Regathering (Part 1/2) Into Unprovoked Psychiatry

Hello there

I've a few things I wanted to go over in a written post, and why would this not be the best day to do that? I’ve just woken from a nap, got a headache and feel a bit sick, but other than that, this seems ideal.

It’s really some expanded thoughts on what I mentioned in Cabin Fever at the weekend, about where certain projects are up to. One of those ‘regathering’ posts where I remind myself, as much as you, of how things are progressing, focussing on Tales From Castle Diablo, Group Sex and Loopholes.  Mainly Loopholes really, but I also want to have a brief ‘taking stock’ of Reboot too.

Edit – It turns out to be anything but brief.  I spiral into some deeply personal self-assessment for over 2000 words, and don’t even get to Diablo, Sex & Loopholes (that’d be a brilliant album title).  With regret/confidence, I shall inform you at this stage that this post had to become a two-parter, and I promise to try harder to stay on track in the future…

It is ludicrous that I have two podcasts on the go which both have “oo” in them.  I am calling each podcast the other one, with annoying regularity. It’s genuinely getting on my nerves. If anyone knows why one would do that, do let me know so I can at least diagnose something.  It might be nothing to do with the “oo” but I feel like it is. It’s definitely not a similarity in the projects, because there isn’t one. Well…maybe there are some similarities.  I’ll come to that.

Anyway, I’m starting to get rather proud of Loop…Reboot. Reboot, is what I meant.

The other day when I was “tidying”, my phone started playing Reboot episodes.  I listened to three episodes back-to-back and had some thoughts about it. I’m relatively good at detaching and listening as a listener rather than participant, almost certainly because of the editing hours I’ve chalked up over the years. I do still wonder if it entirely translates, but I’m particularly proud and intrigued by the “different time” aspect of it.  I guess because I’m one of the very few people with a proper perspective on then and now (because I lived it, mate), I really like that it’s a podcast with a history to it.  I’ve nowt against strangers being chucked together for a podcast or radio show or whatever, but I am far more interested in when you can hear that the folk chatting know each other properly. That there is a tangible experience of each other, outside of what is recorded. I think Reboot has that nailed because we inadvertently ‘did the knowledge’ on it. The added layer of it not being three people who’ve known each other a short time, but rather three people who have been through a lot of hardship together and apart, who haven’t stayed thick as thieves all that time, alternating between closeness and estranged.  Even with all that under the bridge, there is an organic structure between us that appears to be unbreakable when we talk.  From the inside it feels like that would be an attractive thing to listen to on the outside. Being let into the inner sanctum.  I like that it goes seamlessly between being considered and thoughtful, all the way over to…well, Rob I suppose.

(He’s got proper layers to him; you just have to let him tire himself out before he reveals it.)

The most potent force within it, certainly that I’ve managed to isolate in my assessment, is it’s three people who were slap bang in the middle of comedy, and television deals, and all that business, who can talk about it with authority and freedom because we aren’t trying to get now what we were trying to get then.  It is completely freeing as we don’t have an eye on where we want to be or what we want to achieve.  I don’t think you get that very often.  I feel like podcasts have become strategic as part of a journey of ambition (like when one develops into a live double act or becomes a film).  This one has no agenda.  It’s just an honest, musing, and unguarded chat about a time when we were in the eye of the storm, how that destroyed us, and ultimately, how ridiculous it all was. It’s three old men on a porch. Amongst other bits of messing about and court cases and being in awe of a millionaire teacher, of course.

I know from my own listening habits, that I’m far more invested in things that have substance and humanity to them and have gotten a little impatient when I hear ‘fluff’ stuff, or things that are all surface.  Again, I’m not condemning those things, people can create what they want, and there’ll always be a market for going route one, but for mine, I prefer a bit of depth.  It’s certainly come on stronger with age, and my own personal irritation with swagger.  The Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse programme “Gone Fishing” is a great example, where you get a sense of the humans rather than of performance.  It’s a comfort thing, and I suspect that’s what I have in my head for Reboot, on which it often delivers.

“Considered” – that’s the word that I keep coming back to in all my ongoing work these days. I strive to be ‘considered’. Although it feels like something that other people should be saying about me rather than me declaring it myself. We’d all love to write our own reviews though, eh?

I was chatting the other day to a pal about that (the “considered” bit, not the reviews). When I’m in particularly doubtful periods about what I do, I wonder if it ever gets annoying for people that I’m not just speaking in the …dialect(?) that I did on the old podcasts. Putting “thanks” on the end of every sentence and being intentionally childlike. As we were chatting, I actually ended up going rather deeply into the psychology and reality of that period.

How I was in the Ray Peacock Podcast and Peacock & Gamble podcasts was genuinely how I was all the time. I was like it at home, in the car, out and about. It was constant. I mean, this is true of all my podcasts, and I take a fair bit of pride in the fact that I strive to be authentic.  Notwithstanding artistic deceptions, like pretending to smash up houses in The Ray Peacock Podcast, or pretending my grandad’s stick was haunted in The ParaPod, I don’t present myself or my life as different, for any reason.  When things are fine, I say, and when things are rough, I say. You all know what my house looks like, how I spend my time, etc, etc.  What you see, is what you get.  Unless I’m just being really smart and manipulative by reinforcing the façade.  Which I’m not.  But that could be part of it as well.  Just trying to be a bit enigmatic for a moment, rather than an open book.

There is though, I will admit, something rather bizarre about the revelation that the persona of Peacock & Gamble was a constant. I think there would be an assumption in that scenario that it was just for the podcast (or live stuff), but, God no.

A lot of it was funny.  The thing I was telling my pal about recently was one evening when myself, Ed and my partner of the time, were driving to the cinema in Stevenage.  It was to see Zack & Miri Make A Porno, which is how well I remember the evening. We were running late.  At that time, I only lived about ten minutes from the cinema, which is probably why we ended up cutting it so fine.

Anyway, I’m driving, and we are a minute from the cinema, with maybe five mins spare for the start of the film.  As I got to a big roundabout, where I should have been turning left at the first exit, instead, I went around the roundabout.  I’m already deep “in character” on the journey, acting like a five-year-old who doesn’t know how to drive a car.  I’d already said, “What does this do?” before pressing the horn and pretending to jump in shock. I should point out that I was in complete control and concentrating on driving in real life, I was just performing that I wasn’t. There was nothing actually reckless going on here.

Anyway, Ed and my partner started laughing a lot at me going round the roundabout and shouting “this one!” every time we passed the exit.  I was shouting “Where? I didn’t see it!  Sorry I will get it next time!”

I stopped counting after going round it ten times.  I reckon, it ended up being maybe sixteen or seventeen times.  Could have been more. I also recall on one rotation pointing at a KFC and shouting “Hello chicken!” which levelled the waning audience in hysterics again.  When we eventually got to the cinema, I had to scrape them off the floor.

In a similar situation, one night after a gig, we had parked at Finchley Central to get the tube into London, and on the way back, as they got off the tube, I held back.  They turned around in time to see the doors closing, with me still on the train, looking very frightened and confused.  I can still vividly remember Ed bending over laughing as the tube pulled away and I put my hands on the glass like Christopher Reeve in Superman II. So used to this idiocy were they, that they were already waiting at West Finchley in the car when I came out “crying”.

Hey, it might not even sound funny, but I can assure you that it was.  It's as though I was completely out of control in that persona.  As I said about the driving thing, I was absolutely present in my own head, and knew what I was doing, but it must have been wearing to be around.  For all the laughing, it surely must have been. Neither of them are in my life now.

So, I can shrug and say it was funny, but a lot of it was worrying.  If we look at that cold, there’s an argument that I was withdrawn whilst secretly present.  For whatever reason, I do not know (Well, I suspect it’s tied into abandonment and trust issues with being vulnerable, and I know exactly where that has come from, but this post is already personal enough, isn’t it everybody?).  It’s many years later now and I’ve gone full withdrawn, which is fine most of the time, dreadful the rest. You can’t have your cake and eat it though. Which is a stupid phrase because it confuses people and would be so easily fixed by just swapping the two things around. You can’t eat your cake and still have it.  That’s how I would have written it, but what would I know?

I am moodily aloof most of the time, in a state of detachment.  The real me is in there, but sort of bored. I’ve long argued for autism on this, but it’s neither here nor there if I am really.  So, the psychology is that I stop being the most dreary thing in the world for the people around me, by adopting a detached extreme persona.  So that Peacock & Gamble ‘character’ is an excellent example.  Unstable and unerringly optimistic, whilst simultaneously being susceptible to outbursts of bitterness and frustration with ignorant authority.  That keeps everyone laughing around me, admittedly alienates others, but stops me having to answer the questions “what’s up?” and “are you alright?” every five minutes.  Well, the questions still got asked, and were usually followed by “because normal people don’t hide everything in one corner of the fridge behind a lettuce, “in case dinosaurs come back and eat it…”

I’m very aware that I am maybe making myself sound far worse than I am. I just sound like I’m sighing a lot of the time.

This is why, when I – for example – speak about things like the Obi Wan Kenobi series in the way that I did last week, it feels like an essential moment of clarity for me.  When I feel things like that, I want to capture it and spread it as a matter of urgency.  I want nothing to spoil it, I shut the door on all negativity about it, and indulge in the nice feeling.  It feels exciting and fulfilling, and I don’t want anything to stop that.  So, shouting about it, in a sense, elongates that feeling.  Hearing others say it’s exactly how they felt about it, validates it and it feels like a comfort. My art creation stuff is the same. I don’t think there was any mention that I’d be doing art on this Patreon, or building stuff, but it’s become a mainstay here, as much as it is a mainstay of my life.  It provides me with enthusiasm, in short bursts, that distract me from my aloof detachment.

Gone a bit deep this, hasn’t it? I think that’s what I’m talking about.

I’ve always, to some degree, incorporated a bit of philosophising and self-examination into my work.  My stand up was riddled with it, and even the stupidest of podcasts had it snuck in once in a blue moon.  Now though, as I’m more or less settled with understanding myself, I’ve certainly adopted the stance of expressing what I want to express, within my work, whenever I want to.  I mean, look at this post.  I started this mainly intending to tell you about the process and organisation of Loopholes and have got stuck in the preamble as though it were a roundabout on the way to Stevenage Cineworld.

Let’s split this up into two posts and start afresh tomorrow.  Consider that all “setting the scene”…

Hope you are wonderfully well and happy over there.

Sending very much love your way

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