TD 1
DD: “I find myself going through old memories loo
king for something to feel bad or guilty about. My advice is do some mushrooms the odd time!” I suggest people need to let it go to install some calmness in their lives. DD: “I have a new song called Let it Go. So many people could be doing great things but they’re fucked with guilt. I see them in Coolmine there, I do some work there and people are so guilty about what they done when they were using. It’s stopping them from doing good things. Sometimes you have to let things go. It’s not easy.” DB: “People find it very hard to let go of guilt especially because we live in a world that compounds guilt on top of people as well and doesn’t allow them to repent for past mistakes, especially past mistakes that were made out of total trauma. It’s very, very, hard for people to let go of that guilt. It worries me.” We get ready to wrap things up having spent three hours in each other’s company. Damien confides this is the first interview he’s ever done. I ask him if he’s feeling all Tommy Tiernan? be great and meditation and stuff like that…I think they should sing every day, everyone should sing a few songs, it’s really good for you, even if you can’t sing just go to a quiet room. Stillness is good, I get it from singing.” DB: “I fully back you on the bare feet on the grass. I don’t have a garden now and it breaks me heart.” DD: “The church divorced us from nature whereas before that it was about the land and the earth and we knew so much about it and we looked after it and respected it. But when the Abrahamic religions came in, it cut us off all that and said it was all up here in the sky, we need to get back to the land. We lived in harmony with it for a couple of hundred thousand years, we can learn a lot from the indigenous people if you look back. we need to be a little like them.” “I think we need to vote the civil war parties out. I don’t think they are going to change. They’ve never been voted out. We need a left-wing coalition in my view. We need a change. And someone who actually cares about workers, frontline workers who can’t afford to live, it’s a fucking joke…Top Scheme - what a fucking song, it lifted my heart to no end.” DB: “Thank you. I didn’t grow up in a particularly political family. My younger sister drove me, from an early age, into politics more than anyone else. My younger sister is a true powerhouse, probably the most inspiring person I know. I would have been politicised at a young age, probably 14 or 15. I wouldn’t say it’s waned, but I’ve had bouts of feeling, at times, almost indifferent to the traditional political routes. Then I warmed myself back around to it, I don’t know how much I am fooling myself or not though.” Damien asks his final question. DD: “Do you believe that you have a role in the tribe, you have a role in this land?” DB: “I think I probably do but I am struggling to accept that I do out of some typically Irish sense of self-deprecation. I’ve been learning over the past couple of years how to accept a compliment, very hard to do that and then you realise when you don’t accept somebody’s compliment you are just telling them that they are wrong. I am starting to accept the wider role and sense of responsibility, but all of that collective sense comes from my understanding of my role in my personal tribe to start with first and foremost - what my role is in my family and my friends and being able to accept and understand that and then I can accept it in a wider sense.” I ask them if they have a wish for each other, or any advice, before they leave. It feels kind of clunky and a dreaded sidebar of an interjection, a resort to humour is the way they acknowledge that. DB: “I saw the chipper van for Fat John’s was up for sale on done deal recently so my advice is for you to buy that and get it going.” DD: “Ah nice, so I’ll be like Fat John now in five years. Ya fucking cunt ya. Fat Damo.” DB: “I’ll go in with you 100%. I don’t feel I can give any man advice at times.” DD: “I realise there’s a guilt ingrained in us from centuries, we need to cast off that fucking Abrahamic guilt.” DB: “I’ve been trying, it’s tough.” DD: “He’s great, he goes deep very quickly like five seconds in, ‘do you cry a lot?’ Straight in.” DB: “You had the audience there, I had none so I got lucky.” DD: “How did it go?” DB: “It was heavy, heavy but it was great cause after it finished and the cameras had gone away he was like, ‘How you doing? Are you ok to drive home?’ He had no fucking clue who I was. To be honest, I was freaked afterwards because I couldn’t remember it and was terrified of what I said. It was my first experience being in a big studio on that side of the camera. I was just sort of a bit freaked out and blasted though the whole thing. Afterwards, I was petrified. He’s very (David stares at Damien). DD: “The hypnotist.” DB: “Yeah, you fall into a pub conversation where I’m telling stuff about my life that I don’t want public. The night it came out I was in the gaff by myself alone. I put the phone underneath the couch and turned it off so I couldn’t get to it.” Needless to say, David made the mistake of looking at his phone and the reaction later that night, “It was the worst mistake. All the voices in me head going, ‘Don’t do that. don’t do that,’ you’ve told everyone in your life not to do that and then that one little voice going, ‘Just see what they say and Jesus Christ I was devastated. I felt like I was ready to set up an account on boards.ie and give out me address and say, ‘C’mon down if you want to say that. The trolls were seriously on one.” To which Damien responds, “If you didn’t look at them, they’d bleedin’ die.” It feels like a weirdly fitting note to end on with the master imparting more wisdom to a budding apprentice. We stand up and there’s a genuine sense of calm in the air, it feels like a special moment has just occurred for everyone. Love Yourself Today is out on November 5. For Those I Love play the Olympia on November 17. 25