Speaker 1: Yeah. With me and my partner, we laughed so hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I paid myself this morning with laughter.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit, it's a little bit game out
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know, we're laughing, believe or not.
Speaker 1: Of the ceramic tiles. I mean, it was all to
Speaker 1: do with what do you want for Christmas? And you know,
Speaker 1: do you know do we have an Ella verse for
Speaker 1: twelve years? And she doesn't want diamonds, You doesn't want cars.
Speaker 1: She just wants sereric titles. I'm like, this is brilliant
Speaker 1: because it was. I couldn't wish for anything better. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Mini Driver. Welcome to The Many Questions Season two.
Speaker 1: I've always loved Christ's Questionnaire. It was originally an nineteenth
Speaker 1: century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty
Speaker 1: five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature.
Speaker 1: It's just the scientific method really. In asking different people
Speaker 1: the same set of questions, you can make observations about
Speaker 1: which truths appeared to me universe. I love this discipline
Speaker 1: and it made me wonder, what if these questions were
Speaker 1: just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be
Speaker 1: revealed if I ask these questions as conversation starters with
Speaker 1: thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So
Speaker 1: I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven
Speaker 1: questions that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story.
Speaker 1: They are when and where were you happiest? What is
Speaker 1: the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
Speaker 1: or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you
Speaker 1: most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped
Speaker 1: you the most? What would be your last meal? And
Speaker 1: can you tell me something in your life that's grown
Speaker 1: out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group
Speaker 1: of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and
Speaker 1: humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You
Speaker 1: may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
Speaker 1: We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to
Speaker 1: their experience or the most surprising, or created the most
Speaker 1: fertile ground to connect My guest today on many questions?
Speaker 1: Is the artist Goldie? To me? Goldie was the face
Speaker 1: and sound of drummer, bass and jungle in the UK
Speaker 1: in the early nineties. He captured this electric vibe and
Speaker 1: blasted it from the Midlands in England to London and
Speaker 1: onto New York. He started out as a street artist
Speaker 1: and art is where he has returned to. Now, you're
Speaker 1: such a considered bloke. If you can tell me where
Speaker 1: and when were you happiest, If you're talking past tense,
Speaker 1: the happiest times, I always been making musical painting. It's
Speaker 1: not past tense. It's really now in the present. Really,
Speaker 1: I have a fascination with time. That the reason on
Speaker 1: every day I wake up and think I'm here and
Speaker 1: I'm very, very lucky. And I walk up to the
Speaker 1: mountain our high copples like a ten came hard going
Speaker 1: up and down. And I do that like three or
Speaker 1: four times a week. I am in an end of smiles. Indeed, yes,
Speaker 1: you know for me being up in the jungle and
Speaker 1: into the lake and a lot of the times, I
Speaker 1: do a lot of a lot of it on my own.
Speaker 1: But just being in that environment and seeing life in
Speaker 1: death in front of you, right in front of you,
Speaker 1: is a really beautiful reminder of how how insignificant we are.
Speaker 1: And I got there and scream and crying and laugh,
Speaker 1: and I find that being the happiest there's an urgency
Speaker 1: as well. There's always been that thing where I feel like,
Speaker 1: even though I came here to retire, I actually did
Speaker 1: the reverse and found myself in a whole of the
Speaker 1: way and finding what happiness really means. Because having all
Speaker 1: of the cars and ferraris and all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: it just never made me happy. It really didn't. And
Speaker 1: I felt that I was very destructive, and I felt
Speaker 1: that all the things that you think are going to
Speaker 1: make you happy actually don't and helps the wealth. And
Speaker 1: it's weird that's changed. I know so little now and
Speaker 1: that makes me more at peace with myself. And we
Speaker 1: said that time doesn't exist. Do you mean that it
Speaker 1: really is just a human mental construct that we've created
Speaker 1: to sort of give life? Meaning what do you mean
Speaker 1: by that? You know, when you study or you look
Speaker 1: at deja vous or the sense of being somewhere, it
Speaker 1: happens to me a lot places, and whether it's in
Speaker 1: the jungle or just the moment. I do think that
Speaker 1: we you know, this is mental construct, but I also
Speaker 1: feel that it's also preordained. I feel that whatever souls
Speaker 1: have passed through, this is the one that I remember,
Speaker 1: and this is the one that has accounts. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I go to that and hug trees all
Speaker 1: day long. You know, I can eff and blind like
Speaker 1: most when he stubs his toe. Oh, I mean I
Speaker 1: sometimes hug trees well swearing. So I mean I think
Speaker 1: I don't feel like they're mutually exclusive. I just think
Speaker 1: that the idea that there is an old time of
Speaker 1: a fascination with it is that it's all happening at
Speaker 1: the same moment. Everything is concurrent, Everything is concurrent. The
Speaker 1: most poignant thing for me is the power of manifestation.
Speaker 1: We're just this electric energy and we have this electorcy
Speaker 1: that we can actually lie to light bulb. It's just
Speaker 1: the shifting energy thinking well, okay, then if I can
Speaker 1: create this positive energy, then there will be something because
Speaker 1: it's the energy is just moving into some of the place.
Speaker 1: Whether it's conscious or not, it's different. And there are
Speaker 1: lots of question do I want to be part of
Speaker 1: the big one, the singular? Well do you have a choice?
Speaker 1: Like do you have a choice? Individual? You don't? We
Speaker 1: want to be an individual. That's that's ego, that's just
Speaker 1: the ego. Yeah, But I sometimes think maybe bits of
Speaker 1: my body think that they have autonomy my lungs are
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I won't do anyone. I just cruising.
Speaker 1: I just got me alveol cooking. Everything's cool. I'm just
Speaker 1: bringing in the oxygen, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: we attached all these mental ideas about belonging. Like Addison,
Speaker 1: my boyfriend, who is a mutual friend of well, he's
Speaker 1: a mutual friend of Goldiar me. He's my love. He
Speaker 1: is always talking about tribes and how this sense of
Speaker 1: belonging is so fundamental to our human experience, that we
Speaker 1: find our tribes in tiny pocket in large pockets, and
Speaker 1: that it is the sort of atavistic past time that
Speaker 1: humans will always come back to. So we say we
Speaker 1: want to be individual, which maybe we do. We are
Speaker 1: born alone, we die alone, and yet in the in
Speaker 1: between we always want to be part of something. Well.
Speaker 1: I think the tribalism is especially concurrent with the idea
Speaker 1: of culture, tribalism moving into the metropolis of New York
Speaker 1: and rising from the ashes. You know that culture is amazing.
Speaker 1: We think of what on the shoulders of giants with
Speaker 1: New York and coming out of the depravity of New York,
Speaker 1: what you personally, all of my friends, the guys that
Speaker 1: I chased that the people that I chased that dream
Speaker 1: and went to New York and found the Bronx on fire,
Speaker 1: thinking this isn't the American dream and is this is
Speaker 1: different than what it said on the tin and what
Speaker 1: it was going to be. And it was important to
Speaker 1: my growing because again it was straight into a tribe
Speaker 1: that where I could belong to crew. But I felt,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea of tribalism in New York
Speaker 1: with the crews, you know, actually did positive stuff when
Speaker 1: he kind of changed from the negative gangs into positive
Speaker 1: dances and painters and hip hop cult. She came along
Speaker 1: and it changed everything, and even even that became gentrified
Speaker 1: in lots of other ways, like everything does, but without
Speaker 1: going too far off piece. I think the idea of
Speaker 1: being happy in finding one's place, it really is about
Speaker 1: letting go exactly. Can you tell me something that has
Speaker 1: grown out of a personal disaster. I would never have
Speaker 1: met my wife unless I severed my left femur water
Speaker 1: ski jump the TV show. It was the last session
Speaker 1: of the day. I've nailed the all day three jumps,
Speaker 1: last one showing off sock off, landing the water to
Speaker 1: wait soil. It's turned the leg snapped the femur, and
Speaker 1: it was like, this was the end of me. This
Speaker 1: is like your legs flowing in the water that way.
Speaker 1: You think this is the end of it. And I
Speaker 1: was in hospital for like four months and the guy
Speaker 1: next to me had his leg amputated. They were going
Speaker 1: to cut it off. When you've gone through everything and
Speaker 1: you've got a divorce and you've gone through you know,
Speaker 1: the ego and the drugs and a rock and roll
Speaker 1: and you you have nothing. I kind of met when
Speaker 1: we my leg was broken. I was in pieces. I
Speaker 1: was never gonna walk again properly. I was done. I
Speaker 1: was at the bottom of it all. And I think
Speaker 1: it was great meeting then, because I healed in a
Speaker 1: really good way. That's amazing. I went to Shanghai on
Speaker 1: a pair of crutches, you know, just before I started
Speaker 1: in this whole yoga thing. And wait, why did you
Speaker 1: go to Shanghai? I went to DJ and Shanghai a
Speaker 1: place called bon Bone, and it was a gig that
Speaker 1: was canceled and it got reslotted and I went there
Speaker 1: and I still had crutches, and I was limping into
Speaker 1: this dinner at the New Heights in Hong Kong. I
Speaker 1: was sitting at dinner and my friend was on the
Speaker 1: phone and he said, he said, look, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: make it for the dinner. And we've got like twenty
Speaker 1: people at this dinner table come to host me, And
Speaker 1: what do you mean you're not coming? And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I just saw this woman walking hang On,
Speaker 1: Dave hang On, and she was standing there and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it pops his head around the court.
Speaker 1: He was with her, and that was it. And we
Speaker 1: never looked back. We even went to Beijing and I
Speaker 1: wrote on the wall and never forget it. In the
Speaker 1: back of a changing room after I've done a gig,
Speaker 1: I wrote Sakoko on the war in ga fee Laires,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be the name of our daughter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we actually dated. I'd seen her in Shanghai and then
Speaker 1: went on this little tour stay in Japan. It was
Speaker 1: the stranger said, I've got to say this because it's
Speaker 1: really important. We were staying in Japan. I'd arranged when
Speaker 1: I first met her in Hong Kong to let's meet
Speaker 1: up somewhere. Let's meet up in Japan. And we had
Speaker 1: this big suite and we sat and watched a wonderful
Speaker 1: film called Ashes to Snow by James Coburn, is a
Speaker 1: prolific photographer filmmaker. And we sat holding hands on this
Speaker 1: bed and we cried and never made out. And we
Speaker 1: spent a year writing lets before we even got together,
Speaker 1: a whole year, and those those letters turned into love
Speaker 1: Box One, Love Box to love Box Free, which we
Speaker 1: have in this house for my daughter when she grows up,
Speaker 1: she will have all of these letters. There are hundreds
Speaker 1: of them. I mean, like I was in England and
Speaker 1: I was writing a letter a day. At one point
Speaker 1: it was insane. After all of the disasters I'd had.
Speaker 1: This wonderful love came is wonderful love letters. But I've
Speaker 1: constantly had a real support of my wife and friends
Speaker 1: to be able to have this time to write stuff
Speaker 1: and and really explore these different things, you know, unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends that can read really well,
Speaker 1: and I can't. But I can write, but I can't
Speaker 1: read that well. But I love the idea of legacy,
Speaker 1: and I love the idea of my different children understanding
Speaker 1: different things. And I write them letters sometimes so that
Speaker 1: when I do pass on that they can read them
Speaker 1: and they can understand it from the horse's mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are we going to really leave? That's important for
Speaker 1: me is legacy is important? To legacy is important so
Speaker 1: that you know, the kids have paintings and they have
Speaker 1: books and writings, and they have my words and not
Speaker 1: the idea where you know, I saw the art world
Speaker 1: and lots of people that died penniless. And also some
Speaker 1: critics decize that they think they understand what the painting
Speaker 1: means and the part of the artist is long gone.
Speaker 1: But in the digital age and where we are now,
Speaker 1: everything is kind of recorded. We have the ability to
Speaker 1: pick up a phone record our thoughts and feelings. You know,
Speaker 1: some people write books and do different things. There's not
Speaker 1: a day that goes by. I don't think of death
Speaker 1: in a good way of what you know, it's death
Speaker 1: coming and it's there. And what do I want to
Speaker 1: leave behind? A phone, some pictures and means my legacy
Speaker 1: is my phone with twenty four thousand photographs and nineteen
Speaker 1: thousand videos. What question would you most like answered? I
Speaker 1: saw that earlier on and I thought this is gonna
Speaker 1: be very tricky. I think for me, the government that
Speaker 1: are in power, why are they determined to kill the
Speaker 1: arts if you could honestly answer it, because there seems
Speaker 1: to be an agenda with it. It doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense to me at all. Everything the human race has
Speaker 1: ever experienced, we've come out of it through art music.
Speaker 1: So why do they in schools make it like art
Speaker 1: and music are some kind of dessert that you don't
Speaker 1: need and that it's this extra curricular concept. Yeah, within
Speaker 1: the school frame, yeah, but it's more to do with
Speaker 1: funding and why won't you invest in your child? Well,
Speaker 1: you're not children before it's growing up. What was their playlists,
Speaker 1: what was their album collections were? What ardly they're like
Speaker 1: when they were young. It just seems like all of
Speaker 1: that generation of government, I just don't understand their agenda
Speaker 1: with it. And that question i'd like to be answered,
Speaker 1: Why don't you fund the arts in the way that
Speaker 1: it should be got such a great I want to
Speaker 1: know that too. I feel fascinated with that because I
Speaker 1: find that it's really weird because there was a big
Speaker 1: debate about the m b E and it was this
Speaker 1: whole thing about you know, they gave me this Bluepeeter
Speaker 1: badge and said you're great, and we've got to explain
Speaker 1: to America an MBAT. When m B is a member
Speaker 1: of the British Empire, the Queen gives you this medal.
Speaker 1: It's for services to music and arts. I always felt like, great, fantastic,
Speaker 1: My mom would have loved it, and it's great, thank you.
Speaker 1: It sits on the shelf upstairs. It's a thing, and
Speaker 1: it's great, thank you very much. But the thing what
Speaker 1: gets me is that they were closing clubs at the time.
Speaker 1: Fabrica was got closed down, and there was this big
Speaker 1: debate about people giving us these accolades, but yet they
Speaker 1: take away the school that my son went to, and
Speaker 1: he could have got a school on the estate that
Speaker 1: he lived, and then he ended up doing twenty five
Speaker 1: years in prison along with a lot of other kids
Speaker 1: because they had no community, because the heart was sorn
Speaker 1: out of it. And I'm thinking to myself that part
Speaker 1: of the reason for living in another place was it
Speaker 1: felt really odd that can't you see the wood for
Speaker 1: the trees, that we were not investing in the youth
Speaker 1: in the way that we should be doing. And that
Speaker 1: really saddens me a lot. It does. It saddens me
Speaker 1: a lot, and I like watching her grow. Cocle Sacoco
Speaker 1: is an amazing creature. And they have Chance who's twenty three.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to be a grandfather in February, which
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to. I'm like granddad at last.
Speaker 1: I speak to my son a lot, who's his Majesty's
Speaker 1: hotel for another fifth deen years? He has fifteen more
Speaker 1: years to go. There was a twenty five year sentence
Speaker 1: that he received and he did that. He's doing the
Speaker 1: whole thing and it was the beginning of the downfall
Speaker 1: of the estate. And the estate in England is the
Speaker 1: projects is, you know, government funded housing, which rarely has
Speaker 1: a community that hasn't been created by the community itself.
Speaker 1: It's like the governments don't really seem to support the
Speaker 1: building in places for people to hang out and be
Speaker 1: part of their own community within these huge housing environments.
Speaker 1: I thought I'd learned a lot from New York and
Speaker 1: the Bronx and being in Garrison Avenue and all those
Speaker 1: boys in the Chad's Crew whim affiliated with. And I
Speaker 1: was there at eighteen and I saw it really young
Speaker 1: of how that place was, like wow, it was still
Speaker 1: leveled in areas and it was just like they hadn't
Speaker 1: even rebuilt the Bronx and seeing how the community aspect
Speaker 1: of fell apart there, but they got together theirselves to
Speaker 1: do a lot of stuff Logan. It was the same
Speaker 1: in Harlem. It was the same, you know, of people
Speaker 1: coming back together and building their communities themselves, not ever
Speaker 1: relying on the government or in England the councils. And
Speaker 1: I think that's where we're going, that's where we're heading. Well,
Speaker 1: that's where England's heading in that respect because we have
Speaker 1: to look after our own and have that community aspect.
Speaker 1: Do you find that the things that you're teaching your
Speaker 1: children now are very much because of things that weren't
Speaker 1: taught to you when you were younger? Very interesting? Yes,
Speaker 1: I found with a lot of early therapy that I
Speaker 1: was doing and especially like the work of gabbled Matti
Speaker 1: and trauma is very amazing. It's to deal with trauma
Speaker 1: in my experience have been separated and growing and moving
Speaker 1: on and breakdowns and everything else, and seeing again in
Speaker 1: a third party, seeing like a pad lock upstairs from
Speaker 1: Cambodia with a key that set on the shelf, with
Speaker 1: beautiful pieces of sculpture and things that I never saw
Speaker 1: in a home when I was a kid, knowing that
Speaker 1: she's growing up in this space and she's seeing these things,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing it through her eyes almost, and I'm
Speaker 1: setting it up so I'm seeing you through her eyes.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what for me, what the Hoffman
Speaker 1: process was about. The Hoffman's a very beautiful process for
Speaker 1: me because it kind of me to get back to
Speaker 1: being that child and instead of suffocating my own in
Speaker 1: a child, understanding what that's like. You can't just say, well,
Speaker 1: it's different one week. We're growing up for her worlds
Speaker 1: that's so well that she doesn't know any difference. So
Speaker 1: learning her all the right tools and giving her the
Speaker 1: right stuff and when she gets emotion and seeing her
Speaker 1: grow all of these wonderful things. And with some of
Speaker 1: my first kids, I never experienced that, and having conversations
Speaker 1: with my older kids about me not being there and
Speaker 1: having an adult conversation. You know, my son did the
Speaker 1: Hoffman which was amazing, and he's a lovely boy, Danny,
Speaker 1: and seeing what he went through, and it's really beautiful
Speaker 1: to to kind of pay back in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: To Halfman is a kind of is it a cognitive
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy situation? The Halfman process is it's like a
Speaker 1: quad of you know, it's the west and the east
Speaker 1: where west meats east, and it's to deal with going
Speaker 1: back into your timeline and looking at where the trauma
Speaker 1: comes from. And my issues were abandonment and be misunderstood.
Speaker 1: I chose drama, bass music and graffiti. You know, you
Speaker 1: repeat these things that you gravitate towards. The work with
Speaker 1: Serena Gordon and those guys at the Hoffman has been
Speaker 1: amazing because you know, everyone goes to therapy and unpacks
Speaker 1: the box, but no one wants to know how the
Speaker 1: box are designed, how was the box manufacturer that fits
Speaker 1: the stuff inside it? And I love that aspect of
Speaker 1: it because when you start to unpack it and you
Speaker 1: realize that we are like our mothers and fathers, whether
Speaker 1: we like it or not, and you start you know,
Speaker 1: we we've we fight to get away from that, but
Speaker 1: yet we're very much the same, and what changes is
Speaker 1: our characteristics of what we decide to put it into
Speaker 1: our lives. From an energetic point of view, so I
Speaker 1: found that was a really good process. I found it
Speaker 1: was a beautiful process. And I think it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with the record label. You know, my labels twenty
Speaker 1: six years old, you were kind of like the mold
Speaker 1: town of DNB with this integral music. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got kids at the age of three making exceptional albums
Speaker 1: continuing to do so. And I love that because it's
Speaker 1: something that I've always served because you have to create
Speaker 1: this platform, and you know, these kids have following me,
Speaker 1: they do this stuff, and they're making some amazing, easy music.
Speaker 1: And I find that probably the most rewarding of all
Speaker 1: because you knows a kid called Spencer, he was twenty
Speaker 1: two at the time and he just then his first
Speaker 1: remix for me and he was playing after Me and
Speaker 1: Egg in King's Cross and he came on after me
Speaker 1: after playing it out and I murdered it and he
Speaker 1: came on and he absolutely just destroyed the club in
Speaker 1: a good way. And seeing this kid taking the reins
Speaker 1: and these kids like who is this guy? And is
Speaker 1: this protege? And there are a few of these protejays
Speaker 1: have come along with the music, and so many of
Speaker 1: the artists on the label are phenomenal, you know, Phase
Speaker 1: and all these are the kids. I could go on
Speaker 1: with a list of the artists that we have, but
Speaker 1: I found that the most rewarding over the years, because
Speaker 1: when you're not the guy you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: fall away. You do something else, and that's something else.
Speaker 1: He's providing a platform for others. All right, So this
Speaker 1: might go back to your roots or it maybe where
Speaker 1: you're currently. But what would be your last meal? Oh?
Speaker 1: It says easy, that's easy. It's bacon ex Sani, Sani
Speaker 1: has a sandwich BAGINGI right, listen, it's truly, says banging
Speaker 1: Sany from Dunsley Farm in shrin in Hartfordshire, England. Wait
Speaker 1: back bacon or streaky bacon, dreaky man smoke streaky okay,
Speaker 1: crispy or still a bit floppy? Just about to turn
Speaker 1: with the egg over? Easies you guys, say on some beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful sour doll with poppy seeds, says to me, trimming
Speaker 1: on the edge. And that's me with a couple of Yorks.
Speaker 1: Should see, I'm yours, say me. That's my meal, probably
Speaker 1: the most unhealthy meal I mean, but that's my thing.
Speaker 1: Lived in Thailand for twelve years. I was just remembering
Speaker 1: arriving at to thirty in the morning. I was on
Speaker 1: my way to Cambodia, and I went walking down to
Speaker 1: the streets of Bangkok, and I was so hungry, and
Speaker 1: all they really seemed to be were lovely shiny black
Speaker 1: insects on skiers at the side of the road having
Speaker 1: just come off a fire. And I was like, very well,
Speaker 1: one in Bangkok delicious though. I mean, I don't eat
Speaker 1: pork myself, but I do understand a bacon and eggs,
Speaker 1: ARENI that's a mood. That's a proper mood. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is that I find beautiful with six million eggs,
Speaker 1: you know, boil the water for six minutes, the waters boiling,
Speaker 1: and then put the eggs for six minutes. They're perfect, exactly.
Speaker 1: And some soldiers boil taken soldiers might actually be my
Speaker 1: last male. Really wow, look at that up one out
Speaker 1: that there and a cup of tea. What person, place,
Speaker 1: or experience has most altered your life? I think Mr
Speaker 1: the Hearst, my art teacher. I think that he changed
Speaker 1: my life completely. He sat me in front of the
Speaker 1: window and said, draw this. You need to get past.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this. In the State,
Speaker 1: we had a thing called the no level, which is
Speaker 1: like a It's like a pre s a T. It's
Speaker 1: like an s A T that you take when you're sixteen,
Speaker 1: and then you take another load of exams when you're eighteen,
Speaker 1: called A levels. So you were studying for your O levels.
Speaker 1: I was studying for the level in art. And I
Speaker 1: was great at sculpture in my hands. Anything you put
Speaker 1: in my hands, I could do it, and I could sculpture.
Speaker 1: I was That's the thing I loved. And he said,
Speaker 1: you can do all of that. It's great. You know
Speaker 1: you're natural fantastic, but you're not. You need to step back,
Speaker 1: you need to You've got to draw this side of
Speaker 1: you have to draw. And he got me to draw
Speaker 1: a newspaper and ash tray and you know, say glass,
Speaker 1: paper and iron. And he got me through this exam
Speaker 1: and after hours, the children's armor was into the time
Speaker 1: said you could stay after school for a couple of
Speaker 1: hours each night and stay with the art teacher. And
Speaker 1: he changed my life. And weirdly enough, in him doing that,
Speaker 1: I did a documentary it's really rare on Red Bull.
Speaker 1: It was called The Alchemist, and I actually went to
Speaker 1: surprise him when his sev on his birthday, to thank
Speaker 1: him for what he'd done for me. I kind of
Speaker 1: went into this little hall in Birmingham in the parish
Speaker 1: church and you know, with an entourage of people and
Speaker 1: managers and people who were there. And I was on
Speaker 1: tour somewhere and I sneaked in and walked in. It
Speaker 1: was arranged by his wife, and I sneaked in and
Speaker 1: sat right next to him, and he looked at me,
Speaker 1: and he didn't even reckon if you look back, and
Speaker 1: carried a looking while he was talking. And then he
Speaker 1: looks and he just burst into tears. And he was
Speaker 1: a great moment. And I think those kind of moments
Speaker 1: kind of stay with me. It is because he he
Speaker 1: grew up in a children's home and he reached into
Speaker 1: that experience and saw more in you and asked more
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah. Well, at the time, I was getting
Speaker 1: beat and I was getting bullied at school as you
Speaker 1: start to walk on the canal on the way home,
Speaker 1: so I get beat up going on the main road.
Speaker 1: It was just crazy. I mean it was there was
Speaker 1: a period of five years where it was just like
Speaker 1: it was hell for me. But the art class was everything,
Speaker 1: and that was it. And and that's why I think
Speaker 1: I always gravitated towards that, the sense of art, and
Speaker 1: especially when graffiti came. That was the answer. Not only
Speaker 1: was he ar and a new form of art, there
Speaker 1: was guys doing it together. There was tribalism and community
Speaker 1: and he was brilliant and you could paint trains and
Speaker 1: stuff and all his mad stuff and you know, break
Speaker 1: the law as well, and it was illegal and he
Speaker 1: was illegal, you know. And it's it's crazy because I
Speaker 1: have a wonderful gallery in the heart of Bangkok and
Speaker 1: it's called the Aurum Gallery Latin for Gold, and I
Speaker 1: have all of my friends are from around the world,
Speaker 1: you know, from New York, from Japan, from Mexico, from
Speaker 1: l a and it's a brilliant contemporary gallery. And I
Speaker 1: think to myself again, it's one of those moments where
Speaker 1: I'm going there on Monday. I was there two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and I watched in on the Wednesday and the staff
Speaker 1: we're just opening up and there's no one in there
Speaker 1: and just walking around this space. And it's beautiful because
Speaker 1: my daughter can run around in there and she's looking
Speaker 1: at all his art and she's drawing away. She loves it.
Speaker 1: She's just really into it. But just seeing people, that's
Speaker 1: the one thing you see that I think music has
Speaker 1: been compromised because you can download it and the quality
Speaker 1: sometimes he's a bit and you can reproduce it and
Speaker 1: everything else, and people want to buy staff. But you
Speaker 1: can't stop the idea of tribal idea of a human
Speaker 1: being standing in a room with a painting. It just
Speaker 1: can't be beaten. Whether it's the National Portrait Gallery or
Speaker 1: it's a contemporary gallery, just being in a space sweet
Speaker 1: art is something beautiful. I find it's amazing that that's
Speaker 1: where your initial way out of what you described as
Speaker 1: being hell through art and all through your life, through
Speaker 1: the music and the graffiti and the crazy cruise in
Speaker 1: New York, all the way to Thailand and back to art.
Speaker 1: Spit mad. That isn't Yeah, it's nice. I mean it
Speaker 1: seems to subscribe to your idea of it all being foretold.
Speaker 1: I think in that way, but also think in turning
Speaker 1: allowing myself to be happy is something that I couldn't do.
Speaker 1: That everything's allowed. And I spent so much time in
Speaker 1: chasing complexity because my life has always been very intense.
Speaker 1: It is unpacking that and being here in Thailand helps
Speaker 1: me to do that. So it helps you to simplify
Speaker 1: and to be able to just see that the imperfection
Speaker 1: is beautiful. An hour ago, I started like three sessions.
Speaker 1: I started at one till three in the morning that
Speaker 1: I got up, we did the school rue baby, and
Speaker 1: I got back went straight at it. So from nine
Speaker 1: all the way through, I do like a full a shift. Today.
Speaker 1: I would not stop. I was just this just driven
Speaker 1: with this painting. Driven. And not only was I driven
Speaker 1: by the painting. I'm doing two at the same time,
Speaker 1: and I've done them both before in different ways. It's
Speaker 1: this style that I'm doing. It's just this complicated layers
Speaker 1: and there were nine layers and I get to the
Speaker 1: eighth layer and I rushed the layer and I messed
Speaker 1: the layer up, and I'm like, I just got to
Speaker 1: keep reminding myself that I just need So now I've
Speaker 1: got to spend three or four hours in the morning
Speaker 1: because I just didn't let the black dry in time.
Speaker 1: And I've done it before and I'll do it again,
Speaker 1: but each time i'll do it, I'm just at that
Speaker 1: moment where I'm like, I'm driven by something. For me,
Speaker 1: it's like music. I find that I'm driven by something
Speaker 1: far greater than myself. And I don't know what if
Speaker 1: it's just the spirit going mad, or I just get
Speaker 1: driven to do something and it's not almost like it's
Speaker 1: finished because I've done this before, but it's finding something
Speaker 1: else in the painting. And I tried something else and
Speaker 1: it kind of worked. But of course my sort of
Speaker 1: things that I do that make these mistakes, they teach
Speaker 1: me something. So I'm just like, I won't do it
Speaker 1: with the second painting because it's it's it's the next
Speaker 1: in line. But again, it was one of those things
Speaker 1: that I it was it was all the way down
Speaker 1: and I was trying to complete it in a time
Speaker 1: frame when there is no time. So I kind of
Speaker 1: shot myself in the foot. I think that's the thing
Speaker 1: with people that gravitate to music, and when you do
Speaker 1: this thing in the night and you kind of you
Speaker 1: blow up, But all of a sudden, you give the
Speaker 1: responsibility to all these people because you become this ego
Speaker 1: because when you when I was a kid, all the
Speaker 1: powers taken away from me. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: go in that room. You've gotta go there and you
Speaker 1: have to do this, so you didn't have any empowerment.
Speaker 1: So when you get the money in the cars and
Speaker 1: all that rock and roll, that sense of you know,
Speaker 1: you're giving it away. It's the ego giving it away,
Speaker 1: and it's really lying on a minute, when am I
Speaker 1: going to take charge of this year? You know, just
Speaker 1: terrific stories of this guy's just knocked out, this guy
Speaker 1: and that guy's just driving your mate, your mates car
Speaker 1: and he's done that, and everyone's pulling and pushing you,
Speaker 1: and I just got sick of that. I got sick
Speaker 1: of all of the pulling and pushing, of almost tearing
Speaker 1: an artist apart. That's what the scary part of sobriety
Speaker 1: was the idea that people got away with lots of
Speaker 1: ship while Goali was drunk, called god, he was just
Speaker 1: crazy because they just got away with the money that people.
Speaker 1: And it's like it was insane in the nineties for
Speaker 1: me in that respect. And I just feel, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty unscathed. I feel like I've got some battle wounds
Speaker 1: and some scarf. But the great thing is the healing
Speaker 1: process is amazing here. And I feel, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: fifties six scaring to fifty seventies a new thirty our
Speaker 1: second that ah, that's just brilliant. Oh my god, gold.
Speaker 1: It's so I could literally talk to you for hours
Speaker 1: and hearing where you are and how you have created
Speaker 1: your life. It sounds so patronizing, going it's inspiring. It's
Speaker 1: sucking beautiful that life unfolds and that you allow for
Speaker 1: the evolution and you haven't judged the evolution and you've
Speaker 1: taken the hits and you watch your son is still
Speaker 1: taking a hit in one way, but you're still connected.
Speaker 1: I love the how in your life and what your
Speaker 1: life was. You are. I think that's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what else we're here to do
Speaker 1: except being these lives that we've been evan you know,
Speaker 1: and live it all. Thank you so much, Goldie. He
Speaker 1: runs about as deep and considered as anyone I've ever
Speaker 1: met in my life actually, and talking to him was
Speaker 1: an absolute joy. Goldie has a new single out with
Speaker 1: his band Subjective called Lost. Mini Questions is hosted and
Speaker 1: written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer
Speaker 1: Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby
Speaker 1: by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced
Speaker 1: by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will
Speaker 1: Pearson Addison, No Day Lisa Castella and a Nick Oppenheim
Speaker 1: at w kPr de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg,
Speaker 1: and for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver h.