June 17, 2025 · Episode 25
48 Min, 30 Sec 

Summary

Technology changes, attention fades—art keeps asking to be noticed.
What happens to art in the age of attention, when focus is the rarest currency?

In this episode, Breallyn and Lyndon trace a conversation that starts in a Melbourne café and spirals out into a reflection on art, technology, and focus. From Jimi Hendrix’s experimental guitar work to the murky role of AI in writing, they explore how every generation wrestles with change—and how artists keep finding ways to make something that matters.

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Transcript

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

Lyndon: And with Lyndon. We spoke a lot about coffee last week and I noticed that, uh, well, I’m assuming you spent another morning at the Tin. No, you told me you’re at the Tin Pot Cafe.

Breallyn: I was at the Tin Pot.

Lyndon: Cafe in Melbourne.

Breallyn: Yep. Which is definitely one of my very favorite little cafes.

Lyndon: But it’s not favorite because of the coffee or the food, is it? No. So you’re just like the building?

Breallyn: It’s the decor, the vibe. Yeah. The old building.

Lyndon: The staff are okay, aren’t they?

Breallyn: Yeah. Yep. It’s, uh, I don’t know, it just is the very first time I ever walked into it, which was many, many years ago. I just felt like I could sit there and write stuff and it was back at a time when I had three little kids, preschoolers at home with me all the time. So my chances of getting anywhere, like literally to the letter box or the toilet on my own were impossible. So let alone, Oh, that’s right. A cafe to sit and write.

Lyndon: They’re your best friends, aren’t they, when they’re toddlers?

Breallyn: I used to have to take all three of them out to the front bin to put a bag of rubbish in because they’re just,

Lyndon: And the, the bins were so far away, weren’t they? How far away were they from the front door steps? Yeah. Not even.

Breallyn: Yeah. But yeah, I was like, I’m just gonna put this on the toddler. Wanna be pick up, picked up. And why? I don’t know. They just, they were just around me like all the time. They were just constantly.

Lyndon: Do you think that was a product of just the size of the townhouse we were in?

Breallyn: I guess so. And the size of the children that they were at the time. Yeah.

Lyndon: But just proximity. Like they, if you are leaving the house for five seconds, they know it. Yeah. Unless they’re in their room.

Breallyn: But it’s just a, a mum thing, I think. Like you just, constantly, there’s always one grip to your leg. You’re trying to think about something, someone’s talking to you. Yeah. Just, that constant nature of co-regulating them I suppose. So yeah, that was,

Lyndon: There’s a word that was never around when we were kids, co-regulating.

Breallyn: That is true.

Lyndon: Or even regulating. The only thing you had to regulate in the seventies or eighties was your temperature.

Breallyn: Yeah. True. Not your emotions. Forget about them. Yeah. Yeah.

So the Tin Pot, now these many years later, I do quite often pop in there and do some writing sometimes organizing, and this morning planning a podcast. So there we go.

Lyndon: Wow.

Breallyn: The reason I was at the Tin Pot this morning and why I’m quite often there these days, uh, is because I drive with our son to his school, which is over in that neck of the woods. So it’s a fair drive and. I drive in for a couple of reasons. I’m sure other parents of teens will understand this. Driving with your teen to school, it’s a bit of a carrot that you can hold out in order to get them up outta bed. And that’s definitely,

Lyndon: How’s that working out?

Breallyn: One of the uses that I’m doing at the moment, oh, it sort of worked this morning. Yeah, it’s the struggle is real trying to get kids outta bed when their bodies just don’t wanna do it, I suppose. But yeah, it’s one of those things of like, if you can drive to school, it’s a little bit more motivation to get there.

Lyndon: I’m just thinking about like our grandparents’ day, where I suppose the issues of getting kids to school were probably the same, but once they turned, 18, I guess in Victoria. If that was the age, they’d go down to the cop shop, the police station, you know, drive down the road a bit and they’d go, yeah, here’s your license.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s right. I know.

Lyndon: Whereas now it’s a hundred and well, in Victoria they’ve gotta get their 120 hours up. How many of those have to be done at night?

Breallyn: 20.

Lyndon: 20 at night?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: So yeah. And you’ve gotta log them in your app and verify them and everything. Yeah. It’s a bit of a process these days. So yeah, that’s why essentially teenagers are, you know, having to spend 120 hours with their parents over the course of a couple years, which I have to say I’m a big fan of, like that is very good. A, for their driving and B, which I’m finding for the relationship. Yeah, I actually wanted to talk about, that aspect of it this morning because,

Lyndon: We’re talking about driving?

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s the podcast topic. No, talking about so this morning my son and I driving to school, it’s a long drive. We were caught in traffic, of course. ‘Cause we didn’t leave early enough. We did get coffees on the way.

Lyndon: Hang on a minute. Hang on a minute.

Breallyn: Now I’ve just

Lyndon: Hang on a minute.

Breallyn: Outed myself. Oh no.

Lyndon: So you are hanging out this get up, you can drive to school. This is the carrot, is it? So that he gets to school on time and then. On the way you decided to get coffee?

Breallyn: I did.

Lyndon: And then what time did he get to school?

Breallyn: Okay. Yeah. Alright. We were a little late.

Lyndon: No, what time did he get to school?

Breallyn: I’m not going into those sort of details, so I’m, I’m gonna

Lyndon: Say school starts at nine. I bet you he wasn’t there before nine 30.

Breallyn: Well, if you’re gonna be late anyway, you may as be, be late with coffee.

Lyndon: Yeah, I guess. Okay. So we

Breallyn: Weren’t even gonna talk about coffee in this episode. Now we’re talking, talking about,

Lyndon: I guess when I used to ride my bike to school,

Breallyn: Two coffee. I’ve had

Lyndon: Sometimes justify my lateness, you know, if I’m gonna be late, I might as well just get there for the next class and be on time for that. Yeah.

Breallyn: Now I know where he gets it from.

Lyndon: I was my own man. Yeah. I was up, I was just listening to the D degeneration on the radio and I didn’t wanna miss out on the show. Oh my gosh. Anyway, go on, on, on with your story of, uh, gee, coffee, carrots and truancy by the sound of it.

Car Rides, Music, and Parenting Teens

Breallyn: The good thing is driving. Sure. It relates to about the driving. Yeah.

Lyndon: So the arts somehow,

Breallyn: Somehow. Well, how it relates is our driving times mm-hmm. Have been the best music listening and appreciation times. So it turns out our son has a lot. Similar music tastes to me. Some of them different. Definitely he’s in a punk band and you know, listens to a lot of heavier stuff that I’m not that into.

But for months now, we’ve been listening to huge amounts of like my back catalog and you know, stuff that I was into when I was his age that he’s come across himself and really enjoys as well. So we have done a lot of listening to Pink Floyd a couple of months ago.

Lyndon: All our kids have been into the classics.

Breallyn: Yeah, they have, which has been great and very varied tastes as well. As in they’ll listen to, yeah. Any of the old stuff, like right across the board. I think of our sons will

Lyndon: Listen to like Engelbert Humperdink, you know.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm. Lots of stuff like Queen or, just all sorts of old things that they’ve all enjoyed. In the car, especially car listening is great. Our youngest son and I went to watch um, Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii, which was like a re-release of this old doco. Yeah. I went to the movies to watch that, which was really good. And yeah, we just really enjoyed talking about old bands and stuff. This morning we were listening to you actually guess, what were we listening to this morning?

Lyndon: Gee, what of all the old bands that have, yeah. Okay. Been around a for the last,

Breallyn: I’ll give a clue.

Lyndon: 50 years. Yeah. Or longer. Yeah, I need some clues. Okay. Why, what would I, I obviously know the band.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Okay. So it’s, and that narrows it down.

Breallyn: Band. I used to listen to.

Lyndon: Fields of the Nephilim.

Breallyn: No, I’m yet to introduce him to those delights.

Lyndon: Oh my gosh. Aussie or no,

Breallyn: No, international sixties. Sixties slash very early seventies.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. British.

Breallyn: British slash American. What American singer guitarist, British bass player and drummer.

Lyndon: I don’t know.

Breallyn: Very famous singer. Uh, well, very famous guitarist slash singer. Okay. What, so three piece blue guitar punk, not punk, sort of just sixties psychedelic era. Oh, Hendrix. Yeah. Yep. We listened to Electric Ladyland by Oh yeah. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which was great. So yeah, our son had talked about how he’d been listening to well, to that band recently. So that was fun that I got to talk about how I was into it.

Jimi Hendrix: Experimentation and Sound

Lyndon: Well, you sort of got me into Hendrix, like I knew about Hendrix before I met you. And, I had, I’m not sure why I just or always had this, Like an anti commercialism streak. I don’t know why. So anything that got played a lot or that was popular around me, I kind of just looked for other things. Mm. Yeah. And in a way I probably got into Hendrix through Stevie Ray Vaughan a little bit

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: As well. Because you were a fan of Hendrix, that’s when I listened to like the albums. Yeah. Rather than just the singles. That’s probably the change that happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Breallyn: No, I, I was a. Big fan back in the day. Yeah. So that was great.

Lyndon: So who put that on in the car? You or our son?

Breallyn: Well, he suggested it and so,

Lyndon: Ah,

Breallyn: I, I’m, I’m the DJ in the car because he’s driving.

Lyndon: Ah, ’cause he’s driving.

Breallyn: He’s, yeah,

Lyndon: Yeah, so that was good. Well, he was the DJ in the car when he and I were gunning it around Tazzie.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: In the in the little MG. So that was good. Yeah. And I, I’d be there saying, okay, after that song, you need to listen to this Baby Animals song.

Breallyn: Well, the good thing about him is his willing to listen and,, interested and Yeah. Is like a, an appreciative listener, because he goes, oh, right, I, yeah. I see what’s good about this, or I see how well they’re doing this, or what’s different about, mm. What they’re doing here. So yeah, he’s a, he’s a really good listener that way and actually that leads us towards the topic that I wanted to talk about today. ‘Cause I, I, I’m definitely, it’s kind of for me, a continuation of my conversation with him this morning.

And the topic is art in the age of attention. And look, we have touched on these things. We, I think we’re always gonna be coming back to these themes throughout the life of our podcast, I guess.

Lyndon: Did you, did you say in the age of detention?

Breallyn: Attention.

Lyndon: Sorry. I was thinking about my schooling years again. “I didn’t call him Mr. Wiggitybob.”

Breallyn: I know you did.

Lyndon: Oh gosh.

Breallyn: I know. Yeah. I think our schooling times don’t stand too much attention.

Lyndon: Just on Jimi Hendrix. I was thinking about him, or listening to some Hendrix and, uh, it’s widely known. Like he’s a name synonymous with one of the great guitarists of our time and perhaps songwriters as well. Like, but he’s really, like, when you think of Jimi Hendrix, you just think of guitar playing. Even people that sort of aren’t into guitar know that he was a guitarist, the famous guitarist. Yeah.

But I think what’s not talked about so much is all the sounds and the experimentation and sort of a lot of the groundbreaking recording techniques that he, pursued in the studio. Mm. You know, that’s. Where a lot of his sound results. Yeah. Uh, , so it’s not just his guitar playing prowess, it was his, his exploration of the guitar at that time, you know, new sort of technologies that were coming in and recording techniques and just experimenting basically.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s crazy.

Lyndon: Just like he did with the drugs.

Breallyn: Well, one big goes experiment hand. Yeah, for sure.

Lyndon: And that’s kids why you should experiment with sounds.

Breallyn: No, I know that. I actually find that a bit of a challenge and driving with my son to kind go, Yeah. You know, these artists, they were really writing some different things, all fueled by their drug experiences. No doubt. However, yeah. Don’t take drugs, but enjoy your music. Yeah. It’s, I know it’s it’s a challenge. I don’t know how to thread that needle.

Lyndon: Well, yeah, me either. I can’t thread any needle at the moment unless I’ve got my special glasses on and a thimble just in case.

Breallyn: Even then I’d put money on it that you couldn’t do it.

Lyndon: Yeah. What am I gonna stitch anyway? Nothing.

Technology’s Impact on Art

Breallyn: So when you’re talking about Jimi Hendrix making music with, you know, different experimentation in the studio and using new techniques and sort of following ideas that hadn’t been explored up until then. His leading towards what I’m talking about today. We’ve touched on it before about how, you know, the current technologies and so on impact art and how there’s a lot of pressure on artists to be able to be, you know, discoverable all the time, continually putting out content and so on.

And I, I guess there’s just this like, when you, whenever you are in a time period, it’s thinking, it, it’s a balance between how all the new technologies can be useful to you. And also, I. The kind of unknown about how they’re gonna impact things.

So I know that in the time of Hendrix and other bands, you know, using layering techniques with a recording or, you know, using an electric guitar, not just to amplify a guitar sound, but to create new sounds that would never have come out of an acoustic guitar. You know, these were all like things that people did to make new music, but there were also things that were really criticized as well of like, oh, that’s not music, or, that’s cheating. Or, there’s always this backlash, I suppose, with using the affordances of technology to make something new.

It’s interesting, I’ve mentioned that the Pink Floyd. Documentary that our son and I had gone and seen. And one of the questions, one of the, the, it’s such a weird doco, it’s really not put in context or anything, but anyway, they’ve remastered. It really worked.

Lyndon: Is this the the Pompeii live in Pompeii?

Breallyn: Yeah. Live in Pompeii, which is just like the band literally playing in an old amphitheater in Pompeii.

Lyndon: Yeah. I can’t say that I was taken by the original version No, myself. I tell what the

Breallyn: Clarity of the, the music now and the, and the visuals as well, like the right, the quality of the film, like you can see so clearly in here.

Lyndon: But I just remember watching it and then having to go, oh, maybe at the time this was like a big deal because they’re in Pompeii, you know? I couldn’t, yeah, I just couldn’t. Yeah, it just seemed, I dunno, maybe it was just like, seemed, it seemed, I don’t know. It just seemed so out a date for now. And just out

Breallyn: Of. Out of all sorts of like, there was no audience.

Lyndon: There was no audience. And I just didn’t know why they were there.

Breallyn: No. And there was lots of shots of like them, them playing, but them, being filmed playing by the film crew, which means there’s another set of film crew behind the film crew. But there was no like, like, why is that happening? Why have we chosen Pompeii? Why are we doing this?

Lyndon: Yeah. And I also looked at it and thought they haven’t seemed to really paid much attention to how they micd up the drums or things like that. Yeah. So I didn’t really know what I was watching. Yeah.

Breallyn: It was a bit strange. It was. And then there was in dispersed with some of the live, songs was like them all eating in the, in the cafeteria essentially. I, I didn’t see that in a bit of a chat.

Lyndon: Maybe that was in the director’s cut. Yeah. Mind you, I didn’t watch the whole thing.

Breallyn: No, we did when and we enjoyed it. But yeah, one of the questions was, you know, with essentially, I’m gonna paraphrase because I can’t remember exactly.

Lyndon: You can have so many Pink Floyd fans writing in and just

Breallyn: Hounding me. Oh, please do. Yeah.

Lyndon: Trolling you now.

Breallyn: That’s fine. Yeah. ‘Cause I’m gonna get this question and answer incorrect, but I think the, gist of it was being asked to Roger Waters like, I think it was to Roger. Yeah. You make this music, you know, like, what do you say to your critics who are saying that the music that you’re making with all these synthesizers and, and laed sounds like isn’t music and will never be music type thing.

And you know, and his answer was, well, we’re making the sounds that we make, we are making something new with what we’ve got. You know? Yeah. It’s not traditional instrumentation and not used in a traditional way, but who’s to say that it’s not music? So yeah, I think, I think there’s always this wrestling match between, what’s a new art form? How’s, how’s the technology influencing the art, and how is the art using the technology to progress itself forward and to create new genre and, you know, new things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I guess that’s just a, you know, we’ve, as I said, we’ve touched on that before.

Innovation in Music Technology

Lyndon: Thinking about Hendrix too. I mean, he, he played left-handed, but he used a right-handed guitar. Yeah. So even right from the outset, he was, using things differently to how they were intended. Yeah, absolutely. So it wasn’t, it, wouldn’t have been at all strange to him, it’s just how, how he was.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And, uh, I think about some of the, I. The pedals that he used, like we all know we’ve heard about the wah pedal. I’m not sure if he was the first to use it, but I know that the wah pedal was actually invented for trumpet players.

Breallyn: Oh, is that right? Yeah,

Lyndon: I’m pretty sure it was. I don’t think, oh, I

Breallyn: Guess does it mimic when they have the stopper in the end of the trumpet?

Lyndon: Yeah, the mute. Yeah, the mute,

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I think so. Something to do with that.

Breallyn: That’s interesting.

Lyndon: So, and even say a fuzz pedal or a distortion pedal, like one of the very early ones was designed to mimic an amplifier that was distorting. So amplifiers were never meant to. Like Guitar Amps initially, they weren’t built to distort a guitar. They were built to amplify the guitar. Mm.

So the fact that people guitarists like Hendrix were turning them up and driving them, to the point of distortion, is once again, that’s not what was intended. So even at that real basic level, mm. Guys like Hendrix were pushing the envelope because it was a, desirable sound. It was exciting and new.

The Beatles did the same thing when they plugged their guitars directly into the mixing desk. So the mixing desk or the console that was also designed to, to bring vocals and instruments up to a listening level that could then be. Cut to a record, you know, cut to vinyl. But if you turn up the, essentially the volume controls on the channel, you can get it to the point where it’s distorting. So if you think about the guitar sound on the Beatles song Revolution, that’s a, an electric guitar plugged into an engineer’s console and then turned up too loud,

Breallyn: Right? Yeah. That’s what

Lyndon: That sound is. Yeah. You know, so it creates

Breallyn: A whole new sound and vibe to, yeah. So,

Lyndon: And even when I think about pedals today, like there’s been such a massive revolution in, I think we’re hitting nerdy guitar talk here, NGT, but there’s been, a revolution over the past, I know, 15 years, I guess, of boutique guitar pedals. Yeah. And, and guitar pedals being able to do amazing things and fit into much smaller, sizes, you know, so you get these micro pedals and things like that, but there’s no, like all the sort of technology that’s used inside a pedal wasn’t designed for guitarists.

You know, the reason pedals have got smaller is because mobile phones have got smaller, so initially, like with all of these products, they were using chips, like chip sets that were designed by designed by com. I’m trying to think of companies now, Phillips, or, I’ve completely lost it. Sony or, yeah. The, designed for other uses, like equipment, like whether that be radios for the military. Or whether it be equipment for hospitals, you know, it’s for the greater good of man.

It’s not, it’s not for the guitarists of the world, but people that are, you know, you get people that are into all this sort of stuff that design, that design something new and go, this sounds amazing. Hey, try this between your guitar and your amplifier. You know? Yeah. Because we, we think it’ll sound really cool, you know, and

Breallyn: Like with speaking about guitar sounds and pedals and so on, like, now that’s completely accepted, legitimate, embraced. But I think in the first place there was a lot of backlash by the purists of kind of going, hang on, that doesn’t sound like a guitar any longer. Like you’ve, you’ve perverted the sound, you’ve used a guitar for not its intended purpose, and, is that still a legitimate way to use a guitar, or is that just. Are you just doing something that we really don’t wanna go down that pathway?

Lyndon: Well, a lot of those early guitar amps, like the first lot of amps that were built, I guess a lot of them, their controls on them were facing the back of them, not the front. And if you, if you see old footage of Yeah. Bands like The Beatles and, others playing, they’re standing behind the amps. So the amps are in front of them because it literally was just to amplify the instruments.

Like initially, yeah. Acoustic guitars got amplified and then that was just so that they could be heard, like say with a big band or something like that. Yeah. And, uh, so the amplifier was literally just to amplify the sound. So the controls are facing backwards because you’re, you’re meant to be standing behind the amp.

Then when guitarists started standing in front of the amp and realizing that if you stood too close, you’d get this feedback loop where the sound coming outta the amp would go back into the pickup and then go back into the amp and you’d get all the squeals and the, the different, uh, things that would make the girls go crazy. And, the rest is history. Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. And again, it’s like incorrect usage. Correct. Yeah. Turning into, yeah. A new sound and a new usage. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe it’s always gonna be that way that something new is able to be done and some people will go, let’s not do that ’cause it’s ruining what we’ve already got. Mm. And others will just kind of continue ahead and do it. Yeah.

Lyndon: Samplings. Come into it. Yeah. You know, I think you were saying before, that’s how different genres have and sub genres have all been sort of founded, if you like, or popularized. So hip hop’s a a really good example. Mm. Of that.

The Evolving Landscape of Art and Attention

Breallyn: I think it doesn’t like, I I, to broaden the, the conversation to not just music, but

Lyndon: What?!?

Breallyn: Sorry.

Lyndon: Suddenly I was like, oh, this is, this is a, a good surprise topic.

Breallyn: But

Lyndon: Can just nerd out.

Breallyn: I think we’ve had, we’ve had some of that. It’s, good, but yeah. Let’s, uh, let’s keep the lid on that jar. Yeah, it’s to think about some of the other things like, and obviously I’m thinking about writers and AI, how that’s changed things for writers specifically, with chat GPT and different, other AI platforms and so on, being so useful and so predominant in all kinds of writing now.

It has changed the landscape significantly. Like that’s probably as huge a change for writers as, , electrifying instruments was for musicians perhaps. So yeah, that’s like in my medium. There’s a big change upon us at the moment. I think for, photographers sort of several years ago when digital photography suddenly was not just available but affordable for a lot of people, like that was a massive change.

And like, I remember the talk at that time of, a real identity crisis for photography. Like what does it mean now? If images are digitized, if you can change things, in Photoshop like that, I guess that was an,, a secondary part of that digitizing process of yeah, being able to change your image, being able to edit things later. Like it’s no longer about capturing a moment and um, getting the light right and the, aperture and your f stop all correct.

And, you know, being able to do that and having the skill to do that, like all of a sudden it seemed to be like, anyone can do it. And, you can take a thousand images and, choose the best one. You don’t even have to capture like a couple of good frames there, like, mm-hmm. Yeah.

So it, it wasn’t even just that the technology changed the art form but the value of the art form was. Kind of up for up for debate.

Lyndon: Was challenged.

Breallyn: Yeah, certainly challenged and, and like, what is the value in an image and what is, what makes good art here now? And I mean, I think even well before that when photography, back in the day was a new medium painters were like, hang on a minute, what’s this new? Capture an image in a second thing when we’re, painting away here to try to, paint something that is, is a, is a image that people will look at, , read into, understand the story behind it.

If you can just take a photo and capture all that in a moment. Our, art form is now questioned. So yeah, I guess, it’s an unending cycle of

Lyndon: It is. And some things get left behind and yeah, it’s hard to know. It, it does to me. It highlights. From an artist’s point of view, the importance for you to be able to find your voice as an artist as early as possible, Mm-hmm. I’m just thinking of photographers, if you’re able to sort of go,

“No, black and white photography, black and white nature photography is my thing. And that’s what gives me the most joy, and that’s what I find. I like to base my lifestyle around that. Going out into the desert or into these wild places taking black and white photos”

If that’s your thing and that’s how, you, uh, like to um, communicate to the world and that’s where you see a place in the world, then it doesn’t matter. Then what happens, Because if now it’s, say the digital photography is, is taking over, you can still do that. That can still be your voice.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: You, know, like you’ll use the technology to your advantage. It might speed up your workflow. It might mean that you can now process your photos in the back of your car.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And send them wherever you want or you can create your own shop front with your photos. So, if you’re just sitting there worried about what digital photography is now gonna do and whether you can still have a career and you haven’t found your voice and you don’t know where you fit in, then yeah, I can imagine it can be harder for you. Or maybe there’s more choices. See, that’s the thing, isn’t it?

Sometimes just through circumstance and opportunity or lack of, you get cornered into creating something, creating something from nothing sometimes, and then that becomes your medium. And, uh, when there’s so much choice and so much scope and anyone can now, Put a few loops together and produce a song in their girlfriend’s closet. You gotta start somewhere. You gotta start somewhere and you,

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Kinda to gotta know who you are and you know, that, that takes time.

Music Consumption and the Attention Economy

Breallyn: We are spoiled for choice and we’re, our attention spans are limited. And the calls for attention. Sorry, what was that?

Lyndon: I was thinking about something else.

Breallyn: Yeah. You know, the, just the pool of attention from every different quarter. It’s relentless and unending. Also something I was talking with our son about this morning, one of the things he likes to talk to his friends and that about is their music. , Hey, what are you listening to? And he said, people will pull up their Spotify lists. And he said, there’s just. Thousands and thousands of songs on it.

And he says, what do you listen to? What do you really like? And he finds out that people they’ll listen quickly to song, or like part of a song, add it to their list. And they never kind of go back and really listen to it. Like, it’s just like, oh yeah, I like that. Like that, like that. And they don’t ever listen to a full song.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Or re-listen to it or, like analytically and purposefully listen to it. Active listening, really thinking about what they’re hearing and so on. And obviously he’s not the only one that does do active listening and that, that he says people are, are just really struggling with that. Which I was thinking about and thought. I feel like that’s, probably, it’s not a hugely new struggle. Like definitely it’s, it’s so much elevated. Today and everyone’s got so much access to music.

But I feel like when we were growing up, people wouldn’t actively listen that much either. They were just like, oh, I like this song, or I like this artist. ‘Cause of the fashion. It kind of identifies, you know, with the stuff I like. But they weren’t really listening to kind of pull it apart and figure out what’s going on or, , why they liked it or that sort of thing either.

Lyndon: Yeah. There’s always been trends and earworms in music. That’s a thing.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It has always been about getting people’s attention and keeping their attention. I think that timeframes just shrunken a lot.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: But yeah, I, I guess people I became friends with or connected with, I knew that. We would talk about music, maybe like our son is with his band members and so on. And yeah, we would all read the liner of notes of albums.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I just found that incredibly interesting. But we were a minority.

Breallyn: Yeah, yeah.

Lyndon: So that’s sort of what, what you’re saying.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.

Lyndon: But there was, and I mean this isn’t news to, to anybody really, but the, one of the major differences was there was only a few radio stations. Yeah. And so there was only a few sort of media outlets for music. And sure there was more opportunity for live performance on TV or faked live performance on TV. There’s more opportunity in, in that sense. But what it meant was that if a band was on TV, there’s a good chance that most of the population saw that.

Breallyn: Yep. Or, somebody would talk about it the next day so they

Lyndon: Or someone would talk about it.

Breallyn: Yeah. So it happened with, was the only thing on,

Lyndon: It obviously happened with music, it happened with TV shows. Yeah. Movies. And so you could, the big players in the industries could plan simultaneous releases all, all around the world. And so you had this, it’s just a completely different thing.

Whereas now a band can pop up, say, from Norway, put something out that, that happens to um, find an audience online, and then they can look at the metrics online and go, oh, we’ve got a couple of thousand listeners in Melbourne. We’ve also got a thousand fans in New Zealand, so they can fly out here, do a show in Melbourne, do a show in New Zealand.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: Yeah. And, and meanwhile, most of us don’t even know that they flew in, did a show and flew out.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm. Or even exist.

Lyndon: Yeah. We’re still wondering where Norway is. Hi to all. Our, our Norway listeners. We didn’t know each other. No. Hey. Okay. Name a, a famous band that came outta Norway. Norway. I’ll give you a clue. In grade five, I mimed to one of their songs. Oh, no, that was Prince. Okay. I think I was in grade five when they had their biggest hit single. And their name is an expression, look at my face. It’s a two syllable expression. Actually. Their songs come back in vogue in recent years. Take On Me by Aha.

Breallyn: Aha, okay. Yep.

Lyndon: Yeah,

Breallyn: I, I was actually watching

Lyndon: Morton, what was his name? Morton Hasket. I

Breallyn: Was watching the singer of Art, like sing that song the other day on, you know, on a reel. And I believe he’s now got Parkinson’s Disease, so he was still singing it. And it was, there was, you know, tremor in his voice and so on. But it was actually quite a haunting rendition. It was, it was just an acapella, like singing. Yeah, it was actually Wow. Really Yeah, really deep mean

Lyndon: Oh, I was a massive fan of that band.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Well, he always had a, did not, he always had a, uh, sort of vibrato in his right. Vocal, I think. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Breallyn: Well, yeah, this was. Definitely, I think, I guess more from the illness. But yeah, it was just a, a really, I don’t know, very brave little performance that yeah. Very exposed sort of performance. Um, yeah. Beautiful. So there you go. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I did not know they were from Norway.

Lyndon: Oslo, yep.

Breallyn: You’ve been watching lots of Nordic Noir

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: TV shows. So Norway’s sort of big for you at the moment?

Lyndon: Well, the show I’m watching at the moment is actually set in Norway, but all the other ones I’ve watched was set in Denmark or Sweden, and Iceland I think was one as well. So

Breallyn: Nordic is a bit of an umbrella term for that region of the world, isn’t it?

Lyndon: Yeah. Yep.

Breallyn: Now, last night we popped on a TV show and what got us over the line with starting that one. As opposed to all the other.

Lyndon: It was my resistance was down.

Breallyn: Your resistance was down. But, oh man, sometimes we sit there and we’ll just watch all the trailers and actually never pick a show.

Lyndon: We would call it a night. We’re not alone.

Breallyn: No, it’s too much. Too much choice. Once again. Yeah. But this was billed as a Tartan Noir because it was set in Scotland and we were like, we’ve gotta see what that means. I was like, in my mind,

Lyndon: There’s nothing noir about this.

Breallyn: There was nothing noir about it. It was, it was just, ’cause it was set in Scotland. That was it.

Lyndon: Because aside from the, the nice, like when I think of Nordic Noir, I think about haunting theme music. I think about long slow panning shots with beautiful scenery.

Breallyn: It’s an atmosphere, isn’t it?

Lyndon: There’s an atmosphere.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And

Breallyn: It’s, it’s a pacing thing as well, isn’t it? And a, it’s definitely anti Hollywood.

Lyndon: Well, this is what I realized last night in watching this. Apparently there’s a whole new genre called Tartan Noir, and I realized in, uh, the Nordic Noir, there’s no smart asses.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: There’s,

Breallyn: Which is so nice.

Lyndon: There’s, there’s none of that. Now I do, I’m listening to me talking. I sound old.

Breallyn: I don’t think it’s the first time,

Lyndon: But there’s no sarcasm. You know, I’m big on sarcasm. Personally, would she get, there’s no sarcasm in Nordic? No. That I can recall.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So it’s, it is like, there’s just it’s a breath of fresh air, a fresh Nordic air,

Breallyn: Icy breath of air.

AI and Creative Expression

Breallyn: So I was thinking that while we’re all grappling with new media and new platforms and new ways in which we’re supposed to be visible and clickable and all of that, I started to think about. Other I guess artistic moments as a bit of a, like a secret garden that you can choose to enter whenever, the mood takes you.

I suppose, like, I know for me I’m certainly using AI in my copywriting business, and I don’t hesitate to say that like it’s, it’s speeding up my processes. It’s never gonna replace me and, what I can bring to a client. But yeah, it’s changing, the way I go about working and so on.

But I’m never gonna use it in my creative writing because why would I give AI all that fun when I could be doing it myself? And not only, you know, not only that I, I don’t feel like it’s a, yeah, like I don’t want to have a regurgitation of everybody else’s creative work that’s been. Stolen and essentially put into the mainframe that, spits out all our AI answers. I want to be developing those voices myself and those characters and so on.

So for me at this point, it’s certainly something that is so separate, even though I want to eventually share that with people and have, my work printed and, and produced, I don’t, it’s like, it’s mine for now while I’m working on it you know, when I go and work, it’s just between me and the work, you know, which feels like such an indulgence sometimes. It’s like if you go to journal or just have a creative date with yourself or make something that’s perhaps not even a thing.

You know, like you might play with pottery or , go in the garden or something, do something that’s creative. It just actually feels like it’s a, yeah, it’s a step away now from all of the clamor of getting art out there and, you know, using all the different technologies and getting all the stuff done,

Lyndon: Well, would we have got like light globes, electricity, and Bluetooth and all these other things? If AI was around back then, like AI isn’t coming up with new thoughts No. Or inventing anything?

Breallyn: Nope.

Lyndon: So aside from the fact that, yeah, if you have a creative bone in your body and that is what floats your boat, whether it be professionally or as a hobbyist or whatever, even as just personal therapy, you find that you’ve gotta do that to regulate your emotions and to deal with whatever’s happening in your life. It is, like you say, it’s the, the act of doing that that has value for you.

Now, if you also have reason to find an audience for that, or to commercialize it in some way, or to make a living from it, or to turn a hobby into a profession, that also can be a worthwhile pursuit. You know, that can also fill you up because it’s another challenge. It’s another aspect on the flip side of, of what you’re creating, but it’s through that whole process that new ideas come about and are presented to the world um, new schools of thought, like you’re saying before, new genres. And new inventions pushing society and culture forward. AI’s not doing that.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: And it’s meant to be a tool that we um, use to help us. And as we’re saying a couple weeks ago, I think we can really get lost in it as well sometimes. I know this week chat, GPT promised to do a whole lot of things for me,

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: , But had I known more about it, I would’ve known that it can’t email me. You know, it can’t create an appointment in my Google Calendar, things like that. And it was, it made, yeah. It was saying it’ll do these all thing. And I’m like, can you do that? It’s like, sure. And it, you know, just check your email in a couple of minutes and it will be there. And I thought, I don’t think it can email me, can it?

Breallyn: You were a little excited and you were waiting on that email?

Lyndon: No. Well, I was like, hang on a minute, I don’t really want to give it my email address. And then after fff on about, with. iCloud email, which I don’t use, and I thought maybe I’ll set up an address in here. I just thought, you know what, I’ve got a pretty good relationship with Chat GPT. I trust it. I gave it my email address,

Breallyn: Could go wrong.

Lyndon: And of course there’s no email. And then I’ve got back to it and I’ve said, uh, so no email there. Do you think that’s because you actually don’t have an inbox of your own, you don’t have an email account and you can’t send it to me? And it’s like, oh, you’re right. I actually don’t and I can’t send you an email. I’m like, why’d you tell me? Right? So, led me down. This led me getting onto something I hate doing, which is forums where obviously other people have had this exact same. Problem of being gaslit by Chat GPT.

And so I think what happens, is it, ’cause it’s just reading a whole bunch of stuff online. It knows about email, it knows about your Google calendar. It knows about, ICS files, it knows about all these sorts of things. And so it just goes, oh, I’ll just do that for you. Even though it can’t, even though it

Breallyn: Can’t. Yeah.

Lyndon: So, you know, I lost a good half hour of my life having this ridiculous conversation where it would tell me it’s gonna do something, I would challenge it on it and then it would go, yeah, of course I can’t do that. So like, what, what can you do? Well, it can summarize, you know, a transcript

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: That I supply it with, you know, and it, there’s all sorts of things that they can do, but Yeah, it’s not I mean, and AI doesn’t just exist in these, LLMs, you know, these large what they large language models.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: AI exists in all, all of the things that we’re using, all the software.

Breallyn: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Lyndon: And whatnot. So yeah. Good times.

Breallyn: Yeah. Challenging times.

Lyndon: Gaslit by a fricking robot.

Breallyn: I think that has to go on a T-shirt, ‘Gaslit by a fricking robot.’

Lyndon: , I think we’re gonna do T-shirts? We’ll need a few more subscribers. We need a few more patrons before we start doing T-shirts.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: But I’ve got a few in mind to do, which I think are funny.

Breallyn: Yeah. What are you, what are you thinking?

Lyndon: Oh, well we just have to wait and find out.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm. Okay. I’ve been tempted to buy one from one of the podcasts I like. Which is Red Handed. You’re not a fan ’cause you’re not quite into the True Crime podcast that are my little. I guess secret,

Lyndon: Yeah. Secret indulgence.

Breallyn: Pleasure.

Lyndon: Yeah. Well, I did actually start listening to a true crime today by accident.

Breallyn: Did you?

Lyndon: Yeah, because I like listening to, The Debrief by Dave O’Neill.

Breallyn: Mm-hmm.

Lyndon: And so he’s started a podcast with Dave O’Neill and Brad Oaks. That’s right. So two comedians. So normally the, The Debrief is recorded in Dave’s car on the way to a comedy gig. And then they debrief about the gig on the way home.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: When a podcast will introduce their new podcast and it’s on the channel you’re already listening to, that’s what happened. I’m like, hang on, what, what is this? But the crime is that. A water slide was stolen in Mount Isa and no one knows who stole it or where it is.

Breallyn: Oh, that’s great.

Lyndon: So who knows, I might end up listening to that.

Breallyn: That’s a quirky little mystery.

Lyndon: Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s not quite the true crime you listen to.

Breallyn: No, I and I do listen to some true crime more investigative ones. Slippery, yeah,

Lyndon: Slippery Slope. I think that’s what it’s called.

Breallyn: It is, but I feel like,

Lyndon: No, no, that’s what the podcast is called.

Breallyn: Oh, Slippery Slope. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, I’ve probably listened to that one too. I think that actually you and I listen to quite different podcasts and I think that the ones that we each like have influenced how we. Come to present as well because you are much more into the conversational kind of ones. You love Conan O’Brien and people are just talking and, and definitely having that comedic slant to things. Whereas I like ones that are way more researched and transcripted and you know, have everything kind of worked out beforehand.

Lyndon: Probably, probably most of the ones I listen to are off the cuff conversational. However, I do know that they are still produced.

Breallyn: Oh yeah, they’ve got, you know, definitely

Lyndon: There’s the element of production there and, there’s probably a, a little more, oh, maybe The Debrief is probably an exception, but I think with the others, like Conan O’Brien, there’s definitely research going on there before they, put a guest on the show. Yeah, there’s a lot of,

Breallyn: But I feel

Lyndon: Behind the scenes work,

Breallyn: Definitely there’s all of that done, but then all of that scaffolding is taken down and they’re free to talk and to gently guide the conversation. Whereas, yeah, the ones that I tend to listen to are, yeah, much more kind of,, outlined like a good essay.

Lyndon: Yeah, if it sounds like I’ve gotta do homework, I suddenly won’t be interested.

Breallyn: Whereas when I get behind the mic, if I haven’t done a bunch, I dunno what I’m gonna say.

Lyndon: I know.

Breallyn: It gives me a lot of stress. So anyway, somehow we’ve managed to put a podcast together.

Lyndon: That’s how our marriage has worked.

Breallyn: I do all the background. And you swan in with the jokes? That’s pretty much how it feels.

Lyndon: You’ve been listening to Pain In The Arts. If you wanna know more about the show, head on over to our website, www.PainInTheArts.Life. You can also find us on Patreon, which is Patreon.com/PainInTheArts.Life. Patreon is home to our secondary podcast, Echoes of Home, which is my journey of writing the soundtrack to Brea’s Novel and the audio book. Brea’s podcast is her journey of writing the novel. And that one is called In Search of Home. So there are two extra podcasts on Patreon plus a bunch of other things that, uh, are slowly being uploaded there. So go have a look at Patreon. Thanks again for listening. We will see you next week.

Breallyn: See you then.

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