Wyrd bið ful aræd

Compilation of all the Solkats

The first time in the gig where we unleashed the feral.

Joey's "fuck it" followed by his smile because we have his back 🥹

The first time in the gig where we unleashed the feral.

Madeleines’s absolutely tiny, “sorry 😀” gets me every time 😭. And her smile is beyond blinding oh my Goddd. Joey is somehow both so charismatic and endearing here it’s insane. “The fuck am I sayin’?” I literally have no idea but I somehow adore you even more because of it

[Joey, on the act of creating] "It doesn't matter if it's good, it matters that it happened"

[Madeleine, on which minor deities they said they would be when they first started discussing the Solkats] "I said I was the goddess of muddy hems on long dresses. I think you said you'd be the god of... the moment ice clinks-" [Joey] "-at the bottom of a whisky glass"

[Joey, on finding the will to return to a hometown that didn't treat him well] "I'm different now, what have you got for me?"

For context, earlier Colin had introduced everyone, and explained that each person would give a 10-15 minute talk. Joey had said that he'd only found out about this 15 minutes before coming on stage, so hadn't prepared anything. In the previous talks, Peter had spoken about medieval attitudes to the 7 deadly sins, and Aleks had talked about silicon valley moguls who are seeking immortality (more about these later).

Disclaimer: I had originally only intended to film excerpts. The theme (as with the book) is filming. I kept filming, because what he was saying seemed really important, even if it was about not filming, so sorry for the hypocrisy inherent in these. But also, enjoy!

I'll do transcripts later.

Colin: So you'll talk a little bit, and then we can have a little interacting, perhaps.

Joey: Correct, yeah. You've got my notes on the laptop here. I want the clicker. Have you got the wee clicker?

Aleks: Did I put it in my pocket?

Joey: I just want to hold it.

Aleks: Ah, it was stolen by someone in the front row.

Joey:

Yes, thank you. And thanks everyone for coming out and hearing about... I feel like I'm following the intellectual equivalent of the Rolling Stones. So do bear with me.

I was told to say something today, and I thought a little bit about saying no. And just saying "no, I'll just have a nice little chat with you guys and see how it goes". But actually it kind of sprung on me something that I wanted to talk about, and that I talk about in It's Not A Cult, that's very, very linked to both of your fields. I'd like to talk a little bit today about moment, and memory.

The last time I was here in Hay, I wasn't at this Festival, I was at the other one. I was a wastrel. A snotty person who tried to, who thought he could do, everything. And ere festival invited my band, The Amazing Devil, to play. Now, we had our first album out, which was made in an old button factory for about £4000, and we were very excited. And we turned up and they said, "we know you're playing this evening, but would you like to play a couple of gigs?" And we thought "Oh my goodness, this is a moment. "

And we got out and played in front of 9 people. Which, and this is about 12 years ago now, I think something like that, and I'm so glad that I did. Because nobody filmed it. It was a beautiful failure. Our guitarist accidentally set for to his amp. There was a 5-year-old having the best time in the corner, twirling. No one could really try and capture that down a camera lens.

Even 10, 12 years ago now, social media was burgeoning. The people you've been talking about in your third point had claimed power, but didn't really know how to use it, or really how to monetise it. And we still had these cameras in our pockets, but they were new. You know, everyone, snip snap? What do you call that? Everyone was doing snip snap, but it was old and no one understood it. Tip top didn't exist yet. I don't personally use them, I don't know if you can tell.

Transcript:

10, 12 years later, Hay Festival invited me to come talk about this book. I've been writing books for about 18 years now, and this is the first one that's been published. And I knew that in the time when I started writing books at the age of 20 and now, the world had exponentially changed. And I had to talk about something .... that's my mic getting stuck to my beard....

I knew that I wanted to talk about something in this book that scared the crap out of me. And it was being filmed. There are one or two people filming me right now. And just before I came out here, they asked "by the way, we've got a camera, do you mind being filmed?". And I said "yeah, fine, yeah, absolutely. " It's ubiquitous. We are just so used to cameras invading every inch of our lives.

Children, before they even understand what it means to be remembered, are being remembered days later. I've seen 3-year-olds know that the 'x' on a phone means go away. They'll swipe if they want to see the next thing. I saw a child do that on the train here. Swiping the window.

In my book, in Its Not A Cult, which is gone now. Oh, it's back! That's why I need the clicker. I wanted to explore what it would be like if I had a character whose addiction to filming was all-encompassing. I've seen people in my life, in my lines of work, who are addicted to filming. I've seen...

... There you go, did you hear it? Did everyone just jolt to see if it was theirs? A phone just went off and we all just went "yeah, it's probably the babysitter". Your brain went somewhere else. To think about who might be texting you, who might be needing you.

And that's what this book is trying to explore. That memory of me 12 years ago exists up here. This memory exists elsewhere now. This memory that is happening right now, this moment, is happening down camera lenses. And I'm fine with people filming.

But to talk about your first point, and also what you spoke about, you described it as oil and wood. I started to wonder outside, do the people who exist in those wooden, in those paintings, and the people collecting data to be immortalised, did they ever think "Oh, I wonder if anyone is going to remember me. "

I wonder if that's important to me.

When I was 20 and I started writing books, that was the biggest driving force. It's... when I started theatre, as an actor, and then I started to get into television and film and I thought "great, well they can't delete that. " And good our bad, whatever it is, I existed and therefore I mattered.

With music, I can point at things that have been created and I can say that I created that. And yet, tomorrow night our band are playing, in a church, and we've not played in years because I'm so terrified of being filmed sometimes. I don't want to be captured.

Part 2: https://www.tumblr.com/could-be-wolves/818062113719320576/reblog-by-could-be-wolves-1-video?source=share

Transcript:

As I was listening to your amazing talks, I started to feel that familiar creeping up the spine of fear. The immortality that people are seeking is now so pervasive, I just wanted to ask, right at the end of your wonderful speech (speech?) you asked "fight it". And my first instinct was how the fuck do I do that. And the only way that I can do that is by not looking at my phone at the dinner table, right? I can write to my MP? And try to get some of these guard rails that everyone keeps talking about, around AI?

My jobs, I have a few of them,....

... is that the play off music? I feel like I'm at the Oscars, "that's my time, guys"....

... but all 3 of my jobs, and more jobs, are infinitely replaceable. You can now officially, I imagine this will be asked by the Hay Festival at some point on the website, you'll be about to take it, and you can do this now, and make me say anything. Absolutely anything. You've got my voice, my likeness. You've got a whole audio book of me talking this thing. And you can make me say anything. 

Acting will be completely destroyed within the next few years, television and film in particular. It is my firm belief, streamers or what have you will have two sections of their website. One is real people, and, if you want AI, click that one. There'll be a little tag, and you'll be like, yeah, I fancy something AI tonight actually. 

Same with music. You can plug in the music that I've created with my band or elsewhere and say: "make Joey sing this. Make the band... The band hasn't released an album in a while. Why don't I just make my own with their voices".

And then finally, books. I wrote for years, and this is the first book that's been published, and I feel like I've mistimed it. Because there's, we're trying, and a lot of the industry is fighting to ensure that writers, that AI can't draw on any writers. But it's only post-2016. So all that wealth of everything that's ever been written, and AI can come along and go "yeah, I'll write like that person". Yes, it's a bit shit at the moment, and we can see it, we can spot it,  but that's only because we've only just noticed. 

When was the first time you heard about AI? And I can promise you it was probably about a year and a half ago. When it really mattered. We talked about AI in sci fi. But really, the first time I started to go "oh god, it really is everywhere", was about 2 years ago. 

So this book that I wrote is full of that fear. I first came to Bloomsbury with this book, and they said "well, what genre is it?". I said, "I don't know, what genre do you think it is?" And they said "...horror?". And I said "it's the closest thing". Because there's solkats and creatures in it. There's music and creativity in it. But the real fear, fear mongering of it, is in the filming of everything, and the being captured. 

I said I wanted to talk about moment, and memory. I'm quite keen to hear, I'm going to ask you when I sit back down and say that I'm finished, how we're soon going to be able to preserve memories verbatim. But for now, and if we are going to attempt to fight this, and draw on the lessons of the past and these sins... I think yes, you're talking about 7 of them. But I think there's an 8th. And I think that's whatever is happening to us without knowing. 

At some point I might talk about the other talks, because they definitely gave me Thoughts, but maybe I'll wait until after I've read the books (I succumbed).

There wasn't time for a lot of questions afterwards. The first one wasn't addressed to Joey. The second one, which was a great question after we got past the very not-concise statement part of it, was something along the lines of "given the state of the world and all the things you've been talking about, what gives you faith?".

Joey's answer started with the caveat that he gave at a number of the booksigning talks that, although he himself is an empiricist, he has no problem with faith, the problem he has is with blind faith. The thing that gives him hope is community, and small in-person interactions.

I have a lot of thoughts in general about the topics in Joey's talk. When he talks about the levels of fear and anxiety he has, I do somewhat want to wrap him in blankets and bubblewrap and put him in a nice cupboard somewhere where none of these things can hurt him. But it's not as though I don't have a bunch of (somewhat different) anxieties and fears, and I try very hard not to let them hold me back, and I really hope he's doing the same. I certainly relate strongly to the idea young!Joey had of being remembered = mattering. But there are some things where it seems like as he seems to be trying to get away from that, and thinking about those differences he was talking about before between being known and being perceived, that he seems to have settled somewhere very far in the other direction, that doesn't sound like it's being all that healthy for him. I hope that performing despite that fear has helped.

Sorry for the delay, I know I promised I’d post more of the videos I got soon… I’ve just been so jet-lagged I’ve been focused on settling back into work and acting like I’m normal and didn’t experience a genuinely life changing event.

Here’s a snippet from the first song of the night, A Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious. They really know their audience ☺️

My favorite memories of the performance are moments like these, that were so uniquely TAD, so intrinsically tied to THIS audience, THIS time and THIS place, that they are truly irreplicable. The way we were all right there with Joey and Madeleine, were feeling their lyrics so deeply and with such love we couldn’t help but spontaneously start to sing along? Magic.

I’ll be making an effort to post more of my favorite clips of the performance in the coming days. The videos I got aren’t the best (I was fighting tooth and nail with my phone’s focus the entire time, ugh), especially when compared to some of the really awesome videos other fans have shared, but I’d still love to offer what I’ve got!

I do have audio recording of the book interview at the start, as well as longer videos (and these shorter ones not absolutely fucking mangled by Tumblr’s compression, if anyone has tips on how to deal with this I’d love to know). If people are interested I’d be happy to put together a Google Drive to share. Just let me know!!

From The Amazing Devil’s instagram, May 31 ‘26