Paul Bedford

Voice Over (00:03):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. We hope you enjoy the show.

Leigh Chalker (00:27):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Tuesday Chinwag. And my name is Lee Chalker. I’m the creator of the Australian Independent comic book series called Battle for Bustle, published through Comics studio. And tonight’s episode is simulcast across two live stream channels, one being Comm X Network, the other being Aussie verse. You can see their addresses across that little yellow ticker box running across the bottom. So if you want to check out all things, comic books and Australian stuff, jump on there. Investigate for yourself. They’re great communities bringing everyone together. Also, don’t forget to like and subscribe ’em anywhere. You can find them. So look, I’m going to introduce tonight’s guest, gday Nick May. Hello mates. All comments are welcome throughout the evening. We will endeavour to get to them. Hello for everyone out there watching in case I miss any comments. We’ll get back to you as best as we can.

(01:25)
So my guest tonight is a gentleman that I’ve wanted to meet for an awfully long time, and I guess the universe just brought us both together when it was meant to. And I’m going to just show you this right before I introduce him because I went to the comic bookshop many, many years ago and on the counter was, we were just having a laugh about this. So on the counter of the comic bookshop was this doesn’t your happy face need a rest the list? And I thought to myself, hell, I’m going to check that out. So I did. And man, I went down, well, let’s say a pretty impressively mind blowing story and it left a mark on me and I wanted to meet the man for a long, long time. And man, here he is, Mr. Paul Bedford. How are you sir?

Paul Bedford (02:21):
I’m good sir. What an intro. Thank you. That’s pleasure. Firstly, lovely to be here. This is very nice. We obviously spoke briefly for the show and I was most surprised and delighted to get an invite onto your show. I’ll just move over a little bit. I think I’m trying to shut off my board games in the back there because I had been out of the scene for a little while. And like you said, I think the list did make a mark, which I’m proud of, proud of Henry and Tom’s and my work. And it’s nice to be remembered after not moving away from it, but just sort of naturally moving into other things. I think it’s been maybe 2018, so that’s six years since I’ve attended a con. So it’s lovely to be on. It really is. I was most delighted. I said to my wife, I said, I’ve been asked for onto a freeform interview to talk about the list, which is just, I’ve been looking forward to it since. So basically what I’m saying is, thank you Lee. It’s great to be here,

Leigh Chalker (03:43):
Mate, it’s a pleasure because I’ve been looking forward to it since I got in contact with you, man. Because one of the things about doing Chinwag is on my journey over the last period, I guess I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on life and investigate things that give me great pleasure. And one of the constants in my life has been comic books for escapism and all manners of things really man. And just the love of the medium. And you had always left a mark with me with the list. And Chinwag has just been one of those blessings for me, two men to be able to meet people that I have admired and I’m peers with and friends with, and just people that I never thought I’d have the opportunity to touch base with man. And sit one-on-one and talk to you about your journey and stuff like that, man. So I’m very grateful for your time tonight as well, man. So thank you so much. And for the people that dunno you man, and your work, I certainly, man, I can’t wait to find out where you gestated this from, man. That’s all I can say. I, I’m like feverish with anticipation. Man. Before I get into the existential introduction, my portal let me down today, but this is how long I’ve had this. Oh

Paul Bedford (05:18):
My Lord,

Leigh Chalker (05:20):
I believe was one of your, if not the first version of this man that

Paul Bedford (05:26):
Is I hand stuck those stickers on.

Leigh Chalker (05:28):
Yeah, yeah, there you go. Well, I’m using this DNA now man to clone a Paul Bedford baby. So I’ve set up the tanks over there in the back corner, so you never know, man,

Paul Bedford (05:40):
Don’t do that to yourself mate.

Leigh Chalker (05:44):
Man’s got to make some money somehow, brother.

Paul Bedford (05:49):
That’s great. I’m so wrapped. You’ve got that version. I’ve got a couple here. Look at the original, there’s the original artwork by Tom Bonin, which I just love. I just love. And if you haven’t read the list, don’t look too closely at that cover. It actually has spoilers on it. Pause

Leigh Chalker (06:10):
And go, well man, I got it. And there’s a review on the back in particular, right? That when I got it, I thought other than that little tag, I was like, this is the quote from paperback reader.com. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to review the list as the material appears to be too disturbing for me to read. So when I read that, I thought to myself, yeah, that’s mine, because I’m pretty game man in open-minded and stuff. And I’m certainly glad that I didn’t listen to that review, mate. So there we go.

Paul Bedford (06:53):
That was a difficult one to put on because it almost sounds a bit too much. And I struggled to put that one on because I didn’t want it to sound like quotes are great, but I didn’t want it to sound like a boast. And I actually asked the girl, I can’t recall her name, but when she sent me that, I said, look, this is quite personal for you, but can I use it? Because that’s a first edition of a self-published comic, but it’s also probably a better warning than what’s on the front. There are violent works out there, but for the list, I didn’t aim for violence. Well, not for gratuitous issues of violence. Violence was a tool to show desperation and to show fear and to show pain. That’s why the fight seems long. So, but when she agreed to let me have that, I’m like, thank you. That’s a really nice quote for what people might face inside with regards to themes and tone and themes and tone I think is where the list touched people more so than the violence.

Leigh Chalker (08:28):
Yeah, I would agree. It touched me with the theme because it was one of those comic books that you get some pieces of work and it’s no disrespect to anyone. I mean, we’ve all had them where you read it and it’s good and you put it down and you, I guess it just sits on the bedside table or it just sits on the table or the coffee table or wherever you like to store your comics and look after them. If the grail is listening, yes, all our comics are put in slabs or else they’ll pick at the queue. But for the people that like to read their comics, I’ve found that with the list, man, I’ve just gone back to it over the years, man. And I’m a particular, and my great mate, Ryan and I talk about this regularly. I

Paul Bedford (09:28):
Work with Darren Close recently.

Leigh Chalker (09:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man, great dude. The book, amazing creator, one of my best mates. Really

Paul Bedford (09:38):
Good work.

Leigh Chalker (09:39):
We’ve got a massive love for outlaw themes and outlaw ideologies in comics. All comics have their places, don’t get me wrong. I’m not just picking one. I love them all and I love the creatorship and the effort that goes into all of ’em. But the outlaw side of things, I love just the people that while they have questions as to whether they should, that’s about as far as the question goes. Because within you, you know that this is what you need to put out. It can be confronting, but it’s personal. It is you through and through. There’s a certain authenticity to it, which I greatly appreciate that in my older age, people being themselves and not making any excuses for being themselves, I think it’s a great quality. I see that come through in your work, man. At the time, I found that man, I was really, really heavily, oh god, man, I’d been obsessed with the crow for a number of years and stuff too, and that’s a regular thing that I always went back to. And a masterwork.

Paul Bedford (10:56):
A masterwork.

Leigh Chalker (10:57):
Yeah, man. And that was why the list really appealed to me. I’ve always had a love of black and white artwork as well. The artist you chose told the story. Well, it’s some pretty vivid stuff. I think that I haven’t seen your scripts, but I’m assuming that what you gave them certainly come through in the pages. And I’m hoping by the end of us having a chat tonight that people out there that haven’t read the list will go and check it out. Because I believe it is a piece of Australian comic book work and creativity that definitely deserves to be read. And I would strongly recommend it. It’s certainly not for the weak of heart. I wouldn’t let your children read it. But if you’re game and you’re an adult and you want to try some things, man, go and check this out. So Paul mate, we’re going to, I always like to just start off Dave Dyer. Good evening mate. What a legend he is. Peter Lane. Hello. Good sir. And as always, Ryan O’Connor, howdy wrote and oh, Gary, hello

Paul Bedford (12:09):
Gary. Gary wrote, Gary wrote one of the greatest reviews of the list. Hello, Ben. Ben, I treasure it. I treasure it.

Leigh Chalker (12:21):
Hello Bo and thank you mate. You remind me of Rolo and Floy from Vikings. I’ll let you two decide who I think is who. Okay. Yeah, right. Well thank you. I think I’ve never seen Vikings. My mother was a big fan of them, so if we can’t work it out between us, I’ll let my mother decide later on this evening when, oh, I

Paul Bedford (12:45):
Have a sword. Where are you? You in Victoria?

Leigh Chalker (12:49):
No, man, I’m in far north Queensland, bud.

Paul Bedford (12:52):
I’m just going to suggest gladiatorial combat, but it’s a little late if you’re in.

Leigh Chalker (12:58):
Well, it certainly rag mate, like two blokes just jousting through the questions. I mean, we don’t have to do it physically, we can do it verbally.

Paul Bedford (13:08):
I’m honestly not interested either. I had a week off last week with a flu and somehow blew my knee out, so I don’t think I’m getting into any sort fights.

Leigh Chalker (13:18):
Hey, well Paul mate, the more you tell me about what you’ve been through the last week with your colds and you’ve blown out knee man, the more I’m liking my chances here. So we might have to tee that up shortly. Might be huling,

Paul Bedford (13:30):
Might be hustling you Lee.

Leigh Chalker (13:33):
Yeah. Alright, so man, we’ll get into the big existential question before we drift into the fluidity. And Mr. Bedford, who

Paul Bedford (13:49):
That’s an interesting one, and coincidentally, I called, I spoke to a long time friend today, Amanda, and I’ve known her since high school. She calls herself a lazy stalker. She’s lovely, she’s fantastic. And during the conversation, the reason I called her was because she’s come up with an endeavour, a project she wants to follow. And so I called her in the interest of having a chat about and see where she’s going with it and what she wants to do and all that sort of stuff. And I kicked off the conversation in two ways. The first one was that I thanked her for letting me call her when my brain had reduced itself as in not reduced, not reduced a shot of juice. I got my brain back after a pretty creative and pretty full on weekend. So it was nice. It’s nice to, I think a true measure of friendship is when you can say, I can’t call you today because the conversation will be worth it wouldn’t be worth it. Okay, I would rather let’s chat when we are both at the same place. And the second one was I to, like I said, to talk about her venture and I said she’s always

(15:19)
Supported the list and we’ve discussed the list and all that sort of, and the other creative works I’ve done and doing. And I said, it’s lovely not to talk about my stuff because, and this is getting back to who you asked at the start, because who for me is difficult to answer because I’ve come to terms with this a lot because you’ve got to not let the ego get into the play in two different ways. Because two different ways the ego can get the play when you talk about yourself. One, it can start to boast, it can start to exacerbate yourself or your achievements or even subtly. And the second is to self-deprecate or to not want to talk about yourself because you feel like you have not nothing to say, but what you have to say isn’t necessarily that interesting. And I tend to fall into the second because I don’t like to talk about myself. But when you are talking about what you do and there’s a whole argument about what you do is who you are, then that’s great. So who I am is someone who enjoys pursuing a vision. So I like to pursue a vision

(17:08)
And the list was a vision. And the other things I created, I had a board game released with Mattel when I was 25. I’m currently, I’ve been working in a board game for six years and in each of these instances, especially the first time I created a board game and with the writing and release of the list was that I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything about those crafts or about those worlds. I had never created a board game before. I’d never played them and I’d never read comics and I’d never written one. So it was coming from a place of when most people say, who are you? I say, Paul, you’re walking down the street. But on a long form where you want to go deep, man, I’ll go deep If you want to go, man, let’s go. Alright.

(18:19)
So knowing nothing, and that could be an ego, I know nothing and yet I did this. That’s not where I’m coming from. Where I’m coming from is that it can be both a place of vulnerability and a place of power because it’s a place of vulnerability because you accept that you know nothing. So you’re just doing it for yourself. And the list was written for me, I wrote the list for very personal reasons, which we can get into and it’s a place of power because you’re free of influence and when you’re free of influence, you can do anything and you don’t feel that you have to, as we were talking about briefly before with regards before we started was you have no expectation because you have no illusion of outcome. So the list had no illusion of outcome. I felt it was powerful because of what I felt in me and what had to come out. That was the power I felt in the story. And you also mentioned another word before, which is interesting with regards to your podcast and starting your podcast, you said it was pure, and that’s such a great word because pure means your intentions were all honest. And what you’ve created

(19:46)
Was a result of just pure action. And it doesn’t mean perfect and it doesn’t mean that, it just means your intention was made real because of your vision and that’s where the list came from. So the list was pure and it was honest by no means perfect, it has its faults, my God, it has its faults. It’s like with Peter Jackson can’t watch the Lord of the Rings because all he sees is the problems. I suppose most creators go through that sort of thing because you second guess yourself all the time. I think the creation of the list was the most pure and cathartic, one of the most pure and cathar experiences of my life. Putting that down on paper. And I can tell you in one example why that is. Since I was young, I suffered from regular bouts of debilitating stomach aches, cramps that would floor me and wipe me out. And the night that I wrote the script for the list, the day after they were gone, they were gone. They were gone. I didn’t notice for a while. I didn’t wake up going on. I’m getting a stomachache this week because it might be every two weeks or it might be a month or it might be two or three, but it was only after a long while. I’m like, I have not had one of those stomachache attacks

(21:29)
In two months, three months. And I didn’t know what it attributed to. I had no idea. And it was only long, long, long, long, long after I’d written the list and had come out and published and were, when I talked to other creators about the power of simply putting things on the paper, that creative process, how incredibly healing that was, how cathartic and therapeutic and healing to get all those demons. I’m trying to swear, get all those demons onto the page. And that’s why I think it touched people, the twist, not because of the violence, because maybe it was a combination of those things. Henry did beautiful art, which brought all my intentions to the fore, and Tom did beautiful inking which suited Henry’s art and suited my script. So the only thing I can think is that I succeeded, not that I had the intention to make that story touch anyone, I think it was I succeeded in just getting that out and getting that onto the page in the way it did, people identified with it. And that above all in the creative process is to me that is the gold. That is the gold sales are great and great reviews are great and all that sort of stuff is fantastic. And if you are denying that sales are good, you’re lying to yourself. If you’re denying that great reviews are great, you’re lying to yourself and other people, recognition of your work, especially among your peers is amazing. But if you can touch the people who find your work, then

(23:40)
There is nothing like it in life that I have felt aside from the birth of my kids. Nothing matches it. So that’s who I’m, so that’s a lot. I gave you the short form. I mean everyone’s complex, everyone’s incredibly deep. It’s the tapping into it and the creation of a story and that shared recognition of the other side of us, even when produced in a non-threatening medium, like a comic that we can tap into and everyone has that. And the people I met that it touched that was you don’t anticipate the effect that it has on you when you see the effect it has on others. And then you are just, I cannot, this is going to take a long time for me to register and process what you just said to me. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (24:57):
Man, I just wanted to give you space there to say that. And I didn’t want to interrupt until interject until the right time. And there’s a lot of things that you just said there that 100% resonate with me. So I just wanted to say that and yeah, I can feel you there, so I totally understand where you’re coming from. Hello, absence minded. Totally 100% understand Paul. It’s when we were talking before about no expectation, that was a concept that I truly became aware of through my second teacher with. I started much like, I have my story, but this is about you, but I just want to let you know how I give you some

Paul Bedford (26:12):
About me. I’m happy to, let’s chat about us. That’s the good stuff.

Leigh Chalker (26:18):
Yeah, well man, pain, obviously the list, very personal. I can see that. That’s why I always wondered who was this person that did this? Because I felt that too, from what you’d put down. And I was certainly picking it up at the time, whether that was something I went through at that moment, it’s resonated with me through into my adult life. It’s one of the few comic books that has always stuck in my mind. As I’ve said, your answer to what you just said about who you are is a beautiful thing because I believe I have gone down a path where the eye is just an illusion. We are everything that we’ve tried, succeeded, failed, touched, loved, experienced, man. It’s just a journey. And when you take on that moment of I’m going to do this, I’m going to create, and you put everything aside and you bleed on that paper and you put yourself into a man the most vulnerable position you ever possibly could, there’s a thing of beauty in that dude.

(27:47)
And that’s why I respect what you just said there because that’s exactly my thoughts of creativity at this current point in my life. And I certainly make no excuses and I don’t hide behind the fact that, man, I say it mely all the time. I had a huge ego, man. I was stuck in an echo chamber and far north Queensland with people that just fed me full of, wow, man, look at your artwork, look at this. So it was lovely at the time, but as you grow and get better and better at things like these things are negative to a certain extent of what you want to become within yourself because you get caught up in what other people think of you. And I think that’s certainly what I admire about the list, man, is I always thought that whoever wrote this certainly has a pretty good idea about themselves.

(28:48)
I’m not that some other people may be listening right now and they may, when you just said, when you wrote that script, suddenly my ailment that I’d had since a child had left me, and maybe two or three years ago, I would not have completely understood what you had just meant by that. But I 100% get you there, dude. I think you and I are on a very similar path and I just wanted to put that down that I think this is going certainly be a very good chinwag because yeah, I’ll leave it at that and we will continue the fluidity. But yeah, let us continue sir. Absolutely. And no expectations, we’ll come back to that at some point. But mate, I want to get back to a little bit of a lighthearted thing here because I mentioned it was

Paul Bedford (29:51):
Lighthearted.

Leigh Chalker (29:54):
Yeah. I say

Paul Bedford (29:55):
To everyone I meet, who are you? And that’s the spiel. I mean, I’ve got memorised,

Leigh Chalker (29:59):
It’s beautiful. No, no. But we spoke about this briefly when we were Paul giving everyone the feels. Indeed. And so we should, man, it’s a lovely thing for someone to be themselves. That’s lovely. And now I mentioned this to you when we were talking briefly about organising the show and stuff like that. Now you said to me that, no, you don’t remember, but I’m going to give you a breakdown of my memory, okay. And let the audience decide who listened to this. Alright? Yeah. So I’m thinking it was probably 19 95, 19 96, maybe it could have been a little bit later than that, but let’s work on pre pre-millennial bug. Let’s say that at my comic shop they used to get little news someone had sent around free news, this is coming out in Australia or this, so this shop’s open, blah blah blah, blah blah. Anyway, I used to collect it and I found this, there was a little ad and it was fell in. Melbourne, wants to do a comic book, has a story. And at the time, now I’m going to put the pieces together here. Alright, we’ll just jot ’em together because man, I’m telling you, I’m telling you, I reckon the two of us are in the room. We just, but hey, memory may be different. And it was a fantasy based comic book that was, the idea was based on the notion of it being tentatively comic book board game themed. Okay, so the gentleman in question, whose first name was Paul, I might add not

Paul Bedford (32:08):
Ringing any bells yet.

Leigh Chalker (32:10):
Alright. Alright. So asked for some samples. So me being a young whipper snapper and all that and was always drawn, sent off these samples and came back and before the internet and emails, we had actually been conversing by brief telephone calls. This is back in the day, this individual and I had been talking through telephones where to ring up Victoria, he was from Victoria too. I might add and cost a couple of bucks mate per minute back then

Paul Bedford (32:54):
If it’s me, if this was the where it’s leading, I owe you some money. If that’s the entire, you could have just messaged me on Facebook and I,

Leigh Chalker (33:03):
Yeah, well no, it’s not about that. Don’t stress me. I keep my own list brother. So don’t you worry about that, you’re not on it. And yeah, and we actually had conversed through things, this individual, and I had the letters, but I couldn’t find them because I wanted to confirm. And for a long time I thought that was you. And because board games, I guess dots sort of joined to me and then I was like, wow, is that him? And I was messaging you that and you were like, yeah, I got no idea what you’re talking about. And oh man, I roared laughing, eh, I’ve been carrying around this baggage. I dunno, man, 25 years or something, you know what I mean? And I was put down so gently and I appreciate that I idea talking about, yeah. But anyway, it’s neither here nor there. But I like to think that on another parallel,

Paul Bedford (34:18):
I’m not saying it wasn’t me, I just don’t recall it being me.

Leigh Chalker (34:22):
Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. Well man,

Paul Bedford (34:24):
Do you remember what the art was? You’re saying you’ve spoke to this individual you spoke on the phone to okay.

Leigh Chalker (34:35):
Yes, yes. Yeah. And you were just about, and this is what brings me back, you said you put out your first board game in about 19 95, 96, just earlier. So I’m thinking that now, Paul, I’m not sure here man, but if I was a bloodhound man, I’d be sniffing some blood, man. I think I’m on a track here brother. And at the time we were talking on the phone, you were also this individual hang,

Paul Bedford (35:07):
You’ve changed it to you and me now.

Leigh Chalker (35:09):
Yeah, yeah. This is where I’m going.

Paul Bedford (35:13):
Okay. Okay.

Leigh Chalker (35:15):
And this person whom I believe is you was telling me that you were about to, you just got your contract for the first board game and

Paul Bedford (35:25):
It’s sounding a lot like me, Lee.

Leigh Chalker (35:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well again,

Paul Bedford (35:30):
I think I fill in most of my life’s events from other people telling me them. I don’t remember anything.

Leigh Chalker (35:37):
Well, in a strange way, Paul, I’m pretty sure that you and I have connected at some point in the past and just about 30 years later, mate, that’s

Paul Bedford (35:50):
Amazing. We should have done done this podcast this time next year. It would’ve been our 30 year anniversary of not knowing we’ve met

Leigh Chalker (35:57):
Mate. We could have had streamers. Yeah, I know. How weird is that? We’ve met, but I didn’t know we’d met each other, but so yeah,

Paul Bedford (36:07):
I not putting an ad anywhere. Was it a comic shop?

Leigh Chalker (36:10):
Well that that’s how I remember it being. But obviously CSI chinwag. Haha. So there you go,

Paul Bedford (36:23):
Ryan, does he always do this? Is this what he does? Is this what it’s all about? Just bringing people on and saying, you owe me a couple of bucks from 30 years ago and I’m sure I met you.

Leigh Chalker (36:34):
Hello guys. No man. Look, dude, it’s really funny. That’s

Paul Bedford (36:40):
A great story. That’s fantastic

Leigh Chalker (36:41):
With the chin wags and stuff that I just find it’s a beautiful thing that as you go down, I guess I’m just going to surmise here and I hope it needs a dramatic theme song. Indeed. I’m just going to just surmise man, that from how we’ve already spoken to each other so far, that there’s the distinct possibility that you if not have been on a bit of a spiritual path per se, in search of oneself and all the certain things that lead us on these journeys. I have been as well and still am. And it’s just something that when you start to realise things like that, everything truly in its own way is connected. You can take it down to the comic book community and man, it’s just amazing how many people have touched at certain points or intersected, crossed, you know what I mean? And then through just a series of events have been brought back together.

Paul Bedford (37:58):
A niche thing.

Leigh Chalker (38:00):
Yeah, it’s odd, but well it’s, I’m going to leave that up to the audience that’s listening to decide whether or not Paul and I have never met him. You put him

Paul Bedford (38:10):
Into a jury.

Leigh Chalker (38:12):
Yeah, yeah. Why not everyone have a vote by the end of the show and winner takes all. There’s nothing to give, but there you go. We’ll send you a high five full of love,

Paul Bedford (38:26):
A bookmark

Leigh Chalker (38:27):
And rock on. But man, we’ll take me out of the equation now and get back to you, man. But I just thought that was a funny little story and glad we sort of got some, if not, no clarification on that at all. But mystery is everything. So if I guess where I would take it, and I’m going to let you just roll with this, what was the attraction to doing the list, this intensely personal thing of yours in, and you said comic books can be an innocent type medium and I would think they’ve got more so chancy now and people see it in an artistic way to voice themselves. But at the time, the other thing with the list that I recall is for me, one of the most important times in Australian comic books that I remember was the time the list came out because it seemed to be a little you there.

Paul Bedford (39:41):
My son’s just turned up. I’m sorry Lee. One second. Hello? Hello.

Leigh Chalker (39:51):
See this you

Paul Bedford (39:52):
Going guys

Leigh Chalker (39:53):
The chin? Hello?

Paul Bedford (39:56):
Hello, this is Rosie and Lakin kin my basketball hero and Rosie, my gymnastics heroine Daddy’s just on an interview. Okay. That’s when Lee here is talking to me and he’s going to put it on his YouTube channel. Okay. We’re talking about daddy writing. Go on YouTube. Yeah. How’s that? Yeah, well I’m going to talk to Lee now. Okay sweetie. I’ll come out and see. Are you going to go on grownup YouTube? Hey, are you going to go on grownup YouTube? Yeah, grownup YouTube. But I think you’ll be able to watch it. Yeah, I’ll ask Lee if you can watch it. Okay. All right. See you dudes. Love you. I’ll be out. Be up bit later. Hi Liz, thanks for bringing him home.

Leigh Chalker (40:48):
Good night.

Paul Bedford (40:49):
I love that I was listening so intently to your question and then I heard the front door and I’m like, oh man, what timing, what timing. Okay, sorry,

Leigh Chalker (40:56):
That’s perfectly mind me. This is the fluidity of Chinwag. I love it. Children and family are always welcome man.

Paul Bedford (41:04):
Sorry mate. Mate, that’s fine. That’s excellent. Although it should be in Richmond colours, mate. That’s excellent. That is lovely. That’s lovely. Alright, I’ll chat soon buddy. Sorry mate. I’ll just make, if it’s okay, briefly go over.

Leigh Chalker (41:20):
Oh there is absolutely no reason for you to apologise mate. It’s perfectly perfect. Lovely.

Paul Bedford (41:25):
I’ve gone all blurry. Don’t

Leigh Chalker (41:27):
About it with what I was getting to man was

Paul Bedford (41:30):
Why my blurry, is that my camera?

Leigh Chalker (41:32):
I don’t know. Maybe probably help with, you probably want to take your hand away from the camera, but Yeah,

Paul Bedford (41:41):
Actually I look better like that

Leigh Chalker (41:44):
Focus man. There you go. Look at you. Oh there we

Paul Bedford (41:47):
Go. Now they got, now they’ve got full resolution again. There’s poor viewers.

Leigh Chalker (41:52):
Alright. Hello. Hello Alex. And so mate, I reckon that this came out because what I was getting to is now people seem to be a little bit more Chancey with their creativity and I suppose independent comic books, the way for people to go and stuff. And for someone that wasn’t obviously comic book bound at the time, to have this need to get this particularly very personal story out that has led you down the path of even a childhood ailment releasing itself in order for you to put this in into a comic book format. It was also hugely Chancey at the time because from my memory of a young man, I’ve often think of that period of Australian comic books as being extremely important because there wasn’t a lot of stuff happening that I knew of from maybe in the biggest cities, but from the regional areas of Australia things, it was all Marvel, it was all this, the late nineties boom had sort of died down.

(43:09)
Kroo was kicking along, there were a few others that were popping up, but then you had superhero movies, you had pretty regular sort of stuff. Dark Horse was coming in, but not even Dark Horse just dropped something like that. Man, so incredibly important I believe for the time because you did have a lot of momentum going with it as well. You had different additions if memory serves at the time. You also, you were writing feverishly scripts for TVs and films and that, which I want to get into with you as well just for a breakdown with people, for people. But so I guess what I’m saying is that the time you brought out the list, comic books were a little innocent like you were saying before, and then you went and dropped that Grenade Men into the Australian comic book scene. What was it that you just went, no, this is best formatted in comic book. You didn’t just go straight to screenplay, you didn’t just go and try and pitch something to a TV channel or something or whatever the pathway was. What was it with the comic book media?

Paul Bedford (44:28):
Okay, so firstly I did, I think that’s probably relatively unknown that I wrote it initially as a screenplay, but with my absolute lack of knowledge or context in the comic world, I was in the same situation with the screenplay. I had no bloke in Bandura storming, just had an idea.

Leigh Chalker (44:56):
So this thing had to come out of you man, had to come out of you

Paul Bedford (45:01):
Had to come. And I took it to an independent filmmaker and he nailed it when he said, you will not get the producer in Australia, even though it is like Jeffrey Wright. Jeffrey Wright, I got the name right there. Who’s the guy who did romper Stomper? Oh

Leigh Chalker (45:34):
I dunno who that is. I can’t.

Paul Bedford (45:35):
Jeffrey Wright’s following up, we can go back to talk about him later on with regards to the screenplay. He said, you won’t get this produced in Australia. And I think he was right and the screenplay was pretty, it was different to the graphic novel. I was in my fight club stage and I had no idea how to write a script. I sat down and wrote a script and I had no idea about three

Leigh Chalker (46:05):
Structure, no schooling, no, go to the book world and get the film scripts for idiots or whatever those books were called at the time, nothing. It’s coming out man coming

Paul Bedford (46:19):
Out, it’s coming out. And I wrote what I thought would look like a screenplay, no idea of minute per page, overarching theme, subtext, protagonists, blah blah blah. And some of that stuff can, while good can inhibit you just as much, which getting back to the purity we’re talking about before. So with regards to my decision to release it as a graphic novel,

(46:55)
And this hearkens back to me saying before about knowing nothing is a place of power because I didn’t know what was out. I didn’t know the scene, I didn’t know what people read. I didn’t know if there’s anything like the list. I just had to get it out and I wrote it and because I knew the chances of being a film are very slim, I thought well the next visual medium that is just as powerful, which would suit this is a comic. So I sat down and wrote what I thought would be a comic script and then I’m like, what do I do with this? I do with this, I do, I dunno anyone,

Leigh Chalker (47:52):
How do

Paul Bedford (47:52):
I make this into a comic? And I just put it away, Lee, I just put it away, the experience of writing it. I still remember I wrote the entire thing in a night. It was awful because it was a stream of consciousness, but

Leigh Chalker (48:13):
It had to come out.

Paul Bedford (48:15):
It had to come out. There was no structure, it wasn’t panel this, it wasn’t any of that. There were none of the headings that you see that the chapter breaks. It was just the story and it started with the father and the son and the car, but it had a different ending and there were different events throughout it. I don’t even think the angel was in it. And I put it away and I didn’t think of it because I didn’t know what to do with it. And it was only when I was moving into a place in 2004 with a mate of mine, I was unpacking and I pulled it out and I’m like, oh shit, here’s the list. And I sat down and I started reading it and I’m like, yeah, I should do something with this. It would be nice to have it be nice to hold it as a book. And it brought back everything that I felt when I wrote it. Oh sorry. No,

Leigh Chalker (49:28):
You go. You do whatever you need to do.

Paul Bedford (49:31):
You’re saying PG before, so I’m trying to be, oh man.

Leigh Chalker (49:33):
If you let it go because it’s in the story and you vibe and you do it, brother,

Paul Bedford (49:37):
Cool. I mean if anyone who’s watching this is PG then go and reads the book, they’re going to see a few words. When I wrote it, I felt sick. It was so much, it’s probably like, well I know what it’s like going into therapy and talking deep with people that have come into my life. Really special people. I could see that you and I could have that connection that we could just sit down and chat for weeks. And at that time it was difficult to read it because it brought up everything that was related to its writing. Sorry,

(50:23)
Which we can get into. And then I did, the only thing I thought I could do to get this thing produced was I either caught a train or drove into the city and went to Mour on Elizabeth Street and I looked in the back of Australian comic books for contacts. I’m like, what do I do? And it was the least expected person wrote back to me Who is Arvy? Beshore, I dunno if you know of Arvy. He was, he ran conventions and produced a manga sort of compilation done by Australian and I think international artists who would submit short stories. It was called ku, I think it was called Otaku, ATA Aku as an Australian. And he’s written, he wrote back to me, he was the only person who wrote back. And I was like, someone’s written back. It’s a big comic publisher. I didn’t know the scene. Were there, Australian publishers are there just blokes in, do they have a photocopy machine? Does their mom have one at work that they use?

Leigh Chalker (51:43):
Does it over the coffee? I’ve got to this off for the sun who real pe me all night.

Paul Bedford (51:50):
That’s right. They put together for him and put it on shelf for free. And he wrote back and he said, look, what do you got? And I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, actually this was astounding. And we’re talking about in 2004 or five and he said, send me the script. And so I was sending the script and it was nothing like the script. It was still a fight, not script, but it had the underlying, sorry, it wasn’t fight, but it was anti-establishment and there were darker scenes that they were on now. And it, God damn when I picked that thing up, it’s a struggle to get through anyone to read and go, yeah, whatever. And he wrote back saying, I think I have an artist for you. I’m like, I can’t believe this. I never, my English teachers, I couldn’t connect with school. I wasn’t good, didn’t do well in school. I dropped out of uni, worked a slew of shit jobs. I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going, who I was. Any idea completely full of anxiety, completely. Well back then there was none of this amazing conversation that gets around now. I just felt shit.

(53:41)
And

Paul Bedford (53:43):
I,

Paul Bedford (53:45):
The very thought that I could produce or have a work produced was astounding and revelatory. And I was so overwhelmed by what I came to know because imposter syndrome that I simply, it was beyond my comprehension. You know what I mean? I didn’t know anything about this whole industry. And then the fact someone agreed to draw something that I wrote blew my mind. And going back to what we’re talking about with regards to expectation and outcome, I both, and you would’ve felt this yourself a part of you. It’s just difficult to define. You want people to like the work, but you want people to, I knew what was the next Star Wars, right? But when you feel something, when you write something like that, there’s always a hope that when you share it, as many people as possible will identify with it. And that’s a pretty amazing feeling. And that’s why people create and don’t just put things in their drawers. I did. But because we have this an unspoken, like you were saying before with a connection is I think that what we produce had its own power and universal consciousness and energy that others will identify whether it’s one person or 40 million. And

(56:37)
When we were discussing before when I said the identification of people who identify with the list is the gold. That’s what I’m talking about. When I saw the first picture of the list of the son sitting in the car with a dad, I could not believe that was my creation. I created that. I made that happen. Obviously Henry too, Henry was amazing. Henry was the perfect artist for the list, but the writer is the backbone to all productions. And then the artist goes, yeah, I’ll help you out mate, by doing a lot more work than the writer does. I’m happy to admit that they probably do about 70% to our 30. But it’s different sort of work. It’s more laborious. So slowly seeing the list come together and then into the first edition that you are holding there and then having that a reality, having that produced and then having that a reality was that I’d never thought being who I was and word come from and the kid I was something that I never thought I would experience as much as I sort of subconsciously or on the back of my mind wanted to create during my life I wanted to create. But a lot of kids, kids are creative,

(58:31)
Kids are naturally creative. My daughter just makes amazing things. And my son, anything they do is creative and slowly it gets squashed down and you find yourself doing as a parent, you’re back off. I consider myself to some degree, sorry sweetie. Hey, I’m sorry mate. Thank you. Grandma’s going to call. I’ll be out soon sweetie. Okay, I’ll be out bit later. Mommy’s going to come home. She’s putting you to bed tonight. Thank you. She’s give me those eyes. She knows how to work me.

Paul Bedford (59:09):
She’s

Paul Bedford (59:09):
Horrible. So I love talking like this Lee, this is great. I just want to say this is great. This is everything I wanted it to be. Thank you. Because when you get interviewed at a convention or via text, you can answer, but you’ve got to answer it reasonably quickly. But getting to the long gestation of who I was right through to holding the first copy. To your question about entering it into the, dropping a grenade into the Australian comic scene, it had a bigger effect than I thought it would. I knew there was a power in it, but I didn’t know if anyone was going to identify with it. And I’m not talking about powers. It’s a powerful film, it’s a powerful story. I knew it had a personal power to it. Whether someone was going to identify with that or not was the next step. And people did, in fact, some reviewers wouldn’t even read it. And that gives you some degree of encouragement that your vision has been true. As the name started to get around a little bit, the real power of and the real reward of producing it started to come back to me such as

(01:01:17)
People who are good enough to review it, going to conventions and having people bring in their copy to have it signed. I’m like, you really were here to see me. You bought the book and it’s astounding. Other things. I remember this lady came past and she’s like, ah. Because at the sitting convention I always like to just be, how are you going? Please just pretend I’m not here. This is a bookshop, don’t feel obliged. Have a flick, have a look through. And I said, have a look. Go ahead, have a look. And she’s like, oh no, no, no, no, no. I read it last year and I couldn’t sleep for three days. And I’m like, I dunno whether to say sorry or thank you.

Leigh Chalker (01:02:08):
Take that

Paul Bedford (01:02:10):
And, and there’s other people who, and understandably because this is with every work that it was water for duck back because that’s, and I’ll explain, I’ll go into genre a little bit now, but the list was when I wrote the list, I knew it scared me writing it, but didn’t horror scare me. But it was when it was written about, they would say it was psych horror. And so with any genre, some people it terrifies a share of them and others, it doesn’t touch them in the slightest. So there was that side of it too. I knew this was an incredibly niche work and that is lovely in itself because you are getting to the people who it will mean something to. And it meant a lot to a lot of people I have received and I treasure them. I have letters from people who before I wrote the list, I would hear about someone saying, oh, your band got me through, or Your music got me through a hard time. And I’m like, how surely you, and then I had it said to me and I’m like, oh, okay. And now I see the power of

(01:03:56)
Creativity and creative works to literally help someone. Even if, and I don’t know if you had the addition, but I wrote quite a personal sort of summary of what the list meant to be and where it came from in the back of one of the editions. And it talks about how the, even as dark as the list is, it’s a positive work because it’s somewhere that people can put their pain not into themselves and not into their others. And that’s where I put mine. I mean look, I’ve stuffed up my life quite a few times and done crap things I think everyone has. But once you find a process or a method

Paul Bedford (01:05:02):
To,

Paul Bedford (01:05:04):
Or just the pure need lead to augment that pain and everything that’s inside you that you do not like, if you can augment that, if you can get that out of you, it doesn’t matter what form it takes it, it will literally physically change you physically, mentally, they’re all the same. To me. The braint stems go right through the body. You are mind that moves around. So what I’m saying is that anyone that is going through something and there’s a lot of people going through a lot, just the simple power of just putting words onto the page is beyond what you can comprehend until you do it. And if you were to lean towards writing or being creative, which I think, can you see my fingernails, my daughter open in that fingernail shop, she’s sick. So when your daughter says put fingernail polish on your do it, I quite like it. It’s been here for three weeks.

Leigh Chalker (01:06:53):
Whatever makes you happy, man. I don’t judge anyone Paul.

Paul Bedford (01:06:58):
No, no, no. I don’t care about TI just keep forgetting it’s on. Yeah. So I suppose what I’m leading to is that if you in any way have some creative urge, follow it. Follow it without expectation, like you were saying before with your drawing, you just start, you just start and you start with that expectation and you start with that ego and you start with just a place of, I’m going to do this. You remove all emotion, you remove all expectation and you do it for yourself. And any judgement that happens outside that space, outside your walls where it was made, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter in the slightest. And that took me a while to get, because I came into this not having reduced any work. So man, Jesus Christ, I felt those darts, I felt ’em and I fired back and that was the wrong thing to do. But I didn’t know not to do it. And I love the fact that I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what people think about your work, good or bad, it’s great if they get something out of it. It really is. That’s incredible. But it’s all beyond your control. So I guess what I’m saying is don’t let fear hold you back from creating because fear is one of the things that needs to come out. If you in any way want to do anything, I’m sneaking over my, I’m just sneaking over, I’m just going to start playing my board game.

Leigh Chalker (01:09:04):
Rolling

Paul Bedford (01:09:05):
And the list. Yep. Always stick. Yeah. So at the back of Darren Close’s struggle, I dunno if you read that or not. I

Leigh Chalker (01:09:25):
Have read that. Man, that’s a great comic book.

Paul Bedford (01:09:28):
Oh my God, that is the list but turned even more inward. That has got to be the most courageous work I have encountered. And I was gobsmacked when I read that. I’m like, the courage to write that book was a place of such egoless base emotion. I’ll just pick it up now and and I read it and this is just astounding. And Darren was, I start to ask me to write a forward for that and I wrote it. And the reason I mentioned struggle was because we’re talking about fear not inhibiting your, don’t let fear inhibit your decision to create. I wrote about that in the back of his book because that’s what really touched me was that that was both a work of fear about fear, but not written, wouldn’t have been written if you felt fear that was work, like a lift that it had to come out and that is the best thing he’s ever done. Killer rule is great, but struggle was that’s an immense, I have not encountered another work like that novel comic movie, nothing. It is so it so unique in its self-exploration and so courageous in having the balls to release that it doesn’t give himself enough credit. It is fuck the list. Everyone should read struggle. Everyone should read it.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:58):
I would a hundred percent agree with you. I’ve spoken to Darren on Chinwag before and I’ve mentioned my appreciation of struggle as well because you are a hundred percent right I guess. Excuse me. I came from meeting Darren and doing a short story for Kru and then deciding through ego that I didn’t need to learn anymore. I didn’t need to cut my chops. I’ll just go and do my story that I’ve been working on for 10 years and I don’t know what planet I was on, man. And then it was a couple of years later, touch base with you on this later we can get into it because I love talking about it as well, is I was shock and drinker and made a total dick in myself and just over extended just bullshit, fake confidence, no character. When I looked back on myself, something was there, but so you drink to, because maybe I’ll find myself because you don’t have the strength to look at yourself in the mirror man and ask those questions. And it was around this particular time, I’ve tried to stop drinking, oh man, I don’t know, 10 times in my life until I did finally break it.

(01:13:54)
And I came across struggle. And it wasn’t just the comic book side of things, it was that comic sits with me. You do, you just get certain pieces of work, men that just sit with you and they resonate over a vast quantity or space of field. And I could take what he was feeling into my own frailties at that time. And man, I’ve said it before and I’m so glad we’re talking about it now amongst this is like if anyone has never read the struggle written by Darren Close, absolutely do because you’re not alone out there. Struggle is awesome. You’re not alone out there having fear.

(01:14:53)
I think, I guess to a certain extent, fear is you have to break it. I don’t know how everyone breaks it differently, but much like I suspect the road that you’ve travelled down Paul, is when you’ve got something that’s got to come out, you can’t keep it in because that shit churns you up, man. And you don’t know what it is screaming in you to come out man. And then you just have to man, you just got to do it. And sometimes if it’s your thing of on the computer, the typewriter and get it out like you did that first time man, where you just punched it out and you did it in a night, I would assume that the feeling of relief in you at that moment would’ve been absolutely immense man. And you wouldn’t even have known where this thing had grown or come from. And I feel the same with particular drawings and comic books and stuff.

(01:16:09)
I’m a huge believer in creativity. Man is so important to people. I say this, I say it regularly because I firmly believe it. Creativity has saved my life. If I did not know how to draw or write or paint or do any of these things, man, I can tell you dead in the eye right now to anyone that’s listening, I would not be here, man. It’s been close. Let me tell you closer than what many people out there had realised. And the only thing that kept me here man, was like, how do I get it out? And sometimes it is just a blank page and a piece of pencil and a little bit of pencil and boom. I said, Ryan, Ryan O’Connor. Being humble in the face of enormous cost of creativity is where the biggest growth happens. A hundred percent man. Spot on.

(01:17:13)
And I think it’s in that moment where I think you grow in that moment, you pure and intuition, you, you’re pure in the fear state and in that moment you are balanced and you don’t realise it because you’re so raw in your emotion that your heart, body and mind are bomb. They’re right there. And then you go in this long search of how do I get my body, heart and the chi, whatever any of you want to call it, the balance, the eye, all of this stuff. And it’s in those moments, man. It’s in that. It’s just in that beauty of the stream, the flow. And it’s amazing what you can do. And to be proud of what comes out of you, no matter what you do, is a beautiful feeling to have those moments. For me, Paul, all like, man, I don’t know dude, I just wouldn’t, I completely understand with you man. It’s like, fuck, I’ve been low, man. You got no idea how low I’ve been.

Paul Bedford (01:18:37):
I have an idea.

Leigh Chalker (01:18:38):
Barely fucking human sometimes man. I don’t even know who I am. And the only thing that’s kept me going, man, was just paper and pen and just sit there and draw and focus and bleed on that shit.

Paul Bedford (01:18:56):
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Leigh Chalker (01:18:58):
I’m feeling, I’m feeling it.

Paul Bedford (01:19:00):
Absolutely. Our creativity is literally scientifically indefinable. They cannot define it. They can’t define it, they dunno where it comes from. You can have your different divergence of minds, you can have your chemical balances or whatever. They cannot define. It is not, you can’t data point it. You can’t extrapolate where it’s going to go. And it is the only form of magic because it exists in a place where until you’re experiencing it, like you said, the overwhelming feeling is that it is all consuming and you are so in that moment that where this work goes or what this work will achieve or who will read it or how it’ll look does not matter. And you are just right there. And all the best works are like that when you encounter them, that in the process, in the actual manufacturing, in the word to word picture to picture manufacture of that work, that person is not thinking about anything else. They could be George Martin, they could be Spielberg, they could have produced numerous creative work, any successful creative, but when they’re in there on their next work, on their next song or their next line or the next

(01:21:17)
Picture, that’s where they are. That’s where they are. That’s it. The board game I’m working on at the moment, board games in a golden age, and this is Uber nerd Lee, you’ve got no idea. It’s like one of those 40 pages of rules and war dollies fighting each other and all that sort of stuff. And I

Paul Bedford (01:21:48):
Love it. I love it.

Paul Bedford (01:21:51):
And my co-designer and business partner, Alan and I we’re launching after five and a half years. We’re launching on Kickstarter in October. And some of these games gross are making 2, 3, 4, 10, 12, 9, $10 million going across the world, YouTube content, all that sort of stuff. And yet, and my game may do that, it may die in the ass. Once again, getting back to expectation and yet despite the potential of those things happening, when I’m sitting in my study working on the rules, whether that particular statistic or mechanic is a plus one or plus two is the only thing I’m thinking about

(01:22:57)
And not intentionally. I don’t intentionally go, I’ve got to shut out. I’ve got the marketing or the freight, the warehousing, the YouTube critics that, oh, the graphic design or the expense and it just doesn’t occur. And you probably feel that’s what it sounds like, what you felt and you feel, and I’ve seen other artists drawing where there’s just lost in it. It’s lost and you get lost in it. And that’s the other side of the magic is you are okay, you play a computer game, but the computer game isn’t yours. Oh my God. But it’s not yours. You are experiencing another person’s creation. If you are watching a footy, you are being an audience to something that’s happening, playing great playing. That’s probably the same thing. So it’s getting back to being in the moment and it’s almost like it’s, you don’t put yourself in there intentionally. It just happens when you are working and you just feel like a vessel. That sounds strange. I’ve heard other writers and creators saying basically you are the vessel through which the work comes.

Leigh Chalker (01:24:30):
I don’t think that’s all. Again, like we were talking about before, I don’t think that’s strange. If you were to have spoken to me about that a few years ago, I can honestly tell you now, I would’ve understand the words, I would’ve understand the literature of what I’ve read about that particular comment, but I would not have been able to understand the emotion or the actual a magic of it. And I can, I have and I do. And that strangely enough, it’s like one of the, and this will equate back to what we were talking about, no expectations and stuff. Where I’ve been taught by my teacher and it’s fairly in depth stuff, is to deal with my things. And it’s not for everyone, but for me it’s exactly what I needed is transcendental meditation. So I do transcendental meditation in two sessions each day and they’re 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon where I have my time.

(01:26:01)
And I won’t go into my experiences within myself, but that’s for me, that’s personal. But my second teacher said to me upon my first meditation is You must enter these things with no expectation. No expectation. And I didn’t understand and upon pondering this, because when I draw and I’m in the zone, you are with your thoughts and they’re not intrusive thoughts. People in the world have intrusive thoughts, man, you know what I mean? And by intrusive, it’s what did this person say? And that person may not have said anything, but then an hour later you’re still thinking about what that person said and they never said anything.

Paul Bedford (01:26:50):
It’s illusion narrative in your

Leigh Chalker (01:26:51):
Mind, this shit up and you’ve created stress and you’ve created all this unnecessary

Paul Bedford (01:26:57):
That doesn’t exist

Leigh Chalker (01:26:58):
Noise. Then you snap yourself out of it. You go, man, I’m getting on my phone, I need a break. And you go and do that. So you immerse yourself in that. And what I found is you can with no expectation, every meditation is different the same way as every drawing is different. You can’t sit down and go, man, I’m going to have the best meditation I’ve ever had in my life. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to nail out the best drawing I’ve ever done. You just can’t do that because the moment you do that, you wish

Paul Bedford (01:27:33):
You could. Yeah, imagine you could, but you can’t.

Leigh Chalker (01:27:36):
You’re gone. You need to be there and ever present and in that creative zone. And with that comes an element of piece. And whether that is through drawing or writing is a particular person’s meditation, you do become the vessel. Because these, to quote and look man, I’m a huge David Lynch fan and one of the great quotes to paraphrase him is that he sees ideas as fish on the surface, there’s little fish, but if you want to go deeper and deeper sometimes and he meditates and practises other forms and things, the deeper you go, you know what I mean? Through your creative process and the more in tune you get with yourself and the vibe and everything that’s happening, the bigger the fish you catch. So the bigger the idea, therefore you do become a vessel because these thoughts are there to be caught man. And you are just the vessel just to go thank you, boom, at that particular moment.

(01:28:47)
And sometimes you get lucky and you catch the fish and sometimes you don’t. And everything in its own way is connected man and creativity, man, not just obvious it’s worked for you, it is still working for you. It is. If you took creativity away from me, man, there’s five staples in my life that if you took either of these four away from me or you didn’t respect me enough to respect these foundational pieces of me, get on your bike. And I don’t say that easy, right? Sobriety is the biggest thing that ever helped me on this way. My meditation and spiritual practises, who some of you, I would just like to clarify without going on about it, spirituality is not necessarily religion. If you do want to look into it, please feel free. There’s lots of information I won’t go on about it with people. That’s for you to find if you wish. Believe it or not, my creativity is there and it is my voice more so than this voice, my vegetarianism, which I’ve been doing for 10 years, just purely because it’s just so indistinctly me now. And the other thing to be quite frank is kindness and love man, which is what they’re, they’re the things for me that make me function and make me move forward into where I’m and have helped me get from that point of low to at least the person I’m with you now,

Paul Bedford (01:30:27):
That’s a huge journey. Aren’t small things to come across. They are, they’re not small things, they’re huge things to come across and a lot of people don’t get there get,

Leigh Chalker (01:30:40):
Because I don’t get often to talk to people in this regard. So if I’m overstepping, please let me know

Paul Bedford (01:30:50):
You’re overstepping nothing. No, it is. It’s sad how rare it is. You could talk to people like this. I’ve got a handful of friends, Bobby n Bobby did digested comic and all that sort of stuff. So he

Leigh Chalker (01:31:13):
I know digestive, yes,

Paul Bedford (01:31:14):
Okay, so he’s created digestive arter and writers have digested, we will like this incredibly articulate deep guy, really interesting way of thinking. And after I sort of moved away from the comic scene, had kids, all that sort of gear, we drifted and we had sort of really sporadic contact. And I think the last time we spoke was around,

(01:32:00)
It must’ve been 2000 in the mid-teens around there, late teens around there. And we’re the sort of guys who could talk really deep or just trash a shit of each other. We, we’ve had interviews and it’s a sled of the shit of each other the whole time and just laughing. It was great. And I rang him the other day, I just rang him. I just rang him and it was incredible. It was incredible. I had an incredible day that day. My Friday I came home and told my wife and I said, there was something strange about today, I dunno what it was, but I felt like I’d taken cocaine. I dunno where it came from. I dunno what it was. It started. And when I first said, it’s sad that these interactions are so rare. There’s another interaction I have nearly every day, which is also rare on my way to work, there’s a guy who stands out on his footpath and just waves to everyone. He just waves kisses and goes. And first time I’m like, hi mate. Fair enough. One of the sad things is that you have that reaction because you are projecting onto them like you weirdo.

(01:33:39)
And then one day I just kept on driving past him. He’s sort of a bit out of the way, but I like waving to him and one day I stopped. I mean I got to the point where I was enthusiastically giving the thumbs up as I was driving past,

Leigh Chalker (01:33:56):
He’d become an important part of your daily ritual. Important

Paul Bedford (01:33:59):
Part of the day,

Leigh Chalker (01:34:00):
Happy dude.

Paul Bedford (01:34:01):
You come across someone like that, you embrace it. Of course you have the initial, but unfortunately that’s been sort of pounded into us. Be wary, God be wary of friendly people. And one day I stopped and he walked up and just gave me a hug. I’m like, I’m waving. I go to the car and I’m waving. And he walked up, he gave me a hug, he was like, thank for stopping. And I initially thought, I don’t know all the terminology for, I thought he was maybe heavily autistic or something or maybe stands out the front. And he

Leigh Chalker (01:34:48):
Was a special person, special

Paul Bedford (01:34:50):
Person. And that’s great. And that’s what he does. And he lifts people up and he wasn’t, he was just like you and me chatting and it was such an incredible thing to stand there and talk to this man who just decided that one day he’s going to stand out there and wait to everyone. And I stood there for a good 15, 20 minutes because I intentionally go out of my way and go a bit earlier so I can stop and talk to him. And we’ve slowly gotten to know each other a little more. And as we talk, he still waved everyone I was going past. And it turns out that he had to flee for his life from war. And his younger brother was murdered when he was 23 and found with 134 bullets in him. And he’s from Lebanon. And when you talk about trauma, shit a brick, he has no one left, he’s got no one, they’ve all been killed. But when you’re saying before, I hope you don’t mind broaching this stuff, I’m like broach away. Because that’s when you get the opportunity, when you get those sadly rare opportunities to meet people like yourself or like Na Z, the guy who waves or the guy who, my mate

(01:36:28)
Jay, 1996 was an incredible year. I bought out Rob Warrior with Mattel and I met my mate Jay. And when I spoke to Jay, it was like meeting you, right? So I’d never met anyone like that in my life. Never had a conversation like that in my whole life. It’s always mates and drinking. And then you come across this person and they show you an entire new universe. Things you did not, and you find yourself that if you are open to it, all this dormant need for that kind of conversation lights you up. Probably people take drugs for you would’ve it? You would’ve thought it with your teachers conversations where you just feel like you’re floating and you’re just tapping into things where you’re like, you have, thank God I went through all that shit and hit those low lows because now to hit these highs and appreciate where I’ve come from to be feeling, I don’t know if I would’ve been open to feeling or open to this conversation without having been so low to need it. So you were talking about that place before, that horribly dark place, which I completely, I’ve been there. I know

(01:38:21)
That that’s an empty bucket. And people who, and the drinking is you’re trying to fill that bucket. Jesus Christ. I know you’re two and a half years sober, which is just incredible. Thank you. I imagine you have unshackled from it, probably 99.9% if not completely,

Leigh Chalker (01:38:52):
Mate, I definitely, I’ll put it to you this way. I don’t want to get too confident on it. It could be something that if I let my guard down for a minute will bite me on the ass, man. Do you know what I mean? And the fucking struggle is real to get through those days, man. And it’s not just, it’s not just stopping the drinking, it’s the repair of every bit of devastation you left behind, man. You know what I mean? It is. Oh dude mate, it’s like trying to get a jigsaw puzzle together that’s like 50,000 pieces spread over Queensland. You know what I mean? Slowly but surely pieces come together and I’ve been really very lucky, Paul. There’s certainly a lot of people worse off than me, man.

(01:40:09)
I’m immensely close to people in this community, have helped me through my sobriety and stuff like that and know the journey I’ve been on, which is pretty detailed and sorted. I’m very lucky to have a mother that’s extremely supportive. I’m very lucky to have six friends in particular that I would say without the universe dropping them on me out of nowhere in the space of 24 hours. Like what you said, people I hadn’t talked to for years, people that had decided that after an argument we had five or six years ago in a pub over something stupid like a stool or something, I hate you and rah, suddenly that day decided to ring me to see how I was at a very low air bit and just all of this, people won’t believe it man. And I don’t think I believed it, but when I didn’t believe it and I look back on it, it was happening all around me. I just had to take that step dude. You know what I mean? And then slowly everything went from grey to colour and then the colours have become fluorescent and then you just see, fuck man, beauty and everything, man. I’m like, I don’t know.

(01:41:41)
I can’t describe it any better than that. I would probably just my history, I started off doing podcasts with Comex during the Friday night drink and draw and I was renowned man for having a talley or 10 beers piled. So part of the identity and where I am now through my sobriety can be tracked man through these live streams and stuff that I’ve done. And it’s weird when that’s all come to me. But I don’t know, man, I think I’ve learned you can’t do anything without love man. And people out there, love Lee’s always going on about love. But I do feel love because for the first time in my life I feel love for myself and I feel love myself because I have respect for myself, because I’ve done things that I didn’t think would ever do. And you meet people that are like, you’re not successful, you don’t do this, you’re not successful, you don’t do that. It’s like, well I think I’m very successful where I need to be and what I want to do with my life and I don’t really what you think. I love you, but see you later buddy. I dunno man, you just have this, I’m at that point creatively now where what we were talking about and you were with the list is, man, if people like my comic books, that’s awesome.

(01:43:22)
That means so much. If people don’t like my comic books or what I’m doing okay too, man, thank you so much for reading. The beauty for me is the journey of the creation and whatever happens outside, it’s not up to me. It doesn’t matter, do so much. The rest is up to whoever’s watching and you can try to control it. Good luck. Good luck. You

Paul Bedford (01:43:51):
Can’t and all you’re going to do is make it worse,

Leigh Chalker (01:43:54):
Dude. You can’t control anything but yourself. Man. That’s one another lesson that I’ve learned and people can’t even do that. It’s like they’re too busy, we’re going to do this and and I was the same man. And then how I did it, Paul man, to the viewers out there, this is definitely going in a cool direction, but this is the chinwag and I apologise, I don’t get to talk to people like Paul about this stuff very often and that’s how it is. People always tell you, and these are the processes that I went through because obviously those five things that I mentioned before very important to me and we’re touching on base and resonating with each other. You’ve got a lot of those things that are very important to you. And people come at you with certain things like, oh, what do you want to be?

(01:44:47)
What do you want to do? And they’d sort of try and pigeonhole into these things and because I guess I’ve got the, because I isolated myself for 12 months, man, you know what I mean? And came out a little bit with Chin wags as I learned something, I wanted to see if it had work, you know what I mean? And I was fearful that it, I was changing. It’s hard to kick that old tenant out, you know what I mean? There’s a dude been living in his head for like 40 fucking four years, man. You know what I mean? I’m trying to find out who that dude was before you. Alcohol and drugs and trauma and shit.

Paul Bedford (01:45:27):
Absolutely

Leigh Chalker (01:45:27):
Mate. So I went through this isolation period where I was I guess gestating and growing and shit and I started thinking about it. I dunno who I want to be, but I sure as hell know what I don’t want to be. And I started writing this list of who I don’t want to be. Man,

Paul Bedford (01:45:49):
I write the list. Sorry,

Leigh Chalker (01:45:50):
Go on. That’s right, you do. I wrote my own list of who I don’t. I

Paul Bedford (01:45:54):
Dad joking now, now and then, mate.

Leigh Chalker (01:45:55):
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s cool man. You had to get it in there. Come on man. I’m with you there. I usually have a symbol here, but it’s gone find one on my phone later on a little.

(01:46:09)
But yeah man, and this list was huge and I just found it much easier, man. What do I want to do with my art? What do I want to do with this? How do I feel about this? What am I grateful for? You start off with little cliches that they tell you in the self-help books and shit like that. And then as you get deeper into it, oh man, I did. I went down all the paths. I was new to this, I didn’t know what I was feeling and stuff, but the one foundation that I had man was my creativity and my sobriety and I lent into them and everything else sort of piece

Paul Bedford (01:46:46):
All your need mate.

Leigh Chalker (01:46:47):
Yeah, man,

Paul Bedford (01:46:48):
They’re immense things. They’re huge things. I’m the same. I’ve tried to give up drinking on several occasions and in my twenties I drank a lot and Jesus, and that is your demons. Back then, man, in the nineties there was no conversation about depression and anxiety and no man, nothing. There was nothing chin up or die.

Leigh Chalker (01:47:18):
Yeah, dude, if you and I were having conversation in the early two thousands, man, we would’ve been ridiculed man to the point where it’d just be like, oh, I need to go and drink or

Paul Bedford (01:47:30):
Just

Leigh Chalker (01:47:30):
Fit in.

Paul Bedford (01:47:32):
Look, it must be an amazing time to live in. Of course there was the other side to it where people are using it for their own platform or for the wrong reasons, but religion in its purity if you used correctly, it’s an incredible tool and the best tool that you can possibly have is that it get to know yourself and that’s where you’ve gone. I’m this month, I’m this weekend, four months sober and that is the longest I’ve gone in my life.

Leigh Chalker (01:48:14):
Congratulations man. Thank you. I’m, I’m proud of you and for you man.

Paul Bedford (01:48:20):
Thank you. And I look at two and a half years and I’m like, that’s incredible because I believe from what you just said then I think you’re allowed to get confident and be proud of yourself. I don’t think it’s coming back because of all the magic you feel like you have found. I don’t think you would sacrifice that. I think you would sit in front of that drink and not take it. This is the first time, the first time out of the several attempts I’ve had. Thank you Ryan. I appreciate that. I really do. Thank you Andrew. Andrew Law. Andrew, we’re mates on Facebook. Love his work. God damn, that guy’s a great artist. This is the first time out of all the times that I have no cravings. I don’t know. Well, I had initial ones like initial, but they were so mild compared to the ravenous, if I don’t have a fucking beer, if I don’t have a fucking beer, I didn’t verbalise like that. It was always like, I can’t wait to get there. Can’t wait. That’s Friday night or it’s Thursday night or it’s Wednesday night. It was any night. And when you were saying, and I hope I’m right in repeating what you said then or catching on to what you said then is

(01:49:54)
Week after week my life is becoming more colourful and I am, it’s like I’m unlocking parts of my brain. It’s like I’m tapping into things that not only the drinking itself but the follow on from the drinking and the culture and the desire and the crap behaviour that I did all locked away. And I am now in this space and it’s strange. I never thought I’d be here where after I’m 53, after all those years, I’m thinking all those years like you back to probably 15, 16, 14, drinking different amounts at different times and a bit of dabbling in the drugs here and there. Although it never really appealed to me that much, too much of a lightweight to contemplate that it will never again be a part of my life is a welcoming thought and not a confronting one. And it’s something that I never thought I would be there. I was always like that guys long down, holy shit, I could knock ’em back. And that whole saying of one’s too many and a thousand’s not enough is holy shit. Some nights I’d go out six beers before you go out and join and a line and I still never smoked a few cigarettes. He gives a fuck.

(01:51:55)
And then if I could change one thing, although going back to what I said before, I think it was necessary to reach to, to crave growth. You probably gone really deep and dark the other way. I wish I’d never touched a drink. And I have friends who have never touched a drink.

Paul Bedford (01:52:30):
I

Paul Bedford (01:52:32):
Might have a sip here and there, might’ve tried it. I tried a cigarette once when I was 14, 15, made me cough. Never did it again, hated it. My mum smoked and everyone around smoked because it was the seventies, eighties fucking police smoke on the street. But aside from probably having three houses we might never drank, I’d also not have a whole bunch of regrets and behaviour that I’m really not proud of and a lot of just fucking dangerous fights. Fuck, I’ve got myself in some situations, I was chased with a city by 10 guys one night and I’m not going to get on a soapbox because for God’s sake I’m never ever going to get on a soapbox. But now I’m starting to, and you’ve probably started to do the same where you start to view, it’s like when it’s like in meditation and spirituality where you monitor yourself, you view yourself, you know all about that. So you don’t engage the emotional, you don’t let it overwhelm you. You can monitor, you

Leigh Chalker (01:53:53):
Recognise,

Paul Bedford (01:53:54):
You recognise it. That’s the term. And now I’m starting to view alcohol as a slow acting, expensive poison. And you start to all the things you heard about it over the years, which you ignored because fuck that I drink, I love beer, holy shit, wine, amazing. All those things you heard, you’re like, oh, fucking right. They were right all along, but you weren’t in a place with a lot of things in life. You weren’t in the place to do anything about it, whether your demons were too strong, whether you’re in the wrong crowd, but everything ultimately is your own choice.

Leigh Chalker (01:54:44):
And that’s where the control comes into it. It’s also having things happen for different times. I think we live in a world man where I know I did where at grade 12. So what are you going to do for the rest of your life if you haven’t done this by the time you’re 20, by 24, you need to have you be married. There’s all these plotted out. Seriously. I mean what the hell?

Paul Bedford (01:55:16):
They basically give you a checklist

Leigh Chalker (01:55:19):
Do. Yeah man that you’ve got to do it. If you aren’t doing this stuff by the time you’re 30 or whatever it is, you haven’t lived up to expectations. Again, no expectations. What is this shit

Paul Bedford (01:55:31):
Expectations and why there’s so many unhappy people if that’s the way to go. That is, that is almost the antithesis of the human experience and it’s, it’s like an adult peer group pressure. And you were told to do this, I were told to do this and they were told to do this and where’s the questioning of it? And look, it’s great to have a car, it’s great to have a house, but those things will not serve you beyond the purpose that they are meant to serve. Encourag meant to get you from A to B and hasn’t meant to give you shelter, A job’s meant to give you money. That’s all they’re going to do. And if you are thinking that they’re going to fulfil you or the only fulfilment they’ll give is that you’ll get recognition from peers who have the same things and think that’s the be all and end all to life. And yet they’re all drinking and there’s depression everywhere and mental illness and we have a massive suicide rate. And there’s people who would go there but for reasons don’t people with kids or people with an outlet like you have you touched on before, but there’s people on the verge and if there’s so much misery out there

(01:57:24)
Or even just massive dissatisfaction, it doesn’t have to be misery. If it’s massive dissatisfaction,

Leigh Chalker (01:57:32):
You

Paul Bedford (01:57:32):
Can’t tell me that those checking those boxes,

Leigh Chalker (01:57:38):
We aren’t causing problems if aspire to the mundane.

Paul Bedford (01:57:42):
Exactly right. Yeah. So you are not stepping outside the box. That’s an excellent way to put it. If you are not rocking the boat, you’re part of the club, come be part of the misery club mate. Fuck your dreams. They won’t work out anyway. Well I’m telling you what, your dreams don’t work out. I don’t know anything about your dreams. I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m telling you don’t do them because they won’t work out. It’ll make me feel better. If you don’t pursue your dreams, please, please stop. Please stop making me feel uncomfortable. Can you just stick with your shit job that you hate to make me feel better?

Leigh Chalker (01:58:22):
You’re a hundred percent for me. You just said something when you were talking and man, I remember I’ve kept a journal of my sobriety and varying other things, man and calendars and that I track these things. So if I go low, if I’m feeling a dip in myself because you start, what am I doing wrong? You go back and you just check things. And sometimes it can be as simple as what you ate or it’s people you hung out with or there’s factors you get in a rhythm. And when you start to really know yourself and things, I think when I remember when I was four months through and a beautiful thing you just said is you started noticing this gentleman and he was smiling and at the time that you are going through that, it’s raw man, you would be feeling raw, like you were saying, there’s little bits of it there. You’re feeling good, but there’s a little bit of rawness there. Absolutely. And there’s times where it’s got to be all you’ve got to be on it. And you see this dude who’s lost his whole family essentially. People are walking down the street kicking stones and whinging that they can’t get their 85 inch TV for $3,000 when they pour it in an ad like 200.

(02:00:08)
And here’s this guy that’s lost everything. That absolutely means everything that’s irreplaceable can’t be replaced. And this beautiful human being is standing on the side of the street trying to pass on a token of happiness and delight to those people that are going by. And Paul,

Paul Bedford (02:00:31):
He went through a hundred times what they were going through

Leigh Chalker (02:00:34):
Man. And majority of those people, Paul would be so caught up in the TV not being $3,000. You know what I mean? That they wouldn’t even notice that dude. And my point that I’m getting to is I noticed where you are when I stopped drinking that, I started noticing things like that man. I started going like, look at that dude, I’m going to stop and talk to him. I started, man, I’d just be having conversations with people in the shop, man. I’m standing at the news and see some 80-year-old woman there grumbling about a scratchy. And then next thing you know, I’m talking to her for half hour and fuck, she’s nearly dropping a false teeth out of her head, man chuckling away. And that people,

Paul Bedford (02:01:33):
They’re just not used to it. Mate, I heard an amazing, or I don’t know where from or heard it, where people just live in illusion. They literally live in illusion. And we were touch on that before and that comes back to attachment with regards to art or anything is you are making that up and you are making up 99% of your life and that’s stressing you out and it doesn’t fucking exist.

Leigh Chalker (02:02:10):
Yeah, man.

Paul Bedford (02:02:10):
And I get trapped in it. I’m fully aware of it, but I get trapped in it all the time because it’s so easily your default state is concerned. Our primal state is anxiety and awareness because that animal is still in there. We’ve got to take care of things. And yet it is now translated into things like, I can’t pay the bill or whatever. It’s that survival instinct. But now it’s been manifested into here’s 40 million things to worry about. 39, 9, 9, 9,000 9, 9, 9 aren’t going to come true. But make sure you spend your whole day worrying about them.

Leigh Chalker (02:03:04):
Yeah, man. And don’t sleep and cool with yourself.

Paul Bedford (02:03:10):
All these people you like the people we talked about before, literally walking around thinking about things, stressing about things that don’t exist. They have no bearing on their life. They may not matter, sorry, they may not happen. There’s a fucking good chance they won’t happen. And yet all their kicking the stones and whinging is a result of something that doesn’t, it is not part of their life. Whereas Naze, the guy who waves everyone, he’s right it, he’s a trance snapper. He’ll snap you out of that trance. And he does with me. First time I saw him, I’m like, yeah, goodday mate. But still had that effect on. He was like, how cool was that? And then that one day I stopped, I took a selfie with him and we chatted, and you’re right, this sobriety thing, and part of the regret of drinking was that I’ve probably missed 10,000 of those experiences and that hurts. And how much more would I advance as a person as a result of those experiences that I didn’t miss? So I’m way back.

Leigh Chalker (02:04:42):
No, you’re not. You’re feeling exactly what a person from my experience should be feeling. And I have felt in the same point, man, where you are starting to, and I can tell this from talking with you now you’re starting to embrace your sobriety. You know what I mean? Because I was caught in a regretful. How do I repair this? How do I repair that? And then I started realising it’s not until you’re here that you look back and the pieces start joining together that the reason why that was happening was to get you to this point. And this point is the point for you and everyone’s point is different. Do you know what I mean? That you can’t compare what you’ve done with anyone else. You can only take your experiences and try and improve on yourself as of this moment. You should lean into your children, your misses, the things you’ve got around you, and you simply start with being grateful. If you feel like those claws are digging in, man, just look at what’s close to you right now. And if you break it down too, if you hadn’t have gone through any of that, you would not be here. And you already mentioned pure love for your daughter before when you said, man, she’s looking at me with those eyes. She knows how to play me.

(02:06:19)
If you hadn’t have gone through that in that moment, would you have had that affect you as wholeheartedly as it did? I mean, no,

Paul Bedford (02:06:27):
You’re very right. You’re right. And I don’t

Leigh Chalker (02:06:30):
Be too hard on yourself, man.

Paul Bedford (02:06:31):
Oh no, no. I probably came across, no, I’m not being hard on myself. I think what I mean is I think I have, there is a regret there. It’s not a painful regret. It’s more a realisation. That’s a better way to put it. A realisation. Yeah. So yeah, there was something I heard the other day, I can’t recall who was talking about it, but they said to really experience life, the lucky ones break down the scary bit is not everyone recovers. Not everyone gets back from that. But if you can find a way and it takes courage, more courage than getting in the blue or anything like that, then that’s the real meat of fucking life to be really to just put it out there. They’re not drinking and I’m the same as you. I have a few fundamentals that now define me, which I never thought would happen. The first one is creativity. We’ve discussed that I never thought I’d be a creative person. Everyone’s creative. Sorry, what’s that great quote? A creative child is a survivor or something like that. Someone who survived because they hold onto it somehow. Even if it was shut down for a long time. Everyone is creative. That sounds like a cliche, but God, it’s so true. The second is my family. God.

(02:08:39)
People choose not to have kids or choose to. And I never thought I was going to be a father. So there’s the second thing I didn’t think I was going to be. And that is the only level of magic that exceeds creativity for me is my kids. The moment to moment magnitude of their existence is overwhelming. And I have never been so aware of okay so much stuff personally has never come up for me before I became a father. Both dark and light really, really makes you question yourself because now you’re a dad mate, you’ve got a job and if you want to be a good father and produce good humans, and I think so far I’m doing well. That’s another thing I think I naturally lean towards things I know nothing about. So I’ll try that. I’ll try that. Try that. I just scaring the crap out of myself. And the other is, so we have the creativity and the kids and sobriety and they are three things. I probably have something else.

(02:10:30)
I live a very quiet life and I’m probably like you, I think if I was a super shy kid growing up. But then I discovered alcohol and partying and I put on this false facade like you’ll mention before, and that I came full circle and I’m back to being who I was, not who I thought I had to be. And I’ve come back to quiet and nothing means more to me than well so easy to say. Nothing means more to me. I really embrace the quiet life and quiet mornings, getting up at particular hours like four in the morning to work in my game. That’s quiet. But even loud, kids are quiet because they’re like a form, they’re screaming. And energy to me feels quiet. Whereas to people who don’t have kids alive, it’s jarring to me. That’s quiet. That’s what it’s meant to be. That’s life. So those things, yeah, I’m glad you said your fundamentals before because they sound like things that you didn’t expect to happen in your life, you always drew, but you probably never realise that it would come to the point where having that removed would remove part of you.

Leigh Chalker (02:12:05):
I think they also firmed for me, man, when I went through that, what don’t I want to be? You know what I mean? And what don’t I want to become? And I realised the importance of those five things was through fire, man. You know what I mean? I’ve been through fire and those things are what kept me going, mate. And I don’t know why necessarily to begin with, I can’t give you an answer. They’re not in any particular order. I think if you would’ve asked me before, obviously I would never have said sobriety several years ago. I always would’ve said creativity. I believe I’ve always looking back on it now, I went to private schools and look, I was baptised a Catholic, but I would probably think that I am in line with just about every good portion of religion. As we said before, there’s a lot of good in it. It’s just the ceremony and the pomp and dickheads wearing walking around with staffs and gold bling and that and all that shit.

(02:13:29)
Yeah man, I’ve always been of a spiritual nature. I guess I just had to find myself man to realise that I never really spoke about a lot of this stuff with people. I’d always been, a lot of people that knew me well would always say like, man, you just keep shit in. You know what I mean? Don’t even know what you’re thinking. They would when I had some beers, because generally I’d be 90% good, but some of it had come out and it wasn’t so pretty. I lost a lot of friendships like that because I didn’t have the emotional, I just didn’t have the emotional man tools, maturity to be able to communicate with people, understand, because I did hide behind. And then it all becomes a cycle. You drink more, you draw less and create less. And I mean it’s all cyclical. Do you know what I mean? And then when you just go, I’m stopping that wheel, man, I’ve got to pick a point. I’m not going anywhere. And there were a series of events that happened over time that were far worse than the event that I went, no, no more. And that was it. And I never went back.

(02:14:49)
It was, I won’t go into the event because that will remain forever within me. And with all due respect to people listening and yourself, Paul, there are only a handful of people that I’m willing to share that with because that is a deeply personal nature to me. But that was the first time in my life where I lay in a particular position and put a call out to the universe man and just went, fuck, I need to change, I need help. I need it now. I’ll do whatever I got to do. Boom. And man was rolling. And that’s what we were talking about with magic in this conversation we’ve had tonight, man is you don’t necessarily realise these things are happening.

(02:15:43)
And they do happen in everyday life, man. People just don’t see them. Everyone has their choices. I’m in no way saying how I found my way is better than how someone finds their way. Or if someone doesn’t find their way. All I’m hoping, man, for me, I know what it’s brought me. I can feel the change in myself. I can see that your calm nature from meeting you tonight and talking and stuff, and we’re just chilling and we’re talking about a subject and certain subjects that people some would be very uncomfortable with. But this is the point of communication. And this is what people, men, particularly of our gender, sorry, a generation I should say are and were not brought up with to be able to this. Because if we went, I want to fucking cry because something means that much to me. And you would just get met with mate, toughen the fuck up and go and play football. Alright, get over it. And you bottle this shit up. And it does. It happens. And these are all, communication is, I believe you can’t get anything right with no communication, man,

Paul Bedford (02:17:06):
Kids,

Leigh Chalker (02:17:07):
Girlfriends, friends, any relationship, man.

Paul Bedford (02:17:11):
Yep. I am with you all the way. Especially with the bottling up part. My dad pissed off when he was three, pissed off is the wrong word, okay? He was 20, mum was 17, okay? They were young. I don’t blame him in the slightest. We only exist on a jokey sort of level. We weren’t close for a lot of years. And he is a man with a huge heart, but he finds it difficult to show. And he came from Australia before even what we grew up in. So when he left at three, when I was three, I wasn’t cognizant of that. He’d gone really? I would’ve felt it on some level. But then we lived in, I don’t know if you know West Holberg, but it’s okay. So let’s say it’s an awful place.

(02:18:34)
Let’s say it’s worst. Let’s say it’s about one of the worst you could live in. So I had a single mom with raising me. She was 17, 18, no qualifications, a smart woman but not educated. And so she had a kid thrust upon her before she even got to grow up, develop any tools, understand anything about life, and there were some pretty awful things that happened to her, which I think shut her down. And so as a result of her being shut down, she was a good mom. She was a great mom, really hard worker, all that sort of stuff. But we did not exist on the level where we talked. And I went through a lot of stuff as a kid, some of it nefarious what happened to me. And I was also born with a club foot, so I couldn’t walk properly. I was on a trolley for a long, long time, still couldn’t walk correctly for a long, long time and massively bullied about it. So when we start to move into where the list came from, going from being bullied at school to not the healthiest home relationship, I too shut everything. Everything. Because you have no outlet. And

(02:20:31)
As when you throw shyness, debilitating shyness into that mix, and you are really doing your head in as a kid without even realising it, but you just think that’s the way it is. And then you combine that with the seventies and eighties and nineties, where don’t you dare show any of that emotion? Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (02:20:55):
Man.

Paul Bedford (02:20:56):
And you don’t even show it around yourself because you just eat it. And then you go through your teen years and you don’t have any tools, you don’t develop any tools, you don’t have any, I had nowhere to turn when shit stuff happened. My mom was dealing with too much. She was a single mom with two kids working two jobs at sometimes she busted her ass for us. But there wasn’t that other side of things where I could talk to anyone about all the awful stuff that both experienced and was currently experiencing. And that took its toll. So when I got older and you discover the drink, that’s where the demons came out.

(02:22:24)
Or actually it was a way to get the demons out into the bottle and shit. I’d drop myself off and get in fights because I did nine years of martial arts and kickboxing and you name it, if the demons weren’t coming out via drinking, then all that rage when I discovered martial arts, that was discovering creativity because I could put all this anger somewhere again constructively. But unfortunately, and like you were saying with your history, is that when you have no tools to deal with these things, no conversation, no terminology, even no channels, when you drink, they will come out. And so while I’d never start a fight, fuck me, if there was a slightest,

Leigh Chalker (02:23:50):
I’d finish it.

Paul Bedford (02:23:53):
If there was a slightest thing to tick me off, I was there. And I used to walk around angry because I was angry. I was angry. You can’t hold all that stuff in. Humans need an outlet. What does Phil Smo say? The releasing of anger is better than any medicine under the sun. A lot Panera. But you can only live like that for so long before

Leigh Chalker (02:24:27):
It turns to bitterness, man, anger and it poison man. And it kills you from the inside

Paul Bedford (02:24:37):
And you’re not, there’s no feeling good about it. But you dunno any other option, you don’t have another option. You don’t know where to go with this stuff. And that’s until you fuck up on a major way. I can’t remember the amount of times I could have fucking died. Holy shit. If not in a fight then in a car accident or it’s doing stupid shit. The amount of people I’ve hurt and I’ve been hurt because everyone, they’re all the fucking same. Everyone was the same. And some of us, like yourself and I, and probably the people watching or I,

(02:25:43)
We found creativity and I was like, Ew, what’s the point without it? And that was a massive, I still kept drinking, but that was something where I’m like, now my life has turned around and now I know what I want and I can’t believe I’m so fortunate to know what I want rather than be getting back to what was saying before, get the kids, get the house, get the car. And if you want those things, that’s great, but don’t expect them to be the answer. Finding the answer instead of being given told the answer is the difference. Because you can’t be told what you want. There’s people out there I know who are great singers, just tradies mates, whatever, who don’t want to take that talent anywhere because they don’t want any sort of, they love their private life and they love being anonymous. And their wives are like, he could make us a fortune. He could blah, blah. He an Australian idol. He could sing on ads. I bet you can’t make someone want something and for what reason? Why would you push? The worst thing you could do is push someone creatively.

Leigh Chalker (02:27:08):
Yeah, man. Most

Paul Bedford (02:27:10):
Natural personal thing in the world.

Leigh Chalker (02:27:12):
And it has to come that way. That’s the flow. If you force it, it won’t work. You can read that man. If anyone’s got their self-help books or they want to read Buddhist books and all that sort of stuff. One of the things, because man, believe me, I’ve been down a deep hole here trying to find within, and it’s a work in progress. Don’t think my greatest enlightenment man was realising I believe enlightenment’s all bullshit. Because when you think you’re enlightened, you’re so far away being enlightened, man. You know what I mean? So don’t go sp screwing that. It’s like, come on now. Because it’s learning. Every step is learning every day.

Paul Bedford (02:28:03):
There’s no end, there’s no end,

Leigh Chalker (02:28:05):
There’s no end man. And I would say that, man, I think I love the Aldo Huxley quote, and he was nearing the end of his life and he said after 45 years of studying people as to how they could treat each other better, the only thing I can come down to is just be kind. And at the end of the day, you can break everything down. But if you’re kind to people around you, if you’re kind to yourself, then you do start noticing little things happening and things start going in your favour. And I’m not talking suddenly you’re going to walk outside and trip over a bucket of like 500 bucks, you know what I mean? But you’ll be walking down the street and suddenly someone will go, oh, good morning. And you’ll just be like, hello, how are you going? And it starts slow, you know what I mean? It doesn’t start as in bang, it just starts slow and you just build things up and then that filters into every capacity. Like man,

Paul Bedford (02:29:06):
It’s so strange. It’s like a magic. It’s like people can pick up on it. Like I tell my kids, the attitude you put out is the attitude you get back

Leigh Chalker (02:29:19):
A hundred percent man.

Paul Bedford (02:29:21):
And the way perspective is everything, the way you view the world, what you want to see is what you will see.

Leigh Chalker (02:29:28):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Bedford (02:29:30):
It so simple.

Leigh Chalker (02:29:32):
And it is if you want to see people in countries and different things like that, I don’t know how you get that because kids, they aren’t bored with that. They’re trained in that. They’re shown that. And this is what I mean, everything. You can break it down again, the connectivity of things, whether it’s the comic book community, you and me having met 30 years ago to where we are now having this conversation allegedly.

(02:30:00)
Yeah, yeah, man. Allegedly. Yeah. And the cycle of animals and life. If you cut down a tree, you are taking fucking that koalas home away, which means it’s got, I mean everything. You look at everything, man, it’s all joined together and shit. And your action creates a reaction. And it’s the duality. And words have power and oh man, you could just, it’s a loop. Everything’s a loop. That’s what I mean. That’s why I did come to the conclusion, man. It was only recently men. I haven’t even told one of my great mates of late this one, but I dunno, in a strange way, here you go. This is all weird stuff. So my mom moved away when I was 18 and my dad died when I was 20. And I’d never not lived with my mom for a long time.

(02:31:10)
And I’m by myself because look, I won’t go into details again. Certain things that I have to keep for myself, I can’t give everything away. But I had a relationship breakdown that was pretty fucking bad. And to put it down in a very simple layman’s term is that I realised that sobriety was what I needed. And my partner at the time, she decided that she wanted to keep drinking. And two people that think differently along such a depth of thought in that regard cannot survive the process. So therefore, paths dissect. And I went into seclusion for 14, 15 months and my mom’s my mom, I love my mom, but much like yours, Paul worked very hard. My dad was only on the scene, but left a huge mark for about seven years of my life. And mom and I was probably more a dad sort of a guy, you know what I mean? The mom. And it’s no disrespect to mom, I love my mom like fuck, he’s always been there. But it just became evident of, laid through a personal thing that happened with my mother, and it became aware to me that she was in a crisis to an extent. Or if something wasn’t done within the next 12 months, it was going to turn into something very, very bad of that I won’t get into either. That’s her story.

(02:33:07)
And for the first time in my life, I was able to help her and go to her and offer a solution wholeheartedly and say, it’s my turn to help you now. You know what I mean? And far out, man, that was where everything just fucking went, Ong. And I don’t know, man, I can’t explain the weird, I dunno, man. It was like I two feet off the ground, man. I was like bulletproof for days. Everything just, all the dots joined just everything there. And there’s work to do. But that was the moment where it was just like, okay, everything. That’s where it was like, fuck man, there ain’t no eye. Lee only exists because mom and dad call me Lee. I’m just the ball energy in a sack of skin and skeleton bouncing around, man. Yeah, we forget that. Oh man,

Paul Bedford (02:34:18):
Forget, oh shit, we’re at corn complex. I can’t believe there are no sock pairs. I can’t. And then contemplate for that five minutes, how do we not have any socks? And you get lost in stuff like that. And then yet you sit back and you go, this is an astounding journey I’m on. And yet we get caught up in such trivial shit. But unfortunately that’s also part of survival. But I suppose if we lived in a constant state of spiritual transcendence, well, I don’t think we could, can we? I don’t think we could. I think the real magic is that we are on some level still animals who are capable of these sort of this kind of adventure.

Leigh Chalker (02:35:30):
I think that’s the best way we need to look at life, mate, is people are scared of change. Where change is an essential for growth, change is scary. But that comes to the fear. You need to break your fear. This is all part of the flow. This is part of letting go of the bank that you’re so desperately clinging onto. Don’t resist just flow, man. Don’t just flow. You know what I mean? Aimlessly, but maybe approach things with intent. And I’m not talking about intention with malice, I’m talking about intention with direction. This is what I’m realising is know what you want to do today, know what you want to do tomorrow, know what you want for yourself.

Paul Bedford (02:36:17):
Intent is absolutely the right word. And you can absolutely flow through magically. I do with regards to the creation of a board game, but I approach it in a militaristic mindset. I’m up at four in the morning and I will do an hour or an hour and a half before I go back to work or I take off to work, and then on the weekends I’ll be up the same and spend anywhere up to six or seven hours. So you’re right, it is not flowing through a ferry on the wind. It is purposeful thinking. And as much as creativity is magic, it sustenance and work like you were saying before, where your drinking overtook your drawing and that shuts down part of you and that shuts down the important part, which again, obviously it found its way out again because it has to. Creativity is something that can be silenced, but it can’t be stopped.

(02:37:29)
And if you stop it, I don’t understand directors and writers and loc who say I’ve retired and announce it. Firstly, announcing it publicly is an ego move. I don’t know if they’re looking for people say, no, no, the great blah blah, don’t stop. Secondly, that’s not their choice. Christopher Nolan, he’s like, oh, I’ve retired. I’m making any more films five films ago. You dunno who you are, mate. I don’t mean that in disrespect to who his work. I mean, it surprised me that someone who produces that kind of work would say something like that. And I don’t know him. Maybe he was going through a crisis, but personally, you probably don’t say those things publicly because creativity, that’s an incredibly personal choice. Your part love’s the wrong word. I respect a band or a creator that just fades and just, they probably move into different kinds of work. Say for example, my favourite band is tool and I can just see them one day just not releasing anything. They just stopped. Pink Floyd just stopped.

(02:39:01)
I don’t think they’re the kind of band I would be disappointed if they said we’re breaking up. I don’t understand the we’re breaking up thing. Okay. Essentially you’re very much a public entity, but what you create remains personal. It’s like with the George Ara Martin thing with his books, he hasn’t stopped being creative, but I honestly think he’s made the quiet decision to not continue that particular work. And a lot of people are disappointed because they want their bookie so they can then turn around and bag him out like what? It takes so long and rip him apart. But I think creativity itself cannot be stopped. You can try and bottle it, but the bottle’s going to explode can be long. You probably have long pauses or long space of time between projects. I’ll only pursue something that makes my heart go all a flutter. I have several scripts and games and all that sort of things that I haven’t not stopped. I haven’t stopped them, but it’s like it’s not their time type of thing. Whereas with the list that told me come out, but Road Warrior was my board game. That was something that I stumbled into and that was my first

(02:41:04)
Commercial thing that I didn’t produce that came out and that was surreal and astounding. And I’ve bought out a few little comics here and there and I’ve worked on a few other games and it wasn’t until for the latest board game where I’m at that I like to call it positive obsession because it’s difficult for me to operate. It’s difficult for me to pick a moment in a day where I’m not considering something about it unless I’m thinking about something funny my kids did or something funny or wife said just rad intrusive thoughts like you were saying before is that will be always on my mind for someone and I drive for a job that’s dangerous. But so maybe Christopher Nolan had just a spate of ideas and then just didn’t have any, and maybe that’s what prompted the retirement thing. But I still don’t understand the, maybe he lost faith in himself. I mean with the list I wrote, I started writing part two and I released book one of part two. I dunno if you’ve read it or not. And I sort of going sort of contradicting myself here, but I’ll be honest, I did say, look, I don’t want to continue this.

(02:43:01)
And I mainly said that because I think people had an expectation. But looking back on that, I went into the personal reasons of why. And the list too I felt was I really, I think the power of the list was because it doesn’t answer your questions, it makes you come up with your own answers. And great people have come to me and I’m like, not what I think, I wouldn’t say this, but I’m like, that’s not what I think. But it’s amazing that you’ll come to these conclusions out of this work where I thought something different. That’s incredible. Where I felt the list too, while I enjoyed the story, felt like it was an answer that I had to give rather than I wanted to give because people are like what happened afterwards? And because the ambiguous ending, and I should have stuck with my initial belief and confidence in the work that a sequel would only denigrate the list itself. The first book, so sorry, Henry, sorry to draw another a hundred drawings. Geez, they were good. Those guys, they stuck with five years Lee.

Leigh Chalker (02:44:33):
Yeah man, man, they believed in you. Do you know what I mean?

Paul Bedford (02:44:39):
That’s 900 drawings, mate.

Leigh Chalker (02:44:42):
Yeah,

Paul Bedford (02:44:42):
Man. And Henry was working full time. Tom had two kids working full time. I had no concept of what kids were like because I didn’t have him at that stage. But I’d send Tom a page and he’d send it back the next day. God a machine, and beautifully done. We were such different personalities. Henry is a quiet, intelligent, contemplated guy who really knows his stuff and knows all about comics. So when he tried to talk to me about him and I didn’t know any very short conversation.

Leigh Chalker (02:45:21):
See it’s strange how you just get some things that just work, man. I’ve spoken to mates of mine and weirdly enough we did a comic book, a group of us, SPIE, Ben Sullivan, Ryan Valour and myself. And it was strange to see that they were here tonight that your daughter’s name is Rosie. Because the last drawing that I drew on the weekend, because I get up at four o’clock every morning even when I am working and come down into the studio to draw. But that drawing there is her name is Rosie and

Paul Bedford (02:46:09):
That’s amazing.

Leigh Chalker (02:46:11):
And that comic book is called Ring Around the That’s very cool. And we are working on

Paul Bedford (02:46:17):
Show her that

Leigh Chalker (02:46:17):
Putting the pieces together,

Paul Bedford (02:46:19):
That is her inside. Believe me.

Leigh Chalker (02:46:23):
Well there man. So I mean weird how synchronicities happened there. It’s there. It’s like that’s magic. Your daughter’s Rosie, and there’s Rosie and here we are. But I would say from talking to you tonight, man, and delving because everything we’ve spoken about tonight, well for some people out there may be confronting, some people may not want to hear it. That’s okay. You know what I mean? They may be ready, they may not be. Everyone’s timing is different. It’s not my place to force, it’s just chinwag to give information, man. Like forcing power, powers manipulation and power only hurts, man. That’s what I mean. I believe in kindness and love, inflammation, process it yourself, get to know people and you take it as you wish.

(02:47:17)
But as we touched base with those things earlier, man is like, I can totally see where the list has come from now by you just talking man and us broaching on these subjects and things like that. The father, the son, just that quintessential relationship with the boy and his dad, you know what I mean? How much shit you must have coped for as you said, your club fought, getting bullied and then feeling a million bucks when you were learning martial arts and stuff and feeling bulletproof and then having that anger that can turn to bitterness and then you just man vomited this script that had to come out of you and you immediately felt healed because there was some spiritual thing that had to come out of you’re a beast or something, man. You know what I mean? And then you got it out. But it also inevitably led you pushed you onto the path of you realised your creativity and then a gift was given to you in your first board game, which created a love there in itself.

(02:48:32)
You know what I mean? And then man, the one thing that I’ve learned about you from tonight, Paul, in everything we’ve spoken about man, is very early on when you were introducing yourself, you said that you mentioned the word hope. And I think that hope is a very important word for anyone and for everyone to think about. Because even though Paul mentioned that this is a dark comic book, it’s confronting it certainly, I like mystery and it did leave me with questions and it allowed me to play in the theatres of my mind as to where I thought the story was going and what would happen. And I’ve wondered for a long time about it, as I’ve said earlier, but there is hope and there’s always hope in some of the darkest places, man. And I think that you’ve conveyed that with the list. I think you’ve conveyed that with your story tonight, brother.

Paul Bedford (02:49:55):
Thank you,

Leigh Chalker (02:49:59):
Man. I’d keep sitting here talking to you forever in a day. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that this probably won’t be the last time you and I have a chinwag mate. I

Paul Bedford (02:50:10):
Thought that about 28 seconds ago.

Leigh Chalker (02:50:12):
Yeah. Yeah. I think we’ve got a lot.

Paul Bedford (02:50:15):
We’ve got some great conversations ahead.

Leigh Chalker (02:50:18):
Yeah, we do, man. We do. I feel that as well. A hundred percent. Paul, for the viewers that are Rob o Ryan, I need to replace my copy after lending it to a friend in like 2012.

Paul Bedford (02:50:34):
Brian, what are you doing mate? No, that’s, that’s what that’s there for. Pass it around. It was never going to be something I live on. It’s something it’s create to share. Have I got a few? I think I’ve got a few now. I’m, I’m going to spring one on new Lee. Did you do a piece of fan art for the list?

Leigh Chalker (02:51:08):
Oh man, I don’t, no,

Paul Bedford (02:51:10):
I am not sure because I’m just looking at your art in the back and I’ve been glancing at it now and then the style strikes me as one of the pieces that I received, but

Leigh Chalker (02:51:30):
I don’t recall. But that there’s a fairly hectic period of wildness at that stage of my life. Man, I could have been drawing on walls for all I know. Man.

Paul Bedford (02:51:44):
Let’s see, I just, oh man, I don’t know. I’ll have to send you this one too, Lee. I think you might like that. That’s another, it’s called the Day I Stopped and I wrote it. It was just one of those stories that came to me and Jane Mark Schmidt who had had a couple of books, a couple of comics published. I think you would enjoy that story. It is literally about a guy who chooses to stop. Just stop. And I won’t tell you anything more about it, but I will send you a copy of that. That’s one I just wrote and gave away.

Leigh Chalker (02:52:34):
Yeah,

Paul Bedford (02:52:37):
It was just something where, and it was certainly something that people who had read the list didn’t expect that to come along. So that’s like post list. It’s a story that I think I taps into a lot of stuff we’re talking about tonight, so I’ll have to get your address and I’ll have to find a copy and send it up. That’s one of the originals that Mark sent me from when he was living in Japan. Whens

Leigh Chalker (02:53:18):
That’d be awesome.

Paul Bedford (02:53:20):
When he drew it, it was like when Henry first presented the list to me and I’m like, you just got it. And the thing about Mark’s art is it’s very sort of innocent looking, but it belies it a deeper level in and of itself where the innocence hides. It’s incredible. And he nailed what is essentially very, I out there sort of script, but he grounded it but also helped it reveal itself just like Henry used negative space in the list to convey its tone. Yeah, I’ll have to send you a copy of that.

Leigh Chalker (02:54:18):
Yeah, that’d be fantastic, man. I hope somewhere down the track when inspiration arises, you dabble back in to comic books, man.

Paul Bedford (02:54:33):
I have. I’ve got a bit of a script here, right?

Leigh Chalker (02:54:39):
Yeah. That’s just first draught.

Paul Bedford (02:54:43):
That’s part one of three. I wrote a massive fantasy script because if you’re right, you’ve got to write a fantasy script and that is the story that I really want to bring to life. And I was working on it and work was being produced on it. It’s called a Battle for Arn. And it’s like probably when I thought of the climax of that story, I had the tendency to think of the endings first and reverse engineer them. That was one of those moments where I lost my breath. I was so overwhelmed by the rush of creativity that I remember losing. I was shaking. And I remember I was at work and I was standing on the desk and I had to walk over the desk and I was standing there and I was shaking and I couldn’t breathe and it just hit me out of the blue. I was working, you’re like

Leigh Chalker (02:56:08):
A conduit man.

Paul Bedford (02:56:11):
It’s bizarre. And I know it’s all just, it’s subconscious dripping and it’s all my past experiences, but how it managed to funnel into this one particular moment which defined the entire story. And it happens right at the end. And there is, I think getting back to drinking and drugs and all that sort of stuff, people artificially seek that feeling that it can’t be matched. I haven’t had anything matched that is the drug that will, you are hooked on creativity and there’s no break in it. And I don’t know if we’re running over time or anything like that, but there is, when I was saying before when I mentioned the term positive obsession, there is also obviously there’s a bit of a darker side to being so obsessed with art and creativity because it is literally, it’s a drug. You cannot escape it. And it is one of these things where because it is not frowned upon, in fact, it’s louder, of course it is that you’re encouraged to just smack up every day.

Leigh Chalker (02:58:01):
Look, like we were saying about everything connected, I mean creativity, I mean it’s a duality thing, isn’t it? Well, creativity can be positive amongst all things. Again, you need to find balance because one of, going back to what I was talking about about my relationship breakup, one of the things that was brought up was you draw too much. You need to stop being creative, that sort of a thing. And if

(02:58:41)
That in itself for someone that is essentially creative at heart and spirit is an existentially, almost eviscerating question that not only were you trying to maintain something while sober, while someone else was drinking in the vain hope that you could piece it together somehow, but that same person would ask you stop you from doing the one thing that was keeping everything together. So there are sacrifices, I guess to a certain extent that come with everything. There’s gains, there’s troughs, there’s peaks. You learn in the troughs man, and you take the peaks where you can get ’em. There’s not many of ’em. So enjoy ’em, ups and downs, hurdles, that’s all connected, man. Do you know what I mean? The flow, just intent. Be the best person you can be every day. Hit it, man. Do you know what I mean? Do your thing. Have your goals. I mean it sounds regimented and all that, but the one thing that I’m learning too, through sobriety and getting up at four ams in the morning and creating and coming down to get better at drawing, and this is all connected to keep yourself in a routine, to keep yourself in a rhythm. You know what I mean? Whether it’s a song where you want to be bass or drums or whatever, you must maintain yourself man. You know what I mean? You just got to be good, healthy mind, healthy body, healthy spirit.

(03:00:14)
It’s all everything, man.

Paul Bedford (03:00:17):
Yeah, it rewards itself and it’s a cycle of reward. And while I’m not a proponent of motivation, there is a cycle of motivation that comes with some level of denying yourself and indulging in the more positive practises. And motivation sometimes comes at the end of things as opposed to at the start. And yeah, you’re right. And I think one of the things with regards to say creativity, which is easy, sometimes easy, sorry, most times easy to keep up at. Well, it’s an absolute drug. I can’t stop. The only times I can stop is when I’m not working on something in between projects. But then there’s also, then there’s the reward cycle of not drinking. My wife and I went out for our 12th anniversary last week and I, she’s also pretty much stopped, but I would never ask her to stop. I’m like, you drink when you want, but I’m not going to. And was we went to Hillsville and got a beautiful red,

Paul Bedford (03:02:16):
Oh God, I used to love a red

Paul Bedford (03:02:21):
Shiraz mate. And it was surprising to me that having a big old sniff of that wine glass did nothing. It was like I was smelling cordial or coke and then I felt like, I don’t know what that is. I don’t know why I’m not craving it now, but maybe it’s a underlying perpetual reward system of motivation. Like I’ve hit four months, I don’t want to sacrifice four months. I’m unlocking all these things psychologically in my mind. I’m in a more centred, calmer and all this stuff. If it works for you, great. But I don’t believe that drugs or alcohol do anything to enhance creativity personally. I’m saying for me, I don’t believe they do. They may for others, but I used to believe it because it hals me to keep drinking. And it’s also, that’s the

Leigh Chalker (03:03:49):
Trick of mind, man. That’s the trick of the mind, man. Because it’s

Paul Bedford (03:03:53):
Like pain too. It’s like pain artists work from a place of pain. Do they really? Okay, well, I understand that they do, but what would happen to you as an artist if that pain was removed? Would you remain an artist? I believe you would.

(03:04:11)
And that’s another trick is, and that’s what we’re talking about before with it’s great. That’s all this conversation about mental health and everything’s around. But don’t use it as a platform and don’t use it for attention because then that’s going against the spirit of it and it will cause more harm and good, especially the people who don’t understand that you don’t use this as a platform. And it’s like with pain, the artist create from a place of pain. Great. Yes, do if it’s there, but don’t talk about it as if it’s your solitary, well, it was with the list. Oh my God. But things like Hunter by God, sorry, that’s the name of my board game. That is a place of pure creative indulgence. What a lovely man. Oh, there he is

Leigh Chalker (03:05:05):
For Mr. Bedford legendary bloke. I would Darren that I am in agreeance with you mate at this stage. So

Paul Bedford (03:05:14):
We can both align. Man, you’re such a champion.

Leigh Chalker (03:05:18):
I think we touched on anger before too, and when you identify emotions and you begin to, because you can break down, not all emotions are identifiable either because people are pushed apart from them and there’s so many emotions now, you know what I mean? God, what’s the difference between someone being passionate about their football and they’re jumping up and they’re yelling loudly? Some people could assume that’s anger. People don’t. So not interconnected with people that they just misinterpret emotions. And I think the individual themselves, because they’re not learning from other people’s reactions and understanding their emotions, don’t understand their own emotions. And then when you start piecing together emotions and identifying that well of things as well, I believe that once you get on top of things like anger, you flick into determination. You know what I mean? Excitement. That’s a good thing that it can be pushed to you start.

(03:06:30)
That’s the balance. I think that also helps with creativity is identifying. Yep, this is good. When you said earlier about the list, you did that boom, you just banged it out, man, then you put it in a drawer, you weren’t sure about things, it felt good, but you didn’t know what you wanted to do with it at that stage. You just let it sit, go to work for a year or two or however long it was. Come across it later. Well, I’m going to read that. And you read it and man, it made you feel fully emotional, you know what I mean? And then when you came back to that, that was your recognition of like, damn, man, that’s exactly how I wanted to feel. I’ve isolated those things that I’m feeling and that’s good to go. Let’s get that shit out there. You know what I mean? And that’s where the list came. That’s that in itself from what you’ve described, man was like a full moment of self-awareness there. Dude, that’s a cathartic piece of work fully from what you’ve said. It makes a lot more sense to me too. Not sense, but it it,

(03:07:38)
I’ll put it to you this way, I’ll be rereading that in the next day or so, mate. So to get a taste of what we’ve spoken about tonight, because I think that I’ll be able to put it into some more mature and viable context now after a conversation, knowing where you’ve come from and seeing what it’s all about, it’s a beautiful piece of work, Paul. Not just yourself, man, because I’d also, I mean you in particular because it’s your baby, it’s your brain and heart and stuff, man. It’s what you needed to do. But the gentleman, Henry and Tom, it really is a lovely piece of work. And it’s black and white, which is my favourite because I think that black and white shows, you can’t hide behind black and white. You can hide behind colours and stuff, but to me, black and white pushes something out there that shows business. Henry,

Paul Bedford (03:08:44):
Yeah, that was a choice to not have the blood dominate, to not look like a slasher film. And I think I always picture it as being black and white in my head. I dunno why. I think maybe because the story is black and white. Maybe that’s why

Leigh Chalker (03:09:13):
A natural way man, I

Paul Bedford (03:09:16):
Guess. Yeah. And Henry and Tom, for them, I didn’t fully identify that they identified with it, not so much on a personal level, but that was the first large form work that they, it’s 200 pages.

Leigh Chalker (03:09:49):
Yeah, it’s a commitment.

Paul Bedford (03:09:52):
It’s a massive commitment. And I think it was as much for them on a different personal level as it was for me. I don’t know if it was some

(03:10:18)
Creative outlet for them, and obviously it was a creative outlet for them, but on a huge scale, that’s a fucking lot of work. I, and sometimes I’ve written the wrong thing in the script and Henry sent me a picture. I’m like, oh dude, I’m sorry man, I didn’t mean to put, and he’s drawn this beautiful, I’m like, God, I’m so sorry. The angel’s not meant to have wings here. But Henry is a unique guy where he’s centred and grounded, articulate and solid. I just always had faith in him. We didn’t connect on a personality. We got along and we sat there through conventions and now and then he’d sneak, he’d sneak some gin in or what did he sneak in?

(03:11:26)
I dunno, I couldn’t Scotch. Scotch, that’s right. Because I’m not tough enough to drink scotch. I’d to have a lemonade. I dunno how I’m sure that we were guests at Supernova not meant to be drinking. I’m sure when Daniel and Tim came along, they must’ve smelled at a mile away. They were nice knocked boot out, but maybe it was as meditative for him. I know it wasn’t easy for him either. I know I’d call it the Monday nag because I’m obsessed. I’d call it the my n na. Like Where’s my page? Henry, where’s my page? But he got there and in volume three, which it’s all in one book now in volume three, I just saw him just go in those pages he bought out. I’m like, Henry, dude. The thing that I think made the list was the expressions. And I could feel through the expression what I’d written in the script, in the panel description. I could feel it. And yeah, I haven’t read it in a long time without question. It’s a strange work. It’s a strange story. And it doesn’t have archetype structure. I didn’t know anything about story structure. It doesn’t make sense for 175 pages of its 200 pages. It doesn’t make sense. But I think there’s obviously enough in there to keep readers

(03:13:24)
Going, whether they read it on a surface level as a slasher, because there’s certainly enough on that in it, or they read it on a deeper level. As I’ve had psychologists write to me about it, exploring the book, this is what this means, this is the it, and this is the anima, and this is, I’m like, okay, if you say so. It was very rewarding to have readers realise that the violence and was an expression of the inner workings of the characters of the story and all the subtext and themes. So there are a lot of creators in the Australian, not a lot, sorry, that is completely incorrect. There were a few creators in the Australian scene who didn’t like it and me as a result. And that was surprising. There was a lot of, and I know Darren, I didn’t get anywhere near what Darren got it, but there’s a, let’s say a Covin who will try to undermine you. And when you create a work like this, you create those people, you’re going to bring them out of the works. I don’t know what it was they had against me. I think it was because it was my first book and I hadn’t the comic before. And it did well that a natural, that a national, that natural irrational thing called jealousy probably came out. And I don’t understand why I wasn’t selling. It wasn’t topping the diamond list by any means. And that was,

(03:15:38)
To me, it didn’t hurt me. I found it because I dealt with much harder bosses than that. Believe me, it revealed who they were.

(03:15:56)
And it was a little disappointing because some of them were very good creators that they would resort to that type of behaviour. And then on the flip side, there was just an amazing group of creators like Colin Wilson who came to my wedding, Bobby, who didn’t come to the wedding. I thought it was just an invite to a ceremony, but no, we actually bought a seat for you, mate. I’ll never let him live that one down. Darren, Jason Franks, Fred Woods, I’m probably forgetting people, but people who realised that I saw the new kid on the block and don’t really know that much, but were cool enough to be cool and really good friends and saw that I was, while a bit of a, I always laugh, I think some readers, when they picked up list, like a comic book store or whatever and then brought along to a convention to be signed, they probably looked out, they’re probably in the lookout for a guy dressed in black, just crying. They’d come to my store. It was just bald Bogan, dad, are you looking after the table for the writer? I’m like, no, I’m the writer.

Leigh Chalker (03:17:30):
Yeah, I’m the writer man.

Paul Bedford (03:17:32):
I’m the writer. I don’t live the list. The whole point was to get it out, not to live it. Darren put it up before there was just a great group of support and I felt like they had my back. Whether I need to or not, I didn’t ask them, but I could tell they had my back.

Leigh Chalker (03:18:06):
I think, mate, I think no matter where you go, you’re going to get, I call ’em naggy Aggies, me and my mate do. It’s just our little code word for ’em for different people that are negative and they all belong on an island on their own because quite frankly, scare

Paul Bedford (03:18:27):
Each other apart.

Leigh Chalker (03:18:28):
Yeah, man. Because quite frankly, I would say in my experience, and I’ve said it a few times, is usually the ones that are making the most noise, do the least amount of work and they’re not prepared to take the chances. I look absolutely bless everyone that has an opinion. They’re entitled to it. Bless everyone that doesn’t like anyone’s work. They’re entitled to it. Bless everyone that likes people’s work. It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s out there. I think people get the shits on because people do things. It is confronting work. It’s probably not done in the Marvel or DC fashion or what it was for the Times. It’s so unique. The voice of the and the creator artists doing their thing. It’s made with passion. It’s a venture that you and two other gentlemen probably never thought would get done. And in spite all of the naggy ies, you still found support in people that were out there and obviously still do support you tonight. And being on Chinwag and to all the naggy ies that are watching and probably listening, the dude did it. It lives, I’ve got it in my hands, he’s got copies of it. So anyone else out there that wants to check it out, it is available. So Paul, I’m going to wind our show down there, brother, because I think otherwise

Paul Bedford (03:20:18):
We’d talk for days.

Leigh Chalker (03:20:20):
Yeah, man. And I just think for right now we have articulated just about everything that we could touch on that has created the list, including personal things, communication, there’s a whole lot of stuff. One of the things I would like to say, and I do because Comm X is certain members of Comm X community have had issues with mental health, and I’m one of those in particular, it is very important to look after yourself. It’s very important to look after other people. It’s very important to be kind because they smile can mean the world to someone and it may even person

Paul Bedford (03:21:04):
Life a day.

Leigh Chalker (03:21:07):
Absolutely. And even a phone call, A text message to see how someone’s going, just to show they care can save a life.

Paul Bedford (03:21:15):
Right? To me, I’d be happy to receive anything if people, even if they want to talk about the creative process or getting a start, how to start, how they’re feeling, anything, I’m more than happy to always, I’ve been there and I’ve been where you have been and I’ve been where they may be right now more than happy to chat. Like I said before, the hearing from people who it is the gold. It really is the gold. That’s the whole entire reason we’re not in this for the money because Lord knows it’s not there. But that doesn’t matter.

(03:22:04)
What you get out of this is meeting people like you, meeting the guys I did through the comic senior Australian comic scene, getting the letters that I did, the fulfilment of creating the work and seeing it touch as many people as I did. And so the way I, I want to pay that back is just I try to talk to people who, like I said before, I don’t know anything, but if anything I say touches a nerve, especially with regards to getting starting, that’s what I’ll just say just before we wrap up, is just I, people put too much weight on themselves and that word, again, expectation, I think there’s been a key word all the way through the night, is you have to just be gentle on yourself. Remove expectation, leave the ego at the door and just create for yourself and just don’t slap yourself around the face. None of that. Don’t rely on motivation, just quietly sit down and for yourself, just do the work. Just start. Doesn’t even have to have a direction.

(03:23:42)
A lot of the creative works came from people just writing a few words and then something bounces from that. But if you have the urge, then firstly, don’t deny it because it can not only change your life, but also have massive benefits for your mental health, which is what we touched on at the start of the podcast. And I’m a living example of the power of getting, just honouring your creativity inside you, even on a mental health level. So I’m happy to hear from anyone if they want to write to me, they can get there. Just my name is right there in yellow and you can find me on Facebook or just write to me on my email, which is Paul bedford1@gmail.com, or I do have the list Facebook page. We can just join that. I don’t maintain it as much anymore because I’m a board game nerd now, but if you can just, I’m happy to chat to anyone about anything. Yeah, so I’ll just put that out there at the end, Lee,

Leigh Chalker (03:25:06):
That’s lovely, man. That’s really awesome because that’s what part of this is all about too, man, is opening up for people to allow them so that they’re not feeling alone. And if you’re not sure about how to do something, you can touch base with as many creators as possible that do Chin Wags. And Paul being so thankfully, one of them that is opening himself up just to pass on information. If you’re interested and help you out, I would jump on the list as well. Facebook page. There’s a lot of stuff on there that’ll keep you, as Paul said, he’s a board game guy now, but it’s still available. And now Paul, before we go, man, the most important thing that I want to do for you and anyone out there that’s listening, mate, are there any copies available of this old Pearler,

Paul Bedford (03:25:59):
That old one? Oh my Lord, I think I’ve got six here. I think I’ve got six here. I’ve got one, sorry, I’ve got one hard cover. I’ve got one hard cover, which was produced by American, sorry, Canadian publisher, but we won’t go into that. I do still have mean every comic creator has boxes of them in their garage. But look, that’s

Leigh Chalker (03:26:37):
The last thought I’d ask.

Paul Bedford (03:26:40):
And that’s the full volume. That’s the entire book, that’s the 200 pages. And I’ve just got to say I don’t support it in the stores anymore. I haven’t for a while, but I think I’ve got about 20 or 30 copies left. Funnily enough, the idea sort of came upon me about a week ago thinking maybe I should do a convention again. Alex

Leigh Chalker (03:27:13):
Wants a copy, mate, can they just talk to you?

Paul Bedford (03:27:21):
I’m not going to charge for them, but if they cover postage, I’m happy to send them one.

Leigh Chalker (03:27:25):
Oh, look at that. Hey, how good Paul

Paul Bedford (03:27:29):
Bloody the sitting in the garage. I would much prefer people read them and experience them than they just sit in the garage. Lee, if you need a full copy or anything moment, just say my word mate and I’ll send one up. I’ll zip one up.

Leigh Chalker (03:27:46):
Oh man, I’ll definitely take you up on that.

Paul Bedford (03:27:48):
Yep, cool. Alright, done. So I want

Leigh Chalker (03:27:51):
To have a look at that other comic too.

Paul Bedford (03:27:53):
Oh yeah, I’ll drop one the day. I’ll stop in there. So if anyone wants a copy, more than happy to send one out if you are willing to cover the postage, especially if you’ve got any American listeners. I sent one to a mate over there, it was like 50 bucks. I’m like, it’s alright, I’ll get it back over there. But certainly it was made to be read and it’d be nice if, especially tonight, probably gives it some deeper degree of context as to its gestation. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (03:28:34):
I’m really glad, man that I finally got to meet you, duke, because it meant a lot to me when I came across it too, as I said earlier, and I think it will resonate with people out there. Paul’s been kind enough to give you his details for any sort of assistance. Reach out, touch base with him or get some comics. Please do have a look for Paul’s stuff. He comes with very high recommendations. I mean, Darren Close from Kroo and Rob Ryan O’Connor’s out there. There’s other people out there, all of his friends, people watching the show and everything. I really do recommend getting that if you haven’t. It does deserve to live again with and have its place up on the shelves, man, and look for newer people to read. And Paul, man, it’s been a pleasure, dude. I’ll talk to you after the show comes down and have a debrief and swap addresses with you and stuff, man, and swap some comics and that.

(03:29:36)
But look, I hope everyone enjoyed that as much as I did. Thank you. For everyone that’s kept watching, thank you for everyone that will watch tomorrow. Thank you for everyone that’s listening. Thank you for the constant porters thank you to Comex Shop that you’ll find support the show and sponsor the show. It’s the house of over a hundred Australian independent comic books. So if you follow those website channels down in the bottom, you’re bound to find the shop and it supports a lot of artists and it’s a good thing and it’s a beautiful thing, man. So two things I’ll say is community is unity and chinwag is always and will always be made with love. Thank you Paul. I’ll

Paul Bedford (03:30:26):
See you. Thank you Brian Lee. That will stick with me forever. That conversation that was incredible and I felt at home from second one. So you really know how to just put your, what am I? Am I the interviewer? Am I the subject? What am I? I don’t know what I am. We will go back to who again, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I was delighted when you invited me and I can’t believe we’ve been speaking for three and a half hours. It was utter magic. Amazing. Thank you. Beautiful

Leigh Chalker (03:31:06):
Man. Thank you so much. I’ll see you soon. Alright, thank

Paul Bedford (03:31:09):
You. Bye-Bye.

Voice Over (03:31:12):
This show is sponsored by the Comex Shop. Check out comex.cx for all things Comex and find out what Comex is all about. We hope you enjoyed the show. I.