Speaker 1: Hey, this is Christian O'Connell and this is a very
Speaker 1: different kind of conversation for me to share, but one
Speaker 1: I am so excited to be sharing with you. It's
Speaker 1: with David White. Now he might not be a household name,
Speaker 1: but over the last couple of months you might have
Speaker 1: heard him on Tim Ferris's podcast, also on the music
Speaker 1: Producer's Brilliant podcast, Rick Ruben, You've had people like Liz
Speaker 1: Gilbert raving about his work. David White had a really
Speaker 1: big and still dance big impact in my life as
Speaker 1: a speaker, as a dad, and how I understand myself
Speaker 1: and what it is to be alive. I came across
Speaker 1: his work when I first moved here seven years ago
Speaker 1: to Australia, and man, I really needed it. He's a poet,
Speaker 1: but I think he's more of a philosopher, and I
Speaker 1: can't think of anybody else that I've heard speak about
Speaker 1: what it is to be us and make sense of
Speaker 1: our joy, our heartache, our pain, our passion, our purpose
Speaker 1: in a way that you just get. He just has
Speaker 1: a way with words. He's quite incredible, and so that
Speaker 1: two years ago, when I was turning fifty, I wanted
Speaker 1: only do one thing. He does these walking tours all
Speaker 1: over the world, and so I went to Western Island
Speaker 1: all the way from Melbourne, a twenty three and a
Speaker 1: half hour flight, and I went back to Western Ireland,
Speaker 1: which is where my ancestors are from going back many
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, and I did a walking tour with
Speaker 1: thirty five other strangers from all over the world, mainly
Speaker 1: crazy Americans, and had an amazing, a really genuinely incredible
Speaker 1: week and actually got to know David and spent a
Speaker 1: bit of time walking with him, talking with him, and
Speaker 1: drinking Irish whiskey and guinness every evening in the pub
Speaker 1: with him as well. So I was very excited when
Speaker 1: he was here in Australia. And you can find out
Speaker 1: more about going and see him at his website. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope you really enjoy this conversation. We go into
Speaker 1: quite a few interesting areas my conversation with the Great
Speaker 1: David White, got anything good?
Speaker 2: Hey, this is the Christian O'Connell show podcast.
Speaker 1: David, A great joy to be with you again. The
Speaker 1: last time we were together in Ireland, when I was
Speaker 1: there with thirty five other strangers and light minded souls
Speaker 1: all over the world in Western Ireland. But actually i'd
Speaker 1: love you to know how I first came across your work.
Speaker 1: Seven years ago. I just moved to Australia and it
Speaker 1: was a lot. It was a lot to set up
Speaker 1: a new life. My wife and I had no idea
Speaker 1: what it would be like to set up a new life.
Speaker 1: We didn't know anyone here in Australia. So my wife said,
Speaker 1: why don't you go on a retreat. I've never been
Speaker 1: on a retreat in my life. And I suddenly went
Speaker 1: on this retreat and I was the only man. There
Speaker 1: were thirteen women and there many of them were getting
Speaker 1: over breakups and people like me a man, or processing
Speaker 1: issues with their dad. So I was representing men. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of energy there. And the woman facilitating this,
Speaker 1: this amazing woman. She said, look, before we get into
Speaker 1: the work this week, I'm going to open with the poem.
Speaker 1: And I have to be honest. Before that moment, I
Speaker 1: hadn't really felt the benefit of poetry. I thought, really
Speaker 1: it was the domain of academics. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh God, here we go a poem. And then suddenly
Speaker 1: she played a recording of the voice I know as yours,
Speaker 1: and it was the first couple of lines in this
Speaker 1: high place. It is as simple as this, and I'd
Speaker 1: never received poetry like that, and I had a physical reaction.
Speaker 1: You got to the last line of the poem about
Speaker 1: the true shape of your own face, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened. I found myself shaking and sobbing. And
Speaker 1: this was right at the start of the retreat, and
Speaker 1: I was trying as hard as I could not to
Speaker 1: have this physical reaction to a poem. The rest of
Speaker 1: the ladies were looking round at me, like, what's happening here?
Speaker 1: And that was it. I became obsessed with finding out
Speaker 1: who you were. And since then it's it's opened my
Speaker 1: it's opened my heart actually to the wonder of poetry.
Speaker 1: But really I always come back to your work, which
Speaker 1: has deeply been a great companion of friendship, I think
Speaker 1: with me over the last couple of.
Speaker 2: Years, David Bravas. And that's why we write them, of course.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are ways of overhearing yourself say things
Speaker 2: you didn't know. You knew when you're first writing poetry.
Speaker 2: If it's good poetry, it's surprising you're in new territory.
Speaker 2: It's a bit like those those arguments you have domestic arguments,
Speaker 2: I mean good domestic arguments where you suddenly find yourself
Speaker 2: articulating something in your marriage or your relationship that you
Speaker 2: hadn't until you were on your emotional edge. And once
Speaker 2: you've once you've said it, you're in new territory and
Speaker 2: you can't go back. That parm you you recited is
Speaker 2: called Tillico Lake, and I actually it comes from an
Speaker 2: experience I had on my own edge when I was
Speaker 2: up high in the Himalayas eighteen thousand foot pass and
Speaker 2: I was coming down with mountain sickness. I was starting
Speaker 2: to hallucinate, and I just with the weather and everything,
Speaker 2: everything had just been too hard. And I had this powerful,
Speaker 2: powerful invitational experience to leave the trail and go off
Speaker 2: of the ridges towards this great snow lake as it
Speaker 2: was called, or Tillico Lake. And I had to use
Speaker 2: all my wool power to stay on the trail actually,
Speaker 2: or I would have died actually up on those ridges.
Speaker 2: But it was a very powerful feeling. It was some
Speaker 2: kind of longing. And the whole poem is in this
Speaker 2: high place. Well afterwards we got down finally, when we
Speaker 2: got down lower and the mountain sickness disappeared. With the
Speaker 2: being able to breathe more air. We all fell sleep
Speaker 2: in this pesture that was full of piles of yakdang.
Speaker 2: Actually I remember sleeping between the piles of yakdan and
Speaker 2: when I was sleeping, I had this dream of arriving
Speaker 2: at the side of Tillico Lake. So it's a very
Speaker 2: short onm you mentioned the first and last line in
Speaker 2: this high place, it is as simple as this, Leave
Speaker 2: everything you know behind, step toward the cold surface, say
Speaker 2: the old prayer of rough love, and open both arms.
Speaker 2: Those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake, astonished.
Speaker 2: There in the cold light, reflecting pure snow, the true shape,
Speaker 2: the true shape of your own face. The sense I
Speaker 2: had in the dream of suddenly seeing I knew me.
Speaker 2: Actually that was emerging. And the interesting thing is the
Speaker 2: way we mature as human beings is from the inside out.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We have all these outside experiences, but they're affecting us
Speaker 2: at a very very deep core. And I often think
Speaker 2: there's a part of us which has always gone ahead
Speaker 2: of us, as matured at a much higher rate than
Speaker 2: our outer surface self, that is caught up in all
Speaker 2: the little imprisonments and besiegements of our of the way
Speaker 2: we've put together our life, and quite often, you know,
Speaker 2: getting below the horizon of what you think, you know,
Speaker 2: you suddenly come across this part of you that's actually
Speaker 2: matured way ahead of your present life. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons we won't look in there is we know
Speaker 2: that when we do that, our present peripheral life will
Speaker 2: fall apart actually or be undone, and we don't know
Speaker 2: whether it will be put together in the same way
Speaker 2: or not. And so it's one of the reasons we're
Speaker 2: rightly afraid of going in there, rightly afraid of writing,
Speaker 2: you know, the lines that will speak from that place,
Speaker 2: and in some ways rightly afraid of hearing it. You know,
Speaker 2: it's one of the reasons where we intuitively know that
Speaker 2: good poetry represents something insiders, that is, as a kind
Speaker 2: of moveability beyond our are often rigid surface lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, it touches. There's some opening. It opens
Speaker 1: up parts of us I guess that have been thought
Speaker 1: or I don't know, you've lost contact with. And it's
Speaker 1: funny how I've often thought about the energy of some
Speaker 1: of your work, and obviously what you're shaping and connecting
Speaker 1: to in you as the poem emerges, and then how
Speaker 1: we receive it, because you're talking about what was going
Speaker 1: on for you and what that poem represents the energy
Speaker 1: inside it. And for me it was you know, I'd
Speaker 1: literally had just move the other side of the world
Speaker 1: and I had to leave everything behind, everything that I
Speaker 1: had left behind in the UK, my mum, dad, a job, friends,
Speaker 1: everything at our family home, and it was refinding some
Speaker 1: new version of myself here in Australia. And I hadn't
Speaker 1: really thought about it actually until you're talking about what
Speaker 1: was happening for you when that emerged. How does your
Speaker 1: relationship with your your palms change over the years as
Speaker 1: you do, Does it remain the same what that means
Speaker 1: to you now? For example, No.
Speaker 2: I mean a good palm. If it is good, it's
Speaker 2: a living thing. You know, it's not about something. It
Speaker 2: is the thing itself, So it has its own life
Speaker 2: and so it matures also. And you hear it from
Speaker 2: other people's mouths, just as I heard that that little
Speaker 2: palm from your mouth. It opens up new levels and
Speaker 2: new understandings. You know, I have hundreds of palms memorized,
Speaker 2: and that's how I work on stage and are online,
Speaker 2: and I'll often work with a palm for years and years,
Speaker 2: and then suddenly a new level will open up just
Speaker 2: because it coincides or has a kind of symmetry with
Speaker 2: something that's occurring in my emotional maturation or in my
Speaker 2: inner life, or in some form of vulnerability. I'm feeling
Speaker 2: at that threshold in my existence. So the poems and
Speaker 2: other palms are companions. They're like friends. You think you
Speaker 2: know them and then they always surprise you.
Speaker 1: At one time a good friend yeahs, like a good
Speaker 1: friend does, yes, I think you know where you are
Speaker 1: with them, and then all of a sudden they surprise you,
Speaker 1: will challenge you in some way, and they're revealed something
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't know about yourself. Well you didn't want
Speaker 1: you didn't want to admit about yourself. There was a
Speaker 1: one poem last year my mother in law died suddenly
Speaker 1: and my wife was obviously heartbroken. She said, would you
Speaker 1: do the eulogy? And I've never done a eulogy, And
Speaker 1: it's a deep honor to do somebody's eulogy in try
Speaker 1: and bring their life and their essence into words. And
Speaker 1: I found it very hard actually actually putting eulogy together
Speaker 1: and thinking, how do I best do this and talk
Speaker 1: about the amazing life of my mother in law? And
Speaker 1: what I did is I interviewed all the family and
Speaker 1: got their stories about this marvelous woman, and then, using
Speaker 1: the words that kept coming up, I put it together
Speaker 1: them to the EUUGI, using everyone's words about her. But
Speaker 1: about two nights beforehand, I couldn't end this eulogy, and
Speaker 1: so before I went to bed, I sort of intuited.
Speaker 1: This sounds crazy, but I think you and I what
Speaker 1: I said to my mother in law, I'm really struggling
Speaker 1: about how to end your eulogy. I need your help. Please,
Speaker 1: could you just give me some clue. I'm missing somebody's voice.
Speaker 1: It's yours. I don't know how to end this with
Speaker 1: your voice. You're not here and we didn't know you
Speaker 1: were going to go that. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: end your own eulogy. During the night, I was visited
Speaker 1: in a dream by her. She did, and she was saying,
Speaker 1: do you remember when you came back from Ireland? And
Speaker 1: he'd been on David's walking tour, and I was full
Speaker 1: of your poems and I was talking about the people
Speaker 1: I'd met and quoting lines of yours, and she said,
Speaker 1: you told me about this pom you wrote about your
Speaker 1: mom when you lost your mom. Here you were very
Speaker 1: very close to the farewell letter. And I woke up
Speaker 1: in the morning, very early, actually getting goosebumpser telling you this.
Speaker 1: I woke up on in my I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: know so many of your poems, I don't remember the
Speaker 1: farewell letter. And I went on to Google and I
Speaker 1: found it and I literally I started crying because I
Speaker 1: knew this is what you want to say. Oh I did,
Speaker 1: so I ended the eulogy with the farewell letter, and
Speaker 1: I don't think afterwards people going where did you get
Speaker 1: that power from? It just destroyed me in the right way.
Speaker 1: And it's such a I think it's an amazing, amazing
Speaker 1: testimony to love and letting somebody go. And it feels
Speaker 1: like a hymn and a conversation. The farewell letter.
Speaker 2: David, Yes, yeah, I wrote that after my mother, my
Speaker 2: Irish mother had passed, and you know, being the firstborn
Speaker 2: son of an Irish mother, you have this you feel
Speaker 2: blessed by reality and by garden, by everything, and so
Speaker 2: when she went, I felt this incredible absence and vacancy.
Speaker 2: And what was really disturbing was I had this sense
Speaker 2: that my mother was was actually concerned with other things
Speaker 2: now and not with her son or her daughters. She
Speaker 2: was not a mother anymore. Actually she was she was
Speaker 2: on to greater things, and it was it was quite remarkable.
Speaker 2: And I had this series of experiences of having dreams
Speaker 2: where I would I would be just about to find
Speaker 2: out what my mother was up to and where she was,
Speaker 2: and then I would wake up and had I had
Speaker 2: the dream that appears in the poem actually where she
Speaker 2: was sat on her old bench by her roses. She
Speaker 2: had these beautiful red roses as Dublin Bay roses is
Speaker 2: the name of the variety. I have them now at
Speaker 2: my house where I live, in memory of her. But
Speaker 2: she was sat there, you know, all of her later years.
Speaker 2: And in the dream, I was suddenly sat there and
Speaker 2: I had a letter from her. And in the dream,
Speaker 2: as you do in a dream, I knew that when
Speaker 2: I opened this envelope, I would find out everything about
Speaker 2: where she was and what she was up to. And
Speaker 2: I was so happy in the dream. But of course
Speaker 2: I came to open the envelope in the in the dream,
Speaker 2: and that was the moment I woke up, and I
Speaker 2: was so appalled, and I tried to get back to sleep.
Speaker 2: I tried to put my head back in the same place,
Speaker 2: close my eyes. It was no good. And I said,
Speaker 2: you know, you already know what your mother would say
Speaker 2: to you, and just go now to just go now
Speaker 2: to the kitchen table and write the letter that your
Speaker 2: mother wrote you in that envelope. So I didn't. That's
Speaker 2: the farewell letter? Shall I read it?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would love that if it's okay
Speaker 1: for you. I don't want to bring up some sad
Speaker 1: times in your life.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it was a wonderful time. So a volume
Speaker 2: called Everything Is Waiting for You Farewell Letter. One thing
Speaker 2: to know was that my mother lost her own mother
Speaker 2: when she was thirteen, and that was the end of
Speaker 2: my mother's childhood really, and the family was split apart
Speaker 2: by the bad old church in Ireland, and my mother
Speaker 2: had to flee with her sister at fifteen years old
Speaker 2: to England to get out of their clutches. And so
Speaker 2: my mother's mother appears in this too farewell letter. She
Speaker 2: wrote me a letter after her death, and I remember
Speaker 2: a kind of happy light falling on the envelope as
Speaker 2: I sat by the rose tree on her old bench
Speaker 2: at the back door, so surprised by its arrival, wondering
Speaker 2: what she would say, looking up before I could open it,
Speaker 2: and laughing to myself in silent expectation. Dear son, dear son,
Speaker 2: it is time for me to leave you. I am
Speaker 2: afraid that the words you are used to hearing are
Speaker 2: no longer mine to give. They're gone and mingled back
Speaker 2: in the world, where it's no longer in my power
Speaker 2: to be their first original author nor their last loving bearer.
Speaker 2: You can hear motherly words of affection now only from
Speaker 2: your own mouth, and only when you speak them to
Speaker 2: those who stand motherless before you. You can hear motherly
Speaker 2: words of affection now only from your own mouth, and
Speaker 2: only when you speak to them, and only when you
Speaker 2: speak them to those who stand motherless before you. As
Speaker 2: for me, I must forsake adulthood and be bound gladly
Speaker 2: to a new childhood. You must understand this apprenticeship demands
Speaker 2: of me an elemental innocence from everything I ever held
Speaker 2: in my hands. I know your generous soul is well
Speaker 2: able to let me go. You can only have your
Speaker 2: mother say something about you like that in a pot.
Speaker 2: I know your generous soul is well able to let
Speaker 2: me go. I know your generous soul is well able
Speaker 2: to let me go. You will, in the end be
Speaker 2: happy to know my God was true. And I find myself,
Speaker 2: after loving you all for so long in the wide,
Speaker 2: infinite mercy of being mothered myself. Ps. All of your
Speaker 2: intuitions were true.
Speaker 1: I am once more moved to tears here in that.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful, beautiful. There's a generosity in it, hearing
Speaker 1: you read it. There's a generosity in actually letting someone go,
Speaker 1: which is actually a very hard invitation in in grief
Speaker 1: because as a part of you it doesn't want it
Speaker 1: to have happened. You want to see the person again,
Speaker 1: and she resists that for so long. And there's a
Speaker 1: generosity in that, David, where you know you allow your
Speaker 1: mom to be mothered again.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, yes, And we have all heard of the
Speaker 2: dynamic or experience it ourselves at the bedsides of the dying,
Speaker 2: where when you're holding onto them so tightly, they actually
Speaker 2: find it hard to go. And it's often when people
Speaker 2: leave the room for a moment. I mean, nurses talk
Speaker 2: about this again. And it's often when the family leaves
Speaker 2: the room to get a cup of tea or coffee
Speaker 2: that they'll take the opportunity to slip away. And we do.
Speaker 2: We hold people as they're dying because we're afraid of
Speaker 2: their death more often, quite often more afraid of their
Speaker 2: death than they are themselves. Actually so interested at the end. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then we hold them afterwards too, in a way
Speaker 2: in which we're not allowing them to be free. We're
Speaker 2: not allowing them to go off and have not only
Speaker 2: their own life, but their own death in a way.
Speaker 2: And so, but that's all part of the grieving process.
Speaker 2: I always say there's only one cure for grief, and
Speaker 2: that's grief itself. You know, it's feeling it to its
Speaker 2: very very bottom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very painful truth, isn't it. And you
Speaker 1: actually only get to really understand it when you are grieving,
Speaker 1: and there is You're right, there's no I think one
Speaker 1: of the greatest pains in our life and being human
Speaker 1: is is unexpressed and unfelt grief.
Speaker 2: What's strange about it is that it's a kind of intimacy.
Speaker 2: It's it's in your grief you're actually feeling the hole
Speaker 2: that they left in your life and in others' life,
Speaker 2: so you're actually you're actually feeling what their gift was
Speaker 2: simply by it not being there. The Great Dominique and
Speaker 2: mystic of the European Dominique. In Mystic of the thirteenth century,
Speaker 2: Master Eckert was once that was once asked what God was,
Speaker 2: and he said, God is pure absence. What you need
Speaker 2: to be in an advanced day to understand that. Yes, really,
Speaker 2: he's really saying that we experience almost everything through distance
Speaker 2: or the inverse calibration of how close we are. You know,
Speaker 2: quite often in a relationship, we won't measure how we're
Speaker 2: doing by how intimate we are. We'll say, oh, we're
Speaker 2: not too far apart today, we're not doing too badly.
Speaker 2: And so human beings often often find their way through
Speaker 2: what is absent in their life, and part of the
Speaker 2: task of poetry is to articulate that absence in your
Speaker 2: own life, so that so that you can start moving
Speaker 2: along that excess of invitation that the absence is causing.
Speaker 2: And we call it longing, and we think of longing
Speaker 2: as mooning about, but actually longing is this kind of
Speaker 2: gravitational poll which is inviting you to move along it
Speaker 2: to the horizon where you will understand why you were
Speaker 2: invited in the first place.
Speaker 1: And do you think that gravitational poll that you speak
Speaker 1: of is that the journey inwards to discover and find
Speaker 1: more of our true self?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we're all born with a certain kind
Speaker 2: of felt absence, and it's germane to the way each
Speaker 2: of us holds the conversation of life in such an
Speaker 2: incredibly unique way. It's incredible to think that every human
Speaker 2: being is the representation of a conversation which has never
Speaker 2: quite occurred in the whole history of time and will
Speaker 2: never again occur. And that's why in all of our
Speaker 2: theologies on this earth, an individual life is seen as
Speaker 2: unique and sacred because of that. You may share commonalities
Speaker 2: with other people, but those commonalities are caught in you,
Speaker 2: and caught in me, and caught in the listeners to
Speaker 2: this show now in a way which has never quite
Speaker 2: never quite been constituted or constellated before. And so each
Speaker 2: of us is this unique threshold of experience. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting to think that each of us is given a
Speaker 2: relationship with what is missing in our life in a
Speaker 2: unique way too. Everyone feels longing in a slightly different
Speaker 2: way with a different coloration, and everyone's longing is quite
Speaker 2: unique and you can never name it because part of
Speaker 2: the journey is actually finding out for yourself. You know,
Speaker 2: when you're when our children leave the door at a
Speaker 2: teen years old or twenty years old, whatever it is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you suddenly realize you actually never knew who they really were,
Speaker 2: and how could you because that's what they're out in
Speaker 2: the world trying to find out themselves. So how could
Speaker 2: you know the essence of who they are? They're out
Speaker 2: there and this astonishing pilgrimage trying to find it out
Speaker 2: for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is me right now. My r eighteen
Speaker 1: year old daughter leaves in a couple of days. Time
Speaker 1: she leaves home, she'd be the last daughter to leave home.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you're right, she's going out in the world
Speaker 1: to find out what she's about, who she is. And
Speaker 1: at fifty one, I think there's still some part of
Speaker 1: me that's still doing that as well. Yeah. They are
Speaker 1: a mystery, aren't you, aren't they? Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 1: big time. We're a big crossroads at the moment, David,
Speaker 1: my wife and I we've got this big we know
Speaker 1: that there's a big event happening Sunday, and it's almost
Speaker 1: the fear of it, you know. I remember listening to
Speaker 1: one of your talks the last couple of years and
Speaker 1: you're talking about BeO Wolf and it's the mother of
Speaker 1: the fear that you should fear. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what it is. It's that longing and it's what being
Speaker 1: a dad has given me in the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: And you're it's fearing the absence again of what would
Speaker 1: I do without that?
Speaker 2: And the invitation is, you know we feel from the
Speaker 2: surface of our lives, is to turn away from that vulnerability.
Speaker 2: But there's a lovely there's a lovely line by Albert Camue,
Speaker 2: the great French writer and philosopher, and it's a wonderful invitation.
Speaker 2: He says, lived to the point of tears, lived to
Speaker 2: the point of tears. And that's not an invitation to
Speaker 2: modeling sentimentality. That's an invitation to feeling everything and to
Speaker 2: the depth that you feel it and speaking it into
Speaker 2: the world. And of course that'll be your challenge for that,
Speaker 2: that desperdida, that goodbye you have on Sunday is for
Speaker 2: you to articulate that folly probably to everyone, but also
Speaker 2: especially to your daughter in a way that's freeing.
Speaker 1: For her.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, left to the point of tears, you've
Speaker 2: got You've got a wonderful opportunity coming right up.
Speaker 1: You'll laugh about the tears. So I've got this. I've
Speaker 1: got this mysterious eye infection that just happened or we
Speaker 1: literally woke up one morning the other day with it,
Speaker 1: and my eighteen year old daughter Lois, who's off this Sunday,
Speaker 1: she saw it and she goes, I know what that is?
Speaker 1: And I went, do you the doctor, doesn't? She goes,
Speaker 1: I think it's the weight of all the tears you're
Speaker 1: going to cry this Sunday. And I leave. I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something in that. Maybe she was trying to
Speaker 1: make me laugh and cry and roasting me say that.
Speaker 2: I always say that our children live with as spies
Speaker 2: and saboteurs for years, watching our every psychological move, and
Speaker 2: then and then they've got the psychological stiletto in one day.
Speaker 1: She's done it in my eye, you know, exactly? Very Shakespearean, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah is that? And yeah, there's lots of young and
Speaker 2: interpretations to that. Not wanting to see that's looking out
Speaker 2: and one eye. I don't want to all of those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're right, the inclination is to turn away.
Speaker 1: So I've been thinking, well, I must be very strong
Speaker 1: in front of her. You know, it will upset her
Speaker 1: seeing me upset, because the fear is I don't want
Speaker 1: to be upset. It's about the loss of control and
Speaker 1: thinking that I need to hang on to some kind
Speaker 1: of image of what a dad should be, especially my
Speaker 1: Irish heritage of some stoic and you know, stiff upper
Speaker 1: lip and all that rubbish.
Speaker 2: But actually, you know, you know, the power of the
Speaker 2: of a father's love in a daughter's life is there
Speaker 2: even now I'm breaking down, is there even after she's
Speaker 2: left the house. So the articulation of your love for
Speaker 2: your daughter, the articulation of your love for your for
Speaker 2: your daughter, will carry with her into the world because
Speaker 2: when her daughter has a strong father behind her, she
Speaker 2: can go you know, lots of places with confidence and
Speaker 2: without you actually being there physically, but you that that
Speaker 2: articulation is very powerful and will be a companion to
Speaker 2: her as she goes off.
Speaker 1: Thank you for saying that. And actually I saw the
Speaker 1: beautiful relationship you have with your daughter in Ireland two
Speaker 1: years ago. You know, she she was singing, She hung
Speaker 1: out with us, she came to the pub with us.
Speaker 1: You know, she was great company. But I was really
Speaker 1: I was really impressed. What a beautiful, loving, respectful relationship
Speaker 1: you both have together, David.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do. And she's said she's got my mother's
Speaker 2: Irish singing voice to her.
Speaker 1: My god, God, what a voice. She flowed everyone I know.
Speaker 2: And she's also got the relationship to silence and presents.
Speaker 2: I always remember when she was just five years old
Speaker 2: and we had a Christmas gathering and everyone people were
Speaker 2: taking turns to sing in the Irish way, and I
Speaker 2: turned to her and her father shouldn't do this, you know,
Speaker 2: in public, and said, Charlotte, will you give us a song?
Speaker 2: And I almost caught myself saying, don't do that. But
Speaker 2: then she just, you just dropped her hands and bolted
Speaker 2: out this song in front of everyone. I said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: there's no there's no harm there. And she's been like
Speaker 2: that ever since. Actually so, and she's also memorizing poetry
Speaker 2: as I do. She'll be able to do what I
Speaker 2: do eventually. Actually, I think she works her way into it, how.
Speaker 1: Lovely, how beautiful. Now tell me you're in as people
Speaker 1: are listening there and to this and they're enjoying your work,
Speaker 1: and how you have the conversation you're here in Australia,
Speaker 1: so talks about the show you got Sydney this weekend
Speaker 1: and then you're in on Tuesday doing a workshop here.
Speaker 1: What can people expect?
Speaker 2: David Well, I found myself saying to an interview the
Speaker 2: other day with ABC here as when she asked, what's
Speaker 2: it like? I said, I suppose it's like a quiet
Speaker 2: rock concept. Imagine, I said, imagine that Nick Cave concept
Speaker 2: without the music, but with the lyrics and the narrative.
Speaker 2: And that's why I work. I work, you know, as
Speaker 2: I said, I have hundreds of poems memorized, so I
Speaker 2: can work extemporariously, but I'll usually have a theme. And
Speaker 2: actually in Sydney between ten and at ten am and
Speaker 2: one pm here on Saturday, I'll be working. I'll be
Speaker 2: taking people on a psychological pilgrimage through the West of Ireland,
Speaker 2: actually to many of the places that I visited myself
Speaker 2: and spent time and so it's a it's it's a
Speaker 2: kind of theological journey through the Irish, the Irish landscape,
Speaker 2: going to these remarkable places. But it's also a psychological journey,
Speaker 2: the way human beings could go through thresholds of understanding
Speaker 2: and loss and.
Speaker 1: Gain and.
Speaker 2: Maturation. So that's that'll be Sydney. I was just up
Speaker 2: in Byron depp Bay. I did two different mornings there.
Speaker 2: We had to sellout crowd. It was great, the lovely
Speaker 2: Byron Bay Theater. So intimately it's a beautiful place. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I have this Sydney theater whose name escapes me right now,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure it's they're all online. And then Wednesday afternoon, no,
Speaker 2: Tuesday afternoon in Melbourne. Yeah, we tried to do We
Speaker 2: tried to do just a big occasion in Sydney, but
Speaker 2: the poetry hooligans in Melbourne rose up as one, absolutely
Speaker 2: and heartily, so we put up up reading there and
Speaker 2: there's a good few hundred people already signed up. So
Speaker 2: it's going to be it's going to be lovely.
Speaker 1: Actually, well I'm going to be I'm going to be
Speaker 1: one of them. And tell me this. When you do there,
Speaker 1: when you are doing your your spoken word, do you
Speaker 1: there's something magical about the voice these days we live
Speaker 1: in a world where you know it's for k TV
Speaker 1: and the movies we watch incredible high definition Instagram. I
Speaker 1: think it's very visual these days. But what is still
Speaker 1: the power of the voice. Because I've seen you, I've
Speaker 1: done you walking tour in Ireland, there's something which happens
Speaker 1: with the poetry, your own poetry, when you're doing it
Speaker 1: in front of us, there's a there's something else that
Speaker 1: happens between us, someone's between the words in a way.
Speaker 1: Can you speak to about the power of our voices,
Speaker 1: which I think still has more magic over the image
Speaker 1: the visuals.
Speaker 2: Yes, the I mean the vice literally of another person
Speaker 2: literally passes into your body. And it's not just in
Speaker 2: the malleus of the ears, you know the mechanism of
Speaker 2: the ears. It actually the vibration of another person's voice
Speaker 2: passes through our bone structure and in our face, but
Speaker 2: also in our in our whole body. In a way,
Speaker 2: it's one of the reasons when a person has an
Speaker 2: aggressive or unpleasant voice, we don't want to be there.
Speaker 2: Actually we will immediately go into a defensive posture. So
Speaker 2: we all know the power of an invitational voice in
Speaker 2: when we're trying to deepen a conversation. And I always
Speaker 2: say that every real conversation is based on vulnerability. Actually,
Speaker 2: when vulnerability ends, the conversation, the real conversation ends. So
Speaker 2: the and every vulnerability is a kind of invitation. So
Speaker 2: it's really interesting to ask yourself what kind of invitation
Speaker 2: you're making to the other to the other person. So
Speaker 2: I'm trying to, you know, with a I mean, I've
Speaker 2: worked for years with the voice in the breath, the
Speaker 2: breath in the body, and the body on the ground,
Speaker 2: and that's the key to someone really listening to you.
Speaker 2: If I take my voice out of my body like
Speaker 2: this and up above my shoulders, you know, and I
Speaker 2: immediately become a lot less interesting just talking about something.
Speaker 2: As soon as I take my body down into the breath,
Speaker 2: down into the body, down into the feet, the feet
Speaker 2: on the ground, there's someone else there, and there's someone
Speaker 2: who's inviting you to listen to them. And so then
Speaker 2: you've got the responsibility of making sure that what people
Speaker 2: are listening to is actually good for them, that they'd
Speaker 2: want to actually be surprised, they'd want to be in
Speaker 2: many ways emancipated into a larger understanding of their world
Speaker 2: and themselves and that's what good poetry does, and good
Speaker 2: narrative and good storytelling. It's in all of our great
Speaker 2: it's only the last few hundred years we've got caught
Speaker 2: up in the visual in such a and the visual
Speaker 2: world is a kind of tyranny because in our evolutionary past,
Speaker 2: you had to look at fast moving things because they
Speaker 2: were often quite threatening to you. You had to look
Speaker 2: at brightly colored things because brightly colored things are usually poisonous.
Speaker 2: So when we're looking at a television screen, they're making
Speaker 2: sure that something's happening all the time. If you're ever
Speaker 2: in a pub and there's a television screen in it,
Speaker 2: it sucks all of the conversational light out of the
Speaker 2: people's eyes are constantly darting there. Why because we're made
Speaker 2: that way. We were made to survive by making sure
Speaker 2: we knew what was coming out of the corner of
Speaker 2: our vision and what was coming at speed, and what
Speaker 2: was highly colorful. So the visual environment is a kind
Speaker 2: is quite often a threat environment in good ye of
Speaker 2: course it's not. And good artful television, there's good artful television.
Speaker 2: There's good artful film, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the general place of screens in our life is
Speaker 2: really a distraction away from another deeper form of conversation
Speaker 2: in our life, of really listening and of listening in
Speaker 2: the silence. Listening in silence is totally different than just listening.
Speaker 2: So a relationship with of the vice with silence in
Speaker 2: the presence of another.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. There's so many points there. I want
Speaker 1: to pick up on, David, because you're right, even as
Speaker 1: I as someone who's taught for a living for twenty
Speaker 1: seven years, when I go back and hear myself ten fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, I'm speaking from a different place physically.
Speaker 1: It is much more higher up here. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was obviously then nervous, and I didn't quite know
Speaker 1: who I was then or what was in my heart.
Speaker 1: And as I have and different things have happened in life,
Speaker 1: You're right. It's embodied. Real voice is embodied. It's deeper
Speaker 1: in the body, isn't It's we all know when someone's nervous.
Speaker 1: Instinctively it is high pitched, and sure it's very high up,
Speaker 1: almost like they're just in their head, they're not in
Speaker 1: their body. With the magic of the voices and how
Speaker 1: we listen, it's a full bodied sport. It's an embodied thing,
Speaker 1: the true voice.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you can see it when someone's flung on
Speaker 2: stage against their will and they have to introduce someone.
Speaker 2: I'll say something, they go, you'll see them go up
Speaker 2: on their toes actually, and the voice will be just
Speaker 2: will be just coming from almost from the top of
Speaker 2: the head. And they really don't want to be there.
Speaker 2: They don't They want to escape, and the voice wants
Speaker 2: to escape. And it's because it's such an it's actually
Speaker 2: a compliment, because they know intuitively that the voice is
Speaker 2: an intimate way of meeting. And to begin with, when
Speaker 2: we're first on stage in front of other people, we
Speaker 2: don't know how to meet one hundred people all at once.
Speaker 2: And we also know that that one of those hundred
Speaker 2: people will be noticing any bs that we have. There's
Speaker 2: always someone out there who will see your vulnerability. So
Speaker 2: the game is up, you know, and or here your here,
Speaker 2: your your hear something you're trying to cover over. So
Speaker 2: it's so being in front of other people and speaking
Speaker 2: in other people, we're rightly afraid of it for good reason.
Speaker 2: For good reason, it's because you will not escape. Notice,
Speaker 2: you will not escape being examined, You will not escape
Speaker 2: being vulnerable, being vulnerable, and your vulnerability is being exposed.
Speaker 2: So you need a good sense of humor about yourself
Speaker 2: to go on stage, which noticed you have in spades, Christian, so.
Speaker 1: As to you David as well. The thing about voices
Speaker 1: is that people don't realize is that they kid themselves,
Speaker 1: that they can lie to themselves and other people. It
Speaker 1: happens every day. Actually, our voices are way more revealing
Speaker 1: than we give them credit for, don't you think.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's it's a really astonishing and quite often we'll
Speaker 2: cover over what we've heard. Actually, no, intuitively we've heard something.
Speaker 2: You know, say, you're in the presence of an untrustworthy
Speaker 2: character who's trying to convince you of something. We all
Speaker 2: know that that disconcerting difference between between the words you're
Speaker 2: hearing and what your what your stomach is telling you
Speaker 2: and and it's actually asking you to speak from that stomach,
Speaker 2: and when it's not spoken, when you're not speaking from
Speaker 2: your from literally from your gut, then there's a kind
Speaker 2: of disembodied feeling, which is that that telling disturbance that
Speaker 2: says we're in the presence of something we either need
Speaker 2: to get away from or or we need to say
Speaker 2: no to I was just going to say. When I
Speaker 2: was first on stage and working with a lot of
Speaker 2: these issues literally of life and death, I would get
Speaker 2: into places where I'd just be terrified on stage and
Speaker 2: be in front of six seven hundred people and I'm
Speaker 2: suddenly talking about death, and at that time I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have had the equanimity that I have now to talk
Speaker 2: about death. I would be disturbed by it. I feel vulnerable.
Speaker 2: I'd feel overwhelmed, particularly with a loss of people or
Speaker 2: friends that I'd lost, and my knee would start shaking.
Speaker 2: I would start getting a twitch in my face. You know,
Speaker 2: my whole body was unable to hold it. But part
Speaker 2: of the discipline and the apprenticeship to my voice was
Speaker 2: staying there and just trying to feel it more while
Speaker 2: I was on stage. It was a really fierce apprenticeship.
Speaker 2: And if I needed silence, I'd just fall silent, and
Speaker 2: everyone intuitively would know what you were doing when you
Speaker 2: were wrestling with something and you let you let that
Speaker 2: voice have a ground, you let it have space, and
Speaker 2: sometimes it just comes out in a cracked way to
Speaker 2: begin with, mouse like correct way, But if it's authentic,
Speaker 2: that's your voice at that moment, that's all you've got,
Speaker 2: and you you slowly embody the mouse until you become
Speaker 2: the lion. And that it's an incredibly humiliating in the
Speaker 2: best form of humiliation, humiliating, an instructive way to go
Speaker 2: just to start to listen to your voice. I'm just remembering. Actually,
Speaker 2: I always had an intuitive relationship with the human voice.
Speaker 2: When I was thirteen or fourteen, I started to notice
Speaker 2: that my voice was very different depending on who I
Speaker 2: was with. When I was with my mother, who I
Speaker 2: was the most comfortable with, it was very easy. It
Speaker 2: was rested in my body. When I was with friends
Speaker 2: at school, it was easy rested. If I was in
Speaker 2: the presence of the school bully, you know, then my
Speaker 2: voice would be high and squeaky. When I was in
Speaker 2: the presence of my father it would be very fragile, too,
Speaker 2: And so I started actually practicing being able to speak
Speaker 2: in all those different relationships. And I remember my father
Speaker 2: being really surprised because we're going through the normal kind
Speaker 2: of distancing that a thirteen year old needs from the father,
Speaker 2: and I, you know, so heeping away as much as
Speaker 2: I could. But then suddenly I said, I was saying
Speaker 2: to my father where are you going down? And he'd say, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see your uncle Tom. I'd say, can
Speaker 2: I come along with you? It's not really surprised, but
Speaker 2: I would practice sitting in the car having keeping my
Speaker 2: voice in my body while I was talking to my father.
Speaker 2: We were both looking forward, which is the best kind
Speaker 2: of masculine conversation when you're at that age, not into
Speaker 2: each other rise. But it was it was great practice, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was, and it really helped my literally my conversation
Speaker 2: and my relationship with my father.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. Yeah, it says so much. You're right,
Speaker 1: there's a I'm fascinated by, you know, how people find
Speaker 1: their voice, you know, and there's so much literature out
Speaker 1: there about how you find your writing voice. And yet
Speaker 1: the one way we express ourselves in this world is
Speaker 1: through our is our speaking voice. And as much as
Speaker 1: it's about finding I actually increasingly now aware of, it's
Speaker 1: about allowing and everything you just talked about there. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of people when they say I struggle
Speaker 1: to speak freely in certain situations. You know, whether it's
Speaker 1: a parental figure, someone at work, replacing that parental figure
Speaker 1: in a relationship with their own children, it's actually about
Speaker 1: allowing and allowing themselves to almost have the permission to
Speaker 1: take up space, because actually when we speak, we're saying
Speaker 1: I matter, I am here. You know. It's amazing how
Speaker 1: actually that was an act of real maturity and courage
Speaker 1: with your dad.
Speaker 2: It was when I think, when i'd think about it,
Speaker 2: actually about that young thirteen year old lad. But I
Speaker 2: always had an intuition about my poetry, the writing portrait
Speaker 2: since I was seven years old or so, and I
Speaker 2: think it was just part of that necessary following of
Speaker 2: that absence I spoke about in the earlier part of
Speaker 2: the interview.
Speaker 1: And what do you think that was for you? David?
Speaker 1: What do you think it is now? The absence?
Speaker 2: Well, the absence was what I have now, actually what
Speaker 2: I'm able to embody now with my voice on stage,
Speaker 2: working with very very difficult dynamics that it's very hard
Speaker 2: to put language to, and reciting poetry that takes you
Speaker 2: into incredibly vulnerable places while standing in front of a
Speaker 2: thousand people. And so that's what that was. The I
Speaker 2: could not have done that at thirteen years old, but
Speaker 2: that was my intuition of what I needed to do.
Speaker 2: You did to work with the way my voice was
Speaker 2: absent from my body. Actually, particularly in fierce circumstances, you know,
Speaker 2: where you might feel threatened or you might feel overwhelmed,
Speaker 2: not knowing what to say.
Speaker 1: One thing, having listened to you and seen you live
Speaker 1: a lot and listen to your beautiful three Sundays, is
Speaker 1: you also use humor beautifully. And I was like, if
Speaker 1: you're laughing, you actually feel safe because the one thing
Speaker 1: that they do about absence. You know, when something's very
Speaker 1: serious or very terrifying, there's the absence of laughter. But
Speaker 1: actually you use it beautifully, not as an avoidance technique
Speaker 1: like so many of us do sometimes, but actually as
Speaker 1: a way. It's all part of the work you do
Speaker 1: and how you have the conversation is And I know
Speaker 1: that's an Irish thing because you know, whenever I'm in Islands,
Speaker 1: you're surrounded by comedians and storytellers and a real life
Speaker 1: of language and how it's used and played with. It's
Speaker 1: it's like a melody. As much as there's great singing
Speaker 1: an island, that the voice in conversation storytelling that it's
Speaker 1: like a melody. It's like an instrument. And one thing
Speaker 1: I've always loved is the way you use humor as well,
Speaker 1: and you've got a really enjoyable laugh. Some people laugh
Speaker 1: and I don't quite get the feeling that they're enjoying laughing.
Speaker 1: Yours is a real joyous, bellowing, full bodied laugh. And
Speaker 1: even as I think about David's laugh, it's making me
Speaker 1: smile because I've been in the presence of that laughter
Speaker 1: and it reverberates through all of our bodies. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think humor to you is just as important as the
Speaker 1: precision you can have with the words to talk about
Speaker 1: what it is to be human.
Speaker 2: You know what humor represents. It represents the multic and
Speaker 2: textual experience of existence and the understanding that whatever context
Speaker 2: you have arranged for yourself, there's always another larger context
Speaker 2: that makes you your context absurd. And so it's you know,
Speaker 2: we're never just one person. We're all of these different people,
Speaker 2: including the vulnerable child insiders that's never grown up, and
Speaker 2: you have to bring all parts of you along and
Speaker 2: so to be able to laugh at yourself with your
Speaker 2: absurd ideas of how you should live your life at times,
Speaker 2: and the way that those ideas are exposed in public
Speaker 2: in humiliating ways, you know, in front of other people.
Speaker 2: This is you know, this is absolutely necessary. You can
Speaker 2: be as efficient as you want in your life, and
Speaker 2: and and the larger reality will will. You know, while
Speaker 2: I was just trying to get out of an Airbnb
Speaker 2: and Byron Bay, actually, I suddenly noticed this very large
Speaker 2: lizard standing in the in the living room and it's
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's called an Eastern water dragon,
Speaker 2: and massive creature. I've never seen one before. My love,
Speaker 2: I just about leapt out of my skin. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to pet and uh so I I stopped this thing
Speaker 2: to try and get it out the door, but it
Speaker 2: went the wrong way. And so I'm having this this
Speaker 2: trace around the Airbnb of this dragon like creature I've
Speaker 2: never I don't even know if it's if it can
Speaker 2: bite or anything, but but I mean, we're we're often
Speaker 2: humiliated into the next dispensation of our life. And and
Speaker 2: you know, parenting is often a constant humiliation of your powers,
Speaker 2: you know, of your patients, of your integrity. Every parent
Speaker 2: falls down in their integrity at one time or another,
Speaker 2: and then and then having to let them go and
Speaker 2: going from this godlike figure when they're so young to
Speaker 2: being a walking embarrassment you know, as you come in
Speaker 2: the kitchen and they suck and they immediately leave. You know,
Speaker 2: you're just not wanted in that way anymore, And so
Speaker 2: you're humiliated into the next level of maturity of parenting,
Speaker 2: which is giving them some distance, giving them some space,
Speaker 2: giving them some freedom from your specific advice, no matter
Speaker 2: how good it is, and saying fairly well, So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of humor in parenting, but there can be
Speaker 2: a lot of tragedy if you don't have a sense
Speaker 2: of humor about yourself.
Speaker 1: It's so true, You're right, I remember just going. You
Speaker 1: go from almost getting standing ovations at nighttime in front
Speaker 1: of your kids and almost being a golden god, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly now with eighteen and twenty year olds and
Speaker 1: suddenly now being reduced to a consultant dad with up
Speaker 1: reduced hours and reduce powers. And like any consultant, you
Speaker 1: don't really listen to half the stuff they say that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just give us your findings, dad, and yeah, I'll have
Speaker 1: a look at it when I get round to it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I'm just like some kind of assistant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a consultant now on the sidelines really of their lives.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, Hang on a minute, it wasn't What
Speaker 1: do you think I was always just a consultant at
Speaker 1: the side of it. I was never really the central
Speaker 1: driving force that I'd kidded myself that I was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's life is a series of humiliations. You're right. If
Speaker 1: you can have a sense of humor about that, I
Speaker 1: think you can navigate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know the root of that word is
Speaker 2: as humorous actually, both in humor and humiliation. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: didn't know that. What have a fancy ideas you had
Speaker 2: about yourself? Your your suddenly returned to the ground of
Speaker 2: your being, and those abstracts notions you have had about
Speaker 2: yourself as shown away. Also, there's this whole dynamic of
Speaker 2: having to let go of what seemed like sacred promises. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, the promise you make over a newborn child,
Speaker 2: whether you're a father or a mother, or a godparent,
Speaker 2: or an uncle or an auntie or just a good friend,
Speaker 2: they are always promises of complete and not of safety.
Speaker 2: Nothing's going to happen to you on my watch, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to make sure you're kept safe. And that's
Speaker 2: a really appropriate promise for the child and for the infant.
Speaker 2: But if you kept to that promise when they were
Speaker 2: fifteen years old, you'd ruin the child's life if you
Speaker 2: tried to provide ultimate protection. No, you're meant to have
Speaker 2: let go of that actually many years before they're fifteen. Actually,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of a magnified version of many of
Speaker 2: the promises we make in our life that are now
Speaker 2: out of season. And we have a lot of advice
Speaker 2: in our theological and religious literature and psychological literature about
Speaker 2: making promises. There's an almost nothing about the breaking of promises,
Speaker 2: which is just as necessary. Actually, so there's so to
Speaker 2: speak to the breaking of promises can be quite freeing
Speaker 2: for people actually to understand that there's all of us
Speaker 2: that in our lives are always grappling with a promise.
Speaker 2: We now have to break one that was previously sacred
Speaker 2: in its season and completely appropriate, is now imprisoning both
Speaker 2: myself and the person to whom I've made the promise,
Speaker 2: and articulating that I have a piece actually written called
Speaker 2: to Break a Promise, and it's a little poetic manual
Speaker 2: about how to do it. First lines are, I would
Speaker 2: love to hear that I wrote it in this amazing
Speaker 2: ruined medieval fishing cottage that's part of this monastic ruin
Speaker 2: right on the edge of Connemara. You might have gone there, actually, Kong.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're on my with you. Yeah, beautiful, I remember that.
Speaker 2: Remember that that ruin out over the river on pillars.
Speaker 2: It had three walls left, and the peaked roof the chimney,
Speaker 2: and a fireplace, and then a slot in the floor
Speaker 2: where the monks used to drop a net down to
Speaker 2: catch fish. But the fourth wall has fallen into the river.
Speaker 2: If you're ever in there by yourself and you spend
Speaker 2: some time in silence, you're you're watching the river flow
Speaker 2: away from you. It's a fast flowing.
Speaker 1: River, yes, powerful plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're really looking at everything that's already gone. Actually, actually,
Speaker 2: when all of us when we're looking at a river,
Speaker 2: are actually looking at something that's no longer there. It's
Speaker 2: already gone. And so I was in there, and I
Speaker 2: was grappling with this relationship I had that I needed
Speaker 2: to let go of. So I wrote this piece. And
Speaker 2: you can feel the architecture of that medieval fishing cottage
Speaker 2: in the poem to break a Promise, Make a place
Speaker 2: of prayer, To break a promise, Make a place of prayer.
Speaker 2: No fuss now, no fuss, now, just lean into the
Speaker 2: white brightness and say what you needed to say all along,
Speaker 2: nothing too much, words as simple and as yours as
Speaker 2: the birds sung above your head or the water running
Speaker 2: gently beside you. Let your words join one to another,
Speaker 2: the way stone nestles on stone, the way water just
Speaker 2: leaves and ghost to the sea, the way your promise
Speaker 2: breathes and belongs with every other promise the world has
Speaker 2: ever made. Now let them go on. Let your words
Speaker 2: have their own life without you, go with the river.
Speaker 2: Let the promise go with the river. Now stand up,
Speaker 2: walk away. Have faith. That's to break a promise the
Speaker 2: less time. You are very practical, just to say have faith.
Speaker 2: And because when I did walk away, I said, you know,
Speaker 2: if the promise is still real, it will come back
Speaker 2: to me. Actually I won't be able to let go
Speaker 2: of it. But if you spent forty five minutes on
Speaker 2: a freezing cold January day and a medieval stone got it,
Speaker 2: you probably need to give the promise.
Speaker 1: Away and do your own survival.
Speaker 2: I did give the promise away, and it's incredible freedom.
Speaker 1: Actually it's a great questionation.
Speaker 2: What's the promise? I need to let go of because
Speaker 2: there will be one. What's the promise I need to
Speaker 2: let go of that's imprisoning me and the people are
Speaker 2: the person to whom I made that promise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something like an old stori or version of ourselves,
Speaker 1: someone that you know, at the time we thought we
Speaker 1: need to be, or have to be, or should be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then some sort of that story is keeping you
Speaker 1: too small, and there's a larger story which is trying
Speaker 1: to trying to cool you forward, I guess in your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean when I started off as a serious
Speaker 2: young man poet, you know, I grew up from long
Speaker 2: lines of rebels on my Irish and Scots and Yorkshire side.
Speaker 2: I grew up where the Luddykees used to meet. I
Speaker 2: grew up in a raving socialist part of West.
Speaker 1: At what a hot genetically that is a melting pot.
Speaker 2: I know, the Irish side, the Scots side. When I
Speaker 2: was first invited to come and speak in the corporate world,
Speaker 2: you know, I had this inner promise in me, which
Speaker 2: was to keep my integrity as a poet, not to
Speaker 2: sell out. You know, it's a pretty fierce inheritance, the
Speaker 2: poetic tradition. People have gone off to the gulags for
Speaker 2: a line of portrait, you know. And so you're standing
Speaker 2: in this very powerful, courageous tradition, and in some ways
Speaker 2: I'd made an unconscious promise to it not to never
Speaker 2: to betray it. So when I was invited into the
Speaker 2: corporate world and the organizational world to speak because people
Speaker 2: heard me and said, oh, we need you here, I
Speaker 2: said no, because because I'd made this promise, and I
Speaker 2: was asked again, I said no again. And then I
Speaker 2: was asked three times sincerely, And in the Irish tradition,
Speaker 2: if you're asked three times, you have to go so
Speaker 2: and then the scary thing was that I did not
Speaker 2: have to compromise my work. Actually, so that meant me
Speaker 2: letting go of this old idea right about the organizational
Speaker 2: world being somehow the enemy of creative and artistic endeavor.
Speaker 2: And I was able to let go of that. But
Speaker 2: it was a promise that I'd made to myself quite unconsciously,
Speaker 2: actually consciously and unconsciously, and a promise I had to
Speaker 2: undo consciously and unconsciously.
Speaker 1: Say, and yeah, actually, if there's one place where you
Speaker 1: know poetry and the language of the heart and understanding
Speaker 1: our own longing and belonging in the corporate world. It's
Speaker 1: so needed in boardrooms and in meeting rooms because often
Speaker 1: they want you to exclude or exile that essential I guess,
Speaker 1: vulnerable part of yourself, your heart and soul, leave it
Speaker 1: out in your car and in the staff car park.
Speaker 1: And actually what's really needed is to bring more of
Speaker 1: that into the workplace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I work. I have an institute for conversational leadership now,
Speaker 2: actually I work with others, a great team of people
Speaker 2: that I founded quite a few years ago, and I
Speaker 2: look at seven the seven elements for deepening any conversation.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're you could talk about conversational leadership,
Speaker 2: which is the best kind of leadership, but you could
Speaker 2: talk about invitational leadership. Just as I said earlier, there's
Speaker 2: no conversation with that real invitation. And actually, when you're
Speaker 2: in that position of responsibility in leadership, people are unconsciously
Speaker 2: or consciously looking to see what invitation you're going to
Speaker 2: make to them. And there used to being existentially disappointed
Speaker 2: in finding out that actually there's no invitation. It's true, yes,
Speaker 2: to go away so they can get their work done.
Speaker 2: So a real invitation is really quite powerful It's also
Speaker 2: disturbing because as a leader, you invite, you invite someone
Speaker 2: for a specific gift or task, and they always have
Speaker 2: more to bring the new ask of them, and so
Speaker 2: you always have to make room for the greater consequences
Speaker 2: of what you've invited into your life. So that's a process,
Speaker 2: and it's a difficult and vulnerable process to stay in
Speaker 2: those conversations. And you know, the word corporation is a
Speaker 2: telling word. It just means a body, a body of people.
Speaker 2: So corporation is simply a group of people that have
Speaker 2: come together to do something that that's impossible for an
Speaker 2: individual to do alone. And wherever two or three are
Speaker 2: gathered together, there will be drama. My Irish niece went
Speaker 2: went off to university to study drama. Before she went,
Speaker 2: she said to me, she knew I worked in the
Speaker 2: corporate Well, she didn't know how it worked for a
Speaker 2: poet to be in the corporate world, but she said,
Speaker 2: I don't suppose the major corporations of the world will
Speaker 2: be knocking on my door when I have a degree
Speaker 2: in drama. And I said to her, Marlene, I said,
Speaker 2: a degree in drama is what would most prepare you
Speaker 2: for corporations?
Speaker 1: It's a world of amateur dramatics I found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we think it's so buttoned down, but it's all drama.
Speaker 2: Every organization trama. Oh my god, no.
Speaker 1: And you're right, as a you're right. So many of
Speaker 1: the leaders I've worked with, it's they make themselves very alone.
Speaker 1: Actually I've done this in running my teams the radio
Speaker 1: shows of the year. I've made myself too alone with it.
Speaker 1: You think that the job is about showing that you
Speaker 1: have all the answers. And actually the real turning pointment
Speaker 1: for me was when I moved here to a different
Speaker 1: country and I realized I needed a different way to
Speaker 1: leading people who didn't know who I was. I didn't
Speaker 1: have the same accent, and I didn't have the shame
Speaker 1: shared history. And it was brilliant. It was a radical
Speaker 1: letting go of everything that Actually I thought that was like,
Speaker 1: you know, my arrows, but they weren't. They're actually creating
Speaker 1: distance between me and the people that I needed to
Speaker 1: work in a deeper way with. And it was about
Speaker 1: more vulnerability I've found. And actually, yeah, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that I wasn't being very invitational. Yeah, I was frightened
Speaker 1: of being of them. Seeing that I was scared or
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you needed help. One of the is things
Speaker 2: that comes out of vulnerability is asking for help.
Speaker 1: It's so hard. I found it so hard, David. Why
Speaker 1: is that I found it so hard to be a
Speaker 1: burden to somebody I thought was a sign of weakness.
Speaker 2: Yes. I spent a whole year actually working with what
Speaker 2: I call visible and invisible help. And I gave myself
Speaker 2: the task of every day of the year asking someone
Speaker 2: for help, some visible kind of practical help. So it
Speaker 2: might be someone to come over and help me with
Speaker 2: the electrics in the house, you know, and or fixing
Speaker 2: a tap, or or something to do with my computer,
Speaker 2: or advice or about about an intellectual dynamic I was
Speaker 2: working with. And there were two things I found. One
Speaker 2: was how much incredible buoyancy I got in my life.
Speaker 2: So many things got done it was just yes. And
Speaker 2: the second thing was how much people loved to be asked,
Speaker 2: especially if you said you are really good at this,
Speaker 2: I'm not very good at it at all, would you
Speaker 2: come and show me how to do it? And people
Speaker 2: are incredibly complimented. Yeah. Then the other kind of help
Speaker 2: that we have to ask for is what I call
Speaker 2: invisible help. Well, we've called it invisible help since the
Speaker 2: beginning of time, and you know, one version of it
Speaker 2: we inture in the sense of there being other realms.
Speaker 2: You know, in religion it's the angelic realms or whatever,
Speaker 2: or the invisible helping us. But you can think about
Speaker 2: it in a very very practical way too, Christian, in
Speaker 2: that invisible help is the help that you do not
Speaker 2: as yet.
Speaker 1: Know you need. Beautiful, Yes, unless.
Speaker 2: You're on your absolute scintillating edge paying attention to the world,
Speaker 2: you'll walk right past it, even though it's exactly what
Speaker 2: you need. We can all think of moments in our
Speaker 2: earlier in our lives where someone offered us help, either
Speaker 2: psychological or practical, and we put our hand down and
Speaker 2: said I could do it myself. When the going gets
Speaker 2: tough to death get I don't need help, and we
Speaker 2: walk past it. And then seven years later we look
Speaker 2: back and said, oh my god, if I'd have just
Speaker 2: accepted that help, I could have saved myself seven years
Speaker 2: of drama. So it's really interesting to ask yourself, what
Speaker 2: help is being offered to me right now that I'm
Speaker 2: walking right past that I'm refusing It just makes you
Speaker 2: look at the world and look at other people, and
Speaker 2: look at the dynamics of your existence in a completely
Speaker 2: different way. You start paying attention as if everything's speaking
Speaker 2: back to you, which it actually is, actually and actually
Speaker 2: inviting you into the next dispensation of your existence, the
Speaker 2: next territory, large and more generous territory of your life.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful because yeah, even now I'm thinking, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a much better way rather than seeing sometimes life as
Speaker 1: a having an adversary relationship with it, or what's it
Speaker 1: doing to me? Now? What's it demanding of me? Now?
Speaker 1: It becomes more of a collaborate, more of a companion
Speaker 1: or soul mate, and you can co create that way
Speaker 1: with it by having more of an open heart.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe I could finish with the poem on
Speaker 2: that theme.
Speaker 1: There'll be one.
Speaker 2: It's it's called Everything is Waiting for You. Your great
Speaker 2: mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.
Speaker 2: Your great mistake is to act the drama as if
Speaker 2: you were alone, as if life were a progressive and
Speaker 2: cunning crime with no witness to the tiny, hidden transgressions.
Speaker 2: To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.
Speaker 2: To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
Speaker 2: even you, at times have felt the grand array, the
Speaker 2: swelling presence, and the chorus crowding out your solo voice.
Speaker 2: You must note the way the soap dish enables you,
Speaker 2: or the window latch grants you courage. Alertness is the
Speaker 2: hidden discipline of familiarity. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
Speaker 2: The stairs are your mentor of things to come. The
Speaker 2: doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you.
Speaker 2: And the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream
Speaker 2: leader to divinity. Put down the weight of your loneeness
Speaker 2: and ease into the conversation. Put down the weight of
Speaker 2: your loneeness, and ease into the conversation. The kettle is
Speaker 2: singing even as it pours you a drink. The cooking
Speaker 2: pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good
Speaker 2: in you. At last, all the birds and creatures of
Speaker 2: the world are unutterably themselves. Everything, everything, everything is waiting
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Oh, what a lovely, beautiful way to bring
Speaker 1: it all together.
Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you, David Loss of Love. Thank you for your
Speaker 1: time and your words. I Know
Speaker 2: A Christian O'Connell Show podcast