Ep12 Solace & hitchhiking - Oscar Linsey Turner

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Luke 00:00:03  Welcome to another episode of the Impro Pod podcast. My guest today is Oscar Lindsay Tanner, ecological entrepreneur and podcaster. Hi, Oscar.

Oscar  00:00:13  Hello.

Luke 00:00:15  So what's your relationship with improvisation? Good question.

Oscar  00:00:18  I improvised through life quite a lot. I've done some comedy improv, and I've improvised with musicians, with poetry. Yeah, quite a broad relationship.

Luke 00:00:29  So they would obviously play some sort of soundtrack and you improvise over it.

Oscar  00:00:33  Yeah, exactly. Well, it's freestyle poetry or rapping or with a bunch of other poets. Yeah.

Luke 00:00:40  So I'm going to play a piece of music, and I want you to tell me what that makes you think of. Okay. So anything that comes to mind and kind of thoughts, emotions.

Oscar  00:00:49  All right. I'm excited.

Luke 00:00:50  And it's completely made up. I haven't composed it. I'm just improvising it. Okay.

Oscar  00:02:09  Wow. It started out and it made me think of some kind of judgment. It was the spacing of the notes that had this kind of regular, repetitive spacing, and it made me think somehow of maybe a preacher doing a speech to repent.

Oscar  00:02:25  And then it turned really beautiful, and all of that dissolved reminded me of the Titanic and love. And then towards the end, it went back to the church and it went through the building. And it was very much about the building and how the structure of the building and that classic religious architecture, an old English church with that cold stone feeling, with the pillars leading up connecting to the roof, that kind of domed effect where you often had imprints and murals and stuff on it. Or maybe it reminded me of weddings in some sense, and then that tied me back to the church. I recently attended my brother's wedding and it was in an old church, the ones I'm describing but a bit warmer and it's just timeless. When you step into a church, isn't it? Because there's all the ceremony and the way that you should behave, the way you should be in your head, even though everyone has probably a slightly different version of that. There was something about the piece that seemed quite archaic to me.

Oscar  00:03:30  How would you describe the piece that you did from a technical point of view?

Luke 00:03:33  This is quite a tricky thing to do because when I'm in the moment, I'm not analyzing it or thinking about it at all. Yeah, I just know there was a lot of wide kind of fifth shapes to begin with. And then there was a change of scene and that became more delicate, fragile. And then I kind of moved up the piano a bit, but I can't really describe it. Yeah, I can't really remember it that well. I've switched off that part of my brain. If you're playing something live, for example, and you've got to remember what your hands are doing and the different shapes, and it's a very much different process to improvising from nothing.

Oscar  00:04:09  Yeah, for sure. A whole different part of your brain lights up when it's improvising, I believe. But it's interesting. It went from that structure to more delicate. And that's when my mind drifted off into the Titanic for some reason.

Luke 00:04:28  I'd like you to tell me a story, and I'm going to then break it down into sections.

Luke 00:04:33  I'm going to improvise a soundtrack to the story.

Oscar  00:04:36  Okay, nice. I guess today I'd like to talk about the topic of death and my experiences with it as a phenomena. In the last three years, I've had three male friends commit suicide, and it's been tricky. There was this level of distance between me and these male friends in my life, but in turn, I love them all dearly, and I went through a process when each one of them passed away of mourning, and I cried, and I had typical ceremonies of either by myself or I went to one of their ceremonies with hundreds of people, and it was very moving because, you know, these were young men. And I reflected on something that somebody said at one of the ceremonies, which was that in some way, maybe there are some of us on Earth that death is a sort of spiritual fulfillment to return back to a source or piece or original consciousness. And I reflected on that. And for some of us, that maybe death comes as a relief in some ways, and I don't know exactly what I make of that.

Oscar  00:05:55  There's been a few quite harsh awakenings in that realm, and it sometimes left me feeling a little bit shaky. I mean.

Luke 00:06:02  There's a massive difference in people who are going to die, and that's very different to when someone commits suicide. And that's a it's another thing because it's so avoidable. I think that's what gets you not like I've ever experienced that.

Oscar  00:06:15  Yeah that's true. You do hear that, don't you? People that are going to die. There's often quite a sense of acceptance about it.

Luke 00:06:21  So what's the story?

Oscar  00:06:23  So the story I would tell is the story of a friend who passed away. He was a friend that I did a course with, and it was quite a tight knit group of people that were all friends on the course. I got the call, as it were, giving the overview of the fact that a friend of ours had committed suicide on the course. And yeah, it really shook me because there's that classic thing, isn't there? People say I never knew. I never knew there was a problem.

Oscar  00:06:56  I never knew they were suffering so much. And that was the case for me when I got the call. I was distraught at the time, but I knew I needed some closure. I knew there was going to be a ceremony. This was a person that had lots of friends, but I needed some connection quickly. So I cancelled all my plans that week and drove up to Bristol and I was rattling in my old Nissan Arena people carrier car on the dual carriageway. This is a car that complains when you go at 60, and I was flooring it at 80 the whole way in the fast lane. I think I was crying as I was driving, I was quite reckless. I got this bizarre concentration and adrenaline. It was probably going a bit too fast and it was also really windy. And the car rattles from side to side and the best of times. So it was quite a dramatic journey. And I got up there and I met some friends who I did the course with, and we had a ceremony on a hill in Bristol and we lit candles.

Oscar  00:07:58  It was very beautiful and we cried. And then there was the big ceremony with his family and friends from all over the world that came, and it was very beautiful. It was in a large piece of land. Lots of beautiful words are expressed. A few days later, I was telling my therapist about it, and it helped me understand a little bit more about how I felt about life. I think through having this tragedy in a way. It helped me feel I could live again. It was the last session that I had with that therapist, and at the end of the therapy session, my therapist said something to the effect of go and do that thing, whatever that thing is that you feel you need to do that or that makes you feel alive, go and do that thing. And I think maybe for the last few years before that point, I'd been probably feeling like I wasn't doing it. That thing that made me feel alive and it helped me in that moment, commit to life a bit more.

Luke 00:09:03  Wow, thanks for sharing that. What was that thing then?

Oscar  00:09:08  I thought you were gonna ask that. It's always been around writing and communicating, but it's also teaching. Teaching young people to connect to nature for sure, or helping people emotionally. And then writing. Writing's been a kind of a tumultuous love of my life. And whether that be through poetry or prose, find a lot of peace and calm through my writing.

Luke 00:09:34  So back to the story then. I'm going to break it under sections. So I'm going to go for the initial here, getting the phone call thing, and then this slightly perilous journey in this car that might not be up for it. And then this kind of cathartic nature of the ceremony that takes place.

Oscar  00:11:57  Beautiful.

Luke 00:11:58  So what are your thoughts on that? If don't be afraid to tell me if it doesn't work for you, that's like what it's all about.

Oscar  00:12:04  No, it did. It really did. You know, I felt like I was on the hill. I was pacing through the story as I told it just then.

Oscar  00:12:13  And actually, I only really got to the bit on the hill with the close knit group of friends before it ended. But it still had that same, that same narrative of the entire journey. It was that cathartic release and that deeper joy to life.

Luke 00:12:35  And then you got the sense of the journey, the chaotic. I think the movement of the music is important in conveying that sort of thing. Go around the bend. I was imagining it was raining on that journey.

Oscar  00:12:44  Stormy temperament.

Luke 00:12:45  It's interesting what comes into my mind, thinking about each different bit because suddenly I thought, oh, fourths, play some fourths here, or play some weird arpeggio thing and then play something discordant here. I don't know where this is coming from, but it just arrives as the next instruction, which is to do with the emotion of the story I'm going through.

Oscar  00:13:04  Do you visualize the story as an image, or do you just know the general?

Luke 00:13:08  Partly. Yeah. It's not a very strong image. My visual imagination is not incredible.

Luke 00:13:15  So it will bits, bits of an image, the windscreen wipers, the the rev counter being too high, the hill. In fact, I got the sense of the hill.

Oscar  00:13:23  I got all that too. Actually, it was very much the cart and the hill. And then there was a second half to the story, wasn't there, where it opened up into the larger ceremony with the family and the extended friends. And then there was the therapist bit at the end where I found my own personal connection.

Luke 00:13:43  So have you got another story then?

Oscar  00:13:45  Yeah, sure. Okay, so this story is about a 1000 kilometer hitchhike journey that I made across Europe. And I started off in West Germany, and I was doing a work away, and I was hanging out with a bunch of cool alternative German people who a few of them just didn't use money. They lived their life nomadic, and they went from work away type situations to alternative building things to festivals, and they just didn't have any money. And two of them were about to have a baby.

Luke 00:14:23  And that's going to change.

Oscar  00:14:25  I don't know, I never saw them again.

Luke 00:14:27  But did you ask how expensive the baby is? Yeah, I.

Oscar  00:14:30  Did have some questions at the time, but I was 19 at the time, so I just thought it was all very cool and amazing. I met this other guy who I didn't really get such a good vibe of him. He was 30 odd. And he also lived with no money. Anyway, I'm hitchhiking to Hungary and I was like, oh, cool, so am I. Because I wanted to go to a festival there. And I basically said, can I come with you? And he was like, yeah. So we started hitchhiking together and it was rather successful. Actually. It only took two days to hitchhike over 1000km, but at some point I left this guy we were been raiding, and I think in some way he was showing me his ways. I remember getting in the car with one German guy, and him, and this German guy really didn't like people from the UK.

Oscar  00:15:22  He was saying how the English were like dogs. Anyway, I left those two and ended up hitchhiking with Eastern European truck drivers, and they were a lot more fun because they didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any of their languages. But we ended up drawing pictures, communicating in crude sign language. But I overshot a country because I said Budapest. But he heard Bucharest. So I ended up in Romania. And then I had to hitchhike back on myself to get to Budapest. So I had to flap my arms and be like Hungary as I saw the sign for Hungary disappear behind us. And anyway. Yeah. So I left that guy and I managed to hitchhike back on myself. Spent the night in a service station, just the arse end of nowhere. The bit that God just accidentally hiccup it on and it's all just gross. And there's just rubbish everywhere. It was a character building. Any time I sleep outdoors, I'm always really aware of everything. All the sounds. Is that a fox? Is that some axe murderer? What's going on? My senses are just awake.

Oscar  00:16:31  And it was like that, but without any of the nice nature sounds and just the drumming hum of motorway traffic and the trees were all horrible. I just slept in the bushes. There with a little one man coffin tent. It wasn't even a proper tent. It was something that a toddler would bring to a birthday party and then leave because it was so terrible. Anyway, after all, I ended up in Bucharest and Budapest, and I surprised a bunch of my friends that were there, and it was a nice memory.

Luke 00:16:59  And how did you feel when you arrived? When you saw your mate?

Oscar  00:17:02  Oh, yeah, it really goes. That was elated. They were so happy to see me, and it was such a nice thing to surprise them so far from home. Nice hitchhiking again and mission it around. And then the bits in between that was me sleeping and me waiting at the side of the road again. Oh, God, when are they going to arrive?

Luke 00:20:17  And then the sort of the service station sleep, that weirdness, that slight paranoia.

Luke 00:20:22  Yeah. Tried to get the kind of the traffic around everywhere and.

Oscar  00:20:25  Yeah, yeah, different to the other one. I was watching your hands throughout this one. The other one, I had my eyes closed and I was picturing the thing in my head. But this one, I was really present on watching your hands. And at one point your hands were really close together and they were overlapping and it felt like there was something about that was like being in the trees, sleeping in my bed.

Luke 00:20:43  I was thinking kind of road movie. Some of that soundtrack driving. We're on a mission here. Oh, whoops. We've overshot a country.

Oscar  00:20:51  Yeah. And then the end was nice. It felt like the end of every fantasy film or something. The way it just ended really beautifully like that.

Luke 00:21:05  So what did you get out of this podcast?

Oscar  00:21:07  Oh, it's cool to see. My life in music is kind of like Reverse Desert Island Discs. Instead of me bringing the music and saying, here's the story, this is what I'm going to play.

Oscar  00:21:17  It was the story unfolded after I said it in musical terms, really cool format. I liked being able to reflect on those stories made me realize how many different things have happened in my life.

Luke 00:21:30  That's good. And did you feel that you got insight with the music somehow?

Oscar  00:21:35  Yeah, I did, yeah, I think having the images alongside that, there's the structure of those pieces helped me create them as story arcs more than just these random things that happen to me. And now being able to listen to this back, I think I'll gain an extra level of reflection as well.

Luke 00:21:55  The way you remember something is, since having this experience, do you think that soundtrack will have an influence on that memory?

Oscar  00:22:01  I think it will actually, especially the first one, because it was the most sad and therefore had the most pull to my memory, and it was also the most recent. And yeah, I think it will help me see that as a almost a three part narrative rather than a kind of bundle of sad emotions.

Luke 00:22:21  That's suggesting the way that I can manipulate your memory in some way, which is a pretty terrifying thought, really, isn't it?

Oscar  00:22:28  Yeah. Maybe manipulates to harsher word. Just collaborate. Yeah.

Luke 00:22:33  Okay.

Oscar  00:22:34  Maybe that's a nice word. How did you find that today? Throwing the questions back at you today. Sorry. Yeah. Podcaster and podcaster.

Luke 00:22:43  Yeah. Quite cathartic. I haven't done a podcast where someone's been so open about death. And family member wishes are important for me. Not making it sad, but exploring the emotions and providing an objective point of view. Musically, I think.

Oscar  00:22:58  I felt that actually because it would have been easy to dwell in one thing or but it had nuance to it. So yeah, I appreciate that.

Luke 00:23:06  So thanks very much, Oscar, for being on the podcast. It's been really insightful. If you want to check out Oscar's podcast, it's called the Nature Deficit Podcast and it's available on Spotify. Listen to the artists, activists, educators, therapists, movers and shakers who are creating ripples in our living world.

Luke 00:23:27  I'll leave a link to Oscar's podcast in the description of this episode. Join us next week for another episode of Impro Pod. Thanks for listening.