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Episode image is a detail from the cover of Grace And Grit by Ken Wilber, published in 2001 in arrangement with Shambala Publications, Inc; original design concept by Laura Shaw Design; cover design by Terry Foley.
For the 73rd Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian talks to comedian, writer, promoter and human organism Barry Ferns about the effect of parental care on infants, how to get more time at home and an intense but life-affirming account of some difficult experiences.
Grace And Grit by Ken Wilber is also discussed in Page One 182.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
This episode features a jingle written for the podcast by the band Friends Of Friends.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 28th April, 2015.
Book listing:
Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes A Baby’s Brain by Sue Gerhardt
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Grace And Grit by Ken Wilber
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 97th Page One. This is the 73rd Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today in Kentish Town—are we still in Kentish Town town here?
Barry Ferns
Gospel Oak.
Charles Adrian
Gospel Oak. Okay. Is that... Is that an area?
Barry Ferns
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Okay. It's not just because it's near the station.
Barry Ferns
No. Yeah, it's Gospel Oak.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Barry Ferns
It's...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
I think... Well, I suppose the station was named after the area so [indistinct].
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah. Okay. Well, because I think it happens the other way around as well.
Barry Ferns
It's all meta. It's, like, you know...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. So we're in Gospel Oak, not far from Kentish Town...
Barry and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Barry Ferns
Or Highgate. In between Kentish Town and Highgate.
Charles Adrian
Oh! Highgate. That feels like that would be a long way away, though.
Barry Ferns
No, no, just...
Charles Adrian
Really?
Barry Ferns
... around the corner.
Charles Adrian
Oh, all right. All right. Anyway, it's Barry Ferns… is my guest.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
So, Barry, the first thing is—obviously—I ask you how you describe yourself.
Barry Ferns
How do I describe myself?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes.
Barry Ferns
I don't know. I'd go basics.
Charles Adrian
Yes?
Barry Ferns
I am a hu... like, and it's going to seem broad but I just see myself as a human organism that has these... a certain amount of experiences that makes me think that I am a human being called Barry Ferns...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Barry Ferns
... rather than just a process of the world, kind of, manifesting right now. Because, like, there's nothing to me other than that. Just a... I think I have control but I don't. So I'm... I think I'm a comedian. That's how I perceive myself. Even though right now I'm not being funny so technically I'm just a talker—a lecturer, if you like.
Charles Adrian
I could do the giggle track for you...
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... if that's going to make you feel more comfortable.
Barry Ferns
No, I think that would definitely make me feel less comfortable.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
And I write, I perform, I run... I promote. I run a comedy club—Angel Comedy—which has just been voted the best comedy club in the UK.
Charles Adrian
Congratulations!
Barry Ferns
Thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
Wow. I hadn't heard that. It is a... It's a great club.
Barry Ferns
Thank you very much. And I go to the Edinburgh Festival a lot. I've won a few awards at the Edinburgh Festival. And I make films. So... yeah. I'm... I am a... Those are some of the names or ideas presented to me. But essentially I'm just—like everybody else—just a... you know, a human being...
Charles Adrian
A bundle of cells.
Barry Ferns
A bundle of cells trying to make sense of an unknowable universe.
Charles Adrian
[acknowledging] Mmm. It's bleak, isn't it?
Barry Ferns
Well, no... Well, it's whatever we want... That's the thing. It is... It can be bleak if you have a bleak feeling from it.
Charles Adrian
Uh huh.
Barry Ferns
Or if you have a joyful feeling of, like, ‘Oh my god, I'm a... you know, a... an aware, conscious group of cells that's wandering around’, that is also...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I mean I guess that's... Yes, that's also miraculous, isn't it?
Barry Ferns
Yeah, so you can, kind of... if you come it [sic] from... You can come at that fact—that bare fact—from a state of [scared noise] or a state of ‘Yay!’
Charles Adrian
Yeah, you're right. You're right.
Barry Ferns
And doom and gloom—the whole doom and gloom idea—is just the way that our brains or our experiences pre-program us to be. So it's nothing more than, you know... We are very—in a... not necessarily a Pavlovian way—but we're very much the sum of our experiences.
Charles Adrian
Right. Right.
Barry Ferns
So how much autonomy do we have over what feeling we wake up with? Some people just wake up really happy.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Barry Ferns
You know. Some people... My ex-girlfriend used to just wake up delighted every day.
Charles Adrian
Oh how nice.
Barry Ferns
And I say ex-girlfriend, she probably wakes up even more delighted now that I'm not there. [laughs] But...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's not a particularly positive way of thinking...
Barry Ferns
But, like I say, I've got a bleak disposition...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
[laughs] ... rather than a...
Charles Adrian
What is the first... What's the first book that you've brought? The book that you like.
Barry Ferns
The book that I like is totally, absolutely...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I say ‘brought’ but we're in your house so: ‘carried across from the bookshelf’.
Barry Ferns
Well, the book that I brought that I like is relevant to this, actually. It's a fantastic book. It's a synthesis of how affection shapes a baby's brain.
Charles Adrian
Oh, I'm... Yes, I'm really interested in this question, actually.
Barry Ferns
It's called Why Love Matters and it's... yeah, it's an amazing book. It's by somebody called Sue Gerhardt and... Yeah, the book goes through a lot of scientific research that's been done on child and, kind of, infant brain development. Because when a child is born, as a... when a... you know, for the first eighteen months the human child—the human infant—is an external foetus, really. So the brain of a newborn is still developing. And it's still developing in the sense of its levels of... like, cortisol levels, stress hormone, everything is being set at that time. So the way that a mother or a father or a primary caregiver responds to a child absolutely sets that human being's levels of emotional, kind of, relationship to the world for the rest of their life.
Charles Adrian
So this is very much a, kind of, blank slate hypothesis that... The idea that you come out and you have... So it's a nurture over nature.
Barry Ferns
Well, not really. It's a synthesis of both. That the child is an individual there—so there is something there—but whatever that child presents to the world it needs to be appropriately met. And that is what the primary caregiver should give. So whatever issue the child has, if that child is met, then it's less of an issue. So the child might be more rambunctious than others or if a child is... for example, if a child is a bit depressed or a bit down or, you know... then a sensitive caregiver would try and stimulate the child and get it out of itself more. If it's overstimulated, [it] would be calmed. But it's that that relationship to the primary caregiver actually shapes the brain. So... you know.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Right. Oh, I think that's really interesting. Read... So read the first page of it.
Barry Ferns
So I'm going to... Yeah, I'm going to read—essentially—what it is and... Because, I mean, the first page is a... Would you like the first paragraph or the first page?
Charles Adrian
Read the... Is the... I mean, you can decide what you think is more interesting but...
Barry Ferns
Okay, I'll read the first page.
Introduction
Charles Adrian
Read the first page.
Barry Ferns
Introduction
This book is the outcome of many years of casual observations, followed by training and practising as a psychotherapist, particularly working with the disturbed or malfunctioning relationships between babies and their mothers. Following my hunches about the impact of the early relationship on later psychological functioning, I began to explore the growing body of research on the development of the brain in babies and small children. I then found myself linking this [sic] data with the data on psychologically disturbed adults – people suffering from a range of problems, from mild depression to mental and physical psychopathology.
In the process, I discovered that something new and exciting is happening, and that my own exploration was a timely one. We have in fact arrived at a moment in which different disciplines are converging to produce a new understanding of emotional life. I want to offer you a guide to these developments, and what they might mean to you as a parent, as a clinician, and [sic] as a partner. The often dense and technically written medical, scientific and academic sources on which I draw contain vital information, yet they have not reached public awareness to the extent that they deserve. Certainly, this information has changed my understanding of the emotional life dramatically. By bringing these sources together and ‘translating’ them, I offer you a chance to experience this for yourself.
Charles Adrian
It sounds really interesting. Oh, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that. Now, I'm going to play the first track that you've chosen, which is... Well... So I've chosen from your suggestions. I've chosen Holocene by Bon... Bon Iver [/bɒniːˈveər/]? How does he pronounce his name?
Barry Ferns
Bon Iver [/ˈbonɪvər/].
Charles Adrian
Bon Iver [/ˈbonɪvər/]?
Barry Ferns
Yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] So this is Holocene.
Music
[Holocene by Bon Iver]
Charles Adrian
So that was Holocene by Bon Iver [/bɒniːˈveər/]. Right. Now. My book for you, Barry. I'm very pleased with my choice—and more and more pleased the more I think about it. The reason I [laughing] chose this for you... You've probably read it. It's The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.
Barry Ferns
I've read it ages ago but I can't remember it so that's...
Charles Adrian
Ah, you should definitely re-read it then. I just... I think of you as somebody who is always running around.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
And in fact, the only time I saw you in Edinburgh this year you were on a bike going down a hill so you, like, literally flashed past me.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] And that's... I mean, every time I come across you you're on your way somewhere or you've just come from somewhere and it's... I feel very privileged to have pinned you down for an hour today.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
And that hasn't been all that easy, has it?
Barry Ferns
No.
Charles Adrian
So, I thought this is... this is... This—basically—is about a guy who doesn't stop running for a week.
Barry Ferns
[laughing] Right.
Charles Adrian
That's really... If you want to summarise [laughing] what happens in The Thirty-Nine Steps...
Barry Ferns
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
That's what happens. So I think you might identify [laughing] with this guy. I mean, I'm huge... I admire your energy enormously, Barry.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
I'm so sedentary. [laughs] If I...
Barry Ferns
And I'm so jealous of that.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
For a man that runs around I crave sedent [sic].
Charles Adrian
Yeah, you just... Well, you've just got to learn not to say yes to things.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Or not to even be offered them in the first place. That's my tip.
Barry Ferns
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
Don't get offered stuff...
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... and then you'll spend more time at home.
Barry Ferns
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Okay. So: Chapter 1. I'm just going to read it to you.
Barry Ferns
Okay.
Charles Adrian
Chapter 1
THE MAN WHO DIED
I RETURNED from the city about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the old country and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him, but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. “Richard Hannay,” I kept telling myself, “you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.”
It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Buluwayo. I'd got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so, England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days. But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all.
Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb...
There you go. So I guess... I mean, that's the other side of it. If you did ever stop running around you'd probably find that you didn't enjoy being sedentary.
Barry Ferns
[laughs] Thank you very much. That's great. Yeah, and...
Charles Adrian
It's a very short book as well, so...
Barry Ferns
You know, that has many benefits...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
... and mostly to do with my reading speed. I read as fast as a four year old that has yet to be prescribed glasses.
Charles Adrian
It's a charming description.
Barry Ferns
You know, I like the colours of a book.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yeah.
Barry Ferns
And, yeah, I often eat the last page before I've had the chance to read it.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
That's great. Yeah, no, I... I like the sound of that. The... And it does relate. The only time that I have ever actually stopped [was when] I took a series of month-long silent meditation retreats in...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh my word. I can't even imagine you doing that.
Barry Ferns
... a few years ago and they were quite... quite something...
Charles Adrian
Yeah, I can imagine.
Barry Ferns
... to stop. And it's... Talking about... It's funny talking about ‘sedentary’... Like, the idea of the mind being, kind of, like... like lots of sediment in the mind. So if you stop the, kind of... the glass stops moving and the sediment goes to the bottom and suddenly you do see a lot clearer. It's really interesting.
Charles Adrian
Tell me about your... Tell me about the book that you're going to give to me.
Barry Ferns
Okay. Now then. The book that I'm going to give to you—and, please... this is going to sound quite intense, okay? And the reason I'm giving to you is just I... I... it's a special book and I only give it to people that I think could handle it but it's a... It's quite intense but I think that it's such a life-affirming book and it's so much about contact with other humans that it's... And I think that that's something... Whenever I meet you you have... there's a real, kind of... you have a real both sensitivity to somebody and an openness and, you know, a gentleness and an empathy and a genuineness and I think that it's... With those qualities this book is... I think, would touch you and would...
Charles Adrian
Oh! Well, thank you.
Barry Ferns
So the book is called... [laughs] With that introduction.
Barry and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Barry Ferns
The book is called Grace and Grit. And the basic book itself is two people's journals over five years. And they're the two people that didn't know each other. They met. Within a month they were married. And seven days after they got married—it was a man and a woman—the woman, Treya, was diagnosed with breast cancer. And the five-year journal are [sic] their personal journals about their experience from not... from before they met to her dying of breast cancer in five years and what they went through with that. And they're both very, kind of, you know... He is a psychologist, she's... and a spiritualist—a spiritualist makes him sound like Aleister Crowley.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
But somebody that, kind of, writes spiritual literature as well and she is very open to that. There are parts of it that he, kind of, goes, ‘Well, you can... these are my ideas but you don't have to read them, that's outside of the journals’.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Barry Ferns
But, yeah, and it's just absolutely... They're both so fiercely honest because they're journals, they're personal journals. And they're not... they weren't written for publication. And yeah, they're some of the most... It's probably the most moving, kind of, life-affirming and... book that I've ever read. So I'm going to read to you the first page—which is, as it happens, the introduction to the second edition and it will explain a little bit of that but other as well. So.
AS I write this, it has been ten years since Treya's death. I'm immeasurably more, and immeasurably less, because of her presence. Immeasurably more, for having known her; immeasurably less for having lost her. But then, perhaps every event in life is like that: filling you up and emptying you out, [all] at the same time. It is just that it is oh-so-rare that such a one as Treya is with us, and thus the joy, and the pain, are all so intensely amplified.
There are [as] many Treyas as there are those who knew her. What follows is my Treya. I'm not saying that this [sic] is the only Treya, or even the best. But I do believe it is a full account, fair and balanced. In particular, it makes liberal use of her own journals, which she kept off and on for most of her adult life, and which she kept almost daily during the years we were together.
I had always intended to destroy these journals after Treya died, and without reading them myself, because they were so intensely personal for her. She never showed them to anybody, not even me. Not because she was reclusive or private about her ‘real feelings’ and thus had to ‘hide’ them in her journals. On the contrary, one of the most extraordinary things about Treya—in fact, I might say the single most astonishing thing about her—is that she had almost no split between her private and personal [sic] selves. She harboured no ‘secret’ thoughts that she was afraid or ashamed to share with the world. If you asked, she would tell you exactly what she...
Charles Adrian
Oh, very nice. Wow. Oh, that sounds...
Barry Ferns
[speaking over] That is your book.
Charles Adrian
... super intense but really interesting.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
But then there are all kinds of other questions about... yeah, boundaries and what... I don't know, I'm... No, I'm really interested to read this.
Barry Ferns
So she also said that he could use the journals. That's what he goes on to say. It's not like... Yeah, because that makes it sound like...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah it does. It makes it sound like he just... No, no, but even then, making decisions for somebody who's no longer there is an interesting conundrum, isn't it?
Barry Ferns
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
But this... No, this sounds... It sounds wonderful and challenging. I think I'm going to enjoy it. Oh, interesting. Oh, thank you very much, Barry.
Barry Ferns
That's all right. It's a big book but actually a lot of it is... It's like you can choose what you, kind of...
Charles Adrian
Okay. Yes. Yes.
Barry Ferns
... you know, take in. And so you can...
Charles Adrian
Yes, yes, I see what you mean. Yeah.
Barry Ferns
But it... And it does... You know, it does actually bear... You can dip in and dip out, in a way, because, you know... But it is a, yeah, absolutely.
Charles Adrian
Wow. We're going to have to bring this to an end.
Barry Ferns
Okay.
Charles Adrian
And it's been such a pleasure. I'm so pleased that I did finally pin you down.
Barry Ferns
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
And that... It's never occurred to me before [but] that's a butterfly metaphor, isn't it? But that is exactly how I feel. I have somehow [laughs] skewered you to your chair.
Barry Ferns
[speaking over] Happy to be pinned.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
Happy to be pinned. Not as happy to be skewered but...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Barry Ferns
... if that's how [you want to] see it then...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Gently... Gently perforated.
Barry Ferns
Perforated.
Charles Adrian
And so I'm going to finish with the other track I chose from... So Bon Iver I was aware of before you sent me the list. The Black Crowes I wasn't aware of but this is also lovely. This is Descending.
Barry Ferns
Yes. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I like this very much.
Barry Ferns
I really enjoy the piano on this. I find it beautiful. Yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
So, yes, thank you Barry. Thank you very much.
Barry Ferns
Thank you.
Music
[Descending by The Black Crowes]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]