Walking Therapy - Night Walking

Transcript

Nobody can miss them for me That’s reason why I try both If all is cold I can see a thousand times of it Out against mental illness So it’s mid October About 7.30 in the evening The sun sets here and this time of the year about 6 So it’s not completely pitch black but the sky is cloudy So there’s very little light and I’m wandering through a wooded area Which is making it even darker I’m on my own It’s a very calm night, there’s almost no sound from the breeze I can just hear a road in the background But it’s pretty dark and I feel pretty isolated I do this quite a lot this time of the year Mid summer in Scotland it’s kind of hard to find darkness You have to go out at midnight and then the sun still has an influence But as we get towards the winter, winter solves this The day is getting very short here and it’s very easy to find dark Sometimes the only real possibility is to If you want to go out and be outside and go for a walk or whatever it is that you do You have to do so when it’s dark Now you have to be like me and wander through some secluded woodlands There’s plenty of walled areas and perhaps that’s the safest thing to do But I’m not so worried about assailants, or maybe I should be I’m a 6ft plus, broad, kind of scary looking guy I don’t think many people would consider me easy pickings and I’m really quite fit I don’t really want anyone to try but I also think it would be a bit dumb Anyway I feel relatively safe, I’m in rural Scotland So I like to do this because I can I go walking for many reasons but one of which is to feel isolated on my own People just leave me alone and I’m not getting disturbed and it’s very easy in the Scottish countryside To just go out and be outside and be unobserved And I’ll do that whatever time of the year, whatever the weather I kind of love being out in the darkness because it’s such a different experience We rely, especially someone as visual as me, as a visual artist on the things that we can see with our eyes And we discover beauty or stuff of interest and something excites us or whatever Something that’s going to give us some stimulus to our artistic process And that comes in through our eyeballs but what happens when you’re robbed of that I mean I can see but only just I’m not sure I’d be walking through a wooded area that I didn’t know very well when it was this dark I’ve got a bit of light but I’m mainly feeling my way through catching the odd indication of where I am With a certain amount of vision I can hear, I can feel beneath my feet This is a very very familiar walk for me I can hear a river stream to the left of me I’m just crossing over the bridge for that, it’s a tiny little stream I can feel the ground beneath my feet, I’m wearing very thin barefoot trainers My feet aren’t bare but they’re the next best thing And I’m just using the other senses as much if not more than what I would usually rely on So I take my headphones off and I’m going through an area that’s particularly dark I always struggle here I have a torch on my phone, I’m not stranded if I need some illumination, I’ll get it I prefer not to have it, I like to try and push my old eyes to accustom to the dark If you put your torch on then you have to start that process all over again I don’t really like the way that these white lights that we get on our cameras Really designed to be flashes for photographs I think that neutral white light is a wonderful thing in the studio But in the dark when it’s so concentrated it can be very bleaching You just see a flattened, bleached out view of the environment around you That leaves you really not perceiving it as you would do otherwise I’m really struggling right now, this is so dark Here I would usually use a torch but for you dear listeners I’m going to brave it out Now just in front of me I’m using my feet to film my way through I’m walking quite slowly in case I have taken a wrong turn I’m going to clob them and my shins on a log There’s actually a fair few lights around me The area that I live in is pretty remote but not that remote There’s a town of about 5,000 people in which I live There’s another town, here’s another stream and I’ve got the stepping stones Thankfully I don’t have the stepping stones through the stream I’m not sure I could manage that right now Listen to the water, what a lovely sound There’s another town about 5 miles away that usually you can’t see from here because it’s just sort of at the foot of the highlands which start a bit north of here It’s a town called Krief It sort of blends in and you can’t really see it during the day Besides you’re looking at the mountains and the mountains are amazing So you’re not thinking about the fact that there’s a town there But there is and this time of night you can’t see the mountains You can see all the lights in Krief It’s quite jarring to see the town there imposing itself Just a little blob of a banity If you’re going much further north than Krief Then you’re not going to see anything resembling human residents for 20-30 miles If you’re lucky enough to run across the next town up there Once you get a bit further north than where I am now through the highlands There’s not a lot up there And that’s part of the reason why I’m here I’m next to a field of sheep who are way more scared of me And I am with them and huddling away Down the little alleyway Trying not to trip on my arse and fall on my fence next to me During the day when you’re walking around a place like this You don’t think much about what’s lurking in the hedges and the thickets and the woodlands And under rocks and in brambled hedges and stuff And maybe neither should you But when it’s dark You’re sort of forced to think about your surroundings in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise And it does make you think what’s in there And there are things that come out when it’s dark That you don’t see during the day Walking down a little… Just a little back bridleway here Hence the different sound of my footsteps That I can’t see right now But there’s usually lots of bats Lots and lots of bats That you don’t see at all once it gets a bit later But they zoom down right close to your head And I just love it, it’s brilliant I can imagine if you got long flowing locks that might freak you out a bit Because what happens if they do the thing that they absolutely never do Which is get stuck in your hair But I can imagine the idea is quite terrifying But I have no hair So I’m not going to worry about that But I love bats, they’re amazing There’s a few I just think they’re beautiful creatures, amazing It’s so, so interesting And such a different experience on the world that they must have Navigating by sound And again it makes you think I’m hearing it in the dark And I’m being forced to use the feeling of the road under my feet And the sounds around me And everything I can to navigate To make sure that I’m where I expect to be And I’m not about to walk into a riverbed or something And I think it’s great for the Flexing the creative muscles I think When you put your brain in situations where it has to Flex different muscles is it worse Like if you’re not a runner And you go running Suddenly a whole bunch of muscles Hurt that didn’t hurt before Even though maybe you’re a cyclist or a swimmer or something And you never get achy muscles But you’re using the muscles that are needed for cycling or swimming Running takes some of those muscles But a whole bunch of different ones too And so you’re being forced to use a different set of muscles And to tone yourself up And I think the same goes for the brain You need to force your brain to Poke up a bit of wire Some of the wiring, some of your neural connections That it perhaps neglects And see the world Or not see the world as the case may be In a slightly different way And things are always so peaceful In my mind anyway In the darkness a few people around Daytime, the daytime beasts are chilling And the birds have gone to sleep Fewer cars on the roads You feel much more isolated But in my mind in a good way I’m not a hundred miles away from my home or habitation I can get back home within ten minutes Pretty much any point during this walk So I’m safe as far as I can tell And I’m warm enough And no one’s hassling And there’s no one around There’s no one to think, what’s that weirdo doing talking to himself And And yeah I can just sort of be And sort of forget that the world exists Envelopes me and I’m being kept company By whatever creatures and beasties That I can’t perceive or see that I know it there And me and the night beasts And I’m not Yeah, goth Pseudo-vampire, only coming out in the night type I just like being outside And I don’t like being limited And so I’m just as happy to be out in the daytime At the same time in the middle of the summer And when it’s raining or snowing Or anything but the most perilous of conditions I’ll just get out because I love being outside And I love the freedom And the isolation And all the stimulation that I get from it That’s why I do these walk-in therapy episodes I naturally feel my brain wander And Be a bit more Loose and Vestal, agile, I don’t know Plastic, I don’t know what the right word is When I’m wandering around Most of the time when I’m walking I don’t record anything But sometimes I feel like I want to share it I don’t know if other people value that or not Yeah, part of the reason I have a podcast Is to share in my thoughts and feelings And hope that people relate People who are like me And they can draw some sort of benefit from that Be it Inspiration or Solace or identification Whatever it is I’m no Bob Ross but I’ve been told my voice is Quite soothing Except when I get super excited about something And I’m really doing proper full-on autistic ADHD intensity And then people get really freaked out and want to run away So if you catch me In a more contemplative state of mind Wondering Scottish countryside, eh? I wonder if waving my voice could allow people to sleep Although I made someone cry yesterday I didn’t mean to, it was in a good way I think So maybe I’ve got some sort of magic voice Where I can just sort of elicit any emotions from people See this is the type of shite that goes through my head While I’m wandering around late at night on my own And sometimes I think useful thoughts And sometimes I wonder whether I’ve got a magic voice And since that’s where my mind has gone I’m going to spare you any more of it, dear listener Please tune in next time for Alex Talkshore Fucking ear off about some wild thing he’s got interested in That has absolutely no interest to anyone but him Bye