{"id":6885,"date":"2026-08-25T15:59:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T05:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/?post_type=transcript&#038;p=6885"},"modified":"2026-08-25T16:00:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T06:00:01","slug":"creative-inspiration-keep-going-when-you-want-to-give-up","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/transcript\/creative-inspiration-keep-going-when-you-want-to-give-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Ep 81 &#8211; Creative Inspiration: Who Do You Think About When You Want to Give Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">August 25, 2026\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Episode 81<br>54 Min, 26 Sec\u00a0<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/open.acast.com\/public\/streams\/66bc1a4d8681753490f376cc\/episodes\/6a891c7149da90829912619e.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-rank-math-toc-block\" id=\"rank-math-toc\"><h2>Table of Contents<\/h2><nav><ul><li><a href=\"#summary\">Summary<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#transcript\">Transcript<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#shout-out-to-kate\">Where To Find a Stalwart <\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#postie-bin-drama\">Postie Bin Drama<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#who-inspires-you-not-to-give-up\">Who Inspires You Not to Give Up?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#breallyns-inspirations-lily-wilkinson-and-amie-kaufman\">Breallyn&#8217;s Inspirations: Lily Wilkinson and Amie Kaufman<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#lyndons-inspiration-sam-baker\">Lyndon&#8217;s Inspiration: Sam Baker<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#authenticity-over-hype\">Authenticity Over Hype<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#nathan-cavaleri-and-the-battle-with-anxiety\">Nathan Cavaleri and His Battle with Anxiety<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#ryan-adams\">Ryan Adams<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#defining-your-own-version-of-success\">Defining Your Own Version of Success<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#life-points-and-creative-capacity\">Life Points and Creative Capacity<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"summary\">Summary<\/h2><p>Who do you think of when you feel like giving up on your creative work?<\/p><p>Not some aspirational figure pulled from a shelf, but the person who shows up in your mind, unbidden, when things feel too hard or too quiet or not enough.<\/p><p>This week, I brought the topic and Breallyn only found out after the recording had begun. The question I asked sent each of us somewhere quite different when thinking of our own creative inspiration. <br>I thought of musicians whose lives and music became inseparable, precisely because of past trauma and adversity. Sam Baker, who rebuilt his career after a terrorist bombing left him with hearing loss and a mangled hand; Nathan Cavalieri, the guitar prodigy who found himself unable to get on stage due to crippling anxiety. <\/p><p>Breallyn went somewhere quieter, to Melbourne writers with full lives and extraordinary creative output, and ultimately, to someone closer to home.<\/p><p>Oh, and we also introduce you to our newest character, The Petty Postie!&nbsp;<\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sambakermusic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sam Baker Website<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nathancavaleri.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nathan Cavaleri Website<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/ryanadamsofficial.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ryan Adams Official<\/a><\/p><p>Love this conversation? Get <a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/painintheartslife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon<\/a> and support the show!<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"transcript\">Transcript<\/h2><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Remember you wanted Backstage Banter to be called Backstage Bants. And I said, &#8220;No.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, I never wanted that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I was gonna say that any time I&#8217;ve ever looked for a new office chair, they disgust me, &#8217;cause they just are all so ugly. I don&#8217;t know why they have to be designed so ugly.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I was&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> What&#8217;s wrong with people?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I, like the ones that are&#8230; and when I say I like, the exact opposite. I really dislike. So I don&#8217;t know why I&#8217;ve prefaced it with &#8220;I like.&#8221; I really dislike the ones where they&#8217;re showing you all the virtues of the chair, and one of them is getting the headrest just right, and then putting it in a reclining position.<\/p><p>And then they show someone with a laptop on their lap, in their office chair, reclining. And I think, to me, that seemed&#8230; that&#8217;s like someone stringing me up in a hammock and going, &#8220;Here you go. Work like this for a few hours.&#8221; What&#8217;s the point? Wouldn&#8217;t you just get on the couch or be in bed or&#8230; I suppose if you&#8217;re at the office.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> If you&#8217;re at the office, you&#8217;re trying hard. But if<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you&#8217;re at the office&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> don&#8217;t have the couch experience&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you haven&#8217;t got&#8230; They&#8217;re all gaming chairs. It&#8217;s like they&#8217;re designed&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; for people to, I think, do five or six hours straight gaming and then have a bit of a rest.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, wow. Oh.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Whereas when I was a gamer, you&#8217;re standing up at the window at 7-Eleven playing Duke Nukem.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Standing in front of a pinball machine. Is that what you were gonna say?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No, I never did pinball. No, I was no good at pinball.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"shout-out-to-kate\">Where To Find a Stalwart <\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Shout out to Kate.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Hey, Kate.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Do you know Kate?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Kate&#8217;s one of my best friends. She&#8217;s also, like a&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Did you know she was a subscriber on Patreon? <\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. She tells me that she listens to the show, which is so nice. And it&#8217;s so strange, I find, having people that know us listen to the show, &#8217;cause then I start thinking, &#8220;Do they still like us?&#8221;<\/p><p>&#8220;Are we idiots?&#8221; On the show. <\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And the answer is yes to both those questions. <\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It is, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Surprisingly.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know. It is lovely when, yeah, people we know support the show, which is fantastic. And Kate has been a loyal listener, and&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m gonna use the word stalwart.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> A stalwart? <\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, maybe&#8230; now I take that back. Emphasis on stall, less emphasis on wart. Isn&#8217;t there a thistle that&#8217;s called a wart something? <em>&#8220;When I was a young warthog<\/em>,&#8221; Is it a thistle wart? Is that a thing?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, but it&#8217;s not spelt like&#8230; it actually, maybe it is spelt like an actual&#8230; like a wart&#8230; wart. Yeah. But no, isn&#8217;t it spelt W-O-R-T?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, not W-A-R-T. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> That&#8217;s true. What about stalwart? That&#8217;s A-R-T.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, but it doesn&#8217;t mean anything about warts. No one would&#8217;ve thought it except that you started talking and singing about it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I reckon sometimes when you&#8217;re at a restaurant or something, and then you ask where the toilets are, and they go, &#8220;Yeah, you&#8217;ve gotta go through the kitchen, down the alley, cross over a pathway, and then step up into this some other thing,&#8221; and you carry one of those massive keys.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I reckon that&#8217;s where you&#8217;ll find a stalwart.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You could catch anything off it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, I&#8217;m just like&#8230; And I, all the whole journey there and back, I&#8217;m just thinking, &#8220;Who else has touched these keys?&#8221; &#8216;Cause I&#8217;ve seen people even during the global pandemic come out of public toilets, and I know for a fact they didn&#8217;t wash their hands. Ew. I was like, of all the times.<\/p><p>Yeah, just dammit, wash your stalwarty hands. Anyway, so thanks, Kate.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Kate, you&#8217;re a champion. You&#8217;re definitely not a stalwart. You&#8217;re an upstanding and, like, a bastion of loyalty, and we appreciate it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> The more you say some words, the less they sound like words.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Now that the heater has been turned off so that we&#8217;ve got a quiet studio recording environment, I&#8217;ve just noticed how windy it is outside. It&#8217;s windy and rainy.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It was actually really nice this morning before the wind and the rain started. Or the wind was going, and you knew the rain was coming, but it was a great temperature. I love that sort of weather, the anticipation.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, I do as well. We were out in the city last night walking around, and it was quite tempered out there. It was good.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It was<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> not<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> cold. Yeah, it was<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> good. And the day&#8230; I think yesterday was a pretty good day, and the day before almost felt like spring.<\/p><p>It was a really nice day, wasn&#8217;t it? Warm-ish.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I have noticed blossoms starting to appear, so spring is&#8230; it&#8217;s actually nearly spring officially, but<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> going by the climate, it&#8217;s already here.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Do you think we talk too much about the seasons and<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> We always talk about the weather.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> gardens and things.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yes. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Why is that? I think&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230; We had a comment on our podcast of &#8220;nothing&#8217;s ever made me wanna garden more,&#8221; or something like that. I thought that&#8217;s probably not a good endorsement for an arts podcast.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No, it probably is when you consider, you strip back the layers of what we actually talk about.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> You know? But yeah, funnily enough, on&#8230; actually today on Patreon Backstage Banter, which I was just referring to before, which is probably why I was thinking about it, episode three is up. And the leading story on that is about the missing lemon tree. So I think actually on that we talk about the lemon tree, we talk about nectarines.<\/p><p>We&#8230; what else do we talk about? Whether when you&#8217;re a P-plate driver, if you can have passengers in your car drinking alcohol. I don&#8217;t know why you brought that up, but very curious.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> We&#8217;re solving all the big mysteries of life, really. So get along to Backstage Banter.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, there were some interesting stories.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s basically all the stories that end up on the cutting room floor, and because I&#8217;m a bit of a hoarder I don&#8217;t wanna waste anything, we put &#8217;em all into another audio program for your listening pleasure.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> The thing is, our episodes tend to be around an hour long, like on average.<\/p><p>But we&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> record for four hours.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> We often record for an hour and a half or more, so there&#8217;s sometimes funny stories or anecdotes that are worth listening to, but just don&#8217;t make the cut of the main episode, &#8217;cause we just talk for far too long and we&#8217;ve gotta cut it out somehow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> If I was smart, I would say, &#8220;We&#8217;re recording the episode now,&#8221; and then I would push record.<\/p><p>But what I do is what you do in the studio when you&#8217;ve got your artist sitting there, and there&#8217;s instruments around, and you don&#8217;t wanna accidentally miss something, so you just start recording. That way you get moments that you could never have orchestrated or predicted. You catch people sort of unguarded and whatnot.<\/p><p>So what I&#8217;m actually trying to do is hopefully capture you saying something incriminating and get rid of you forever.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Permanently.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I knew there was an underhanded reason we started this podcast.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Imagine that. I&#8217;d be like, wandering around the house just asking where things were.<\/p><p>Where&#8217;s my T-shirt?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Which one?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> My<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> good one&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It wouldn&#8217;t take long before the whole thing unraveled.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. I&#8217;d be like, on&#8230; Is Today Tonight still a thing? They&#8217;d be sending cameras around going, &#8220;Yeah, neighbors haven&#8217;t heard from&#8230;&#8221; Actually, no one would care around here.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No one would notice.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I could be dead for months here, and I don&#8217;t think anyone would bat an eyelid.<\/p><p>They wouldn&#8217;t inquire. Be nothing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow. But I&#8217;m pretty sure some of your family would reach out at some point.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m not.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Probably the children who live at home would notice.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, yeah, no, I mean in another scenario&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; where it was just me here.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Just you here.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> You&#8217;re really gonna get rid of all of us, are you?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No, I just was like, just wondering. I just can&#8217;t imagine.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Finally, peace and quiet for you. No T-shirts or socks to be found, but&#8230;<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"postie-bin-drama\">Postie Bin Drama<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Put it this way, the postie won&#8217;t even deliver to us anymore. We&#8217;re having a spat with the local postie. Oh man, what a piece of work. I actually was&#8230; He kicked our bins into the middle of the road.<\/p><p>And so I&#8230; hey, I&#8217;m wearing my Sherpa socks, and I walked down the street in these. I think I was wearing the exact same thing I&#8217;m wearing now, and it was like three weeks ago. That&#8217;s hilarious.<\/p><p>Yeah, this is exactly what I was wearing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And I walked down to him, and I said, &#8220;Mate, did you just kick our bins into the middle of the road?&#8221;<\/p><p>He&#8217;s gone, &#8220;Yeah.&#8221; Anyway, so he&#8217;s got a problem accessing our mailbox&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> once a fortnight&#8230; when it&#8217;s recycling day&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and the recycle bins block his path. So he can get to the letterbox, but then instead of doing<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s so hard to&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; a little uey,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> back,<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> he wants to go around the tree, and on recycle day, there&#8217;s a couple of recycle bins there. So he&#8217;s decided to just run through them on his postie bike and kick them over into the middle of the road. And Lacey, the wonder dog, alerted us to this. That was the first time.<\/p><p>We&#8217;re like, &#8220;Why is she barking?&#8221; And we looked outside and saw the bins.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Bins.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Saw him going down the street.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Blocking the blind corner of the road, mind you, so not super safe for the neighbors.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So yeah, even mail&#8217;s&#8230; yeah, not getting delivered now.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s right.<\/p><p>There we go. What a&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So like I was saying&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> What a tedious little local drama we have going on.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So no, no one is gonna find me, basically. Unbelievable.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"who-inspires-you-not-to-give-up\">Who Inspires You Not to Give Up?<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And where one of us finds out the topic at the same time you do.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yes. I am Lyndon.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I&#8217;m Breallyn. Thanks for joining us.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And the topic today is something like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, I wanna know exactly<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> what it is.<\/p><p>I&#8217;ve pulled up my notes. You know what? I actually&#8230; ooh, there&#8217;s probably a date on this. What would you call these? Prep notes for the episode? Our prep notes go up roughly every month.<\/p><p>And you can see what sparked the conversation. And mine generally look a lot like my first inspiration for songs that I write, where there&#8217;s a few words, a bit of a verse, a bit of a chorus idea, and then the rest I just leave till later. This is pretty good. I thought there was way too much seriousness lately on our podcast.<\/p><p>There&#8217;s been too much AI talk. There&#8217;s been too much in-depth gardening talk. We had a bit of fun with the Soup podcast, Soup Pod.<\/p><p>They brought some<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> literary talk&#8230; to<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the show.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Not nerd talk.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I realized last week I was monologuing a couple of times to my distress&#8230; or chagrin. Is it?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Was, to my chagrin.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Well done.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Thanks. So now this is gonna be the best, lightest episode ever.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay. I&#8217;m ready.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Who is someone you&#8217;ve caught yourself thinking about when you wanted to give up? So this came from me sitting down, feeling like giving up. Not really. I was just thinking about who inspires me. That&#8217;s what it was. Who inspires me to just get on with it and to not make excuses? What was happening is I caught myself thinking about a particular artist. So for me, I went straight to a musician.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t know&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Naturally.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Naturally. I don&#8217;t know who you&#8217;re thinking&#8230; you might wanna start thinking of people, &#8217;cause I&#8217;ve gotta jump on you&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, I&#8217;ve started to think about people.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and I&#8217;ve wrote a couple down.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it&#8217;s definitely got me thinking, &#8217;cause yeah, my mind&#8217;s pinging around to a few different people that I do think about, and yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> it&#8217;s<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> it&#8217;s only natural, isn&#8217;t it? It&#8217;s human to get a bit down on yourself, unless you go out of your way to distract yourself continually. You do have a lot of time inside your own head, just as a human.<\/p><p>And if you&#8217;re an artist, you often want those times, and you need to be in those times. But it&#8217;s in those moments just where you&#8217;re reflecting on your own work and your own life, and then it&#8230; I think it&#8217;s part of the process of when you&#8217;re coming through the other side of it. And that could just be while you&#8217;re having a cup of tea, or it could be&#8230; often it&#8217;s while you&#8217;re watching a movie.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> as well. You&#8217;ll see a character and&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> good art makes you feel something or recognize something in yourself a lot of the time.<\/p><p>And so yeah, you might just be watching a movie and then you start thinking about your own work from a different perspective, and your own life, and it can motivate you. And so can just thinking about someone else who&#8217;s perhaps doing a similar thing to yourself, and you know a bit of their backstory, and that can be inspiring.<\/p><p>So have you got someone in mind?<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"breallyns-inspirations-lily-wilkinson-and-amie-kaufman\">Breallyn&#8217;s Inspirations: Lily Wilkinson and Amie Kaufman<\/h3><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I had a couple of things jump to mind.<\/p><p>One, like in terms of somebody who is doing&#8230; I was starting to think of writers. Yeah. I often think about Lily Wilkinson and also another Melbourne-based writer, Amie Kaufman.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. You&#8217;ve spoken about them before.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Actually, Kaufman. Yeah, it&#8217;s the pronunciation, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Kaufman.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And is&#8230; yeah, I have&#8230; is there something about her being local that makes it a bit realer?<\/p><p>Not a word, by the way.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. More<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> real.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Both of those writers, yeah, they are local. They&#8217;re Melbourne-based. Although they travel at different times for book festivals and things like that, I believe.<\/p><p>I&#8217;ve been in a couple of masterclass-type things with both of those writers. So seeing some of the behind the scenes and hearing some of their stories&#8230; things like that, it means that I&#8217;ve followed their careers more closely. I really love their books.<\/p><p>I tend to go to book launches and stuff like that. Or if there&#8217;s any opportunities to hear them speak on something, I&#8217;ll go along to those kind of things. So yeah, I guess I just sort of&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> You&#8217;re a fan girl.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I, a little bit. Am I a fan girl?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t know. Put it this way, when you go there, do they recognize you or do they go, &#8220;Oh&#8221;?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, they don&#8217;t recognize me.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Do they go, &#8220;Hi, Bre?&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Not at all, no.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Do they say, &#8220;Are you sure you want me to sign there?&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> They say, &#8220;Security.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Normally we sign in the front cover of the book, but sure.<\/p><p>It&#8217;ll wash off in the shower.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s gonna give me something to try next time, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, nothing like that. I&#8217;m not&#8230; Yeah, I just follow their careers. And they both&#8230; I don&#8217;t know, they have this incredible regime of writing and delivering and publishing books that just seems&#8230; the timelines just seem incredible to me, the amount of work that they&#8217;re doing putting stuff out.<\/p><p>So yeah, I guess I go, &#8220;Ah, that would be&#8230; like, that would be incredible. That would be an incredible publishing schedule and writing schedule. Like, how amazing.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And do you ever go&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> So I guess&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8220;Gee, I hope they&#8217;re single and have got no kids and no other responsibilities,&#8221; and then you find out, oh, no, they actually&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know they both have partners and have, I think, one child each, so yeah.<\/p><p>So&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And then you go, &#8220;Oh,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> they&#8217;re family people. They&#8217;ve got all the usual<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> things of life. I know. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And I know one thing that I&#8217;ve been interested in, because we&#8217;ve been talking kind of about side projects or hobbies, and so on. I know&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> On the&#8230; we have on the podcast?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, on the podcast. Yeah, Lily Wilkinson I know does&#8230; She&#8217;s quite a creative&#8230; or she&#8217;s obviously a very creative person, but she&#8217;ll often in her newsletters be updating about she&#8217;s been knitting or quilting&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, she&#8217;s a triple threat.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; those kind of things.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Does she dance?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, she makes stuff.<\/p><p>She probably cooks. I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t know that she dances. She&#8217;s a gamer and an<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Really?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; avid reader. Yeah. So she&#8217;ll often just pop in things that, you know, a series she&#8217;s been watching or a game that she&#8217;s played or things like that.<\/p><p>Yeah, and I think sometimes when you look from the outside at someone&#8217;s life, or like an artist you follow, or someone who seems to have it all, like I&#8217;m definitely past the stage of my life where looking from the outside you think you&#8217;ve got the whole story.<\/p><p>Obviously everyone&#8217;s got all sorts of things going on. So it&#8217;s not like any one person has this kind of golden perfect life that, if you could just live their life, everything would be perfect. It&#8217;s not like that. It&#8217;s more just how inspiring that they are, just continuing to put out their work and do different projects, and yeah, just very cool stuff like that.<\/p><p>Amie Kaufman&#8217;s got a couple of podcasts she does as well. So yeah, just all sorts of different things.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I hear you&#8217;re Lisa Wilkinson.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Nuh.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Amy, was it Wilkinson?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Lily Wilkinson.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Is that why you said &#8220;nuh&#8221;?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Lisa Wilkinson was a TV host, wasn&#8217;t she?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> What&#8217;s she doing now?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t know, but I believe there was&#8230; I think there was some, yeah, action there. There was<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> some action.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. She was a<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> co-host<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> with&#8230; she was a<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> co-host&#8230; with, what&#8217;s his face?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Karl Stefanovic.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Who&#8217;s now got his own podcast.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep. But she resigned immediately, quite publicly, because she wasn&#8217;t getting the same pay that he was, and they were doing the exact same job.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh.<\/p><p>That&#8217;s right. That was about six years ago, wasn&#8217;t it? Yeah. Six, maybe at least.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Good on you, Lisa.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> There you go. I hear you&#8217;re Amy Kaufman, and I raise you Sam Baker.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Sam Baker.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Before I tell you about Sam Baker, it&#8217;s occurred to me that all of my examples&#8230; ooh, all of them? My examples seem to have had some real trauma.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So I don&#8217;t know what&#8230; I don&#8217;t know. Maybe I just assumed that you would also be picking someone who actually had some trauma and a hard life. Not these city chicks who&#8217;ve got it all at their feet. Anyway.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s not what I said.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Hi to those women. No, but I thought of some classic examples.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"lyndons-inspiration-sam-baker\">Lyndon&#8217;s Inspiration: Sam Baker<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> The first one that came to mind was Django Reinhardt. Now, do you know about Django Reinhardt?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know the name.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, I don&#8217;t know the story.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he was like a gypsy jazz guitarist. Very famous<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> for his playing. But his story was that his fingers, or two or three of his fingers on his left hand, got fused together when he was saving his parents from a fire.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh my gosh.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So when he was younger, yeah, he&#8217;s got&#8230; I think two fingers are fused together.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And he plays incredibly.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> That&#8217;s&#8230; plays guitar incredibly.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s amazing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he&#8217;s inspirational for that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But he&#8217;s also&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Like, in that overcoming, you know&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> overcoming adversity way.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I remember teaching people guitar, and they&#8217;re like, &#8220;I think my fingers are too short,&#8221; or too fat, or too long, or too tired, or &#8220;Is it meant to do that?&#8221; And it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Okay, have you heard of Django Reinhardt?&#8221; So he came to mind initially. But when I was having that moment of reflection, thinking about who inspires me to create and to never give up, it&#8217;s this guy called Sam Baker.<\/p><p>He&#8217;s an American singer-songwriter. He&#8217;s got 5,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, which I suppose depending on which way you look at it is either a lot or not a lot.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a lot of people enjoying your music. It&#8217;s not a lot to make money from.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Not enough for&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Not from that platform. I&#8217;m gonna read out his little about me.<\/p><p>So this is an excerpt. If you wanna read his whole bio, I guess go to his website or just go to Spotify, look up Sam Baker.<\/p><p>The defining moment in Baker&#8217;s life came in 1986 when he was traveling on a train to visit Machu Picchu in Peru. A terrorist bomb exploded on the train and Baker was gravely injured, losing most of his hearing and suffering serious injuries to his left arm. He had 18 corrective surgeries over the next decade at hospitals in San Antonio and Houston, and the consequent physical, emotional, and spiritual journey he experienced helped inform his quiet and passionate view of the world.<\/p><p>Baker had to completely relearn how to play the guitar with his mangled left hand, and singing was extremely difficult for him because of his severe hearing loss. But he overcame these obstacles to develop his uniquely hushed and quietly powerful performance style. Baker self-released three critically acclaimed albums, 2004&#8217;s Mercy, 2007&#8217;s Pretty World, and 2009&#8217;s Cotton, all of which make up what he calls his Mercy Trilogy.<\/p><p>2013&#8217;s Say Grace was cited by Rolling Stone as one of the top 10 country LPs of the year. And that&#8217;s why I think it&#8217;s surprising that he&#8217;s got 5,000 monthly listeners, &#8217;cause he&#8217;s released these incredible albums, and even Rolling Stone have put one of them in the top 10<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> country LPs of the year in 2013.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> So you&#8217;d think he&#8217;d have 50,000 listeners. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But the thing about&#8230; and his whole story is pretty crazy, &#8217;cause if I remember correctly, I&#8217;m not even sure that before the accident he was a musician necessarily. I might be wrong. But yeah, so this whole&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it&#8217;s actually formed his sound and his approach.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> If you listen to him sing and play, you will totally get it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s really powerful. If you didn&#8217;t know his backstory and you just heard him, which is I think how I first heard of him&#8230; I just heard him singing and I thought, &#8220;What is this guy&#8217;s story?&#8221;<\/p><p>Because on one hand you could think he&#8217;s just one of these sort of singers that doesn&#8217;t enunciate words properly, or he&#8217;s a bit of&#8230; not even a lazy singer, it&#8217;s just stylistically, it&#8217;s that kind of&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Not all pronounced crisply or<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> anything. No. Yeah. Just<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> very quiet.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And what he was singing about was very poignant, and so it just made me think, &#8220;Who is this guy?&#8221; And I looked him up and I just couldn&#8217;t believe the story, and then it all made sense.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Like it all made sense.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> How horrific. Terrorist bomb, yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And he&#8217;d been&#8230; that was in &#8217;86 and he was a young man.<\/p><p>He&#8217;d be in his 60s easily now.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I&#8217;d say. So his most of his adult life has been in overcoming this horrendous event and<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;d say so, &#8217;cause &#8217;86&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> developing music through it or, in spite of it&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> it&#8217;s 40 years ago.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he might&#8217;ve been in his 30s or something.<\/p><p>Okay. Or his late 20s. I don&#8217;t know. But that&#8217;s who I was<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> thinking about. That guy going&#8230; you know when sometimes you just go, &#8220;What excuse do I have?&#8221; You just&#8230; these are just moments. It&#8217;s not like I was<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> sitting around, moping around for a week or anything.<\/p><p>Yeah. It was just probably&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And if this guy can get&#8230; past&#8230; that thing, then I have to get over my whatever thing.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Just, yeah, just made me&#8230; yeah, just think there are people that just pop into your mind.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, almost unbidden, or just when you need that just a point of reference, of like going, &#8220;Okay, I&#8217;m finding this hard now.<\/p><p>I feel like nothing&#8217;s coming together. I might give up.&#8221; But then something comes to mind. You&#8217;re not even going, &#8220;What should I think of?&#8221; Or<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> well&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; or like deliberately trying to inspire yourself or something. No. It&#8217;s just more like somebody might pop into your mind<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; at a time like that.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And also, I should also say that it&#8217;s not even that you&#8217;ve gotta be in this low doldrums. Sometimes you&#8217;d just be coasting along. You just feel like there&#8217;s more that you should be doing, or maybe you&#8217;re not&#8230; I don&#8217;t know, like maybe in my case I go, &#8220;I&#8217;m at home too much and maybe I need to be rubbing shoulders with people a bit more and be in the scene a bit more,&#8221; and that sort of stuff. So you don&#8217;t have to be like at your lowest ebb to have these different people pop into your mind.<\/p><p>But they can just pop in and you go, &#8220;Oh, yeah.&#8221; Imagine what that took. So in light of that, do you wanna come up with some better examples then?<\/p><p>No, I&#8217;m just kidding.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No, &#8217;cause I think that there&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> like, it&#8217;s nice to kinda think, &#8220;Oh, hey, so many people have overcome so many things in order to put out their art, or to keep on going, or to keep being a great person or whatever.&#8221; I think what sometimes I&#8217;ve come up against is not wanting to use people as, oh, if they can do it with all of their difficulties, then surely I can do it.<\/p><p>That&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, because we&#8217;ve lived different lives and everything&#8217;s different.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Of course&#8230; you can never&#8230; &#8217;cause that&#8217;s the comparison thing, isn&#8217;t it? But that&#8217;s&#8230; I know what you mean, but it&#8217;s a different thing, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p><p>Like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a different thing if you&#8217;re&#8230; like, you&#8217;re not trying to push yourself up by reminding yourself of somebody else&#8217;s difficulties or whatever.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s more just going, they&#8217;re genuinely&#8230; I like what they do. I can relate in some ways to their story, or I feel for their story, so then I can&#8230; yeah, on the difficult times that we go through. Yeah. We&#8217;re not alone.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And I think, yeah.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"authenticity-over-hype\">Authenticity Over Hype<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And I think, too, what I like about the Sam Bakers of the world is they&#8217;re not&#8230; His albums or his motivation isn&#8217;t to inspire people.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I saw a post come up today from, I don&#8217;t know who this person was, never heard of them in my life. But they had a photo of them singing and playing guitar, presumably.<\/p><p>And it said, &#8220;I was born to entertain.&#8221;<\/p><p>And I just thought, &#8220;Swipe.&#8221; Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> You know? It&#8217;s just a completely different&#8230; it is. I wanna consume&#8230; if I had a gun to my head and I had to choose half a dozen artists, they&#8217;re the only ones I could listen to, I&#8217;d be choosing someone like Sam Baker.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Someone who&#8217;s, and not because of the experience he had, but because of where the music&#8217;s coming from.<\/p><p>So there&#8217;s a synergy between who he is and what he&#8217;s doing.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Yep. It&#8217;s come from a deep place and from lived experience, and yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he, yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> and even the physical limitations that have come through that experience have shaped the very way that he goes about writing and recording. That&#8230; yeah. There&#8217;s a unique sound that wouldn&#8217;t have come about otherwise.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; So yeah, that is, yeah, it makes for this, really, like a unique sound that&#8217;s come from a certain experience, I suppose. So yeah, it&#8217;s a, yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And it doesn&#8217;t have to be&#8230; as great a thing to listen to&#8230; as much as I&#8217;ve immediately gone to people that have had to overcome some hardships.<\/p><p>And I&#8217;ll tell you a couple of the others that I wrote down. The same thing in terms of lived experience, or the person that someone is, and that coming through strongly in their art.<\/p><p>They don&#8217;t have to have had trauma necessarily. I think of the band Australian Crawl.<\/p><p>Like, you hear the Australian Crawl songs, and they&#8217;re singing about their life, about growing up on the peninsula, things that they saw, things that they did. A lot of the lyrics are literally things that they said to each other.<\/p><p>Or things that other people in their circles had said. So there&#8217;s this connection there that can&#8217;t be faked.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s just coming from real&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> everyday life, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So even if&#8230; it&#8217;s<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> not coming from &#8220;How can I write a cool song about my ex-boyfriend or about,&#8221; like yeah, a song of what&#8217;s gonna&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you know. But even if they sat down to write a song about their ex-girlfriend, right?<\/p><p>It&#8217;s all just too real. It&#8217;s all right there. It&#8217;s not because they&#8217;re trying to write a catchy song that will be a big hit or something like that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> The artist doesn&#8217;t have to have gone through this trauma. And there&#8217;s a whole other debate that we&#8217;ll talk about when we do a serious episode, which is the idea of the struggling musician and the poor artist, and how that image and language has&#8230; a lot of us artistic people fall for that romanticism.<\/p><p>We&#8217;re just expected to be poor, and like, we talk about ourselves in those terms, and I&#8217;m just a struggling artist, or I&#8217;m a broke musician.<\/p><p>Like, I said something the other day which was such a typical sort of thing to say, but it really is just terminology to make the other person feel comfortable, or to understand what it is I do. And I realized, oh, you don&#8217;t do that for other industries.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But somehow over many years it set&#8230; not just the tone for artists, but it set like a pay scale<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> for us as well.<\/p><p>Yeah.<\/p><p>And often that pay scale is, do this for the exposure.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And it happens across all the arts at any level, regardless of how long you&#8217;ve been doing it for, or the experience that you&#8217;ve got, or anything. But that&#8217;s a whole other conversation.<\/p><p>Tune in for that&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> whenever Bre decides to do that. But I&#8217;ll move on with my other list. I&#8217;ll move on with my other&#8230; yeah, examples.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Like inspirations? Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> You can tell me what another one of yours is if you&#8217;ve got one, maybe after this.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"nathan-cavaleri-and-the-battle-with-anxiety\">Nathan Cavaleri and His Battle with Anxiety<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m gonna talk about Nathan Cavaleri.<\/p><p>Some listeners might remember Nathan Cavaleri<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> from when he was promoted heavily as a young blues prodigy.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Guitar player prodigy, yeah. &#8220;Hey, listen to this young kid. Isn&#8217;t he amazing?&#8221; He can rip these licks that just, yeah, are incredible.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Players&#8230; pre,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> pre-internet.<\/p><p>Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> This would&#8217;ve been in the &#8217;80s or &#8217;90s, was it?<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> He&#8217;s a little younger than me, so probably the, yeah, probably the &#8217;90s.<\/p><p>The early &#8217;90s. But he popped up somewhere on my Instagram feed a few years back. It was before COVID.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And I connected with him after he started posting about his battle with crippling anxiety.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So this was a time when I was realizing that a lot of mental health symptoms that I had from migraine were very similar, if not the same, to people with anxiety and ailments like that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So when he was talking about certain aspects of his mental health, I was like thinking, &#8220;Hang on a minute. I&#8217;ve experienced that.&#8221; He had&#8230; the anxiety he had was absolutely crippling. He couldn&#8217;t get on stage.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, he&#8230; yeah, that&#8217;s really hard.<\/p><p>And he is a born performer. Yeah. He is. Yeah. He&#8217;s a really talented musician.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, he&#8217;s written some really wonderful things album-wise, song-wise, and also just sound design and in advertising and whatnot.<\/p><p>But yeah, so he just found himself in a place where he couldn&#8217;t get on stage anymore.<\/p><p>And for someone who&#8217;s&#8230; that&#8217;s their life&#8230;<\/p><p>He&#8217;s had a really big journey to overcome that<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, wow&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> and to deal with that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, that is huge, &#8217;cause it&#8217;s like a direct impact onto the performance. The lifeblood of a musician, like a performing musician, is<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> to be able to get up on stage and do your thing<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> and have a great time doing it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And if you&#8217;re trying to battle even just being able to get up there and&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> &#8230; yeah, that, yeah. It&#8217;s like a blow right to the heart of what you do.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And I imagine, too, when you&#8217;ve had all that attention on you<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> as a young person,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> that alone would be enough to deal with when you&#8217;re&#8230; I don&#8217;t wanna put words in his mouth, but if you&#8217;re trying to redefine yourself as an adult and a musician and&#8230; you know what I mean?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Or&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> just, or&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Just assimilate what that childhood was and what it means to you now.<\/p><p>Yeah, again,<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> who knows? Yeah. Expectations that don&#8217;t matter, but they<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> still feel like<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> yeah&#8230; still influence you and&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> they feel like they do, yeah. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> all that sort of stuff and then to have this as well.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he&#8217;s someone that he has done a lot of stuff online in the mental health space in terms of bringing awareness to it and helping other people, talking about his journey, and in a real honest, down to earth, no BS way. It&#8217;s not&#8230; he&#8217;s not an influencer. He&#8217;s not out to profit off of that.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> it&#8217;s as genuine as you&#8217;re gonna get.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he comes to mind too, because he&#8217;s touring, he&#8217;s writing.<\/p><p>He&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230; you<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> know.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And yeah. So he pops into my head every now and then.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. He would be an excellent person to have on the podcast. I wonder if he could ever become a guest.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It would be so great to hear that story and yeah, just his reflections on it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s shaped who he is and what he does, and he still talks about it today. It&#8217;s not like he got over it and now has just&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s right&#8230; moved on and&#8230; Things never&#8230; you&#8217;re never the same person<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> on the other side of<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> something. No.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ryan-adams\">Ryan Adams<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Now the last person I&#8217;m gonna talk about is a little bit controversial for a few different reasons.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Ooh, controversy on the pod.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I&#8217;m gonna try and sidestep all the controversy because I don&#8217;t know enough about it. All I can talk about is what I&#8217;ve seen and why he&#8217;s coming up in my list.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s funny how everything&#8217;s post-pandemic, pre-pandemic, during the pandemic.<\/p><p>But that&#8217;s just sort of&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That&#8217;s it.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> how I&#8217;ve&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Our new&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; thought about things&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> BC, AD.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Oh, don&#8217;t start me on that. Have you seen what the other term is now?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> What, BCE? No. Before Common Era is&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, the Common Era.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. That&#8217;s been out for a while. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. I only just came across it the other day. I was like,<\/p><p>&#8220;Is this what I think it is?&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s no longer BC, it&#8217;s BCE. Yeah, that&#8217;s right. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p>I was just like, &#8220;Wow.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So this person popped up on my feed during the pandemic playing guitar from his lounge room, with his cats, playing some songs of his that were really popular, playing songs that he&#8217;d just written or was writing that day.<\/p><p>It was very intimate, very raw.<\/p><p>A lot of it&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Very<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> immediate<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> sounding, yes&#8230; it was very immediate. Some of it, I think he was even doing some live streaming stuff.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But it was so lackadaisical, but from someone who&#8217;s got a lot of hours under his belt as a player, as a writer, as a studio musician, as a performer, touring. And so in what he was doing, there was a lot of expertise and knowledge behind it.<\/p><p>Like you&#8217;re in the lounge room with him, witnessing something that was literally a moment in time, would never happen again.<\/p><p>And this person was&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And because they&#8217;re like a master at what they do, or like a professional in what they do, it&#8217;s not just like watching someone noodle around with a guitar.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s just that next level of actually watching someone who&#8217;s very good at what they do. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, okay.<\/p><p>And this person is, or was, or is Ryan Adams.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Oh, okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So I was a big fan of&#8230; I&#8217;m still a fan of Ryan Adams.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Righty-o.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Like, years before that. So I&#8217;m talking like 30 years ago.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Now this is Ryan Adams, not to be confused with Bryan Adams.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Who I&#8217;m also a fan of,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Bryan Adams.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> This is Ryan.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Now you&#8217;re gonna need to explain Ryan Adams because yeah. Which I think you&#8217;re coming up to.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> There&#8217;s a poster of him<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; on the wall there&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Well, Ryan Adams, I haven&#8217;t got a blurb about him.<\/p><p>Oh, what&#8217;s his style? He&#8217;s flirted with different sort of genres, so I don&#8217;t know. Singer-songwriter, Americana, country rock.<\/p><p>There&#8217;s an album of his called Gold, which from my recollection is the one that&#8230; you know when you start hearing more people talking about someone and you go, &#8220;Oh, maybe that&#8217;s his breakthrough album&#8221;?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> This may have been that album. Or in Australia anyway. And it&#8217;s from 2001. It&#8217;s called Gold, there&#8217;s a picture of him on the front not really looking at the camera. A little bit Bruce Springsteen-esque, and he&#8217;s in front of an American flag. Okay. Here, I&#8217;ll show it to you. You know what I mean?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Ah, yeah, yeah. Seen that one. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So the lead track of that is New York, which is this up-tempo acoustic-driven song.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s great.<\/p><p>There&#8217;s another song on that I love called Answering Bell. The Rescue Blues. There&#8217;s a song I actually used to do&#8230; That&#8217;s right, I forgot about this, called When the Stars Go Blue.<\/p><p>I used to do like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; a cover of that.<\/p><p>Another song which I love, which I covered as well when I played with a three-piece, was called Enemy Fire. No one knew these songs when I did them either.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So it&#8217;s like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; a really bad choice of songs, but I just, I loved doing them.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So that was a big album for him.<\/p><p>He&#8217;s also got another album, which I think was the year before, called Heartbreaker. And that was a very popular album. So he&#8217;s got fans all over the world. Just a great songwriter. But one of the other things about these live performances he was doing was he was talking about his mental health struggles at the time as well.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So it was&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Which I bet a lot of people could relate to, being&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> 100%&#8230; yeah. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Being the pandemic, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. And he&#8217;s got a condition, I can&#8217;t remember what it&#8217;s called, but a pretty debilitating condition. And unfortunately, this last tour that he did when he was in Melbourne, he basically didn&#8217;t finish his set on stage. He got annoyed with some people doing flash photography. And someone was telling me exactly what happened and how he left the stage. And then when he came back on, he didn&#8217;t even finish songs.<\/p><p>He&#8217;d start a song and then move on to another one without even finishing it, and people were leaving. And then he started being a bit demonstrative towards people that were leaving and stuff. And so it was like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; really quite&#8230; Yeah. I don&#8217;t know what&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That is controversy.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; I don&#8217;t know what was going on.<\/p><p>And then he said something publicly about Melbourne or Australians being the worst audience. And then he took it back and did an apology. And it was all this stuff<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Wow&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> that happened. And I was like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Big saga.<\/p><p>Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. And I was like, &#8220;Man, I don&#8217;t know what to think about all of that.&#8221; But he&#8217;s someone that definitely at that time I found, because I did love his music, just having him open up about things that he was going through, but the stories are so real&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I didn&#8217;t follow that story. But yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I basically got told, &#8220;Oh, if you were a fan of his, it was a good thing that you weren&#8217;t there because<\/p><p>now you can remain a fan.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Okay.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. It was just hard&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> for people. Yeah. And that does show that correlation between the person and the art<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> or the music. And that is also why it is hard, isn&#8217;t it? If people enjoyed Rolf Harris and all his genius&#8230; he was a talented guy.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, and captured the spirit of everyday backyard Aussies and all that.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah. And he had a real way about him in terms of entertaining.<\/p><p>I still remember him doing his&#8230; &#8217;cause he was, remember he was a&#8230; was it Taubmans or something? Was the&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> British Paints.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> British Paints.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Sure can.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Sure can, right? Yep. So he would do these massive paintings<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> with a house painting brush or whatever. Yeah. Like the big wide brush, straight from the tin of paint.<\/p><p>Do these murals, and then you&#8217;d go, &#8220;What is that?&#8221; And then it would get turned around like on, was it Upside Down, Miss Jane? Yeah. You know that show? It&#8217;d get turned around and then you&#8217;d go, &#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s a self-portrait,&#8221; or&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So he was very<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> entertaining. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. And he was like, he could sing and dance and write a song, paint and whatever, and then he had this other side to him, yeah, which was obviously terrible.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And it is hard to then go, &#8220;Oh, but&#8230;&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I know. It&#8217;s<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the, he&#8230; we just wanna love him and remember him for all this stuff. It&#8217;s really hard to separate the person.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It is. I think that&#8217;s a&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Because that&#8217;s often the thing that makes us drawn to art in the first place.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Is the conflicts and the place where, yeah, things aren&#8217;t easy. Yeah, that&#8217;s what you hear in the art and you feel in it. Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Or just the<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> truth. I think it could just be<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> a truth sometimes&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> something that we should possibly cover at some point when we feel like doing a very serious topic is&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yes, &#8217;cause today&#8217;s not serious.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> No.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It can&#8217;t be serious.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Is where can you separate the art from the artist, and where can you just no longer overlook who this person is and just go, &#8220;No.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Such a grey area.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And it&#8217;s different for everyone&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It is different.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; at different times of your life as well.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Yep. And depending on what they&#8217;ve done and how close that is to you in your life, some things&#8230;<\/p><p>Yeah.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"defining-your-own-version-of-success\">Defining Your Own Version of Success<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Can I ask another question?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Is it okay if I just keep going quietly in my own way without it looking like anyone else&#8217;s version of success?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I think that&#8217;s a good thing to do. That seems like a different topic.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No, it&#8217;s not.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Because these people that I&#8217;ve been talking about are going about their business.<\/p><p>Maybe not Ryan Adams so much. I&#8217;m looking at my notes and I had&#8230; I want to say Ryan Adams, but yeah. I have questions.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But anyway, I did talk yeah about him a bit. But the&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. So say,<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> the question again&#8230; So Nathan Cavaleri, right?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Despite things that have transpired in his life and things he&#8217;s had to overcome, has been quietly going about his business, doing it his own way, choosing to talk about what he wants to talk about, choosing to write what he wants to write.<\/p><p>Having to really do it all himself without any of that support that he arguably had when he was a child prodigy. All those supporting networks. Obviously, he&#8217;s got his family support and whatnot. But without all of those,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> All the industry ins&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> without&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> and all that kind of thing&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. That&#8217;s right.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And without it, he&#8230; it&#8217;s his version of success that he&#8217;s creating. So it&#8217;s not really a different topic because when these people pop into your head, when you&#8217;ve caught yourself thinking about these people at times where you&#8217;re just trying to work out what your next move is, right, as an artist. The people that have at least come up for me are people that are going about their business and creating a version of success for them, and that&#8217;s essentially what&#8217;s been attractive to me. So these people, I&#8217;m attracted to their music and them as a person who&#8217;s created the music.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s not like I&#8217;ve talked about people where I really like their story, but I actually don&#8217;t like their art or their music.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s like, I&#8217;ve liked their music&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> but I like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, and then&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I like how that music has come to be in the world, right?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So the question is, is it okay if I just keep going quietly in my own way without it looking like anyone else&#8217;s version of success?<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Obviously it is okay.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, of course. Yeah. And it&#8217;s almost like it takes a while for artists to come to that point of going, &#8220;I no longer wanna chase those ideals and ideas of success that have been put in front of me. I&#8217;d rather do something that means much more to myself.&#8221;<\/p><p>So it&#8217;s like a mature reckoning of what success is.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8216;Cause I only know it from my point of view. But when you&#8217;re a musician, you&#8217;ve gotta be on the particular stages, and you&#8217;ve gotta talk to the right people, and you&#8217;ve gotta get your music&#8230; this whole thing of like getting it out there.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s how do you get your painting out there, how do you&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s the&#8230; what you end up with at the end is&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a single piece you can sell to one person or&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Although if you make reels of it, you can sell a course or a subscription or<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> a&#8230; or you can make postcards.<\/p><p>Yeah. What about that guy that does the linocuts? I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s the right word. Yeah. What were you gonna say&#8230; you had a lovely way to end this episode.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"breallyns-inspiration-birdie\">Breallyn&#8217;s Inspiration: Birdie<\/h3><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> I&#8217;d&#8230; your original question was,<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> I had two questions, yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> you had two questions. Who do you think of when you feel like giving up? And the first person that came to my mind is Birdie. <\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Ah. Yeah. But youdidn&#8217;t wanna mention her.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, because then I realized we were talking more about inspirational people, or just people that we&#8230; I don&#8217;t know, yeah, just draw something from in order to keep going.<\/p><p>But I feel like for me, Birdie&#8217;s sort of always the first and last person I come to in anything that I do. I just feel such a huge level of responsibility to her and for her. And not just in order to make her life as good as it can be and look after her and give her all the opportunities that she can have and all that.<\/p><p>But it&#8217;s almost like she deserves me to be the best that I can be, that it&#8217;s like a responsibility to be better and do all the things I can do just because she exists and just because I get to know her and live as her mum.<\/p><p>It calls me in a way to not give up and to not settle for, like&#8230; just going, &#8220;Oh, I won&#8217;t get this thing done, but it doesn&#8217;t matter.&#8221;<\/p><p>I don&#8217;t know. I just, yeah, she pushes me in that way to make sure that I do finish things and do keep searching for my version of success.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s right.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. And so part of that obviously is that I feel like I have to be her voice in so many ways, so I better do a damn good job of it, &#8217;cause she deserves it. So yeah, I think that&#8217;s something that like when I feel like, oh, this, I&#8217;m never gonna get this draft finished, or there&#8217;s too many things on my plate, I can&#8217;t do this thing that feels like it&#8217;s really important to me, but in the scheme of things won&#8217;t matter to anyone else if it never gets done.<\/p><p>It still feels like it really matters.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, because she deserves me to get my things finished<\/p><p>and to be a better voice for her.<\/p><p>Yeah.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"life-points-and-creative-capacity\">Life Points and Creative Capacity<\/h3><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> We were talking to one of our support workers last week about life points, because she&#8217;s moving house, moving into a home that she bought.<\/p><p>And we were like, &#8220;Yeah, that&#8217;s a lot.&#8221;<\/p><p>Those are two big things that add up your life points in a year.<\/p><p>And you&#8217;re getting to a tipping point there. Like&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, you need to explain life points.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Life points are&#8230; there&#8217;s different events that happen in your life that a point system is attributed to.<\/p><p>And in the top 10, in terms of taking up the most amount of points&#8230; and once you get to a certain amount of points, and I can&#8217;t remember what it is, it might be like 400 points or something in a 12-month period, you&#8217;re reaching your capacity of what<\/p><p>you can deal with before it starts affecting you.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Like adversely. In a very bad way, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So, and<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> and obviously there&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a theory&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> It&#8217;s not, yeah, it&#8217;s a theory. But when you look at it, you go&#8230;<\/p><p>It&#8217;s just a way to reflect on it. It&#8217;s not like you&#8217;ve reached your points, you&#8217;re out.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No. No. No one&#8217;s taking you around the corner and<\/p><p>bumping you off. But once you&#8217;ve experienced a few of these things, you look at the whole list and you go, &#8220;Yeah, that makes perfect sense.&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong><\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> In that way. It&#8217;s just about being aware of capacity, which is why I&#8217;m talking about it.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> But yeah, like in the top 10 is getting married<\/p><p>and getting divorced.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. They&#8217;re both in there.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Both huge things, yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Moving house, or moving country,<\/p><p>are up there. Having to deal with an illness or someone dying in your family.<\/p><p>Those are obviously up there.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> So it&#8217;s, you know how you hear people say&#8230; they&#8217;ll go, &#8220;Is that wise?&#8221; When someone&#8217;s saying, &#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m doing this,&#8221; and then this is happening, and they&#8217;ll be like, &#8220;Is that wise to be doing all of that at the one time?&#8221;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Because it sounds like a lot. And so now you can mathematically prove that it is a lot. I wonder if there&#8217;s a similar thing for your capacity for your energy reserves, because that would be interesting to look at.<\/p><p>Because you have to divert so much of yours into Birdie.<\/p><p>And then whatever&#8217;s left, in a sense&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s right.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230; you need to then be able to&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> you know&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That gets distributed between, yeah, all the other things. Yeah. Yeah. &#8216;Cause, yeah, Birdie has to come first with things. It&#8217;s not like I can borrow from the Birdie time and energy and<\/p><p>put it elsewhere.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yeah. And often even if it wasn&#8217;t Birdie, if it was something else&#8230; like people find that just with their work,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah. Definitely.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> it&#8217;s<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> it&#8217;s a non-negotiable.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> It&#8217;s a non-negotiable.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> That<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> has to happen. Yeah.<\/p><p>Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. But I suppose what started out as a question about who pops into your head when you&#8217;re having these sort of times of self-reflection and trying to work out your next move.<\/p><p>And we&#8217;ve talked about that a bit in a very non-serious manner, I might add.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah, just a bit.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And then we&#8217;ve ended up actually in that place.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Always comes back to Birdie.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> No. We&#8217;ve just ended up&#8230;<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> For me, at least.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> &#8230; not necessarily Birdie. We&#8217;ve just, yeah, ended up in that place of reflection and&#8230;<\/p><p>Yeah. I guess that&#8217;s how it works.<\/p><p>But yeah, go look up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sambaker.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sam <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sambakermusic.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Baker<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sambaker.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">.<\/a><\/p><p>Look up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nathancavaleri.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nathan Cavaleri<\/a>. Look up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ryanadamsofficial.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ryan Adams<\/a>. You either look him up for his music or the controversy. Whatever floats your boat.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Buy some books from Lily Wilkinson and Amie Kaufman. Great reads.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Yep.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Buy them for the young people in your lives because they write in YA and children&#8217;s genres.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Thanks for listening, everybody. Yeah. Thanks, Bre, for engaging with my mystery question.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> And,<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> And we&#8217;ll see you next time.<\/p><p><strong>Lyndon:<\/strong> Talk to you all next week on Pain In The Arts.<\/p><p><strong>Breallyn:<\/strong> Bye.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/><p>Want more deep dives into the creative process? Our Patreon supporters <a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/painintheartslife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">get exclusive episodes and behind-the-scenes content.<\/a> <\/p><a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/painintheartslife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"patreon-button\">\n    \ud83c\udfa7 Click for Bonus Episodes\n<\/a>\n\n<style>\n  .patreon-button {\n    display: inline-block;\n    background-color: var(--wp--preset--color--primary, #FF424D); \/* Uses Podcasty's primary color *\/\n    color: var(--wp--preset--color--contrast, #ffffff); \/* Theme contrast color *\/\n    font-family: var(--wp--preset--font-family--body, sans-serif);\n    font-size: 16px; \/* Slightly smaller font *\/\n    font-weight: 600;\n    text-align: center;\n    padding: 10px 18px; \/* Reduced padding *\/\n    border-radius: 6px;\n    text-decoration: none;\n    transition: background-color 0.3s ease-in-out, transform 0.2s ease-in-out;\n    box-shadow: 0px 3px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);\n  }\n\n  .patreon-button:hover {\n    background-color: var(--wp--preset--color--secondary, #e63e48);\n    transform: translateY(-2px);\n  }\n\n  .patreon-button:active {\n    transform: translateY(0);\n  }\n<\/style>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August 25, 2026\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Episode 8154 Min, 26 Sec\u00a0 Summary Who do you think of when you feel like giving up on your creative work? Not some aspirational figure pulled from a shelf, but the person who shows up in your mind, unbidden, when things feel too hard or too quiet or not enough. This week, I brought the topic and Breallyn only found out after the&#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/transcript\/creative-inspiration-keep-going-when-you-want-to-give-up\/\">Read More<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","categories":[61],"class_list":["post-6885","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry","category-personal-stories-reflections","is-cat-link-regular"],"featured_image_url":[],"post_author":"","assigned_categories":"Personal Stories &amp; Reflections","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/transcript\/6885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/transcript"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/transcript"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paininthearts.life\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}