April 22, 2025 · Episode 17
39 Min, 55 Sec 

Summary

In this episode, Breallyn and Lyndon reflect on how art weaves its way into life’s most significant milestones—especially ceremonies like funerals and weddings. What role does music, poetry, and ritual play when words fall short? How does culture shape or stifle our ceremonial expression? From Leonard Cohen at a funeral to the poetry of W.H. Auden, this is a tender and tangential conversation about grief, memory, and why even the least “artsy” among us still turn to creativity when life hits hardest.

Love this conversation? Get exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon and support the show!

Transcript

Lyndon: Are you comfortable? Because you don’t look it.

Breallyn: I’m pretty comfortable.  

Lyndon: I can’t work out if you look uncomfortable or too comfortable. Maybe it’s too comfortable. Oh, maybe I’ll take these. I’m fine. Oh, that’s better. Take my short-range… What did I look like? My short-range monocle off.  

Breallyn: Uncomfortable blob in the short range.  

Lyndon: You’re wearing a top that’s the same color as the couch from here.  

Breallyn: Wrong. My top is blue. The couch is gray.  

Lyndon: Yeah, they’re close enough. And it’s dusk. This is unusual ’cause normally we’re recording in the afternoon and it’s late afternoon now.  

Breallyn: Today it’s, yeah, late afternoon. It’s also Wednesday. This is not our usual… Oh, that’s true. Recording day. Yes. It’s Wednesday, it’s dusk, and we do have a gin and tonic in hand. We have…  

Lyndon: Prohibition gin, not because it’s illegal, but because that’s what it’s called. Yeah.  

Breallyn: It’s the name. It’s nice and it should help us make lots more sense than usual in the podcast.

Lyndon: That’s your department. I’m just here to look beautiful, right? Don’t you wish we had cameras in here?  

Breallyn: Oh, I so do not. If we ever decide to start a YouTube channel and just it’s us talking, then please…  

Lyndon: We’re not starting a YouTube channel. We do have a YouTube channel, but it’s just the audio.

Breallyn: Good.  

Setting the Scene: Dusk, Gin, and Bats

Lyndon: So I wonder, I shut the door. I wonder whether we’ll hear any birds starting to wind down their activities. And that we have a bat out there too. We’ve got at least one bat. It’s a fruit bat. What are they called? The ones that are in… Flying Fox, I think they’re called flying foxes.  

Breallyn: The smaller ones? Yeah.  

Lyndon: No, this is the size of a small cat.  

Breallyn: That it may be a fruit bat. I don’t know.  

Lyndon: Yeah, but they’re common Like in the botanical gardens? Yeah. In the city. They’re a problem. Yeah, we’ve got loads of them, but there’s a couple that live around here and you see them. Not at dusk. You’ve gotta wait until it’s dark.  

Breallyn: What’s the collective noun? Is it a coven? A coven of bats?  

Lyndon: A coven?  

Breallyn: I just feel like that would be…  

Lyndon: I think we’ve spoke about collective nouns before.  

Breallyn: I love collective nouns.  

Lyndon: They are fun.  

Breallyn: Yeah.  

Lyndon: A collective… they’re fun to get them wrong. I have no idea. A vampire of bats? That doesn’t make sense.  

Breallyn: A crypt of bats.  

Lyndon: A sports bag of bats. I know, what about a… oh, a high tea of old bats. Yeah.  

Breallyn: Very nice.  

Lyndon: I think we’re talking about different kinds of bats.  

Breallyn: I think so.  

School Holidays and Podcast Schedules

Breallyn: The other thing that today is, it’s school holidays. It’s not long till Easter and oh boy. School holidays, no matter how well I think I’m prepared and organized and I’ve got things in place. It just is at its own level of…  

Lyndon: Chaos. Do you remember when we used to look forward to school holidays?  

Breallyn: I do. Like 94 years ago. Yeah, I know. Because we usually take time off during school holidays and then you try and make them last as long as you can.  

Lyndon: No, no. Oh, when we were kids? When we were kids? Yeah.  

Breallyn: Oh, Oh no. I was just thinking earlier on in our parenting life I used to love the school holidays…  

Lyndon: You’ve seen the videos of where the car’s being packed for holidays and the kids are hopping in and the wife hops in and then the father’s, “See ya!” just tells them to go on their own. It’s just so much work, getting everyone out, yeah.  

Breallyn: It can be a lot.  

Lyndon: I remember too, like my dad on holidays, insisting we enjoy ourselves when we’re on… like if we’re on vacation or going somewhere, it’s “Shut up and be happy.”  

Breallyn: “It’s been a lot of time and money organizing this trip.” Yeah, that kind of a thing. I sympathize somewhat. Yeah. Nothing like being yelled at to make you enjoy your holiday more.  

Lyndon: No, I’m talking about when we were kids at school. And you’re just hanging out for especially summer holidays. You’re just hanging out for school to end.  

Breallyn: Yeah.  

Lyndon: And summer did, as Bryan Adams says, seem to last forever.  

Breallyn: Yes, they did. When we were what, eight?  

Lyndon: Yeah.  

Breallyn: It did. But these are autumn holidays and there’s only another week to go. These are ones that… we’re real high energy today too, I’ve noticed. We’re just like, oh, I just feel like all I’ve done is trying to organize stuff. We’ve had two separate kinds of care fall through for little birdie and, so yeah, luckily we have incredible support workers who have stepped into the breach, as they say.  

Lyndon: The other thing that’s… that we’ve done is we’ve caught up to our bank of episodes that we had in the vault.  

Breallyn: Oh yeah. ‘Cause we’d done quite well getting…  

Lyndon: We’ve always had few up our sleeves or two. Yeah. We’ve always had one or two, and now we’ve caught up.  

Breallyn: So we can’t take a break?  

Lyndon: No, we can’t take a break.  

Breallyn: What have we done to ourselves?  

Lyndon: What’s our wedding anniversary on Sunday? What have you bought me?  

Breallyn: What have you bought me?  

Lyndon: Two… she… I asked you first. Traditionally, I’ve been the gift giver, haven’t I?  

Breallyn: Yeah, quite a lot of the time. Yeah.  

Lyndon: I don’t know. We’ll do something to celebrate. We’ll do another recording of… yeah. So anyway, so we’ve caught up which means that we’re very current, so we could actually do a little political segment right now if you wanted to.  

Breallyn: Yeah, that’d be something new. That’s right up our alley. Yeah. No, let’s leave that alone.  

Lyndon: Not while my phone’s next to me because I don’t listen to the news. Yeah. I just don’t make a habit of it. So I don’t really know what’s going on and it’s, and I think maybe that’s how I’ll live out the rest of my days. Just in complete ignorance.  

Breallyn: Good to know. I’ll be the one to break the news then. We’ve got a federal election coming up.  

Lyndon: No. I did know that.  

Breallyn: Great. I did know that. And that is the beginning and the end of our political segment, so enjoy. You’re bringing an episode today?  

Lyndon: I believe I am, because you mentioned that you were last week, so I thought, oh, okay. I don’t need to… I don’t need to put the gray matter to work and come up with… That’s a shame. I thought we were gonna do a double recording and get one more in the bank. You know me, I’ve got plenty just hanging off the cuff right here.  

Introducing Today’s Topic: Art and Ceremony

Breallyn: Welcome to Pain In The Arts. You are here with Breallyn…  

Lyndon: …and Lyndon drinking a gin, a cheeky gin. Cheers. Somehow I got caught off guard that was the intro. Even though I queued you for the intro. I thought I had timed that. But have a sip. It’s very unprofessional to be eating and drinking while we’re on air.  

Breallyn: Can hear our ice clink and…  

Lyndon: Someone might call in, enjoy and complain. Maybe I shouldn’t have put ice in it. All right. Hit me with this topic. And yeah. Surprise me.  

Breallyn: All right, last week. You were a little upset with me because I’d gone in for a heavy topic. We had been to a funeral of our dear friend Sal. And so I was talking about how a life in itself can be an artistic work in some ways.  

Lyndon: And I heartily agreed.  

Breallyn: No, you disagreed, but we talked about it nonetheless. I guess ’cause I felt that she had just put the right elements into her life and it became a very beautiful work of art.  

Lyndon: I think in reflection I was having… I was having a bad day, but also I had wondered whether it was something we should talk about then that soon. ‘Cause it was literally a couple of days after the funeral and I think in my mind I had decided that we wouldn’t, and that I wouldn’t be mentioning it. And then you came in and that was the entire topic?  

Breallyn: Yes. Heavy on my heart. And so I wanted to talk about it, and I wanted to bring… I think something like that in your life where you lose someone so close that you love. It does make you think about a lot of things differently or just reflect on life in general. But yes, you were not so happy about my topic choice. So for this week, what I’ve done is I’ve doubled down on it.  

Lyndon: Are you trying… just trying to upset me.  

Breallyn: I’m not, but I had a couple of topics in mind and they were somewhat related and yeah, it’s happening again. Strap in. Today we are talking about art and ceremony because as we were going to a funeral, it was, oh, it was a pretty heavy one too. As you do, you get reminded of funerals that you’ve been to or other gatherings like life event gatherings, often weddings obviously, and funerals are the big two. There’s what baby dedications or just even birthdays or…  

Lyndon: Is this like a part two? Did we do part one? And this is part two? Or is this different? It’s not really different.  

Breallyn: It’s a different topic. It’s a different topic, but it’s related to the fact that we went to a funeral and we were sad. So are we listening when I said today’s topic is art in ceremony?  

Lyndon: Yeah, I heard that bit. Yeah. And then I thought, I don’t even know… I don’t know what you’re talking about. And then I started thinking of other collective names for bats.  

Breallyn: Great. So if I can’t keep your attention for the first minute, might be… you might be doing this one on your own.  

Lyndon: Oh dear. What is saying? Art and ceremony? Yeah. No, my brain actually immediately went to corroborees.  

Breallyn: Yeah. I guess I was just thinking about ceremonies from like our cultural background, but of course, like every single culture has huge amounts of ceremony and artistic expression through those ceremonies for different reasons and probably many more reasons than what we’ve diluted it down to.  

Discussing Australian Culture (or Lack Thereof)

Lyndon: I think, too, I’ve proven on… I’ve proven on the prior 16 episodes that I’m completely unqualified to speak on any other cultures…  

Breallyn: Yeah. And their practices. That’s okay.  

Lyndon: So we’ll just stick to ours. Didn’t we discover yesterday… oh, I was out talking with some people that we have no culture here in Australia? We have a very young country and it makes it hard to have as rich a culture as many of the other countries around the world, let’s just say.  

Breallyn: Certainly have a European culture.  

Lyndon: European culture, yeah. Is what I’m talking about. Yeah. I thought that was the context because I just had said that any other culture I’m unqualified to speak on, but certainly on White Australia as it’s called. Yeah. Yeah. We certainly don’t, which… it’s such a young country in that regard that we’ve…  

Breallyn: Brought along some ceremonies and cultural aspects from England and other various parts of Europe with… but even European settlement.  

Lyndon: But even just can’t just have a national dish. We don’t really have one. And Bunning sausages… Message when you were growing up and it was the great Aussie barbecue. And then you find out that there’s other cultures that have been barbecuing for a lot longer and they’re much better at it. Yeah. And, that was so great. Yeah. In The Castle. Did you just mention The Castle?  

Breallyn: No, I just said Bunning sausages.  

Lyndon: Oh, okay. And somehow I heard Castle… In The Castle where the guy holds up a completely burnt piece of meat. Blackened steak, blackened steak, and said, “Who ordered medium rare?” We think that’s very funny. That’s funny because that’s what happens here. Stand around, burn all the food. Yeah, so, what we’ve established is culture ceremony. Yeah.  

Breallyn: We’re not big on culture and we’re not big on ceremony and we’re not big on art really.  

Lyndon: As a country.  

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.  

Lyndon: So much swimming around in my head to do with white Australia. And maybe the last thing I’ll say on that is that, certainly growing up in the seventies and eighties, we were really told how lucky we were in a lucky country and there was no real talk about the country before white settlement. No. That wasn’t a part of the narrative. And as years have gone on, I’ve wondered why wouldn’t a country like Australia draw on all that heritage and culture of the First Nations people and make that part of the collective story. Yep. Instead of nearly fabricating one, it’s, it is odd. So we somehow got political and it’s your fault talking about art and ceremony.  

Breallyn: So I guess we’ve gone on a tangent, but when I was thinking about the topic, it was because I feel like life and death ceremonies are one of the few times in our very understated, underrated culture where we do actually have some kind rhythm to it or familiar things that happen. Whereas in so much of our culture, it’s just, just do whatever.  

Lyndon: I might be wrong, but I suspect that the arts community would have more grievances and perhaps insight about our lack of culture than maybe the wider Australian population do. That’s my experience and my understanding just from living here for my entire life. Because we do have a really strong culture around certain things, like you’re saying even maybe more than what you’re talking about, Football. Yeah. Like culture in Victoria and in South Australia and in Western Australia. And Tassie the culture around AFL football or Aussie Rules Football is strong, healthy. You can’t argue against that. And in Queensland and New South Wales, it’s rugby really strong. Healthy cultures to a greater extent. So there, so in certain circles people would, I think would just think, we do have a lot of culture yeah, there is certain things of history, but…  

Breallyn: And, we do have some strong arts, as well. Yeah. Not everyone takes…  

Lyndon: We certainly have legacies that society hangs its hat on. Yeah. You can point to pillars within certain industries and you can create a whole culture around that. How much of it is genuine or not, I’m not sure.  

The Role of Art in Milestone Ceremonies

Breallyn: I guess when I was thinking about this particular topic, I was thinking that this is something that like, we’ll all go to some kind of ceremony in our lives, whether it’s a wedding or a funeral or, baby dedication or something like that. They’re the every family type things. A lot of people won’t be involved in the arts community per se, or the football community, but we’re all just part of our own communities and our own people. And I guess I think that these little, not little ceremonies, but these sort of significant milestone ceremonies are somewhere where we all turn to art in some respects. To help us through that, to help us to make that milestone and make that event what it is.

And without certain artistic things throughout those ceremonies, it would really be lacking and it would actually really, we’d be a bit stuck, I think. And I was thinking most prominently about funerals for obvious reasons. And how the arts can be such a powerful way of expressing emotion and coming to terms with things. But more than that, it can link us to other events. It can carry us beyond that day and that ceremony to our grieving beyond that and also our remembering.  

Lyndon: It’s quite a big topic because I’m sure stuff is coming to my mind that isn’t on your agenda.  

Breallyn: That’s okay. It’s a very loose agenda.  

Lyndon: You’re right, because in a lot of these forums, that’s when, as you say, they turn to art and they turn to the art sector for input. And then how well that actually works and transitions and plays out is a whole other thing, a whole other discussion. Yeah. And where it might, maybe where it tends to… I don’t know.

I was gonna say the Olympics is maybe a grand example of what I’m talking about. It obviously happens all the time in much smaller arenas and venues and whatnot. But yeah, that’s probably an area where you could argue that it’s done quite successfully polarizing at times, but art is often polarizing. Yeah.  

Breallyn: Yeah, like if there was no art in the opening ceremony, it would hardly even be an opening ceremony.  

Lyndon: I, yeah. I just, I do wonder how much the corporate sector, because they’re so used to saying how things are gonna happen and what’s… that they miss the point of, in a way that they sort of hamstring the creative vision of an artist. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Or, Yeah. So there’s sometimes it’s… it feels like tokenism. Yeah.

And here’s another, this will sound like a bit of a whinge. But why like when there’s fundraisers and when there’s trying to raise money for fires or whatever. Why is it that like, it’s just expected that the musicians are gonna donate their time? I don’t understand that. Yeah. It’s, I know, find that infuriating.  

Breallyn: Yeah, I know. It’s yeah. That’s… I think that is a topic for another day. Yeah.  

Lyndon: Let’s talk about… I told you it wasn’t on your agenda.  

Breallyn: No, it wasn’t. And I think it’s worth having a discussion about that. I don’t know. Might, not that specific example, but Yeah. About value and that sort of thing. But yeah, let’s talk about that another time. ‘Cause I guess we won’t do it justice if we ram it in here.  

Lyndon: Maybe we’ll leave it for the big hitters and we’ll just keep talking about fruit bats and school holiday programs.  

Breallyn: Welcome to pain in the suburbia, I dunno. Oh, pain in the suburbs. Yeah.  

Lyndon: Rocking the suburbs.  

The Experience of Performing Art at Funerals

Breallyn: Can you remember an art, or a particular piece or something in a ceremony that you’ve always remembered? Maybe a song or a poem or something?  

Lyndon: Do you mean one where I was present in the room or something on TV or…? Any… the first one that comes to mind is a very self-centered one. It’s when I had to play at someone’s funeral.  

Breallyn: I was thinking about that one as well.  

Lyndon: Were ya?  

Breallyn: Yeah. Set the scene for us.  

Lyndon: No, I don’t really want to go into it, but I had to sing a popular song, Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen. And it wasn’t the first time I’d sung at a funeral, but that was particularly difficult to do. And it’s, and you do something like that in service of the family and in service of the occasion. Yeah. And you’re part of the emotional mechanism. Yeah. I guess. And then that’s it. You finish and like it’s not a gig. I didn’t want any acknowledgement.  

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s not a performance for the sake of to shine your talent.  

Lyndon: It’s at the same… You’re really conscious of being on top of your game. Yeah. ‘Cause you want honor the person and the family. Yeah. But also you wanna make sure that any unexpected emotions that might hit you, that you can professionally sidestep them or overcome them or ignore them, or whatever you’ve gotta do. So that if you succumb to something like that in a moment like that, you suddenly become the focus and you make people feel uncomfortable, or at the very least you pull them out of their, their grieving or whatever it might be.

So, I always feel this sense of, it’s not sense of… res… it’s a responsibility, but it’s also, it’s nearly like going, okay, this is… it’s a… Nearly like a higher calling of injecting art into a social situation for the betterment of society, Yeah. I think, I dunno if I’ve put that… but, so yeah, it’s a real interesting one because as a performer, you’re often going in and like I’ve said before, like before I’ll get on stage, I’ll be giving myself a little bit of a pep talk just so that all the inner voices that I normally live with bugger off.

And part of that is showmanship or whatever, but it’s not the energy you wanna take into a performance at a funeral. No. But you still wanna be really professional and you want to, like I said, you don’t wanna be inadvertently pulling people away from what they need to be experiencing.  

Breallyn: So if you do your job well as an artist, in that situation, you’re giving an amazing performance that while people are on some level, they’re appreciating the delivery or the performance that’s given, they’re not really thinking about that. Because if you falter in some way, then they’re gonna be really thinking about, oh, is he gonna get through this? Or whatnot.

But if you’re doing it really well, what it will do is help them to feel the grief and the emotion and have that ceremony, have that funeral as a time that you can collect together and feel that sorrow at somebody’s passing. Because otherwise you might be gathered together… doing what? Without the song in that bit, without any music or without even any, I guess structure to…  

Lyndon: The way we do it here is if you’ve been to, and I’ve certainly been to funerals where there is no real input of arts in any way. And yeah, it’s a little… it’s not necessarily more somber it… It’s just a lot of speaking, isn’t it? As soon as it’s an occasion where there’s a little more happening, like lighting of candles or if there’s… there are more sort of little ceremonial things then to have music there, at the very least it glues some of those sections together. But if that’s the only reason you had a live performer at the funeral, then you’re really underutilizing them, I think.  

Breallyn: Yeah.  

Lyndon: What I reckon is great is how they do it in New Orleans. Where, admittedly dunno a lot about this, as I was saying earlier, but when you study… but it’s a celebration. They’re playing music. They’re playing awesome music like marching bands and stuff down the street. We’ll need someone to email us and set us straight with all this stuff, or call in now. But, and I think the second line is, my understanding is that’s when they’re on their way back. Harry Connick Jr. sings about it. Here Comes The Big Parade.  

Breallyn: Oh yeah.  

Lyndon: Yeah. So imagine growing up where Yeah. That’s what going to a funeral was.  

Breallyn: Yeah. Yep.  

Lyndon: It’s brilliant.  

Breallyn: Yeah.  

Lyndon: And, but it’s so cultural. It’s that’s an ama… They’ve got an amazing history like that particular city…  

Breallyn: Music is such a part of that culture. Yeah. I’d love stuff like Go… I’d love to go there. Yeah. Maybe you can go there while I’ll go to Paris. No, that’s why I can’t go to Paris with you.  

Lyndon: I know. We can’t travel together in case one of us dies. No, we can’t travel together because of commitments back home. But, maybe when you get back… they speak French in… Is that why you thought of it in New Orleans?  

Breallyn: No, I just… I don’t know.  

Lyndon: I don’t, I actually don’t know what that connection is between the French speaking sections of New Orleans. Do you Brea?  

Breallyn: I do not.  

Lyndon: Do we need to edit this out so we don’t sound like ignorant? We do Australians.  

Breallyn: We do.  

Lyndon: We’re pretty conservative how we do it here, aren’t we?  

Breallyn: I can’t talk. I’ve got ice in my mouth.  

Lyndon: Oh my gosh. Gotta wait for you to chew it. Do you wanna move on?  

Breallyn: I do remember when you were preparing for playing that funeral and how you, knowing that you had to get up and perform, you actually had to keep a really tight reign on your emotions and almost filter out all the other things being said beforehand. I was crying my eyes out and this was a funeral of a friend of ours who also was quite young when he passed away. And it was a sad funeral. He had three young children there.

So it was sad and you almost had to not… not engage as much with your emotions and how you felt about it in order to be ready to perform. I can’t imagine how it… I can’t imagine what it’s like to sing full stop, but especially to sing when your throat is constricted ’cause you know you’re fighting back tears or just…  

Lyndon: Because that’s what I was talking about before. It’s yeah. Gotta really… the preparation for that is probably just knowing that you’re gonna be hit with waves of emotion and so that it doesn’t blindside you. You can’t rehearse it, you can… you can’t rehearse for that sort of a thing. Probably more just knowing it’s gonna happen, but Yeah. Beforehand. Yeah, absolutely. Like you say, filtering that stuff out and that is probably the downside of being asked to play at funeral because you never get asked to play at a funeral of someone you don’t know. It’s not like wedding gigs.  

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. You aren’t just booking random music because…  

Lyndon: Wedding gigs, there’s more pressure on you, I think.  

Breallyn: And it’s more of an entertainment than…  

Lyndon: There’s just Yeah. And there’s just more pressure ’cause there’s more demands put on you Yeah. At weddings and Yeah. And, and when I say weddings, I’m thinking receptions. Although obviously it happens at weddings as well, but yeah. So you’re only really playing at a funeral if you know the person or the family. So the downside is then that you’re not really immersed in the occasion because you’ve got a job to do. Yeah. So that’s the downside. Yeah.

Yep. But you could say that too, of people that have to make speeches if, if I’ve gotta make a speech, I’m… I’ve got anxiety for days, weeks leading up to it. So if you’ve gotta do that at a funeral, you could also be a little bit disengaged. Yeah. That’s true. With what’s going on. Because you’re just worried about… you’re just so nervous about having to get up and speak, or the fact that you might cry while you’re giving, trying to give your speech and all that sort of stuff.  

Breallyn: Yeah.  

Lyndon: They’re difficult occasions in that regard. Wow. Is this episode over, we didn’t have to talk about funerals.  

Breallyn: No, but…  

Lyndon: You asked me what came to mind. Yeah. And that was the first thing that came to mind. Yeah. Came, that came to mind. I didn’t wanna talk about it too much and we’ve just spent 10 minutes on it.  

Breallyn: That’s okay. Made some good points.  

Poetry’s Power in Expressing Grief

Breallyn: I was thinking about, as recently our son’s girlfriend and I have been on a bit of a Bridget Jones journey. We’ve watched all four Bridget Jones movies, which has been quite nice. But I did say to her, oh, have you seen four weddings and a funeral? And she hasn’t. So that might be next on our agenda.  

Lyndon: I won’t be here for that.  

Breallyn: You haven’t been here for any of the others either.  

Lyndon: I watched it when it came out a millennia ago and it was quite enjoyable. Yeah. I certainly have other things pressing, things that I’ll need to do on that day. Whatever day that is, I’m busy.  

Breallyn: You’re gonna be washing your hair and compiling your socks. I was thinking about, ’cause I have seen four weddings and a funeral. I was thinking about the poem and the kind of big work that it did. It was, I can’t remember the character’s names, but I remember the poem and it was by WH Auden. And it’s stop the clocks. No, stop all the clocks.  

Lyndon: Oh yeah, I remember that now. Yeah.  

Breallyn: And it got me thinking about poetry in funerals and how, the words a good poet or a good writer, can really encapsulate emotions about a certain event, losing somebody or something like that. And then those words, although they were written about one person by one person, they’re so useful for other people who might not be as good with their words to be able to express how they feel about their person that they’ve lost.

In that movie I remember that it not only was expressing grief at the man dying, but it also was very revealing about the nature of their relationship, which people hadn’t been aware of before that. So it was showing a depth of love that was really self exposing. So yeah, I was like, that was incredible. All of that through the reading of one poem. You’re looking so confused.  

Lyndon: Was your point with that?  

Breallyn: I was just saying my point was poetry’s great. I think that was it. Poetry’s great.  

Lyndon: Yeah. I either was listening to a podcast or watching something in the last couple of days where they were literally talking about poems How they have a unique place at funerals. Yeah. Poems are undervalued and…  

Breallyn: They are.  

Lyndon: So weird that they happened this week and now you’re talking about it. Poetry’s amazing like that because it’s such a distilling down of big ideas or big emotions or, a large something into a very small number of words.  

Breallyn: And yeah, the way that they’re constructed and every, every single part of that poem has been very deliberately done and it all adds to the whole, I love poetry, so I’m not gonna continue. But yeah. At funerals, I think especially is where those few words contain whole universes of feelings and ideas. That’s why about something as inexpressible as grief.  

Lyndon: That’s why haikus are the highest form of poetry. ‘Cause they distill so much into so few lines. And man, like when a poem is just going on and on wouldn’t you kill for a haiku? My lord.  

Breallyn: And thus endeth our discussion on poetry. Really.  

Lyndon: I was just… I thought we’re just getting started. It’s quite interesting. That’s it.  

Creating Art as a Response to Loss

Breallyn: The other thing I wanted to make mention of was how even after something like losing someone, how people who even would not identify as artists in any way, they’ll often try to express their feelings by creating some art. So people will write poems about someone they’ve lost or they’ll design a tattoo to have done on them. Or they might do a sketch or just, or paint something. They’ll often be trying to put all of those feelings and all of that love and all of that loss into some way of remembering that person in a piece of art.

Yeah, like people do it all the time and it’s, it’s one of those little tiny reminders of how we all need art in our lives and how bereft we are without it, without those expressions. We can’t actually fully live, we can’t get the full meaning out of life without wrap it in art in some way because otherwise it just all stays inside of us and we can’t even fully experience it ourselves, let alone communicate it with anybody else. Yeah, that was just something I was thinking about today.  

Lyndon: What’s the alternative? You just bottle everything up inside. People have done that, but then they’ve got stomach ulcers.  

Breallyn: True. And all the people that love them are disappointed forever. Maybe as you get older, there’s two ways you’re gonna go.  

Lyndon: One is to try and deal with everything that’s happened in the course of your life, you look to some sort of artistic endeavor so that you can find your peace. And the other is, you become bitter and twisted and have a, have a sore stomach. I don’t know. I’m just being silly. I’m being silly ’cause I can’t think of anything profound to say.  

Breallyn: That’s a shame. That’s a surprise because I’ve got here on my notes profound ending by Lyndon. Yeah. To come now. Yeah.  

Lyndon: I just feel that, I feel the topic warrants a fitting end that I can’t provide, or at least some sort of insight. And I’ve got nothing. I’m blank, I’m devoid, I’m an empty shell of a man.  

Breallyn: You need a poem in your life. I’m the milo tin that you open up and everyone else has already been at it and you can’t get your, full five spoons, teaspoons of milo that you’re wanting. You open it up and there’s just me two spoon milo.  

Lyndon: Man, that’s not enough.  

Breallyn: Thank you for joining us today. We’ll leave you with that thought. We can’t leave there with that stunning metaphor there.  

Lyndon: No, that’s all. We don’t have an episode. We can’t end like that.

You’ve been listening to Pain in the Arts. Thank you for tuning in, and we will be back next week for another show, which I will be curating.  

Breallyn: Curating. That’ll be good.  

Lyndon: Yep. Bring your topic. Yep. It’ll be a surprise to all of us. You can visit the website, paininthearts.life. I’ve just put up another transcript there from last week’s episode. You can actually listen to the audio on there as well. Why would you? But you can visit patreon.com/painintheartslife, and you’ll find our growing community of what would Pain In The Arts listeners be called Painers, PITA’s?  

Breallyn: Yeah. Something like that.  

Lyndon: And of course, go to Apple… well go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review there. Leave us a review on Spotify. Do both, whatever. I’m not your mother. Do whatever you like, but why not? Why wouldn’t you just quickly head over and do it on both? Right now you can almost cut and paste. How hard can that be? Yeah. There we go. Yeah.

Look, I don’t wanna come across as needy or anything, but we have a mailing list, although maybe don’t sign up for that ’cause then we need to send stuff out. Now over on Patreon we have two other podcasts. So that is a pretty big benefit. And we do. Brea, you need to be recording another episode for In Search of Home. People are waiting on that. Yeah. Episode three.  

Breallyn: I have some news, so listen up. As soon as I get that recorded, you’ll find out the latest on how my new novel is progressing.  

Lyndon: Very good. I have been meaning to record my podcast, Echoes of Home. What I discovered today? What can we call ourselves? We’re podcasters so we know that.  

Breallyn: That’s… are we… that’s a given. Wow. Yeah.  

Lyndon: We’re podcast… Podcast. Is that what we’re now Cool. Yeah. But I’m also a podcast producer. Wow. And what was it? Podcast administrator or No, that’s not it. But there’s these other titles. I’m like, hang on a minute, I’m doing jobs that other people should be doing. Yeah. So hopefully I’ll be able to offload that. That’s right in the future.

But anyway, I’ve been meaning to record or wanting to record episode three, I think it is. Of Echoes of Home. And, I wanted to be playing the music while I was talking about it. And that’s when I realized I didn’t actually technically know how to do that properly. I had all the tools there, I discovered. So thanks to not… thanks to Future me, thanks to history me from a couple of years ago where I had an idea. And so I can actually, what’s it, what’s the saying? We have the… I have the… I have nothing.  

Breallyn: I have the technology in my hands. We have the technology. Is that it? I have no idea.  

Lyndon: I dunno what you’re referring to. Anyway, the point is I have the technology to do it, just didn’t know how to use it. So a bit of a refresher on that and I’ll be able to yeah. Do episode three That’d great. Of home, which will be fun. Yeah.  

Breallyn: Thank you so much for joining us. We will be back next week with your next episode. Talk to you then.  

Lyndon: Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.  

Breallyn: Bye.  

Want more deep dives into the creative process? Our Patreon supporters get exclusive episodes and behind-the-scenes content.