Ep16 Where is the Edge?! Eddystone Pigeon & Snowy Adventures - Thomas Wilson

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Luke 00:00:05  Welcome to another episode of the Improv Pod podcast. Today in the studio I have Thomas Wilson. So tell me a bit about yourself, Thomas.

Thomas 00:00:14  I'm an astrophysicist, and I like spending my time looking at the stars or playing in the woods, inspiring people about nature, tracking animals. Yeah, witchcraft, that kind of stuff.

Luke 00:00:26  Oh, nice. Okay. First of all, going to play your piece of music, and I want you to tell me what it makes you think of any kind of thoughts, ideas that come into your mind. Don't overanalyze it too much.

Thomas 00:00:38  Okay? All right.

Luke 00:01:46  So what did you think of that?

Thomas 00:01:47  I was immediately on a spaceship, travelling through the icy depths of space and feeling kind of the dangers and then the enjoyment of finding something new and maybe at the end, kind of becoming safe again.

Luke 00:02:03  Where did the spiciness come from?

Thomas 00:02:05  The first word that popped in my head was space. With that initial chord, I think it made me a little bit scared in a way.

Thomas 00:02:11  Yeah. Unnerving. Slightly.

Luke 00:02:13  But in this process of discovery, was this thing specific about the space, about the journey through space?

Thomas 00:02:21  I felt that the journey was initially important. There was a reason I was doing it, and then it was dangerous. And then something was okay at the end. That was the kind of the feeling of relief by the end of the song. End of the music.

Luke 00:02:37  Yeah, because it went a bit jazzier from this quite tense moment.

Thomas 00:02:42  I kind of jazzy. This was a much more relaxing. Maybe that's where the feeling of safety came, because it was more homely to me. Yeah.

Luke 00:02:54  I'd like you to tell me a story.

Thomas 00:02:56  A couple of days ago, I was sailing back from Falmouth to Plymouth and the wind was coming up. It was about 12 30mph wind, and the boat was heeling over and there was a good swell, maybe three meters. So we were rocking about. And just off Plymouth there is a lighthouse called the Eddystone. And as we were sailing past this small, very bedraggled looking pigeon hit the sails, flopped off into the water madly, struggled for a few minutes, and then finally managed to get herself out back and land on the deck.

Thomas 00:03:29  It was missing most of its tail feathers. Maybe a fox or a dog had got it, and it was a racing pigeon. Must have come across from France going into England, and it sat on the deck watching us quite nervously, finally built up the courage and snuggled in closer. We gave it some water and some oats and then sat on our laps for a while, and we gave it a box and crawled into the box and slept there for about 12 hours, and in the morning it just flew off. And it was just lovely to connect with this animal that was completely exhausted, needing some help. Found us, trusted us enough to take it to safety.

Luke 00:04:06  Well, I guess I had to really trust you, didn't it? Yes, because otherwise it would have just died. Was it a nice day? What was the weather like? Oh, the.

Thomas 00:04:13  Weather was better. It wasn't raining, but it was very windy. Very gray and stormy.

Luke 00:06:26  So how did that piece reflect on your story? I won't be offended if you thought that was in the beginning.

Thomas 00:06:32  Really. I felt captured the feeling of the sort of the weather and maybe the desperation of the pigeon and that and our misunderstanding of what's, you know, what is it? The pigeon. Why is it here? What's it doing? How can we help?

Luke 00:06:46  It's interesting how you picked up on the suspicion. The way I was playing it was from the pigeons perspective. Maybe it was thinking. Who are these people? I don't have a choice here, but I'm gonna have to trust.

Thomas 00:06:56  Yeah. The pigeon stayed with us until we got up into the river and moored up, and it was completely calm and tranquil.

Luke 00:07:09  Okay. So do you have another story? I.

Thomas 00:07:11  Yeah, I can do another story. Another one that involves much more weather. I don't remember The beast from the East, which came in 20 1617. So heard the snow was coming and as the snow was falling in Exeter, geared up, raced across Exeter, got the last train into Bristol. We met another friend who we drove together up to Scotland and this is.

Luke 00:07:32  Before it all kicked off right?

Thomas 00:07:33  It wasn't the first night in Bristol, it hadn't quite kicked off and we were out just outside in a small village and we had to dig our way for a few miles with the help of some farmers and tractors to get out of the village again. But once you're on the motorways, they were clear. So we drove up to Scotland. We spent four days hiking in Craig, Maggie and living in snow hills. There was enough snow that we could dig about four metres in and make a little, little shelter, which is really lovely because it's raging wind outside and inside it's calm and peaceful and you put one candle up and because the snow is all made of a white snow, it reflects a light around like a like a cathedral or something of that. And on one of the days there we went up a ridge, not knowing more, but the cloud came in, so it was completely white, the ground was white, the air was white, and you couldn't see where your feet were or what was where.

Thomas 00:08:23  But we had to go along a little ridge with a nice big cliff on one side, but you couldn't see where the cliff was. So to work out what was land and what was air, you'd make a snowball, throw it ahead when it landed. You get a little bit of contrast. You could see it wasn't land. If it didn't land, you knew that was. Yeah. Don't walk over there. This story with me anyway, was an effort of self-control, because I had to walk along this ridge and not go back down the hill where I wanted to go. I knew it was safe and had to stay walking on a compass bearing, throwing these snowballs ahead until we finally got to the point at the top. And when we arrived, there was this, I suppose, an utter sense of relief and I didn't realize I had for the last hour or so, being utterly terrified but living on adrenaline. And I finally got to the point where I knew it was safe again. Oh, and then you could just relax.

Thomas 00:09:13  And actually, it was a really strange experience to go from a state of fear to a state of relaxation and how your body responds in quite a strange way. You had to take a moment and make a cup of tea before doing anything else. I can now move on.

Luke 00:09:27  So how did you feel when you saw the snowball go over the cliff? Because I guess you've been anticipating this moment for a while, right?

Thomas 00:09:36  Big desire to turn around and go the other direction, but also. Oh, okay. That's that. That's the edge there. I can't see it. Yeah, we could have been blindfolded. That would have been a similar experience.

Luke 00:09:47  It's a good story. So I'm going to go for starting out on the journey. This sense of uncertainty which is different from certain fear. Yes.

Thomas 00:09:55  When you can see the monster running towards you.

Luke 00:09:57  You know, that's definitely it. And it will definitely kill you. And it's going to happen soon rather than this might kill you. But we don't know when.

Luke 00:10:06  What was it like living in the sort of living area from the snow.

Thomas 00:10:11  It was personal. Three of you in a small hole in the snow. The main thing I would pull out from that would be that it was this contrast between inside and out. When you're in a tent and it's windy, it flaps around, it's noisy, and you know where you are. When you dug into the snow. It was peaceful and calm and fairly warm because the three of you in there keeping it warm. So I'd say it was a safe refuge. Yeah. You get a really long pole, and you just walk around for a little while and digging the pole and hoping that it's deep enough. When you find one that is deep enough, you put your packs down and start digging. You dig a little hole straight in, partially dig, partially get blocks and take it out and dig a few meters in. And then you dig a sort of bigger chamber inside. One of the things that I felt listening to that was that I definitely got the sense of adventure going through it into space, and then the more tenser moments and the environment really came out as well, the kind of the feeling of snow, but also this, there's more joy in it.

Thomas 00:13:47  I chose to be there, and that came through in the music. Yeah. Was that a mostly major or minor piece of music?

Luke 00:13:54  It's a mixture. Honestly, I have no idea. I wasn't really thinking about that. But yes, I use the mixture of the major thirds, sort of. And then I flip to minor.

Thomas 00:14:14  That last bit you do has quite a somber tone. The last few bars, I want you to come along and narrate everything I do now. Yeah.

Luke 00:14:22  So you could probably breed kind of paranoia this podcast. Or you start hearing soundtracks during everything you do. It would be a nightmare, wouldn't it?

Thomas 00:14:29  It depends if you were doing something you thought was great and then had a very sort of sinister soundtrack suddenly came on.

Luke 00:14:36  Then we've got time for one more story.

Thomas 00:14:39  A very brief short story which I found absolutely hilarious. I was fortunate enough to go to Uganda a fair few years ago, and we were in a little bus along the road, and suddenly there was a very loud beeping of horns from behind us, and our bus swerved off the road.

Thomas 00:14:54  A small minibus thing and six armored Humvees piled past very fast, very close together, forcing everyone off the road. And once they got past, we continued on. And maybe six miles down the road, there was a long line of six Humvees, all bumper to bumper, with smoke coming out the engines because the first one had braked. They were going too fast to stop so close together, all travelling at such speed they just couldn't stop. Rear ended each other, ended up in a large pile. It's a very angry people outside gesticulating and carried on slowly, our driver looking happily at them. If you go past someone on the side of the road with a small motorbike with a sofa strapped on the back of the motorbike. I remember that quite distinctly.

Luke 00:15:40  Like a proper sofa.

Thomas 00:15:41  Yeah, yeah. The road was going east to west, so it was the main transport route and it's hot. And there was big ruts in the road where the big lorries are going to cross. And this is a tarmac melted, just made these grooves.

Thomas 00:15:52  So if you weren't in those grooves when you're driving. It was bumpy. It was a much more AP piece, but I guess the story was far less serious.

Luke 00:17:40  And yeah, more. Was there anything that I missed that I.

Thomas 00:17:44  Didn't necessarily get the sense of the cars that forced us off the road then being themselves disabled. But really, I was not necessarily a point to the story. That was just something that happened, that I felt the journey much more.

Luke 00:17:58  I guess one way that you could do that is write a theme for the car.

Thomas 00:18:20  It's really intriguing how in that theme you can pull on and then you keep going and then. Yeah.

Luke 00:18:25  Which is quite hard to do because then you write the theme and oh God, what was that? So to remember it then and then you have to play with it in a way that reflects the narrative of the story.

Thomas 00:18:35  Yeah, subtle adjustments to the theme as you go through.

Luke 00:18:38  When you have a theme for a character. Yeah. Something happens to that character and you can portray that, that you can get the audience to recognise the character by playing the theme.

Luke 00:18:49  Even in a space like this where we're not, there's no real visual. It's part of the imagination. Yeah. You're learning a lot about how people perceive music. So what did you get out of this podcast?

Thomas 00:19:07  From a personal perspective, it was really fascinating to have thoughts that are in my head. So sort of those stories which are just there and then placing music to them. I don't think I can go back now. There is always now music to those stories, which will be interesting. Something that's never happened before.

Luke 00:19:25  And it's not a good thing.

Thomas 00:19:26  Yes, definitely. Because they amplify the emotions or the feelings or the visuals that were there.

Luke 00:19:33  It gives me a lot of responsibility. I've created a soundtrack and rewritten some of your memories with this soundtrack. It's a good thing. It's a.

Thomas 00:19:41  Good thing. And when you have more than one sense to remember something by, those memories are always heightened. Yeah. So you've brought in a new level to those thoughts and memories, which is a gift.

Thomas 00:19:54  Yeah.

Luke 00:19:55  Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that. I want to try and get Darren Brown on to see if he has some interesting ideas that I'm sure you.

Thomas 00:20:04  Can definitely make people feel a lot of emotions with the right. Right. Sounds right.

Luke 00:20:07  Yeah. All right. Thank you very much.

Thomas 00:20:09  Thank you very much as well.

Luke 00:20:10  Join us next week for another episode of Impro Pod. Thanks for listening.