June 2, 2026 · Episode 69
55 Min, 04 Sec 

Summary

In this episode of Pain in the Arts, Lyndon and Breallyn explore why you need to guard your creative process — and what’s really lost when outside opinions meet unfinished work too soon. Sparked by a recent studio experience, Lyndon reflects on the studio as a sacred space: a safe environment where artists can experiment, make mistakes, and collaborate freely, without the burden of premature feedback. Breallyn brings her own version of the same instinct from writing and theater. Along the way: raw dogging, tiny claps, and a book Lyndon will absolutely never read.

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

Transcript

Lyndon: I haven’t got my water. That’s all right. Neither do you.

Breallyn: No. We’re going dry.

Lyndon: Oh, we’re raw dogging it.

Breallyn: Such a bad term.

Lyndon: Do you know what that means? Yeah… raw dogging?

Lyndon: Why do dogs come into everything? Dogging is something I still don’t 100% understand, and I don’t know… Do you know about dogging?

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: Oh, this is awkward.

You surely would’ve heard about it, because it was even talked about on, what was that show we were watching? Oh, Jeremy Clarkson bought a farm, or whatever that

Breallyn: Ah, yeah…

Lyndon: show was called.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And do you remember when he then bought a restaurant?

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: And one of the first things that they realised after they bought it, and maybe why… I’m not sure if they got it cheap, but maybe why they got it cheap, or why people hadn’t been frequenting that restaurant, was there was that parkland, like ah… right off the road.

Breallyn: Ew. Yeah.

Lyndon: Remember

Breallyn: that? Okay. I do remember that.

Lyndon: And they, there’s a…

Breallyn: referred

Lyndon: to dogging then.

Breallyn: Yeah. A local scene where people would meet up to

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: together. Yeah,

Lyndon: yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s like, why is it called dogging? That’s what I didn’t understand… just

Breallyn: in this bit of… is it scrubland beside the road.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah.

Breallyn: But that was… I heard that as a very British term, like a

Lyndon: Oh,

Breallyn: okay… quite a colloquial thing that they would say. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. Raw dogging.

Lyndon: Raw dogging is

Breallyn: Yeah. Seems to have come

Lyndon: I got… Raw dogging’s different. Let’s just make it clear. We’re not dogging now here or anywhere.

Breallyn: So all we’ve done is not bring our water bottles in, and all of a sudden

Lyndon: we’re raw dogging it.

Raw Dogging Explained Poorly

Lyndon: I saw someone talk about raw dogging a plane, flights, or how people raw dog it. Oh. Yeah. And I’ve heard that a couple of times, and the… you know how you see these things that are… and I mostly ignore them, and happy to remain ignorant. You see these things and they’re just like, they’re not in real life, they’re just internet things.

And you never know how much of it actually then bleeds into real life. And maybe, I imagine, for instance, our parents would be completely unaware of all this stuff, and we’re probably a little bit aware, but then maybe

Breallyn: Definitely not as aware as

Lyndon: and not doing any of it. Yeah… I don’t think. But yeah, so raw dogging is when you get on a flight, I might have this wrong, but you don’t watch any movies or anything. You just sit there and endure the flight.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah. Is that

Lyndon: right? Is that raw

Breallyn: dogging, yeah? Yeah, I think so. I’ve seen things saying, “Oh, my mom just” announced, “Oh, I forgot to ring the dentist,” and then straightaway raw dogged rang the dentist, without three days of emotional turmoil leading up to it.

So yeah, I guess it’s just going into it without preparation, without having a whole lot of emotional supports around you or, I don’t know, just

Lyndon: without overthinking

Breallyn: it. Yeah… just doing it, just thinking it, just doing it.

Lyndon: Yeah. If you’re really raw dogging it in an airport, you’re sitting there waiting for when a seat becomes available or something.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah.

Lyndon: No, I don’t think that is raw dogging, but I’m saying if you were really gonna do it. Without, ’cause you have to. Yeah, with a… I understand ringing the dentist. I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s raw dogging it. But I do understand that, of just going, “I’m just gonna call them.” Yeah. “Book it in. Go.”

Breallyn: I know,

Lyndon: but you can’t do that with a flight.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: You’ve gotta, no… or be a little more. It’s more just, like, organised and then stress about it…

Breallyn: It’s just, yeah, doing an action, I think.

Old People Discuss New Terminology

Breallyn: Okay, this is our new segment called Old People Discuss New Terminology.

Lyndon: Now, hey, what did you mention yesterday or the day before? You mentioned something to me and I said, “What is that?” And you said, “Oh, it’s just something online. People don’t really do it.” Do you remember what that was? I think

Breallyn: it was the clicking.

Lyndon: Oh, yeah, we watched, we watched Company Retreat.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. Very good show.

Lyndon: Where

Breallyn: Recommend…

Lyndon: you really got into it. I got into it, too.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Where one, but they, one person

Breallyn: No, don’t give away the premise, ’cause people can go and watch it themselves and enjoy it. But

Lyndon: What do you mean, don’t give away the premise? It’s given away before you even start watching. Okay. It says it on it.

Breallyn: Yeah, all right.

Lyndon: It’s not giving anything away. Everyone’s an actor except one guy.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: One person, and so yeah. Yeah. So that’s what it’s about. But

Breallyn: it’s sort of, so he believes that he’s been hired by a company as a temp. He’s a temp worker. And he’s been hired as an assistant to the HR rep, and he needs to come and assist him on a company retreat for the week.

And literally everyone else, the company are not real, the retreat is all set up. All these scenes are kinda played out, but this poor guy doesn’t know that everyone else is fake.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s very good.

Lyndon: It’s very good, and it’s half documentary but half actual sitcom, isn’t it? Even yeah… even when the main character isn’t in a scene, the others are still acting.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Absolutely. So that’s what kinda makes it, yeah… see, actually, I found myself from time to time forgetting that the actors were actors.

Breallyn: Yeah. Definitely. They’re all such

Lyndon: Which is kind of

Breallyn: characters, too. They’re such believable characters.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, worth

Breallyn: Very good…

Lyndon: worth watching. But yeah, so in that, at some point they were doing this clicking thing, and I was like, “What is that?” And you’re like, “It’s tiny claps.”

Breallyn: Yeah. I’ve seen it when people are, like, debating and they’ve got, like it’s Republicans versus Democrats kind of thing, and then everyone else is sitting around the sides and they do this click when they think that their guy has scored a point or has said something that is a good point, ’cause they’re too polite to the other person…

Lyndon: to just clap

Breallyn: normally. They, you don’t wanna interrupt. You’ve only got a certain amount of time in a debate, so you can’t be, like, the debaters can’t be stopping to listen to applause. It’s just like, yeah, that’s a point.

Lyndon: It reminds me of, do you remember years ago, maybe they still do it, it was like if you were telling a story and someone wanted to sarcastically go, “Oh, poor you,” they’d do mini violins.

Breallyn: Yeah. Just rub their finger and thumb together and go, “That’s the sound of me playing my tiny violin.”

That was our generation’s version. We’re not clicking to applaud it for anyone. We’re just going, “Oh, suck it up.”

Lyndon: Yeah. Get over it. There were no support systems in place, no, just because you had to get on a plane.

Breallyn: That’s right. You were raw dogging your whole life.

Speeches, Anxiety and Prep

Lyndon: I had to raw dog, I virtually raw dogged, I raw dogged this episode, just so you know.

Breallyn: Is that your term for not being prepared?

Lyndon: No. Yeah, we’ll get on to that. But I raw dogged my speech at your party last week.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Almost, didn’t I? I guess, you

Breallyn: seemed to have points.

Lyndon: I know. And I had a little joke in there, which I knew I probably should’ve taken it out. And I guess with a speech, you don’t get a chance to try it out on an audience first. Maybe you could, but not just an everyday person getting up and making a speech. Arguably, some best men and fathers of the brides probably should maybe run it by a few people first.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: At least a wife. But I had a joke in there, and I thought, “Oh, I should probably take it out.” It was just one line. And in the heat of battle, I just said it.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: No one laughed. It wasn’t a laugh joke, though. That was the problem. I would never have known if it landed.

Breallyn: Oh, okay.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: I can’t remember what it was.

Lyndon: ‘Cause I literally wrote that speech out that afternoon, sitting outside. And when I got to the end of it… Remember I was doing it, and you were doing yours at the same time, and you had your computer going and your

Breallyn: Yeah, I had

Lyndon: you had your laptop and you had your iPad, and

Breallyn: yeah, I was writing it on my laptop, and then I just

Lyndon: And it

Breallyn: put it on my, got it on my iPad so I could read it out.

Lyndon: Yeah. It was making me nervous ’cause you seemed to be spending a long time on it. And what I didn’t say in the speech, and I planned on saying this for so long, but I didn’t say that when you did a speech at my 40th, which was a couple of years ago.

Breallyn: 12.

Lyndon: I wasn’t… I guess I don’t think I was prepared that you were even going to give a speech. I don’t think I’d even thought about it.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: And then you gave a speech, and it was a really good speech, and I think it… yeah, I just was like, “Oh, wow, that was,” that was like, it was obviously appropriate for the occasion, and you were, I guess in part singing my praises.

It was my birthday. But at the end of that, I thought, “Oh, crap, now I’ve gotta do one for your 40th.” And so I had all this anxiety about it. Did I tell you this already? Or not

Breallyn: Not really, no…

Lyndon: And I, ’cause I was gonna mention this in the speech, oh, yeah… and then I decided the speech wasn’t about me, it was about you.

So I shouldn’t mention any of this. So I had anxiety about it for, ’cause I’m a couple of years older than you. But then your 40th, you never had one.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: Because it was just, it was just bad timing.

Breallyn: So

Lyndon: inconvenient

Breallyn: of me to turn 40.

Lyndon: You probably… no, bad, yes, just everything that was happening at the time.

Breallyn: Yeah, it wasn’t

Lyndon: I don’t think you felt like celebrating.

Breallyn: No, I didn’t feel like seeing anyone or doing anything.

Lyndon: So you

Breallyn: we couldn’t have pulled it together at that time.

Lyndon: No. Yeah. So you missed out on your 40th. Which gave me another, I had anxiety about this speech for another decade. And I raw dogged it.

Breallyn: You still didn’t prepare it.

Lyndon: And your speech, no… was still better than mine. Both of them.

Breallyn: I gave you so much time.

Lyndon: I know. Honestly, I’m not even joking, I had anxiety about that speech for so long.

Breallyn: What did I say that was so

Lyndon: I don’t know. It was what you said, but also the fact that I wasn’t prepared that you would even say anything.

I don’t think I knew you were gonna do a speech. I just thought I had to give a speech and thank everyone.

Breallyn: You did a song.

Lyndon: Oh, did I?

Breallyn: Yeah, you wrote a little song for it.

Lyndon: Yeah, but it was, that was good… it wasn’t a serious song.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: Wasn’t it a rap? Yeah. Didn’t I rap something?

Breallyn: I think so.

Lyndon: You know what? The, do you know what the, why I did that?

Breallyn: To get out of giving a speech?

Lyndon: No.

Breallyn: Why?

Lyndon: Just to make our kids laugh. And they did.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s cool.

Lyndon: I just thought I’d just do it just to give them a laugh. Gee, I wonder

Breallyn: if we’ve got it on video somewhere.

Lyndon: I hope not.

Show Intro and Sick Week

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain in the Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life. You’re with Lyndon.

Breallyn: And Breallyn. Thanks for joining us.

Lyndon: And I sound like I’m underwater. I’ve got blocked ears.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. We’ve definitely all had sickness going throughout the house, which is always fun ’cause once one person has it, we all have it.

Lyndon: We started recording last week.

And then we got a call. You had to pick up Birdie from school because she was not well.

And since then we’ve all been unwell.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: But I’m gonna keep, I’ll keep that in.

Breallyn: Oh,

Lyndon: yeah. Whatever we recorded last week. I don’t even remember

Breallyn: what we were talking about.

Lyndon: I know. It’ll be there, whatever it was.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Technically I’ve had an extra week to prepare.

Breallyn: To prepare your episode.

Lyndon: That’s right. But the truth is, and you and the gallery can bear witness to me now opening my… iPhone 13, which I think is the current iPhone model. It might be wrong. I don’t think

Breallyn: we’ve ever had the current model.

Lyndon: Things are bad when your parents have got a newer iPhone model than you do. Previous seven days. Oh, here we go.

Breallyn: Had we got onto the topic yet? I

Lyndon: No.

Breallyn: No, we’d just been

Lyndon: nowhere near it…

Breallyn: our rambling

Lyndon: Yeah…

Breallyn: chitchat.

Lyndon: But I just figured let’s just get straight into it.

Breallyn: Straight into it today, yeah. A bit different.

Lyndon: Yeah. Also, the reason is, my throat hurts. I don’t really wanna, I don’t know how long I’ll last. We played, what was that card game we played last night?

Breallyn: It’s called Organ Failure or something like that.

Lyndon: Was it? Organ Failure.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It should’ve been called Family Breakup or something, because

Breallyn: it’s, thought we kept the peace quite well.

Lyndon: Things… wow. The problem is, the problem is when you discover that there’s a perpetual cheat in the room. A cheat. Anyway.

Breallyn: There is a cheat.

Lyndon: Well, deal with her later. Okay. So I’ve titled this, but this may not be the title, as per usual.

The Sacred Space.

So we’re talking, yes… chapels, mosques.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: No, we’re not.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: Oh. I can’t believe you believed that.

Breallyn: I thought, gee. Yeah. Oh, I was into it. Oh, okay. I was already imagining the acoustics and the way that the architecture supports the art that’s going on, and the reflectiveness of

Lyndon: there you go.

Now you know what you’re gonna do. Get off. The Nibbles, the studio cat. Did you just see what it did?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. It jumped on to the

Breallyn: it’s on the control chair.

Lyndon: Oh, and now it’s cleaning itself. Man, I don’t know whether I like this cat.

No. I want it to be clean, but I don’t want it cleaning on my stuff. Anyway, yeah. There you… yeah, you can do that if you want.

Breallyn: No. It’s your episode.

Lyndon: There was

Breallyn: What’s the sacred space all about?

Lyndon: It’s interesting actually, you… that I was gonna say that you brought up chapels and

Breallyn: No, I didn’t, you did.

Lyndon: Yeah. But yeah, years ago there used to be a live music venue. I think it may have actually been an operating church, and it was in Cranbourne. And I don’t know who organised this, but there was an evening that happened regularly, and it was called Fathers in the Chapel.

I went along to it, and Chris Hallam was recording it with all, oh yeah, all of his vintage outboard gear and, I think he was probably recording onto reel-to-reel tape.

Breallyn: Oh, wow.

Lyndon: But the thing about, yeah… the reason I bring it up is because it was an almost entirely acoustic performance, but the space… And it wasn’t like a really old church or anything, but it was just a nice acoustic space for folk music, for people to get up and to just sing their original material to a captive audience, and really great. I wish there was more of that stuff.

Breallyn: Yeah. I think that sort of thing is really nice and

Lyndon: yeah… fascinating to hear the recordings from those nights as well. Yeah. Just a great, yeah, just a great spirit around that. But no, I’m not talking about that.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: Could have

Breallyn: been an episode.

The Sacred Space Defined

Lyndon: So over the years of me being in the studio, and working with lots of different singer-songwriters and artists and musicians, what I’ve come to realise is that the space that we’re in, yeah, it’s a physical space, but also it’s more than that.

It’s a safe space in a way. It needs to be a safe space that allows people to feel free to make mistakes.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s interesting. I’ve often come into a studio with a real specific idea of how I thought something was going to go. Whether it was a musical part or even if it was a direction for the session.

And you need to have an idea in mind for direction, especially if you’re producing, and you’ve got so many different things to consider, time and budget and all that sort of stuff.

People’s availability. But so often it’s when I’m open to the creative process and just letting it unfold, that’s when the best results seem to come.

The sort of simplest ideas that stick, that just seem to work, and often they are piggybacked off of something else that’s piggybacked off of something else that’s piggybacked off of something that was tried that didn’t work out.

Breallyn: Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Lyndon: Do you know what I mean?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And there’s a lot of, and you can end up looking at how a session went, and you go, “How did we even get here?”

To this thing which now works and sounds great. And there’s a mystery to a lot of it, which I really love.

And I like the fact that, it nearly sounds counterintuitive, but I like when I come in with a really strong idea and it just falls apart in three seconds.

And you go, “Oh, fair enough then.” ‘Cause often when that happens it’s like you’ve got nothing else.

Breallyn: Yeah, okay.

Lyndon: And you can’t hold too tightly to it.

Breallyn: So do you find then, if that strong idea falls apart and then you don’t have, you haven’t come with five other ideas or whatever, that it’s in that sort of vacuum of pre-idealised things, like where you’ve got nothing, is that when the new ideas come, and actually is something

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: better at that point?

Lyndon: I think, if you’re going into a co-write session, and it’s not necessarily that I’ve done a lot of co-write sessions as such, a lot of the work I’ve done is when people come in with their song or with their idea, and I’m helping them develop it.

But I have heard a lot of co-writers say that, or songwriters, when they go into a co-write they have to take in an idea. You’ve gotta have an idea. You have to, yeah. Something to start with. But that’s a starting point. Yeah. Yep. So I think, yeah, in anything, it’s if you’ve got your starting point and you’re viewing it as, okay, it’s an idea and it’s a starting point.

Then that helps keep the momentum going because you don’t suddenly go, “Oh, I thought that was gonna work. Maybe we didn’t do it right,” or, “Maybe we’ve gotta try this,” or, “Maybe we’ve gotta try that,” because you can end up chasing your tail.

Breallyn: And when you say a starting point, a starting idea, it might be an idea about, oh, I had a thought of a song about this particular type of story, or I might have had this little riff that’s been occurring in my head.

It might be a musical idea or a lyric-based idea. Is that, could be anything, is that what you’re saying? Yeah. It

Lyndon: just depends where you’re at in the project, what the session is.

Breallyn: Yeah. Maybe who you’re working with too. Yeah. What you might wanna bring.

Lyndon: Yeah, you could be, like, coming into a session of a song that you’ve only ever heard acoustically, and now you’re trying to make it sound like more of an album track with a band or whatever. And so you kinda go, “All right, the guitar’s…” I’ve got an idea that the drums are gonna go a particular way and the guitar, and then you try it and you go, “Actually, that just doesn’t, it’s not working. It doesn’t sound like it should. In my mind it worked.”

For this other song it worked perfectly, but today for this song it’s not working.

Yeah, but I guess my point is that the process involves so many different aspects of what it takes to create something, and I guess if you break down creativity, like what is that? And perhaps it is allowing yourself to… I don’t even wanna use the word fail.

It’s just part of the process. Trying things and knowing that one thing leads to another. It’s a bit like improv, where that’s the yes-and sort of attitude, someone brings something in and you go, “That sounds great. Let’s try this. Okay, now let’s try that,” or, “How about this?”

And, “What if I grab this guitar?” And maybe I need to tune this guitar completely differently and put a capo on the fifth fret and play it up here, and how does that sound? Yeah. And trying things like that. There is that trial and error.

There is mystery. There are things that are just inexplicable, but it’s a world that is only understood by the people in the room at the time.

Breallyn: Yeah. Okay.

Lyndon: Yeah. So that’s what I mean by like

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: it’s a, that’s why I call it the sacred space. Yeah. It’s like as soon as you invite someone else in who hasn’t been a part of the process, what they’re then hearing or discussing, I think it wouldn’t matter who it was, whether they were musically inclined or yeah.

I just think the ability to actually input into that, I think is really difficult because of the history of what’s already happened in the room.

Breallyn: Yeah, it is. This is

Lyndon: something I’ve

Breallyn: found… it is so, like when that collaboration or co-write or whatever is taking place, everyone is there, and they’re uniting in a creative consciousness of sorts. And sort of piecing together this ethereal thing that will one day become a song that others can listen to and just get it, because that work has gone in and the parts have all been created and put together.

But until that’s all been done, it’s like it could work, it might not work, some parts haven’t been developed right or whatever, and you can’t kinda crash that space.

Protecting the Creative Process

Lyndon: The other thing is too, that the moment that someone, that you might let someone else into the studio, for instance, that’s a moment in time for, say, perhaps a particular song. But like quite often you don’t even know until you’ve finished all the tracks whether any of…

Like which ones you actually want to release.

Do you know what I mean? So you might go, “There’s these 10 songs that we’re working on, and they’re gonna be the album.” But then by the time you get them all to a particular stage, you go, “Actually, these six I wanna release.”

“But these other four,” for whatever reason, they’re not gonna be part of this. Or perhaps they’ll never see the light of day. Who knows? Maybe they will. Maybe they’re fit for another project. Maybe one of them needs a completely different direction. Maybe one of them needs to be given to someone else, like a different artist, yeah… or a different producer or who knows? So like

Breallyn: And so you don’t know until the end how all these ideas will come out, yeah… kind of thing. So you

Lyndon: Yeah…

Breallyn: just don’t want that process to be interrupted, ’cause it can actually kinda kill it, can’t it? When somebody else is

Lyndon: Well

Breallyn: involved or tries to change the direction or yeah, takes the energy out… yeah, and

Lyndon: it’s not a rule. There’s obviously there’d be plenty of examples of where people have come in and actually changed things for the better. But I just think as a general rule, I, like personally, I haven’t seen it, really. It’s hard to actually put into words. It’s hard to describe music, even, imagine being a music critic, writing about music. There’s people that do it well, but I just think it’s, yeah.

It’s good, it is good when you read a well-written

Breallyn: Oh, yeah…

Lyndon: review.

Breallyn: If we’ve got time for a small detour on that point. Let me just…

Lyndon: We don’t, sorry.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: No, I’m kidding. So gullible. Is that why you married me? ‘Cause when I asked you, no, because you felt like you had to say yes.

Look who’s laughing now.

When do you reckon the cat thinks it’s clean? Seriously.

Writing About Music: The Betrayals

Breallyn: Just on that point of, like, how do you describe music or write about something that is another art form or whatever. I recently read a book by Bridget Collins, who I absolutely love her work.

And this book’s called The Betrayals. And actually, the idea in it isn’t the most, or… she’s taken this idea from another author, but basically the whole book is around this academy where they play this game called Le Grand Jeu, I think it’s called, and when I say game, they call it a play or a game that they create, and it’s a mix between music, dance, and mathematics.

And they work on it for, like, all term or whatever, these students, and then they perform it at the end. And the whole time you don’t actually know what this could possibly feel like or look like or be part of, but you’re so wrapped up in the story of these people creating these games and, you know, how it would be, and the ideas, the inspiration that they get from different…

It’s actually incredible. So if you ever wanna read something about something musical and mathematical and movement-based, highly recommend The Betrayals. Just incredible, like, how you can wrap words around this concept that doesn’t actually exist. But the whole time I’m reading it, it’s like that could absolutely exist.

It’s like chess or something, this incredible game, these are the highest tier players, and yeah. So there you go.

Lyndon: I heard all the words you were saying.

Breallyn: You’re never gonna read the book, are you?

Lyndon: No, I’m not, but

Breallyn: This is the hidden side of my life.

Lyndon: I heard all the words you were saying, but for some reason I wasn’t comprehending.

Breallyn: Jeez. And I was doing the most

Lyndon: You were doing all hand movements as well… ba

Breallyn: basic sort of explanation.

Lyndon: I know.

Breallyn: Anyway.

Lyndon: But yeah, it’s… but that sounds incredible. Maybe you can read it to me. Is there an audiobook?

Breallyn: There would be.

When Outsiders Enter the Sacred Space

Lyndon: Talking about the process itself before the music is even more abstract in a way, I think. Yeah, so this all came about because recently I had a client who had some family members in here because they wanted to see the space that we’re working in and have a listen to the progress of the songs, and a couple of the songs weren’t as finished as we may… ones that we worked on late last year that we had moved on from and were gonna come back to.

They probably weren’t as ready for vocal tracking as we may have thought. So that meant that now, people are commenting on something that isn’t even close to being the realised work.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. And it was, it’s like you were saying before, it was quite derailing and I guess at the time, in that moment, it just really put a dampener on what had been a good session.

Okay. Inviting people in. Yeah, okay. And so that’s what made me think about all this stuff. Yeah. And

Breallyn: ’cause you want the opposite of that, that then you can go, “I’m getting there, this is my progress.” Yeah. And it kinda gives you a boost

Lyndon: to yeah, continue the

Breallyn: work,

Lyndon: right?

Yeah. Momentum’s really important. Yeah. And I find it, something I find difficult, and I’d love to combat it as time goes on. I don’t know how. People can feel free to write in with their suggestions. Call me on 04

Breallyn: Write in.

Lyndon: Yeah, write in. On caution. Yeah.

Lyndon: People need money to record, so they need a job, and so often I’m working around their hours.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah.

Lyndon: And I would love to just lock out the studio for a couple of weeks and work with someone.

Breallyn: Yeah, just have that more intense. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: there’s just a lot of cons that come with just seeing someone once a week, working on something, yeah.

Anyway.

Sacred Space Disrupted

Lyndon: See, that’s what got me thinking about this sacred space idea. Because as soon as that session was done, and instead of leaving on a high going, “We had a great session today, and we’ve got two songs pretty much done, and now we’ve got a couple more that we need to go back to, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Instead what happened was I was sitting there going, “I actually knew that would probably happen.” I knew. Like that

Breallyn: the energy would change or

Lyndon: that, I knew the dangers of inviting someone in

Breallyn: Okay…

Lyndon: before

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: before things had, and before the songs had

Breallyn: and to make it clear too, these are family members who are supportive, who love the music and weren’t necessarily saying bad comments or anything like that. No. It was just

Lyndon: No, there was nothing

Breallyn: just the very act of having

Lyndon: there was nothing they said, other people, that wasn’t fair and wasn’t, there was nothing inappropriate

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: at all. There was nothing, no toes were stepped on or anything like that.

Yeah, no. It was just

Breallyn: so it wasn’t like a criticism of the

Lyndon: project. No, I

Breallyn: just

Lyndon: it was more just, it’s just like watching a hot air balloon when it’s all the, the helium is going out of it. Helium? What do they use? Yeah.

Breallyn: We’ve been in a hot air balloon.

Lyndon: That sounds right. Yeah, remember when we were up there at altitude and we were all talking like this because of the

Breallyn: helium? No.

Lyndon: No. I don’t remember.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: It’s just, remember the big, just a lot of hot air…

Breallyn: fire bellows in the

Lyndon: sky. You ever get told you were just full of hot air?

Breallyn: Yeah. In grade two, a lot.

Lyndon: Anyways, so yeah, I was just like, “Oh man, I knew that this would probably happen.” “It was a bad idea, and why did I… it was my suggestion. Why did I suggest it?” But the other thing that occurred to me, and this once again, this isn’t, it’s not like it just occurred to me.

I’ve thought about this for years, known this for years, as everyone would.

Finished Work Bias

Lyndon: 99 point, this is my own figure, but I’ll stand by this, 99.999% of the songs that you ever hear in your life, you’re hearing the finished product. You’re never hearing it

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: before, you’re not hearing anything before that.

Breallyn: Yeah,

Lyndon: so your subjectivity as a listener is based on the finished work.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: And sometimes too, your subjectivity is based on what you know about the person. So sometimes you won’t like something because you won’t like the person that made it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that’s fair too, because part of the marketing of music is there’s a story behind the artist, and that’s all part of it. It’s a bit like when you’d see American Pickers or whatever, and they’d find an old sign, and the sign’s worth $80 until they discover who had the sign before that, yeah… and where it came from, and all of a sudden that Coke sign is now worth $380 because of the provenance

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: and things like that. Yeah. That’s often where art can get its value from as well.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So yeah, it’s, yeah, subjectivity on something, we all grow up with music being, in quotes, the soundtrack to our lives, and we all have opinions on it, and that’s fine, but it’s like we’re having opinions on the work when it’s done.

Breallyn: Yep.

Yeah. Imagine if everyone got to have a say along the way, it would never get to the point of where it is a complete piece, existing in and of itself, and yeah.

Can

Lyndon: you imagine, a painter, having people come over and just be commenting on the hues and the choice of, yeah, are you really gonna use that blue? Should you maybe use a, I like the one that you did, I liked the painting you did last year that was like a much, you know, the colours were

Breallyn: prettier, the pastels.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. Have you, is it a different brand you’re using? I know it, maybe it’s the brush.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Oh, no, it’s, maybe it’s the canvas. Have you changed the brand of can?… You know what I mean?

Breallyn: Like, that’d be awful. And yeah, traditionally painters will keep everyone out of their studio. No one wants those comments and, yeah, that’s ’cause

Lyndon: they’re mean, angry people,

Breallyn: isn’t it?

No, and same with writers, it’s really hard to let someone read those early drafts. And you pick very carefully who you want your early readers to be.

Yeah.

Lyndon: I haven’t even got onto my notes yet.

Breallyn: Oh. Thought we were finished the episode

Lyndon: already. Why? Are you so bored with it?

I was trying to think of an image of what it’s like, and it’s sorta like showing the scaffolding of a building that’s being built rather than the

Breallyn: Yeah, come and have a look at all the timber framing and what do you think? Yeah. Can you picture yourself here for Christmas?

Lyndon: Do you remember in Hong Kong, we were getting driven around in Hong Kong, I’m gonna say chauffeured, whatever. And there were all those, like the buildings, like we’re talking about high-rise buildings, and there was all the bamboo scaffolding.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. And you’d look at it and ’cause it’s bamboo, it was not straight.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: It was

Breallyn: swinging in the breeze. Oh

Lyndon: my gosh. Yeah. It’s so strange to look at, going, “There’s workers on that stuff.”

So yeah, even an even worse image.

But have you ever shared something sorta too early and regretted it?

What about your thesis? That was, I was gonna say, that was a little look into the novel, wasn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah. It was some of the, it was a few chapters of it actually, to say. Yeah, of the novel. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that one, that was scary. Fortunately there was a process with that, and the only person I had to share it with along the way was my supervisor.

Lyndon: Okay. Yeah.

Breallyn: Dr. Rachel Hennessy, the great.

Yes. She’s amazing.

Lyndon: Is that what she’s known as, The Great?

Breallyn: That’s what I, like a wizard? That’s what I call her. She is a wizard for me. Yeah. She’s great. An excellent writer and, yeah, brilliant academic and whatnot.

So I had to present my idea for the thesis and basically she then had the option to say, “Bad idea,” or, whatever.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. But then we would have to meet regularly and I’d have to present my progress, and then we’d discuss what was happening next or whatever. Yeah, she was really wonderful with helping me sort of figure out that arc and what I was doing.

But then once I was ready and once it was due, then it just got seen by three people and they, I don’t think, I don’t know if they knew who I was or saw my name, but like, no, oh, no, they would’ve ’cause it was on there. But yeah, so then they just read it and give their comments and grades.

Yeah, so that was scary. But yeah, luckily got an H1, so I was pretty happy about that.

Lyndon: H1. Yeah. Oh, gee, that doesn’t sound good, no, ’cause they, you got A, A pluses, that goes down to B, C, D, E, F, G.

I thought F was the lowest, but you’ve hit a new low with H.

Breallyn: No, it’s the highest. It’s a high distinction. Wow. Which was nice. Yeah, so that, that was good, but it was a bit scary.

Lyndon: Nerd.

Breallyn: Yeah. I’m happy to be a nerd in that area.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: I remember when I was in a theater group, we would write scripts. We were doing sketch-style theater, and sometimes we’d be like, “Oh, we’ve got these dates coming up. We need to write a few sketches.” And I was, I think I was the main script writer at the time, and I would have a nebulous idea, and sometimes I’d pitch it to the group, and it would fall pretty flat.

And that was, yeah.

Lyndon: Just explain nebulous for our non-readers.

Breallyn: Oh, like a kind of a shimmering bubble of an idea that might not, it might just burst and go nowhere. I don’t know. Yeah. Just like an idea. Nothing solid.

Yeah.

Vocabulary Gap in Feedback

Lyndon: Before you were mentioning that these family members obviously love the artist and love the music and love the space and everything. So I’m like, what is it? What is one of the things that is difficult in that situation?

And I think what it is, the vocabulary. Oh, okay. Like they don’t have the vocabulary. Yeah. Even when I’m working with singers that might be first time in the studio or just young at their craft

Breallyn: Yep…

Lyndon: they have a lot of catching up to do.

And normally once they’re onto their second project or their second EP or whatever it is, they generally have, they’re more comfortable because they understand a lot more of the language as well.

There’s a language

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: just for some of the technical things, and it can all be a little bit overwhelming, or people can feel like they don’t know what everything’s called, and I might be using language that is just second nature to me and

Breallyn: it’s brand

Lyndon: new to them. Might not be helping them.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: But then there’s also just the language of music as well. So yeah, so when you’ve got people trying to participate and explain their thoughts on something, it can be really jarring

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: as well.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And you can see them trying to really grab for the right adjective or the, yeah, and it’s like it’s near impossible.

Breallyn: Yeah, they just don’t have the

Lyndon: it’s like watching someone trying to get into a rescue boat after they’ve been floating on an iceberg or something for a while. It’s just a completely different world, a different vocabulary and, yeah.

Yeah. So I think that’s one of

Breallyn: so even the nouns, let alone the adjectives to wrap everything in to describe what’s happening, what nuance you might be hearing or not hearing that you wanna hear or whatever. Yeah, like

Lyndon: yeah, and

Breallyn: not that they’re not getting it…

Lyndon: and not that that’s the main problem.

Like I said earlier, you can have someone who is quite musically talented come into a session and go, “Oh, hey, have you thought about this?” And they do something musically and you just think, “That is not right for this at all.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So they’ve got the language and they’ve got the ears and they’ve got the experience, but they haven’t been part of

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: they haven’t been part of the journey of that work, and so

Breallyn: Yes…

Lyndon: yeah, they might come in and come up with something brilliant that kind of, and then really kicks, restarts something.

But

Breallyn: yeah…

And often, you’ll have session musicians that do have to come into a half-finished project, or part way, and go, “Hey, can you come in, do the guitar solo,” or whatever, do this, that, and the other.

Lyndon: And those people are kinda quite exceptionally skilled

Breallyn: yeah, it’s quite

Lyndon: experienced,

Breallyn: yeah… a niche thing to do. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: To read what’s going on and bring their own expertise to it, and leave you with something that’s more than the sum of the parts, kind of thing…

Lyndon: yeah, and they often know the right part to play.

And they can also play in a way that makes their artistry disappear.

Breallyn: Yeah, wow.

Lyndon: But they can do it where their art, if they know that they’ve been called in for what they bring, then they can make more of that show. It is a

Breallyn: oh, it’s really

Lyndon: incredible, it’s an incredible

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: incredible skill.

Breallyn: Yeah. Wow.

Lyndon: I was gonna say, to your example of your writing the thesis and then it being given over to other people.

They had the language, they had the vocabulary.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So

Breallyn: they’re the experts. They’re literally, their job is to judge your work. So yeah, whatever they say, yeah, you’re gonna kinda take it and, I, like I was just happy that people read it and had something to say, and could give me some expert opinion. And luckily they all said really great things.

But yeah, you want that insight at that point. But yeah, it’s not the same as just giving it to a few randoms and going, “What do you think about this?” It’s, you know, it’s a part of a thing, it’s this, it’s that.

Yeah, and seeing what just anyone would say.

Lyndon: It has occurred to me in this day and age, with platforms like Twitch, that’s probably an example of where people are inviting, say, the general public, I guess, in on their process of how they’re doing it.

On the process, yeah. I haven’t looked at it lately, so I’m not sure how much of it is exactly like that or how much of it is a little bit more predetermined or organised. I don’t know. But yeah, that is definitely a space where you can see creators creating, live.

Breallyn: Yep. Yeah.

Lyndon: So that’s a different, yeah, that’s, maybe that, does that completely debunk everything I’ve just said? I

Breallyn: don’t know. It’s an outside

Lyndon: it’s,

Breallyn: thing still too. They’re not exactly in the room. Like it’s, yeah, it’s a different thing. And I suppose if you’re setting it up in that way of going, “Hey, here I am creating something. Everyone pitch in with your ideas and comments,” you’re opening the space for that kind of open air collaboration.

It’s like doing theater and letting everyone just yell out, “Do this, do that,” from the audience.

Lyndon: Yeah. It is interesting.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is there some theater like that, like a choose your own?

Breallyn: Yeah, what’s

Lyndon: it called? I

Breallyn: I did

Lyndon: watch something like that…

Breallyn: I don’t know. When I was, but I think all those, back when I was studying theater, we did stuff like that. Yeah, lots of audience participation stuff where yeah, you’d have to yell out an idea and then they’d basically have to go and do it, or you’d change a character’s motivation or whatever.

Like just, yeah. So then you’d have to improvise on the fly if you were on the ground doing it. Lots of fun.

Lyndon: Well

Breallyn: it’s fun to be involved in. It’s not always fun to watch as an outsider though, because again, it’s the magic of the room, and even as an audience member in that situation, you’re seeing what’s being created and you’re part of it as it’s happening.

Yeah. So yeah, it is, like you’re in that collaboration space at that point.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah. It is uncomfortable, isn’t it? If you go to something in like a live show and you feel like the people on stage are having more fun than you

Breallyn: are. Yeah.

Lyndon: ‘Cause

Breallyn: it’s experimental theater and yeah, and it’s, yeah, like I’ve gone to a bunch of those, obviously, with study and that.

It’s a bit, and it’s because sometimes in the learning process you’re wanting to explore ideas that may not be specifically for the audience, but they’re for you as a performer and as a writer to see what happens if I get this out. What does this look like? You can imagine it. It always is different when it’s actually physically done.

So it’s really important to have that as part of the learning process and the artistic process, to try stuff, see what happens, and then you know, and then you can, yeah, you’re not gonna put that on a stage show that you then ask people to purchase tickets with their real-life money. But you will ask people to come for free.

Lyndon: This has given me an idea of like you put on shows where everyone just pays with Monopoly money. Yeah. And that’s all the preview shows, and then

Breallyn: Yeah.

Then the real shows.

Lyndon: Yeah. You get ’em to pay what they think it’s worth in Monopoly money. Yeah. And then you’re able to go, “Oh, okay, so this is what” we could charge, but if we spend another couple of weeks in rehearsals, we might be able to charge a bit more.”

That sounds like a really silly idea. Monopoly shows.

Guarding Process Versus Fearing Feedback

Lyndon: So where’s the line between protecting process and fearing feedback?

Breallyn: Good question. You’ve had clients who are so worried about the feedback and trying to get everything perfect that they end up sitting on one project for over a decade because they can’t, they can never finish it, and never, it’s never ready. It’s never finished, never ready to launch because they’re worried about the feedback or they think that more massaging will make it perfect, which nothing’s ever gonna be perfect.

It’s just gotta get to that point where it’s still alive and it’s ready, and it just needs to be launched. So yeah, I think there, it’s definitely an art to actually recognising the right time to let others have an opinion.

Yeah. It’s interesting, and different art forms I suppose have different points at which they’re ready.

So if you’re a traditional sort of painter and you’re doing a canvas or a series of paintings or whatever, like you don’t need anyone to be coming in and giving you opinions on it because you do it and then it’s finished, and that’s it. People aren’t coming to the gallery, seeing all the finished artworks and going, “Oh, you could add some more birds in that one,” or, no one’s seeing the works and then trying to give feedback on what you should’ve done

Lyndon: Yeah…

Breallyn: differently, whatever. They like it or they don’t like it, and that’s fine. But

Lyndon: yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s interesting. When I’ve been asked to give feedback on people’s songs, which happens semi-regularly, I always, I’ve to ask them, “Okay, what will I be listening to? Am I listening to the finished work?”

Or like at what stage is it?”

Because if it’s the finished work, do you know what I mean? It changes what my feedback is. It’s

Breallyn: analysis. It is.

Yeah, that’s right.

Lyndon: There’s no point in me saying certain things that aren’t gonna be changed.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So I need to know, like, where’s the work at, i.e. what do you want from me?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Do you get what I mean?

Breallyn: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you need to figure out what is being asked of you as a

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: yeah, as a

Lyndon: crit

Breallyn: as a critic, yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Which kind of segues into my last question for you.

It may not be, but it might be a nice way to end the discussion.

What’s the difference between a trusted collaborator versus outside opinion?

Maybe they feel like gulfs apart… maybe I’ve touched on it earlier.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I did mention earlier, like there’s a difference in vocabulary.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that’s just one point. That’s really, what would that be? 5% of the whole thing.

Trusted Collaborator Versus Outside Opinion

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s so interesting because it might be like, a trusted collaborator, like you might have someone like me, I’m your wife, and you trust me with all sorts of things, but I wouldn’t be the right kind of person to ask for my opinion. Obviously I can give my opinion on the songs that you’re working on.

But I’m not a musician. I haven’t had to sweat it out in the studio trying to piece songs together. So I don’t have the working background to be able to give an opinion on what should happen next with a song, or where to from here or whatever. Like I’m not an expert in the field. So that would be one point, is no matter how trusted the person is in your life, whether they actually, yeah, that’s different, have the yeah, that’s

Lyndon: different to a trusted collaborator.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. They’re a trusted person, but whether you would trust them as a collaborator, it’s a completely different thing.

Yeah,

Lyndon: you could have a trusted collaborator, but you’re not gonna trust them with your car keys.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. You know, so you’ve gotta choose

Lyndon: or

Breallyn: your children, carefully. Yeah, like who are you asking and why? What are you hoping to get from that relationship?

Yeah.

Lyndon: Okay, that wasn’t a good question to end on.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: But I think there is wisdom in guarding the process. Like I said, it’s not a rule, it’s just from my experience, I think there’s a lot of merit to guarding the process, for your own benefit and for the sake of the art itself. We are trying to create art and not everybody gets a say in what’s being created.

I perhaps need to have that more in the forefront of my mind.

And I should have perhaps been more responsible in that situation.

To

Breallyn: guard the process until

Lyndon: it’s finished. Yeah, ’cause it, yeah. Yeah. Because I do, I definitely guard the music sort of being taken out of the studio before it’s been finished.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I try not to let anything out until it’s

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: because I don’t want it to be…

I don’t want that sort of stuff to happen.

Breallyn: and then, so like an artist taking home some tracks and going, “Hey, listen to what I did today”

Lyndon: and yeah, and then bringing it back with a whole lot of outside opinion, and then yeah, and then it’s, oh, it just makes everything so much harder, and the art is never better for it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yep. And the experience is never better. So what I did this time, I was like, “You know what? Bring them here.”

Breallyn: Yeah, so

Lyndon: “And we’ll do it like that.” Yeah. And but the same sort of thing happened. I just got to witness it in real time.

Breallyn: Yeah…

And yeah, like I suppose the idea then was that they would step into the sacred space of the studio and try to bring them in to be part of it, but you found that just did, yeah,

not work, and

Lyndon: yeah. No,

Breallyn: yeah.

Lyndon: So look, I just think the finished work speaks for itself.

And the artist has to be happy to put that work out. Don’t put anything out that you’re not happy with, and once you put it out and the work speaks for itself, expect not everyone to like it.

Breallyn: yeah, that’s

Lyndon: right. And that’s fine.

Breallyn: That’s fine, but if you’re happy with it and you feel like, yeah, this is a complete piece, it’s done for now, yeah, then, yeah. Yeah. Then that’s it. If people don’t like it, yeah, you shrug. It doesn’t matter.

Lyndon: No.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: No. That’s right. Some people are gonna love it, and some people are not gonna love it.

Yeah. And that’s completely fine. And if some of your family members love it and some don’t, it’s always gonna happen. Some will go, “I really love that song. What do you think about this one?” “Eh.”

And that’s fine, too.

Breallyn: Yeah, that’s right.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Not everyone’s gonna love everything you do.

Lyndon: But are you happy with the art that you made? Are you happy with your songs?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Are you happy with the experience of making it? The journey, I think that’s probably the takeaway.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Thanks for listening today, and we’ll talk to you next week. Bye.

Lyndon: Bye.

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