Speaker 1: Which ship happens to me. I don't blame it on
Speaker 1: the outside world, so on the author of my own fortune,
Speaker 1: whether it be good fortune or misfortune. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Our guest this episode is legendary songwriter Mike Scott of
Speaker 1: The Water Boys. His career in music began in the seventies,
Speaker 1: continuing to this day with a discography so prolific we
Speaker 1: can't possibly discuss it in great detail. What we can
Speaker 1: say is that we are huge fans of Mike Scott
Speaker 1: and his music. Here's a snippet of one of his
Speaker 1: most love songs, followed by the interview in the world
Speaker 1: forty years but you just saying in your room, I
Speaker 1: saw the crescent saw. Welcome to the show, Mike. We're
Speaker 1: really glad to have you. Thanks rank my pleasure. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being a guest. The other thing I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for is uh and words will will
Speaker 1: fall short, But both myself and my co host have
Speaker 1: been really big fans of your music for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's meant a lot to me at different points
Speaker 1: in my life. It's sort of been a consistent um
Speaker 1: inspiration to me in a positive way so many different times.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for that. Okay, So our
Speaker 1: podcast is called The One You Feed and it's based
Speaker 1: on the old parable where there is a grandfather who
Speaker 1: is talking with his grandson and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there's a battle going on inside of us, and there's
Speaker 1: two wolves. One is a good wolf who represents kindness
Speaker 1: and love and joy, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents greed or hate, fear, doubt. And the grandson
Speaker 1: stops and thinks for a second and says well, which
Speaker 1: one wins and the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off the podcast by just
Speaker 1: asking you what that parable means to you in your
Speaker 1: life and in your work. Well, I like parable. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's an absolute truth, because I don't think
Speaker 1: that we're split creatures with with a good one and
Speaker 1: a bad one inside of us. Don't think we're all
Speaker 1: paranoid schizophrenics. But I think that parable is important because
Speaker 1: it's it shows that we have a choice in how
Speaker 1: we act in every in every encounter, in every instance,
Speaker 1: and by our choices, we create who we are. And
Speaker 1: I certainly believe that, and I've noticed that out working
Speaker 1: in my life for a long time. So I read
Speaker 1: The Adventures of water Boy and we sort of end
Speaker 1: up at the end of that book right around the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, and I know what the band has
Speaker 1: been up to since the year two thousand musically and
Speaker 1: all that. I'm curious a little bit more about where
Speaker 1: you have been the last thirteen fourteen years, specifically if
Speaker 1: you've been active Finnhorn and what else you've been up
Speaker 1: to personally. Well, actually, I didn't move back to finnt
Speaker 1: Hoorn finnt Hoorn for your listeners as a spiritual community
Speaker 1: in the northeast of Scotland. Not not. It doesn't subscribe
Speaker 1: to any one belief system. There are people there from
Speaker 1: all different spirits of traditions, but the unifying philosophy would
Speaker 1: be that spirit or God or or the Great Mystery,
Speaker 1: whatever your name you want to put on, it is
Speaker 1: inside each of us and we can access that core
Speaker 1: part of ourselves and live and make decisions from it.
Speaker 1: That's the ethos at fint Hoorn and I was there
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties and it was a place that
Speaker 1: a profound influence on me, and in the early two
Speaker 1: thousand's my wife and I went back to live there.
Speaker 1: We bought a house and I was there for I
Speaker 1: think six years through to two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 1: it was a good experience for me because not only
Speaker 1: was I living and interacting of the spiritual community, but
Speaker 1: it was a touring, traveling worldly professional musician at the
Speaker 1: same time. So it was a fabulously educational and endlessly
Speaker 1: interesting experience touring my band from Finnhorn, so I would
Speaker 1: be going out into the world and doing all these
Speaker 1: fast activities and moving through cities playing concerts to the
Speaker 1: thousands of people, and then after I would always go
Speaker 1: back to finn Hoorn to this rarefied, almost sacred atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and that was really good for me, really taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about how to sustain that atmosphere when I
Speaker 1: was out in the world. That was a learning that
Speaker 1: I need needed to go through at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you mentioned in in the book how when you first
Speaker 1: went to Finnhorn you weren't Mike Scott, this this famous musician.
Speaker 1: You were just another person there. And I imagine based
Speaker 1: on what you're saying, sort of it helps keep that
Speaker 1: that sort of star on one side versus just another
Speaker 1: person on the other side. It better imbalance. Well, do
Speaker 1: you know that was a lesson from my first time
Speaker 1: in Fincorn back in the mid nineties. I didn't need
Speaker 1: to learn that one again. I'd got that one. No,
Speaker 1: it was more the challenge for me when I went
Speaker 1: went back to live to Finder. Of course, I didn't
Speaker 1: move back to Fintorn for these reasons. I just moved
Speaker 1: back actually because my wife wanted to work again in
Speaker 1: the community as she had done in the past, and
Speaker 1: we were a bit fed up being in London at
Speaker 1: the time, so we thought, all right, why not. So
Speaker 1: I didn't go for any great benighted spiritual reasons or
Speaker 1: for for a particular challenge. But the challenge that I
Speaker 1: got was this one of moving in and out of
Speaker 1: the spiritual community atmosphere into the world, back and forth
Speaker 1: all the time, and learning how to balance those two
Speaker 1: worlds inside me. And I was just really great learning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that ties back well of the theme in
Speaker 1: the podcast, because I think we all go through that
Speaker 1: to some extent. We live in a world that is
Speaker 1: very external focused, and yet for a lot of us
Speaker 1: are trying to live a deeper and more meaningful life.
Speaker 1: I am pulled back and forth between those worlds a lot.
Speaker 1: So I think you know that that is a challenge
Speaker 1: we all face. Yours is on an extreme level obviously,
Speaker 1: because those are those worlds are so far apart. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and you met your wife there at Finnhorn right in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties. Yes, And so where are you living now?
Speaker 1: I lived between Dublin and New York. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: places in both cities. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: you you just actually use the word in our last
Speaker 1: piece was sort of use the words sustain and one
Speaker 1: of my favorite songs of yours is the song called
Speaker 1: Sustain from one of your one of your more recent records.
Speaker 1: And what I really like about it, you know, the
Speaker 1: main choruses. You know, I've learned how to sustain myself
Speaker 1: in storms, and and I think as I've gotten older
Speaker 1: that's I've certainly gotten better at doing that. Could you
Speaker 1: share a little bit about how you've learned to sustain yourself?
Speaker 1: Because what I got from that was really a sense
Speaker 1: of and I think it's back to the finn Horn theme, right, like,
Speaker 1: it's inside of us. It's not something external that we
Speaker 1: need in order to bring us through things. Blues are
Speaker 1: followed like showers a ring. But I don't feel like
Speaker 1: crying death is abroad this day. But I don't feel
Speaker 1: like I learned how to sustain myself, how to sustain
Speaker 1: myself in storms. Yeah, somewhere along the line, I found
Speaker 1: that the replenishing power was inside me. Um. But I
Speaker 1: also needed to have a kind of stillness inside me
Speaker 1: to be able to do that, to access that power.
Speaker 1: If I'm confused and I'm I'm running around the handless chicken,
Speaker 1: and I'm stressed and worried about things, I can't access
Speaker 1: those healing, holistic parts inside of me that give me
Speaker 1: the wherewithal to recalibrate myself regardless of what's happening. I
Speaker 1: need to need to have stillness. So it's not just
Speaker 1: finding a sustaining partent side mean, it's also being still.
Speaker 1: That's a crucial thing. And have you so you've been
Speaker 1: out of fin Horn for a while and yet you
Speaker 1: still sort of go back and forth between the the
Speaker 1: hectic music world and then back to a to a
Speaker 1: personal life. Have you found you been able to maintain
Speaker 1: some degree of stillness when you go back to a
Speaker 1: world that's not as removed as finn Horn. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty i haven't been a find Hoorn for quite
Speaker 1: a while, and I'm pretty chilled out wherever I am.
Speaker 1: Take a lot to stress me out, do you. I'm unpressurable.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to see. Oh that's that's a good place
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah. How much that do you think is
Speaker 1: attributable to um the spiritual practices you've learned, and how
Speaker 1: much of that do you think is attributable to sort
Speaker 1: of the maturation process that we all go through as
Speaker 1: we get older. It's a bit of both. At probably
Speaker 1: equal amounts. I learned to meditate in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: I still meditate, not every day now, but it's that's
Speaker 1: given me tools, really perception tools that that enable me
Speaker 1: to take a step back from whatever might be happening
Speaker 1: in a day, or in a week, or in an event.
Speaker 1: And that's that distance is very useful. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's a you know, that's a theme that seems to
Speaker 1: come up a lot on this show. Is that is
Speaker 1: that ability to sort of step away and and learn
Speaker 1: to observe your mind, just to step back from it
Speaker 1: and be able to step out of the the swirl
Speaker 1: of emotions and thoughts and recognize that that's not reality.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a construct that we've put there.
Speaker 1: So one of the big things that seems to have happened,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was necessarily big to you, but
Speaker 1: I think that's why I'm asking, is uh. Ellie Goulden
Speaker 1: recorded a version of how How Long Will I Love You?
Speaker 1: That seemed to do pretty well in the charts. At
Speaker 1: any reaction to that, Oh, it's true. She was in
Speaker 1: the top ten for ten weeks at Pleased to See
Speaker 1: It's lovely that a hit record how long I love you,
Speaker 1: as long as stars are above you, longer hellong need you,
Speaker 1: as long as the season's need to hello. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful song, and I've heard her version, but no one
Speaker 1: will ever do it do it the right way except you.
Speaker 1: In my books, Thanks very much, have been quite a
Speaker 1: number of good cover versions of that song. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: Ellie's is. Ellie's is the one that's been successful and
Speaker 1: good for her, but they've did some of the good
Speaker 1: ones as well. In the book, there's there's something you
Speaker 1: talk about and I'd like to I'd like to see
Speaker 1: if you could kind of walk us through it a
Speaker 1: little bit, because I think it's very relevant to what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. And you you start a chapter by
Speaker 1: describing an Indian hoops dancer and and a ritual that
Speaker 1: he goes through and kind of what that translated to
Speaker 1: you in your life. Could you maybe walk us through that? Well.
Speaker 1: It was in the early nineties. I was just moved
Speaker 1: to New York. I spent two years in New York,
Speaker 1: and I went to see the American Indian Dance Theater
Speaker 1: I think maybe it's called the Native American Dance Theaters
Speaker 1: in an old theater on seventh Avenue, and the grand
Speaker 1: finale was this guy, the hoop Dancer. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you you or your listeners have seen photographs
Speaker 1: or film with hoop pants. What it is is it's
Speaker 1: a young Native American who has comes out with three
Speaker 1: wooden hoops and he starts answering with them, and as
Speaker 1: he dances, he's managing to pass them around and over
Speaker 1: his body in ways that defy the eye. And then
Speaker 1: he produces more hoops and more and more, until he's
Speaker 1: dancing with maybe two dozen hoops and balancing them all
Speaker 1: beautifully in various shapes, and how he manages to get
Speaker 1: his body through them as he's dancing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of Houdini esque miracle for the eye,
Speaker 1: and I took it. I think perhaps it was in
Speaker 1: the program that the theater production program that what the
Speaker 1: hoop dancers doing, what his dance symbolizes, is that he's
Speaker 1: balanced all the different aspects of his life. The hoops
Speaker 1: each represent different areas of different interests, of different concerns
Speaker 1: in his own life, and by balancing when he's demonstrating
Speaker 1: his mastery of himself. And of course he's certainly demonstrating
Speaker 1: his physical master of himself, so it's a that it
Speaker 1: has a correlation to his spiritual or or personal mastery
Speaker 1: of himself. So I was very impressed by that, and
Speaker 1: for a long time after that, I really wanted to
Speaker 1: be the hoop, answered myself, not that I would go
Speaker 1: around on the stage with the hoops, but that I
Speaker 1: would master all the different aspects of my own life,
Speaker 1: and that that gave me a good template too to
Speaker 1: view how I was doing. If you like, it's a
Speaker 1: challenging subject. I think for a lot of us to
Speaker 1: to balance things, and I tend to be relatively obsessive.
Speaker 1: So I get into something and I am all the
Speaker 1: way into that and the things that the other things
Speaker 1: around it in my life sometimes can suffer. And as
Speaker 1: I've gotten older, it's certainly been a matter of how
Speaker 1: do you strike that balance and how do you integrate
Speaker 1: the different parts of yourself, because I think at that
Speaker 1: point where they all come together is really the thing
Speaker 1: that defines us as individuals, and our unique contribution is
Speaker 1: that sort of meshing of all those things. You're in
Speaker 1: Nashville now, and I think you said doing pre production
Speaker 1: on the New Water Boys record. Anything you can share
Speaker 1: with us about that, well, I can tell you it's
Speaker 1: snowing outside my window that I don't get snowed in
Speaker 1: because I'm going back to New York tomorrow and i'd
Speaker 1: like to make it. I've been rehearsing with a couple
Speaker 1: of the players who will be on the record, a
Speaker 1: great giber poicle Paul Brown from Memphis, and a guitar
Speaker 1: playnicle Jay Barkley, who who was in the Last Waterboys
Speaker 1: touring band in North America a few months ago. So
Speaker 1: we've been working on parts and developing the songs and
Speaker 1: on the back here in three weeks time to make
Speaker 1: the record, taking it there in Nashville. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us who's producing it? I'm producing it yea. And will
Speaker 1: will the fellow who fiddles be involved? Oh? He certainly
Speaker 1: will he will? Yeah? And do you have a Do
Speaker 1: you have a time frame for release? We're not sure.
Speaker 1: If we can get it out in September, then then
Speaker 1: we'll do that. But but I know that recording in
Speaker 1: March and probably mixing maybe late April, and all the
Speaker 1: cover and promotion to process and set up. I think
Speaker 1: we might be pustion it for September. Realisticly, might it
Speaker 1: might be January. We're certainly eager to hear it. Will
Speaker 1: there be a Will there be a US tour? Will
Speaker 1: of course wonderful? Yeah, we uh we. I've seen you
Speaker 1: multiple times here and I think I mentioned to you
Speaker 1: in our email correspondence. My my co host and I
Speaker 1: met you years and years ago. I had to be
Speaker 1: probably and and just had a brief conversation. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that's really cool about having you on
Speaker 1: this show is my cost and I've been really best
Speaker 1: friends for twenty five years, and our when our friendship
Speaker 1: really started, I think your music was one of the
Speaker 1: things that we have consistently shared over all these years.
Speaker 1: So it's special to have you with this particular podcast
Speaker 1: also given that that you of your music has been
Speaker 1: pretty central to a lot of things with us. UM,
Speaker 1: it's lovely. No thanks for telling me. Oh, so you UM.
Speaker 1: A piece of music you released over the last year
Speaker 1: you had you had the Yates record, but you also
Speaker 1: released a one off sort of single or or satire
Speaker 1: called around Arthur's Day in Ireland. Could you tell us
Speaker 1: about that? Well, Arthur's Day. Arthur's Day is an advertising
Speaker 1: event dreamed up by the clever of people behind Guinness
Speaker 1: Beer and what they do is the exactly six months
Speaker 1: after St Patrick's Day, as if as if as a counterweight,
Speaker 1: they announced Arthur's Day, when Guinness will be half price
Speaker 1: at certain hours of the day and everybody will toast
Speaker 1: Arthur Guinness who invented Guinness at seventeen hours and fifty
Speaker 1: nine minutes. Of course, Guinness was established in the year
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty is very very clever. But the reality of
Speaker 1: on the streets as it becomes a binge drinking excuse
Speaker 1: for Ireland and the streets are filled with vomit and
Speaker 1: this drunken people and it's really an awful, awful event.
Speaker 1: And the advertising is Ireland's a very small country. It's
Speaker 1: probably hard for anyone in American to understand just how
Speaker 1: small and colloquial Ireland is. And when you have a
Speaker 1: heavy marketing exercise like Gennesses for Arthur's Day, it becomes
Speaker 1: absolutely inescapable. It's like the Super Bowl multiplied by ten
Speaker 1: and an Ireland is a country with a big drink problem.
Speaker 1: I think if Ireland were personified, it might be an
Speaker 1: alcoholic and in a country has such a problem, everyone
Speaker 1: in Ireland either has someone in their family or as
Speaker 1: someone close to them who's an alcoholic or has suffered
Speaker 1: the effects of alcoholism, and in such a country to
Speaker 1: have this drink, this binge event presented as if it's
Speaker 1: a national holiday. It's kind of offensive. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people, after four or five years of Artist Day
Speaker 1: being ran down our throats by these marketing then a
Speaker 1: lot of people got fed up or piste as you
Speaker 1: say in America. In Britain and articles, pissed means drunk,
Speaker 1: so we don't use that, we say piste off. So
Speaker 1: a lot of us were piste off. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write a song about this, because I'm going
Speaker 1: to use the weapon that I have, which is my words,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to write a satirical song that tells
Speaker 1: what actually happens during the Arthur's day and polkes and
Speaker 1: punctures the lie that this event is all right. So
Speaker 1: that's what I did, and it got quite a lot
Speaker 1: of us to day and police to say. It was
Speaker 1: mentioned in the New York Times and and the Herald
Speaker 1: Tribune and various newspapers around the world, and along with
Speaker 1: a song similar song written by the great Irish Bard
Speaker 1: and singer Christy Moore and the two of us with
Speaker 1: our our anti artist Day songs. I think we created
Speaker 1: a climate of bad publicity for arturs Day and our
Speaker 1: hope and a lot of people that Guinness or their owners,
Speaker 1: their masters will have realized that office days actually counterproductive
Speaker 1: because it brings a be gives them a bad name.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping that that's the last of our Thursday,
Speaker 1: but if if they announced it again this year, I'll
Speaker 1: be there with my son. We'll show the world where
Speaker 1: drinkers on ar Thursday, not gentlemen or thinkers on Arthursday.
Speaker 1: We'll puke in our hands and PITSI where we stand
Speaker 1: with phil any Wards, will bingeing Min's talk shite all
Speaker 1: night in Ireland and our horns on ar Thursday. It's
Speaker 1: very well done. It's it's a it's a great satire
Speaker 1: than you have You not drank or or done anything
Speaker 1: for a long time? Is that kind of your your story? Well?
Speaker 1: Do you know I made friends with Mr Guinness when
Speaker 1: I was in my late twenties, and then I became
Speaker 1: his slave, and then I decided we would never talk again.
Speaker 1: That was I stopped drinking. I didn't go to a
Speaker 1: air or anything like that. I just got fed out
Speaker 1: with it and decided that was at once in my
Speaker 1: life back But no, I haven't had a drink since then.
Speaker 1: Has that been Has that been a challenge for you
Speaker 1: at all? I mean you're exposed to it all the time. Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm lucky. No challenge. Yeah, I've I've been there too.
Speaker 1: I think mine might have been. Um Mr Old Crow
Speaker 1: and I had a conversation and decided to decided to
Speaker 1: stop talking. But similar similar ending, what are you listening
Speaker 1: to these days? What? What sort of music travels with
Speaker 1: Mike Scott these days? Well, I listened to a lot
Speaker 1: of new music and a lot of old music. I'm
Speaker 1: forever listening to music from what I think is the
Speaker 1: golden age of the music from about seventy one. There's
Speaker 1: no end of magic from that period. It for me,
Speaker 1: And in the last few years I've been listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of great soul music from that period. James
Speaker 1: Brown's liestone, Motown Stacks Northern so what we in Britain
Speaker 1: called northern soul music. But I listened a lot of
Speaker 1: new bands as well. I like Flee, Fox's Shovels and
Speaker 1: Rope real cool band. That there are dual like the
Speaker 1: white stripes, but the bit a little bit more down home.
Speaker 1: I'd like Joanna knew some a lot. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm always discovering stuff. I have an I thought full
Speaker 1: of music to listen to. Yeah, there's it's It's amazing.
Speaker 1: The breadth of music that's available to us these days
Speaker 1: is really busy, isn't it. Everybody's listening to different stuff
Speaker 1: as well. In the sixties, everybody's listened to the same things.
Speaker 1: There was this unified audience. But now we're all in
Speaker 1: our headphones listen to our own a little world. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's overall a positive thing? I just think
Speaker 1: it is what it is. I can see things that
Speaker 1: have been lost, but I see things that have been
Speaker 1: gained as well. So it just as the word is.
Speaker 1: It's just at times yep, and and fighting against the
Speaker 1: marching forward of technology as a feudal endeavor for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So within your music, there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of references to spirituality. You've gone to you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked a little bit about the finn Horn time
Speaker 1: and all that. What does the word spiritual mean? Do
Speaker 1: you have somebody ask you to say what that word means. Wow.
Speaker 1: Words are faulty because they, like a snowball going down
Speaker 1: the hill, they gather ideas to them, and different people
Speaker 1: have different ideas about the same words. Love, God, Spirit.
Speaker 1: All these words have so many different meanings, different interpretations
Speaker 1: that I'm loath to add to that by giving yet another.
Speaker 1: So what I would say is that I think everybody
Speaker 1: has a spiritual side. Everybody is a spiritual being, and
Speaker 1: we come down into this world, into the world of form,
Speaker 1: and it's very easy to lose touch with our spiritual
Speaker 1: selves because we get in trance, or some would say
Speaker 1: ensnared by the lure of form, by appearances. Then it
Speaker 1: gets tired. Spirit don't man surrenders Spirit won't man crawls spirits.
Speaker 1: Spirit lives with men days man seems spirit. Then there
Speaker 1: is man is tilert, stirred free, what stirred is man?
Speaker 1: We all still have this other thing inside that can
Speaker 1: inform and inspire us in a way that is beyond words.
Speaker 1: And for me, the best thing in my last twenty
Speaker 1: years has been finding that inside me and and learning
Speaker 1: how to stay in contact with that. And so that's
Speaker 1: that for me, that spirituality, And how do you what
Speaker 1: is your method for sort of I know this is
Speaker 1: a question that is there's no good answer for, but
Speaker 1: what are some of the things you do that keep
Speaker 1: you in touch with that and and remind you to
Speaker 1: go back to that? Well. I I continually observed myself
Speaker 1: and question why I do things. If I find myself
Speaker 1: in a situation and I act a particularly way, I'll
Speaker 1: look at that. I don't just blame it on outside circumstances.
Speaker 1: I know that I'm the author of every action that
Speaker 1: I take, and and really, if I extend that line
Speaker 1: of thinking, I'm really the author of every circumstance in
Speaker 1: my life because the things that happened to me are
Speaker 1: the results of choices that I've made and of trains
Speaker 1: of events that I've set in motion by the things
Speaker 1: that I've thought and decided and done. So I'm the
Speaker 1: author of my own fortune, whether it be good fortune
Speaker 1: or misfortune. So when things when ship happens to me,
Speaker 1: I don't blame it on the outside world and feel
Speaker 1: like a victim. I think, Okay, how did I put
Speaker 1: myself in the situation where this happened? And that that
Speaker 1: gives me information and also is an incredibly empowering way
Speaker 1: of looking at my life because it means that I'm
Speaker 1: responsible for what happens, and I can change what happens
Speaker 1: by the way that I respond to things. So I
Speaker 1: keep that as a practice every day, so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even call it spiritual practice, just all life practice. And
Speaker 1: that keeps me straight, and it keeps me aware and awake.
Speaker 1: And I also remember always that that I'm a spiritual
Speaker 1: being of a human experience. And I also believe that
Speaker 1: we're all God, that we're all we're all really one,
Speaker 1: one being, one experience in our sense of ourselves as
Speaker 1: a separate selves is a helpful illusion because without it,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be able to function in the physical world.
Speaker 1: But it's only an illusion. Really, there's only one of
Speaker 1: us here having a kaleidoscopic experience through billions of sell
Speaker 1: of And I remember that. And I've had moments of
Speaker 1: my life when I actually perceive life like that through
Speaker 1: that lens, and I remember those moments and and always
Speaker 1: keep that as a kernel in my consciousness that I
Speaker 1: I remember is true. Yeah, I think it's. I think
Speaker 1: an interesting thing along those lines is we we talked
Speaker 1: with We had someone else on the podcast who was
Speaker 1: talking about there's a transcendental world that he has visited
Speaker 1: where that sense of oneness is really there, and then
Speaker 1: there's a day to day life we find ourselves in,
Speaker 1: and that those worlds are not necessarily connected, but the
Speaker 1: remembering of one whilere and the other is really helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both present. Both those worlds are present at all times,
Speaker 1: and it's only by our perception that we moved in
Speaker 1: and out of them. But they're both here, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the transcendental world is the real world. I always found
Speaker 1: when I be the Fintorn, he would say, when I'd
Speaker 1: come back to the city or whatever, to the normal
Speaker 1: life as you might call it, people say, oh, you're
Speaker 1: back in the real world, and I would say, excuse me,
Speaker 1: I've just been to the real world. YEP, so is there.
Speaker 1: I know you've you've got a lot of you're a
Speaker 1: reader of a lot of different things. Are there any
Speaker 1: spiritual works or things along those lines. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big fan of that term, but I don't have a
Speaker 1: better one. Um that that you have been reading these days,
Speaker 1: or that that sort of influence you're thinking. I've been
Speaker 1: reading ram Das's recent book Be Love Now, and if
Speaker 1: your listeners know who ram Das is, that he's spirituality too.
Speaker 1: He has been actors since the early seventies. He went
Speaker 1: to India during that year when lots of people are
Speaker 1: going out seeking gurus, and he met a guru there
Speaker 1: who would have profound influence on and he spent the
Speaker 1: rest of his life disseminating the teachings that he received
Speaker 1: from Skuru. Be Love Now is a beautiful book. And
Speaker 1: do you find that's another way that you, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, feed your good wolf is going
Speaker 1: to books and literature and continuing to sort of refresh
Speaker 1: those ideas. Would you know, Eric, I have periods when
Speaker 1: I don't read any spiritual books at all, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm fool and I just need to stop breathing stuff in.
Speaker 1: For a few years, when I went back and lived
Speaker 1: in Fintorn in the early two thousand's, I had three
Speaker 1: or four years of intense spiritual reading and education. And
Speaker 1: then for about the next six or seven years, I
Speaker 1: don't think I read a single spiritual book. I just
Speaker 1: needed to breathe out for a while. I needed to
Speaker 1: to live what I've learned. And then in the last
Speaker 1: year or so, I've started to slowly pick up books again.
Speaker 1: I'm ready for some new inputs. Yeah, it's it. That
Speaker 1: is a very profound way of talking about that idea
Speaker 1: that it's really easy to consume a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: but the enough it is really where the challenge comes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I guess I would just wrap up by
Speaker 1: asking is there anything that you would want to say
Speaker 1: sort of on our theme that you would you'd want
Speaker 1: to leave us with. Well, I don't get too to
Speaker 1: fix them. The positive side, I think it's good too
Speaker 1: to acknowledge all the parts of yourself. And sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be really useful to be angry about something. Sometimes
Speaker 1: being angry is what needs to happen in the person.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that you then act abusively towards people
Speaker 1: or take out your anger and people. But sometimes anger
Speaker 1: an appropriate emotion, and sometimes it's all right to be down.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to go through little spells of being
Speaker 1: down or depressed, and I think it's good to I
Speaker 1: find when when I'm hurt during or I'm upset or
Speaker 1: I'm sad, I allow myself to go through that because
Speaker 1: if I don't, if I push it under, then it's
Speaker 1: only going to come back up and distort my experiences
Speaker 1: in some way. So I go through all these things
Speaker 1: that it's important to go through. Whoever is is in
Speaker 1: front of me, whatever I need to go through, I'll
Speaker 1: go through it. Whether it's positive or or so called negative.
Speaker 1: It's just all life or or John Das would say,
Speaker 1: it's old grist for the mill. Yep, I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that phrase, Chris for the mill. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for taking the time to talk with us.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to hear the New water Boys record and
Speaker 1: excited to see you when you when you tour back
Speaker 1: through the US. Thanks, thanks for it, ye take care bye,
Speaker 1: all right bye. You can find out more about Mike
Speaker 1: Scott and the One You Feed podcast at one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash Mike Scott. Hey, just when you
Speaker 1: thought the podcast was over, I'm back to ask you,
Speaker 1: whether a faithful subscriber or a lucky newcomer, to please
Speaker 1: go on iTunes and give us a high rating and
Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions who might have. In return, we
Speaker 1: promised to never interview anyone with the last name Kardashian.