Losing faith, best use of duct tape, opera thoughts, anxiety parenting zine, insect farm

My research into London deaths. Thinking about people who have and lose faith. My excellent podcast with Bec Hill. Thoughts on seeing opera, Satyagraha. Anoushka's new zine. NetZero investments.

Oct 31, 2021

I’m continuing my research into how we’ve died through time. In the UK, inevitably this will lead you to the Bills of Mortality. These were weekly death statistics from London.

There are many causes which we are unsure what they relate to now. We think “megrim” was a precursor to how we think of migraine, suggesting a head trauma. Timpany is a bloating in the digestive tract and a term still used today. From what I can tell we are still debating “rising of the lights” which seems to be illness associated with cough or breathing difficulties. Some butchers still call the lungs “lights” due to their comparatively light weight compared with other organs.

The London Bills of Mortality were compiled from the 1590s through to the 1800s. They began an unbroken run of weekly publication from 1603 (apart from a short hiatus during the Great Fire of 1666.) You can check them out at the Wellcome collection or the Guildhall library amongst other places.

If you want to know how I’m using them, then do please come to my show on 26 Nov: in person or livestream. I’d love to see you.

One thing to read/listen this week is Bec Hill. She’s an awesome comedian and lovely person, and she made me think very hard about the nature of what we should tell jokes on. Everything can be funny, but should we tell jokes about anything?

This week:

A piece of kindness
On having and losing faith
My new performance piece
Bec hill on comedy and heat use of duct tape
Satyagraha, opera thoughts
Openspace, business as force for good
Chatting with CEOs
Local government NetZero
Anoushka makes an anxiety zine
My friend’s insect farm

My podcast with Bec Hill

Benjamin Yeoh @benyeohben

I podcast with @bechillcomedian on #comedy check it out: thendobetter.com/arts/2021/10/2… ...On: The right to offend faith, arts and crafts, ADHD and the best uses for duct tape... ...plus check out her new book Horror Heights: The Slime #podcast

just because a poisonous berry is delicious, doesn't make it any less poisonous and I feel that same way about comedy. I think just cause something is funny, doesn't make it not toxic.
… it's more about what you're saying, I think. It's the message. What is the message? What are you actually saying with your art or your joke or whatever? You've got to look at why you've said that and why you think it's funny or why you think it needs to be said.

Bec really made me think about this point. I’ve defended Dave Chapelle’s right to offend, and I still think that is correct. But does Chapelle have to make these kind of jokes? Now, I think he would be funny over so many other topics as well…

Bec also gave me some very thoughtful insights into faith, having an ADHD diagnosis and her use of arts and crafts.

….We speak about the use of arts and craft in comedy and thinking about children’s comedy. How she found acting as a “straight actor” in David Finnigan’s Kill Climate Deniers.
How she met her partner and how he has helped direct and collaborate on her shows.
How faith helps guide her life. How her ADHD diagnosis has helped her understanding.
The best uses for PVA glue, duct tape and glitter and her practical advice for aspiring stand-up comics (it’s to do with the microphone).

Listen below or read the transcript and see the video here.

A piece of kindness and joy. On one of our mega-train journeys hunting down new trains and places, we had a kind offer from Darren on Avanti West Coast trains. He offered to let Jpike make a train announcement which was an amazing highting of our trip.

Thank you Darren!

Benjamin Yeoh @benyeohben

Super many thanks to Darren from @AvantiWestCoast who gave our son a very special moment on the train.

Losing faith. There’s an unanswerable exam question that does the rounds along the lines of

Is religion a force for good?

Critics highlight the atrocities committed in the name of religion and proponents highlight the social goods.

In my later years, I’ve been struck on how many people I meet who have faith as guiding North Stars in their lives. In both my podcasts with Sally Phillips and Bec Hill, faith plays a major role in their lives. I’m in awe of my cousins who have faith that guides and centres them. People of faith in my day to day experience are also very kind to my son, JP.

In my forthcoming podcast with Aella (a little NSFW), she talks a little on how she lost her faith and more in her essay here. The pain on losing faith shows me what people gain on having faith. She writes:

Losing my faith was horrifying and painful. I refer to it as my ‘faith’ and not my ‘religion,’ because religion is a word we use from the outside, as the observer watching the person bowed in prayer. For me, the person bowed in prayer, it was my faith, and to call it a religion feels like it undermines the meaningfulness of the feeling of “loving God”.

There can be more to faith than religion. I’ve been thinking about Ghandi and his concept of Satyagraha. …

Satyagraha… satyagraha is a concept embodied by Gandhi that brings civil resistance to non-violent protest. The idea flowed to Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

Deriving from Sanskrit words, it’s a more modern invention by Gandhi.

Philip Glass, the American composer, known for minimalist work created the opera Satyagraha around 1980. Glass based the opera on the early life of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The words - the libretto - use the Sanskrit from the Bhagavad Gita. But as the director Phelim McDermott explained to me one way to embrace the opera was not through story narrative but on a more visceral level or the level of a sequence of portraits in sound and visuals.

This freed me to be much more moved than I was expecting.

One of my companions described it as an ocean of sound. I’d add on to that the stunning and theatrical visuals.

This music and visual feast then comes to embody Satyagraha as a concept in art and in being given to us by the performers and musicians, is a way of holding that idea and concept into our lives outside the theatre house.

I know many people and friends would find this art impenetrable. The wall of sound. The indecipherable text in a forgotten language. I feared I would be in that camp.

But letting go of making narrative sense and setting my mind closer to meditation and perhaps embracing a kind of faith led me to experience I wouldn’t have had otherwise. If and when it comes back, give it a try. (Or we can also go and see Ahkanten when it comes round next year.)

We held with Improbable an OpenSpace on Business as a Force for Good. Thank you everyone who came.

Benjamin Yeoh @benyeohben

Thank you to everyone who came to discuss business as a force for good with @improbable1 and @openspacer

I find these conversations where I continually learn a lot and get challenged by different viewpoints, fascinating and useful.

Challenging and thoughtful chats revolved around inclusion and system change, the nature of why we do arts, what is good and what is impact.

If you are interested in trying OpenSpace let me know. We are also on a quest to find a new home and I made a short podcast with Improbable for them.

Improbable @improbable1

"We've been talking about it for over 10 years... but it's never seemed possible, or the time wasn't necessarily right. But the time does seem right now." Listen to @benyeohben's interview with Phelim and Matilda about #ImprobableTheGathering now: improbable.co.uk/posts/intervie…

On the responsible investment pension front, I presented at the London CIV (LCIV) annual conference on engagement. LCIV has made a commitment to Net Zero in 2040. LCIV are an important part of looking after London local government pensions.

There are complexities but it means c. £12bn in local government pensions is aiming to be Paris-aligned Net Zero. That’s a substantial portion of London local government pension joining many other pension funds in this journey.

Good to know I can still wear a suit (LI post).

It might not sound like it but I still spend the majority of my time in investments particularly healthcare. I had a video meeting with the CEO of world leading medical technology. One point of emphasis that came out is the importance of “human captial”, how happy, engaged and productive are your employees and how being mission driven can help that. Net Zero and circular economy ideas are also there but nearer term challengers are dealing with supply chain constraints, investments in China (due to “buy China policy”) and figuring out what balance between remote work and in-person working is needed.

(In rich nation world) We see the edge of the complexity going on around us in supermarkets, and remote working but there is a tremendous amount happening at the moment from a confluence of pandemic still raging, many commodity and components (think semiconductor chips) supply shortages, a re-thinking of low wage jobs by many; while others think about the “metaverse”, crypto and biotech advancements.

World is always uncertain, but seems to me the range of outcomes and happenings is particularly wide at the moment.

I caught up with a friend (hi Jmac!) who has moved to Nova Scotia and is working on a circular economy and start-up company that is farming Black Soldier Fly. Turns out there are a number of black soldier fly farms in the world and they sound pretty good to me. So much, I don’t know but I found it fascinating to learn.

My friend is at Oberland Agriscience. And here’s a case study on the whole idea.

Anoushka:

A new zine. As usual, it’s a parent’s eye view of autism. Specifically, on how anxiety is at the heart of the many and disparate rules that my autistic son imposes on himself (and us).
I used to think the rules (which are considerably greater in number than shown in the zine) came out of nowhere and were random, but we find the logic in them more easily, these days. The rules are the not-always-successful means by which my son tries to protect himself from anxiety and the uncomfortable and upsetting hyper-arousal that comes with it. Self-management of anxiety requires some quite high level emotional regulation skills. We are doing our best to teach my son these skills, but until he’s got a handle on it all, we muddle through - accepting many of these rules and arranging his day-to-day to life to minimise (but never completely eliminate) those anxiety-inducing moments.

If you want to make this zine, Click for zine pdf and print it on A4 at 100%. Then navigate to these folding instructions. More zines here and here.

Links this week:

Also on faith…

Benjamin Yeoh @benyeohben

My mum the nun: why my socialite mother joined a monastery aged 61