Pain In The Arts

Brea knew a secret guest would be arriving. She just didn't know who.When Phil walked up to the front door Brea couldn't have been happier. That's Uncle Phil, Brea's uncle and a regular in our stories for ages.Now he's finally in the studio. He came over to swap a guitar pedal, and I may have trapped him into co-hosting with us.Phil teaches woodwork and builds guitars from skateboard decks in a single garage under his house. He brought one along, so we asked, 'Why do we bother making things when we can buy almost anything?'You might want to listen if:• You used to make things, and you can’t quite remember when or why you stopped.• Part of you believes creativity only really counts if it earns money or finds an audience.Visit Phil on InstagramPain In The Arts is a weekly podcast about the reality of creative life. Hosted by Breallyn and Lyndon Wesley. One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.If you enjoyed this episode, the best thing you can do is share it with one person who'd love it.Support the show on Patreon:patreon.com/painintheartslifeSubscribe and listen:Follow on your favourite podcast app or visit paininthearts.lifeSocials:Insta: @painintheartslifeFB: painintheartslifeTheme music by Lyndon WesleyProduced on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Words are being removed from dictionaries to make room for new ones. We think some of them deserve better. Who knows what forgotten little nocturnal marsupial was erased for the word 'floppy disc'?This is our small attempt to restore some balance.Word You Never Heard is a recurring series from Pain In The Arts, drawn from one of our favourite books, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. Words that fill the gaps. Feelings that exist but have never had a name.In each episode, one of us reads a forgotten or reimagined word from the book. The other has never seen it. With only a handful of clues, they have less than half an hour to work out what it means - or build their own definition from scratch. But before the clock runs out, a guess has to be made.Today's word is Agnosthesia.Pain In The Arts is a weekly podcast about the reality of creative life. Hosted by Breallyn and Lyndon Wesley. One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.If you enjoyed this episode, the best thing you can do is share it with one person who'd love it.Support the show on Patreon:patreon.com/painintheartslifeSubscribe and listen:Follow on your favourite podcast app or visit paininthearts.lifeSocials:Insta: @painintheartslifeFB: painintheartslifeTheme music by Lyndon WesleyProduced on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's a Chinaberry tree on our nature strip, a Lilac in the back corner and an underlying grief knowing 'acorn' is being dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary to make room for 'chatroom.'Words are disappearing and not just the weird ones. Nature words, specifically. Researchers are calling it an 'extinction of experience', a growing cultural distance between us and the world around us.This week we talk about that loss, what it costs us and what it might mean to rewild our imaginations.Plus: we announce a brand new spin-off series: Word You Never Heard, drawn from John Koenig's Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of invented words for feelings that didn't have a name...until now.You might want to listen if:• You've walked past the same tree for years and realised you have no idea what it's called• You're curious what Breallyn and Lyndon are up to with their new series, Word You Never HeardPain In The Arts is a weekly podcast about the reality of creative life. Hosted by Breallyn and Lyndon Wesley. One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.If you enjoyed this episode, the best thing you can do is share it with one person who'd love it.Support the show on Patreon:patreon.com/painintheartslifeSubscribe and listen:Follow on your favourite podcast app or visit paininthearts.lifeSocials:Insta: @painintheartslifeFB: painintheartslifeTheme music by Lyndon WesleyProduced on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it actually take to walk away from a career that pays well but costs you almost everything?This week we're joined in the studio by Bill Bate, a long-time listener who has quietly lived one of the more interesting creative detours we've heard in a while. Twenty years in the fly-in, fly-out oil and gas industry. A slow-burning disquiet. And on the other side of all of it: a photography degree, a music festival in regional Victoria, and a brass fountain pen he's carried every day since 2010.We talk about what it costs to stay too long in the wrong life, how creative people find each other and why Bill thought the only real solution to missing a creative community was to go and build one himself.You might want to listen if:• You've spent years doing work that pays but doesn't quite fit and you want to get out, like yesterday• You've been thinking about starting something - a group, an event, a regular gathering and you feel time is closing in• You're at the stage of life where you've stopped trying to name what you are and you just want to live creativelyFind Bill at these links:Clear Air Creative InstagramClear Air Creative WebsiteBill on InstagramPain In The Arts is a weekly podcast about the reality of creative life. Hosted by Breallyn and Lyndon Wesley. One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.If you enjoyed this episode, the best thing you can do is share it with one person who'd love it.Support the show on Patreon:patreon.com/painintheartslifeSubscribe and listen:Follow on your favourite podcast app or visit paininthearts.lifeSocials:Insta: @painintheartslifeFB: painintheartslifeTheme music by Lyndon WesleyProduced on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I'm bringing a question that reared it's head again. It's the idea that suffering is the source of our best art. And the fear that goes with it - the reluctance to heal, to process and to move on - in case our edge goes with it.Because if it's true that the best work comes from the most painful places, what happens if you stop hurting? What if healing makes you lose the thing that made the work matter?It's a conversation about the tortured artist myth.Why it's persisted for centuries, what neuroscience actually tells us about trauma and creativity and whether it's possible to park the painful material somewhere you can still reach it, without having to live there to access it.Lyndon does his best to be supportive and understanding, but unfortunately gives-in to his usual intrusive thoughts!And we both ponder whether artists can actually afford therapy.You might want to listen if:• You wonder whether healing and creative legitimacy can coexist, or whether you have to choose• You've caught yourself thinking that an artist with an easy life might have nothing real to sayPain In The Arts is a weekly podcast about the reality of creative life. Hosted by Breallyn and Lyndon Wesley. One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.If you enjoyed this episode, the best thing you can do is share it with one person who'd love it.Support the show on Patreon:patreon.com/painintheartslifeSubscribe and listen:Follow on your favourite podcast app or visit paininthearts.lifeSocials:Insta: @painintheartslifeFB: painintheartslifeTheme music by Lyndon WesleyProduced on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.