Just this year, Scott began studying for a master\u2019s degree in counselling. On the day we met, he had just been to an interview for a job placement. At one point, he says, the interviewer asked what jobs he\u2019d done in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018None, bro\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not doing it for the money. He\u2019s doing it, he says, because he wanted to do some good in the world, something with purpose. As he\u2019s gotten older, he says, he feels like he\u2019s \u201cholding on to fire\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got wisdom that could warm people, or it just burns you. You can get old and washed and bitter and jaded. Or you can use your wisdom and pass it on.\u201d<\/p>\n
So this is him, passing it on.<\/p>\n
He thinks that, maybe, our constant attempts to fix our problems are the underlying cause for some of said problems. He roleplayed for me an imaginary discussion between two people at the imaginary founding of Buddhism.<\/p>\n
Buddhist 1: \u201cWhat\u2019s the first thing we should write down here, you reckon?\u201d<\/p>\n
Buddhist 2: \u201cJust write down that it sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buddhist 1: \u201cOh yeah? That\u2019s the first one is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Buddhist 2: \u201cYeah. Life is suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
He brought up Buddhism more than once during our interview, so I asked if he meditated. He said:<\/p>\n
\u201cNot with my legs crossed on the top of a hill, but I am definitely more aware of things, cognitively. Like I try not to even say, \u2018I\u2019ve been thinking\u2019 anymore. I try to say: \u2018I had a thought\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought for a second, then said: \u201cI might even try to stop saying, \u2018I feel like\u2019. I might just say \u2018I had a feeling\u2019, cause I think a huge part of my f***ing depression, or whatever it is that makes my brain tick the way it ticks, is that it looks for these absolutes. You know? My brain likes absolutes. I\u2019m maybe a romantic in that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to feel melancholy, like I want to feel all the depression. I\u2019m going to walk in the rain if something goes even slightly wrong: \u2018Let\u2019s self-destruct and sabotage this whole thing\u2019. Instead of just like, \u2018Yeah, well that was f***ed up, but you can still\u2026\u2019 You know?\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he struggles to admit that life can be nuanced. He\u2019ll tell his partner he loves her and she\u2019ll reply that she loves him too and he\u2019ll reply: \u201cNO BUT I LOVE YOU MORE THAN THE SUN AND THE STARS AND THE MOON!\u201d He says it\u2019s hard for him to admit how nuanced life can be, that his thoughts tend to the extreme and that he has a tendency to catastrophise. He knows, he says, that this is where he has to do the cognitive work.<\/p>\n
If he sounds like a philosopher or a psychologist, that may be because, in his early 20s, he got a degree in philosophy and psychology. <\/p>\n
Philosophically, he describes himself as \u201ca bit of a determinist\u201d. He says: \u201cI don\u2019t really even know if you can be anything other than what the pool balls have already set you out to be. You know?\u201d<\/p>\n
“I want to feel melancholy, like I want to feel all the depression.” Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
By his own admission, his new solo record ANITYA, which he released in October last year and which he\u2019s touring in May, is less controversial than his previous records, with fewer hot takes and more feelings, of which he has had many since breaking up with the mother of his children three years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs clich\u00e9 as it sounds, the album was really a way for me to work through my flaws without it being overwhelming, you know?<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, music has always been therapy. There\u2019s nothing that\u2019s changed. If you listen to my music, you\u2019re going to be hearing what I went through. I\u2019m just an autobiographical f***ing writer. It\u2019s all I have to pull from, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he was unfaithful to the mother of his children and was responsible for wrecking their bond. In seeking validation from other women, he was, he says, trading one addiction for another: \u201cSearching for something to instantly make me feel good\u201d.<\/p>\n
He sought pleasure wherever he could find it, which he now believes was a mistake. \u201cThe seeking of pleasure to avoid pain is the fool\u2019s route.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holding up his phone, he says, \u201cThese things are like f***ing dopamine slot machines, dopamine dealers in your f***ing palm, you know? You can just instantly get a little fix if you check your fake praise, that\u2019s always there on tap if you want to tap into it. I was a pleasure seeker in every way. I think I realised, like, \u2018Okay, just because you got clean doesn\u2019t mean the wiring\u2019s gone away\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t written an essay on my last two years \u2013 just an album \u2013 but I think part of the conclusion would be something like: \u2018You don\u2019t need the validation. You can only give that to yourself.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Scott with his son Quincy in 2020. Photo \/ Dean Purcell.<\/p>\n
He has two sons, aged 8 and 6. He is worried about the manosphere and its influence on young men.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese extreme figures create these extreme circumstances that we then idolise and glamourise and romanticise.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says the thing he wants most for his sons is self-awareness, maybe because he\u2019s aware he didn\u2019t have enough of it. Understanding the world starts with understanding yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as I thought I was a rebel, I was still being led by big alcohol. I didn\u2019t know alcohol was a pimp until two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was then, a year after his separation, that he got sober and came to understand alcohol\u2019s power over him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just don\u2019t know who\u2019s pulling the strings. So I would just hope that my kids figure out who\u2019s pulling the strings sooner than later and just know themselves enough to not follow things.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the songs on ANITYA is called message 2 miles and it\u2019s a message to his son letting him know the breakup of his parents was not his fault. He lets his son know his dad is flawed and outlines in sometimes painful detail, some of those flaws (\u201cI gotta go and get high every time I get low \/ That\u2019s my flaw \/ Soon as s*** gets hard, gotta go and look for a cure \/ Name it, been hooked on it all\u201d).<\/p>\n
The song, he says, is not a \u201cpoor me\u201d thing. He is \u201cjust trying to break cycles of bulls***\u201d.<\/p>\n
At a high level, the creative act of a musical performance or recording sometimes seems like a magic trick; the years of hard work and training subsumed into a few minutes or hours.<\/p>\n
Recently, he says, he\u2019s been enjoying demystifying the magic. When working with rangatahi, he says: \u201cI tell them how bullshit it is, tell them that the magic happens with the first thing you write, and maybe you chase that dragon for the rest of your life and you\u2019re never as happy as that first moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
He says most people, when learning, want to do the most amazing magic trick they can. His friend, a music teacher, tells him his students always want to learn the hardest guitar solo, the highest trills and so on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not happy with: \u2018I just got up and wrote today and it was kind of cool and I got it out and it was neither great nor s***\u2019. But that\u2019s where the beauty is, I think, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
He tells a story about his sons having to watch him play the video game Street Fighter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting quite good on the online Street Fighter. I\u2019m playing these guys in Japan that are pretty f***ing sharp, so they\u2019re beating me. And I watch my kids watch their father\u2019s invincibility shield fade, you know? And I\u2019m kind of happy that they get to see it early. I want them to know, \u2018Bro, your dad\u2019s human\u2019. I want them to know that early, because I remember watching it with my father, the hero that I\u2019d painted him to be. He could not live up to \u2013 no one could have lived up to \u2013 that expectation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about that magic act that we all want to believe as humans, eh? And that\u2019s again maybe our expectations leading us astray, man. Life is suffering bro. Life ain\u2019t magic bro.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Scott plays solo shows in Hamilton on Friday, May 1 and Wellington on Friday, May 8. Homebrew plays the Auckland Town Hall on Sunday, May 31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just this year, Scott began studying for a master\u2019s degree in counselling. On the day we met, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[95,204963,5822,795,6658,14772,16027,31898,156,222,29400,204965,65792,15209,5420,16718,204964,221,5620,11285,4188,58253,111,139,425,69,51252,30618,18241,8139,40293,24391,3422,5134,9192,1530],"class_list":["post-396771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-and","tag-anitya","tag-bright","tag-bruce","tag-built","tag-burning","tag-counselling","tag-degree","tag-entertainment","tag-fast","tag-fatherhood","tag-flame","tag-frontman","tag-greg","tag-hes","tag-him","tag-homebrew","tag-how","tag-interview","tag-learning","tag-living","tag-masters","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-now","tag-nz","tag-pass","tag-reputation","tag-reshaped","tag-scott","tag-sober","tag-studying","tag-therapy","tag-tom","tag-writes","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}