Tom:
Now I'm on Instagram as well and I do all that stuff, then I find myself getting caught up in it and I go “I used to hate all this and now I'm part of this thing of: Oh you must put out a reel, you must do stories, you must put out a picture.” And you can see how, unless you are absolutely flying and almost deranged in how lopsided you are towards the thing, you feel like you have to play some sort of game or be aware of your brand and how to position yourself and all this sort of ********.
Stu:
Does that simply come back to the marketplace or is it about the fanbase? Because if you want to do the work… like for me I want to be selling tickets, not because I want a load of money from tickets, but because I want to play to full rooms, I want to feel like I'm a success.
I've just started doing Instagram off the back of this massively viral clip of me on somebody else's page and tried to spin that into creating. And I've had a couple of viral things and, of late, not so much, and I felt myself go “Oh this was very easy!" and felt very objective about it when it was flying. And then I hate it again and “Oh God, this is awful”.
For me the motivation to do that is to get it seen by people. So maybe it isn't just about **** selling, about shifting units, selling tickets, becoming a glitzy famous person. I do think at my core, the experience of performing to a nice full room, doing stuff that you care about and excited by, is the same sensual experience for 50 people or 5000 people. So I shouldn't care at all because I want to be an artist and I wanna do the stuff, but I end up caring.
Tom:
And sensual is a lovely word for it as well.
I think it's like you've done 50 people and then when you've done 5000 people it's like “right. OK. We've move to the next level here.” Once someone's absolutely ripped for a role in the film they then have the pressure of keeping the body. Once you start making progress it's like “Oh ****, if I was just in mediocrity forever then it be fine coz there's no real drop from that. The drop is less seismic than dropping from greatness. I've put myself in it now coz now I've got this new a higher standard as norm”.
Stu:
But isn't that just another illusion? Aren't we people of art? That is just illusion isn't it?
Tom:
Of course it is but it's so tricky distancing yourself from the illusion and illusion is coming at you all the time from all angles and we’re constantly told to “Live in the illusion, give in to the illusion, play the game.” You got to try remember that it's a game and it's really hard and sometimes it's utterly absorbing. You got to keep pushing back, keep remembering “I'm playing a game, I can put down the remote, go and have a breather coz this isn't real.” As long as you’re aware it’s a game I think it’s okay.
