My Husband and I had the absolute privilege of being at Joey and Madeleine's gig at the Hay Festival on Friday night. Words cannot describe how special it was...so I won't, instead here is a link to the YouTube channel where the videos he took are in HD for all to enjoy! @chrisschuring on YouTube.
💬 2 🔁 18 ❤️ 60 · Transcript:
Colin: So you'll talk a little bit, and then we can have a little interacting, perhaps.
Joey: Correct, yeah
Transcript:
10, 12 years later, Hay Festival invited me to come talk about this book. I've been writing books for about 18 years now, and this is the first one that's been published. And I knew that in the time when I started writing books at the age of 20 and now, the world had exponentially changed. And I had to talk about something .... that's my mic getting stuck to my beard....
I knew that I wanted to talk about something in this book that scared the crap out of me. And it was being filmed. There are one or two people filming me right now. And just before I came out here, they asked "by the way, we've got a camera, do you mind being filmed?". And I said "yeah, fine, yeah, absolutely. " It's ubiquitous. We are just so used to cameras invading every inch of our lives.
Children, before they even understand what it means to be remembered, are being remembered days later. I've seen 3-year-olds know that the 'x' on a phone means go away. They'll swipe if they want to see the next thing. I saw a child do that on the train here. Swiping the window.
In my book, in Its Not A Cult, which is gone now. Oh, it's back! That's why I need the clicker. I wanted to explore what it would be like if I had a character whose addiction to filming was all-encompassing. I've seen people in my life, in my lines of work, who are addicted to filming. I've seen...
... There you go, did you hear it? Did everyone just jolt to see if it was theirs? A phone just went off and we all just went "yeah, it's probably the babysitter". Your brain went somewhere else. To think about who might be texting you, who might be needing you.
And that's what this book is trying to explore. That memory of me 12 years ago exists up here. This memory exists elsewhere now. This memory that is happening right now, this moment, is happening down camera lenses. And I'm fine with people filming.
But to talk about your first point, and also what you spoke about, you described it as oil and wood. I started to wonder outside, do the people who exist in those wooden, in those paintings, and the people collecting data to be immortalised, did they ever think "Oh, I wonder if anyone is going to remember me. "
I wonder if that's important to me.
When I was 20 and I started writing books, that was the biggest driving force. It's... when I started theatre, as an actor, and then I started to get into television and film and I thought "great, well they can't delete that. " And good our bad, whatever it is, I existed and therefore I mattered.
With music, I can point at things that have been created and I can say that I created that. And yet, tomorrow night our band are playing, in a church, and we've not played in years because I'm so terrified of being filmed sometimes. I don't want to be captured.
And neither does the protagonist in this book. They want to capture everything, but never be captured.
The Amazing Devil performance yesterday was hands down the best live show I have ever been to. It’s not even close, and not to be melodramatic or cliche, but I will genuinely treasure the memory forever.
I keep trying to write out exactly how it felt, what it meant for me to be there, but nothing seems to be enough. I’ll keeping working on it, and I’ll post more of the photos and videos I got soon (most likely when I’m back in the states and can take a breath lol).
I will say though, that the connection I felt to every person in that room was near spiritual. To anyone who was not able to make it, if it’s any comfort know that we were carrying all of you with us 💕
My favourite quotes from Joey Batey and Madeleine Hyland tonight:
[Joey, on the act of creating] "It doesn't matter if it's good, it matters that it happened"
[Madeleine, on which minor deities they said they would be when they first started discussing the Solkats] "I said I was the goddess of muddy hems on long dresses. I think you said you'd be the god of... the moment ice clinks-" [Joey] "-at the bottom of a whisky glass"
[Joey, on finding the will to return to a hometown that didn't treat him well] "I'm different now, what have you got for me?"
[Joey, this one is better without context tbh] "I'm getting the heebie-jeebies, and I like my jeebies invariably un-heebied."
*fucks up the line* 'Grow young each time that thunder in your lungs begins to rumble at the world'
Instead: "Sing louder than you've sung for me- *loses the plot* I forget!
Cause you were always strong-"
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