Netil Radio Stories #001
w/ Ben Kelly aka Aboutface
Intro
Welcome to the special edition of our weekly radiofilter. Let’s be honest, reading headlines or erratically clicking on links is okay, but sometimes is good to sit down, read something longer and think about the beauty of life.
Netil Radio Stories will take you into the minds and creative processes of our presenters and djs, discuss important issues and question sensitive topics in a long-read format.
We would love you to let us know your thoughts, interact with writers or suggest topics. To do so, email us newsletter@netilradio.com
Take your time and have a nice read
NR team
Words
by Ben Kelly
Hey 👋🏻, I hope everyone is doing well.
In preparation for the second season of my An Ocean of Ink in a Single Drop show on Netil starting next year, Miro has invited me to write an article for the newsletter that gives a little more background information of the show: how it was conceived, creative motivations, methods used, and some of the broad concepts and content that materialised during the first 10 episodes. It also candidly describes my experience with mental illness, as halfway through the season I unfortunately suffered a severe mental breakdown, which at the time I didn’t know if I would ever recover from. The station and its community, combined with continuing with the regular shows became an important anchor to slowly move forward with recovery, to the point I am now; I am very grateful for this.
I hope you find it interesting and in some way helpful to those also struggling: to give you an insight into my experiences, and the confidence and motivation to reach out to others for help – you may feel it, but you are never truly alone. ❤️
How ‘An Ocean of ink in a Single Drop’ was first developed
Following a guest appearance on Luca Schiavoni’s fantastic E2-E8 show on Netil, I first came to Miro with the idea of a new show based on a technique I’d been experimenting with for the past year or so – a blurring of live performance into, and alongside conceptual music selections, with the aim to create an expanded and psychedelic Dj radio show. The technique uses live improvised flutes, guitars, electronics and sound design, alongside creative writing, spoken word and poetry, to create a live radio-narrative inspired by a unique conceptual theme for each episode, inspired by any element of the collective zeitgeist: the nature of reality; our environment; culture; politics.
The aim was to create something that created doubt in the listener’s perception of whether they were hearing live instrumentation, selected music, or a section of a song looped then expanded using improvisation and building into a kind of hybrid of the two. The technique allows me to at any point create a collage of others' music into catching moments and suspending them into live patterns, to be building blocks for new improvisations, creating an unpredictable ripple in the usual radio-spacetime-continuum of linear blends, track ID’s and edit-extends. Releasing me to be able to stitch more diverse melodic and rhythmic content together with wide ranging feeling and BPM’s.
The reason for the use of a conceptual theme to shape each show, is simply to creatively force me into traversing musical areas I would not normally attempt though my own volition – to take risks, experiment and consider new communicative methods to express themes. For example: establishing a narrative by inserting environmental field recordings in the background of others music; the creation of a music scale/mode based on a stanza in a poem; introducing and repeating a motif sound or musical phase to pull the listeners attention back to the show’s theme.
1.Performing my final NTS show during the pandemic. 2. NTS broadcast 18.7.20
I’d previously trialled this hybrid technique on NTS radio for the pandemic lockdown themed ‘These solum days we plaid the craze’, based around the patterns of urban nature that could be interpreted as fractal, similar to the fibonacci sequence, and was centred around a poem, written especially for the show by Syd Hawes.
For the live performances, I created a musical mode for melody and rhythmic generation based on the Fibonacci sequence to mimic the fractal patterns in nature. The poem stanzas were recited by long-time voice and music collaborator darker, and acted as the narrative anchors to reveal the story throughout the set. This was later to become the central method of storytelling in An ocean of Ink in a single drop.
Following this performance, I was devastated to receive an email from NTS stating they no longer wanted any new shows from me moving forward, therefore this was to be my final show after the station showcasing all of my live performances since 2016. However, upon reflecting on this now, it really was the catalyst to motivate me to push on and consider more innovative methods of presenting and performing on air: to devise a new kind of radio show which can develop my skills as an artist and give the listener a more unique and immersive experience.
The technique also had great potential to be a stream of improvisations to be recorded live that are coloured by the flowing energy of a live radio environment, with the aim to potentially release at a later date, as demonstrated by the live performances in ‘These Solum days’, which were later released as my 2021 debut album called ºS on the label AD 93 .
I do feel this live improvisational radio environment colours the music and gives it an organic flowing momentum that I cannot recreate by simply building a composition from scratch in the studio. This final NTS show gave me the confidence and motivation to pursue the technique further, and became the precursor to ‘An Ocean of Ink in a Single Drop’ season 1, which would inaugurate on Netil Radio, Sep 2020.
Netil Radio
Setting up for live improv/DJ shows at Netil Studio
After a short meeting with Miro to explain the proposal, I knew Netil would be the perfect new home for me to experiment, make mistakes, take risks, develop and test out new innovative approaches. We there and then agreed a new residency and An ocean of ink in a single drop was born. Looking back now, at the time I could have never envisaged what would then materialise over the proceeding 18 months!
Aboutface Pres. – An Ocean of Ink in a Single Drop’ Season 1
Artworks from An ocean of ink in a single drop Season 1
In Sep 2020, EP1 opened with Ir969GHZ, a fictional transdimensional radio broadcast omitted from deep space, introduced by Intergalactic host, Azimuth (Akari Yasuda), and featured 100% audience submitted music, alongside live improvisations using a pre-connected double flight case, some mics and flutes in the Netil studio.
It was great to be in the studio but it quickly became apparent it was not realistic to bring all my considerable set up for each episode, which is predominantly hardware/instruments based. So I switched to broadcasting live from my home studio, which opened up every piece of kit I owned!
Deptford home studio for EP2 Play to the Jellyfish & Southend loft studio for EP6 Dodek 2.1.
EP2 Play to the Jellyfish took advantage of this move to explore a surreal voyage into the world of the jellyfish: live flute, guitar & electronics, DJ including listener submissions, immersive underwater recordings, and live sound design using blowing air into a glass of water – It was so much fun!
During this episode for the first time I included especially written poems based on Jellyfish: A plastic bag in the Ocean, by Eca_Tuoba; I am you, by Heart;
JF, by Syd Hawes, all narrated by ºS collaborator darker. One of the live performances was turned into a release called ‘We're the same aren't we’, for the Freerotation Festival’s Ukraine Fundraiser called Dove.
‘And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul’ – EP3 navigated an inter-dimensional psychedelic forest, and featured conceptual music selections alongside narrated sections of the book ‘Amazon Beaming’ by Petru Popescu (Narrated by darker).
Improvising with mallets on electric guitar on EP3
Just as I was starting to feel like I was really starting to develop and refine the the live/DJ hybrid technique, my living situation and consequent health started to decline, mostly to pandemic related loss of artist income/output, a dispute at my part time job, and our deptford flat being declared inhabitable due to poor condition, me and my partner had no other option but to move out of London – thankfully we found refuge about 1 hr away on the Essex coast.
Inspired by the move, EP4 used music from the past, live improvisations in the present and pre-release music from the future, as a psychedelic exploration exploring time, matter and memory, as one transient overlapping state, inspired by sections of Henri Bergson’s ‘matter and memory’ recited by darker.
EP5 explored a conceptual journey to a 5th dimensional utopia called Intropica, centred around Max Richter’s Voices which features hundreds of readings of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights in dozens of languages, in response to the 1 year anniversary of George Floyd’s racially motivated murder by Minneapolis police officers.
Health deterioration
Unfortunately during this time my physical and mental health progressively deteriorated, first I started to get blurred vision in my right eye, which spread to both eyes causing a kind of blindness. At the time I was under increasingly escalating work and domestic pressures caused by a loss of income and my work situation (which I am unable to discuss due to a non-disclosure agreement), exacerbated by the pandemic.
This was my body pre-warning me to stop and seek immediate help but unfortunately my efforts were either not sufficient or too late. I was finally forced to stop when I suffered a severe mental and physical breakdown.
It is quite hard for me to remember now, it’s all a blur, but my residual feeling was that of getting swallowed up into a black hole and feeling completely helpless, inconsolable and having no way out. I was medicated and in bed for about 8 weeks initially, there were periods where I would contort and twist up, and suffer from apnea during sleep where I would wake up gasping for air.
I also started to notice a loss of reality, everything was a conspiracy and everyone was complicit, even my family who were trying to help me; this must have been heartbreaking for the loved ones around me.
I started to experience frightening psychosis: audio and visual hallucinations that would appear and I could not escape them. One particularly terrifying moment I recall was when listening to the radio, it seemed that every song’s lyrics for about an hour was about dying or committing suicide; at the time I thought these were some kind of supernatural cryptic messages telling me to kill myself, or that I may die soon; It’s quite hard for me to relive this.
Thankfully, mostly due to the love and support of my partner, my father, local NHS services, some important books and most importantly some time out, I was able to get through this very challenging phase; thankfully the psychosis did not persist permanently. I feel very grateful for my support network as I know others do not share this privilege and lose the fight. However, my recovery was far from over.
One of the hallucinations I had which I painted after: a mouthless white giant in the room directing the moon's energy on me to keep me alive during a hyperventilation attack.
Always listen to your body…
It was the most frightening experience of my life and I feel terrible that my partner Dannii had to witness it – It must have been heartbreaking for her. Aside from the psychosis, I had now become completely agoraphobic; I could no longer leave the house.
One of the other frightening parts of the experience is how solitary a breakdown felt – friends and family you thought were close, become very distant. I suspect the reason for this is simply, it is a difficult thing to witness to someone you care about. Perhaps others avoid it as a kind of self-preservation of their own flailing mental stability. Or it could again just be paranoia; I completely understand why anyone would have avoided me when I was at my most distressed and do not blame them at all. I know why so many people lose this fight, I feel very lucky to have lived through the experience.
After these 2 months of complete stasis, heavily motivated by seeing how upset my partner was, I started to slowly improve with about 4-5 hours of self-work each day. Books such as: Michael Pollen’s ‘How to Change Your Mind’; When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté; Be Here Now by Ram Dass and The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary by Ron Siegel helped greatly giving me perspective and a reconstructed foundation in reality.
Seminal book by Ram Dass previously known as Dr Richard Alpert, Harvard University. Three simple words that have changed my life, Be Here Now.
As importantly in addition to reading, I introduced a simple morning routine of 20 mins Kirtan Krya meditation (which has also been studied for its efficacy in preventing and managing the onset of alzheimer's), 10 mins mirror affirmations such as ‘I am strong, today will be a good day’, which felt embarrassing to do but I literally would not leave my bedroom if I didn’t.
In addition to the inner work, I started with physical exercises but after such inactivity I could only manage 1 meagre push up. Following some time with this routine, gradually week by week I improved and got stronger: push ups went from 1, 2, 5 to 15 per day; I started to walk to the end of my front garden, then to the park, then to the coastline, then I started to run etc, incrementally over a period of about 2 months. I also had to gradually introduce myself into public places such as shops– initially I would loiter around outside to wait until there was no one else inside, at the beginning I would abort often and go home feeling terrible – it blows my mind now to think back about how I was during this period.
Following sustained improvement and a consultation with medical professionals, it was suggested that it may be beneficial to try and continue with an Ocean of Ink in a Single Drop. I planned the return after a 4 month break. However, it would soon become evident that the show would be as much a documentation of my ongoing condition, as a tool to improve it.
After a 4 month break I returned to Netil Radio for EP6, which explored the summoning of an ancient 5th dimensional genderless being called Dodek 2.1, who feasts on the underlying fear in toxic leaders (yup, you read it right).
Upon reflection, this was definitely me exercising some inner anger towards individuals who I felt were negligent and facilitated the escalation of my condition (see NDA) – I think the venting was an important point to move on from it. During the show I spoke candidly about the breakdown, to be honest It was very difficult to be that vulnerable to a public audience, I felt so embarrassed and thought people would judge me, especially with regards to psychosis, but deep down I thought it would ultimately help me and perhaps others who were experiencing their own issues.
Following this show, just as I was starting to feel more confident that I was truly on the mend, I finally started NHS psychotherapies, via the excellent self-referable Therapy For You NHS service. The sessions made me face up to the immediate factors which led to a breakdown, but as the layers peeled back a lot of traumatic stuff that happened during my childhood reared up, and I had another relapse/breakdown episode that this time, left me with a speech impediment triggered by any kind of stress; I was devastated as I had hoped to have a future in teaching and radio. This almost sent me back to the void, but by persisting with the therapy and especially the radio show, it really did anchor me in the present and keep me moving forward.
The stutter I’d developed is apparent in EP7 The Gateway Experience, it felt very difficult to talk during the show and I was too embarrassed to listen back to the show until writing this – it feels surreal and like some other me in a parallel dimension.
I also had a relapse of some psychosis, but by this stage it was much less severe and exclusively auditory – I would continually hear short repetitive sounds I could not stop for days on end, not internally, but it felt external; I would periodically checking my devices to see if any radio or music had been left on and playing, but it was never there! That was difficult. Although I was no longer having any visual hallucinations, I was having the craziest dreams and closed eye visualisations during meditation, which from a creative perspective, ironically helped with this Episode! Reflecting/listening back this was probably my favourite episode of season 1.
Following stumbling upon the Vice article How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA , (which seemed a rather appealing escape from my own reality at the time) the show was developed around Dr Robert Monroe’s Hemi-sync technique for out of body experiences and astral projection, which was the focus of a recently declassified CIA study into the Hemi-Sync’s potential in the exploration of consciousness expansion and remote viewing for espionage purposes.
I ‘obtained’ the same The Gateway Experience course studied by the CIA, and started daily practice as per instructions. These involved specific exercises alongside audio files to synchronise both hemispheres of the brain, with the aim to facilitate out of body experiences. To say the outcome was wild was an understatement! After experiences encountering giant bioluminescent octopus extraterrestrials and beings with toad heads pointing at the sky, I thought it would be prudent to stop given my condition at the time; It was the most immersed I have been in developing conceptual performance, but I felt like Icarus and was sailing far too close to the proverbial sun.
During the course, I kept a diary of all my experiences which were then narrated by darker. This became the story for the show which everything else was built around.
Feeling much better by now – not back to my old-self, but a kind of new-self, I created EP8 called The Ice Edge that Blooms, inspired by recent studies that have found glaciers support an entire marine ecosystem underneath, facilitated by a blooming process which nourishes life underneath.
‘The small ones are seeking refuge in my shadow, I must protect them, but I feel myself fading. As my ice edge blooms, watching them glide, shine and suspend in time.’
– The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (perspective prose taken from EP8)
The show was centred around field recordings from Antarctica, and specially written cryospheric prose: creative writing from the perspective of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, speaking about the loss of his friend the Thwaites Glacier, otherwise known as the doomsday glacier, Thwaites is…was the size of the UK and over 1km deep, holding enough ice to raise the sea level by 65cm if dissolved due to the climate warming. If this occurred, it would cause catastrophic consequences around the world and is currently losing mass at an accelerating rate.
For the prose, I tried to situate myself from the perspective of a sentient glacier, exploring the use of different words to describe the environment as if the glaciers had their own vernacular, such as the stars as ‘night sparkles’ and ice melting as bleeding ‘life rain’. It was a pretty surreal experimentation:
‘I had heard through whispers carried by the echoes of mammals, that Larsen had dissolved into the universal sustenance. How could this be? Once his frozen span had breathed the size of the night-sparkle, only to rage quietly into the soup of creation, cold crystal by crystal. What is happening?’
– The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (perspective prose taken from EP8)
The two live performances from this show, were extracted and released as digital bonus tracks on my latest album The water that glows like dancing glass cuts crimson, a climate emergency-themed project which utilises poetry collected from my dreams alongside sound recordings captured during polar expedition c/o the Alfred Wegener Institute - a centre for polar and marine research.
Following some speech therapy, my speaking fluency had really started to improve now, I felt more confident to speak and present EP9, a special collaborative show called Qachuu Aloom (Seed is Kin), centred around a specially written poem by the amazing artist and fellow Freerotation brother Duckett, expertly and tenderly recited by darker.
The brief to the show was based on a quote in a Guardian article on how the ancient amaranth is bringing indigenous groups together: “We've always viewed our seed relatives as relatives and kin” – Tsosie-Peña (Santa Clara Pueblo Native American community). As when seeds thrown into a derelict industrial factory, slowly democratises the decaying steel, this episode explores how planting seeds, figuratively and literally, can be an act of resistance and solidarity, geo-shaping the cinders of humanity into a new future and showing us cycles are ephemeral and change is inevitable. It also featured supporting animations in the artwork by Milou Stella.
EP 9 Artwork and animations by Milou Stella.
It had been a challenging journey, but had made it to EP10, the final episode of season 1. A few months earlier I thought I would never present another show, let alone finish the season. Inspired by my experiences of the last 12 months, and the fact that it would be the last episode, I based the show’s theme around the Japanese concept of 物の哀れ (Mono no Aware), and included a live performance with guitar, flute, clarinet (after practising with one for just 2 weeks 😬) and electronics, alongside themed music and 6 specially selected Matsuo Bashō Haikus, recorded in Japanese and English by Fumika Geary & darker.
Mono no aware describes the feelings of sympathy a person feels upon becoming aware of the fleeting, impermanent nature of life, and implores that impermanence should not just be accepted, but cherished, typified by the beauty of the cherry blossom (Sakura) – the flower blooms intensely, yet only for a short period of time each year. As the sakura flowers die and the petals fall, cherry blossoms line the streets like a layer of soft, pink snow, and are the highest kind of beauty as captured on the precipice between life and death; we truly only appreciate things fully when we accept they do not last forever. All life and its experiences, good or bad, are ephemeral; the blossoms will bloom once more.
Big love to all the Netil fam & listeners. Ben x
An ocean of ink in a single drop season 2, premieres on Wed 01/02/23, 3pm - 5pm.
For this show, Aboutface wants to base the first episode's concept on Netil Radio’s listener’s dreams: this can just be simply a description of any dream you have had, or if you want to go deeper, a dream description following the process of dream incubation:
Step 1: Write the message ‘What will my dreams tonight show me’ on a piece of paper.
Step 2: Before you go to sleep, look at the message, read it out loud, then place it under your pillow.
Step 3: With lights off and as you close your eyes to sleep, silently repeat the dream incubation message for 5 deep inhales and exhales.
Step 4: In the morning as soon as you wake up, write down any details about your dream, no matter how small or general. Think: where was the dream? Who/what was in it? Were there any sounds, smells, images or writings that drew your attention? It’s vital you do this immediately after waking while the brain is in the hypnopompic state: the dissociative bridge between dreaming and being awake where it is much easier to recall your dreams. You can also get more details by reentering the hypnopompic state through meditation, or falling back asleep immediately.
Step 5: Once you have all dream details, post it as a comment on this pinned Instagram post (insert link).
All submitted listener dream content will be used to build the conceptual narrative for the show! What is the universal unconscious going to reveal?
We will also be running a competition for the best dream descriptions, a winner will receive a Netil radio tote bag, and a vinyl & digital copy of Ben’s Coordinates 1 & his latest album The water that glows like dancing glass cuts crimson. Some of the dreams will be read out along with announcing the winner of the competition on the Aboutface DJ show Wed 04-01-23 3pm-5pm.
See you in the collective dream space!
“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfil all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now.”
Alan Watts, excerpt taken from Out of Your Mind.
London’s community voice, broadcast live from a converted shipping container atop of Netil Market - project facilitated and supported by Eat Work Art