Speaker 1: Hi, Christy Caster.
Speaker 2: It's me Christy Swan. Welcome to this podcast and thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to it. I'm having a coffee and
Speaker 2: probably reading a book. I mean, look, holidays for me,
Speaker 2: unless I physically remove myself from the perimeter of the compound,
Speaker 2: they usually involve sorting.
Speaker 1: Buckets, and that is probably what I'm doing it.
Speaker 2: While I'm busy with that, why don't you enjoy a
Speaker 2: little selection of my favorite bits and bobs and conversations
Speaker 2: that have happened since I started the Christy Cast about
Speaker 2: a year ago.
Speaker 3: I try on stage to say to agitate my audience
Speaker 3: a bit, to challenge them a bit, because yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: just preaching to the choir. But I do think I
Speaker 3: actually manage that a bit. I pissed everyone off a
Speaker 3: bit by being by being a sort of logic loving
Speaker 3: rationalist moderate because it's not trendy and it's very typical
Speaker 3: of a middle aged white guy to think like that.
Speaker 3: And fuck it, I still think that, and I still
Speaker 3: think it's a valuable way to view the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think that.
Speaker 2: I have been watching some of your performances and in
Speaker 2: the back of my mind I've thought, God, it's annoying
Speaker 2: that the people that most need to see this won't
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 3: No, and that's my fault. I think a lot about
Speaker 3: how you reach out, and I talk a lot about
Speaker 3: how you reach out, and I do pretty well. I mean,
Speaker 3: my art, not not so much, my polemic, not so much.
Speaker 3: My early stand up. Without a doubt, if you were
Speaker 3: a very religious person who came, or if you really
Speaker 3: were into alternative medicine or whatever and you came to
Speaker 3: my early shows, you would have felt a bit.
Speaker 1: Put off affronted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, Matilda's seen by all sorts of people,
Speaker 3: and that's got big ideas in it that I'm glad
Speaker 3: are out in the world, and roundhog Day is seen
Speaker 3: by all sorts of.
Speaker 2: People, and I'm dying to see right day loved. And
Speaker 2: I want to talk about Matilda because there are two
Speaker 2: songs in the world that I can not sing without
Speaker 2: choking up, and one of them is tend to feel Sadler.
Speaker 1: Oh what I'm feeling like.
Speaker 3: That's amazing that just thinking about is so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful.
Speaker 3: Grandson of George has.
Speaker 1: Just no special place.
Speaker 2: You went to the symphony parts, Well, I went to
Speaker 2: the bit about about the Peter Allen about the guy
Speaker 2: who lives all around the world and there's no special
Speaker 2: place because that's me, that's you, George. Just to hear
Speaker 2: that voice and the sentiment behind it. Lived on High Street,
Speaker 2: lived on lived on Manners, Yes, lived on man Such
Speaker 2: a good lyrics.
Speaker 1: It's so good hit. I'm going to get it late,
Speaker 1: George Warno. I'm going to get it all day long.
Speaker 3: He sat on his randa and made his sad And
Speaker 3: if you had questions about on that that lyric later
Speaker 3: when you're going if we have questions about why his
Speaker 3: son was so sad, well, George had no answers about why,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yeah, yeah, that's the lyric.
Speaker 2: About okay you really the late George Wilno walked on
Speaker 2: worked on High Street, and lived on Manners fifty two years.
Speaker 2: He sat on his brand, made his saddles, and if
Speaker 2: you had questions about sheep or flowers or dogs.
Speaker 1: Just asks the saddler. He lived without sin the building
Speaker 1: for Do.
Speaker 3: You know whose voice I hear when I hear that song?
Speaker 3: Todd mckenniy's. I tour it with Todd playing piano for
Speaker 3: him after The Boy from Us and I played that
Speaker 3: song while Todd sang it over and over again all
Speaker 3: around the country.
Speaker 2: What a song.
Speaker 1: I think it could be the most perfect song. And
Speaker 1: I'm a lyric freak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tom is a side again cockatoo, So I know
Speaker 2: it's just the best I've been told. And I reckon
Speaker 2: you have too that, Oh you're so unapologetically yourself. And
Speaker 2: the word unapologetically rubs me the wrong way, because yeah, what.
Speaker 4: Am I apologizing for?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Fucking honest?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like what I say that I am shamelessly myself
Speaker 5: because I don't have any shame about who I am?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you achieve that? Are you a self
Speaker 2: care person? Are you a walker? What is kind of your.
Speaker 1: Daily honoring?
Speaker 5: I honestly have always believed that all of the things
Speaker 5: that I did that were bad or taboo or most
Speaker 5: people would find shame from, We're not done of my
Speaker 5: own v I was doing these things because of how
Speaker 5: I had been cheated, either as a child or as
Speaker 5: a woman, and so I just gave my shame back
Speaker 5: to whoever caused it.
Speaker 4: Like, sure, I was.
Speaker 5: An alcoholic, but why was I an alcoholic? I was
Speaker 5: an alcoholic probably because I was molested as a kid
Speaker 5: and I was completely unnurtured, you know. So it's not
Speaker 5: my fault. That's not my fault. That's their fault for
Speaker 5: the way that I was raised. And so I give
Speaker 5: that shame back to them. And it's why it was
Speaker 5: so easy for me to quit drinking because I was
Speaker 5: not ashamed.
Speaker 4: I told people I don't.
Speaker 5: Believe in alcoholics anonymous, Why do I need to be anonymous?
Speaker 4: I didn't murder anybody. I just drank.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: I think that's a problem for a lot of people
Speaker 5: when they quit. There's so much shame that they have.
Speaker 5: And it's like, why because you slept with a bunch
Speaker 5: of guys and drank, you know what, and I woke
Speaker 5: up in your friend's lawn or the police came to my.
Speaker 4: House or whatever, who cares? Who cares? I didn't kill anybody,
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 5: I think that's just what's always made me unapologetically me
Speaker 5: because also there was no social media growing up, so
Speaker 5: I had nobody to compare myself to.
Speaker 4: So I just was.
Speaker 5: Living my life the way it felt like I should
Speaker 5: live it, you know, and was always looking for people
Speaker 5: to listen to me, pay attention to me.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think all women are like that.
Speaker 2: Speaking of being unapologetically yourself and kind of listening to
Speaker 2: what society tells us and really actively rejecting that. It's
Speaker 2: very easy to take on board a feeling of failure
Speaker 2: if you don't tick certain boxes. And I know that
Speaker 2: you've never been married. I've never been married, and the
Speaker 2: automatic kind of opinion you have of yourself is, oh
Speaker 2: my god, what's wrong with me?
Speaker 1: Everyone's doing this? There must be something wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I don't feel that way.
Speaker 1: Was there ever a glimmer of that?
Speaker 2: And then you had to talk yourself out of it
Speaker 2: because the societal messages are pretty strong.
Speaker 1: I've never finished a degree.
Speaker 2: There are all these things that we're told we're supposed
Speaker 2: to do that I haven't done.
Speaker 5: I mean, honestly, I really think I was just far
Speaker 5: too busy being an alcoholic to pay attention to the
Speaker 5: societal rules. When I was very young, I said that
Speaker 5: I wasn't going to get married until I was very old.
Speaker 5: And that age that I picked was twenty eight. That
Speaker 5: was old when I was growing, Yes, And then I
Speaker 5: kind of, you know, I was busy living my life
Speaker 5: in my twenties and having fun and getting jobs.
Speaker 4: And living in this city and dating and.
Speaker 5: Drinking and partying and just building a career. And I
Speaker 5: dated boys, but none of them were like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I want to marry him. And then the ones that
Speaker 5: I did meet when I was older that I wanted
Speaker 5: to marry usually broke my heart.
Speaker 4: And so by the.
Speaker 5: Time I came out of my booze haze, I was
Speaker 5: thirty six, and then I had to get my shit together,
Speaker 5: so I wasn't dating, and then before I knew it,
Speaker 5: I was like, dating sucks. I don't want to get
Speaker 5: married or date or have babies or any of it.
Speaker 5: So I'm sure there was a time where I felt
Speaker 5: like a loser for not having a husband.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there was, but I don't remember it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so fleeting. You remembered your spirit.
Speaker 2: You are a TV writer, and I would love to
Speaker 2: know what narrative or story line you would love to
Speaker 2: see on the screen about women.
Speaker 4: I'd like to see the stuff that I write, you know.
Speaker 5: I was a writer on a TV show called Baby
Speaker 5: Daddy first one hundred episodes. It was a young show
Speaker 5: about young people, and when it ended, I decided to
Speaker 5: only focus on writing for women over fifty, and I
Speaker 5: was It was twenty seventeen, so I was fifty seven.
Speaker 4: I guess, is that right? Yes, it was probably earlier
Speaker 4: than that.
Speaker 1: Never be forty women in their fifties.
Speaker 5: And and I've been writing scripts. I have four or
Speaker 5: five on my desk that are about women in their fifties.
Speaker 5: I have my version of the Golden Girls. I have
Speaker 5: a script about a woman who flashes back at fifty,
Speaker 5: who flashes back on all the men she dated in
Speaker 5: her twenties to see, like what made her who she was.
Speaker 4: I have a movie.
Speaker 5: I mean, I have a lot of stuff, and it's
Speaker 5: all about women in their fifties. But the one thing
Speaker 5: I really want to see is my version of the
Speaker 5: Golden Girls or Sex and the City, because I think
Speaker 5: what they've done now is not realistic view of women
Speaker 5: in their fifties. And I don't think we see ourselves
Speaker 5: on TV. And I think, you know, I always said,
Speaker 5: even when I started my social media journey, I always
Speaker 5: said that my goal was to change the way the
Speaker 5: world looks at women over fifty.
Speaker 2: I alsh erises, I'm newly fifty. I turned fifty a
Speaker 2: few months ago, and I just love it. I've never
Speaker 2: I've never felt more myself, more like my own kind
Speaker 2: of kid version of myself, and I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker 2: I recommend it to anybody that's on the journey to fifty.
Speaker 2: You are ten years older than me, Yeah, well, this
Speaker 2: is the thing. You've said that your fifties kicked your ass.
Speaker 2: Well what's coming.
Speaker 5: Probably not, Probably not as much as it kicked other
Speaker 5: people's asses. But it's interesting because my friend Constance turned
Speaker 5: fifty when I turned sixty, and every day she.
Speaker 4: Was like, I don't what's the big deal. I don't
Speaker 4: get it. What's a big deal?
Speaker 5: Everyone talks about fifty And now she's fifty three and
Speaker 5: she's like, fuck these fucking fifties.
Speaker 1: Aha. My sixter said the same thing. She's like, how
Speaker 1: are you feeling? And I said, I feel really great.
Speaker 2: She's he's older than me, and she said, you've got
Speaker 2: three years enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I didn't get like hot flashes or anything like that.
Speaker 5: But I just felt like wekain and everything fell apart,
Speaker 5: and I was crabby and I was so fucking invisible,
Speaker 5: like hello, can anyone pay attention to me? And it
Speaker 5: was rough, not menopause, thankfully, because then I would have
Speaker 5: really lost it. But it was just like the invisibility factor,
Speaker 5: and the concept, the inner feeling of how do I
Speaker 5: stay relevant in this world was just looming at all times.
Speaker 4: And I'm a.
Speaker 5: Very curious person, and I feel like I'm a lot
Speaker 5: younger than most of the people I know, and I
Speaker 5: still felt like highly irrelevant, you know. And it didn't
Speaker 5: last long, but I know that so many women that
Speaker 5: I hear from are just like straw on the struggle
Speaker 5: bust for that irrelevant feeling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the air. It's weird.
Speaker 1: It is weird.
Speaker 2: And I read some research last year and it's something
Speaker 2: like seventy five percent of women, or even more a
Speaker 2: higher percentage of women over fifty do feel invisible, even
Speaker 2: in the everyday stuff of like walking into a shop.
Speaker 2: It's like no one can see me. It's like I'm
Speaker 2: a vampire.
Speaker 5: It's wild. It's really wild. And it really did happen overnight.
Speaker 5: And I do think a lot of it is our
Speaker 5: own perception of ourselves, because we have been raised to
Speaker 5: only think that our sexuality is our only value, you know, Yes,
Speaker 5: and when you start going through menopause, even just you
Speaker 5: start getting hormones and your body starts changing, and you
Speaker 5: start changing your own perception of your relevance becomes less
Speaker 5: because you feel less sexual, and so you buy into
Speaker 5: the fact that that's all you are is a sexual being,
Speaker 5: Like I don't give a fuck about sex. I haven't
Speaker 5: for twenty years and it hasn't changed a thing about
Speaker 5: who I am. It's just something that's so baked into
Speaker 5: who we are that you buy into the irrelevance, like, well,
Speaker 5: no one's looking at me. Who cares if some fucking
Speaker 5: dude is looking at you?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: Yeah, if some shopkeepers not looking at you, that's her
Speaker 5: fucking problem, and make her aware that you are standing
Speaker 5: in there, you know.
Speaker 4: But it's all how we carry.
Speaker 5: Ourselves in those situations because we feel less than because
Speaker 5: we've been told when you hit that age, you don't matter.
Speaker 2: Yes, And that is the conclusion I came to when
Speaker 2: I was looking at these stats, because I I don't
Speaker 2: feel invisible, because I've never put value on being objectified
Speaker 2: or being seen that way physically admired. I am fascinated
Speaker 2: with the fact that you spent decades with the name Sharon,
Speaker 2: Yeah till 's twenty four? When did you have to
Speaker 2: remember that you were Sharon?
Speaker 1: Now? Did that happen when you arrived in Australia.
Speaker 6: No, So in Malaysia everyone has an English name. My
Speaker 6: mum's Christina, dad Steven, and my brother's Casper. Everyone has
Speaker 6: an English name. What were you called day to day
Speaker 6: in Malaysia? Okay, it's I was called polling at school
Speaker 6: and at home I'm called b because that's just my nickname,
Speaker 6: because it's from when my brother was tiny and he
Speaker 6: couldn't say my name.
Speaker 7: So he'd go, baby's crying, baby's crying.
Speaker 1: That just to be He's cute.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so everyone in my family just calls me be.
Speaker 2: So when you started school in Australia, day one, were
Speaker 2: you Sharon?
Speaker 6: I started Sharon because I started with polling and then
Speaker 6: I got teased once by one boy and he was like,
Speaker 6: let's go bowling polling and I was like, fuck that, I'm.
Speaker 7: Going with Sharon. So that's how that started.
Speaker 6: But I'd always written as a kid, even in Malaysia,
Speaker 6: Sharon Poling. Now, oh so Sharon yoo Poling. Actually we
Speaker 6: always have last name.
Speaker 2: First, right, And what was the catalyst for you going
Speaker 2: actually getting rid of Sharon altogether?
Speaker 1: I'm not Shaz any more. I'm going with Poe.
Speaker 7: So my first husband. My name's Elizabeth Taylor.
Speaker 6: Yes, haven't of yet to choose a lot, so my first.
Speaker 1: We have a third? Do you think?
Speaker 7: I say no, But you know, I never like to
Speaker 7: say never, but.
Speaker 2: No, because we don't know what we're thinking from one
Speaker 2: day to the next.
Speaker 6: Exactly, yeah, exactly agree because I'm not pessimistic, but I
Speaker 6: just don't can't see how it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know what you mean. I feel like proper
Speaker 2: connection like that is rare for normal people. And then
Speaker 2: throw en us and apps.
Speaker 7: I can't do it.
Speaker 1: Oh god, no, yuck.
Speaker 6: I saw this meme the other day says I'm just
Speaker 6: happing to meet someone in my.
Speaker 1: Lounge roop, I know, knock on the door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but uh Sharon, Yeah, getting.
Speaker 1: Rid of shoes.
Speaker 6: So Matt's a filmmaker, that's right. And he made this
Speaker 6: short film that had me in it, and he goes,
Speaker 6: I'm going to call it polling, I'm going to call
Speaker 6: it your name, and I was like okay, and then
Speaker 6: he won this massive film prize. It was actually the
Speaker 6: biggest short film prize in Australia at the time.
Speaker 7: Wow, the Zoomer Woods.
Speaker 6: And we had a little bit of like local press
Speaker 6: and stuff, and he just wrote in the credits Polling
Speaker 6: played by Poling.
Speaker 7: He goes, let's just do this now. He goes, because
Speaker 7: he's been big, he'd been begging me for years.
Speaker 6: He goes, you need to ditch to Sharon. And I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 6: I can't. It just feels really pretentious now. And he goes,
Speaker 6: what do you mean that is your name? It's just
Speaker 6: you're just shedding the Sharon. And at the same time,
Speaker 6: I was looking through some documents and found that Sharon
Speaker 6: wasn't on my birth certificate, and so he's like, let's
Speaker 6: just try it.
Speaker 1: Let's just get.
Speaker 6: People to call you that from now on and just
Speaker 6: see how that What was that like? And everyone just
Speaker 6: latched onto it. I felt a little bit self conscious
Speaker 6: because it was also when I just started painting, and
Speaker 6: I thought everyone thought I was being a pretentious skitch
Speaker 6: oh yeah, and being oh no, they I'm a painter.
Speaker 7: Can you call me pooh?
Speaker 1: But it's my num plume.
Speaker 6: So but everyone just latched onto it so quickly that
Speaker 6: it just there is.
Speaker 2: No other name for you, like it is absolutely there
Speaker 2: is just no other name.
Speaker 1: You are poked through and through. Do you feel that
Speaker 1: yes I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah I do. Gosh, haven't
Speaker 1: we had a lovely time.
Speaker 2: I'll see you back here next week for a few
Speaker 2: more highlights that you might not have heard.