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‘I play the Oud. It’s a Middle Eastern lute. There’s a new album out on ABC called “Permission to Evaporate” which is a recent one I did in New York with two great jazz players. One is Mike Stern who was in Miles Davis’ band and Christian McBride – the biggest double bass player at the moment on the jazz scene in the world actually. So I was very lucky to get the chance to record with them.’

If you could describe the Oud as a human, how would you describe it?

‘It’s pretty much like me – short necked, half pear shaped. It’s perfect. I’m exactly like the instrument!

‘I’m playing next Thursday (26th) at Camelot Lounge Marrickville in a repertoire called Angel. We only play that repertoire twice a year to commemorate my parents’ passing. It’s nice to commemorate them through music. This one is to commemorate my mother’s passing two years ago.

‘She was quite sick towards the end. I think there were quite beautiful moments within the short space of time you spend with them in the end. It doesn’t get easy not having your parents around. I think it really gives you fuel for your music. It helps you as a human being and helps you grow. We’re constantly healing and that’s the beautiful thing about music. I guess you’ve just got to take these things as a lesson and grow from them.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhp-IpRPxIs

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‘The mainstay of my work is sideshow. I swallow razorblades, walk on broken glass, eat lightbulbs and stuff. For a circus performer, I’m neither fit nor flexible. It’s all in my fingers and tongue. I had an act where my assistant would feed me razorblades. She’d then swallow some string and then we’d snog. As we snogged, we regurgitated what we swallowed and tie the razorblades under the string wi…th our tongues.’

How did you get in to this?

‘It’s weird. I studied business. I thought that was the smart thing to do. I didn’t study art and drama like I wanted to because like that’s ever going to make you a living. I picked up fire twirling just by randomness and started getting work for it. I then started to diversify. I went from fire dancing to fire eating to fire breathing to sword swallowing to swallowing other things to just working on controlling responses of the body that are normally automatic that we normally don’t have conscious control over – that your subconscious takes over itself.

‘What I do, it’s not like an adrenaline rush. I’m not seeking death or pain or anything like that. It’s actually more methodical. It’s more mastery of your body. It’s not even mind over body. It’s more mind over mind really. My old assistant used to say, “Everything is in the mind. Even the mind is in the mind.”’

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‘When I was 15, a lady came to our school and spoke about exchange programs so I went and spent a year in Costa Rica. I did my year 10 in Costa Rica and learnt to speak Spanish and lived with a local family there. We lived in the mountains surrounded by coffee fields. Before I went, I didn’t speak Spanish or anything so I didn’t really know what was going on. It was a poor school – 3,000 students with just a couple of teachers and none of them would turn up. No one really cared.
‘There was one teacher; she was a biology teacher, and she really cared that I understood what was going on and that I actually learnt. She told me to go and buy some rope and some paint and she taught me to make a really thick rope – like macramé. She was teaching us about DNA so it looked like a DNA thing. So I made a really big one – she taught me how to make it – and she told me to paint this knot blue and this knot green and I did everything she said and at the end she was able to explain all the parts of the DNA. To this day, I still only know them in Spanish.
‘Then she told me to go buy some smaller string so I could make bracelets for my friends and family. This is the jewellery I make and sell now.’

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‘I’ve been studying music at the Conservatorium. I’ve actually got my graduation this afternoon.’

If you could describe the trumpet as a human, how would you describe it?

‘Like a drunken boxer – it feels like getting punched in the face a bit. It’s like mashing a piece of plumbing in to one of the softest bits of my body.’

Have you ever been punched in the face?

‘Yeah… It’s got its comparisons.’

 

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‘I want to go to England and open a gallery in London with the world’s largest painting. It’s a magical portal between the worlds with a very magical subject.’

How big is the painting?

‘About six storeys. We’ll paint it on canvas in Dublin and offer it to the English as a peace offering. I can’t say right now which building we plan to put it on but it’s an old power station. …

‘We’re going to bring some of Princess Diana’s energy back to a world that needs it.

‘The whole ethos behind the gallery is to take art away from the elitist club and to celebrate and promote art of ordinary people. Such as exhibitions of portraits painted with materials of canvas provided by the gallery to the disabled, the homeless, elderly, people with terminal illness – anyone you can think of who Diana supported during her time here.

“’he idea is to bring art to the public through the people who popular culture likes to sweep under the rug and pretend that they’re not there. The gallery is more about infusing our culture with a sense of self-worth based upon what we can create within ourselves as an individual but also as a collective.

‘It will be called the Princess of Whales Gallery (as in dolphins and whales). If Sea Shepherd or anyone else wants to come along and offer their support and be supported in return then they’re welcome to approach us.’