Johnny B.A.N.G. Reilly - Carved In Mayhem

Full transcript: Johnny B.A.N.G. Reilly on London Real

4:53 This is London Real. I’m Brian Rose. My guest today is Johnny Fang Riley, the transient poet, fighter, dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, fashion designer, and voiceover artist. You were born in Britain, started boxing at eight years old, where you both used violence and were a product of violence at home. You’ve been homeless, fought bare knuckle boxing matches, and trained with some of the best martial artists in Europe.

6:08 These days, you focus on movement, nutrition, and producing epic short films that feature your spoken word poetry and your background in fighting. Johnny, welcome to London Real. It’s nice to have you here. Where do we start with you? There’s a lot to talk about.

6:25 Where do you want to start? Tell me about when you were born and where and what was it like back then. I was born in Park Royal Hospital, London, and I was brought up in the area of Wilson Green to an Irish mother who had an extra mile to look there with somebody that she was working with. She had an Irish husband, and I think pretty much I wasn’t what she wanted to pop out. Your father wasn’t Irish, I guess.

7:09 My real father’s Jamaican. And then I was born, and at first it was, oh, he’s got yellow joiners. This is in the 60s. Yeah, 64. Then I think I was at home about a week, and then my mother reported that I was kidnapped, and it ended up on the front page of a newspaper hall that held, which is turned into the sun newspaper with the Beatles for a nationwide manhunt looking for me.

7:57 But the Johnny Riley they were looking for was a white Johnny Riley. So I can’t remember if it was the same day that I was reported missing. I was found in a park called Gladstone Park. Some school kids heard me in a bush, and I was pretty beaten up. Brought back to the hospital, my mother said, that’s not mine.

8:22 So I was left in another room. And I know all this from my social reports because I got them after, because I was in care for a while, children’s homes, and then when you’re a certain age you can get all the reports. So I was able to read the whole breakdown. And the midwife was like, that’s her kid. One of my uncles came and he said, that’s her son.

8:45 But the police were looking for the white Johnny Riley because it was feasible to them that a black woman really disliked me and swapped me for this white child that they were looking for. He was highly racist. When it turned out that, you know, they said, oh, let’s do a blood test, which they must have lied about because they said that my mother’s husband was my father and she is indeed my mother. So they put me back with the same woman. And what, she hid a man in you in the bushes?

9:22 Well, my stepfather thinks that she left me there. I wasn’t kidnapped at all. But I don’t know, so I’m not going to pursue that. I just ended up in the bushes and I know that when I read the social report from the midwife said I was bruised, pretty beaten up, and there was a cut on my heel of my foot. I still have the scar there.

9:43 And you’re one week old at this point. Pretty much. Not the easiest thing to survive, you know, at that point. It takes exactly 14 days. I remember now, you know, it’s 14 days old.

9:53 So things started off well for you. Survival, yeah. And what was the rest like? Well, they essentially put me back in the house of my abuser. So I think my, you know, psychiatry or that type of institution wasn’t very good at their job at the time.

10:16 My mother, I can’t give a prognosis of what mental state my mother was in, but I know that my mother was popping pills as long as I’ve known her. And she would have, she couldn’t control her emotions, which resulted in her hitting me with blunt instruments a lot. I remember being knocked out regular. And a particular occasion, I was always messing around, who was coming from church, coming from Catholic, coming from church, and I pulled my trousers down and walked with my underwear on the street when we were coming back from church.

10:54 And my little sister, who is my stepfather’s daughter, blonde hair and blue-eyed, told my mother, Johnny pulled his pants down, and my mother beat him with a broomstick. These big lumps would come up. I think she hit the same spot again. And I remember being comatose. And what I remember is I saw my two sisters sitting with these white socks on the settee.

11:19 And it was spraying with blood. And the socks just went… It was just blood. So it must have been spurting out of my head. How old are you at this point?

11:29 Young. Five. Seven or eight, something like that. And we were living in a warm lane then. You know what I mean?

11:42 I remember that. And I remember she used to… She scared her own mother. I remember one time her own mother was trying to protect me and she picked up a candelabra with like these lion’s feet and said, if you don’t let him go, I’ll kill him with this, you know? And, you know, occasions where she would hit me with shoes and the heel would stick in my head.

12:00 And I was climbing up my bunk bed and I thought there was hair on my neck and it was blood. And I was like, Mommy, I’m bleeding. And then I was taken downstairs. There was a couple lived downstairs. And a guy called Peter came and tried to squeeze the hole in my head closed and, don’t tell your father, my stepfather, telling me you were jumping off the wardrobe because I was always climbing stuff and jumping off stuff and hyperactive.

12:29 Because years later I spoke to my mother and said, why did you beat me so much? She was very hyperactive. And her husband was a womanizer and kind of just basically left her alone with the kids, you know what I mean? And I was very boisterous and because of the lack of value at home I was compensating. And then there’s racism at school and one of the biggest things that stuck with me about my perception of humanity was that a particular individual can walk around a playground of all these different human beings and say, I’ve got this idea.

13:10 You see that guy? Let’s fill up this teacup, plastic teacup that we have at lunch and spit and spit and everybody agreed to the point they filled it up and then the boy came and poured it on my head and I was like, why did it? You decided out just because of the way I look and that’s when I decided that I need to learn to fight and everything changed from that point of view, do you know what I mean? And I just became obsessed with power because my power was constantly taken away.

13:48 It was the right way to fixate it, under pillows and stuff like that to the point of one time she was smothering me and I was kicking so hard that those days you had gas fires but the flu was kind of in a chimney and I kicked it out of the wall. That was the strength because I remember symbols of my struggle. I don’t remember all the details but the play in that throughout my life made me very aggressive, sensitive and probably because of the head trauma I couldn’t control my impulses.

14:26 So if you disrespected me as I started to grow into my body and then I was obsessed with fighting and because I’m a poet now I look at everything symbolically and I remember we was having a geography class and you use this compass where you put a pencil in this one and then there’s the needle in and you make a circle and there was a little screw and I used to undo the screw and it fitted perfectly in a fountain pen, the spiky end and I just screwed that up and that was my hidden weapon. So I was making weapons when everybody was trying to find their way around the world. I was making weapons and it was just constantly like playing out in my head how to protect myself and I remember seeing a thing recently, this lady, she’d done this thing called the blue eyed experiment where she took professional people and put colours around their neck and she used the same model as racists use on black people in a classroom, in a place, said you’re insignificant and wouldn’t answer their questions and ignore them and that stressful environment for 20 minutes all of these professionals started making mathematical mistakes, spelling mistakes because of the stress, the brain didn’t work.

15:45 So I have no diplomas, no education. The only thing that I had was two things I could draw, I could move and I could fight and that was it. But as soon as I started to grow into my body, one day my mother tried to hit me with the broomstick and I took it off of her and poked her with it. And I think at that point she realised that she created this monster she couldn’t deal with anymore and sent me to go and live with my stepfather who had left. He’s an alcoholic and a womaniser.

16:20 So 12 years old I’m living with this guy, he’s never around and every time I would see him he’d just give me money and go away. So I never went to school. I was on the street. And this is more at what age now? 12.

16:35 So now you’re in London still? I was in London. But if I never went to school and all of those things then they decided to move me outside of London into a children’s home on the coast in Hastings. When I landed there I met skinheads. And this is now mid-70s.

16:55 So not a lot of open minds. I was in a children’s home called Gessling and in Hastings if there was any black boys they were from that kid’s home. So we were fighting non-stop. Okay. And what kind of things were you studying fight-wise?

17:16 You started to study boxing. Boxing was my initial thing because I started to, you know I was picking people off that were bullying me. I would catch them on their own, you know what I mean, and do my thing. And it was just like that sent me the child guidance because they thought I was a little bit bordering on being danged. I think I broke my first nose at eight, you know what I mean, with knees.

17:42 Okay. And then they threw me into boxing. It just gave me more tools, you know what I mean. And then when I went to Hastings I realised about speed because a lot of these skinhead boys they fight very quick. And then I was kicked in the face when I was on the floor.

18:04 I said, everything’s changed now. So then I started doing soccer kicks, head butts, biting ears, you know what I mean, eye gouging. That was my gladiator university. Okay. And these fights would not happen at school now.

18:20 They would happen on the streets. Yeah. I mean the children’s home we had like an in-house school but the staff would fight with the kids, you know, had fist fights and it was madhouse, you know what I mean. And then when I went back to my social report that this particular children’s home had changed its name about five times because the staff didn’t know what they were doing. I mean some of them were having sex with the girls that they were supposed to be looking after.

18:43 It was on madhouse. When I went there I was like a pretty decent kid and I ended up, I had this social worker called Mrs Mansfield who was really posh but loved me to bits. And she went there and there was like, I was thinking I was there for a couple of months and she was like, he’s glue sniffing. She said, well how did he start me? He wasn’t glue sniffing when he came here.

19:06 And I was just obsessed with glue sniffing every day because it was hallucinate. Now this friend called Little Johnny who I haven’t seen since I really hope I see him again. Both of us were in this children’s home called Kestlin and he was my glue sniffing partner. You know, every day we’re just in Alice in Wonderland. But then that didn’t do any good for my brain.

19:29 And what I know now about the micro world that happens inside us with our glands and hormones, the amount of stress because of the poison I was putting on my body, that all the messengers that are in the hormones were going in one way, cortisol. Like Pac-Man was eating up everything so I couldn’t control my emotions, I couldn’t control my reflexes, everything was just mental. And what happens as we get into teenage years and later? I start to dance because in those days if you could dance, I think Johnny Travolta happened.

20:07 And you got a lot of attention from girls and that’s how I offset all the racism because girls liked you and they were nice to you. So I needed that, psychologically I think. That’s healthy as opposed to staying on the aggressive bodies. Fighting all the time, you know what I mean? Softer.

20:27 I was like, I need to dance, I’m a survivor so I learnt. And then I went for an audition in London for a dance group and they released me from the children’s home at 16. I was a glassblower originally, an apprentice glassblower. And I came to London but the dance company didn’t happen. Then I was effectively just left on the street.

20:54 And going around all the clubs and stuff like that, I met this guy called Danny Carr. He was a big giant, he was like, he reminded me of Frank Bruno, a massive, great big guy. And he left his own home and we used to live in this car. So old Morris belonged to this guy called Andy Anwar. And his parents were working all the time.

21:17 I think he was a Pakistani guy and he would let us sleep in the car. And when his parents went to work, I think the car, they didn’t use it. And then he would let us in and give us a written arm bed and we would take the gravy off of the pots and stuff like that. And that’s what we was eating. And sometimes a girl would buy us a burger and we would steal Mars bars.

21:36 I don’t know how I survived in that nutrition. But still obsessed with dancing. And then I discovered the Pineapple dance studios. I knew it. And as the classes are changing over from one teacher to another, sometimes there’s a 30-minute gap.

21:57 So I would use the mirror and do my thing. But then the place is full of people from record companies and they were like doing the auditions. They’re like, no, we want him. And then I just started working. And one of my first jobs was with Adidas.

22:13 And I think at the time, who was the triad? David Thompson. David Thompson was like the big guy here at the time. And we did this tour of Germany with Adidas and stuff like that. It was like modern sportswear but with dance routines and stuff.

22:32 And I was fine once I was working, but when the work stopped and I had to be out on the street again, if anybody just were, respect got me into a lot of trouble. Okay, so you were on edge. In retrospect, were you looking for it? Or do you think it just, you were ultra sensitive? From where I’m sitting now?

22:50 Yeah. What happens is that if you’re an abused kid, you look for signs of an abuser, aggression, any of these type of things. So I walk in a room and you want to put on this persona that I’m no sucker. Then somebody else that might be an abused kid sees you and goes, well, I need to take him out. And then you see him and you like magnets, boom.

23:18 And I’m frequent in environments of disenfranchised people. So the percentage of abused kids in a room is pretty high. It’s just a numbers game. You go into a big enough room, there’s going to be a fight. And again, they’re probably just like you.

23:36 You know what I mean? Low value. You know what I mean? Can’t do it financially. Can’t wear nice gear.

23:43 Can’t have nice things. Can fight them. You know what I mean? That guy getting all the attention from those women, I can prostrate him and take his manhood away. Low value.

23:55 You say if someone feels low value, that’s the way they can build up. Cheaper, isn’t it? Yeah. Then after we’re a name brand, you knock out the guy with the name brand. Right.

24:07 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So it’s a weird place to be. You know what I mean? Highly stressful, very unhealthy to yourself, let alone other people.

24:17 Heart rate’s up all the time. It’s decaying. From where I’m at now, I don’t know how that kid survived. I don’t know how he even operated. Can you spot these kids a mile away in London?

24:32 Yeah. They come at me because they see, you know, I wear my scars. You know what I mean? But they see the calmness and they’re like, how did you get like that? And I’m like, I’m at your disposal.

24:46 You know what I mean? For sure. It’s very easy, simpler than you think. What does that mean, I’m at your disposal? I’m here for you.

24:53 As long as you keep turning up, you have my complete dedication. You know what I mean? Because there’s no need to waste your soul like that. Absolutely no need. All these kids need is somebody to give them the attention.

25:06 Mum can’t. Busy, trying to feed them. You know what I mean? And I can’t change the environment, but I can’t refuse anybody there. Because of what I’ve learned is so easy.

25:23 The only gripe I have with it is to be healthy is so expensive. And I’m like, you’ve got all these kind of new age people that are supposed to be so centered, but your industry cuts off all the people that need you because they can’t afford it. So you’re only catering for a particular… If I wanted, for instance, say to a parent whose kid is definitely toxic from metal intoxication and plastics, and I say, you know, you need to give them chlorella before they sleep, to buy clean chlorella that’s cracked so it can work in your system is expensive.

26:10 Usually from another country. You know what I mean? I don’t know how we’re going to sort that out. I’m a big believer in adaptogens, especially with kids that deal with stress because then you’re going to get the fight or flee. The cortisol is going to get released and this kid is going to do one or two things because, microbially, inside, his nervous system is telling them there’s a saber-tooth tiger.

26:37 So the three things happen. They run from any type of commitment that gives them stress or they’ll stick their feet in and fight or they’ll get fat because the internal organs saying there is stress and it could be either where there’s a famine so they’ll start just storing fat because of the stress. Most people are not fat. You know, from food, they’re fat. Their body is now just into storing rather than getting rid of because the whole environment is constant stress.

27:11 We’re supposed to have that stress once or twice in our life. We live with it every day. Take me through, end of the teens in London. What happens next? You start trying some boxing.

27:22 Are you kind of transient now? Are you living anywhere in particular? I kind of never really lived anywhere. I always lived with friends and stuff like that. You know what I mean?

27:32 And then because I fought really well, for me it was a life and death situation. Most kids fight out of ignorance, you know, they fight and put something in their headlock, give them a couple of punches. You go home. I was introduced to when violence happens, you could lose your life from my mother. So every time I fought, it was so that somebody has to be asleep for me to feel safe or you have to pull me asleep, you know what I mean?

28:01 And most people I fight are actors. Most people, they’re just actors. Actors. Yeah. Most of them.

28:08 Most of them. You know, you have to understand something. Everybody can start a fight. A couple of beers, throw a punch. But you punch somebody that’s, that punch means something real to them.

28:24 So you’re going to, I don’t mean to hit me again because you’re not going to stop. I’m used to people that want to have me destroyed. So I take, I’m taking it for real. Now I’m breaking the ribs and smashing the liver of somebody’s kid, a civilian, so to speak. I didn’t know he was acting.

28:45 Then you get a reputation. That leads to getting in a fight and somebody says, I’m not having him break my jaw. So you get stabbed multiple times. So I had to recover from that. Punctured lung.

28:59 That’s a weird experience. Can’t breathe in or out. And you’re drowning inside your body. And that happened when you thought it was a baronellicle boxing fight, or that was just a street fight? No, it was on the street.

29:09 The guy came, I was doing a show, I was dancing on a show here called Soul Train. They had a British version of it. Okay. And the kid came up and tried to pretend he knew me more than what he did. I didn’t really know him.

29:21 And he came up and kind of hugged me from behind. And I slipped out of it and said, what are you doing? And then he got embarrassed because of everybody else. And then started reaching in and I said, I’m going to take that out. I’m going to make you eat it.

29:36 And he goes, come around the corner. And I’m like, oh, cool. Let’s go. When I’m around the corner, boom. One straight in my chest.

29:44 Then one in my rib. But I wrapped that and hit him. He let go with a knife. So I pulled it out. But now, I’m grateful for what happened because for sure I had to kill him.

30:02 He threatened my life. I’m on another level now. But his friend put one in my back and took my air away. And that was exactly the right thing to do for everybody to leave, to be alive. Because you would have killed him.

30:16 You would have killed him and who knows what happened. Yeah. And that punctured you long from the back. From the back. The one from behind got me in the back.

30:22 And you really felt like it took your air out. It was gone. You know what I mean? I couldn’t breathe in or out. I was making this noise, you know?

30:31 But I remember my sister, my older sister, when I was in hospital, I woke up. My mother was standing at the end of the bed. She was like, oh, thank God. And my sister was like, thank God. She goes, he’s going to be 100 times worse.

30:48 And I looked at her. That’s a bit heartless. She was like, now he thinks he’s Superman because he survived this. And it played out. Yeah, exactly.

30:59 Reilly? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that your Irish accent? Well, no way there. Well, thank God.

31:04 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And this is how old?

31:11 I was in my 20s by then. Okay. So you did become Superman after that, but you felt like you were. I went from registering that I’m in a fight when you hit me to if you just purse your lips, it’s on. You know, because I had to now.

31:32 You might die now. You know what I mean? Okay. Yeah. And then I carried a weapon for a while, and I was like smart enough to know that, man, I’m going to use this every time.

31:43 You know what I mean? So I literally had to just keep those things away from me. I’ll just stick with these, you know? But in between, there was great art and dancing and do you know what I mean? And stuff like that.

31:57 But it’s just the stresses that release that fight reflex. Most of it’s amplified by my own warped sense of reality as far as human beings. And then probably the trauma that I had to my brain that makes it impossible for me to control my impulses. So I was diagnosed with bipolar. I won’t know until I’m dead whether I’ve got CTE.

32:30 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. But the symptoms sound pretty much there. My long-term memory is okay. Short-term memory sucks.

32:37 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I’ve made two drinks for myself before. I had the remote control in my chest and looking around for it. Right.

32:44 You know what I mean? And CTE is this disease we’re seeing a lot in American football players and others where just multiple concussions stacked up over time. And it doesn’t happen at the time. It happens later. Right.

32:55 And it leads to some crazy stuff, some depression and… Suicide. Suicide. And a lot of these guys, when they’re committing suicide, they’re shooting themselves in the chest because they want their brain to be examined afterwards and, you know, it’s really scary, sad stuff that American football is going to have to end up paying for for probably the next 20 years and people aren’t talking about it enough, I don’t think. No head strikes, man.

33:18 Yeah. Period. I know a lot of parents are going to probably feel, you know, our egos are crazy things, you know what I mean? It’s like you get all of this proof but because you put your son in boxing for the past two years, you carry on because you don’t want to be seen that you’ve made a mistake. So you keep him in the boxing rather than putting your hands up going, I made a really stupid decision here because the head gear is only for stopping you from getting cut.

33:50 It doesn’t stop the brain from crashing against the skull. Most boxers don’t get punch drunk, which is a nice word. You ain’t punch drunk. You’ve got brain damage, like serious. It doesn’t happen in the actual combat of being in the ring.

34:07 It happens during the training. You’re sparring with guys that know you. They know what you’re going to do. So you’re going to get punished a lot more. Your sparring partner sees you every day.

34:18 He knows all your holes and your weaknesses. You know what I mean? And then you get like, it’s different if you’re living the life where you’re healthy and you’re still, you’re sharp. But you get these MMA fighters, they’re only getting shaped six weeks before they fight. So they go from doing nothing to extreme getting battered.

34:44 You know what I mean? So it’s only a matter of time before that stuff turns up in MMA as well. Slowly starting to have a few retired UFC fighters. Yeah, because the audience doesn’t want to see people rolling around on the floor, only people that really understand you jitsu. That’s exciting for them.

35:01 You know what I mean? They want, I guarantee you, they’re promoted to telling you, you must stand up. You need more stand up. Yeah, 95% of the highlight reels are knockouts and strikes. When did your violence hit rock bottom or when did you realize, I got to start thinking a different way?

35:17 I’m not violent. Okay. I’m the violence. I’m just challenging it. I’m pure.

35:29 I was a baby in diapers, never had any of these things. I’m challenging what was done to me. I’m just a speaker, man. I’m flailing the music. You know what I mean?

35:39 I’m not violent. None of these kids are violent. They are the violence. Do you know what I mean? And as soon as people, you know, I’ve been incarcerated for an illness.

35:47 You know, go and see, you know, I’ll go and see a shrink. Part of my anger management course said come and see us every two weeks. I say I need to see you every week. I’m tired of this stuff. And I’m conditioned to take instruction.

36:06 Instruct me. How do I use my brain? What patterns do I use? Just come and tell me what you did for the past week. So I’ll tell you a nice story about the details of my week.

36:21 Now and again, you glance at the clock. Now I don’t trust you anymore. You know what I mean? You’re falling asleep as I’m talking to you. You’re not doing your job too well.

36:31 Now I’m going to start clamming up and disliking you and why am I here? Okay, see you next week when time is up. See you next week when time is up. Don’t learn anything. Actually coming out of the sessions, more angry because I’m being failed.

36:47 And then at the end of the session, the only time the guy gives me instruction, can you come to the computer? Let me show you how to fill out this form to get more funding to keep on your therapy. This is the only time you’re going to talk to me about giving me instruction on something. And I’m telling you that one day I’m going to hit somebody that’s genetically not built for it and they’re not going to get up. I fight on the street.

37:11 I’m going to stun them standing up and they’re going to hit the pavement and they’re not going to get up. These are the mental health professionals. This is just anybody. Mental health professionals. Yeah.

37:24 New medication within the first 30 minutes. You said you had kind of a realization because you used to channel a lot of anger when you would go back to that eight-year-old boy because he was the victim. And you’re attached by a psychological umbilical cord to your base. Your formative years. Who’s that guy?

37:47 Because when the times get tough you have to… Who are you? Who am I? You have to use your memory. Who am I?

37:53 What have I been through? Same with a fighter, you know? The ones that are the most serene are the ones that have been for all the stuff that they thought was going to be frightened until they experienced it and now they’re on the other side of it. You guys know how they’re called. So I’m looking at this reference point but I’m always seeing him as the victim.

38:11 He’s scaring the life out of me today sending that message through that umbilical cord to my adult structure. And then one day I just decided to go, look what you survived, bro. And everything just… The whole energy just switched. I never ever looked at him being victimized or this shouldn’t have happened to you.

38:36 I was like, okay, you took that beating and you still love your mum. You’re still a loving person. Look how you bled like that and you never told anybody. Look how you kept your mouth shut because the neighbours might have heard and your mum would have got in trouble. So even though you were in pain, you kept your mouth shut.

38:55 You’re a special, honourable, loving person. That became my new route and it affected me and the now dynamically. When did that happen? A few years ago. Okay, all right.

39:09 And that was like a major turning point. Completely. You just reframed that whole… I was sitting in jail once and there’s a lot of little prompters that guide you on the way and I was just reading this book on addiction because I had a crack addiction altering my brain set. The drugs are not addictive.

39:31 It’s wanting to alter your brain. That’s what’s addictive. It’s driven by pain. These are just the tools. They don’t do anything on their own.

39:42 And I just got tired of the hangovers and the stress that my body went through because I had so much altering to do, I took vast amounts of chucks. You know what I mean? I never wanted to have my brain, when they say come down, go back to its normal state. Because that was painful. It’s like this.

40:10 A white knuckle ride. Not because I’m worried about other people, because of the thoughts I’m having in my head what I’m willing to do to survive. Do you know what I mean? And I’m like, that’s a life. As a fighter, you go through the motions.

40:25 The drills, what do you do? If he does this, I’m going to do this. For instance, if I get the knife off of you, I’m going to stab you in your armpits. That’s horrible, man. Imagine trying to recover with that, with all of those glands and stuff that’s up there.

40:39 You’re not going to be the same ever again. Or stick it under your chin, through your tongue. You know what I mean? Because I have to stop you, and I’m small. You know what I mean?

40:50 Trying to get away from that, just eased up a little bit on drugs. Cocaine doesn’t ease you up, but it allows the brain that wants stimulus from outside to just go internally, like Ritalin. What they give to kids is as good as crack. They’re just running around in a hamster wheel inside their head. The body looks calm, because the brain’s occupied.

41:09 But the stresses that are going on, the amount of insulin being released from the pancreas and adrenaline and cortisol, soup, that you’re sitting in, it’s people getting twitches because the hormones are not going to relax the body anymore. Part of the brain switches off, because it’s not about being intelligent, running and being and fighting or storing energy. So I was in jail, and I was trying to read in about addiction, and besides the point of them trying to sell their drugs within the book, David said, reverence, reverence changes thoughts of power.

41:54 I’m repeating on a loop this recording of my past that’s affecting me now, changed the tune. So I wrote this poem about I’m going to mug a bumblebee, because I wanted to get my multi-vitamins and stuff like that from nature rather than rock, shaved rock. You know what I mean? So I like bee pollen, and I studied it so much that one time a bumblebee was flying, and I was like, if I catch him, I’m going to get fresh bee pollen. I was like, I’m literally standing there, I’m going to mug this bumblebee.

42:30 And I just started to look at life in detail, I started looking at butterflies, and then I remembered this is what I did as a kid. My mother would iron my shorts after I’d been out all day, and they would crackle because they were full of ladybirds. You know what I mean? And I was always like catching butterflies and putting sugar in a jar, and put like little breathing holes in the top so I could watch it and listen to it flutter around. I even used to put flies in my mouth and go like this to feel how they fly around inside my mouth.

43:02 And all of those things, I remember how they made me feel, I didn’t feel anything about the environment that I was in anymore. But I wasn’t intelligent enough at the time, I didn’t know what I know now. I was changing the atmosphere inside my body. So cortisol and stresses and all these, these chemicals that make you go like this, they were being turned off. Then I’d get interrupted as I’m playing with a little butterfly playing with the snail.

43:28 Some kid would come along and crush the snail and then I’d have to go from the butterfly whisperer into a boxer. So I was all constantly interrupted. But when I was in jail, I was at the calmest because usually in category A, there was high violence I was put in there for. So I’m in the cell of my own because I’m dangerous. But now I don’t have to interact with people.

43:54 Everything just chilled. And then I started to really control my environment because I went to the library and got books by the Dalai Lama. So I was only reading all of this peaceful stuff. So I was like, that’s when I started to realise you can actually change over the wiring of your brain. So now I don’t, like even though you’re talking, I’m not focusing on you.

44:21 I’m focusing on me sitting in this chair. And because I’m only focusing on me, I hear everything. People think you need to go like this. But you need to go like this and everything comes in. Do you know what I mean?

44:35 So I’m in the good story all the time. So if I’m going to plug into this transistor that gives me the good vibes, this is the only satellite I’ve got. So now I’ve got to eat well. I’ve got to make sure the nervous system is cool, the blood is good. Because if my receptors pick up anything bad, stress starts again.

44:57 So I’m kind of stuck in a life of living really well to be happy, which is a good deal. You mentioned reverence before. Could you talk about that? You saw that in that addiction book first. Yeah, so then I started writing.

45:13 And I started, because when you write and you read it back, if I’m reading, I can’t read back my past and the stuff that upset me. So I wrote consistently. You know, I wrote this thing about that I was swimming next to a whale looking in its eye and the next minute I’m playing with a polar bear. You know what I mean? And I was just like Peter Pan flying all over the place.

45:34 But I’m a man writing this stuff. But I would get these visuals and I was only using it for medicine. And then other guys would like hear my, because they’d hear me, I’d be spitting in the cell, working on cadence. And they would vibrate off the concrete. And other guys would hear me.

45:54 And then they’d come and say, yeah, I’m writing poetry. And I said, yo, can you write me a poem because my girl’s going to leave me? And I’d write these poems in return for apples or lemons and stuff like this or a phone card. And I’d come back. And you’re in your 30s now, 20s?

46:13 Yeah. Okay, something like that. In and out. Okay, and right, okay, so now… I’m writing every gel I went to, the same thing happened.

46:20 You know what I mean? And they’re like coming back, going, yeah, she loves me, man. Write one for my daughter, do this. And I was like, this is powerful shit. You know what I mean?

46:29 So I’m kind of voice over, kind of doing voice overs for people in a way who can’t find it hard to express themselves with their loved ones. So I was like, this is great. And I’m like, I was this person that there’s this part of me that’s untouched that can express so much emotion and love that when people read it, they cry. I was invited to a friend of mine’s wedding and this poem called Every Story Worth Telling starts with me and a girl. You know what I mean?

47:03 A point in your life where the only beautiful thing you’ve ever seen is the person you love. And all the older women in the room are in tears, constantly affecting people’s emotions. And then, you know, you forward to today and I voice over stuff and people are crying in newspapers in London, people are crying in Holland, people are crying in America, people are crying. You did this video, Dear Brother, right? Yeah.

47:30 Can you explain what that was and what the reaction was to it? Basically, there was some German film students and they made like this mock-up, Johnny Walker commercial. I don’t voice over alcohol commercials. But this was a mock thing for them, a little college thing. And they had a film of these two guys and they were just reminiscing where they used to walk when they were kids.

47:53 And one of them has a sack and they’re just sitting together and they’re having a drink and they walk in all the plays they used to play and then they get to the edge of a cliff and the camera pans around and then one of the brothers is gone. There’s only this one brother left. And then he opens the sack and it’s actually ashes of his brother. And the brother didn’t exist, he was a ghost, so to speak. And they said, can you voice over it and told me basically what it was.

48:23 And then I imagined me doing this with my own little brother and I wrote it. And I smelt a rat because they were like, you know, we don’t want the poem to kind of overshadow the film. Is that your German accent? No. And I was like, you’re a bit worried, you’ve got this great film and all this end up, just me and my little voice and some words and you’re like focusing on that.

48:53 So much other things for people to take in. Then it hit YouTube and everybody was going, who’s the poet? Who wrote the poem? And it was deflecting away from them because I came with that, they came with the film and then they said, we wrote it. But they took lyrics from another voiceover I did through a film called Nostalgia and meshed it in.

49:19 So they stole from another voiceover that I did that I don’t think they knew was me and then meshed it together and said they co-wrote it. And I said, everything on there is mine. But anyway, that’s beside the point. People were touched by it. People were touched.

49:37 And the people were making videos about them watching it. They were watching it and filming their reactions. And they were super strong. Yeah, people couldn’t speak. And you were saying critics.

49:46 When the critic was watching it and he asked his friends to comment, then he couldn’t speak. So you start realizing you have a power with words. That’s not the greatest poem I’ve ever written. Okay. The greatest poem I’ve ever written was for my Auntie Nellie.

50:04 And there’s a few people in my life that gave me value. That’s what allowed me not to take so much drugs and kill myself. These memories. Like I had a grandfather that used to go to work all day and he worked on building sites. And you know, these things called cream crackers like wafers with a bit of cheese.

50:27 And he’d go through his whole day and come back and there was one cream cracker left, unbroken. And he would save that for me all day and go, yeah, that gave me value. I was on somebody’s mind. And my Auntie Nellie, if I went to visit her, she would always, when I was ready to leave, she would start dusting the ornaments but have her back to me. And when I’d look around, she was always crying.

50:48 She just couldn’t see that and I was like, oh, that was important for me to see I was loved like that. And she ended up with cancer throughout her whole body. And then they sent her home and gave her a morphine machine, which is, imagine the con in that. This person is going through excruciating pain. It’s not in their right mind.

51:10 Of course they’re going to press that button. So they’re just going to OD and kill themselves. Do you know what I mean? But, and you can imagine now, when you’re on your last throes of your life out, you’re just not right. You don’t recognize people.

51:27 And all she kept repeating to her sons, because I wrote her a poem about our relationship. She just put that in the grave with me. Put that in the grave with me. That’s the greatest poem I ever wrote. You know what I mean?

51:43 And you did. It’s in her grave, yeah. Did you ever recite it for anybody or talk about it? It’s only for her. That’s right.

51:53 I don’t even remember it. How do you live with reverence every day? I struggle with it. You know what I mean? Can you explain the concept?

52:04 Gratitude, man. You know what I mean? Just looking at things in detail and just being like, wow. Try your best to just be wow about something. Do you know what I mean?

52:20 It will save your life. It will change your choices. Value is a powerful thing. You see what happens when people are devalued. You look at Chicago.

52:34 You know what I mean? People look like each other and they’ll put bullets in each other’s faces. You know what I mean? And you add to that with a person trying to get a sense of value and then they’re on low income and eating foods. Like, they’ve got us looking in the air for metal pollution, you know, from chemtrails.

52:56 But ask yourself, how are all your grains stored before they get to the supermarket? Big metal drums. And each time them grains are taken out, there’s heavy chemicals put in there to clean it. Do you think they wait for that to dry out before they put some more grains in there? And all the aluminium seeping into those live foods added to the point that there’s insecticides on them as well.

53:19 The quality of land that they’ve been grown in is crap over farmed. And I’ve done a little study there because you have to match it with, you know, you can say wow about something, but you’re dying inside. It’s very difficult to keep that up. Life is great, but your microbes are going to know it, eh? But I looked at, we eat plants and vegetables and fruits that can’t keep an insect off of them.

53:50 They can’t fight an insect off. A tiny insect will just eat the leaves and kill it. But right in the middle of them, there’s a dandelion that the insect won’t touch or a nettle. They stay away. Why aren’t you eating that?

54:05 Dandelion is the highest amount of magnesium. So many other things in it, you can just walk up, just don’t eat it from places by the side of the road or gardens. But go in the food. You see, eat the flour. They’re sweet.

54:17 The smaller leaves are sweet to taste. There’s your multivitamin. Umbringe, you know what I mean? Take a multivitamin from a plant that’s grown in an organic environment rather than taking, you know, magnesium that’s been stolen out of salt. So now the salt you’re putting on the food is like glass.

54:38 There’s nothing in it because the supplement companies want the magnesium and stuff like this. You know what I mean? They say vulvic minerals, but it’s shaved off of rock. And I used to take vast amounts of minerals to try and create an ambience, and I got to the point I couldn’t even walk down the stairs because all my tendons were aching and my knees were hurting because these almost calcium builds up, build up. You know what I mean?

55:04 So now I just try and find healthy plants that are not rhodiola and these adaptogens, they live in harsh environments. So they’re surviving. That power that they’re using to survive when you put that in you, it’s going to be in you. Right. So you keep your nutrition top, your movement top.

55:24 My patterns, my patterns are sick. So you can’t fight the battle in your brain. I don’t have to fight anymore. Okay. You know what I mean?

55:34 Salt absorbs fluid. It allows you to keep fluid in your body. In that fluid is vitamins and minerals going through your blood. Right? That salt needs to have all your minerals and all of these things in it for the brain to operate, to fire off magnesium, iron.

55:58 But it’s not in the soil. So I do it on the back end. What’s the soil missing? Magnesium. So I take magnesium flakes and make an oil and I rub it on my belly for 20 minutes in the morning.

56:11 Do you know what I mean? And I put it on my kids. And lithium irritate. Not the lithium they give to people, the pharmaceutical thing that makes you dribble, to irritate. I give that to my kids.

56:24 It’s a salt. Right? All of a sudden the brain is healthy. Now I’ve got more stamina to fight the brain stuff. You know what I mean?

56:37 If I’m sitting on a train for two hours, I’m having a great time. But externally I’m like a rock. I’m not even moving. But I’m having a great time because I’m not stressed. Reverence.

56:52 And why do you still struggle with reverence? Sometimes I can have a bad day because some of the past, I’ll think about the past in the wrong manner. See, I can control my thoughts when I’m awake. But when I go to sleep, I can’t control them. And then I just get mugged.

57:11 You know what I mean? So I wake up cranky. What does a bad day look like for Johnny Riley? I can’t concentrate on too many things at the same time. You know what I mean?

57:25 If I’m writing and I get disturbed, I don’t have the sense to put the pen down and deal with it. I’m like I’m doing this, go away. You know what I mean? But I know when that’s happening and I learn from a teacher that says that it’s a great virtue that if you go and live in the mountains, you keep your evil away from the people. So I tend to lock off when I know I’m having a bipolar dip.

57:59 You know what I mean? It’s the best I can do. If there are people around me that don’t understand that, then it’s a problem. Last few years, you’re becoming well known for your poetry, for your films, for your voiceover. Someone would call that maybe a career renaissance.

58:18 I don’t know. How do you feel about it? It’s all of my… I’m creating my own reverence. You know what I mean?

58:25 I get to do something, see myself in the process, overcoming the problems, producing the work from nothing. Next. Everybody else enjoys it. I’m already moved on. I just got to keep doing something.

58:39 Because I’m still… You’re in the present, is that why? Yeah, rebuilding the value. You know what I mean? Because there’s this other thing that’s wants to…

58:46 Wants to kidnap me. It wants to pull you back. Yeah. Just remember you’re the victim. You’re the one that they beat the shit out of.

58:53 And I’m like, no, I’m not going there. And you can’t… You’re never going to get away with it. People need to realize when you disturb a child like this, you’re putting them on a life sentence, man. And they’ll kill themselves because…

59:05 I used to get mad. I said, I have to work so hard to normalize. It’s exhausting. And I understand why some people kill themselves on drugs and don’t want to, you know, want to stay high or altered. You know what I mean?

59:21 But adaptogens, rhodiola, ashwagandha, maka. Maka is a little bit… I don’t like these things. You have to cycle. It gets a bit complicated.

59:31 And I imagine a kid that’s overwhelmed and then you prescribe to me to take maka, but you’ve got to do this. And it’s like, man, I can’t even use my brain. Don’t tell me to do that shit. Give me something I can just pop. Right.

59:44 Rhodiola, ashwagandha. Those are all approved. Lithium, oretate. Okay. Zen.

59:51 So with art, you create it, you move on. You create, you move on. Absolutely. I just love the process. And what are you loving mostly lately?

59:58 What do you like doing now? Teaching my daughter movement. How old is she? Four. Okay.

1:00:07 Is that she your oldest? No, my oldest is 26. Okay. But she… I get to treat me the way I should have been treated.

1:00:32 You know what I mean? I do. I get to treat me because that’s me. Yeah. You know what I mean?

1:00:38 Treat me the way I should have been treated. We used to eat all our food out of cans, dented cans. My mother used to get them cheap from a lady that worked in a factory. We now know the contamination of food that comes out of cans. So I’m dealing with all of this abuse and a polluted body as well.

1:00:59 So I just do the opposite. My children eat like athletes. I can’t imagine. They eat like athletes. Probably eat like that as we move like that.

1:01:07 I use my own water. Right. You know what I mean? I distill it and then I remineralize it. Nice.

1:01:13 We just got our distiller in today. Yeah. We start doing that tomorrow. Yeah. Does great art come from pain?

1:01:23 Could do. Could do. It comes from anywhere. You know what I mean? All to…

1:01:31 Just want to all to state. You know what I mean? Want to see something else that you’re not getting to see. I have… I had a friendship with Tricky, the guy that invented Trip Hop.

1:01:42 And he was like, I started making music because I didn’t like all the stuff that they were giving me to listen to. So I made me hum. That’s a tricky impression. And I remember he was… He said something powerful.

1:01:59 He goes, I need to get tougher and you need to soften up. So all these great people like my friend Little Johnny that I was in the children’s home with. You know what I mean? A girl called Faye Agada who always looked after me. Do you know what I mean?

1:02:18 My auntie Nellie, my grandfather, a friend of mine called Norman Peer. It became more important to me when he died. Because we was street guys together. Twins. At the same, party the same.

1:02:34 He got up for one morning, went to go to work and drop dead. Similar age. I really started living. And it was about that time I had that moment that we spoke about when he died. Because all that echoes from him is, I’m gone, live Johnny.

1:02:51 That’s the telepathy or whatever you want to call it that’s going on between. Because of my knowledge of him as a person. I know that he loves me and I know what he wished for me. That I still have life. So I’m not going to insult our friendship by being a drunk.

1:03:07 By being locked up. I’m not going to insult my auntie. I’m not going to insult all of the great people that love me. You know what I mean? Shen Dandle.

1:03:17 He’s my angel. You know what I mean? All these people look at me like I’m a million dollars. And so much people spend time trying to impress people that don’t like you. You don’t want to get you to like me.

1:03:32 You’re wasting your time. Get around the people that love you. Visit your grandma. She ain’t going to say nothing bad about you. You know what I mean?

1:03:40 Be around your family. I’ve got all these family members that I’m not family. My own brother doesn’t check on me. I’ve got a nephew or cousin in Ireland called Dylan. And his parents just gave him to me to look after in London.

1:04:00 I took him to skateboarding, competitions and stuff like that. He still hits me up how you’re doing, what you’re doing. He lives in a little place called York in Cork City. He has a lot of racism around him. Studied the Carla.

1:04:19 And then he’s standing up and going, well, actually, you need to understand the history of black people and why this is going on. And people are blown away. He’s like this little country guy with all these things. And he values our relationship because I pointed him in that direction. So he’s got reverence for people.

1:04:39 And he’s so much, when I look at him, he’s so much more enriched than all the people around him. So it’s important that you have people that keep the cortisol away. You call yourself a poet, not a spoken word artist. And you never were. That’s technical, man.

1:04:57 I’m just Johnny, you know what I mean? And I grew up, I was magnetized to black people that had nothing. I mean, I had a friend that his dishes and what do you call it? Would you eat off of it? There’s a technical word for that.

1:05:18 Yeah. Not cutlery, but you’re china wear, whatever. You know, like them camping plates with the blue rim, they’re made of like ceramic, but they’re metal. That’s what his family were eating off of. They had rabbits in the garden, and the father used to kill them to eat.

1:05:33 They bred them and ate them. This was in London. But his brother can move just like Bruce Lee. Exactly the same. And making music and creating speakers for sound systems.

1:05:49 These people didn’t just sit around and drink. They did other stuff from what my family members, my family members just got drunk. As soon as they got old enough, they were in the pub. These people were making, doing graffiti, doing, spinning on the head. The first time I was here, when the first person ever did it.

1:06:05 Do you know what I mean? My feet are not good enough. I want to use every part of my body. I want to run up a wall and do a somersault. I was over there, man.

1:06:13 And then there’s a cadence in the way we speak. So just to say it’s a poet, that’s what people do that try to learn what we do. We’re just us. We walk, there’s a certain way that we walk. Of course we can dance.

1:06:28 I mean, I’m this little Irish kid that didn’t know anything about being black and just picked up. All the aspects of my black side was art. That’s where I found my identity. Otherwise, I’d just be a little Irish boy whose mother used to scrub his knees till they bled because in the pigment of young black children, the elbows and the knees are always darker until you get older and it spreads. She thought it was dirty.

1:06:57 She just scrubbed my knees until they bled. And then I was here, a nigger in my house, my stepfather was a real racist. Imagine your grandmother singing Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mum. And then she went, catch a nigger by his toe. Normal conversation.

1:07:22 And I went, not the ones I met. I was born. You’ve got cottonies there. They say if you’re born within the sound of Bow Bells, you’re a cottony. I was born in the sound of Muhammad Ali saying he’s the greatest.

1:07:35 Do you know what I mean? Pele. This is what I always was. So I was like, there’s a disparager here. Because I’m from these great people.

1:07:44 I can identify. I can do what they do. I can move like them. But there’s this other bunch of people pouring spit on my head. Which one am I going to take on?

1:07:56 Do you know what I mean? Muhammad Ali was a big influence on you. Poet in a boxer. I think he wrote the shortest poem any human has ever written. Me, we.

1:08:09 That’s it. His beliefs didn’t come from the macro. He came from the micro. He referenced himself and told everybody about it. I’m the greatest belief that.

1:08:29 I’m going to knock this guy out in this round. I mean, the only person that we’ve got now that does anything kind of close is Conor McGregor. What do you think of Conor? I think. He’s from the streets.

1:08:46 That’s me. Yeah, I see it in his eyes. I see it going here. Yeah, I see it in his eyes. I know some people that know him and they say it’s there.

1:08:54 I think he hides it or tries to hide it. I’d like to know who his teacher was. Because there’s some seminars that went on there. About how to present yourself and stuff like that. So I learned more about in a way.

1:09:11 I don’t want to discredit Muhammad Ali because he’s never done the same achievements. He hasn’t taken on a whole government. You know what I mean? Yeah. And probably will never will.

1:09:20 You know what I mean? But the similarity is I’m more interested in him not as a fighter. But how he keeps himself together as a business. How he works that. Yeah.

1:09:36 And just survive mentally in that sport. In the media attention. And the fact that he’s loyal to his woman. Yeah. That says a lot.

1:09:48 That says a lot. If you’re a chump to people close to you. You’re not going to be all that as an athlete. There’s no honor. You’re going to quit.

1:09:59 What else do you see when you watch him? I see a guy that he’s found a way to be really comfortable in a massive platform that usually consumes people. It was a great thing I saw on the internet of these two kids. I think they’ve just come out of a bar. Two young men and they were moving like Conor McGregor, messing about with each other.

1:10:40 And then in kind of like a black Escalade or some car kind of rolled up really slow. And then stopped. And then one of the kids went and looked and it was Conor McGregor. Sitting in the car like that moment was amazing. You know what I mean?

1:10:56 But I think he’s no disrespect to him. You know he’s in business first and foremost and he’s been very clear about that. But I think there’s a lot of profession cheating going on. You know catching guys that you haven’t given notice to. Guys that find it hard to make that weight.

1:11:12 Because you know a little bit of inside story about how they live their life in between fighting. It’s very easy to set up fights that you can win by knowing the background of people. It’s good intel you think? Absolutely. Because he’s effectively got one punch.

1:11:31 He’s got that counter left. Great movement and that’s his one weapon. Yeah the movement. Yeah. Barrera had a three punch combination.

1:11:43 Left right. Left to the body. Reset. The guy was a champion on the three punch combination. Conor McGregor was utilizing his only strength which was that shot.

1:11:54 But when he goes to the floor with somebody that knows how to go to the floor. He quit. Well Nate Diaz is the one example. Look at the boy that done him before. Duffy.

1:12:05 Duffy yeah long time ago but yeah. He probably didn’t know much of Jutsu then. That’s in him. Trust me. I don’t watch that fight.

1:12:12 Every time he’s going to get it put in that position. He’s going to quit. Unless. And that’s because he’s only doing one thing. I’ve got to look good.

1:12:23 I’ve got to look good. If you set that premise when you start looking bad. You’re going to abort. Because that’s what you focused on. But if he does what Nate Diaz does.

1:12:33 He doesn’t care about looking bad. And having his face all messed up. Then you’re not going to panic in that situation. What you focus on. What your intentions are.

1:12:42 They’re going to surface. So if he’s like I’ve got to look good. I don’t want to look bad. And if he’s more worried about looking bad. He’s not going to want to be there for too long.

1:12:52 As long as he’s like Mike Tyson is the same. On top fighter. But as soon as he got hurt. He goes to pieces. I’m the opposite.

1:13:03 Like for instance I’ve got tattoos on my face. That are the same model as Mike Tyson’s. But I finished mine. Is that a digging Mike? Yeah it is.

1:13:15 No I love Mike. I love his story. I don’t. I don’t. I’m hurt.

1:13:23 By the way that he was. He wasn’t given any social skills. He was Molly Coddle to just kill people for other people’s benefit. And they left this guy not able to deal with life. You know what I mean?

1:13:37 And God knows the amount of medication they’ve had the guy on and. All types of business. He looks happier now. Yeah. You know what I mean?

1:13:46 Joe Rogan once said that people think that to be a fighter you get to beat people up. But it’s all really about taking punishment. I was telling you about the film I’m making with this kid Kevin Ross. And he was an alcoholic. Partied all the time and his friend died.

1:14:08 And this is where our story is kind of similar. He was like I don’t have a right to waste my life. And my friends got cut off so short it’s insulting to him. So he decided to clean himself up. And then he’s late in his 20s walked in the tie box in a Muay Thai gym.

1:14:28 And one of his friends described him as. Like a Muay Thai savant. And if he wins easy he’s upset. Because he wants to be tested. And if you look at his show he’s had his skull opened up from elbows man.

1:14:52 And he just smiles. And there’s famous pictures of him like covered from head to toe in blood man. In the other person’s blood and his own. But his demeanor in the ring is never aggressive. He’s just doing the dance that he was taught.

1:15:07 And if you stand up by the time he’s finished the eight count. That particular move then you’re still there and he tries another one. But he’s not thinking about beating up the other guy. He’s thinking about perfecting the art. And if you crumble in the process of that dance then he wins.

1:15:24 If you don’t then he has to lose honourably. You know what I mean? And I spent some time with him making this film. And when he left he left and then I was sitting down I said I feel really weird. And I just blurred.

1:15:44 Blurred just started to cry. Because he didn’t set off. Even though he’s so dangerous. Didn’t set off any of my stresses. And it must have been the first time I’ve ever felt that.

1:15:57 It hit me so emotionally because I was so relaxed. Usually you’d have to watch people. Do you know what I mean? And he’s like a kid. Like he taught me about.

1:16:06 He actually inspired that chocolate spread that I gave you. Because he had a peach. And he used to put chocolate spread on the peach to eat that thing. And he’s like a child. He loves sweets.

1:16:19 And he giggles like a little child. But when you see him go to work man. And he knows how to take pain. I’m talking about give it too. Okay.

1:16:30 It’s incredible man. Like most people kick you to the head and if they get you dizzy. They’re like yeah. He’s like nah man. It wasn’t the full shin.

1:16:39 Can you walk me through a bare knuckle boxing match. Maybe your best. Maybe your worst. What’s going through your mind. I’ve never lost on the street.

1:16:48 Never lost on the street. Yeah. It stabbed me. I don’t lose on the street. I’m too fast.

1:16:53 Too fast. I have great positioning. Educate me on what that’s like. A bare knuckle boxing match on the street. How is it different?

1:17:03 It’s a fight. Like any fight. Every street. You’re talking about actually being in a ring and doing all that. Versus yeah.

1:17:10 No I don’t do that stuff. I do the underground shit man. We just you know as I said I was growing up. It was holy the skinheads. We would meet them.

1:17:18 Sometimes it would stand off and go you know what we don’t have a group fight today. Your guy fights our guy. You know what I mean. And when we’re standing under the broad walk or whatever it is and we’re doing it. You know what I mean.

1:17:29 But I never lost on those fights. What happens? What’s it like? What do the guys do? How long?

1:17:35 You gotta work. You know what I mean. And then in the beginning it’s all head shots. Then I became more educated. I used to take people out to the body.

1:17:44 And that’s a strange experience when you get a liver shot. It feels like somebody’s poured acid into your guts. And people just their head goes. And that’s the most merciful way to hurt somebody because you can recover. To the head they may never be the same again.

1:18:01 But I remember seeing a psychiatrist once and he asked me. He described to me fighting. And I said once I’m fighting I’m really I’m at home. It’s before the fight. All of my insecurities make me afraid.

1:18:19 But once I’m moving and I get hit. I’m like that wasn’t shit. Then I go let’s do some art and look good now. Because he can’t hurt me. Do you know what I mean.

1:18:30 So I hurt him and he’s staggering. I let him go and I tell his friends. He’s friendly. Ain’t nothing man. Watch.

1:18:36 And I hurt him again. You know what I mean. And I said now I’m going to finish him. And then I go in and I finish him. You know what I mean.

1:18:43 And in the early days I used to panic because I wasn’t that trained. And then jump in on their head and all this type of business and you’re young. Because they say that you don’t really understand consequence until you’re about 25. So I’m sticking with the cartoon and you know soccer kicking people’s whole bodies going. You know what I mean.

1:19:02 And going and all this type of business and we were like yeah did you see how he trembled. And you basically short circuited somebody’s brain. So. He stopped doing that. I’m more dangerous now than I was then.

1:19:16 Why. How so. Because I’m relaxed. OK. So there’s a lot of energy conserved.

1:19:22 Right. You know. And if you’re relaxed you’re not seeing the hologram distracting you of your loss. Right. That’s not playing.

1:19:33 You’re like there’s that whole this is that art. One of my greatest teachers is Lucian Garbin. He’s trained as the over him. He’s trained Tyrone’s bong. He’s guys amazing.

1:19:47 He also will tell you the same. He loves the street fight more than anything else. I mean. And I remember we had him. I made another film called the tear up which is about kick boxes turning over to be in boxes.

1:20:05 And they were training with another friend of mine another great person used to look after me and gave me value. Don Charles was the trainer of Derek Dezora. And I brought these kids to him. And Lucian with it was like doing the pads and Charles would do boxing pads and Lucian. The guys were training for about two hours.

1:20:26 Charles said to him do you want some water. He says no I didn’t earn it. My ears pricked up. I said what. He says I don’t I don’t eat until I earn it.

1:20:39 So he has to do something in his day. So I learned from him about that. You know that that composure not being manic not trying to be the tough guy makes you more dangerous because a lot of fighters burn out before they even get in the ring. Like Bernard Hopkins said he only has one fight which is the guy. Most people are fighting.

1:21:08 Stop partying fighting. They have so many fights before they actually get in the ring. I try to live like that. I don’t have any fights with stamina. I have to build stamina first and all of that.

1:21:21 In the younger days it was manic. I’ve burnt out in fights and then done some nasty shit to survive. Do you know what I mean? It doesn’t happen now. And you said now you don’t train with aggression because you know you have that.

1:21:35 I want movement. You just movement. I want movement. You still street fight. No.

1:21:41 I don’t want to get hit in my head anymore. It was in America. No man. No. I don’t want to hurt people.

1:21:52 I want to enjoy people. Was that when you flipped the switch about the eight year old? Did that change that or do you think you just grew out of it? I just think I’m old now. You’re not spring chicken, right?

1:22:07 You’ll give me a heart attack. You know what I mean? I’m on the back end of my life. When you’re younger you’re thinking about life. And you’re thinking about your death.

1:22:18 That’s all about quality for me. And I’ve got nothing to prove, man. It’s pathetic being my age still trying to find something to prove. You know what? Nothing to prove.

1:22:30 Talk to me about your films. Because I’m watching them and you make pretty damn good films. Thank you. These short films are captivating. Now yeah, you’ve got the added bonus of having your own poetry and voice over in there.

1:22:44 So you’re cheating a little bit. But even then I found them very powerful. And sometimes I don’t even know what I’m watching or listening to. And obviously it’s just short films. A lot of times there isn’t necessarily even no arc or all these kinds of things.

1:23:01 But I feel like I learned something from these films. Or at least I experienced something. How do you approach these films? I think that when you’re trying to tell a story, you’re immediately doing something that somebody else wants you to do. You’re talking a language that exists.

1:23:20 How do you understand me? Now, I don’t know if that’s still art. I think wild stuff is art. You know what I mean? Like when I danced and I lost my balance and the way I got on balance, that was the magic part.

1:23:37 The other controlled stuff. Or when I had a kickboxing match in my forties with a guy of 25 and I did it for clean water in Bangladesh. And he was near me continually trying to take my ear away and I was just feeling the rhythm of the kicks. I was like, that doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t hurt.

1:24:00 That doesn’t hurt. And then this right hand just went. Now, I remember finishing that fight going it was a wicked left hooker because that’s what I was thinking about hitting him with when he was near me. But the art was the right overhand. It was the perfect shot to put.

1:24:15 I definitely was not conscious of it. So I can’t say by me. I don’t even like putting at the end of my stuff. You have to do it because you want to reference stuff. You know what I mean?

1:24:26 And want people to know where my website is. You know what I mean? Because I can’t do this on fresh air. I need to get some sort of money to fund it. But I don’t even have a rhymes to it.

1:24:38 I used to rap, but that’s like being caged in every bar. This is your rhyme structure. I just speak. And then when I read it back, it happens to rhyme. One time I used to write a word for a couple of words.

1:24:54 I’d hear something. And then I’d write in the middle of the page a couple of words. Then at the bottom of the page a couple of words. Then in between those two a couple of words. And it could happen.

1:25:02 I hear something one day, a week later, a month later. And when I filled the page up, then I’d read it back. And then I’d read it back in my voice over voice to make it, to sell it. And it was the greatest poetry, but I can’t, it was just caught out of the ear. But I trusted the fact that these things, I’m taking notice of these things for a reason.

1:25:26 I don’t want to, but why did I hear that? And that’s what I’m trying to share with the people. The raw part. Base elements. You know what I mean?

1:25:36 That’s fine. As soon as you start contriving yourself, there’s a part of you that you don’t like. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And that’s why your voiceovers are successful, in your opinion, because it’s…

1:25:47 As soon as they ask me to do those dynamic rises, I’m going, I’m not going there, mate. Right. I’m just going to speak this. When they try to tell you how to do your voice, it doesn’t sound right. They don’t say, you haven’t got me anymore.

1:25:58 Yeah. You wanted me, but at this point you don’t have me. Understand that. So you’re wasting your money. You paid the wrong guy.

1:26:07 How are you dealing with this sudden popularity in you? I’m not conscious of it, man. I’m too busy looking at my daughter move with that amazing anatomy and balance and my kickball that I’m allowed to have because I’m in Holland, you know what I mean? And how he’s getting older, you know what I mean? And my garden.

1:26:38 I’ve never had a garden before. And all the birds that come along and the birds that keep coming back, they have little babies and they see them when they’re young with the little yellow bits on their beak and then the year later they’re back having babies. That’s where I’m at. You know what I mean? And running and feeling my feet out of hitting the pavement and doing my Edel Portal knockoff.

1:27:01 Yeah. Talk to me about Edel Portal and how you saw him. He’s a good friend of this show and I’ve had him on a few times. Little things hit you, you know, and it was like I said, you gravitate to stuff you need and I trust the bee in me. He knows what flower it wants to make that honey and I let go and let God, you know what I mean?

1:27:21 And he was doing all of these movements, oh, that’s interesting. I could probably do that. But then he went, I don’t want to be a specialist, I want to be a generalist because when you’re a specialist you miss all the other stuff and being as I’m on the back end of my life. I want to take in all the stuff because I haven’t had a good quality life. So I’ve got to make it up on the back end.

1:27:42 Do you know what I mean? So I was like, yeah, I’m going to be a generalist. So I’m going to do a little bit of Edel Portal, a little bit of Lucian Carvin, a little bit of Tyrone Spong, a little bit of Anbi Sour, a little bit of Don Charles, you know what I mean? And every day I get up, I move, you know, when I have a shower I make sure that I don’t have to lean on anything when I’m cleaning my feet. You know, everything is movement.

1:28:06 And getting feedback and creating this low ambient so the cortisol button doesn’t get pressed. Right. Right. You think we all walk around with too much cortisol? In a cortisol soup.

1:28:18 Right. Yeah. And that’s responsible for… London, New York. Right.

1:28:24 They are the cortisol drug dealers. Is that why you left London? Pretty much. Okay. You don’t want to raise kids in this cortisol factory.

1:28:33 I live out in the sticks, man, where their hair is fresh. You know what I mean? I feel like my battery is running out every minute on here. You know what I mean? I’m starting to feel the old issues coming up because I’ve got a reference point.

1:28:46 I know when it’s going like this because I know how vibrant I usually am. I have an Ayahuasca shaman. I did a ceremony a few years ago and she said she doesn’t want to be in the city. But Mother Ayahuasca, the plant teacher, she says, that’s where you’re needed. Yeah.

1:29:04 That’s where you’re needed. I had a meditation coach once. I met him when I was in Bangladesh, this crazy Dutch guy. And he teaches people… The meditation part is real short.

1:29:18 And then he gets a ghetto blaster, plays music, blows balloons up and pokes them and does all this. And he says, this is where you really meditate. In the thick of it. Not going off to a nice little room, looking at a lake. Because when that facility is gone, what are you going to do?

1:29:34 So, yeah, it’s good practice for me to come back here and learn these central things. And I had an argument with somebody that was living in a little retreat, banging gongs all day for rich people and living in a teepee, all right? And I was like, just teach them how to laugh. I said, they have too much issues. I have to try to teach an inner city kid who doesn’t have any…

1:29:59 The possibilities for an even playing field. And I’ve got to teach him within his environment to feel like he’s sitting in a teepee banging a gong on his block surrounding the crack dealers. You know what I mean? And racist police. You know what I mean?

1:30:16 So that’s my thing. I wanted to try and introduce the adaptogens, but I want to find a place where it can be cheaper than crack. You know what I mean? Those are the adaptogens. You’re also going to try to introduce also mindset.

1:30:34 I’ve got stacks, man. I’ve got… There’s a friend of mine. He has a kid. He’s been sick since he was born.

1:30:41 And I gave him advice, and within two weeks he said he got his son back. Point blank. No sickness, no mucus, no nothing. Within two weeks, of course the young body’s going to turn around that quickly if you treat it right. When you’re a little bit older, it doesn’t matter, you know?

1:31:00 It takes a lot longer. You’ve done a lot more damage. There’s more fat around the liver. Everything’s blocked, you know? Salt water flashes.

1:31:09 A litre of water. Big tablespoon of salt in the morning. Urinate out of your backside. Clean up your colon and everything. Then you will absorb more.

1:31:18 Feel more life. Most people are blocked up. You know what I mean? Then the quality of the food, you’re eating so much because the brain really wants the quality of the minerals from the blood. It only gets a little bit.

1:31:32 Eat some more. They’ll get a little bit more vitamin C. But if you mineralise, all of a sudden the appetite’s gone away because the brain gets what it wants. Do you know what I mean? All the alcohol that people are drinking, why do you get a headache?

1:31:47 You’ve urinated all your minerals out, man. Because of the sugars in the alcohol and stuff, your body’s acidic, it’s a minefield. And that’s legal. It’s worse than heroin. Don’t get me started about that.

1:32:01 So you won’t do voiceovers for alcohol companies. Absolutely not. You once said giving up is the worst disease to happen to a human being. Yeah. Somebody lied to you that there’s nothing beyond that point.

1:32:15 This is where I quit. This is where I give myself up. This is where I lay on my back and kill me. How dare you, man. You’re full of potential.

1:32:25 You’re not going to lie to it, you know? You’ve got to keep… Just beyond that, this is like this cartoon of these two guys mining for diamonds. There’s this amount of earth left and one guy’s walking off and the other guy’s still going. If you just hang in there for a little second more, there’s a whole other world opens up on the other side of that fear.

1:32:50 And you live in it. I trained once with my little brother and he wound himself up because he thought he had to train on my level. His ego told him. He only did 10 press-ups. And then I said, now I want to talk to you.

1:33:07 And he was like, what? I said, well, you were the guy that came here that don’t do any press-ups. Now you’re the guy that did 10. Take that guy and let’s approach the next exercise. Don’t take the guy that never did it before.

1:33:18 You’re not him anymore. It would never, ever be that guy. You’re the guy that did 10 press-ups. You focus on the area of influence instead of the area of concern. Focus on what influences you.

1:33:30 Do you know what I mean? For instance, like, I make my film and I have a nice camera, nice lenses, self-funded. I had a kid that hit me on the internet and said, yeah, I want to have all these grandiose ideas. I said, how are you going to fund that? I do fraud.

1:33:53 So I don’t want nothing to do with that, bro. So how am I going to do it then? So let’s just talk. During the conversation, his father had a coconut store in Brick Lane. He said, I do that some Sundays.

1:34:09 I do that. I said, well, let’s do it. Let’s do that as a business. He said, well, every Sunday he said, yeah, let’s do that. I said, now let’s make hot drinks in the winter because the thing about a coconut or something like that, people feel weird if it’s cold to be hold of the coconut.

1:34:26 I don’t think they look good. If the sun is there, it goes with it. So let’s make the coconut war hot. This is the story of how you started making films, right? Just how we funded it.

1:34:36 Yeah. All right. So you took the coconut stand, which usually got no business in the winter months. And we put hangover, we got hangover cure. Would it like cider vinegar in it and ginger and raw honey and stuff like that.

1:34:55 And then we went on to using the byproducts. And now we make coconut pancakes. He makes his own chocolate spread. We’ve got the chocolate spread I gave to you. And we make our own jams as well.

1:35:06 And if you eat the chocolate spread, if you put it in the fridge and you eat it cold, it’s like ice cream. But if you let it thaw out, you can use it just put it as a spread. And we just started to make some money. And then we funded. We got a camera.

1:35:24 Then he’s amazing because he can read instructional videos and just learn how to use the camera and all the light stuff that you’ve got to do with the camera for exposure so it doesn’t have noise once you upload it and stuff like that. And then I took him with me. All these big guys that wanted me to do these films like Carved and Mayhem and stuff. Then I said, yeah, but I’ve got to bring somebody with me. That’s part of the deal.

1:35:51 I started talking with me and then I said, nah. Watch them. Watch them and milk them. You know what I mean? To ask them what it is and what happens.

1:35:59 And now we’re at the point we’re making our own films. Carved and Mayhem wins awards at Cannes. It’s made by some probably high up people in the business out of New York. What do you think when they’re asking you to do that stuff? I already left being at their disposal, you know.

1:36:22 So I’m there to take orders and do what I need to do. The only thing I don’t like about Carved and Mayhem is that there’s a fine detail that some people might not focus on. But this, you know, I look like this. So there’s a stigma that will come with this if you don’t know me. And people from my community disenfranchise people There’s a stigma attached to us in the press that we’re just based on violence.

1:36:50 Not that we’re reacting to something or that we’re overwhelmed. And our violence is a sign of our handicaps, really. And the film just looks like I’m just this violent person. When they actually came and they filmed me with my family and they left all of those parts out. So there I’ve been a hoodwinked into that stereotype of this killer.

1:37:21 If you put other information in there it would have made it a little bit different. That’s the only thing I don’t like about it. Tell me about your tattoos. What do people react to when they see the ones on your face? Did that hurt?

1:37:37 But I think in Munchausen Syndrome when people cut themselves to feel something and then watch the healing process I think that it was a bit of Munchausen Syndrome because I used to get off on withstanding the cutting of the needles. Because they’re essentially cutting lines and pouring ink into them. And then you heal over and the ink gets trapped. That’s what a tattoo is. So it wasn’t so much getting the tattoos.

1:38:12 I wanted to put them in painful places. Like I got angel wings on my back. Because being called a niggle all your life. Your innocence and your self-esteem as a child. The children are really like, they know they’re worth.

1:38:28 They’re like, hey, I’ve just shit myself. And they scream their head off and demand you change their nappy. Hey, I’m hungry. Get your tit out. I want it now.

1:38:38 Kids are like, they know what they want and they’re expecting it. If they don’t get it they get mad. That means they got born with a self-worth. There’s angel wings on their back. When I smile I expect to light the room up.

1:38:51 And when I don’t give you my smile I expect you to miss it. Children know that from their born. I essentially had those invisible rings ripped off of me. You know what I mean? Started to believe that I was a piece of shit.

1:39:11 So I put them back. Permanently. But I had to go through the process of doing it in one sitting. It was 13 hours. I pulled away from the…

1:39:24 There wasn’t one sitting. I did the outline then I had to come back and do the filling. What hurt the most? Hands? I can’t remember.

1:39:33 And why get the Maori ones in the face? I like the design that Mike Tyson had. But then it was the story that I read that it’s a passage from manhoods. Because the lines, if you squint you’re going to mess it up. You know what I mean?

1:39:54 So if you end up with these crooked lines in your face you’ll be like yeah. You push it out. You know what I mean? So it was that that intrigued me. So to sit with your face completely relaxed.

1:40:08 Even though it feels like a third degree burn. And my face was like this. Because it swells up all the fluids. I had my eyes stretched out like this for a while. You know what I mean?

1:40:21 Most of them are totems. People expect them when they see love they’re going to see hate. But if you look closely at mine. Love and good. Love and good. That’s what hands are for.

1:40:30 Love and good. You know what I mean? And I’ve got these ones here which is a full stop. What does that mean? Because I’ll finish the sentence if you’re going to say something bad.

1:40:41 What does your daughter think of your tattoo? She doesn’t really say it. She’s born seeing it. But I found it really strange that she just realised all on her own that it’s not part of me. It’s something that I got.

1:41:00 And I’m like how did you know that? Nobody told her that she’d never see anybody get a tattoo. But she just knows that it’s an application rather than this is the shape of her dad. You know what I mean? Did you ever forgive your mum?

1:41:19 Of course. My mum’s cute. My mum was a cute person that wasn’t helped. Does that expression hurt people? Hurt people.

1:41:32 You heard that. Can I swear? Damn right. Fuck expressions. Fuck these boxes.

1:41:41 We’re more complicated than that. You can put a cookie cutter on everybody. You know what I mean? There’s a guy who made a book. He’s called a boy called It.

1:41:55 He used to be fed with his dog food, with a dog. He never hurt nobody. Do you know what I mean? That’s rubbish. You shouldn’t put that shit in people’s heads.

1:42:07 We’re complicated. You cannot put these cookie cutters on people. Not every person that’s been hurt hurts other people. Sometimes they’re the most compassionate people in the world. And abhor violence.

1:42:22 You know what I mean? Yeah. Although I think it can be a way to start forgiving people though. So in that sense it might be a good tool for someone that’s so filled with hate. You realize, oh, I’m hating on someone that maybe is acting in a way that I don’t understand.

1:42:37 Sure, yeah. I’ll get it from that point of view, yeah. Was it hard to forgive your mom or was it just something that happened with time? For a while my mother was an excuse for my fallout because I didn’t know why I was behaving the way I was behaving. So I just reached to that.

1:42:51 Yeah, my mom hurt me so that’s why it’s all right for me to do it to you. Hate. Do you know what I mean? But what do I want to do? Leave my mother with a shitty story.

1:43:06 No, no matter what my mother did, part of her genes made this loving poet and she couldn’t knock it out of me. No one could. All the cruelty, all the shit that they ever did, I still make people cry when I write poems. That part’s indestructible. Everybody thinks that the rage is indestructible but that love is the one that’s indestructible and the ability to be an artist.

1:43:33 You can lock me in a concrete cell, man. If you don’t give me a pen I’ll remember it. You know what I mean? Art doesn’t matter what happens. If you cut my legs off, I get a moment to relax.

1:43:49 I’m going to do something artistic. That part never gets touched. Love also. And it’s so good for you to love, man. It’s therapeutic.

1:43:59 Amazing antioxidant. You know what I mean? And people have to value themselves and say, look, what type of actions? You need to understand actions that hurt you, toxic actions, and actions that give you therapy. But you can’t put these things on a plate in front of people that don’t like themselves.

1:44:18 How are they going to choose the better option? I don’t deserve it. It says they’re subconscious. Then they need other people like me to say, let’s have a discussion about how your eyes work and the fact that you blink and lubricate those eyeballs to see. Is that an evil person?

1:44:38 Is that an evil anatomy? The character name may, you know, and what everybody said about that character, yeah, you can say that’s evil in a piece of shit, but that’s a cartoon. But you doesn’t have a name. It’s lungs, heart, red blood cells, all working in perfection. Make it all porter look like you’ve got two left legs.

1:45:04 Do you know what I mean? It’s all balanced, all caring. You got any suggestion? No problem. We’ll take care of it, boss.

1:45:12 That’s you doing that. It’s not a separate thing. But remember, this is a spacesuit, and it’s supposed to help you breathe in this atmosphere. And if you put holes in it, you’ll die to try and make sure the spacesuit is fully operational. You know what I mean?

1:45:29 Next five years, what are you doing? I want to voice over a cartoon, feature film. Why? Of all the things? I just like the character.

1:45:43 I like to see my voice coming out of a donkey or something. Like a Pixar picture. Yeah. That would be cool. That would be dope.

1:45:49 That could happen. I hope so. Why that, of all things? I think my kids would love it. Do you know what I mean?

1:45:58 And I’d like to do action, like fight scenes, because I move well. And I don’t want to punch people, but I’ve always looked good when I fight. So I’d like to be in a movie doing fight scenes. Not a star, but one of the characters. Okay.

1:46:17 You know what I mean? You thought about acting? You don’t want to do that, do you? Or you wouldn’t? I need the space.

1:46:25 I believe that, it’s difficult to say, actors don’t act. Great actors don’t act. They do what they’ve experienced. You hire, you’re like casting Michael Bisbing in XXX to do a fight scene. Will you teach him to fight?

1:46:50 You just show him the moves he has to do, and he’s going to do it. You know, with the right leverage and make it look real. When you want Robert De Niro to play a villain, he didn’t have to sit down with villains. He was living that shit when he was a kid. You just say go.

1:47:08 Do you know what I mean? So I’d like to be in a situation that when the director says to me, do this, I know that experience, I know how to make that real, I’ve lived that, and I just tap into it. Do you know what I mean? It sounds like you could do that, I don’t know if you… That’s a bit specialist.

1:47:30 You’re being more careful now with what you choose for projects, because sometimes what they tell you what’s up is not always what’s up. If I’m doing something I don’t like, I’m going to leave. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time on mine, you know what I mean? But the other thing, what was the other thing I wanted to do? Me too.

1:47:56 Yeah, I wanted to do the cartoon thing, I wanted to do a bit of acting, and I would really love, like I love the Planet of the Apes franchise and to learn gorilla movement, you know, and the gestures and stuff like that. They’ve got to get those gorillas moving better. I can make… I hope so. I’m studying these things about…

1:48:16 CGI is funny. The horses on the one where Cesar actually spoke. Okay, I saw the one in San Francisco, that was the first one I saw. There was one… Tim Moth. Gary Oldman was also in it.

1:48:31 Okay, maybe that was the second one. Yeah. There was one with Marky Mark, Mark Wahlberg. Then the one after that is when they started… But when they came on the horses, the horses looked wack.

1:48:46 They looked wack. It’s funny, like you notice in like a half a second, I think it’s something carnal in us. Yeah, we know what’s not moving right. Right, yeah. But are the apes moving right now? They’re moving better.

1:48:56 It’s nice they move too quick. When they got the shot from here to here and they’re acting, it’s great. Okay. But when they do the full body and they start moving, the shape of the legs ain’t right. You know what I mean? And stuff like that.

1:49:08 The gorillas… I think the physics isn’t right. Sometimes they move too fast for a body that’s that mass. And again, my lizard brain knows that. No, no, no.

1:49:16 It’s like they’re moving too fast. I was studying these things about movement because I remember the gray stoke. I looked behind the scenes of that and all the actors acted to go to the zoo and watch our monkeys move. Okay. Because these guys are real guys in suits.

1:49:29 Okay. And I was like, I really want to do that. Yeah. Reilly want to do that. And then I started with the…

1:49:35 You used the back of the hand and making these strange noises. Okay. And then I went to a zoo and started doing it and they were going to attack me. He was like… He stood up and then he started throwing around the stuff and looking at me and I started moving around like this and then people…

1:49:52 And he just jumped and kicked the glass, you know? So I was like, okay. Yeah. I found something. They know what’s up in there.

1:50:00 They know what’s up. They know there’s a crazy game going on. Yeah. They’re playing head games with all the people there, I think. For sure.

1:50:06 For sure, for sure. All right. So do some movement voiceover. That’s what’s going on. Yeah.

1:50:11 Tell us three things about our own nutrition, things we ingest, besides what you were talking about, a lot of these micronutrients. But this is obviously important to you. You studied it. I’m guessing 10 years ago, maybe it wasn’t as important to you. But obviously, maybe it has been.

1:50:27 But what’s important? Water. Water. Okay. Oxygen.

1:50:35 Breathe. Breathe. No pathogen can live in oxygen. Candida levels going through the roof. Why?

1:50:47 Candida. Cancer. You know what I mean? We’re not breathing. Breathe, man.

1:50:52 Okay. 4, 7, 8. Breathing. Very quick. Four in.

1:50:57 Hold your breath seven seconds. Pull up your cheeks. Breathe out. I do that seven rounds. All right.

1:51:04 Okay. People that are not oxygenated, I do it. They’ve got to faint on the second one. First time they’ve ever been hit with so much oxygen. Breathe.

1:51:13 Or shining skull. 70 breaths. Okay. Seven times. Shining skull because you’re like putting the air up in your head and using your belly.

1:51:22 Yeah, your skin gets great. Okay. You know what I mean? One of the first signs you’re oxygenated is your skin. Right.

1:51:28 MSM. Don’t know the technical word for it. What is it? It’s a sulfate. Okay.

1:51:37 It allows your body to absorb. The cells become softer to absorb more nutrients. You can take Celtic sea salt with the magnesium still in it. Put it in your water. Borax.

1:51:55 It’s like bicarbonate of soda. Put a teaspoon in your water. After you distill it. Yeah. Okay.

1:52:03 Because all of our clothing have flame repellent on it. You’re absorbing that crap through your skin. You know what I mean? Yeah. I’m getting these mood swings.

1:52:14 Yeah, because inside your body’s exhausted trying to keep you alive. Trying to repel stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. Constantly chugging away.

1:52:24 Sleep. Turn off your computer. Get out of your phone. Do you know what I mean? You don’t have a phone.

1:52:33 I don’t keep that shit. I look at people. I don’t want to look at digital representations of reality. You know what I mean? What’s that about?

1:52:45 I don’t even get that. What do you eat? I only eat every two days. So I kneel by mouth one day. Sun goes down.

1:52:54 Seven days a piece of cucumber. Water. Go to sleep. Wake up the next day. Phytoplankton in water.

1:53:03 MSM. Little bit of vulvic minerals. Train. Now I’ve earned my solids. During the day when I am eating, I eat food that can go straight through my body.

1:53:17 So I don’t eat meat. I eat fruit. Then I move to leaves. Bit of sweet potato. I don’t mix carbohydrates with meats or proteins.

1:53:28 Too much acid. If I eat meat, I eat it with dark greens. I don’t eat seeds, rice, any of those things. All acidic. Too acidic.

1:53:40 Fruit is acidic before it goes in. When it goes in, it’s alkaline. Do you know what I mean? Acid comes in your body. It’s going to eat up your cells.

1:53:49 Sickle them. Do you know what I mean? Sugar sickles your cells. Makes the quality of the cells bad. Now you’ve got the body just on it like there’s an alarm going off.

1:54:01 Ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh. Constantly. That’s affecting your mood. Affecting your choices. Affecting your tolerance.

1:54:07 Affecting your energy. Exasperated. You know what I mean? You’re just limping the whole time. Chemically.

1:54:15 Because at the end of the day, I want to live. So I don’t want to be digesting. That’s energy. Blood. Manufacture.

1:54:22 I want to eat things that give me the sugars to my brain and all these things. I don’t eat really sweet fruits. I eat berries. You know what I mean? Then when the evening comes, in order to digest the protein, if I’m eating eggs or chicken, and the chicken and the eggs I get from a farmer that lets me kill my own chicken.

1:54:43 So I take it away from the other chicken and I kill it alone and it’s eating first so he’s not dying afraid. Do you know what I mean? The eggs that are from animals that are not being fed a whole heap of antibiotics. But if the animal needs to stay alive with antibiotics and being injected every day, you’re eating something that’s been dead ages ago. It’s just kept alive chemically.

1:55:05 It’s putrid. Do you know what I mean? You’ve got to eat live things. If you’re going to go kill a sheep and it comes into the room and it’s breathing but his body’s rocking like this, it has no power. You can’t even keep itself still when it’s breathing.

1:55:17 Don’t eat that. But don’t kill them in front of each other.

1:55:28 Let it eat, let the metabolism slow down and whatever. You kill it with one shot. Don’t shoot the head or make the nervous system or break the umbilical. A lot of vegans are going to hate what I’m saying but I live. I’m like it all, you know, all paleo.

1:55:45 You know what I mean? That’s what I eat at the later part of the day because now I’ve got all night long to get rid of that protein and digest it. But I eat a piece of pineapple for the enzymes so that helps me digest the protein and sauerkraut for the probiotics to make my gut happy. And that’s what I eat every two days. So one day I’ll fast all day and then the next day I eat.

1:56:14 Eat. When I fast, next day I eat. You’ve done your research. I have to, man. Because this is a good point.

1:56:20 I thought I was going to forget this. But all my life people have just fired this word at me. You need to take responsibility. Response, ability. You want me to respond but I’ve got no ability.

1:56:35 How can I do what you’re asking me to do? Like the shrink. Give me the components of ability. People’s children, innocent children, that may be a little bit rude, don’t deserve to meet me or kids like I was. So on behalf of them, I sacrifice in my life to keep me less dangerous.

1:57:09 So I’ve had to learn this. Not just on my, you think I’m fighting a prison, I like it. No responsibilities. Don’t have to deal with dickheads. Do you know what I mean?

1:57:22 But I have had to take responsibility because other people’s children that are actors don’t need to be taught a harsh lesson by somebody that had multiple attempts on their life. So you’re doing it for the rest of humanity. And that makes me valid. That makes me valid. That makes me celebrate my mother and all the people that love me.

1:57:53 So I could be a story they never ever want to speak about. I know this guy but don’t talk to me about him. I’m ashamed of that even knowing him because he cut somebody’s head off. You know what I mean? So I have more love going out.

1:58:13 I can’t say that I’m doing it because I love me. I know internally that I’ve still got issues with that. But I like to see the faces of other people that are happy with me. I feed off of that, you know. Are you the happiest when someone cries at one of your poems?

1:58:31 I’m a little bit… I’m strange about that. Other people told me that’s a great thing. I was like, really? Okay, I agree.

1:58:38 But I don’t know. I don’t feel anything. Does it make you feel it emotionally? Okay. No.

1:58:43 I mean, besides your kids and your family, what do you enjoy emotionally? Like from your art? Having a good day. Yeah, okay. Creating something.

1:58:54 There’s like two things. Getting through the day and going, no police. I’m going to have a heart attack. I don’t do drugs anymore. You know what I mean?

1:59:10 And falling asleep. And like success. And then opening the door and seeing the children asleep did my job. If they’re sleeping, I’ve done my job. I’m Irish. Right there, I’m good, man.

1:59:25 What are we going to do with a city like Chicago where, you know, I mean, there’s totally a death at day now from gun violence, like you said, usually from Southside Chicago, black on black crime, people that probably have horrible nutrition, not to mention all sorts of other things stacked. And it’s right next to one of the biggest cities in America. They’re arresting the wrong people. You’re arresting the symptoms. You’re not going to the cause.

1:59:53 So any of those people that are manufacturing those foods, those crazy chemicals in there, they’re already setting that kid up to malfunction from young. You understand? Mother’s going to give them sweets even though they know they’re bad because the mum’s got four kids to look after and she’s doing two jobs. Out of desperation, put that in your mouth. You get me?

2:00:17 But the guy that manufactured that shit needs to go to jail. For profit, you and your shareholders need to go to prison. Storing that stuff in those plastics, lining those cans and those plastics, raising the estrogen and the stresses in their bodies. What they’re doing is the poetry of the stress they feel inside. They’re like, what?

2:00:37 You’re going to shoot me looking at? You’re going to attack me? I’m going to get you first. All of that stuff comes from the base of fear. Cortisol again.

2:00:45 Stress. Fight or flee. The housing. What happens is you’re incarcerating. That’s one set of money.

2:00:54 Then relocating. Another set of money. Millions. Stop this yo-yo. Take that and put it here.

2:01:03 You’ll change it overnight. But there’s a vested interest in that relocation and incarceration. It’s big business. And they’re the guinea pigs. So it’s sad that they’re all killing each other.

2:01:17 But it’s also, your country is only as gray as the worst shit that’s going on in it. And if great America has a place called Chicago, it needs to be ashamed of itself. And Obama didn’t do shit about it. Do you know what I mean? Can I talk politics?

2:01:38 A little bit. But the only thing about… When do you ever ask for permission, Johnny? I’m asking now. Yeah, go ahead.

2:01:45 But the only thing I saw about Obama is that they based it upon let’s vote in a black guy. Well, then you set up Trump. Because now they’re voting in a white guy. If that’s the model you were setting, you’ve set up Trump. Because both of them were elected for the same shallow reason.

2:02:06 The color of their skin. But that both of them are both guilty. The only difference is, is that Trump is talking what Obama had good marketing to hide. He killed millions of children during his time. What he sanctioned.

2:02:25 This is not my buddy. It’s not one of my people. Kids in Flint drinking that shite. Children. But your children are eating.

2:02:36 They’ve got spring water running through the taps in the house. And you enjoy that. And you know that they’re going to get through this schooling and take on that work load. Like the woman that done the blue-eyed experiment made professionals dysfunction after 20 minutes of pressure. How about any of these kids?

2:02:57 Let me tell you something. Any of those kids that come from that environment and get a master’s degree is super human. That’s super human. Because they’ve found a way of dealing with that stress and still been able to focus. You know what I mean?

2:03:13 But if America still has a place like Chicago, I’m not looking at Hollywood. I’m not looking at all the nice places. That’s not representative of you. Chicago is. They did a study and they found out that the more segregated a community was almost directly proportional to the violence.

2:03:35 And you could go lots of ways with that. You’re not a superpower if you can’t take care of your poor. You’re whack. Old people dying in their houses because they can’t pay electricity bills. You’re not a country man.

2:03:52 You’re a brute. And what do you think about Trump? I think they’ve got the leader they deserve. I think he tells it like it is. This is how I think.

2:04:09 All the rest of them think like him. He’s just stupid enough to say it. Johnny, let me ask you about the word success. When you think of the word successful, who comes to mind? Me.

2:04:24 Why? Because I’m happy. I don’t know about anybody else, man. All I see is symbols. I don’t know them.

2:04:34 You know what I mean? I don’t know why I’m a success story because I’m still alive. And I’m optimistic. And I’ve got plans. And I can answer questions like, what are you going to do in the next five years?

2:04:44 I come from people that would go, I’m going to be dead next week. You know? No one’s ever said that before, by the way. I like it. End of this year, how do you judge yourself like you come December 31st and you look at like what Johnny did this year?

2:05:02 These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show. I don’t have any fear. I don’t live off of fear.

2:05:29 You know what I mean? So, I’m a generalist. Like Ido. Yeah. When are you going to meet him?

2:05:36 When he wants to meet me. You guys will get along very well. What keeps you awake at night? MMA videos. Yeah?

2:05:49 Do you have an addict when it comes to those? Yeah. Because you’re analyzing all their moves, right? I pick the people. The people.

2:05:56 I’m not going to look at the people. I’m going to look at their faces. Okay. How they respond to that, you know what I mean? I’m more interested in the backstories, you know what I mean?

2:06:04 The documentaries about them. That’s just the commercial. The fighting part, I’m like, oh, that was a crazy move. I like transitions. Not the lay and pound.

2:06:14 I like, you know, the guys here, then they use the hips right, and one guy’s counteracting the other. That’s amazing when you see that. You know what I mean? The striking stuff. The only one that I’m impressed with right now is that they’ve got this new boxer.

2:06:31 What is his name? Novachenko or something like that, his name is? Wizard. Okay. Oh, Wizard.

2:06:38 Because he stays in the pocket and he wants to fight, but you can’t hit him. He’s not out of range of coming back in because he’s afraid. He stays in the pocket, but you can’t hit him. Okay. Like you.

2:06:49 You like to stay in the pocket. Absolutely. Well, I stayed in the pocket because my retinas would smash the pieces. Okay. And I have cataracts from when I was born.

2:06:56 So as I’m getting older, it’s getting worse. So I used to be like Muhammad Ali on the end of the jab, but then I found that, you know, I had to start fighting closer. Okay. And that’s when Mike Tyson came along at the right time. So I adapted that.

2:07:12 Okay. You like stories you said in MMA. Who do you like in MMA? Nate Diaz? Sure.

2:07:19 I love both those brothers. Me too. What do you think of him? I love the fact that Nate, even now that he’s older, you say, you know, whatever Nick says. Yeah.

2:07:29 Whatever Nick says, I’m going to… That’s brothers, man. That’s like, yeah. Tight, tight. Yeah.

2:07:35 And I see a photograph of Nick when he was really young in the school picture and he’s the only one with his fist up, you know, and I’m like authentic. And Paul Daly, our English fighter, for me, he… I would love to make a piece of film about this kid. Serious. Because he came around when MMA wasn’t sexy.

2:07:58 So he was like a Ronin. He was going, I’m going to get my stand up in this gym. Nobody was putting it together for him. He was doing it on his own. I’m going to go over here, do a bit of boxing.

2:08:07 I’m going to learn to wrestle. I’m going to go over here. I’m going to go and stay in Thailand and learn the Thai boxing. And that can be tiring. If he was looked after a little bit more, he could really reach serious potential.

2:08:23 But he is like… He is the person that you should give Mike Tyson stigma, fame to. See, Mike Tyson fought a lot of bums until he fought real guys. And when he fought real guys, he lost. He fought Lennox.

2:08:43 He beat him up. He fought Holyfield. He got beat up. He fought somebody that I know, Danny Williams. They went toe to toe and got beat up at his own game.

2:08:53 And nobody could say he was over the hill. Any fighter within three rounds can still be pretty much like they were when they were young. And he got done within those rounds and put on his arse and he quit. Do you know what I mean? But Paul Daley don’t quit.

2:09:09 And he has got that fire. He is that boy there. He has been around so long. But I still feel that his story is about to get told. Do you know what I mean?

2:09:25 Yeah. He just recently had a great knockout. Previous fight. Beautiful. He was at that O2 match where I saw Michael Benham Page crack a cyborg skull.

2:09:34 He had a tough fight there with that guy. But yeah, I mean, Paul Daley is just striking. He is just at an elite level in MMA. You know, people don’t realise how much it costs for these guys to put themselves through camp. And if you are not getting paid right, how can you give yourself the facilities you need?

2:09:51 Of course, Conor McGregor, he has got a chef. Now. Making his food. Yeah, now. And when he didn’t have it, look, he sucked.

2:09:59 Well, he got two belts over here in Cage Warriors. What does that mean? Street fighters. Come on. He was fighting good before that.

2:10:08 Come on. Yeah, but, you know, it’s like now, you know, it’s balanced that now he needs that type because now he’s fighting with real elites. The boys over here, they’re like, they’re getting what they can. They don’t have them great gyms over here like they do in America. Where you’ve got like Olympic, you’re training with Olympic wrestlers that have done it from when they were kids.

2:10:31 Or jujitsu guys that have lived it from day dot. We don’t have that here to tap into. Now, Gracie’s here and stuff, it may change. But in the early days, I was there going to Wembley Arena watching Cage Rage. Do you know what I mean?

2:10:46 Bouncers with MMA gloves on. Yeah, it’s horrible. Didn’t like those events. The dangerous events. I had a guest in here, his name is Kevin Kelly, and he said, you’re only as old as the last time you changed your mind.

2:10:59 And I was wondering, what have you changed your mind about in the last six months? I’m not sure, man. I don’t put benchmarks. Do you change your mind about things? Where you’re like, you know what, I used to think that was true and now I’m thinking, maybe I’m not sure about it.

2:11:15 I’m learning all the time, man. Okay. Especially with foods and stuff. Okay. But my memory is not too good here, you know, it’s been pretty messed up.

2:11:30 I don’t landmark anything, I’m just always in the moment. Okay. And the thing about that discipline is that they didn’t tell you that the side effect is that you forget everything because the past is not relevant. Right. That’s a good thing.

2:11:46 You know, if you constantly want to hang on to stuff and want to keep memories, your brain will bank them. But I’m just in the moment. So what I’ve done, what I’ve done this morning, I have to take a pause and kind of people can just do that stuff because they want to be conscious of everything they did and build up this scrapbook. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested, how am I here now?

2:12:09 What am I going to do now? The only time I go into the past is when I look at, only look at one aspect. What have I survived? Just to remind myself if I’m a little bit insecure. Like I said in the making of this movie there, there’s a movie called Us.

2:12:27 Okay. And we’ve developed this thing called The Fourth Partner. So it’s me, Benny Buttons, who’s the guy I do the coconut stall with. And me, him and the athlete and Kevin is the only one that stepped up and said, hey, I’ll do this. So we make them some T-shirts or hoodies and stuff like that, signature stuff.

2:12:51 And it’s called Meaningful Clothing. So this always has a statement on it like a mantra. And then you pick somebody as the fourth partner. So they get that percentage is theirs. And we pick a kid that’s dying of cancer, could maybe go on a holiday with that money.

2:13:14 Quality of life. You can’t stop your death. But the quality of life, you can do something about it. They need a new wheelchair or something. Better diet.

2:13:25 You know what I mean? So we developed this thing called The Fourth Partner. I’ve lost a train of thought. What did you ask me the question before? I don’t know, but I want to hear about the fourth partner.

2:13:38 Okay. So we developed this thing called The Fourth Partner. And then I was going to say to you about In the Making Of. Oh, yeah. You said the making of a movie you were talking about.

2:13:48 That was, yeah. About, I don’t know if I started with the Change Your Mind thing. No, I don’t know. I went off. Okay.

2:13:55 But with The Fourth Partner, you just try to give a share of what you’re making to this kind of fourth partner that you choose at random, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s gone that completely. I did really well, man.

2:14:07 I usually get these blanks all the time. Reilly? Yeah. Johnny, I always ask everybody here, a couple questions at the end. You might know they’re coming, but I’ll hit you with them.

2:14:15 These will always be interesting. Of course, asking you questions are always interesting. But if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Johnny, give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him? Don’t kill yourself. You’ve got a good life ahead.

2:14:35 Don’t kill yourself or don’t get killed. No. When you pick fights with the wrong person, I’ve gone into fights with 10 people into the middle. That’s suicidal. Because you’re going, there’s this word, this lyric.

2:14:53 I wrote it the other day. I said, there’s a lyric that drug addicts recite. Fuck it. It’s a powerful thing. Because what you’re saying, fuck it, is to your life.

2:15:11 And when I’ve gone, there’s too many guys, and there’s a few of us, who’s going to go in first? Fuck it, I will. But that fuck it is interesting. What do you mean? It’s suicidal.

2:15:23 I have no value for myself. If they kill me, they kill me. For what? I’m going to die on the street, cover them piss and shit. You know what I mean?

2:15:33 That’s craziness. All the decisions you make, especially the bad ones, are a roundabout way of making sure you get killed. All the fuck stops with you. You went into that gunfight with a guy that had a gun. If you valued yourself, you wouldn’t be walking even on the same side of the street.

2:16:01 A fight back down from fights is because I want to keep my buzz going, man. I don’t want you to interrupt it. Even if I beat you, I’m going to still have to shed off all of the explosion that happened inside me for days afterwards. I’m not even going to digest my food properly because my nervous system is going to be all out of whack. That’s not a quality of life.

2:16:26 That’s a sucker. What would 20-year-old Johnny have said to that advice? If it was coming from me, I trust you, man. Just have a go. You look like you know what you’re talking about.

2:16:48 Second part of that question, best advice you’ve ever received? From the racist stepfather, have an interest. Did that get you dancing? Yeah. Having an interest is a really nice way of having what it really means is reverence.

2:17:14 Okay. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It’s always been there. I just had to wait to a point that I valued myself enough to let it go in.

2:17:23 I’ve had great advice all my life. I just wasn’t ready at the time. I didn’t like myself enough at the time to take it in. And great advice can come from what at the time seemed like bad people. Yeah.

2:17:35 Because it was for you. You know what I mean? Yeah. They remain the same. I’ll take the advice.

2:17:41 Are there bad people? There’s no bad babies, man. No such thing as an ugly baby or a bad baby. I didn’t ask that, though. That’s people.

2:17:54 Everything else is a character. The only time people were people was when they’re babies. After that, they’re just robots of some sort of… They’re a karaoke of all the shit that they learned. Playing it out.

2:18:08 I walk for not even our own… I used to change my walk all the time. Turn my feet out sometimes. Turn them in another time. You know what I mean?

2:18:16 Walk like a raster one day. Walk around my shoulders another day because I want everybody to know how to box. You know what I mean? I was always merging. We’re just a collection of memes and you’ve got to fight that every day.

2:18:28 Yeah. Just to find out what’s real or what you want to be. To try to be an individual, right? Yeah. I have a friend called Renz.

2:18:36 And he puts up with my tantrums with the industry. And he gets it because I go, I’m going to punch him down, Johnny. I’ll speak to him on your behalf. But then he says some great gems to me. And he’s like, you’re distilling.

2:18:51 He goes, the more you take away, the greater you become. That means I was always great then. It’s all this other shit that’s holding me back. All these other characters that I’ve taken on. They were all old.

2:19:10 Don’t do that. Do this. These people were dying that were giving me advice. They were old people dying. Dying.

2:19:17 Jealous of my youth. Putting on me their fears. But you don’t want to do that. Be careful. It’s the worst thing a parent could ever say.

2:19:27 I was fearless before you said that was going to happen. Do you know what I mean? You have to take off all of that. Most of what we learn is not actual reality. It’s the conquering people’s philosophy.

2:19:40 It doesn’t mean it’s right. It means they’ve got bigger guns. And we have to learn what they want us to learn to control us. It does not mean it’s the truth. Wherever you feel fearless, that’s the truth.

2:19:54 Wherever you feel nervous because of what you’re doing, that’s a lie. Because life’s about living. You can’t live if you’re in fear. You will be careful. You’ll ghettoize.

2:20:06 You’ll never leave your town. And you’ll die miserable because you, you know, for instance, having children, all these guys running around in Chicago, I’m a grown-ass man. This is like, it’s like the repeated word. Do you have children? Yeah.

2:20:28 Do you look after them? No. Do you have children? No. Then all the aspects of being a man have not been stimulated.

2:20:38 You’re still a boy, even if you’re 80. When you have to take care of something so delicate and plan its life, all of your creativity will never, ever come out in any other situation. Period. You don’t have the right emotions to really make them amplify. When you love this helpless human being, then you become smart, then you become a politician, then you become a mathematician, a nutritionist.

2:21:05 So much stuff, you become that ultimate generalist. When you have to look after a woman that’s weak, ill, when you’re old and your partner’s dying, you could be 80. You’re still going to find out during that process of looking after her while she’s dying the rest of who you are. I wouldn’t learn any of that if I was doing this to people every day. It’s only when I’m doing this and I’m serving, I’m finding compassion, patience.

2:21:35 Before, I just found that all I was was one thing, brute, I was the ultimate citizen of the people that were running the country because they got that country and got in that position with brutality in the first place. None of them were walking around with bald heads and shawls on. They’ve got suits on with guards standing beside them and airplanes flying over with weapons on it. All of these environments that we live in were established with brutality. And I want to be a citizen of that.

2:22:08 I want to be a citizen of those men that were walking around in sandals in the deserts and feeding the 5,000 and Mohammed and his boys, you know what I mean? Peace be upon him, you know what I mean? And Buddha. And all of these were the real guys because they gave people life. All these other so-called superpowers.

2:22:31 Look at the death toll. Being a brute is not power, and I was following that. I was being the ultimate citizen. That was my father, and I was being that. I’m discommunicating that.

2:22:45 We don’t have the same blood. Definitely not the same DNA. I’m not from you. I’m from Noah, Moses, Mohammed, Jesus. You know what I mean?

2:22:56 Dalai Lama. Anybody that’s good and wants to have quality of life is grateful, man. That’s where I want to be. You know what I mean? I’ve got some music coming out, and my new name, Johnny Bang Riley, AKA Odd Flex, because it’s odd for somebody to be from my environment and be so hippie-ish.

2:23:19 It’s a little odd, but it’s not that odd. Final part of that question. To that 20-year-old that’s out there watching us right now live, that’s going to listen to this later, could be from London, could be from Chicago, from the favelas of Brazil, or anywhere. Maybe it’s that kid you saw today that remind you of you. You can probably, like you said, see him a mile away.

2:23:42 What are you telling him? I’m available. I’m available, man. And if you become centered, then be available. And then your student becomes, then be available.

2:23:59 That’s all we can do. I’m not making any promises, but I may say I got advice that helped me be an artist from a racist. He made himself available at that moment. And with all the other shit that he says and using the word nigger and saying that my sister’s two sons that are mixed race should have been gassed at birth because of his mindset and how he was constructed. Poor man.

2:24:29 You know what I mean? Be available. I don’t care if you’re on heroin, you’ve got something good that can say that ping changed somebody’s life, you know what I mean? We’re not available. We’re in our phones.

2:24:44 Sit next to each other on the tube. Don’t talk to me. Don’t lean on me if you fall asleep. You should put your shoulder underneath like that and let him sleep, man. Be available.

2:24:58 Be available. Johnny, thank you for coming on. Of course. I’ve been looking forward to this all week, watching your films, trying to understand what you’re all about, and I didn’t really get it, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it, and I think that’s good, right? I don’t know if great art comes from pain, and I guess I’m going to stop saying my general phrases after talking to you today, because I won’t say things like that anymore, but you make some great art, and I listen to your voiceovers and the words you’re saying, and I’ve listened to a lot of spoken word, whatever the hell that means, and I’ve listened to a lot of poetry, but yours sounds different, it feels different, and it caught my ear, and I watch a lot of stuff, and I’m exposed to a lot of people, and you’ve got some kind of message there that’s resonating with me, so thank you for that.

2:25:49 I appreciate that, and looking forward to seeing all the stuff you create, all the things you do. We’d love for you to spend some time with us here as well and give us your thoughts on making films sometimes as well. We make a few things out there, and we like what we do. I think passion trumps schooling any day of the week when it comes to creating something on film, and why do you do it? That’s really the ultimate question.

2:26:13 What are you trying to do, and why? I think that comes out of the screen, I think, sometimes, and sometimes, like you say, when you have too much of a plan, it falls down, and so, I don’t know, with monorail, I always feel like today, you come here, I want the world to understand you. That’s all. That’s my objective, my single objective, and I feel like when we do that right thing, I don’t know, all this energy comes back to us in this space. I don’t even understand me, man.

2:26:44 I think it’s still coming together, you know what I mean? Yeah, but for some reason, I want, for some reason, someone to be able to plug into your brain for two hours and try to see what’s going on up there. That’s all we’re trying to do here at London Real. Let’s do that, and then see what happens, so I appreciate you letting us in there. It’s an interesting place, you know?

2:27:02 Anyways, all the best with your art, your films, everything. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. I wish you well in here. Thank you, man.