Here Bressie interviews Blindboy Boatclub, one half of the Limerick hip-hop duo The Rubberbandits. A creative soulful force of nature he talks mental health, confessional boxes, taking ownership of your own darkness, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Jungian psychology and emotional catharsis..
1. The Rubberbandits have a very layered intelligent comedic ability. Do you think comedy can be a good vehicle for delivering social messages?
Absolutely, it all comes down to defence mechanisms. Ideas that are controversial, or that challenge a dominant narrative can feel threatening, so humans block them out with fear or anger. By using creativity or humour, an artist can present ideas to people in a way that is non-threatening. Using metaphor and allegory also credits the listener with intelligence, which means that they are being presented with questions rather than having a viewpoint shouted at them. Social messages when presented through art, encourage critical thinking. Things like advertising or religion discourage critical thinking.
2. Ireland has over the years become a much more liberal place, but the side effect of this liberalism is the fact that we have become incredibly easy to offend. Do you find this ever hinders you guys or does it make it an even better breeding ground for your type of unique personalities?
There’s nothing wrong with getting offended, so long as a person understands that being offended doesn’t make them in the right. Anything that generates conversation and debate around an idea or a piece of creative work is a good thing. To bring it back to what I said earlier, it encourages critical thinking. Any position that is far left should be subjected to critical analysis, just as much as a position that is far right. The most recent series of South Park is a great example of how they are challenging leftist ideas that often go unchallenged. They ask questions as to why we don’t challenge them.
3. The mental health conversation in Ireland has exploded in recent times. Your homeland Limerick, like most cities, has dealt with at times many social issues which have foundations in an inability to deal or talk about emotional and mental health problems. What is your opinion on where we are going as a society when it comes to our collective mental health?
Ireland is in a bad way mental health wise. Our public mental health system is almost non-existent. It also tends to veer towards institutionalisation and views a lot of emotional and cognitive unease as serious physical illness which is best treated with medication. We know from empirical evidence through the study of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, that medicine can have an inferior efficacy to talk therapy for a lot of emotional disorders, most notably depression. Voluntary organisations like Pieta House provide the strongest support structures in Ireland, but even they are severely limited in what they can do, due to funding.
Sociologically, our culture is a breeding ground for poor mental health practice. In my personal opinion, one of the core reasons for this is that our modern culture developed within the structures of the catholic church. The confessional box still dictates our attitudes towards opening up about our inner world. For so long, an Irish person was told to assess their outward behaviour and inner thoughts within terms of Sin. Simple morality, good or bad. They then privately expressed these behaviours, in a wooden box to a person that is essentially a magician. This magician would then use divine magical judgement to hand out punishment for the person’s thoughts or behaviours. The person would accept their punishment (penance) and then carry it out on themselves. At which point they are absolved of the sins of their improper thoughts or behaviours. The person then goes to the pub, or has a drink at home, because they feel good about themselves for just having their soul washed by a magician.
The people who felt their sins were too horrible to even tell the priest, simply lived in silence and sorted it out themselves with alcohol. Like today, I’d wager that these were young men.
What I’ve just described is a model for terrible mental health practice. It provides no opportunity for a person to understand their inner world, or to uncover unconscious forces that are driving distressing thoughts or behaviours. It also celebrates shame and punishment and encourages the use of powerful defence mechanisms. It is the opposite to the findings of modern psychotherapy.
Even though the Church and the confession box no longer exist, their effects are still present today culturally. The culture of silence, shame and punishment is widespread, especially among young men.
The fear of talking to a therapist, or opening up about vulnerability carries with it a label of being “bad, or broken”. If the young man does seek help, his parents might treat it as a big secret, like a confessional. Irish people who don’t seek help, still find themselves drawn in by drink, drugs and rivers.
Why don’t we feel this shame about going to the dentist? Because we never had a systematic culture which told us that having a cavity is a sin. We did have this culture around our inner emotional world.
4. What can be done about this?
Potential solutions. Make good mental health practice part of your daily life. You are an adult and you have the power to make this choice, even though you are a product of our culture you have the choice to not be defined by it. Read up about the likes of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Transactional analysis, Emotional intelligence. Embrace them and apply them to your life.
Long term solution. Replace religion in schools with Emotional Intelligence classes. Teach young children to understand their emotions and the emotions of others.
5. The subject of addiction is evident in many of your projects. We seem to promote the culture of alcohol heavily but then when people need help when it comes to alcohol addiction, it’s hard, at times to get the resources. Have we a narrow view of addiction in Ireland?
We are getting better with addiction. Regarding substances of any description however, on a larger scale, I do like to bring the conversation back to mental health. When anyone is using anything in excess, it is worth looking at the Whys. What part of themselves is that person medicating? Regarding addiction treatment in Ireland, again, you’ll find that it’s voluntary organisations that are doing the best work.
6. A lot of your material can be at times quite dark. Does this ever have any effect on your own mental well-being or are you able to separate yourselves from the creative process?
We view creativity as a form of emotional catharsis. It’s a Jungian concept, where the unconscious mind is purged for ideas. We use techniques such as automatic writing to access an uncensored stream of consciousness. Darkness is a necessary facet of the human condition. At the back of everyone’s head, at every second, is the awareness that you and everyone you love is going to die, as a given. All human behaviour has an undercurrent of darkness… violent impulses and sexual impulses which we try to keep under control in the interest of society.
Our exploration of darkness in our creative process requires us to take ownership of our own darkness, our own fallibilities, our insecurities, our jealousies. It’s great for our mental health. Sure, a large part of ‘Spastic Hawk’ is about my own experiences of being bullied as a child, and how I allowed labels to define how I felt about myself. Humans are vicious predators trying to swim in a sea of language and reason, art should acknowledge this.
7. The world of entertainment and comedy can be quite stressful as you have to constantly deliver in order to pay the bills. Does this ever get on top of you, and if so, have you any coping strategies or techniques you use to stay calm, focused and well?
We gave up on trying to pay bills after horse outside. You’re either able to make a product which you yourself don’t like for a few quid, or you’re not. We’re not. The lucky ones are the artists who are genuinely happy with work that has mainstream appeal. Or even better, the likes of David Bowie, who is such a genius that they could do their own thing, and also be successful. We’re awkward bastards, the only thing that makes us happy is creating work that makes each other happy. More often than not, this is usually work with a very limited mainstream, marketable appeal. We’ve an ITV show at the moment which isn’t too bad though. Very mainstream format, but we are given a lot of creative freedom and it makes us laugh. It’s a breath of fresh air for us.
8. When you look at the resources that go in our mental health services in our country, do you feel they are in anyway adequate or fit for purpose?
No, no f@$king way. Even if a giant lump of money arrived to the government in the morning, they’d prioritise medication over counselling services due to economics. Read Terry Lynches book “beyond Prozac” if you’re into this issue.
9. A few years ago I did a documentary in your home city ‘Teenage kicks’ where you got involved. You saw the effect of empowering teenagers and communicating effectively. Do you feel our youth are being catered for in society and what are your opinions on our current education system?
No they are not. Their world is very different to the generations above them, they f@$king try and click the pages of books as if there’s hyperlinks like. The education system needs an overhaul, it needs to embrace kids with different abilities. So that the ones who aren’t suited to rote learning aren’t part of a system that labels them as failures.
But what the f@$k can we do? Teachers are being subjected under an increasingly unfair work environment. Like Guards and Nurses. It’s enough to make you think that Copper Face Jacks has pissed of the Dáil.
10. And now for the daily mail question….What does 2016 hold for The Rubberbandits?
F@$k off Bressie, not telling you.
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