Ep11 Climbing a mountain barefoot, beatboxing and Cabagism - Finn Hopkins

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

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Finn (Singing) 00:00:04  Are we moving around again? Are you mad? Gone along. Damn it!

Luke 00:00:28  Welcome to another episode of Impro Pod. My guest today is Finn Hopkins. How you doing, Finn? I'm doing well, thank you. Very well. I'm good. What's your relationship with improvisation?

Finn  00:00:41  I guess it's the way that I have done music. I'm seem to be favoured more to doing a lot of improv and not so much writing like I have got songs, but improv has been the course that my music has taken a lot more. My teacher taught me the basics on how to beatbox, and then we went on a French exchange trip and just annoyed the whole bus for the whole thing. Beatboxing and making up little raps. And I was like 12 or 13 or something.

Luke 00:01:09  So great. And then the beatboxing led on to hip hop.

Finn  00:01:15  Yeah, a lot of the starting, I guess, was hip hop, but then it led on to doing looping as well and doing looping solo and then doing it with bands as well.

Luke 00:01:24  Looping? You mean using a loop station? Yeah. Recording your vocals and beats and then. Okay, creating a rhythm and looping it. Yeah. I'm gonna play a piece of music and I want you to tell me what that makes you think of anything that comes to mind. Any sort of thoughts? Images? Cool.

Finn  00:01:45  Sounds good. Beautiful. I had quite a vibe of someone walking in my mind, a woman walking up the stairs and then at some stage, turning into more of a ballet. Dancing up the stairs and then potentially venturing onto some clouds.

Luke 00:03:08  It's interesting how the idea of ascension, as in climbing something like where was it? Stairs or a mountain has often been a theme in this podcast when I play something.

Finn  00:03:19  Oh, really?

Luke 00:03:22  Are you up for telling me a story? And what I'll do is I'll break it down into sections, and then I will improvise a soundtrack to it.

Finn  00:03:32  Shall I tell you a story about when I was in India and we ended up taking some acid, as you do, and we went up to go and watch the sunset from a bit up the mountain and then just thought, oh, this is incredible.

Finn  00:03:50  And we just had this feeling that, we're climbing this mountain tonight. Set off about one in the morning, trekked up, got very cold. Stopped for a fire at one point, which was maybe not the best plan because it was like not much firewood up there. And we got very cold. And then the sun rose, which was beautiful, and I was in hysterical laughter. For hours. I'd knocked over the water twice, which is the only time I've seen my friend angry Simon. Anyway, then we continued up and we'd ran out of water, so we were just drinking rum. This isn't a suggestible thing, by the way, to any listeners anyway. And then we got to the top, and then we ended up having no money. Really. I was trying to barter with the people on top of this at base camp and the top of this mountain, and we walked back and we got back at five in the evening the next day. And I did it all barefoot, and my feet were just full of thorns, barefoot and leggings and a t shirt.

Finn  00:04:44  And that was it. I walked back was so painful.

Luke 00:04:48  Why didn't you have any shoes?

Finn  00:04:49  I was just at a time in my life where I didn't really wear shoes at all. Wow, it feels good to walk barefoot. I've done quite a lot of trekking barefoot, to be honest. I thoroughly enjoy it. My feet are just like hard leather on the soles. So yeah, I don't really feel rocks and pebbles very much. It's like a nice massage. Really.

Luke 00:05:08  How did you feel when you started out on this journey? Was there a kind of an excitement?

Finn  00:05:13  Oh, there was lots of excitement. Yeah. And not a second of doubt either.

Luke 00:05:17  You've seen this mountain and you think, right, we're going to climb it. This is the mission.

Finn  00:05:22  I think the thing is, we've been living there for probably quite a while, and we formed a band called The Conscious Cabbages, which was all about cabbages and and the faith of cabbages, and, and we just sat around really smoking hash and playing music all the time.

Finn  00:05:37  And it was the first time that I had climbed even a little bit of the mountain, and we'd been there for a month, who knows? Every time, really. But I felt like it wasn't a good idea and we were just drinking rum, and that's what we ended up only having the acid by just after sunrise really was wearing off because we were getting progressively more and more drunk, which again, is not suggestible when you're walking up a mountain and at one point, like fell asleep on the side of this mountain, and they had to slap me and get me to continue to the top. So yeah, not the best move really, but it was a story anyway.

Luke 00:06:08  And how did you feel when you went to the top?

Finn  00:06:10  Yeah, good. But also hungry. We don't really have enough money. So we had to like kind of barter, which I wouldn't usually want to do when you're on the top of the mountain, all the food, all the drinks, they had to carry it up there on a slightly more direct route.

Finn  00:06:22  And it was terribly reasonable as well. It was reasonable prices, but if we didn't have enough money for a meal each and water. But I feel like we brought a lot of entertainment as well. Usually the people they see up there, they've got all their gear. They might be on a tour or whatever. And so seeing these three people, I think we might have all been wearing leggings because I don't know, I definitely was. Anyway, with the conscious cabbages, we'd wear cabbage leaves on our heads and leggings. We weren't going on the walked path some other random way, but us just like appearing out of the foliage. Three drunk people that had been up all night coming and tried to bargain and see if we can get like some water with our food.

Luke 00:07:02  All right. Music timing, so I'm going to break it down. We've got the beginning, this exciting journey that you're about to take on. And then you've got this, this weird book, the campfire, and then drinking too much.

Luke 00:07:13  And there's a slight sense of drunkenness and kind of a bit disorganized. And then you've got getting to the mountain and this sense of achievement, I'm guessing, but also mixed with a bit of guilt and not quite knowing what's going on.

Finn  00:07:31  I definitely didn't feel any guilt at the time. All right.

Luke 00:07:33  Here we go.

Finn  00:09:51  Nice.

Luke 00:09:52  So what do you think of that?

Finn  00:09:53  Yeah, it was good. It was good.

Luke 00:09:56  Did that reflect your journey in any way?

Finn  00:09:59  I feel like it did. But that stumbling bit where it was a bit janky at the end, I thought that was the bit when we were like, are shit too drunk? But then it didn't go back to the like, oh yeah, we made it to the top. But apart from that, yes.

Luke 00:10:22  Yeah. I was trying to get a sense of the ridiculousness when reaching the top, which you may have interpreted as the drunkenness before. In my mind, I'm breaking it down into bits and estimating the emotion that you were experiencing and then trying to turn it into music in a nanosecond.

Finn  00:10:43  Simple, mate.

Luke 00:10:45  Weirdly, when I was playing the the beginning part, the mountain, the actual shape on the piano is like a triangle, which is the shape of a mountain, which I thought was ridiculous. Coincidence? It's a D major when you play it in root position. Has this shape.

Finn  00:11:04  Oh, yeah. Nice.

Luke 00:11:08  So you are telling me another story, then? Yeah.

Finn  00:11:12  So I was living with some friends. We traveled to Ghana, and then we were living in the jungle, and we were living there for two weeks, and we built this real beautiful tree house, some place called Paradise Beach. And it used to be various different sort of places you could stay and also restaurants and stuff, but quite basic. And then the Indian government, they were like, oh, this is the place for natural habitat. And so they knocked all the stuff down. But then now they're building a five star hotel just up from it, and they cut down so much rainforest to build it.

Finn  00:11:50  So essentially what they meant is the people who have the money are gonna treat this as their own private beach. But what it meant was, is there was all these bits dug out of the cliff around the sea, and people always went down there and would just build all these different places that they would be able to live. Lots of Indians and also lots of travelers. Such an awesome vibe down there. But we were there in the season where there wasn't really anyone down there because it was like near monsoon season. So it was just us for pretty much all of it. And we're just up on the cliff and had this beautiful campsite and then had built a really nice treehouse. It was my birthday, and it was the most beautiful that some of my friends have ever made my birthday. It was just they all got me like this gift and wrote Happy Birthday with sticks on the table. And it was like so beautiful. And then they left, I think the next day actually, they wanted me to come with them, but I was like, why would we leave? We're like literally in Paradise and we have a treehouse on the beach.

Finn  00:12:47  And then they left. The next day the monsoon rain came and it was crazy proper like monsoon like, thunderstorm like. And I was just in this treehouse by myself on this piece. Oh, shit. And then I had to build a roof over it, because at that time it was made of palm fronds. So I built this roof. And this when you're like in the jungle and building stuff by yourself. It's just like such a different experience and like that, experiencing feeling lonely as well. I've grown up in a family of six people and there's always people around. I've always had lots of friends, so to be like, are just you and the jungle? We've known around such a thing. But yeah, then I started getting really ill and like, really itchy and got this, like, rash where I'd get, like, my skin started blistering and going red. And then I got these, like, big lines, almost burn lines. And then at one point I was just like, I just feel like I need to get out of the woods.

Finn  00:13:34  So I walked for like an hour over all the cliffs to this other beach, and went to the first place where I knew two of my friends, like were staying some of the friends, and I was like, oh, can I stay here? And they're like, oh no, sorry, we're closing up. Like we don't have any spaces because we're packing down all the rooms for monsoon season. And I was like, okay, shit. And then I went on and then went to this other place and they were like, oh yeah, yeah, for sure. We have rooms. Have you got your passport though? I'd left my passport with all my other valuables in a little plastic waterproof bag hidden under leaves in the jungle. So I was like, shit, the sun set at this point, it's an hour away. I was like, oh shit. So then I like, went back and pleaded with these other people if I could stay there. And then I was like, I'll sleep on this table, like in the restaurant area.

Finn  00:14:21  And I was like, okay. And then I went to bed and I woke up, like butt naked on this table. This dog was wearing like a sarong, a lungi. It was what they call it. But like, it's a rug that the dog had ripped off me in my sleep and was like ripping up on the ground, but naked, just covered in this rash. I think that was a real realization moment of I gotta get the fuck out of here. So I went back packing my stuff up and then got on the bus and then went to Bangalore and got injected by various different things, and they sorted me out.

Luke 00:14:47  It's a good story.

Finn  00:14:48  It's quite an elaborate story.

Luke 00:14:50  So I'm gonna go for Delic situation. Rains come, friends, go home. You need to get the hell out of there. You do this sort of wandering journey, loss of passport, waking up in this bizarre situation. Okay. Did you feel that reflected your story?

Finn  00:17:57  Yeah.

Luke 00:17:58  Did you get the rain?

Finn  00:17:59  Yes, I did get the rain yet.

Luke 00:18:01  And did you get the sense of this sudden this happens the monsoon. It's not like when it rains here.

Finn  00:18:08  Oh, no. It's a whole different vibe, isn't it? So. I suppose the German based friend. That is more of a British thing. To be fair.

Luke 00:18:16  But did you get the sense of loneliness as well?

Finn  00:18:19  Yeah. For sure.

Luke 00:18:21  This is just lots of space. Minor. Slightly discordant. How do you think that piece of music could be improved if we were making a film about this adventure of yours? And I was the composer, and I played you that. It's like a first draft. First draft?

Finn  00:18:44  Is that right? This is perfect.

Luke 00:18:46  Because it's really hard. Because my perception of something can be quite different to your perception.

Finn  00:18:51  Yeah, yeah. And I think when it's serious, Foley, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Of course. I'm not expecting the sounds of rustling trees and the occasional monkey. Although I'd be Grateful Dead.

Luke 00:19:05  Yeah. I mean, you would be pretty impressed if I came up with a whole soundtrack.

Luke 00:19:08  It just.

Finn  00:19:08  Like that.

Luke 00:19:09  And sound effects.

Finn  00:19:11  Come on, step up your game. I know you got some chimp noises in there somewhere.

Luke 00:19:15  Oh, yeah. Don't want to bring out the chip noises. So what did you get out of this podcast?

Finn  00:19:22  Well, it's always very nice to see and hear you playing the kid, the piano. It's always nice to tell stories with improv. It's amazing to see how a mind can work. So on the spot, it's such a well-oiled machine that just giving a little bit of something you just like, oh shit. And you can just get straight in there.

Luke 00:19:39  So what you're saying is that you can give me a little bit of information, say the rain on this beach or this sense of loneliness or something. And then there's a lot more information that comes out of the improvisation. I'm essentially making a lot more stuff up than you've given me, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Finn  00:20:00  And I guess that's the other thing, isn't it? If you gave this same task to lots of other musicians, probably all the work would be so different.

Finn  00:20:08  It's amazing as well how we would imagine things and like saying you probably play a piece and people will guess what the story is. And I'm sure it will be very different because we have our brains and they figure it out and they make a certain way of it making sense.

Luke 00:20:22  I think it's clearer for some people than others. Like the other night at the launch, the podcast launch, the piece I played at the beginning, someone in the audience said it reminded them of like, melting chocolate. And then another guy said it was a bird, a blackbird landing on something. It was something really specific to do with the bird as well. And I'm thinking, this is the same piece of music. How does this work?

Finn  00:20:49  It's quite amazing, isn't it? Like humans are just so different. Their brains are all so different. Really?

Luke 00:20:55  Yeah. Well, thank you very much for being on the podcast.

Finn 00:20:58  Not at all.

Luke 00:20:59  It's been very insightful.

Finn  00:21:00  Yeah, that's. Thank you for having me.

Luke 00:21:03  Join us next time for another episode of Improv Pod. Thanks for listening.