Episode #7: Kingstonymus Bosch, the man who loved dragons and the ghostly posters on the super-ego's bedroom wall

In this episode I talk about how discovering a bizarre mural has helped me approach the festive season with a little more resilience, reflect on ego ideals as the posters my inner critic keeps on its bedroom wall and tell the story of the man who loved dragons as a way of exploring the phenomenon of aboutism.

TL;DL
6’ 17”    The Kingstonymus Bosch mural
15’ 38”  The ghostly posters on the inner critic's bedroom wall
24’ 05”  All about aboutism
24' 45”  The man who loved dragons
30'56”  The imperfect portrait experiment
36'25"   Plug for my 20% off sale in my shop and mask workshop

Links to things I mentioned
London's horrific AI mural (Evening Standard article)
My talk about learning to dance with my inner critic
The Inexpert 2018 conference experiment
Drawing portraits in Trafalgar Square
John Luke Robert’s telling the story of the person who hated his gig
My online shop
My next mask workshop
Become a patron of my studio
Buy me a coffee (from £1)

The written substack version of this episode: Stevexoh’s substack thing.

If you're wondering why this is an accidental podcast then listen to the first 5 minutes of episode one.

Comments, questions, requests and stuff to stevexoh@gmail.com

(Total listening time 38'00")

Transcript

 (00:12.399)

Hello and welcome to episode 7 of Creative Adventures and Accidental Podcast and this episode is the last one of 2025 and I've got to start by saying that time is really confusing me as I record this episode and I think that's due to what time of year it is because this episode comes out and you're potentially listening to it on Boxing Day at 26th of December and I'm of course recording it before that

because I hope that doesn't disappoint you. I hope you didn't think the episodes went out live. I like that idea though. I like the idea that when you click the button on Spotify or somewhere a little light comes on in my flat and then I come over and I record it live for you to listen to. But that would be impractical of course. Although it does remind me of the musician Daniel Johnston who's one of my all time artistic and musical heroes. When he first started recording his album Hi How Are You he couldn't

reproduce it in any way. So each time someone wanted a copy of it or he wanted to give someone a copy of it, he had to go back into his garage and record the whole thing over and over again. And as much as I'd like to be more like Daniel in that respect, I don't have the time and resource to do that. And I wouldn't know how to do it anyway. Geez, this is a jumbly start, isn't it? But no, time is confusing me. And I think it's because it's like the festive season. Like normally I always record these a

a week or maybe even a couple of weeks in advance to give me time to master them and do any little edits that I want to do and I never normally tell you that I never normally say it's the 20th of July today but you're listening to this on the 1st of August or anything like that and it's annoying me why I feel I need to do that just because it's Christmas it's like you don't care but I'm feeling the need to explain that because of it being Christmas

and that's sort of stressing me out a bit because I find the festive season quite hard anyway which doesn't feel like the cheeriest way to begin an episode that comes out on Boxing Day but it's a feeling that tends to hijack me this time of year that I can't quite describe but I just feel unsettled and part of it may just be the fact that everywhere gets bit busier and routines get messed up but for me it's something deeper than that

 (02:35.362)

And I used to love Christmas as a kid and even more so when my daughter was born and as she grew up spending Christmas with her. But a lot's changed in my life since then, in particular over the last four years. And this seems to have caused me to associate Christmas with difficult feelings and have become quite sensitized to being around Christmas stuff or the sudden appearance of Christmas stuff like Christmas music being played everywhere and lights and decorations and

Christmas markets popping up and this sounds really bar-humbug I've really got nothing against Christmas I just talking about my nervous system response to it and a sort of bracing for it feeling like a challenging time and that means that things like that subtle societal suggestion that it's the happiest time of the year for everyone starts to really grind me down but that said I do notice that

Christmas 2025 does feel a bit different to the last few years. It feels like I've maybe managed to process some important stuff that's left me, I don't know, I still feel apprehensive, but maybe feeling more resilient as I go into the festive season this year. One of the things that I've done this winter as Christmas approaches is I've actually sat down and thought, what are my needs over this festive period? Knowing that I find it hard, what are my needs?

How can I go about better meeting them? And as a result of this, I have booked to go away to an Airbnb by the coast with Poppy the dog. And you'll remember from a few episodes back, the time that had in the beach hut with Poppy in the summer was just such a relaxing and sort of co-regulating experience. So a few days with her over the Christmas period is exactly what I need. Even though that seems like a bizarre choice to other people.

And there are human beings that I'd love to spend Christmas with but if I'm being really honest I think this year just some time with my dog friend is exactly what I need. Some time by the sea with my dog friend and maybe we'll find some crabs. Maybe we go for walks by the beach. I have no idea what we're going to do. I might end up getting bored and hating it but it feels like I'm giving myself a better shot at being more okay over the Christmas period this year.

 (05:01.452)

But even though I'm feeling a bit resilient, I still notice an embodied reaction to some things. My studio, Studio 2, is in Kingston upon Thames in South West London. And Kingston's a very old town. It's an ancient market town that I think the records go back as far as AD 838. And it's where some of the Saxon kings were crowned. And I think, I don't know for sure, that's why it's called King's Town. But that might just be a coincidence, who knows. And it's a

It's a very old town. mean there's some new buildings and stuff but there's a smattering of old buildings and an ancient market square. So when it comes to Christmas time the authorities love transforming it into a traditional winter wonderland with wooden market stalls and decorations and Christmas music just playing all day and all night and it gets so busy it gets really packed and great it seems that people really love it and it gets people into the Christmas spirit.

But for me it does something to my nervous system every time I walk through the Market Square which is sort of the quickest way backwards and forwards to my flat. So since the markets arrived this year I've decided to walk a slightly different way back home by the riverside which can be busy but it's less festively decorated there at the moment. And it was whilst walking this slightly different direction in late November that I came across one of the most bizarre and brilliant and fascinating things I've ever seen in Kingston.

It was a mural that I've nicknamed Kingstonimus Bosch. And I'd seen the mural at the corner of my eye when I'd been running, but I didn't want to stop and have a look at it. And at a glance, it just looked like a Christmas scene. Like there were crowds of people and wooden huts and these little fires that people were huddling around. And there some water that I assumed was Thames and little flashes of red and white that I guess were...

people in Christmas clothes or Father Christmas or something but on this diversion it meant I could stop and look at it in more detail and I gradually realised that there was so much more to this thing than I had initially thought and the first thing I noticed as I stared at it was it didn't look like Kingston at all there was none of the ancient buildings and the river was actually more like a flood a flood of water that the people were wading through so I thought

 (07:26.465)

That's a bit weird. And then I looked at the people and I realized that they didn't look like the people that were in the market square that I was avoiding. There was something weird about them. And as I looked more closely, I started to notice that there were noses out of place or flaps of skin folded over eyes or limbs sticking out in weird directions or morphing into other strange body parts. And then I noticed the creatures. And this was the thing that

absolutely drew me in. What I'd initially thought were like dogs and swans and horses were actually these weird surreal beasts from another dimension. It was like a crazy taxidermist and Dr Frankenstein had got together to do this weird experiment and then release these horrific creatures to terrorize the poor malformed people in this scene.

And the way that the humans and the creatures were interacting made no sense at all or at least not in this reality. Like human arms and bird wings merged, there was a penguin on fire for no reason whatsoever and a strange bird wolf-like creature like this really pointy beak and crazy eyes looked like it was about to eat a depressed Santa Claus who had clearly given up on life and then trying to exist in this strange scene.

And obviously this was the work of artificial intelligence. It was a big bit of AI work and it was big. It was absolutely huge. I'm not good at estimating dimensions, but I'd guess it was at least 10 meters in length and maybe four or five meters in height, maybe even bigger. And while I can appreciate that there are some benefits to AI, I'm not a big fan of it in general. I mean, the environmental impact of just even a simple chat GPT search is huge.

And you scale that up to this sort of size and the amount of energy it would have taken to create this piece of art would have been massive. But most importantly to me as an artist, I am not a fan of AI because of the way that people will use it to generate mediocre art and take away from work that real human artists need. And also the way that AI steals art and repurposes art. I don't know enough about it to know.

 (09:50.23)

how prevalent that is but it gets its art from somewhere so I'm not a big fan of it for many reasons but at the same time as I gazed upon this surreal landscape I sort of fell in love with it and there was no writing on it there was no signature there was no signs to say what it was or who put it there so it was just this thing that just appeared and very soon the mural started to come up in conversation between locals and I'd overhear

people talking about it or I'd notice on local community forums people posting about it and some people seem to share my mix of confusion and delight and just say what the hell is this thing it's it's amazingly bad and good at the same time lots of people wondered was it supposed to be like that is this is this intentional did no one check before it was installed and lots of people were angry about it lots of people accused Kingston Council of wasting

taxpayers money when they could be doing other stuff like fixing the broken bridge or other local issues But Kingston Council were very very quick to publish a thing saying we've got nothing to do with this whatsoever We don't know what this is, who this is, who it's by so please leave us alone And then over the next few days I saw more posts with people demanding it be taken down or be replaced with a more traditional scene that reflected the Kingston that they know and love

and it seemed everywhere I went this mural was coming up in conversation I went to do a talk at a local art college and the tutors were debating it when I walked in trying to work out is this art, is this not art, is it good what's it about, who put it there? and Copple project who run our studio building got some calls from the press asking is this one of your artists that's created this? and it wasn't or at least no one admitted to it

I mean don't know how they'd do it, the scale of it was so huge I don't know if anyone could afford to create something like that from our studio And then by the end of the week a number of Reddit threads and news articles popped up and it started to turn Kingston in Musbosh into a tourist attraction were articles like In the Evening Standard and various other news outlets with headlines like London's horrific AI mural and then the comments afterwards would say we're off to Kingston this weekend to see it

 (12:13.287)

And I loved this response, again with my caveats about AIR. I loved this response. And it reminded me of a quote by the American artist, Ed Roche. And Ed said, there's an easy way to tell the difference between good art and bad art. Bad art makes you go, wow. So you see it and you think that's really good. I like that. And then as you digest and think about it and walk away, go, actually, it wasn't much really.

and just forget about it. Whereas good art makes you go, huh? Wow. It baffles you, it confuses you, it causes a reaction and then over time, gradually you realize the subversive brilliance of it. And Kingstonimus Bosch did that for me. It was the moment of what? wow, this is something that I can't make sense of.

And putting aside whether it was the intention of the artist or the commissioner to create something weird or they just lazily generated an AI image and didn't check it before it was printed, Kingston-Rusbosh was a brilliant piece of art in that it was a brilliant pattern interrupter. Something that disturbed the everyday routine of people passing through the town. Anyone that walked past that had heard about it would pay attention. It would do something to them. The reaction is irrelevant.

But there was always a reaction and the reaction grew and grew and grew. And it provoked a whole mix of emotions from confusion to amusement to anger to disgust. But what was great is it catalyzed a number of real life conversations between people. Conversations about AI art, the ethics of AI art. Conversations about the tradition of art and questions as to why I wasn't a local artist. I Kingston's full of artists. Why wasn't a local artist commissioned to create this?

And the number of people interpreted the depiction of a largely non-white population gathered around small boats and water to mean that this was a piece of art about immigration. And that catalyzed a number of strong views online, both pro and anti-immigration. But my point being, this weird bit of art provoked a wide range of reactions. The Mexican poet Cesar A. Cruz once famously said,

 (14:35.955)

and Kingstonimous Bosch ticked all of those boxes. But eventually due to public outcry and what the papers called local backlash the mural was removed one day, it just went. I was sad and frustrated when I heard it. I mean the environmental damage had already been done to create this thing. So my sadness was more around the fact that the general consensus of what art is about is that it should be pleasant pictures, that people agree are pleasant.

images that make sense and that everyone likes and art can of course be like that, art can be likeable and popular but for me its real power lays in the way that it can interrupt and captivate and disturb and distort and ultimately reflect back parts of ourselves that we may not be ready to witness quite yet and for me personally Kingstonimous Bosch became a positive about the festive season I think whenever I think back to

Christmas 2025 I will remember that mural. But the festive season is just one example of me giving myself a hard time finding things challenging. I mean it's just another day on the calendar and I have no religion so it's no particular spiritual significance to me. But I feel an immense pressure to be a certain way that I don't feel on other days. And the fact that I have a choice in feeling this pressure or not just makes it worse and contributes to my downward spiral.

I spoke in the last episode of this podcast of a similar thing, similar pressure I put on myself when I go to an event or a social occasion. Like a self-imposed pressure to be a certain way. Like a blueprint of how I should be which I critically compare to how I'm experiencing myself in the moment. And that just leaves me feeling deficient and terrible because I never live up to those unattainable standards. Over the last 10 years I've been working with my friend, the Gestalt Psychotherapist Simon Kovitschia on

researching and experimenting with creative and alternative ways to work with a superego. The superego being that self-limiting, self-judging, internal voice of authority that we often refer to as the inner critic or the inner judge. And Simon and I have been fascinated by developing playful and creative and strange ways of getting to know our own unique inner critic and finding ways to learn to dance with it.

 (16:59.881)

rather than do battle with it. And one of the psychic structures that we invite people at our workshops to pay attention to is that of idealized self images or what Freud called ego ideals. Simon suggests a simple way we can think about the superego or the inner critic is that it compares our lived experience of who we are and what we do with these idealized self images, these unattainable blueprints of what we believe we should be like, and it compares them.

and when they inevitably don't match because they never do we get an inner critic attack and we go small and we don't feel good and we avoid doing new stuff we avoid trying stuff and these idealized images are complex things they're stitched together from a lot of the early voices of parents or key caregivers or other voices of authority early in childhood and

throughout life, then peppered with dominant social narratives that we encounter on a day-to-day basis about who we are, our gender, who we're from, our economic background, where we live, all of those types of things. And I like to think of these idealised self-images as the posters my inner critic pins up on its bedroom wall, like lying on its bed staring at these ghostly posters of the past, utterly absorbed and wishing I could measure up to the images portrayed in them. And I think my inner critic has a number of these posters on its wall.

There's the poster of idealised super social life and soul of the party Steve. He's the centre of attention smiling and laughing and networking and making people gasp with awe and fascination no matter who they are or what the occasion is. Always surrounded by a group of people that just want to interact with him because he's just such an amazing social creature. And then there's idealised open mic Steve who

plays a set on his guitar of these songs that he's written and people cry and gasp and fawn over how beautiful and moving this music is and then at the end of the gig they come up to him and just say where can we buy this music? When are you next playing? I want to come to your next gig and then his idealised Christmas Steve who's lived a life that's so normal and sensible and professional that Christmas really is the happiest time of the year for him and everyone who hangs out with him

 (19:26.666)

during a super social and emotionally cosy festive period. And I think my inner critic puts that last one up on the first of December when it puts up its tree and its decorations. Of course these posters aren't real but I've found that imagining them and drawing them in ridiculously exaggerated detail is a really helpful practice. Not only does it deepen my awareness of the complexity of my lived experience

and these unattainable standards that I set for myself it also helps me appreciate the ridiculousness of it all and exaggerating these posters to the point that they just become laughable and if nothing else these posters help me find more self-compassion in the times when I most need it but what really fascinates me is why some things don't bother me I really don't care if anyone likes my art or not or if I do a talk or run a workshop

that people don't respond well to. I might be disappointed but I'm not crushed by it. And if I'm obsessed or fascinated with a new project or something like playing backgammon with strangers or recording silence with a hundred different people I really don't care if people think I'm weird or unusual or eccentric. And I think the reason for this is because my anacritic doesn't have an idealised Art Steve poster.

or an idealised speaker Steve or an idealised neurotypical Steve poster on his wall I mean maybe it used to have them but they seem to have been taken down for some reason maybe because I laughed at them I laughed at how ridiculous they were and my inner critic got embarrassed like I imagine if you go around to someone's house and they've got a poster up of an embarrassing band and you laugh at it they might take them down I came up with a metaphor of shit snap at an inner critic workshop a few years back

And it's based on that childhood game of Snap. You know the one where you lay down different cards and if the images match you shout Snap. And the person who shouts Snap first wins. Well, Shitsnap works in a similar way but it works with what are the posters your inner critic has on its wall? And it goes some way of explaining why some things really bother me and get to me and hurt me and other things don't. Because someone may say something to me or I might have an experience or someone will give me some feedback and if...

 (21:47.646)

that poster isn't on the inner critics bedroom wall it isn't snap it doesn't bother me it would just water off a ducks back is that okay that's alright maybe I'd prefer it if you if you liked my art or liked my writing or liked this podcast but it's okay if you don't whereas other things like the open mic that I've mentioned playing music live is a thing that

really gets to me if I don't get the reaction from the audience or if I see a little comment or hear a little comment from someone and when that experience that I'm having matches a poster on the Inner Critics wall like it has this idealized self-image of what I should be that's snap and the Inner Critic always shouts snap and then I feel shit so shit snap is a very simple but I find it a really powerful metaphor for navigating those challenging things like

maybe this isn't really devastatingly as hard as I'm experiencing it. Maybe that's just because I'm holding onto and working off of this unattainable blueprint of myself. And my superego has given me a hard time over that right now. Let's explore that. Let's draw that poster. Let's work out what the hell is going on there. And that also leads to an important point that really the only way that I've found of doing this work with the inner critic is to experience it.

is to put myself in situations where I can lure it out of its lair. We've designed the Inner Critic workshops and I sometimes describe it as that they're experiments where we put a little bit of cheese outside the Inner Critic's mouse hole just to lure it to pop its little nose out and have a little sniff of the air. So it's not a full on Inner Critic attack but we can observe it and get to know it. And that means that you can't do any of this work in theory.

The theory of it, the idea of it is so much easier than the actual experience of it. And I see this a lot in the type of work I do, not just around inner critic, but around creativity or working with uncertainty or practicing not knowing. The theory of it is always so much more appealing than the practice of it. And I spoke about aboutism, I think, on the last episode or the episode before.

 (24:10.459)

and a number of people said yeah I'd really like you to talk a bit more about that so I thought I would but I thought I'd start by telling an old Chinese proverb that's called the man who loved dragons and maybe I'll break with convention and fade some music in behind the man who loved dragons when I master this so if when I tell the story in a moment's time there is music I've decided to do it if there isn't I either decided not to do it

or I tried it and it sounded shit and I gave up on it. So here's a story of the man who loved dragons. Once upon a time there was a man who loved dragons. He loved them so much that his entire dragon shaped house was covered with pictures of dragons. Some he'd drawn, some he'd bought, others he'd cut out of his favourite dragon magazines that he had a monthly subscription to. On his commute to work wearing his

dragon patterned tie carrying his briefcase that had a dragon emblazoned on it. He'd listen to podcasts about dragons. His mouse mat in the office had different dragon species on it and whenever he bumped into a colleague in the coffee area he would tell them some dragon facts as he sipped from his favorite dragon mug. At night the man who loved dragons would put on his dragon pajamas, snuggle under his dragon duvet and he'd dream amazing dreams about dragons.

One day the Queen of Dragons heard about this man and thought he sounds great I'm going to go and pay him a visit So she flew from her dragon kingdom to Wales because the man who loved dragons had moved to Wales because it has a dragon on its flag and she saw his dragon shaped house and swooped down stood on his dragon door mat and knocked on his dragon shaped door knocker The man who loved dragons opened the door and on seeing a real dragon for the first time screamed and fled in terror

never to return. The Queen of Dragons was understandably upset about this and when she got back to the Dragon Kingdom she told her wise friend about the man who loved dragons. said her wise friend you see this is a man who loves the idea of dragons but not dragons themselves.

 (26:30.632)

And that story was told to me by a Tai Chi teacher at a workshop that I was running years ago and it stuck with me as a brilliant way of illustrating what I mean by aboutism. And I spoke about aboutism, I think it was episode five, when I was telling the story of trying to create the InExpert conference, the conference that I wanted to be the opposite of TED, where I wanted speakers to come on stage and basically embody not knowing.

But at least 60 or 70 % of the applications I got from people wanted to talk about not knowing. They'd like proposed talks to talk about the benefits of not knowing or the evolutionary advantages of not knowing or some theory or life hack or leadership tips they had to improve their ability to not know. But I didn't want them to talk about not knowing. I wanted them to not know live on stage in front of an audience.

And aboutism is a thing that I come across in my work a lot. That phenomena of loving the theoretical idea of something but avoiding the experience of it. And it often manifests when I'm invited to work with a group or an organization that approach me because they've decided they want something completely different, radically different, different to the norm. The brief is normally to run a workshop or do a talk that's challenging and disruptive or edgy and creative, one that's going to put people out of their comfort zone.

One that's going to really stretch participants ability to better self-regulate in moments of uncertainty or access their spontaneous creative self-expression. But very often when I propose something that I think really gets to the heart of this request the client backs away and says, no we don't like that. Can you do something more normal or tangible or structured? Something that we totally understand. Or they'll tell me that they've spoken to another consultant or speaker who's proposed something that makes much more sense to them.

And if I could just change my proposal to be a bit more like that, then they'd be interested in working with me. And in those situations, it seemed like I'm being presented with a well rehearsed defense mechanism that says, like the theory of this, but we don't actually want to experience it. Your proposal is going to take us too close to the lived experience of it. And we're much safer just talking about it or being somewhere near it. We like the idea of dragons, but not dragons themselves.

 (28:54.428)

And I've learnt to politely walk away from these invitations rather than dumb down my proposal and collude with this aboutism. And I respect that it's their choice. I don't want to force people to do something that's not for them. Maybe it's not for them. Maybe my idea is shit. But for me, it doesn't feel ethically right to take their money for work that I know isn't going to have the desired long-term effect that they want it to. And it isn't just the world of creative consulting that's rife with aboutism. I recently heard the absurdist comedian John Luke Roberts

telling a great story about someone who went to one of his gigs and then he came across a blog that she'd written about it about how much she hated it and the line that John Luke Roberts talks about is one that said, love absurdism but this didn't make any sense. perfect example of aboutism in a different sphere. John Wellwood was an American psychotherapist who became known for integrating modern psychological ideas with Eastern spiritual concepts.

and he came up with term spiritual bypassing which he used to describe how some people turn to spiritual practices and theories and rituals and mantras as a way of avoiding the experience of difficult emotions and difficult thoughts and difficult feelings. For example, if someone might turn to Buddhism in order to lead a life that feels less riddled with anxiety and attachment and anger but they focus so heavily on the ideas of Buddhism

that they avoid the potentially challenging lived experience of truly embodying these practices. They'll talk about it, they'll do the routines, but in a way that, as Wellwood says, is spiritual bypassing, it's slightly off in such a way that it means that they don't have the challenging, visceral lived experience that has the power to transform something. And my simple rule of thumb to avoid falling into the trap of aboutism or some form of creative spiritual bypassing

is to always try and plant myself right in the heart of the experience I'm wanting to transform. For many years I was scared of the idea of drawing portraits of people. It just felt to me that while I'm good at drawing there's so many potential hazards to doing it. Beyond the awkwardness of sitting opposite someone and staring at them whilst I draw them. I what if I accidentally insulted them or they were very self-conscious about part of their face or their features and I accidentally

 (31:19.122)

drew it and made it look worse and what they paid me for a portrait and then hated what it looked like do I have that shameful process of giving them their money back and then extreme thoughts like if I was doing this in public what if they verbally or physically attacked me when I reveal their terrible picture but it felt like something I wanted to get better at this there's something calling to me to play with drawing portraits of people I wanted to experience that

relational danger and the potential pits of shame that I associated with the idea. Part of me wanted to watch some YouTube video tutorials about drawing portraits or maybe I could do an online life drawing course where nobody would get to see my terrible representations of the model or I could buy a book and learn the technical skills in the comfort and isolation of my studio. But I soon came to realise that whilst all of these activities might help me technically they were brilliant avoidance strategies.

for the actual experience of sitting with and drawing another human. So to short circuit this, I decided to dive in at the deep end and headed to London's Trafalgar Square with a big sign saying free portraits. My friend, the journalist, John Paul Flintoff came along for moral support, but to also video the whole thing and to stop me running away. And what began as a terrifying experience gradually turned into a liberating one.

By fully experiencing that shame and anxiety in an environment that felt challenging but safe enough with the conditions that I created and safe enough with John Paul accompanying me the emotions transformed into something much more helpful With each portrait I drew I began to make friends with the embodied experience of drawing it so my anxious brain was able to have the lived experience of realising that the terrible things I'd imagined weren't happening people weren't attacking me

and smashing up my drawing equipment. People weren't disappointed. People weren't walking away, shaking their heads. It's like my nervous system was able to recalibrate and find a way of self-regulating where it had previously anticipated not being able to do that. But the most exciting thing from this simple but intense, don't know, four or five hour experience was that my now distinctive style of drawing portraits began to emerge and none of this would have happened.

 (33:43.055)

if I'd simply languished in the idea and theory of drawing portraits, if I'd done that aboutism approach to drawing portraits. And I do a strange talk entitled, Nine Wonky Projects, Interspersed with Thoughts on Creativity and the Human Condition, featuring a bingo machine. It's a ridiculously long title, my favorite talk to do. If you want me to do it, message me. I will come to your organization, house, group to do it.

But in that talk I tell stories about experiences such as the one in Trafalgar Square and creating this talk helped me notice that there's some consistent practices in all of my work that help me avoid that allure of aboutism. The Buddhist idea of the obstacle is the path. The thing that you're trying to avoid is actually the thing you need to head towards. And the idea of starting before I'm ready helps me avoid overthinking and talking myself out of some strange idea

before I've even begun. And also the idea of rapid prototyping, the concept of trying something out in order to fail cheap, fast and happy. That's what the Sound of Silence podcast was. That's what the portraits in Trafalgar Square was. That's what what the February was. And these are mantras that I've subsequently realized as helpful in day-to-day life as they are in art, because they help me not live life and go about life in an aboutism way.

And sure I have ideas and there's things I want to try and things I think about and I like theory but it feels even more important to just have the visceral experience of these things and then maybe use theory as a lens afterwards. I always think of theory as like when you go to the opticians and they put the lens in front of your eyes and say better or worse. The world isn't changing when they do that it's just my perception of the world with that little adjustment and I think theory is the same.

Theory can bring stuff into focus or make it blurry but it's not real. The most important thing is our lived experience. So that's it. We're up on time. Thank you for listening. Lots of people said to me don't put out an episode on Boxing Day. No one will listen to it. Which would be good advice if the purpose of doing this was to get listener numbers but doing it has been another thing like Kingston and Musposh like

 (36:07.258)

booking to go away with Poppy that is just something nice to do at a time of the year that I normally find it difficult. So if you're hearing this you have listened and thank you. And whilst I wasn't doing it for that reason it is always very lovely when people do listen. I hope you've enjoyed it. A couple of quick things before I go is I did a load of markets in December and they were brilliant but they burnt me out. They're great but they're exhausting.

And I'm not doing any more markets, like physical markets with a stall selling stuff until the end of March, I don't think. So that means my shop, my online shop is going to have to do all the heavy lifting with selling stuff in order to earn money. So from today, Boxing Day, there is a 20 % off sale for the entire month until the 26th of January. So head over to my shop at stevesoar.com, stevexoh.com and you can get stuff for 20 % off.

And I've got a couple of workshops coming up next year, my next mask workshop. I spoke a lot about masks in the last episode. So if you'd to find out more about that, listen to episode six. That's on the 20th of March, 2026. And if you want to support my work, obviously you can buy stuff or become a patron of my studio or make a donation via buy me a coffee and all that stuff. But really, if you want to support it, just spread the word about the podcast. I've noticed that despite having more more followers or at least the same amount of followers as the last

seven years on Instagram. Less and less people see my stuff so word of mouth, analogue is the way forward. So if you like the podcast, leave a review, leave a rating, share it on forums, all of that is appreciated. I'll be back at the end of January with episode 8 but in the meantime, take care, I'll speak to you soon. Bye.