June 3, 2025 · Episode 23
47 Min, 55 Sec 

Summary

This week kicks off with a story involving a camping trip, a freeway blowout, and a bottle of balsamic vinegar. It’s worth the ride. Around the halfway mark, Lyndon and Breallyn shift gears to explore what authenticity in art really means. Is it something you work toward, or something that emerges once you’ve found your voice? From Joni Mitchell to Amy Winehouse, they unpack how truth, technique, and creative identity collide. Part one of a two-part deep dive.

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Transcript

Lyndon: Should we talk about the week, our camping week?

Breallyn: I think we should talk about our camping week. But I think I’m gonna start at the end and just congratulate you on your rally driver abilities.

Lyndon: It’s not rally driving. That’s the wrong picture.

Breallyn: Rally driving, I guess. Defensive driving skills. Emergency driving reactions. I don’t know. It’s safe to say I don’t think we’d be here recording and alive if not for your driving.

Lyndon: Maybe it’s ’cause I had that scenario playing through in my head for years. You gotta be prepared for any emergency.

Breallyn: Yeah, you handled it well. Let’s paint the picture for our podcast listeners.

Lyndon: You paint it. I’ll continue drinking my cold cup of tea.

Breallyn: Okay, you do that. Just don’t slurp into the mic. We were heading home from our camping trip. We travel in our family car, which is a Tarago. We go to Tarago people mover, and we have a tiny little caravan. It’s a Jayco Swan.

So one of those ones that like winds up and then pops out the end. They’re really funny looking ones. It’s tiny.

Lyndon: The canvas on the top.

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s a little box kind of. It’s…

Lyndon: It’s old. It’s before they even called them a Swan, they called them a J Swan.

Breallyn: There you go. So it’s got the gorgeous Seventies color stripes down the side. It’s definitely vintage. And yeah, we love it. But it’s not easy to set up or put down, but let’s talk about that later.

But we were traveling along the freeway, the Princess Freeway, and everything was going. I have described it as going okay, but you’ve corrected me when we were telling the story to one of our carers.

Lyndon: I’ve correctly corrected you. Yeah, this is what happens over the years of having a child with a disability and all kinds of psychosomatic issues. You get used to either you have a new normal, and you downplay things. Part of that is so that you can get through things and keep going.

And part of it is because you don’t wanna be telling people all the facts of the matter for things that are hard to understand. And probably brings up lots of questions that are maybe not helpful, so we don’t enter into things we don’t usually talk about. So I think we just get used to downplaying things.

But the reality is that the three-hour drive that it should have taken three, three and a half hours with a bit of a break to get to the campsite, took almost six hours, and that’s pretty normal. But this you are talking about on the way home.

Breallyn: On the way home. So we expected, I guess, a fairly similar, let’s have two or three half-hour breaks, break things up.

Lyndon: We’d be proactive with the breaks, and we should be home in six hours. And the way it was tracking because of Birdie’s behavior and stress in the car, we were tracking to be home in closer to seven, seven and a half hours. And then that’s about the time the tire on the camper blew out at a hundred K’s an hour on the freeway, and we were in the right-hand lane.

Breallyn: So for our international listeners, we drive on the left-hand side of the road here in Australia. The road we were on was a three-lane freeway. So when we are in,

Lyndon: Six-lane, really, isn’t it?

Six-lane. Yeah. So three, three lanes going towards the city, three lanes going the opposite way. There were concrete barriers in between the two directions. So you know, a safe freeway, like a constructed freeway.

I don’t know why we were in the fast lane, but we were.

Lyndon: It’s not the fast lane. It’s the right-hand lane.

Breallyn: The right-hand lane, but that is definitely considered the fast lane. That’s the lane you’re going on if you’re overtaking, but for whatever reason in the course of the journey, we just happened to be in that lane at that moment, and all of a sudden, like we were already, yes, as Lyndon’s mentioned, we’re stressed, we’re coping with the things that Birdie was doing at the time, which was plenty of screaming, which was triggering to us ’cause we’ve had many bad experiences with that.

Lyndon: She also had access to, we tried to pack the car in a way where if she did get to anything, it would be clothing and whatnot, stuff like that.

Breallyn: Yeah, we’d left a whole lot of space around her so that she couldn’t really access too many things, but it’s impossible.

Lyndon: It’s funny, I remember traveling as a kid in a Ford Laser, which is a tiny little, what would you call it, hatch? Was it a hatchback?

Breallyn: A hatchback hatch? Yeah. Hatch.

Lyndon: A little hatchback. Yeah, it was. And there was mom and dad in the front and us three kids in the back, and dad used the boot area to just lay all our clothes in. So we didn’t take suitcases, we just laid down the clothes we needed. So basically treated the whole boot like one suitcase. Then the rest of whatever we had was just stacked up around our feet. And we took turns holding Budgie, a Budgie cage, and a budgie as we pretty much traveled from one side of the country to the other and then back again.

Breallyn: That’s adventurous.

Lyndon: But yeah, so to have a much bigger car like we’ve got now and to have to put space between us and Birdie so that we’re not physically touched, yeah, while we’re driving. ‘Cause that’s unsafe, and then not to be able to use that space to actually pack things normally, so to have to try and create either a barrier or to just not have anything within her reach, it’s tricky.

Of a very tricky, yeah, of a drive that’s longer than 40 minutes, say, yeah, she’s just gonna get either agitated or curious or bored or whatever. And at some point things will get gotten to anyway.

Breallyn: The things that she had previously ignored, like she sees, okay, there’s a big bag in the seat next to her. She can’t see the zips or see any means of accessing it. So she’ll ignore that for quite some time. But then at some point, if the ride has been long enough or tedious enough, she might start to just shake the whole thing, try to turn it around, even though we’ve got it buckled in with seat belts, like try to find an entry point, which she did do. And at one point all my clothes started flying towards us.

Lyndon: Yeah. But then she’s got into one of the boxes that had food and whatnot. And so…

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: At some point on the freeway, we had…

Breallyn: Not long before the blowout, I think.

Lyndon: A 500-gram, near full, bottle of balsamic vinegar thrown between us, and it hit the dashboard and, yeah.

Breallyn: Glass bottle.

Lyndon: Glass bottle.

Breallyn: Yeah.

The Freeway Blowout

Lyndon: And it just escalated from there. And then we had the blowout, and then we had to put, let’s paint this picture. So the tire blows out. We’re traveling at a hundred K’s an hour. There’s cars everywhere. Tire blows out. And Lyndon very calmly and very well managed to pull over further to the right, which was into just the piece of tarmac at the side. So the, yeah, it’s not even really an emergency lane. It’s not an emergency lane. It’s lane because it’s so dangerous lane.

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s a lane width, and I guess it’s just there for…

Lyndon: It’s almost a lane width, I reckon.

Breallyn: Yeah. So we were there, pushed right up against the concrete barrier on one side, on the right side, and then on the left side we still had cars just whizzing by us at a hundred kilometers an hour. 110, I think, along there. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. And no room to move in between.

So the tire was blown. There was no way that you could change it because it was the…

Lyndon: Left-hand tire, so it meant that the camper’s on an angle, obviously, but into the next lane.

Breallyn: Into the oncoming traffic. Yeah.

Lyndon: So no room.

Breallyn: To change the tire and no way. The amazing thing was, we, this blowout happened within, how many meters do you reckon? 200 meters of an actual service stop, which was a lane to get off. So like petrol station, McDonald’s, yeah, all that. Which would’ve been great had we been in the left-hand lane, but we were in the right, so we could see this tantalizingly close, but there was no way to just inch our way across there, ’cause the traffic was just coming way too fast. So it was a bit of a dilemma, and we were…

Lyndon: Yes, it was useless having that over there, ’cause you couldn’t actually get over there. Like even if you were parked where we were parked next to that concrete barrier, and you wanted to get across to the other side and you didn’t have a caravan hooked up, it would be a very dangerous maneuver. And you would be able to do it. You just, you would just need to have to wait for the right gap in the traffic, and that gap wasn’t coming.

And I think there was maybe after about 10, 15 minutes, a gap big enough did open up. Only if you had a car in working order. Yeah. You could get across that. You could…

Breallyn: Plant your foot and just speed across there.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah.

Breallyn: Which we couldn’t do ’cause we had to inch across ’cause we’re…

Lyndon: No, there’s no way driving on a rim. We just couldn’t do it. Yeah, you couldn’t do it. It’s such a busy freeway.

Breallyn: And we’re so used to being self-reliant, I think, as we can and trying to solve all our problems that we were just like, okay, hang on. We can’t solve, like what do we do here? We didn’t really know what to do. So in the end, it was very exciting. I got to call triple zero, which is our emergency line here.

Lyndon: I got to call our roadside assistance that comes with our insurance, which was way less exciting. I was on hold for 10 minutes and then got told they didn’t cover the camper, which had I thought about it, I would’ve known. I just thought, oh, we’ve broken down.

Breallyn: And finally we get to use roadside assist. We get to use our roadside assist if we still have it, Yeah. You’ve got it. And, oh, sorry. Anyway, I don’t wanna talk about all that. That’s, no.

Breallyn: But we got, we got rescued by the, by the, what do they call ’em?

Lyndon: When you call Triple O, they just called VicRoads Roadside Assist, which is a free service. It’s basically a big van and it has a pop-up LED sign with an arrow or a slow to 40 K sign or something on it. And they have all the gear in there to basically, what they wanna do is get you somewhere safe. And as far as he was concerned, really super nice guy, James. Shout out to James.

It’s, yeah, I guess it’s, here’s the number. If you’re in Australia, if you’re in Melbourne, 13 11 70, that’ll get you directly. You actually don’t need to ring triple zero.

Breallyn: You knew it. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. So James was just a brilliant guy, really understanding of our situation and of his job, and super personable. But anyway, he was saying, look, he says, I don’t care how long it takes me to get you into the emergency lane. If it takes two kilometers, it takes two kilometers. ‘Cause his job basically is to usher you across and get in the way of the traffic.

So the traffic has to slow down, and then we move in front of him anyway. But yeah. So they just want to get you to the emergency lane.

Lessons Learned from the Roadside Rescue

Yeah. And then they have the tools to, you know, like if you’ve got a spare tire, which we did, they can help change the tire or whatever they need to do.

Breallyn: Which was amazing because it would’ve been, we would’ve not been able to do it really. You explained that, but I, yeah, I missed how that works.

Lyndon: We could have, but it would’ve been a lot of messing around because the carjack that I have potentially may not have lifted up the caravan high enough.

Breallyn: Oh yeah, that’s all. And I would’ve been no help ’cause I had Birdie to care for. And in the difficult circumstances.

Lyndon: The difficult circumstances included the firewood that she got into, which I didn’t.

Breallyn: Yeah, I didn’t think she would. Yeah.

Lyndon: I thought she might maybe, but I didn’t expect her to be throwing it at our heads while we were stopped with a blowout in the middle of a freeway.

Breallyn: Yeah. Trying to call the police.

Lyndon: Honestly, I can’t believe how much you downplayed the whole thing. It was not safe in, yeah. It wasn’t any which way or form. You know what’s funny? Too funny in the, not funny at all. Today, I was, I just registered, oh, that orange emergency light that we, I’ve been trying to sell on eBay for like forever.

Breallyn: Have you listed it yet?

Lyndon: Yeah, it was listed ages ago for $10, and I had that as, I had that for really early morning jobs in the coffee van.

Breallyn: Oh yeah.

Lyndon: Like just to signal to people that I was there, and, but it’s actually, it’s exactly for that situation we were in.

Breallyn: We could have used it.

Lyndon: We could have used it. And when, when we had the blowout and I thought the best thing I can do is get out of the car, get behind the camper and make sure people can see us, and I realized I was standing, dressed completely in black and I thought, I need a vest. And I knew I had a vest at home as in high-vis, high-vis vest. I’ve got one.

Breallyn: Yeah. And again, for the coffee van, wasn’t it for, yeah. Websites.

Lyndon: So it was in the garage. It wasn’t even in the car. And the funny thing is too, I did have some things in the locker of the camper, but I couldn’t get to it because I would’ve had to kneel down in the lane of a freeway to actually open it and try and access, okay, you know what gear I did have there.

Breallyn: So here’s us still trying to figure out how could we have solved this on our own.

Lyndon: It’s only through experience that you can be prepared completely for something like that.

Breallyn: You can’t be for every single eventuality anyway.

Lyndon: No. Yeah. So anyway, they, anyway.

Breallyn: We got over eventually to the other side.

Lyndon: So there was only another a hundred meters to get across the other side. James and I didn’t think we’d really get across to the service center. We thought we’d probably be up the road, half a K.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: Or so. But yeah, he managed to get all the traffic to slow down and we got all the way across.

Breallyn: Thank goodness, ’cause that meant I was able to get Birdie outta the car and walk her up to the service center. Take her to the Lou and get McDonald’s and just settle her, which was amazing.

Lyndon: And we called a carer that was scheduled for our place that we’re never gonna get home in time for. And she came and met us there.

Breallyn: She did. Hero, hero of the day, our second hero, Nicole.

Lyndon: Yep.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: So yeah, James first Hero. I loved it when he said to me, once he’d come up with the plan, of how to get us across and get us safe. He goes, “all right, let’s get you outta here.” And I was like, Woohoo. Wow.

Breallyn: Superhero must feel like movie. Yeah, great guy. Yeah. That was cool. So yeah, we’re thankful for good people in tricky situations. And yeah, poor Birdie had enough. She’d had a lot going on that week. It was a different place, and she’d done extremely well with camping.

We had a carer with us for most of the camp, which was great. Between the three of us adults, we managed to pretty much have Birdie the whole time and still have time for us to occasionally use the toilet and eat ourselves. Got a little bit of sleep.

Lyndon: You worked on your book for a little bit?

Breallyn: I did. I did about a thousand words. It was great.

Lyndon: How many words?

Breallyn: About a thousand, I think I got.

Lyndon: Oh, really?

Yeah. It was lovely sitting by the river. Oh, it was just magic. I was just like, yes, this is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do for so long and trying to get to this moment. It only took us months of planning and hours of toil.

Lyndon: Feels like it took us years.

Breallyn: Took years of our lives to get there. But hey, I had that hour sitting.

Reevaluating Camping Ideologies

Lyndon: And I think we’ve decided we’re not gonna do it like that again. Yeah, yeah, I did a post on Instagram today. It was a post of you, and I think I said, but we’re reevaluating our camping ideologies.

Breallyn: Yeah, I know. We were talking about we could just hire a cabin that’s, we don’t even need it. No, we were talking about that.

Lyndon: If we do anything like that with Birdie, the whole experience is about her and for her, and we can’t expect that it’s gonna be in any way a recovery get back to nature, rejuvenation time for us. No, not at all. If we want that, we need to go on our own.

Breallyn: And this is where I think the tricky things come in, because we can send Birdie on camps with an organization that takes kids with special needs on camps.

Lyndon: We can now. We can now.

Breallyn: We couldn’t many for many years, but now she’s able to do that. She’s been on one this year and had a lovely time. She went for two nights, so it’s like she can get away and have that experience with carers that know her and she has a great time. And we can also go away on our own and have time to have that connection with nature. Get back to, the camping that we love to do and, have an actual break ourselves.

However, the problem is going, do we then give up family holidays or holidays with our daughter because it’s just all too hard? And like it’s just too much of a toll on us ’cause it’s.

Lyndon: I think a few years ago we would’ve said no because we’re trying everything and we didn’t have that option of her going on camps. But kind of not the question or to say it’s all too hard makes it sound defeatists and that we’re giving up or giving in or that, and that’s not what we’re doing.

Breallyn: Our style. Yeah.

Lyndon: No, but that’s not what we’re doing. No. What we are doing is we’ve actually toughed it out and we’ve gone a number of times back into the fire with different ideas how it can work. And we’ve realized, again, obviously not for the first time, but I think this time we’ve really gone, okay. It’s taking too much of a toll on us to do it like that. And it wouldn’t matter if we’re in a cabin with her or in a tent. It’s not the point. The point is she needs one to one care all the time.

Breallyn: All the time.

Lyndon: And sometimes more than that.

Breallyn: And sometimes two to one.

Lyndon: How can a couple have a restful break in that environment? You can’t. So that’s not saying it’s all too hard and we’re just giving up. It’s just being smart and saying, yeah, enough’s enough. And the other thing is, like my body did not, I went into that week, my back was tweaked from, who knows, not having enough sleep, and I’d started swimming again and different things.

So I don’t know, just I had to go into that week cautiously with my back, and we ended up being in minus four degree temperatures and having to do all the camping stuff.

Breallyn: Oh, that’s right. Oh, and also…

Lyndon: Plus I had to drive, which should have been three and a half hours, and it was, six hours or, so sitting in the car.

Breallyn: We also had a little diesel heater in our camper. It should have. But yeah, that didn’t work.

Lyndon: It didn’t work for the first time.

Breallyn: It don’t work. Oh. The other thing was we didn’t realize, but there was no phone service there where we were camping. So all of a sudden…

Lyndon: That wouldn’t have kept us warm.

Breallyn: No. But one of our resources to use with Birdie is YouTube videos, which she likes to watch. And we had none all of a sudden. So that was tricky for the first night until we went into town and downloaded some and got that working. But yeah, it’s always really fraught when you have things that you expect to work and they don’t work, and suddenly you’ve gotta try to find other solutions on the spot. Your brain is always working.

You’re constantly trying to keep a step ahead of Birdie, figure out what she might need right now and next, and have it all prepared, and it’s really hard mental load kind of work. And even with a carer there, that doesn’t stop as such. We are still thinking, the three of us, all the time about Birdie and how she’s going, monitoring everything. And just trying to give each other sanity breaks in between the caring and the activities for Birdie. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. And what’s the unbelievable thing? I didn’t have one gin and tonic while we were away.

Breallyn: There you go. You took a careful bottle wrapped up, and I took.

Lyndon: I took a bottle of Prohibition Gin and did not have it once.

Breallyn: Ah, you were prohibited from.

Lyndon: Even single drop. I may have had a half a glass of wine anyway. I think.

Breallyn: So camping, we love it.

Lyndon: I think maybe you and I’ll go back there one time.

Breallyn: Yeah. But I think our days Paradise Valley. Our days of taking the camper for a couple of days. No. That it ended. Yeah, they are finished. Yeah. It’s too much work.

Lyndon: Can’t take, you can’t take that camper. It was never intended for that sort of a, that sort of a thing. When you get it all set up and have it set up like base camp, you need to be somewhere for a week at least. And we were somewhere for four nights, and I think had it been summer and it was just the two of us, it would’ve been different for sure. Yeah. We would’ve felt differently about it. But I still may have come back with a bulging disc.

I’ve just made an executive decision. Yep. And that I think the episode that I had planned and prepared might have to be a two-parter. So I know.

Breallyn: I feel like we’ve just used our audience to debrief.

Lyndon: I think we did.

Breallyn: Our camping experience. Thanks for listening, guys. We appreciate you. So…

Lyndon: If you are new to our show, this is Pain In The Arts. You’d have no idea from our opening story.

Breallyn: No. It’s Pain in the Camp and Pain in the Back.

Lyndon: But Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life, maybe hence that story. Yeah. But let’s get on with the, let’s get on with the show. Yeah, let’s do it.

Breallyn: So today is your day, and I can’t wait to hear what topic you’ve got.

The Question of Authenticity in Art

Lyndon: We’re gonna do this in two parts. Okay, which is fine. That’s exciting. So here’s the topic. Do you need to be authentic to be a good artist?

Breallyn: That’s a big one. You just wrap my head around that for a second.

Lyndon: Now, the reason I thought about this is because you hear all the time, oh, I wanna be authentic and I wanna be true to myself. It’s just something that gets thrown around a lot. And I thought, what is it really? Is it important? Why is it important if it is? And then maybe look at some examples of people. All the examples I naturally think of are musicians, but you might have others.

Is it something we need to think about while we’re creating art? Or does it just come out of who we are, and how do you tap into that part of yourself if you need to? It’s all kinds of questions come up. Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: About around authenticity. Yep. Great topic. Is that enough questions for you? Do you want another one?

Breallyn: There’s a lot. Go for another one.

Lyndon: Should we be working on ourself as a human knowing that whoever we are will permeate into our work?

Breallyn: Oh no.

Lyndon: That sounds too hard. I also think that’s definitely not. I think it’s the brokenness that makes the art great, usually, isn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And people lean into that. Yeah. And there’s always intrigue and interest in artists, as in, to who they are behind the art. And we want to hear those stories of, yeah. Not necessarily brokenness, but of we wanna hear the human side. Yeah. And I think maybe with with musicians for sure, it’s like we might think someone’s authentic or being true to themselves and their identity is real.

Who we see on stage is a real person. We might believe that more if that lines up with who they seem to be off stage. And even sometimes what off stage isn’t who someone is. Although in this day and age, maybe it’s easier to know if someone’s just presenting themself as a character or, yeah.

Breallyn: I think authenticity is something you can develop as an artist as you go along, because the longer you’re practicing your art, the, I guess the more you’re finding your stride with it, your, you know what you do for want of a better term, like feels right or, feels like it’s the way you want to do it, the way you can do it best.

What comes to mind for me is, I think it was Ernest Hemingway was talking about it, and his practice was to just sit down and start typing, and he just said he, he just writes until something is true.

And when he says true, it doesn’t mean like a fact or whatever, but it’s something that the truth of the writing starts to come to him and he starts to get into that authentic place from where he can write. It’s a funny thing to think about writing fiction and yet it’d be true. And yet all the best fiction has that ring of truth about it.

I don’t know if you’ve read Lord of the Rings, it’s a common kind of one, but there’s just such a humanness and an authenticity in it, even though it’s like about Hobbits and Dwarves and stuff. Yeah. It’s a hard thing to, I guess, define in an art form, but we all see it and respond to it when it’s there.

Lyndon: Yeah, we throw the word authentic around, like it’s a moral compass. Don’t we be true to yourself? Keep it real. Yeah. But you’re right. You can’t sit down and go, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be true to myself as I write this song. Let’s do it. It’s probably more about writing, switch on the truth, just writing a lot and then being able, like you say, being able recognize and feel something that you’ve written is really resonating deeply within your soul.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I know Rick Rubin and others talk a lot about when you are doing your art. When you’re writing your song, you shouldn’t be thinking about the audience. You should be like, that’s not where you approach it from because then you start thinking about what do they want and how do I wanna be perceived and oh yeah, all the wrong sort of questions that just get in the way.

Breallyn: Oh, as soon as you think those thoughts, you can’t even access that better part of you where the art comes from. It’s you’ve messed your own head up already.

Lyndon: So if you’re sitting down then to, to write and you know that you are only gonna be happy when your expression is representing your truth or what feels true to you. What does that mean at that point when you’re making art, when everything you touch gets filtered through technique and through your taste and a thousand choices that you don’t even know that you’re making?

Breallyn: Yeah. I don’t know. Like I, I think all of those things come into it because you’ve learned the techniques, you’ve practiced, you’ve been very deliberate in how you’ve developed your skills. I can only describe, but when it happens to me, and it’s always this wonderful sweet spot that you can find sometimes where it all comes together and you start writing without really thinking about all those things and without any of those things being on your mind.

It’s more just that. You are using them, but what you’re listening to is your deeper heart or the characters in your head, or something that’s driving you forward.

Now having said that, there’s so much advice. I don’t know how it goes for musicians, but for writers certainly about, you can’t wait for that sweet spot. You literally cannot be only writing when you are there in your head and that it’s all coming together. You’ve gotta push through and just write at other times, write when it feels awful. When every word feels clunky. You’ve gotta write through those times as well. Otherwise your pieces don’t get finished.

Yeah, so you’ve gotta fall back onto those techniques and to the learning that you’ve done and the plot that you’ve developed, the characters that you’ve gotten to know. Like you’ve got to trust those things as well. That part of your art that you have crafted together, yeah. I see it more as a authenticity is more of a side effect of doing the work, honestly.

Lyndon: So you can aim for authenticity, but that’s not your goal. That’s more like just a general say principle that you might hold that you want to be authentic, but it’s really a byproduct or a side effect doing the work. And in regards to what you were just talking about, yeah.

There are a bunch of writers, authors, songwriters, that have that discipline of turning up and treating it like a job because they know that sweet spot or inspiration or whatever it might be, where they’re in the zone and able to create work that is something that is gonna make it into the final edit.

That doesn’t come without the discipline of writing regularly. Yeah, I think it is, it’s through doing it conscientiously.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: ‘Cause the more you write the easier it is to spot the truths in the writing.

Breallyn: Yeah. I think, yeah. It’s.

Lyndon: It’s an easy topic, but I think this is the question of the episode. Does who you are shape what you create? That’s a weird sentence, isn’t it? It sounds weird. It’s a sentence.

Impact of Personal Experience on Art

Breallyn: No, it’s grammatically correct. Yeah. I think it, it does, but the answer of that is sometimes unexpected. For someone like myself, I’m writing fiction, but I’m very clearly driven by personal experience and by trying to give voice to a nonverbal character who’s based on my own daughter. So it’s a very kind of linear progression.

But then I think about people in other art forms, for instance, actors who have to know a character and embody them even though that character isn’t them, and yet somehow bring truth to that performance.

And, be able to be so convincing in portraying someone that they’re not, that it, reads authentic and it. It’s relatable and it’s not plastic on the outside. It feels like it’s very organic. That’s an incredible skill in an art form for those people to be able to do and very much. There’s a lot of obviously, practice rehearsal development of those characters that they have to learn the lines.

Do the blocking and the business of those scenes to figure out how this scene is gonna play out, and then perform in the moment in response to other characters and other events that are happening. Yeah, it’s a, it’s an incredibly balanced art form in that way of bringing lots of technique to, to reside within something authentic, I guess.

Lyndon: Yeah. And they just make it look easy, as soon as like anyone watching it, one thing just goes, ‘I could do that.’

Breallyn: Yeah. I know. Isn’t, and isn’t that the same with all art? Yeah. It, looks effortless. Yeah, it looks, you’re never noticing the business of it because you’re just in the moment of experiencing the product of it and what’s being created. And yet, as soon as you see someone may be rehearsing it or somebody with less skill trying to do a similar thing, you suddenly realize, oh wow.

Like that, person that I was watching or that performance I watched, it did seem effortless. I didn’t even think about what they were doing because I was just enjoying it so much. And yeah, that is like the gift of the arts world to the populace, I guess.

Lyndon: Yeah. It’s one of the gifts. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s a gift in so many different ways as well, isn’t it? When people go, oh, I could do that.

Breallyn: I could do that.

Lyndon: Yeah. And then we get the gift of watching them try.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s hilarious. And then.

Lyndon: Whole TV shows are produced around that as well. Alright, so I’ve got a few musicians in mind. That I. Believe are regarded as authentic. So well known artists. Okay. I’m wondering whether any come to mind for you.

Breallyn: That are regarded as authentic?

Lyndon: That you would regard as authentic.

Breallyn: Okay. Got one?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Paul Kelly.

Authentic Artists

Lyndon: Oh yeah. Paul Kelly, the Australian singer-songwriter. Yeah.

Breallyn: Great.

Lyndon: He’s authentic, even though a lot of the, he’s a storyteller.

Breallyn: Yeah. He’s a storyteller. But it, and even though the stories he tells might not be his stories. There’s such, I don’t know, a gravity and an authenticness, lived experience that goes.

Lyndon: Into those. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s a good one. I didn’t have him, mind you, I picked three.

Breallyn: Okay. Who are your three?

Lyndon: I’ve got Nick Cave. Nick Cave. Yeah, as one. Yeah, that’s a good one. So Nick Cave, Gothic prophet. Punk philosopher.

Breallyn: Yep. He’s got a lot to say, whether it’s in music or interviews or whatever. Yeah. I saw.

Lyndon: A recent.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: He was on The Late Show or Late Night recently reading his letter back to someone that had written to him, and he was telling him why life actually was worth living.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: And had meaning. Whew.

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s something hard. Yeah.

Lyndon: Really heavy. Okay. And beautifully written. And while I was listening to him read it out, I just thought, is he one of the only people that would even think to read that out on a late night TV show?

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s so true, man. It would, brings the mood to a, not down, but usually there’s, that’s all about hilarity and entertainment. Bring a funny story. Yeah.

Lyndon: I assume it was cleared with the producers beforehand, but no, it, it wasn’t heavy in that sense. But yeah, he’s someone who, I think the man on stage is who you expect him to be off stage. Generally.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: And I don’t even know if that’s the mark of authenticity anyway, but.

Breallyn: I’ve got some thoughts about that, but we’ll talk about that later. But yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: Alright, here’s another one, Joni Mitchell.

Breallyn: Oh, okay. Now I don’t know much about Jane Mitchell. She is.

Lyndon: Before our time. Yeah. But she’s someone who I think everyone would regard as authentic.

Breallyn: Yeah. Put up a parking lot. Is that.

Lyndon: Joni Mitchell.

Breallyn: Particular taxi? Is that?

Lyndon: That song? I think it is Joni Mitchell. So she wrote about womanhood. She wrote about heartbreak nature. Yeah.

Breallyn: I’m gonna go listen to the entire back catalog of Joni Mitchell.

Lyndon: Alright, I’ve got a more modern one. Yeah. Another female singer songwriter. Actually, I think all the ones I’ve mentioned are singer songwriters. And actually, that’s another interesting thing, you remember growing up and you think if you heard a singer singing a song, you’d go, oh, they wrote it.

Breallyn: They wrote it. And it’s about them too. And it’s about.

Lyndon: Them. Yeah. And then over time if have the inquisitiveness to look into some of these things and your mind gets blown and you go, hang on. They didn’t write that at all. Or, two guys wrote that song.

Breallyn: Yeah. And are they allowed to just sing that song that someone else wrote? And.

Lyndon: Your whole idea of authenticity just gets warped and blown out of the water. Yeah. Alright, so my third one, is Amy Winehouse.

Breallyn: Oh yeah. Yes.

Lyndon: Tragic, vulnerable.

Breallyn: Oh, and so real. Her songs, it was like, she couldn’t, it’s like your singing her journal, put herself into her songs. Yeah, that’s right. She just had to.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Almost like outside art, just pour yourself into this thing. And leave yourself exposed completely to the judgments, I think. Yeah. Amazing answers. The same thing. That song.

Lyndon: Rehab, just the beat it’s got, it doesn’t feel as dark as the subject matter. No. But it literally.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is, it’s literally about her life.

Breallyn: Very autobiographical, all her albums. Yeah. Tell you who Someone else that I can’t now get outta my mind. Eminem.

Lyndon: Eminem? Yeah. Okay. Explain.

Breallyn: Not that I know a lot of Eminem’s music, but everything I do here.

Lyndon: What’s his real name?

Breallyn: His name, can’t remember.

Lyndon: Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue.

Breallyn: I know, one of our sons has had me listen to a couple of the songs, and that they have come from, his, real lived experience and so on. So yeah.

Lyndon: Marshall Mathers.

Breallyn: Marshall Mathers?

Lyndon: I was hoping when I said, what’s his real name? You were gonna say Slim Shady.

Teasing Next Week’s Episode

Breallyn: The real Slim Shady, please stand up.

Lyndon: Yeah. The second half of this conversation was going to be this authenticity in art. Can you fake it? So that’s what we’re going to get onto next week. Yeah.

Breallyn: Okay. Okay, great.

Lyndon: A little bit of a, spoiler. A teaser, we’re gonna talk about.

Breallyn: It’s either gonna tease or spoil each one.

Lyndon: It’s gonna, it’s gonna both.

Breallyn: Okay. It’s gonna tease and spoil,

Lyndon: Bob Dylan? Now we did watch the Bob Dylan movie recently.

Breallyn: When you say we, not me.

Lyndon: Oh, you didn’t either. Sorry. I’m gonna have.

Breallyn: To go see it now. Before next week.

Lyndon: It was me and, and Chris. That’s right. Oh, your other favorite date? Yeah, you’ll have to see it now. Okay. Before, yeah. I’ll, no, you, you won’t have to, but it is, what is it based on? True events. Yeah. Yeah. So you, it does give you a bit of a history of a particular period in his life.

But yeah, this whole idea of authenticity and then. Faking authenticity or creating characters, all this sort of stuff the second half of the conversation. So that’s where we’re heading to, but yeah, maybe authenticity isn’t the goal. Maybe it’s what happens when you stop trying to sound like anyone else.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And early on in, an artist or a creative’s life, you are definitely trying to sound like someone else. ‘Cause you’re trying to find your own sound or your own style. And by sound it could be, the sound of the words written on the page. It’s not necessarily a musical thing. The voice, you’re trying to find your own voice. And to do that, you have to imitate others to a degree.

You have to explore other people’s work, see what they did, and, that informs your own decision making and your own creative choices. And there’s a whole bunch of reasons why you might do that. At some point morph into finding your own. Sound and your own truths, but then that’s different again, to your identity and also a persona. There’s a whole bunch of other things that, that spring from that, but yeah.

Breallyn: Oh, things for us to dig into next week then?

Lyndon: Okay. Here’s a question that I think might bridge this episode with next week’s. If the artist doesn’t believe it or feel it or wrestle with it, why should we?

Breallyn: Yeah. That is a good question, but I think that there’ll be people who would wrestle with things more than the artist might. In certain ways. If you hear a song or read something and it just absolutely strikes a chord with you, it might not be a lyric that. The songwriter, but they obviously wrote it, it meant something to them, but it might not hit as hit them as deeply as it hits you.

So I think that’s fair. And that’s like what the, I guess the star shine of art is that it, it reaches so far and so wide that, what the artist might have meant in the first place isn’t even what the audience receives.

That happens a lot. So I think that is, yeah, that’s legit that happens and that it happens authentically.

Lyndon: So you’re saying that perhaps sometimes something is written and it’s interpreted differently to the intention of the writer, and then that’s still okay as well?

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s okay as well.

Lyndon: But that’s not what you’re saying.

Breallyn: Yeah, I think that is part of it. I think the best art does happen authentically and comes from an authentic place. But once it’s finished being delivered, the other half of art is who receives it and how they receive it. And you might write a song that say a hundred people listen to it. 90 of them might go, oh, nice song.

And 10 of them might go. Oh, I love this line because of this, or, that whole thing just absolutely reminded me of, when I was 25 and this thing happened to me and that was my heart at the time and I can’t believe you’ve captured it so well or something like that.

Lyndon: Yeah. And it makes me think too of like instrumentals, like where there is no words. Yeah. Like how do you then, like in instru, do you reckon sometimes instrumentals feel like I feel like the documentaries of the music world, like where you just don’t question their authenticity. Yeah. There’s no sort of mask, there’s no pretense or often it doesn’t feel like there’s a performance in the way of the music. I don’t know. That’s just some, sometimes how my brain works.

Actually that’s in a way how visual arts are open to so much interpretation. ‘Cause there’s no lyric there. You might stare at something and feel a particular emotion, or you might even be taken to a place based on what you are looking at. And then you go, what is this painting actually about? And then, reflections on the water. Reflections on the water, and you’re like, oh, it was just, yeah. It isn’t everything that you may have built it up to be. Yeah. But yeah.

Breallyn: But if it means that to you then, that. That is legit. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah, look, I think it’s an important discussion because actually do believe that there’s a good chance your art isn’t gonna hit the mark or move a listener. It’s not authentic. Even if I don’t a hundred percent know what authentic means. Yeah. I know what it means for me, and I’ve missed the mark. I know when it’s not.

Breallyn: Yeah. Done. Yep. I think, yeah, I think an artist does know they go that bit. Yeah. That bit doesn’t show my whole heart or doesn’t resonate with me as much as this other bit does. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. You go, oh, this is gonna need to rewrite.

Breallyn: Yeah, definitely.

Lyndon: Or I’m not ready to show this to the world.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s a bit iffy in my books and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny that happens because somebody else could read. Read that bit or read the whole section and not realize that bit you don’t like or you don’t feel that it’s, it could be perfectly.

Lyndon: Fine with it. Yeah. And that’s not the point.

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s not the point. But then I think, authenticity is something that we do respond to very much. So if that kind of ring of authenticity doesn’t sound throughout the piece, then it. I don’t know that it does hit the mark with people. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yep. And then of course, there’s that whole performance side of something. If you think about going to see a band and they just seem like they’re trying too hard to be punk. Yeah. Or something like that. Then you’re eh. Yeah. I know. Performance. And we all respond a bit the same, don’t we? Yeah.

Breallyn: So I think we should talk about performance, like in our next episode, how performance and show business interacts and intersects with authenticity. That would be a good thing to talk about.

Lyndon: Yeah. ‘Cause authenticity. Doesn’t mean always telling the truth. No. Or being raw. No. So sometimes it’s carefully crafted. It might feel authentic, but it’s carefully crafted and it can be marketed as real. But it’s anything. But yeah. So that’ll be next week. Okay.

Breallyn: Leave you on that note. Thanks for listening. Thanks.

Lyndon: Thanks for listening.

Breallyn: I am Breallyn.

Lyndon: I am Lyndon. Did we not do that earlier?

Breallyn: We didn’t do it at the start. So this is your first episode that you’ve listened to. You now know who we are. Great to meet you, and we’ll see you next week.

Lyndon: We’ll see you next week.

Pain In The Arts was recorded at Morning Phase Recording Studio, and produced by me, Lyndon Wesley. Thanks for listening. Now you can visit our website, www.PainInTheArts.Life There’s some blogs up there. Transcripts for episodes are being rolled out.

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