Riz Ahmed Plays Himself

Speaker 2
Im, i’m curious, riz, what did you learn about the death community by immersing yourself in it for this role?
Speaker 1
So so much. I mean, i thought i’d just signed up to learn american sign language and lerned howd to play the drums, but what i learned was so, so much more. I feel that the death community taught me the meaning of the word communication. I feel like the deaf community taught me what listening really is. Listening isn’t something you just do with your ears. It’s something you do with your entire body, with your with your energy. A, by holding space for some one else with your attention. You know, it’s an act of love, listening. A, and it’s something at it’s an all body activity. A, and similarly with unation, you know, i kind of found myself getting far more emotional talking about ncertain topics in sign language than i would of if if i had the mask of words to Hide behind. I think of jeremy stone, my sign instructor, who told me that there’s this trope in the deaf community that hearing people are emotionally repressed because they hide behind words. And the deaf community is so much about and embodied communication rather than physiological listening, that a, y, it, it really kind of woke me up to what those words really mean.
Speaker 2
Can you give an example of how that expressed itself in you?

Speaker 1
It’s something you do with your entire body, with your with your energy. A, by holding space for some one else with your attention. You know, it’s an act of love, listening. A, and it’s something at it’s an all body activity. A, and similarly with unation, you know, i kind of found myself getting far more emotional talking about ncertain topics in sign language than i would of if if i had the mask of words to Hide behind. I think of jeremy stone, my sign instructor, who told me that there’s this trope in the deaf community that hearing people are emotionally repressed because they hide behind words. And the deaf community is so much about and embodied communication rather than physiological listening, that a, y, it, it really kind of woke me up to what those words really mean.
Speaker 2
Can you give an example of how that expressed itself in you?
Speaker 1
Yes, so a one example is, you know, jeremy and i would meet up every day to inof him to teach me sign language for a couple of hours every morning for about seven months. And over that o time, you know, you quickly move past in nour grammar and vocabulary and stance, becoming each other’s therapists and each other’s kind of best bodies. And er i remember thit was a moment we were just both talking about our lives, really, our experiences.

Speaker 1
I think in smaller ways, almost every day i find myself a, you not trying to look for simplistic solutions rather than the complex, embracing the complexity of acceptance, you know. And em it’s it, sir. It’s a daily right? You know? Surrender and submission and acceptance is something that, it actually comes up in the film a lot, a, you know, the idea of the addict looking for a fix, as in a hit of drugs, is also, the Addic looking for a fix, a way of, you know, ah, making things feel better. You know, if that’s what the hit of drugs do, that’s what the hipdopemine does, that’s what a drenlin does for the work oholik, you know, like myself. Or that’s also am, you know, papering over the cracks with some some kind of illusion o solving a, yes, itit makes things feel better, but, but it’s not engaging with the world as it is. And yet, i iam constantly in that place mesaing all the things that i struggle with.
Speaker 2
I likeheroi sonden o rii ablet surrendering, oh, my gosh. I mean, one thing i found so much residence in reuben’s story. Cause a quick personal aside, which is, i was a concert violinist as a kid, and a sudden acute injury in my hand derailed my musical career.

Speaker 2
And slowly, over the years, am, and i think this touches on some of the themes in sound of metal and in mogl mowgli, you have to figure out who you are outside of that one pursuit. It calls into question this very natural question we all ask ourselves, which is, who are we? Right? You know, in cognitive science, there’s thi term called identity foreclosure, and it does refer to the idea that can feel very fixed in our sense of selves, especially early in adolescence, And that that identity prevents us from exploring other alternatives, other avenues, other identities that we can embody. And so o know, i think if you had asked me as a young kid, what do you love about the violin? I would have said, why? Love how it feels. I love how it sounds. Actually, what i loved oris, and maybe you can relate to this as an actor, is i could get on to a stage in front of thousands of strangers, and in moments, i could make them feel something That they had never felt before. And that was so intoxicating and so powerful that when i realized, well, this is a trait of music that made me happy. I might have lost the violin, but let me try to find that trait elsewhere in other pursuits, right? And so ultimately, was human connection that motivated me. And so it led me y cognitive science, right? Like itds led me to study the human mind, and it’s led me to do this pod casp, that’s a long witted way of saying that. O, if you s really help me understand what losing the violin at such a formative period of my life taught me, is that, a, i had to see my identity is more malleable. And it seems like reuben did too.
Speaker 1
I love what you just said. I can massively relate to that a. I think the, you know, thesound of metal, and reuben’s journey as a character does really interrogate this idea of identity. The star of the movie, he is this, you know, a drummer, a producer, a boy friend who lives this itinerant life on the road in a touring band. And at the end of the movie, he’s the opposite of pretty much all those things. What’s interesting is that the star of the movie, you see him in almost a state ofu s you know, his shirtless ah. But in a way, he’s wearing a mask. You know, he’s hidden behind the fortress of his drums, the cannon, you know, ar thaa. He’s kind of firing out of the world to keep, keep the world at bay from getting closer to him. And he’s hiding behind the mask of his blonde hair and the mask of his tattoos. And by the end of it, he’s like all, you know, wrapped up in paris and like a coat and every thing. But in a way, he’s more naked than ever he’s taken the mask off. And it’s something i think about a lot, because, you know, the malliability of identity is a, you know, sometimes becomes very apparent in these moments of crisis. And i can very much relate e to the experience you’re talking about. And it’s partly what drew me towards both sound and metal. And mogal mowgli is going through much smaller, but in a similar experience to what those characters go through, where i kind hof found myself kind of almost in in a kind of state of physical In a breakdown, just total exhaustion. Er. My body just was just would not, you don’t allow me to function at the pace i was any more. My workolism had kind of run its course and landed me at this cross roads where i wondered whether i could continue doing what i’m doing, not just er physically, but also tionally. And what i learn in that experience, which is, yes, the mallability of our identity, you know. And at some point you realize the work won’t love you backand at some point you realize, even if the work is a tool to get people to love you, that’s never going to be enough. It’s about, you know, self love. And what does that mean, excepting yourself? Do you note the person you know better any one, all the dirt under the rug, the warts and all, you know, the stuff, do you don in wen, you do know that you got to love that person, yould accept That person. So hard for so many of us. And particularly when you realize, as performers, many of us, rather than look inwards. We’re looking out to the audience. We’re looking for that round of applause, you know, we’re looking to have roses thrown at our feet as we bow, because we’ve got that deficit of self love internally. And so i don’t know that was having performance taken away from me, having the possibility of that external, you know, er fountain of validation taken away from me, forced me to look At that internal deficit, forced me to try and start exploring this story of self love.

Speaker 1
My workolism had kind of run its course and landed me at this cross roads where i wondered whether i could continue doing what i’m doing, not just er physically, but also tionally. And what i learn in that experience, which is, yes, the mallability of our identity, you know. And at some point you realize the work won’t love you backand at some point you realize, even if the work is a tool to get people to love you, that’s never going to be enough. It’s about, you know, self love. And what does that mean, excepting yourself? Do you note the person you know better any one, all the dirt under the rug, the warts and all, you know, the stuff, do you don in wen, you do know that you got to love that person, yould accept That person. So hard for so many of us. And particularly when you realize, as performers, many of us, rather than look inwards. We’re looking out to the audience. We’re looking for that round of applause, you know, we’re looking to have roses thrown at our feet as we bow, because we’ve got that deficit of self love internally. And so i don’t know that was having performance taken away from me, having the possibility of that external, you know, er fountain of validation taken away from me, forced me to look At that internal deficit, forced me to try and start exploring this story of self love.
Speaker 2
Look, i love what you say about this cloak we wear, because i also an another moment that really resonated with me, an insoundef

Speaker 1
Good things and bad things happen for some kind reason or the there or that there’s some kind of lesson in there. Even if there isn’t a lesson, even if they haven’t happened for a reason, we can matabolize them into something that we can come out the other side stronger. We can. So there is some kind of spiritual a board game that we’re all playing, that you can find a gift inside every challenge. And i cind of lean in that direction. Not saying that your approach ofm or mutually exclusive, but i think they’re compatible.
Speaker 2
Is, i think the only change in word i would use is, rather than seeking it as as a spiritual journey or spiritual alcemy, i just see it is a cognitive one, which, as i think, as humans, we Are natural, born story tellers. And we will try and construct narratives out of the random ness that happens to us, if only to justify why the why things have happened to us. Right a, it’s effort for us to search for silver linings. For example, after a tragedy, because it just feels like we must make sense of randomness.

Speaker 2
Is, i think the only change in word i would use is, rather than seeking it as as a spiritual journey or spiritual alcemy, i just see it is a cognitive one, which, as i think, as humans, we Are natural, born story tellers. And we will try and construct narratives out of the random ness that happens to us, if only to justify why the why things have happened to us. Right a, it’s effort for us to search for silver linings. For example, after a tragedy, because it just feels like we must make sense of randomness. And so i find that even though, again, i don’t think the universe had a reason behind it, that like, this thing was meant to happen, i’m the same as you. I absolutely am looking for a lesson to be learned, a way to be stronger, a something that i might pull from experience that i might not have been able to pull from another experience. I enter the same psychology as you. I think we’rejust calling it slightly different things. I love it.
Speaker 1
I actually think that putting troma, putting good luck, putting life like shaping into story, is, it’s profoundly healing. I think it actually strengthens us. It strengthens our nactions to each other and to ourselves. I it’s not just tha, kind of opium tho we kind of, you know, an don’t indulge ourselves with. I think it’s, i, it’s a corpor of the equipment we’ve been given on this planet.

Speaker 1
I actually think that putting troma, putting good luck, putting life like shaping into story, is, it’s profoundly healing. I think it actually strengthens us. It strengthens our nactions to each other and to ourselves. I it’s not just tha, kind of opium tho we kind of, you know, an don’t indulge ourselves with. I think it’s, i, it’s a corpor of the equipment we’ve been given on this planet. It’s alike it be at our best connect with others and connect with ourselves.
Speaker 2
Be right back with a slight change of plans, brought to you by discover. It’s time to do you to do the things that make you happy, like date night at that one restaurant you love, or getting your gin membership back. Now that things are getting back to normal, it’s time to rediscover all your favorite things.

Speaker 1
It was interesting, because with sound and metal em you know, the script was written, it was a masterpiece by darius marda. So i could look at it and step back from it, and, as you said, start at the starting point of sitting outside of it, thinking, we what is reuben learning? What is his journey? What is is arc and you know, t’s interesting, because when i was taking on the character of reuben at ok, disguised, nothing like me, you know. And then, yo, start playing any character, and itis the journey, you always on with every character, and hopefully the journey the audience goes on with that character as well. You start off going, whose disguise, nothing like me, and by the end of it, you like, i’m exactly this person. And that’s because, you know, i mean, my belief is that that the differences that seemingly separate us are an illusion. Deep down, we are, we all share the same emotional cale. We have nevert experienced believs thoughts, but we all feel the same things. And thats kind of way we are, in that super feeling that weor ship. But iwas like, i’m not n atict whatever thir’s going to be research. I’ll go to my first kind of adiction recovery meaning. And i’m like, just, i feel like, did some one read my diary? Like, what this is all about me? I mean, you know, i haven’t, never suffered from substance abuse in that way, but it’s like, i don’t know, just that the patterns, the behavior, the attitude, the entitlement, the the The tragedy of uniqueness, in all this kind of stuff with mogul, mowgli, in a way, even though the character, you