's a Nina Dunham in girls and the first series of girls.
• 14:06
  She worries about getting an STI and like, what did you use a condom?
• 14:09
  And she's talking about like, oh, what about the bits that go over the side?
• 14:12
  What, what, what bits?
• 14:14
  And I was like, oh, yeah, that's, that's kind of what I carry around.
• 14:19
  It's impossible to be safe.
• 14:21
  And I don't know.
• 14:22
  Right.
• 14:23
  I mean, self sabotage is a whole other interesting thing as well.
• 14:26
  I remember, who's had it, but like they said, if someone else spoke to you,
• 14:31
  the way that you let your brain speak to you, you would punch them.
• 14:34
  And yeah, we walk around every day talking to ourselves in ways that we not tolerate somebody else
• 14:39
  in terms of our own self criticism.
• 14:41
  I mean, maybe one way out of the trap of fear for the young gay person,
• 14:47
  I'm trying to think of why I didn't have that particular concern.
• 14:52
  And maybe I took more of an almost journalistic curiosity in what it was like to be gay.
• 14:59
  Like maybe my way to self justify the fact that I wasn't a dirty fag at was to be like,
• 15:04
  well, this is a curious and interesting part of human sexuality.
• 15:07
  So what did I like to do?
• 15:08
  An anthropological examination of more gay clubs or gay bars might be like that way.
• 15:13
  I don't have to be of them.
• 15:15
  And I don't need the card to get into them or to be right in them or to be accepted in them.
• 15:21
  I'm coming in with my journalist hat on to examine this phenomenon and then have fun flirting
• 15:28
  and occasionally hooking up.
• 15:29
  But it's funny that the sort of tricks that your brain will play in order to justify getting what it was.
• 15:35
  Yeah.
• 15:36
  Yeah, while evading whatever that might mean in some way and sense about your own identity or who you are.
• 15:43
  I mean, the thing about shame is interesting.
• 15:46
  I think one of the good, one of the lines that I like the most in the, in the play was,
• 15:49
  is something along the lines of after a hookup saying, and I didn't feel shame.
• 15:53
  And then the character catches himself and says, I try and try not to feel shame.
• 15:59
  Interesting and nuanced distinction.
• 16:02
  Yeah.
• 16:03
  Yeah.
• 16:04
  Where does that come from?
• 16:05
  It's all the stuff we've been talking about.
• 16:07
  When I came to Australia on holidays to visit my family or whatever,
• 16:10
  I'd be able to achieve a level of kind of like flow or something when it came to like my sex life.
• 16:15
  I'd just enjoy it because it's like, I'm only here for like three weeks and I can just sort of have fun.
• 16:20
  But actually, I sort of, in the UK, perhaps I was always on some level looking for like love and acceptance within those hookups.
• 16:28
  And then when you don't get it, then you feel like, oh, that's because I'm not good enough.
• 16:33
  So I think that's where the rather than just being like, actually, this is fun and I'm just having fun and it's for me.
• 16:38
  So I think it's probably that dissonance between what we say we want, which is to have fun
• 16:43
  and actually what we really want just maybe like someone to hold me.
• 16:46
  Right.
• 16:47
  That's so true.
• 16:48
  That's absolutely because I realized all the hookups that I had in my 20s was absolutely looking for love.
• 16:54
  And that's kind of the problem that I wasn't doing it just to have great sex.
• 16:57
  I was doing it unconsciously because I wanted something else.
• 17:00
  And it was always afterwards that I'd go, why didn't that feel great?
• 17:03
  And why do I feel awful about myself?
• 17:05
  And I go, oh, because actually, I really wanted to its intimacy and that did not happen.
• 17:10
  Not the kind of intimacy I wanted.
• 17:11
  Right.
• 17:12
  And I always felt shame afterwards.
• 17:14
  Even though it's completely the things that can be...
• 17:16
  You're such old mature souls.
• 17:17
  I didn't have that in my 20s.
• 17:18
  I was just trying to get laid in that way.
• 17:20
  But anyone's on sleeping over and they're having to pretend to make breakfast for them or something.
• 17:24
  No, I definitely wanted the spooning and breakfast.
• 17:26
  Just leave.
• 17:27
  I empathised with the asshole character.
• 17:30
  Who is the dude who's always asking the main character to leave?
• 17:35
  Because he's got to be up there, mate.
• 17:36
  There's me in Australia next.
• 17:37
  Let's make my god Australian.
• 17:39
  It's like three in the morning.
• 17:40
  You're like hanging out at his place.
• 17:42
  You're like warning him to...
• 17:43
  And he's like, can I have something more in the morning?
• 17:45
  Can you go?
• 17:46
  Like, what did you think this was?
• 17:47
  You're obviously more in touch with your needs.
• 17:51
  It's a very complimentary way of starting being an asshole.
• 17:55
  No, but can I do something else for you?
• 17:57
  No.
• 17:58
  I think that is just different types of personality.
• 18:00
  It's like, we get what we want.
• 18:02
  And then, sorry, why are we all hanging around?
• 18:04
  Can we just get rid of the spoonings?
• 18:06
  Let me sleep.
• 18:07
  I was not in touch with my needs at all.
• 18:10
  It was all completely unconscious.
• 18:11
  And so, I could never figure out what it was I wanted.
• 18:14
  And why it was always so dissatisfying and shameful afterwards was because there were needs that I just wasn't meeting.
• 18:19
  And it took me a lot of therapy to understand that,
• 18:22
  oh, I've got needs that I just don't even know about.
• 18:24
  Right.
• 18:27
  Building on the question of shame.
• 18:28
  Because I did when I was writing.
• 18:29
  I was like, I don't necessarily want to write about shame, you know, in a kind of
• 18:36
  depressing way or a kind of self-perpetuating way.
• 18:38
  Because that is something that I think can be critiqued in kind of representation of gay life.
• 18:44
  It's like, oh, it's tragic or it's depressing.
• 18:47
  And this show isn't that I should say.
• 18:49
  But it's also would not be true to say that I always felt great or it is always perfect for everyone.
• 18:55
  So I felt like actually it's like, yes, I could, it wouldn't be truthful to my experience.
• 19:00
  But I don't know if it's that truthful anyway to suggest that everything is one thing or another.
• 19:04
  I don't think it's, I think it can be lots of fun and it can not be lots of fun.
• 19:09
  There is a loneliness to it sometimes.
• 19:11
  And it's okay to talk about both things.
• 19:13
  Yes, indeed.
• 19:14
  And it's also sometimes the case that the payoff, the actual sex,
• 19:18
  is not really the object or like even if you're sort of characterizing it as being
• 19:24
  love or intimacy being a final object.
• 19:26
  But also the whole flirtation can be the object.
• 19:30
  The chase can be the object.
• 19:32
  The, you know, the lust can be the object.
• 19:34
  And then the actual final consummation could be subpar.
• 19:37
  And then the empty but maybe part of the game of the pursuit could be, you know,
• 19:43
  there are lots of different ways of finding fulfillment.
• 19:46
  All liberation in the pursuit without necessarily pegging it to the shame of
• 19:52
  yeah, pouring itself out too much.
• 19:54
  I mean, it is quite a bleak.
• 19:56
  There we, it does present a picture of what it's like to be a young gay man that is
• 20:02
  unfulfilled and unfulfilling and quiet.
• 20:07
  I think it's, like we said, I think it's sort of my own experience.
• 20:11
  And I don't, I wouldn't want to speak to other people's experience too much.
• 20:14
  So I can't say it's, you know, a portrait of anything.
• 20:17
  It's, but it's, it's a sort of story.
• 20:19
  I mean, it's ultimately uplifting.
• 20:20
  I don't know if it's a dark show, but because it has a, because it's a story.
• 20:24
  Yeah.
• 20:25
  And so it has an ending.
• 20:27
  And it's not a tragedy.
• 20:28
  Yeah.
• 20:29
  Suffice it to say.
• 20:30
  But the, the, the dynamic of questing solosely to be filled by, you know, some, you
• 20:38
  know, man on white horseback.
• 20:42
  But it's not a compulsively going back to that stream and getting nothing from it, essentially.
• 20:46
  Which is not a gay thing.
• 20:48
  So that's what I love about the show.
• 20:50
  I think Marcelo's written something so specific.
• 20:53
  And because it's so specific, it becomes universal.
• 20:55
  So the, I mean, the apps thing is for everyone these days.
• 20:59
  And the hookup culture is for everyone.
• 21:01
  And then also there are lots of people feeling shame about it.
• 21:03
  Or there are lots of people searching for romance through it.
• 21:06
  And maybe not finding what they want.
• 21:07
  And then there are lots of people having the best time.
• 21:10
  Regardless of sexuality and gender.
• 21:12
  So I think what I always find quite surprising and satisfying is the response that I get
• 21:19
  from straight people around it kind of going, oh my god, I didn't think I was going to
• 21:23
  relate to any of this because it's a gay character.
• 21:25
  It's a gay story and actually the emotional component and all the self sabotage and all
• 21:29
  the shame stuff.
• 21:30
  I think it's just, I think it's just human.
• 21:32
  Yeah.
• 21:33
  I think there is absolutely an extra layer.
• 21:35
  When it comes to being gay just around the culture.
• 21:39
  And what the culture used to be like how it's changing what it is now.
• 21:43
  But ultimately, I think it's a universal story.
• 21:46
  That's why I think it kind of, that's why I think it's kept going actually as a play.
• 21:51
  This is our third iteration on our first international outing.
• 21:55
  And there's a reason that it's, there's a reason it's kept going.
• 21:58
  Yes.
• 21:59
  Where were the others?
• 22:00
  We started in Edinburgh at Edinburgh Festival in the roundabout, which is a fun venue.
• 22:10
  And it was a little bit of an experiment.
• 22:11
  So it started during lockdown.
• 22:16
  I felt, oh, I got a little bit of Arts Council money.
• 22:20
  It's just a bit of government money.
• 22:22
  And I was like, well, I just, it sort of feels like the end of the world.
• 22:26
  So I just kind of write something.
• 22:28
  But I'll kind of write it in a quite un-
• 22:31
  filtered way or something.
• 22:33
  So it's something for me to some extent.
• 22:35
  And I know, and because I'd worked with Samuel.
• 22:38
  I kind of knew that our neurosis overlapped in a quite useful way.
• 22:41
  And I was a sensitive human with this thing.
• 22:43
  I was like, I'll write a monologue because that's all that we're allowed to do anymore.
• 22:47
  That's one person on the stage with no one allowed.
• 22:51
  It was the 84.
• 22:54
  And yeah, so it started in a kind of scrappy workshop way.
• 22:59
  As a sort of like, what's so nice, I think, is it did start as a quite self-directed, self-made thing.
• 23:05
  And then Francesca Moody saw the videos.
• 23:08
  And I already had a relationship with her.
• 23:10
  And she's, if people that don't know, she is a producer.
• 23:14
  And she's particularly big in Edinburgh because she kind of broke flea bag there and baby reindeer.
• 23:19
  And she has other great shows actually.
• 23:20
  And she's sort of well-known in Edinburgh.
• 23:22
  And this felt like a good show for Edinburgh because the main character is a stand-up comedian.
• 23:26
  And it's interesting to put it in that space.
• 23:29
  And I think we did, I think we thought it was good.
• 23:32
  And it would do okay.
• 23:33
  But then it just kind of took off.
• 23:36
  And we had that really great kind of three weeks of feeling.
• 23:39
  Feeling not afraid.
• 23:41
  Not afraid.
• 23:42
  Sort of feeling in the closest real field sort of rock stars or something.
• 23:46
  And the way that kind of comedians do in Edinburgh, which is totally artificial in that.
• 23:51
  And then you have lots of telepeople talking to you.
• 23:54
  It's all quite exciting about that because obviously flea bag and reindeer, these are examples of essentially first-person stories on the stage
• 24:02
  that get adapted into television shows.
• 24:04
  This is made for it.
• 24:05
  Obviously, it's got a range of different characters.
• 24:07
  You can see the narrative arc.
• 24:09
  What happened to those television conversations?
• 24:11
  Well, we're still talking.
• 24:13
  But things take a long time in relation to TV.
• 24:16
  Everything goes very, very slowly in television until all of a sudden it does.
• 24:21
  Yeah, that's true.
• 24:23
  But, you know, there's sort of ongoing.
• 24:25
  I mean, I think it could be a great TV show.
• 24:29
  Well, let's hope that's all I can sort of say.
• 24:32
  And so, then after Edinburgh, you took it there.
• 24:34
  We took it to the Bush Theatre, sort of year later.
• 24:37
  We took it to Bush Theatre in London, in Shepherd's Bush,
• 24:41
  which is a great little new writing venue.
• 24:44
  And then I don't know at what point Melbourne Arts Centre and Sydney Opera House kind of became involved.
• 24:52
  But there was always talk of Australia.
• 24:55
  And that felt really exciting to be able to kind of go back to Australia with it.
• 24:58
  And we did think that Australians, I don't know, rightly or wrongly, I just think they're quite up for a good time.
• 25:04
  So it sort of felt like the humour would kind of hit.
• 25:07
  Definitely.
• 25:08
  And similar to humour and also pretty gay.
• 25:10
  Yeah.
• 25:11
  Like, you know, pretty on the outside of that.
• 25:13
  That's what I mean.
• 25:14
  Yeah.
• 25:15
  I do find the form of monologues quite challenging.
• 25:18
  Like, that's actually what I sort of don't always like monologues.
• 25:21
  And this is an appeal to people, perhaps, that don't like monologues.
• 25:24
  Is that what we wanted to do, what I wanted to do.
• 25:27
  I don't want to do someone just to sort of tell a story,
• 25:30
  because you can just read a story of this journalism or this, you know, memoir.
• 25:35
  So I wanted to do something that was also quite theatrical.
• 25:38
  I'm kind of used to the device.
• 25:40
  And so that's where they're kind of the idea of the, it's a play,
• 25:43
  but it takes the form of a kind of confessional standpoint in places.
• 25:46
  And Samuel, you're good at characters.
• 25:48
  So you can do the, it feels like you're watching more than one person as well.
• 25:51
  Oh, that's good.
• 25:52
  I mean, I've got better at doing that.
• 25:53
  I don't, I don't really think there are any separate characters in Edinburgh.
• 25:57
  And then Bush, I found a bit more.
• 25:59
  And finally here, I thought I actually delineated some of the characters.
• 26:02
  Oh, yeah.
• 26:03
  I'm not great with like, no, dear, I'm going to top myself out of jobs here,
• 26:07
  but like, you know, accent work takes time.
• 26:10
  And it is hard in a monologue really finding the switches between the characters
• 26:15
  so that you really do think, oh, that voice is different
• 26:18
  or suddenly seeing an American rather than the comedian that we've been seeing.
• 26:22
  And so I've got better at it.
• 26:24
  Yeah, no, you're going to turn the switch on and off
• 26:26
  without sort of awkwardly bleeding between characters,
• 26:29
  you can sometimes happen.
• 26:32
  So the fact, I hadn't really thought, clopped the fact that it was written during the pandemic
• 26:36
  when there's a lot of conversation about dying in the end of life
• 26:39
  and all of this being pointless and the end of the world
• 26:41
  and like, why are other people not freaking out the way that I'm freaking out?
• 26:44
  Is that pandemic related or is that partly pandemic related
• 26:47
  and partly your own existential dread?
• 26:49
  Yeah, the head being, yeah, it'll happen in my head.
• 26:52
  Just explain what that line is.
• 26:53
  Oh, that's it.
• 26:54
  It's all about my family's life.
• 26:57
  He's talking about, he says, why do you always assume the worst?
• 27:01
  And he says, I don't.
• 27:02
  And he says, you do.
• 27:03
  You thought you had a brain tumor and he's like, oh, yeah, no, I didn't have a brain tumor.
• 27:06
  And he says, that's because nine times out of ten,
• 27:08
  it's all happening in your head.
• 27:10
  And the character says, yeah, like my head isn't, as if...
• 27:13
  What is the dub line?
• 27:15
  As if my head isn't the place I live in.
• 27:18
  Yeah, which it is.
• 27:19
  I mean, it's the only place we live in is our heads.
• 27:21
  So I think that's quite a profound point, just about mental health.
• 27:24
  In general.
• 27:25
  I don't worry about it.
• 27:26
  It's all in your head.
• 27:27
  Yeah.
• 27:28
  Also, everything's fucking in my head.
• 27:30
  And I had to touch my body.
• 27:31
  I can't get away from it.
• 27:32
  It's not just my head.
• 27:33
  It's the whole universe.
• 27:34
  Everything is happening in here.
• 27:35
  It's in here.
• 27:36
  There's no universe without this.
• 27:38
  From my first person, the solar system, subjective experience.
• 27:41
  Yes.
• 27:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:43
  Yes.
• 27:44
  So, yes.
• 27:46
  It was, yeah, and it did have...
• 27:49
  And, you know, there's a bit where it's like, why are we just doing this?
• 27:51
  Why are we doing this?
• 27:52
  Why are we doing this show?
• 27:53
  Why aren't we kind of running around screen or living in a bunker?
• 27:56
  And I'm sure that was informed by pandemic dread.
• 28:00
  But the flip side of all that, I don't know if I should say this, but like I found lockdown.
• 28:06
  And we had, I know in Victoria, they had massive lockdowns in the head here as well.
• 28:10
  But we were just locked down for so long and it kept happening.
• 28:13
  But what that did weirdly do is I found myself more relaxed.
• 28:18
  In some weird way because the kind of worst case was happening.
• 28:22
  And my kind of weird kind of catastrophizing brain felt kind of somewhat like vindicated moment.
• 28:29
  Oh, that's so interesting.
• 28:31
  Oh, yeah, see, I did tell you this sort of thing when you spent years being anxious
• 28:36
  and assuming that the worst is going to happen and then it happens.
• 28:38
  You go, yep, there you go.
• 28:39
  I'm ready for it.
• 28:40
  Yes.
• 28:41
  How's everyone else going to cope?
• 28:42
  Well, you're all having breakdowns.
• 28:43
  You all laughed at me.
• 28:44
  Yeah.
• 28:46
  They sort of felt like, okay.
• 28:47
  And then actually also, it took you slightly off the merry go round of interactions.
• 28:51
  And I was quite productive during that period, like a lot.
• 28:54
  Interesting.
• 28:55
  Yeah, I had that, I'm not an anxious person.
• 28:57
  But at the beginning, I'm a, I'm a clued in scientifically minded journalist, a journalistic person.
• 29:03
  So in January, and certainly by early February of 2020, I was hearing enough from colleagues around the world
• 29:09
  who understood epidemiology to be like, this is it, this is the big one, this is coming.
• 29:14
  And people thought that I was a chicken little in early February.
• 29:16
  People were like, I will be back at, you know, three weeks or whatever.
• 29:22
  And then once the, I've had the exactly the same experience where once the supermarket shelves were bare
• 29:28
  and everyone was freaking out, I had this immense sense of calm because I've been really anxious for the past five or six weeks
• 29:35
  feeling like I was crazy.
• 29:37
  And now I was just like, all right, the train's leaving the station and we're all on it now.
• 29:41
  I can kind of relax.
• 29:42
  I don't have to worry about this silly thing that I think is coming because now it's obviously here
• 29:47
  and everybody understands it and nobody is under any illusions about the scale of the thing.
• 29:52
  So now I can just chill.
• 29:53
  Yeah, I mean, you coming up with this monologue was a real gift for me
• 29:57
  because my dad died of COVID really early on.
• 30:00
  Oh, shit, sorry.
• 30:01
  I mean, you know, it is, it is what it is.
• 30:04
  And I, he died on April 1st and we'd locked down I think on the 23rd of March.
• 30:08
  It's really soon.
• 30:10
  And it is sort of not almost not acceptable to say, but locked down was great for me
• 30:17
  because I had time to grieve like it did not have to do real life.
• 30:20
  Then this show came along and you didn't write in the character.
• 30:24
  The characters dad dies, but you didn't write that in because of...
• 30:27
  No, because my, my, my stepdad.
• 30:29
  Yeah, yeah.
• 30:30
  Yeah, so we'd, we'd both lost dads and...
• 30:35
  How do I process stuff apart from through therapy?
• 30:37
  It's actually through being creative and being an actor and, you know, you do.
• 30:40
  You just put yourself in your work.
• 30:42
  So I remember the first time we sort of did the workshop and then the run through.
• 30:46
  And I was just like, I was still grieving, but there was something brilliant about being able to slightly remove it from myself
• 30:51
  and talk about characters dad died rather than having to sit in my own shit the whole time.
• 30:56
  But being able to sit in my own shit actually for six months and not have to engage with life.
• 31:00
  Plus being able to be creative through this monologue.
• 31:03
  I think it saved me.
• 31:04
  I really do.
• 31:05
  I think it weirdly sped up the grieving process.
• 31:07
  I've ever said to my therapist after about...
• 31:09
  After about nine months and we'd come out of lockdown and gone into lockdown again.
• 31:14
  And I was like, I keep waiting for a breakdown to happen.
• 31:17
  Like, when am I gonna do, like you see in the movies, when am I gonna do the kind of...
• 31:21
  I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, and then hit by a train of grief.
• 31:24
  She's like, you've been doing it for nine months.
• 31:26
  Like it's just been, you've been able to process because you've had nothing else to do.
• 31:30
  So you've had to.
• 31:31
  And did you have periods of intense grief when you were crying all day?
• 31:35
  Really early on I did.
• 31:36
  Yeah.
• 31:37
  Really early on.
• 31:38
  I cried.
• 31:39
  So I've never cried that much.
• 31:41
  I've always found crying really hard.
• 31:43
  I'm not somebody who's...
• 31:45
  Turns out I actually need someone with me to cry.
• 31:48
  Didn't really know that about myself.
• 31:49
  Didn't really cry that much as a kid.
• 31:52
  But there was something so...
• 31:54
  It was, it's the worst that happened.
• 31:56
  It was so weird because it's bad losing a parent.
• 31:58
  Like it's one of the worst things losing a parent.
• 32:00
  But then losing a parent to a mysterious disease that's forced the world to stop.
• 32:06
  And everyone's frightened of getting it and everyone's frightened of losing someone to it.
• 32:10
  And I lost someone so quickly and so early.
• 32:12
  It's like, oh, well, it's...
• 32:14
  It's happened.
• 32:15
  And I'm okay.
• 32:16
  And I sobbed, sobbed for a long time.
• 32:20
  And then just didn't.
• 32:21
  And actually the next time I...
• 32:22
  The next time I really sobbed was when...
• 32:25
  Oh, of course.
• 32:26
  Yeah, so he died April 1st.
• 32:28
  I had my 40th birthday in lockdown on April 25th.
• 32:31
  Same day as my dad's birthday.
• 32:33
  So that was annoying.
• 32:34
  A year on, we were in lockdown again.
• 32:37
  And I hadn't cried for a long time.
• 32:39
  And my...
• 32:40
  My now husband, then partner, had commissioned a painting of my dad for my 41st birthday.
• 32:46
  Which I unwrapped.
• 32:48
  And it undid me.
• 32:50
  Because I was like...
• 32:51
  It was, you know, it was the one year anniversary of him dying.
• 32:53
  And I was like, I don't really know how to honor this.
• 32:55
  We're in lockdown again.
• 32:56
  I didn't get a funeral.
• 32:57
  I didn't get a memorial.
• 32:58
  I didn't get...
• 32:59
  There was nothing.
• 33:00
  It's either...
• 33:01
  That gift is either incredibly sweet or totally tecless.
• 33:04
  And I can't figure it out.
• 33:05
  It was unbelievably beautiful.
• 33:08
  You know, he knows me well enough to judge what would have been right.
• 33:13
  And it was...
• 33:15
  It was by an artist who I love.
• 33:17
  It was my favourite picture of my dad.
• 33:19
  Which I don't know if my husband knew that.
• 33:22
  And I opened this thing and it was him.
• 33:24
  And I was like, oh my god, that's how you honor something.
• 33:27
  Like, what a beautiful and very privileged way of doing that.
• 33:30
  And, you know, it sits on my wall at home.
• 33:33
  And everyone...
• 33:35
  Oh, that thing that people do when someone dies, he'll be with you.
• 33:38
  He'll be with you in your heart.
• 33:39
  And I was very much like, no, he's very much dead.
• 33:42
  Like, he's very much not here.
• 33:44
  I don't know what that means.
• 33:46
  And weirdly, I sort of get it now.
• 33:49
  Now that I'm not in the thick of that grief.
• 33:51
  I mean, you know, we're five years on now.
• 33:52
  So I'm really not in the thick of it at all.
• 33:54
  But even a year I was like, oh, I sort of get it.
• 33:57
  Your relationship with a dead person carries on.
• 34:00
  Even though they're dead.
• 34:01
  It's weird to say and feel and think that.
• 34:03
  But it's true.
• 34:04
  Yeah, but it's also tenured of people to try to point it out.
• 34:07
  Well, that's a lot of the thing that you need.
• 34:09
  Like literally day one.
• 34:10
  He'll be with you in your heart.
• 34:11
  I'm like, fuck off.
• 34:12
  He's not with me.
• 34:13
  Very, very dead.
• 34:14
  It's a sense of the people who are saying that.
• 34:16
  I've lost a few people recently, but one particularly close person,
• 34:20
  who was the sibling of my best friend who I knew very well.
• 34:23
  And fuck it's hard knowing what to say to someone who's lost something like that.
• 34:29
  I've made multiple blunders of that kind.
• 34:32
  Like at some point, just trying to be constructive in framing it in a way
• 34:38
  that I feel like might be an escape hatch from the root and from the grief rather.
• 34:43
  And it's like, they don't fucking want the escape hatch.
• 34:46
  You want to be validated in the fact that this is the worst thing that's ever happened
• 34:49
  to them by far and just sit with that.
• 34:52
  Stop trying to fix it.
• 34:53
  But also, I never rejected anybody's kind of approach of,
• 34:57
  he'll be with you in your heart ever.
• 34:58
  I was very gracious.
• 34:59
  I said, thank you.
• 35:00
  I was like, absolutely.
• 35:01
  Whilst thinking, that's not what I need right now.
• 35:04
  Right.
• 35:05
  And it's interesting.
• 35:06
  The people who really know, I guess this is just a universal thing.
• 35:10
  The people who really know what to say are the ones who've kind of experienced something similar.
• 35:14
  Yes.
• 35:15
  And just go, you know, the most useful one was a friend of mine who's lost his wife a few years ago.
• 35:20
  And he, he just especially didn't want, there's nothing I can say.
• 35:25
  There is nothing that will be useful.
• 35:27
  I'm sending you a book if you ever want to read it, no pressure.
• 35:30
  And I did read it and it was brilliant.
• 35:32
  And it was that.
• 35:33
  It was just like, it was by now.
• 35:38
  Is it Louis Carol or CS Lewis?
• 35:41
  Which one?
• 35:42
  Both people.
• 35:43
  CS Lewis maybe talks about grief.
• 35:45
  Yes.
• 35:46
  CS Lewis wrote this book about grief.
• 35:48
  Can't remember what it's called.
• 35:49
  A grief observed.
• 35:50
  That's what it's called.
• 35:51
  It's a thin little book about losing his partner.
• 35:52
  It's like a diary.
• 35:53
  But one of the brilliant things he said, and it was really early on in sort of my grieving process.
• 35:58
  But he said, we have a tendency to immediately eulogize the person that's dead.
• 36:02
  We immediately go, oh, they were just so wonderful.
• 36:06
  And he said, I want to remember my partner for everything that she was.
• 36:11
  And that was so helpful for me because I didn't want to go into, oh, my dad.
• 36:16
  My dad and I had a complicated relationship.
• 36:18
  And I, and certainly towards the end of his life, we had a brilliant relationship.
• 36:24
  And, and I'd worked a lot on that.
• 36:27
  And I think so at he.
• 36:29
  But I didn't want to kind of do the kind of sugar coating of, oh, my dad was the most wonderful man.
• 36:33
  He was the most wonderful man.
• 36:34
  He was also a man and complicated.
• 36:36
  And that was one of the most useful things I took from that book.
• 36:38
  Right.
• 36:39
  You're allowed to still think, well, they were a complete bastard.
• 36:42
  And I loved them.
• 36:43
  Not that my dad was completely bastard.
• 36:44
  But that kind of thing, you're allowed those extremes.
• 36:46
  Again, it's like the non, the non-binary just like everything's allowed.
• 36:50
  Yeah.
• 36:51
  And do you think that losing someone so early in the pandemic changed your relationship to risk
• 36:57
  during the pandemic?
• 36:59
  Yeah.
• 37:00
  It did.
• 37:01
  It did.
• 37:02
  That's a really, yeah, no one's ever really directly asked me that before.
• 37:05
  Because like my guilty secret is that there was a period towards the end of summer
• 37:10
  where everything opened up and you were allowed to fly and go on holiday.
• 37:14
  But people weren't.
• 37:15
  And there was a real judgmental thing going on.
• 37:17
  And I was like, fuck this.
• 37:19
  I have had, you know, people have had it worse.
• 37:23
  And I've had it quite bad.
• 37:24
  I've had it quite bad.
• 37:25
  I've had a shit six months.
• 37:26
  So me and Adam, my partner, we got on a plane and went to Ithaca and had the most extraordinary
• 37:31
  week there.
• 37:33
  It was deserted.
• 37:35
  And it was so good for the soul.
• 37:37
  And then we crept back and we didn't tell anyone.
• 37:39
  And then when I did tell people, there was judgment.
• 37:43
  Yeah.
• 37:44
  Risk as well.
• 37:45
  Yes, I did absolutely become a bit more like, hey, look, if it's going to kill me, it's going to kill me.
• 37:50
  I've had my vaccines.
• 37:52
  And I was careful.
• 37:53
  I observed all the rules like you do, but I was a bit like, I think it's made death feel
• 38:00
  a lot more present for me.
• 38:02
  I mean, and you've lost someone.
• 38:04
  And I feel like, I don't know, weirdly, even before my dad died, it sounds so morbid.
• 38:10
  And I don't even know what I mean by this really.
• 38:11
  But just this sense of death, not as a, oh my god, we're all going to die.
• 38:17
  But just this awareness that I think we may be, we're all, we can all be in denial
• 38:22
  about it.
• 38:23
  Oh, yeah.
• 38:24
  It's existential, I think.
• 38:25
  Yes.
• 38:26
  We are going to die.
• 38:27
  And I've carried that with me and then since my dad died, it's like, yeah, I can fully
• 38:31
  say I'm kind of scared of my own death.
• 38:33
  Absolutely.
• 38:34
  It's not like I've become friends with the idea of it.
• 38:36
  But we do lose people and it's okay.
• 38:38
  We do.
• 38:39
  If I can get through that, if I can grieve that, I can do anything.
• 38:43
  That's what it felt like.
• 38:44
  Yeah, that's interesting.
• 38:45
  Because one could imagine it going either way, either becoming, you becoming hypervigilant
• 38:48
  about the, the pathogen or the other way.
• 38:51
  I mean, on the presence of death in one's life, I actually have a, a thing in my bedroom,
• 38:57
  which is a, have you seen these calendars that have a square for each week of your life?
• 39:02
  It's a calendar.
• 39:04
  It's a piece of paper with a large block of squares.
• 39:09
  And is it, it's 4,000 weeks, which is the, which is an 80 year, oh my God, that sounds
• 39:18
  like nothing.
• 39:19
  And every Friday, I color in another dot.
• 39:22
  And you can see the, the life that I have drifting, like slipping through, I think it is.
• 39:27
  Why do you do that?
• 39:28
  For the same reasons you're talking about, I think I think it's, it's, look, it's going
• 39:35
  to happen.
• 39:36
  It's just a part of reality.
• 39:37
  And I think to some extent, the, the greatest risk is that you squander the, the precious
• 39:42
  time here by pretending that it's very important to do all your busy things.
• 39:49
  And lose sight of the fact that you just have this one very brief glimmer of consciousness
• 39:54
  and then you sink back into the ink evil heat.
• 39:56
  And that's fine.
• 39:57
  And as you say, I don't dwell on it, but like, note it, like, it is a reality.
• 40:03
  It's the respect that it deserves.
• 40:05
  Yeah.
• 40:06
  Yeah.
• 40:07
  And I, I think I do end up writing about death quite a lot in my stuff, but often because
• 40:10
  it's a kind of really clarifying, there are usually a kind of special moment when someone
• 40:15
  sort of dies.
• 40:16
  It really does do something.
• 40:17
  I know it's a cliché to say, it's not necessarily like, well, now I'm going to seize
• 40:20
  life.
• 40:21
  It's just like, this is a real thing.
• 40:23
  Everything else is kind of a femur or stress potentially, but this is real.
• 40:29
  And you are potentially dealing with it and through that, you're also kind of growing
• 40:33
  and changing.
• 40:34
  And that's, but that's a positive.
• 40:36
  Everything else actually feels I don't know what it is, like I don't know.
• 40:39
  Yeah.
• 40:40
  And how did you deal with the, with the grief of you losing your stepfather, because there's
• 40:43
  an interesting moment in the, in the show where the protagonist has a very cavalier and
• 40:50
  comical attitude towards the death of his father and the person who he's dating has
• 40:54
  this very American attitude towards self-help and self-actualization and kind of wants to
• 41:00
  give it the gravitas that it deserves and talks about the death as being a real trauma,
• 41:05
  you know, just a trauma.
• 41:06
  And it's a very funny moment, but it does present this on the one hand, a kind of Oprah American
• 41:13
  attitude towards like understanding oneself and a much more glib British perhaps Australian
• 41:19
  attitude.
• 41:20
  Yes, that really lands well here.
• 41:21
  Yeah.
• 41:22
  It really does.
• 41:23
  Yeah.
• 41:24
  It really does.
• 41:25
  It really does.
• 41:26
  Yeah.
• 41:27
  It sure will be right mate.
• 41:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 41:29
  How did you do that?
• 41:30
  Don't dig too deep.
• 41:31
  Yeah.
• 41:32
  That's all we have to do.
• 41:33
  Yeah.
• 41:34
  We've been doing it for like 10 minutes now.
• 41:35
  Um.
• 41:36
  Well, we do feelings on this show.
• 41:37
  A show as a country.
• 41:38
  Yeah.
• 41:39
  Um.
• 41:40
  I don't know.
• 41:41
  I don't think I processed it very well.
• 41:43
  I was quite young.
• 41:44
  I mean, I was addicted to it.
• 41:45
  That is a line for my life.
• 41:46
  Like I was 21 when it happened.
• 41:47
  And I did have to kind of move back home and look off my mom and.
• 41:52
  And probably that insecurity or sense of the world being so fragile had a strange effect
• 42:00
  where actually rather than I think probably seizing and going out and having lots of sex
• 42:04
  or whatever, I kind of went, oh, I sort of need to settle down age 21.
• 42:11
  And that I think makes sense.
• 42:13
  But I don't think I processed it fully and I probably still have them.
• 42:16
  I do think it's tough when you're a bit younger and you've also got my mom was really
• 42:20
  kind of traumatized by it.
• 42:23
  So yeah, your feelings kind of take us sort of step back and you try not to process it.
• 42:29
  And as long as time's actually, and this is my fault and my problem is I try and kind
• 42:32
  of just speed through things.
• 42:33
  I'm like, okay, well, let's get that over with.
• 42:35
  Take it off the check.
• 42:37
  Yeah.
• 42:38
  Yeah.
• 42:39
  And then let's keep busy, which is human.
• 42:41
  Yeah.
• 42:42
  But just in terms of brain development, all this neuroscience now that our brains aren't
• 42:48
  even fully developed until sort of the age of 25.
• 42:51
  So anything happening before then, you don't even necessarily have the brain power, neural
• 42:57
  pathways to process stuff like this.
• 42:58
  I feel again, really lucky that stuff happened to me.
• 43:01
  The age it happened, like, you know, dying when I was 39, turning 40 after a lot of
• 43:08
  therapy.
• 43:09
  I had ways of processing it.
• 43:11
  I can't imagine at the age of 21, I think that might have broken me at 21 rather than
• 43:19
  made me.
• 43:20
  Yeah.
• 43:21
  I don't know if I would have even had coping mechanisms around kind of keeping busy
• 43:24
  and looking after other people, I think I just would have had a breakdown.
• 43:27
  Well, I think, and I think the catastrophizing of the character is that tendency can be
• 43:31
  traced to that because I sort of just assume the world will just keep sort of ending
• 43:37
  continually.
• 43:39
  Because it can.
• 43:40
  Yeah, yeah.
• 43:41
  For individuals, it does.
• 43:42
  And some people are dying right now.
• 43:44
  Yeah.
• 43:45
  And other people are able to sort of just get through that in a way that feels more effortless
• 43:50
  than I sort of can.
• 43:51
  And I'd, yes, Australians, I think, have a different relation to that.
• 43:56
  And I do sometimes wonder, because if we'd stayed in Australia, would I have been a much
• 44:00
  more chilled human being on that?
• 44:01
  I don't know.
• 44:02
  There's something quite British as well.
• 44:03
  Brithens fucked you up.
• 44:04
  Yeah, it might.
• 44:05
  There is something.
• 44:07
  What's your intuition?
• 44:08
  I don't know.
• 44:09
  It's probably.
• 44:10
  I don't know.
• 44:11
  I think.
• 44:12
  Oh, I actually know.
• 44:13
  I have thoughts.
• 44:14
  Okay.
• 44:15
  Here are my thoughts.
• 44:16
  I think.
• 44:17
  Here.
• 44:18
  Here.
• 44:19
  Here.
• 44:20
  I loved.
• 44:21
  I was kind of excited when we moved over to the K and I, I mean, this whole, this whole
• 44:25
  thing's about how I was told and not told about the move.
• 44:28
  But broadly speaking, I, to be a child, it was going to be a short term thing, not
• 44:32
  that.
• 44:33
  Yeah.
• 44:34
  Wow.
• 44:35
  That.
• 44:36
  And, um, yes, but I did enjoy the first period because it feels like you're in a kind of
• 44:42
  Mary Poppins or, you know, it had that kind of quality, but also, uh, you know, Britain's
• 44:47
  love subtext and they love, love kind of, um, coded rules that you don't know quite where
• 44:52
  you are at the time.
• 44:53
  Um, so suddenly being actually quite, I don't think I was that Craig Arias, but all Australian
• 44:58
  so Craig Arias compared to English people.
• 45:01
  So I think I was a bit kind of an oddity as well.
• 45:03
  I was quite, actually quite emotional, I think of that, that age and quite just up for
• 45:06
  stuff.
• 45:07
  And also, this is true.
• 45:08
  Um, I would keep getting into fights and I'm not like, you know, like, so someone would
• 45:13
  sort of tease me or there'd be something and I would just like, thump them and I don't
• 45:17
  know where I got that.
• 45:18
  Right.
• 45:19
  I kind of love that.
• 45:20
  I know.
• 45:21
  But they quit.
• 45:22
  I know.
• 45:23
  Yeah.
• 45:24
  But I quickly got that kind of like a sort of shamed out of me as I was like, that's
• 45:27
  a problem.
• 45:28
  I mean, you can't, this is a problem.
• 45:29
  There's a problem here.
• 45:30
  And then maybe there was, I don't know.
• 45:31
  It's a building on that people in the school.
• 45:32
  Yeah.
• 45:33
  There's a problem.
• 45:34
  Well, but if you're being picked on, I don't know.
• 45:35
  There was a kind of, um, but I instead internalized, I mean, oh, that's probably me being somebody
• 45:40
  to do with me, um, rather than them.
• 45:44
  And, and yeah, I think, I think, uh, the Brits aren't great at talking about the feelings.
• 45:48
  There's loads of codes of behavior.
• 45:49
  I remember this intense moment, which is so small, but I just remember it being really
• 45:52
  young and being first moving over and we were taking, I was a friend, a someone from
• 45:59
  school and their parents invited me around.
• 46:02
  And I kind of immediately crossed the threshold or something like into the house or something
• 46:06
  like, you know, because they're like, but they hadn't said come in.
• 46:10
  And I was really told like, oh, no, you're not allowed to do that.
• 46:13
  You have to wait.
• 46:14
  How interesting.
• 46:15
  And I was like, oh, I'm a terrible human.
• 46:17
  I was bit by immediate kind of response to that.
• 46:19
  That's definitely them.
• 46:20
  Because that's not, that's not a code that I know of, but well, I think it's sort of like,
• 46:24
  maybe I sort of was just, maybe a bit boy stressing, who's went straight in or something,
• 46:28
  but even then it's.
• 46:29
  Uh, there are, I mean, there is an unfathomable network of stuff that's used towards outside
• 46:34
  of the existing, you know, kingdom.
• 46:36
  Yeah.
• 46:37
  And cloud side as well.
• 46:38
  I mean, I just don't get, and I'm like, I can't read a room sometimes with these things.
• 46:44
  It's, it's, I think it is also a real class thing.
• 46:47
  Yeah.
• 46:49
  I mean, I'm from like very much, like, we were poor when we were, when I was young,
• 46:54
  like we just were.
• 46:55
  And I found like going to London and being at drama school and meeting people of different
• 47:00
  classes, really interesting and really confusing.
• 47:03
  Yeah.
• 47:04
  The stuff that I just still don't think I understand.
• 47:05
  Yeah.
• 47:06
  I mean, there is a, there's a public school clique to Australian listeners or
• 47:10
  American listeners.
• 47:11
  That means private school in England, which I'm quite understanding why I call them public
• 47:14
  schools because they're not public.
• 47:16
  But there's, you know, an educated well off class.
• 47:20
  There is, and it is a visceral club, isn't it?
• 47:23
  Yes.
• 47:24
  There are markers of where you went to school and markers of your accent and markers
• 47:27
  of the kinds of ways that you can talk about literature that are that immediately put
• 47:33
  you inside or outside the club in a way that although there are sort of loose analogues
• 47:38
  in a place like Australia, I think it's much more porous and much more, much less mysteriously
• 47:44
  kind of, you know, enforced by these things.
• 47:47
  We've even got this whole thing built into our social fabric of like social mobility,
• 47:51
  this idea that you can climb.
• 47:53
  It's like, what, why is anyone having to climb?
• 47:57
  What is that about?
• 47:58
  And what does that mean?
• 47:59
  And what about the people you're supposed to be leaving behind then that the whole system
• 48:02
  is?
• 48:03
  Yeah.
• 48:04
  Really not good.
• 48:05
  It's interesting.
• 48:06
  I mean, then who's, I mean, it's an illusion that there's going to be a meritocracy
• 48:13
  that completely disregards your accent in the way of dressing and what you know about
• 48:18
  how you're supposed to comb your hair or a lot, you know, you groom correctly or drop
• 48:24
  the appropriate bon mose into conversation or I have a particular accent.
• 48:27
  It's like, yeah.
• 48:28
  And then you throw race into it and sexuality into it and it becomes even more complicated.
• 48:32
  I mean, there are all these unspoken things.
• 48:35
  It seems weird to just be like, we're going to all be socially mobile.
• 48:40
  Yeah.
• 48:41
  And you're right.
• 48:42
  It's not a meritocracy.
• 48:43
  No, that's so funny.
• 48:44
  It's like, I've got a fairly posh British accent which I lost my Australian really quick
• 48:48
  because I did have a proper Australian accent and I must have, that must have been like
• 48:51
  some sort of self-preservation thing.
• 48:53
  But it doesn't, it doesn't pass like, you know, it wouldn't, like they would know that
• 48:58
  I'm not really posh.
• 48:59
  Right.
• 49:00
  Because there's such a difference between RP, which is sort of receipt pronunciation whereby
• 49:04
  you're not meant to be able to tell where you're from.
• 49:06
  Right.
• 49:07
  At all.
• 49:08
  So that's RP.
• 49:09
  There's a real difference between that and a posh accent.
• 49:10
  Yeah.
• 49:11
  There still is.
• 49:12
  Yeah.
• 49:13
  There still is.
• 49:14
  And it's what school you went to and where you go up.
• 49:15
  And then all those codes.
• 49:16
  I mean, I know people have that everywhere, but it's the air you bring, you know, you
• 49:20
  can't.
• 49:21
  There's a, someone said an example that you're reminded me of, which is that meeting
• 49:26
  in a, it was about the difference between meeting in America and meeting a Brit and trying
• 49:30
  to get to know them.
• 49:31
  And they were saying that have you heard this?
• 49:33
  I know.
• 49:34
  Yeah, I've got my version because someone told me about this.
• 49:36
  It has, you may not have a better version than me, but the way I think I heard it was,
• 49:39
  and if you imagine sort of storming the beaches at Normandy, then then meeting a British,
• 49:43
  being trying to get included into a British social, social circle is like there's an implacable
• 49:49
  cliff that you're trying to climb and you have to like clamber up it and clamber up it
• 49:53
  and clamber up it.
• 49:55
  But once you actually reach the top, then there are vast open vistas and you should have
• 50:00
  know your place.
• 50:01
  And once you know the code, then you know, then you can be accepted.
• 50:05
  But with, um, no, actually, it's the opposite way around.
• 50:07
  Did I say that's British?
• 50:08
  No, no, no, I think that's right.
• 50:11
  I've got a walls analogy to say with British people.
• 50:15
  It's like high out of walls, low in a wall.
• 50:18
  So you get over that cliff and you're in with America.
• 50:22
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 50:23
  Yes, yes, yes.
• 50:24
  With America, yes, yes.
• 50:25
  Whereas within America, and it's like, you storm the beaches at Normandy and it's
• 50:28
  very easy.
• 50:29
  And you just go on and on, but you keep going on and on and on and on and on and you keep
• 50:35
  wandering and wandering and wandering and you never quite get there, you never reach the
• 50:39
  form of occasion.
• 50:40
  Yeah.
• 50:41
  It's pleasantries all the way.
• 50:42
  Yeah.
• 50:43
  It's have a nice day and like, you know, thank you for your service and whatever.
• 50:47
  But you can never, you never actually know when you made it when you made it in that
• 50:51
  connection because the, yeah, because the, the animals are so high, the, yeah, our walls
• 50:55
  are so low, you just step over them.
• 50:57
  Yeah.
• 50:58
  It's interesting.
• 50:59
  We just bring it back to the play because there is an American in that and we were,
• 51:02
  that was something that we were kind of just exploring like, well, like somebody
• 51:05
  would just love the American romantic interest in the play and I'm sort of, I'm fulfilling
• 51:10
  it sometimes.
• 51:11
  Like, there is lovely that, you know, he falls in love, but actually like, how real or
• 51:15
  how easy is it actually to be with, with, with the American, I don't really know.
• 51:22
  Yes.
• 51:23
  What does he have?
• 51:24
  Depth.
• 51:25
  Yeah.
• 51:26
  Is the question.
• 51:27
  Yeah.
• 51:28
  But he's just, is depth just kind of oversharing.
• 51:29
  Yes.
• 51:30
  It's that side of that.
• 51:31
  Depth that you've just had a lot of therapy and, you know, how do you speak the emotional
• 51:35
  intelligence language?
• 51:36
  Yeah.
• 51:37
  Or is there actually depth?
• 51:38
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  Connection.
• 51:40
  And I did on a date with an American, I mean, I sort of saw an American for a while and
• 51:43
  then I also went on another date with an American and we, we got into that conversation
• 51:46
  of like depth and he's like, he says, I don't actually don't know if I have any, like
• 51:50
  people say, you know, is there a nut?
• 51:51
  Is there a sort of deeper level?
• 51:52
  Yeah.
• 51:53
  And he's like, what does that mean?
• 51:54
  Yeah.
• 51:55
  Actually, I don't know if I can tell you.
• 51:56
  Yeah.
• 51:57
  I don't know.
• 51:58
  Yeah.
• 51:59
  I mean, I think I might be so unexamined that I think it would take a therapist so long
• 52:06
  to borrow away peeling the onion skins back until they got down to something true.
• 52:11
  But what if it's, what if I get down there and it's just empty and there's nothing there?
• 52:15
  There is just me.
• 52:16
  I'm just pure out of us.
• 52:17
  Yeah.
• 52:18
  She'll have a human being with that.
• 52:20
  I think that you have awareness of that means you have that.
• 52:22
  I mean, you have that.
• 52:23
  Absolutely.
• 52:25
  So just staying in London, it's so interesting that you went there when you were 10 and then
• 52:30
  on the under the auspices of only going for a short time and then stayed because when
• 52:34
  I was 10, we moved to London under the auspices of going for a short time with the plan of
• 52:38
  staying forever.
• 52:39
  And my brother and I kicked up such a sting that my parents pulled the plug on it.
• 52:43
  Wow.
• 52:44
  And my dad, who was an actor, was like, they had only come back in order to raise my brother
• 52:50
  and me because they lived there in the 60s and 70s.
• 52:53
  And so then they thought in the 80s, well, let's just go back and went back and he achieved
• 53:00
  his dream of being accepted into the Royal Shakespeare Company and literally had to call
• 53:03
  them back and say, I'm not going to take it.
• 53:05
  I'm going to move back to Australia just like, oh, so the children can live in sunshine
• 53:08
  and climb trees.
• 53:09
  But do you ever wish that that decision had been made or that it could have been made?
• 53:14
  Yeah.
• 53:15
  Sometimes.
• 53:16
  I think maybe it would help having a brother, it's someone else's life to fortify, though.
• 53:19
  Yeah.
• 53:20
  I think like I said, I think I did enjoy it at the beginning.
• 53:22
  I sort of at some point just sort of thought I can't complain like the idea of kind of
• 53:26
  kicking up the fuss was quite hard.
• 53:28
  Yeah.
• 53:29
  Um, um, uh, boy, yeah, yeah, well, you just, you adapt and actually in that people,
• 53:33
  kids are so adaptable, but it's like, well, or you just, you know, well, they store
• 53:38
  it.
• 53:39
  They're like, and they store it for later.
• 53:40
  Yeah.
• 53:41
  So I talked to the therapist.
• 53:42
  Yeah.
• 53:43
  But no, yeah, I sort of wish maybe I had kind of excited Miss Australia.
• 53:46
  And oh, I mean, I could sort of talk about it endlessly, but like, I was quite good
• 53:50
  at sports in Australia, I was quite, and I'm okay swimmer, actually, but I was quite good
• 53:55
  at stuff.
• 53:56
  And then something about England just kind of like stamped like, yeah, no, but it's all
• 54:02
  about like being kind of broy and, and, um, but also like actually sports taught really
• 54:08
  badly.
• 54:09
  I went to a specifically a school in Twickenham, which is like, I'm a rugby.
• 54:12
  So it was like obsessed with rugby.
• 54:14
  I didn't really teach it.
• 54:15
  They just kind of threw you into a squad and kind of flattened you and that was the experience.
• 54:19
  But I just sort of look, so then one's identity is formed by like, I'm not a sports person.
• 54:23
  I'm not someone who looks after my body.
• 54:25
  I'm not like, you know, I'm all about the mind.
• 54:27
  Right.
• 54:28
  I think like, it's so nice being here where it's actually sport isn't a signifier.
• 54:33
  And I said, I mean, I know Australians are kind of obsessed with sport, but it's not
• 54:36
  just straight people that do sport, which I think in the UK, it's very delineate.
• 54:42
  It's still in the 80s.
• 54:43
  Yeah.
• 54:45
  It's kind of it's it's it's peculiar for the gay non sports person to observe the level
• 54:49
  of homoerotic homophobia.
• 54:51
  Yeah.
• 54:52
  Yeah.
• 54:53
  It's like, it's hot.
• 54:56
  Yeah.
• 54:57
  You're all having like, they'll get caught in the hotel room all having a gang bang with
• 55:02
  some girls, like with their cocks flying in each other's faces.
• 55:05
  And it's the straight.
• 55:06
  It's portrayed as the straightest thing that's ever happened because there was a girl
• 55:10
  present.
• 55:11
  Yeah.
• 55:12
  Yeah.
• 55:13
  So weird.
• 55:14
  I think that's what I mean when I say like everyone's straight until they're not like that
• 55:18
  is there's there's such a blurred this again, this whole idea that you are one thing.
• 55:23
  Yeah.
• 55:24
  I think he's insane.
• 55:26
  It's insane.
• 55:27
  I don't know where it's come from, something about control, who knows.
• 55:30
  Probably the top of it.
• 55:31
  It's a legend.
• 55:32
  Absolutely.
• 55:33
  Absolutely.
• 55:34
  But even that it's like, why?
• 55:35
  So the fact that we're still in that today, it's just, I just find it, I actually found
• 55:40
  it exhausting and kind of boring that that's where we're still at.
• 55:43
  And I'm that it's getting worse, the more freedoms we've had, the more it's swinging the
• 55:48
  other way in terms of all that.
• 55:50
  I mean, so the social conservative would say the reason it's swinging the other way is
• 55:54
  because there was greater fulfillment in the institutions of family, love, structure,
• 55:59
  marriage, then the quest that this play in some ways portrays this soulless empty quest
• 56:07
  to fill oneself up with meaningless sexual relationships, right?
• 56:12
  And I do feel, I think you're right, that there's a tipping point culturally where people
• 56:17
  are starting to question whether, for example, consent is the only metric by which things
• 56:23
  should be judged.
• 56:26
  Is it the, as we live in this very kind of 1960s, hippie-dippie, like enlightened, sexually
• 56:33
  liberated idea where, as long as two people are great to it, that's the way it is.
• 56:37
  Totally fine, but I think social conservatives are saying, yeah, it might be fine,
• 56:41
  but it might also be less fulfilling than other ways of being, like being in a relationship
• 56:47
  that has fidelity and commitment and stability.
• 56:52
  Like, I don't know, I don't know where are you.
• 56:55
  Yeah, well, I sort of fall on that.
• 56:57
  I don't know, I just, there's often so much hypocrisy in social consensus.
• 57:01
  Oh, this is like, I'm really exactly where I'm actually having a first.
• 57:04
  And like, you know, I think sometimes it's the kind of position that I don't actually know.
• 57:08
  Or all I have to do, but I mean, play the ball, not the man, right?
• 57:10
  Yeah, I mean, assume that they're not hypocrites who are making this argument.
• 57:13
  I assume that we're judging the player on this man.
• 57:16
  I think it's personal. I think I've had to, I mean, on monogamy, say, or like, yeah, I guess
• 57:20
  not. Like, I try to be as sex positive as possible, but I've kind of more or less worked out
• 57:27
  that I'm, I get things from monogamy that is kind of useful for me.
• 57:32
  But I'm not opposed to people exploring other things.
• 57:37
  I don't need the, I don't feel the need to say or impose or kind of value judge what they're doing.
• 57:44
  Because I think it's possible for both to exist, you know.
• 57:47
  Yeah, I think the problem is seeing any particular group as a monolith,
• 57:51
  including themselves. I think social conservative and conservatism and
• 57:55
  the people who kind of live that also see themselves as one particular thing.
• 58:00
  And it's like, what happens to that child and that family where those are the values where they
• 58:06
  don't fit? Yes. So I just go, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. This idea that that might not be
• 58:14
  as fulfilling. It's like, well, it might not be as fulfilling for that person. So they might,
• 58:18
  like you've just said, they might get more out of monogamy than just casual sex.
• 58:22
  It's so individual. And that's why I struggle with this, these movements, whether it is
• 58:28
  the kind of, you know, because I think there are plenty of, also,
• 58:32
  plenty of gay people who think that, oh, that lifestyle of those kind of social conservatives,
• 58:36
  the kind of monogamy and stuff, who would want that, like boring, boring. It's like,
• 58:40
  all this judgment, it is just unhelpful. I think any monolith.
• 58:44
  And there is, there is a pressure, there is, I sort of feel like I sort of have to come
• 58:46
  out as being in a monogamy situation. Yeah. Because it's not the norm in gay life. So you can
• 58:52
  feel like kind of judgment sometimes. Yeah. Do you get judged for being married?
• 58:58
  I haven't felt judged for being married yet. I absolutely relate to that thing of,
• 59:02
  because we only got married in June. But we've been together for, yeah, exactly. We've been together
• 59:06
  for 13 years. I think I've definitely felt judged sometimes for like being in monogamous
• 59:14
  relationships or people going, oh, you're not open. Yeah. Well, no, but again, it's my partner
• 59:19
  and I talk about this regularly. We reassess regularly. We're like, do we want to do that?
• 59:24
  It's, it's whatever works you again as an individual. It's the judgment that is the problem here.
• 59:30
  No, I understand. But the judgment, I think the reaction that's happening, and the reason I'm
• 59:34
  speaking about this right now is because there was an interesting piece by Rostath at who's a
• 59:38
  socially conservative but reasonable person at the New York Times in response to the controversy
• 59:44
  around Neil Gaiman. Did you see that? Yeah. He's a brilliant, not chronic graphic novel, novelist
• 59:54
  who was accused of non-concentral sexual relations because he's into BDSM. And so there was this
• 1:00:01
  big expose and a newspaper, I think it was the New Yorker. No, the New York magazine or something,
• 1:00:06
  where one of the girls who he was with, and he's an older guy and she was a younger girl,
• 1:00:11
  she said that she didn't feel that it was consensual, but all of their interactions sound like
• 1:00:16
  it's consensual. And so the point the doubt that was making was like, it is leading us into a
• 1:00:22
  really difficult area when we're, when we've established that the only yardstick is whether or not
• 1:00:29
  a person consents because maybe it's not as, maybe the, maybe life just isn't as good when you're
• 1:00:36
  consenting to being, to eating your own shit and being pissed on by an old man, as it would be if
• 1:00:41
  you weren't consenting to those things because it's understandable that she's now saying that she
• 1:00:46
  regrets it. But you can't hold him accountable necessarily for the fact that she later regrets what
• 1:00:52
  she then consented to. But like, and so I think the, the, the, the doubts of the world are going like,
• 1:00:58
  maybe there was, maybe marriage was a, there was a reason for not trying to invent, to reinvent
• 1:01:04
  how to live life individually, like seven billion times a day in seven billion ways on the planet.
• 1:01:11
  But I understand that that also sounds paternalistic. No, I think conflating, because I absolutely
• 1:01:16
  hear what you're saying about that argument, the social conservative argument. But I think the
• 1:01:21
  problem with bringing gay men into it is the mountain of evidence that's stucked up where there's
• 1:01:26
  now a pattern of behavior with multiple women. So there's this amazing podcast that they did,
• 1:01:30
  um, which is I think eight episodes long and it's several women. And what's amazing is they've
• 1:01:36
  got actual vote like voiceno recordings of things that he said. And they've gone to him with a
• 1:01:41
  load of questions and he's answered all the questions. So you get what the women are saying and you get
• 1:01:45
  his responses to it. And by the end of the, and you, and actually through the podcast, even I was going,
• 1:01:52
  I mean, it, it does sound kind of reasonable, like it was kind of just, like BDS,
• 1:01:59
  no, nothing wrong with BDSM. And then by the end of the podcast, you're going, oh, yeah,
• 1:02:04
  there's an absolute pattern of behavior here that clearly this was not to do with BDSM. This was
• 1:02:10
  to do with consent. And there is so much stuff that happened that these women say that was not
• 1:02:16
  just BDSM. It was just non-concentral stuff. So there's this pattern of behavior. So I almost
• 1:02:20
  think bringing him into it isn't okay. Well, I may not know about his position. But I assume,
• 1:02:26
  but one can imagine a scenario in which every person in the world is trying to figure out what gets
• 1:02:32
  their rocks off. Yeah. And he's not necessarily doing it with the jobs as if they use them.
• 1:02:36
  Well, there's nothing wrong with it. But it may, it's not as constructive as just taking the
• 1:02:40
  heuristic of like find someone who you really like and then try to make that work. But you can't,
• 1:02:46
  you can't do that for seven billion individuals. It just, it can't be done because we have to be
• 1:02:51
  able to explore everything, make mistakes, find what works. And the problem with doing that is the
• 1:02:57
  judgment that's put on that is the kind of, well, if you're doing that, then you're not okay. It's
• 1:03:01
  like who is anyone to say that anyone else is not okay. Yes. And who is anyone to say that
• 1:03:08
  that lifestyle isn't as good as that lifestyle. And if you're not enjoying your lifestyle,
• 1:03:13
  you can do something about it. What we need is empowerment and emotional intelligence teaching
• 1:03:18
  to understand that when it doesn't work for us, we can make the changes. Not, well, if that's
• 1:03:23
  not working for you, then go and do that. Right. That isn't going to solve it. And I think that's
• 1:03:27
  part of the backlash. I think part of the backlash is a sense from normies that actually the people
• 1:03:32
  who've been judgmental over the past few decades is the other side. Absolutely. That has sort of
• 1:03:37
  denigrated tradition for the sake of denigrating tradition. And that's what I mean. It's just as
• 1:03:41
  bad. Yeah. It's just as bad. Where, no matter where it's coming from, I'm just like, can we all
• 1:03:46
  kind of stop doing it? I mean, I've had the experience of being in a gay bar and chatting to somebody
• 1:03:51
  and having a perfectly nice conversation and then then noticing my wedding ring and being like,
• 1:03:55
  you're married. I'm like, yeah, yeah. And they're like, they rudely scoff and then storm off.
• 1:04:00
  Like, it's not a question about whether or not I'm available for sex. That wasn't the point.
• 1:04:03
  The point is that I embody something that's deeply offensive to them. And they think that their
• 1:04:08
  identity is wrapped up in a countercultural pushback against what I represent, which is the
• 1:04:15
  which is hegemony and my tradition and boring normality when they're being such a rebel out there.
• 1:04:22
  And I'm like, you're a fucking performer. Yes. Absolutely. And this idea that anyone on the left is
• 1:04:27
  better than anyone on the right and vice versa is just part of the problem. Like none of us are
• 1:04:32
  better than anyone else. It's just I don't know what it is about. I mean, talk about self sabotage.
• 1:04:37
  Human beings in general, when you look at what we're doing to each other, what we're doing to the
• 1:04:42
  planet, all of that stuff. You go, why do we have this inbuilt thing to essentially destroy?
• 1:04:48
  I mean, we do. We just want to do it to each other. We want to do it to the planet. It's like,
• 1:04:52
  what are we doing? And I don't know how you raise the consciousness to kind of for everyone to,
• 1:04:59
  it's a bit like that. I mean, I love that you have that weak thing, the weakly thing on your
• 1:05:04
  calendar. It's like, if we all knew that, we really knew that with the things that we get so judgmental
• 1:05:11
  and head up about and destructive about, would we do it in the same way? I don't know.
• 1:05:15
  Yeah. And I think people feel threatened and the more people feel threatened and the more people
• 1:05:20
  feel disoriented and destabilized, the more likely they are to be unempathetic towards.
• 1:05:25
  Absolutely. And you're right. Oh, my God. That's the word empathy. That's the word. And I think
• 1:05:31
  as soon as you start creating kind of overarching kind of claims like that, I just think it's
• 1:05:40
  sort of individual really, I think that works. I don't understand if you're also for kind of
• 1:05:43
  civil liberties, why you then want to mandate that for everyone. No, it's not. I think to be
• 1:05:50
  fair to doubt that I think the claim would be, can we live in a world in which I'm not
• 1:05:56
  pilloried for saying that the choice to eat my own shit because someone is ordering me to
• 1:06:03
  is an inferior choice to the choice to running a family. Absolutely. Can I not be treated
• 1:06:12
  as a big, as an old-fashioned vegan? And we can totally eat his part. That should be the world
• 1:06:17
  as long as then those people aren't then doing the same to other people.
• 1:06:20
  Yes. Of course.
• 1:06:22
  Yeah. All right. Lastly, I think the last interesting thing that I wanted to touch on is
• 1:06:27
  you know this term adulting? Yeah. What is that? What is that? I don't know.
• 1:06:35
  I don't know. No, like the sense that you're supposed to be a grown-up there, but actually we're
• 1:06:40
  just children wandering around and like we're just pretending to be grown-up. That was one thing
• 1:06:45
  that I was left with by the after the show, which is really about a 36-year-old trying to figure
• 1:06:52
  out whether or not they're doing being a grown-up right. Do I know how to do it? Are you guys
• 1:07:01
  grown-ups here? No. No idea. No idea. No, I don't really know what that means. I mean,
• 1:07:07
  I think adulting is about paying bills and seeming functional and I can do it, but I find it hard
• 1:07:15
  and I think I will always feel like I'm a child in a room of grown-ups. I've always felt
• 1:07:23
  and I kind of think that's okay. Does everyone feel that way? I don't know. Do you feel that way?
• 1:07:30
  Yeah, I do. I certainly do. And I remember being in my early 20s and having a horrifying epiphany
• 1:07:37
  that when you grow up, when you're a kid, you sort of assume that there are grown-ups in charge
• 1:07:43
  or make sure they're finished. Get a run-okay. And then you grow up and you go,
• 1:07:48
  oh, they're all, they're all fuck-wit. They're all kids wearing suits. They're all just grown-up
• 1:07:56
  in posters. They're all like me and there's no one looking after the shop. Yeah, but they pretend
• 1:08:00
  they have the authority. It's like because they assume the authority and they pretend they have it,
• 1:08:04
  I go, what will you do then? You won't grow up. I'm like, I hope they're all pretending as well,
• 1:08:10
  because I certainly am. Well, I mean, you can clearly see that if they're protesting too much
• 1:08:13
  and they're pretending, like Donald Trump is clearly a small boy in his daddy suit. He just
• 1:08:19
  reeks of it. And I suppose the most grown-up people are the people who wear it as lightly as
• 1:08:24
  as possible, like Lamar or Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama or someone like that who seems like
• 1:08:30
  they're comfortable in their own skin and make no other ones. Yeah. Are you a grown-up? No,
• 1:08:35
  but I know, no, no, no. And I don't want to leave. I've waded up whether to sort of talk about this,
• 1:08:44
  because I don't know, we're kind of at the end of the thing, but that's what makes the world so
• 1:08:47
  scary, right? It's that no one, I don't understand why the world is not falling apart all the time,
• 1:08:53
  because these people and how anything is working, I don't understand how anyone's working. What?
• 1:08:57
  It's generally in most places and times hasn't. Yeah. Is the answer to that, which is what's
• 1:09:03
  so scary about this moment, like we managed over many, many centuries to figure out a delicate
• 1:09:10
  balance after World War II. We just precariously built this like this China edifice,
• 1:09:16
  like this House of Cards, where we've got these institutions. I thank you to the Enlightenment,
• 1:09:21
  thank you to the Greens and Greeks, like we've all put it all together. Wow, like everyone's
• 1:09:27
  kind of okay in like liberal democracies. This is great. And now people are like,
• 1:09:32
  fuck this stupid liberal democracy budget. Let's have World War III. Exactly. Let's just try
• 1:09:39
  thing. Let's just try different stuff. I'm like, we were trying different stuff for thousands of
• 1:09:43
  years. Go to Cambodia. If you want different stuff, there's lots of places going to North Korea,
• 1:09:48
  lots of places with different stuff. Saudi Arabia, they do all do different stuff. Different
• 1:09:52
  democracies is good. Yeah, but people, the argument keeps needing to be made, doesn't it? And
• 1:09:57
  I guess it hasn't, and hasn't quite taken people along with it. And people have been left behind,
• 1:10:03
  and that's where we, that's where we kind of are. But yes, I guess that's, but still, I'm just like
• 1:10:09
  to people, like genuinely look around at the world and it's like, but what if, what if those
• 1:10:15
  computers stop working and we have no cash anymore, like we'd like two days or something,
• 1:10:19
  we're going to be awarding gold. But that's also where it leads to that we're paranoia,
• 1:10:23
  that then probably supports this sort of very individualistic kind of view of the world,
• 1:10:28
  which is me against the world. Yeah, sort of an interesting self perpetuating leap.
• 1:10:33
  Yeah, I mean, COVID was interesting in that as well, wasn't it? Like to suddenly realize,
• 1:10:36
  oh, we could just turn off the spigot of exports from China, and we'd all be fucked. Like,
• 1:10:41
  how many weeks worth of toilet paper do we have? How quickly do we descend into
• 1:10:46
  Lord of the Flies? So the most important thing to do in the meantime is just, I don't know,
• 1:10:52
  like there is that thing of like, oh, well, do I write about that? Or do I just kind of keep kind of
• 1:10:57
  trying to work kind of entertain and kind of just stand a bit more? You know, I just did not
• 1:11:02
  to preach right now. No, no, no, no, with these kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, explore the
• 1:11:09
  kind of human condition as a way of maybe kind of tracing a bigger awareness of other things.
• 1:11:14
  But yeah, I'm sort of less interested in kind of preaching it. Yeah. All right, I look forward to
• 1:11:18
  your next play, which will be entitled all of the shit things they're going to have with you guys.