Bohemian Rhapsody celebrates Queen, their music and their extraordinarily talented lead singer Freddie Mercury. The film traces the slow but steady rise of the band through their powerful songs and wide variety of musical styles.Cast: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, Allen Leech and Mike Myers▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneux
So, I did go to see the Queen movie tonight, and I have such a complex history with Queen and with Freddie Mercury that I am going to talk about myself as well as the movie, and I hope you know the history well enough to know that there could be just a few spoilers involved in this, but... My history with Queen is wild, and with the possible exception of Sting, for some time there's never been a singer that fascinates me as much as Freddie Mercury.
And this wasn't the case for me for a long time.
In the heyday of Queen, in sort of the 70s, early 80s, I didn't really care about them that much.
I do remember listening to Fat Bottom Girls when I was driving around with a little portable tape recorder, doing my paper route when I was 11 or 12, but I didn't...
Really get into Queen or Freddie Mercury until quite a bit later, in fact.
So, I had the greatest hits, and it's kind of funny, so back in the day, if you couldn't afford music, you would sit by the radio, and you would record from the radio onto a cassette tape.
And this is how I ended up with songs that had DJ overlaps.
I remember Mix 99.9 was like...
Four out of five dentists recommend Mix 99.9.
We're still working on the fifth one.
And I remember these cheesy DJ jokes because they'd be overlapping the front of the songs that I wanted to listen to.
And I think it was my brother who had recorded Bohemian Rhapsody.
But he'd missed the first two lines.
You know, is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.
And then I thought the song was, open your eyes, look up to the skies and see.
So I thought it was that, because the first two lines, I remember when I first heard the whole song, I'm like, whoa, there's more than I thought.
So, I liked the band, didn't really notice the singing as much, which became my later fascination.
And then, you know, just somehow, or sometimes, you have songs, and sometimes the songs have you, sometimes you have thoughts, and sometimes the thoughts have you, in that they arise kind of unbidden from the depths of your mind, and then you get this half-e-day fix-slash-obsession for the rest of your natural-born lives, and sometimes it's productive-like philosophy, and sometimes it's baffling.
Like some Zanzibar-based Parsi singer, yodeling into a distant microphone.
And that's what happened with me, with the Queen.
I, you know, listened, thought it was okay, liked some of the songs, didn't really notice the musicianship, didn't really notice any of that stuff.
And then, I'm working up north.
Now, working up north was a challenge when I worked as a gold panning and prospecting, partly because...
The guys who I was working with, well, they sure did like their country and western music, you know?
I remember being stuck, snowed in for a long weekend, and it was just too horrendous to go out and do work in the snow.
It was hail and sleet, and it was crazy, right?
And they had the top 850 country and western songs of all time.
That's where I learned the immortal lines.
Get your tongue out of my mouth.
I'm kissing you goodbye. Or she got the gold mine and I got the shaft.
And so I was up north and I had a couple of tapes.
And one of them, I just sort of grabbed a box of tapes when I went up to work up north.
And This song was on in the background.
I wasn't even really listening to it.
And just in the background, Freddie starts, the song is to you, sorry, actually half Japanese for the Japanese audience, right?
And the beginning is beautiful, the lyrics are silvery and gorgeous, and then the Let Us Cling Together part is, you know, kind of mainstream-y, wall of noise, Phil Spector stuff.
But then there's this bit near the end, I think it is at the end.
I was just listening to it in the background and I was just amazed at the vocals.
It came out of nowhere.
Because, I won't do it justice, of course, right?
But he sings something like it.
When I'm gone, I'll say we're all fools and we don't understand.
Oh, be strong, don't turn your heart.
We're on, we're on, we're on the long way.
Just the way he scales up and just does this stuff.
Beautiful stuff. So then I started listening more and really, really noticing the vocals, really, really noticing the singing.
And I was just blown away.
The falsetto, the growls, the blues, the folk, the, you know, even the simple things, like the introduction to Take My Breath Away, you know.
And he just keeps scaling up.
Oh, it's incredible.
Incredible. The work that he does in Tie Your Mother Down, particularly the Remix version, the sort of high growly rap stuff that he does, there's a live version of See What a Fool I've Been, where my dog ain't too hungry, just is this full growl, like the best blues singer you've ever heard, and actually was quite excited when one of my favorite blues songs, Manish Boy, I heard there was a Queen live version, listened to it, it really wasn't that good.
But there was something about Freddie Mercury that, Just blew my mind.
Because it's not just about having the voice.
Yes, he's got a fantastic voice.
They've actually done some analysis.
It's like a two-tone voice.
There's a note and there's another note hiding in there.
And you can hear this particularly.
I noticed it. I didn't really know the words for it.
But in Somebody to Love, you know.
When he goes, hi, you can hear this silvery tone in it, and this shows up quite a bit.
And the guy never took a singing lesson.
He was a great pianist, a great performer, and all of that.
And I just, you know what it is?
I sort of realized this while watching the movie, and it was, I guess, kind of important to me.
Maybe it helps you as well. What I realized was What it is is the commitment.
It's the commitment that he has.
There was an old podcast, I don't know if it's still running, called The Bugle, which I used to listen to before John Oliver started really turning my stomach.
And The Bugle...
Had a bit where one of the other guys was doing a pun or a joke and it wasn't really working.
And John Oliver was like, oh, don't stop now.
You've got to commit. You've got to commit.
Don't leave it in the lurch.
And this is like Nietzsche, right? Nietzsche says, do not leave your actions in the lurch.
And commitment. You know, Freddie Mercury really committed to the songs.
Like when he was doing Another One Bites the Dust, his bandmates were like, dude, you're singing yourself raw, right?
Because he really just wanted to get all of that passion.
Or you listen to him doing a fairly mediocre song like Les Palabras' De Amor of Hot Space.
And he does this...
This room is bare, this night is cold.
And you feel the cold when he sings it.
It's really beautifully done, amazingly well done.
And... That commitment, committing to what it is that you're doing, listen to that.
I think it was the first take that he did of Too Much Love Will Kill You when he was dying along with Let Me Live, which were two bookend songs of a kind of mortality art piece, but it's incredible.
And of course, you know, you watch him at Live Aid, and this ferocious, semi-fascistic command of the audience is just powerful and incredible to see.
And yet, and yet, to have a gift like that kind of voice, absolutely astonishing.
And he was, as Brian May points out, I mean, a very...
Sensitive, delicate, and talented pianist as well, which people don't really think of as much.
I mean, you listen to his semi-jazzy piano jams live at the Hammersmith, where he does White Queen, and they have this bit in the middle where it's just piano, and it's really beautifully done.
So this focus, this commitment, and the actor who plays Freddie Mercury gets it down to a T. I mean, he's really good.
What a hell of a role to play, and the commitment to the physicality, the sort of Somewhat stiff-armed, semi-robotic, fist-pumping cheer that Freddie had.
He really gets that down.
This ferocity of concentration that occurs when he performs is just amazing.
And the band is well done.
I mean, Brian May is basically a photocopy of that slightly dour and superior British soft sarcasm, and John Deacon is, I guess, suitably absent yet present, and the drummer Roger Taylor doesn't really look much like Roger Taylor, but, you know, gets that sort of youthful, blondie, pretty man-whore stuff down pretty well.
And I don't really know too many of the other characters in there.
There's nice little comedic bits.
You know, they're fighting and... Well, you know, I won't tell you.
I won't tell you. There's nice little comedic bits.
And, you know, those who are fans already know the ending of the movie where Freddy dies of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 45.
I still remember very clearly being...
I was in an apartment going to the National Theatre School, picked up the newspaper, saw that Freddie Mercury had died.
I didn't even know he was gay. I didn't even really think about it.
I didn't even know that he was from Zanzibar.
I didn't really care.
I still don't care. But the movie is good.
And there's... A couple of times where it really kind of hit me in the feels.
One was when Freddie's father gives him a hug near the end and accepts him for who he is.
That's a beautiful moment.
And those of us who have not been accepted by our fathers, you know, I'm never going to get that.
And... It's nice to see.
I don't know if it actually happened, but it's nice to see.
And that hit me in the feels.
And the second part was in the extended Live Aid piece, where you can't help but look at the screen and say, my God, did this recreate the whole Live Aid thing?
That's incredible, including the crowd who do not look like Sims.
When Freddy, and it's probably because I've listened to it a bunch of times myself before, when he just launches into hammer to fall!
And it's just... That's a great moment of goose bumpy rockiness that is fantastic to see.
You know, the shot-for-shot recreation, including playing with the cameraman and all.
Amazing stuff. And they did a great job with the movie that way.
They didn't really talk about the predations that Queen experienced, as was claimed by a variety of other acts, from Billy Joel to Elton John to you name it.
Where, I think for like 10 years, they'd had a couple of albums out, they'd had some singles that went to number one, and they were still broke.
Their money was just all vanishing, all going.
And Freddie wrote a very angry song called Death on Two Legs dedicated to...
And of course, now with the internet, you can find out who that is fairly easily.
But yeah, he wrote a very angry song about being exploited by the managers and the promoters and so on.
You get a lot of goofy and giddy talent that's just thrilled to be paid at all for what it is that they love doing.
And there's just a whole bunch of people.
And Freddie has a great speech about, you know, you know, when you've gone really rotten, you attract the fruit flies and, you know, fruit being gay as well.
I mean, it's really powerfully done.
His wrestles with their own sexuality is interesting, but it's a well-plowed field.
It's just, I guess, in many ways, it's a well-plowed field.
So that was quite well done.
The music is...
Absolutely glorious.
I mean, the stuff, even songs that I don't particularly like, I'm just reminded of how well Freddie sang them.
And that's, you know, like, I'm not a huge fan of Don't Stop Me Now.
Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time.
I feel alive.
And the world will turn it inside out.
It's a nice beginning.
It gets kind of cheesy in the middle with this Don't Stop Me.
But it's a good song in the end.
The outro has always reminded me of Billy Joel, the piano and the da-da-da-da-da.
So it's...
It just reminds me of just how great the music is.
Even the early stuff, Seven Seas of Rye and so on, it's really good.
And seeing the band sort of struggling and starting out and the risks that they have to take.
And oh, here's something too, which is one of the things that's helped me in my own sort of career as a public guy is Is just knowing how much the critics hated Queen.
I mean, that's something that's hard to overestimate, the bottomless, stigian depths of contempt that the average critic had for Queen.
And they sort of flash up all of the reviews at Bohemian Rhapsody, how terrible it was, and self-indulgent and crappy and meandering and blah, blah, blah, right?
Which has always helped me when receiving a lot of criticism myself.
I mean, it doesn't mean, of course, that all criticism is bad or meaningless, but when one of the greatest songs ever written is panned as one of the worst songs ever produced, well, let's just say it allows you to skate over a couple of negative opinions that critics may have of what it is that you're doing because your relationship is with the audience, not with the critics. And Queen, the band, they have bemoaned the hostility that they receive from the critics from time to time, but...
Nonetheless, it is great to see how great a song was so poorly received, and his friend Kenny Everett, the DJ, Freddie's friend, who played it a whole bunch of times and got it kind of started.
And of course, you know, when you hear a bunch of songs and then you hear Bohemia Rhapsody, there's nothing like it.
There's nothing like it. Well, actually, there is actually one thing that's kind of like it, which is the Prophet song.
I'm Brian May's competitor to Bohemian Rhapsody even with the sort of middle acapella part and it's a pretty good song and live it was great because Freddie would just grab a mic and play with the echo and the reverb and sing along with himself occasionally going into Frère Jacques and stuff and it was a great deal Of fun and an enjoyable live concert experience, I'm sure. I've seen Queen live a couple of times, but only post Freddy, because I never had any money to go to concerts when I was younger.
I did buy a bunch of tickets to Michael Jackson, though, and sell them, because, well, I needed money.
I was lined up all night to buy those tickets and ended up making a couple hundred bucks, which, you know, was quite a big deal in those days.
Still meaningful money even now.
So, it was...
Interesting. Now, Freddie's descent into drug use, I don't know.
They were so skinny. And you see them again at sort of Hammersmith Odeon stuff and the Rainbow Room and so on.
And they're ridiculously skinny.
I think Freddie weighed a buck 20 when he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody.
Bohemian Rhapsody, sorry. I'm doing my N's and my M's together.
Freddie Mercury. And some of this, he reportedly ate very little and there is of course a lot of body dysmorphia in the gay community with abs and buns and all that kind of stuff but it is, to me, there's some very powerful stuff that's hinted in the movie and of course you can only hint it because there isn't any explicit evidence regarding it but I sort of have a theory.
And it comes from just a couple comments that Freddie made.
So, for those who don't know, I was born in Zanzibar, and he was sent a long, long way away to go to boarding school for quite some time.
Now, boarding school...
Well, let's just say that...
Child groping is not entirely unknown in the vicinity of boarding schools.
And Freddie did say that, yes, some of the headmasters chased me around the table a couple of times, something like that.
But he never said anything explicit about being sexually abused by adult males in boarding school.
But I think he was. And again, I can't prove anything, obviously, right?
It's just my particular conjecture, because I look at the arc of his life, and to me, there's a lot of unprocessed trauma, and it comes out in his songs.
And one of the songs, it's a pretty obscure song, called Song is Real, Song for Lennon.
Life is Real, sorry. Life is Real, Song for Lennon.
And they mention it. And it starts off...
And this is one of the very serious songs that Freddie wrote.
Because, you know, some of his stuff was kind of goofy.
A crazy little thing called Love Fun, but goofy.
But this one, it starts off...
Gil stains on my pillow Blood on my terraces Torsos in my closet Shadows from my past Life is real Life is real Life is real So real And this is very serious stuff Gil stains on my pillow Blood on my terraces.
Torsos in my closet.
Shadows from my past.
Life is real.
Life is real.
And it goes on with, life is real.
Guilt stains on my pillow.
Well, that's tears. That could be semen.
Blood on my terraces. Well, I think of a terrace like a place where you, like a pope, you talk to a crowd.
It's part of being famous and having attention, which is...
Blood stains on my terrace.
It means that to me, the sort of public life is born out of pain.
It's born out of a sorrow. Torsos in my closet.
Well, that's fascinating because a torso is without a head, right?
Without arms, legs, or a head.
It's sort of the venality and the greed of the body, the lusts and so on, which she had sort of epic lusts for, not food, but for drugs and sexuality in particular.
Torso's in my closet. Of course, he was in the closet for most of his life, did not come out as gay until the day before he died, I think, or to say that he had AIDS or whatever.
And so there you have a situation where he's talking about torsos in his closet, which is that there's this headlessness, this limblessness, this body, this dead body in the closet, and that's sort of an important part.
Success is my breathing space, I brought it on myself.
I will price it, I will cash it, I can take it or leave it.
Loneliness is my hiding place, breastfeeding myself.
And then he goes on to say, what more can I say?
I have swallowed the bitter pill, I can taste it, I can taste it.
Life is real. Success is my breathing space.
And earlier he said sleeping is my leisure waking up in a minefield.
Life is dream.
Dream is just a pleasure dome.
Love is a roulette wheel. And this isolation, this sense of connection being destruction and love being self-destruction.
You've got this cheesy song called My Love is Dangerous kind of thing.
And breastfeeding myself means he's got to be his own mother, his own parent, which comes out of isolation.
Loneliness is my hiding place.
And it's an incredible song.
Music will be my mistress loving like a whore.
And this is very powerful lyrics.
And they're echoed in the movie when one of the guy, the guy he ends up spending the rest of his life with, Jim Hutton, They're having a sort of relaxed conversation when Freddy's guard is down, and Jim Hutton says, I'm paraphrasing, he says, well, these people aren't really your friends.
He says, oh no, they're not my friends, they're just distractions.
Distractions from what? Well, from the emptiness between the highs, right?
From the highs of performance, like the emptiness that comes after the performance, the crash after the performance.
And he says, what do you do when the shadows keep creeping up on you, the shadows of the past?
Now, no trauma is really talked about in the movie.
So what is he talking about?
Where's all this darkness coming from?
These bodies, these guilt stains, this blood, these shadows, where is this all coming from?
Why is he so isolated? Why does he need to command an audience?
I mean, there's this Mussolini-like concentration in Live Aid, where, you know, it's like, hammer to fall, let's invade Poland, off we go!
Where does this need, and this ability to control the audience, to influence the audience?
Well, you know, if you've ever been a public figure or a performer, your relationship with the audience is quite complex.
I mean, it certainly is for me. Like, I love you guys, and I'm very grateful and happy that I get to do what I do.
But, you know, individually, wonderful, collectively, yeah, you can be a bit of a handful because I approach new topics and bring new people who then want me to stay on those topics.
I'll not do anything that might challenge other beliefs that are associated with those topics.
And, yeah, there's a lot of blowback.
And so it's a real challenge.
One of the astounding things about Freddie Mercury is all of this talent, all of this money, all of this success.
He's a good looking guy.
A lot of people want it to be Freddie Mercury.
You know, with one exception.
It appears. That Freddie Mercury didn't want to be Freddie Mercury, and that's because, you know, they knew about the dangers of AIDS. My memory is he got tested, and it came back clean, so he was fine.
And then he went back out again, which is a crazy risky thing to do, of course, right?
He went back out again, slept around, and got AIDS. Well, that obviously is a self-destructive compulsion that is hard to ignore, and it would be crazy to ignore it.
And this idea, well, you know, just burns bright like a comet, darling.
I mean, it doesn't really answer anything.
It doesn't really answer anything.
So let me tell you why I think all of this went down.
And this is important for you.
It's important for me. This is something that I've thought about a lot in terms of as I get a larger sort of scope of the public sphere.
So, let's say, just for the sake of argument, for the sake of conjecture, that the hints, the lyrics, the drug use, the smoking, the rampant promiscuity, the complete disorganization of his personal life,
and the basically suicidal sexual impulses these all indicate child abuse and if we take that together with his statements about being chased around by headmasters in boarding school I think we can come to a reasonably sure conclusion or conjecture that he was sexually abused as a child it fits with all the symptoms it fits with the lyrics it fits with the statements that he's made obliquely and it certainly fits with this self-destructive aspect of his behavior now If this is the case,
then he was in grave and great danger as a child, as a youth, wherever this may have occurred.
Maybe it occurred in boarding school, maybe it occurred elsewhere.
Maybe it didn't occur at all, but just if it did, right?
Then he's going to develop what's called hypervigilance.
Hypervigilance is when You are in a situation of grave danger and it means you're constantly scanning your environment and you don't have an inner life.
You don't have an inner life.
You know, a couple of parts of my day that I really love, doing the show, playing with my daughter, chatting with my wife, visiting with friends, but some of the really great stuff is half-dozing, right?
So I go to bed, and I'm just toying over some particular problem, a philosophical problem, a self-knowledge problem.
It could be a political perspective.
I'm just sort of toying around with it, playing around with it, rotating into my brain like a Rubik's Cube.
And that's a great way to doze off because what it also does is it helps my subconscious often generate a dream that can really help with processing whatever it is I want to process.
And that's one of the ways in which to generate shows.
Now, I also like it in the morning.
That sounds wrong. I also like it in the morning because in the morning I wake up and I love that sort of 15 minutes before waking up and getting out of bed because I can just doze and think about things and remember my dreams and wonder what they mean and you know just get my dream state ready for the launch of the day.
Now, I can't do that if there's a snake in the room, right?
You don't want to be daydreaming when you're in a dangerous situation.
You don't want to be walking through an unfamiliar jungle and be lost in your own thoughts and not be aware of your environment because you might step on a scorpion or not notice a snake or a jaguar or a panther or something like that, right?
So you've got to be vigilant at all times.
Now if you're in a state or you're in an environment where you're being abused then you have to stay vigilant the whole time and what that means is that you're used to controlling your external environment and you have no inner self.
You're scanning and controlling and manipulating for purposes of self-safety and so on your external environment.
Now if that's the case then when you grow up then you need a lot of external stimuli right?
you need a lot of external stimuli because you have not developed internal stimuli the casual and enjoyable interplay of thoughts and emotions with yourself and you actually hate being alone you're terrified of being alone and this is mentioned in the movie one cruel ex-lover says of Freddie Mercury he's just this Sad little packy who's terrified of being alone.
It's a horrible thing to say, because if it's true, it doesn't help at all.
But this hypervigilance comes at the expense of identity.
It comes at the expense of your inner life.
It comes at the expense of being yourself.
Being yourself. Now, if you're constantly focused on the external at the expense of the interior, then you're very good at playing with crowds, and you're very good at being a performer, because being a performer, you're watching the crowd.
I mean, I know when I give speeches, even now, but when I give speeches in public in particular, I'm not really thinking about myself, I'm not really thinking about my feelings and my thoughts, I'm just thinking about the audience and the best way to connect and communicate with them.
That's a good thing to do, of course, right?
I mean, you owe that to the audience, especially if they're paid to come and see you.
But it can be a problem because if fame or wealth or success or sexual success or drugs or whatever it is, promiscuity, cigarettes, if this external stimuli comes out of the fact that you did not develop a personality When you were younger, because you were just constantly focused on external dangers.
If you have this structure in your life, then being alone is torture.
Being alone is torture.
I mean, I enjoy my own company.
I'm happy with the time that I spend with myself.
And so I don't need the audience.
I like the audience. I don't need the audience.
Now, if you're someone like Freddie Mercury, maybe you haven't developed that kind of inner life, then you're going to be fantastic with the audience because you're so used to focusing on outside things at the expense of your own internal state.
But the problem is, without the audience, you get really messed up.
The shadows, as he keeps talking about, the shadows in the past keep creeping up.
Now, what are the shadows in the past?
Well, the shadows in the past would be the early trauma that he'd received that is constantly clamoring to not be drowned out by screaming crowds, to not be drowned out by...
Flashing photographs to not be drowned out by all of this external stimuli, to not be drowned out by drugs, smoking, promiscuity, workaholism.
Workaholism was a huge issue with Queen.
So, that I think is the big lesson to get out of this kind of life.
It doesn't matter how talented or how pretty or how rich or how successful or how popular or how famous you are.
In fact, a lot of times people develop these kinds of skills because they've been traumatized.
A lot of actors are, in a sense, fundamentally indifferent to being watched because they had to pretend to be okay while they were being watched by someone dangerous when they were young, so a camera doesn't really bother them.
They've developed a defense mechanism called Act Natural.
Right? I mean, you don't start acting when you get in front of a camera.
You start acting years before, and then you just use those skills for the camera.
Like, if you have a family where you're never allowed to show any weaknesses or any problems or any dysfunction, and you have a big fight, and then people come over, and you've got to pretend to be happy, though that's acting.
And it can quickly become pathological.
So I think, with Freddie Mercury, what's so fascinating is this unbelievable, astounding, force of nature, talent.
But at the same time, you see him joyfully playing with the crowd, and you see him doing the call-and-answer sing-alongs, which he does better than anyone in the business.
There's shots where he just kind of sits down, and it's like, oh, let's sing like Aretha Franklin, and just sits in place with the audience.
And I've tried to learn from that, and I certainly have done some of that in my live speeches, and it's a fun thing to do with the audience, because if it's too formal, it's tough to keep focused.
But I think what happened was...
If you continue to hide your lack of identity...
I mean, you know, he changed his name and all of this, right?
So if you continue to hide your lack of identity with external stimuli...
Boy, it's going to catch up with you in a big and bad way.
It's going to catch up with you in a big and bad way.
And I think it caught up with Freddie Mercury in one of the worst ways possible, wherein he basically played Russian roulette with other guys' penises until one of them went off on his immune system and he died.
And he died in a nasty, difficult, painful, you know, breaking his legs when moving him off the bed kind of way.
It's a bad way to go.
It's a bad way to go. And so the fact that he was so committed is important and I really commit to what it is that I do here.
That commitment is very powerful.
The commitment is very important. And if you are committed and confident, it creates a kind of shield around you because most bullies look for weakness and if you're confident and I am serene and happy with the arguments that I put forward, then that does create a kind of shield that's very important.
But don't let your audience displace Your inner life.
Don't let your audience or external stimuli displace.
You need this balance. You don't want everything to be internally generated and no external stimuli because that's kind of solipsistic or narcissistic.
You also don't want a lot of external stimuli to wash away and, you know, wet finger hiss out the candle of your inner true self.
You want a balance to play between the outer and the inner.
And I think that Freddie Mercury did not achieve that balance.
I think he focused constantly on external stimuli And so, when you pursue fame to get away from memories of abuse, but then fame becomes your abuser.
In other words, fame is now the external stimuli that crowds out your inner life, just as the external stimuli of abuse crowded out your inner life as a child, then you've got nowhere to go.
You've got nowhere to go, and especially if you're on drugs, then you're going to be washing out your true self, destroying your true self, whatever it may be, and there may be nothing there left.
There may be nothing left. at that point and that's what's so funny and I said this to Kaya Jones in a conversation that the people who appear the biggest on stage often are the smallest inside it's an overcompensation and this focus on external stimuli is very dangerous very dangerous for you for those around you for the world because he was lonely he was isolated he never fell in love He lived alone.
He's got a whole song, living on my own.
And don't let it happen to you.
If you've had bad things happen to you as a child, don't drown that wound in external stimuli.
Don't drown that wound in sex, drugs, rock and roll.
Don't do it. Sit down, go through the unease, go through the discomfort, talk to a therapist if you need to.
And accept that what happened to you is wrong, if it happened.
And that avoidance is a form of self-erasure.
And if somebody did abuse Freddie Mercury when he was young, sadly, the world won in the escape from the abuser because some glorious music was created.
But the abuser won in the end because he destroyed himself.
Thanks everyone so much for listening.
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