The ChrissieCast: Best Of 2024 PT.2

Hi, Christy Caster.

It's me Christy Swan. Welcome to this podcast and thank you for listening to it. I'm having a coffee and probably reading a book. I mean, look, holidays for me, unless I physically remove myself from the perimeter of the compound, they usually involve sorting.

Buckets, and that is probably what I'm doing it.

While I'm busy with that, why don't you enjoy a little selection of my favorite bits and bobs and conversations that have happened since I started the Christy Cast about a year ago.

I try on stage to say to agitate my audience a bit, to challenge them a bit, because yeah, I'm just preaching to the choir. But I do think I actually manage that a bit. I pissed everyone off a bit by being by being a sort of logic loving rationalist moderate because it's not trendy and it's very typical of a middle aged white guy to think like that. And fuck it, I still think that, and I still think it's a valuable way to view the world.

Yes, and I think that.

I have been watching some of your performances and in the back of my mind I've thought, God, it's annoying that the people that most need to see this won't see it.

No, and that's my fault. I think a lot about how you reach out, and I talk a lot about how you reach out, and I do pretty well. I mean, my art, not not so much, my polemic, not so much. My early stand up. Without a doubt, if you were a very religious person who came, or if you really were into alternative medicine or whatever and you came to my early shows, you would have felt a bit.

Put off affronted.

Yeah, but you know, Matilda's seen by all sorts of people, and that's got big ideas in it that I'm glad are out in the world, and roundhog Day is seen by all sorts of.

People, and I'm dying to see right day loved. And I want to talk about Matilda because there are two songs in the world that I can not sing without choking up, and one of them is tend to feel Sadler.

Oh what I'm feeling like.

That's amazing that just thinking about is so beautiful.

It's so beautiful.

Grandson of George has.

Just no special place.

You went to the symphony parts, Well, I went to the bit about about the Peter Allen about the guy who lives all around the world and there's no special place because that's me, that's you, George. Just to hear that voice and the sentiment behind it. Lived on High Street, lived on lived on Manners, Yes, lived on man Such a good lyrics.

It's so good hit. I'm going to get it late, George Warno. I'm going to get it all day long.

He sat on his randa and made his sad And if you had questions about on that that lyric later when you're going if we have questions about why his son was so sad, well, George had no answers about why, Oh my god, yeah, yeah, that's the lyric.

About okay you really the late George Wilno walked on worked on High Street, and lived on Manners fifty two years. He sat on his brand, made his saddles, and if you had questions about sheep or flowers or dogs.

Just asks the saddler. He lived without sin the building for Do.

You know whose voice I hear when I hear that song? Todd mckenniy's. I tour it with Todd playing piano for him after The Boy from Us and I played that song while Todd sang it over and over again all around the country.

What a song.

I think it could be the most perfect song. And I'm a lyric freak.

Yeah, Tom is a side again cockatoo, So I know it's just the best I've been told. And I reckon you have too that, Oh you're so unapologetically yourself. And the word unapologetically rubs me the wrong way, because yeah, what.

Am I apologizing for?

Yeah?

Fucking honest?

Yeah, like what I say that I am shamelessly myself because I don't have any shame about who I am?

Yeah, how do you achieve that? Are you a self care person? Are you a walker? What is kind of your.

Daily honoring?

I honestly have always believed that all of the things that I did that were bad or taboo or most people would find shame from, We're not done of my own v I was doing these things because of how I had been cheated, either as a child or as a woman, and so I just gave my shame back to whoever caused it.

Like, sure, I was.

An alcoholic, but why was I an alcoholic? I was an alcoholic probably because I was molested as a kid and I was completely unnurtured, you know. So it's not my fault. That's not my fault. That's their fault for the way that I was raised. And so I give that shame back to them. And it's why it was so easy for me to quit drinking because I was not ashamed.

I told people I don't.

Believe in alcoholics anonymous, Why do I need to be anonymous?

I didn't murder anybody. I just drank.

No.

I think that's a problem for a lot of people when they quit. There's so much shame that they have. And it's like, why because you slept with a bunch of guys and drank, you know what, and I woke up in your friend's lawn or the police came to my.

House or whatever, who cares? Who cares? I didn't kill anybody, And so.

I think that's just what's always made me unapologetically me because also there was no social media growing up, so I had nobody to compare myself to.

So I just was.

Living my life the way it felt like I should live it, you know, and was always looking for people to listen to me, pay attention to me.

And you know, I think all women are like that.

Speaking of being unapologetically yourself and kind of listening to what society tells us and really actively rejecting that. It's very easy to take on board a feeling of failure if you don't tick certain boxes. And I know that you've never been married. I've never been married, and the automatic kind of opinion you have of yourself is, oh my god, what's wrong with me?

Everyone's doing this? There must be something wrong.

Yeah, I mean I don't feel that way.

Was there ever a glimmer of that?

And then you had to talk yourself out of it because the societal messages are pretty strong.

I've never finished a degree.

There are all these things that we're told we're supposed to do that I haven't done.

I mean, honestly, I really think I was just far too busy being an alcoholic to pay attention to the societal rules. When I was very young, I said that I wasn't going to get married until I was very old. And that age that I picked was twenty eight. That was old when I was growing, Yes, And then I kind of, you know, I was busy living my life in my twenties and having fun and getting jobs.

And living in this city and dating and.

Drinking and partying and just building a career. And I dated boys, but none of them were like, oh my god, I want to marry him. And then the ones that I did meet when I was older that I wanted to marry usually broke my heart.

And so by the.

Time I came out of my booze haze, I was thirty six, and then I had to get my shit together, so I wasn't dating, and then before I knew it, I was like, dating sucks. I don't want to get married or date or have babies or any of it. So I'm sure there was a time where I felt like a loser for not having a husband.

I'm sure there was, but I don't remember it.

Yeah, it was so fleeting. You remembered your spirit.

You are a TV writer, and I would love to know what narrative or story line you would love to see on the screen about women.

I'd like to see the stuff that I write, you know.

I was a writer on a TV show called Baby Daddy first one hundred episodes. It was a young show about young people, and when it ended, I decided to only focus on writing for women over fifty, and I was It was twenty seventeen, so I was fifty seven.

I guess, is that right? Yes, it was probably earlier than that.

Never be forty women in their fifties.

And and I've been writing scripts. I have four or five on my desk that are about women in their fifties. I have my version of the Golden Girls. I have a script about a woman who flashes back at fifty, who flashes back on all the men she dated in her twenties to see, like what made her who she was.

I have a movie.

I mean, I have a lot of stuff, and it's all about women in their fifties. But the one thing I really want to see is my version of the Golden Girls or Sex and the City, because I think what they've done now is not realistic view of women in their fifties. And I don't think we see ourselves on TV. And I think, you know, I always said, even when I started my social media journey, I always said that my goal was to change the way the world looks at women over fifty.

I alsh erises, I'm newly fifty. I turned fifty a few months ago, and I just love it. I've never I've never felt more myself, more like my own kind of kid version of myself, and I'm really enjoying it. I recommend it to anybody that's on the journey to fifty. You are ten years older than me, Yeah, well, this is the thing. You've said that your fifties kicked your ass. Well what's coming.

Probably not, Probably not as much as it kicked other people's asses. But it's interesting because my friend Constance turned fifty when I turned sixty, and every day she.

Was like, I don't what's the big deal. I don't get it. What's a big deal?

Everyone talks about fifty And now she's fifty three and she's like, fuck these fucking fifties.

Aha. My sixter said the same thing. She's like, how are you feeling? And I said, I feel really great.

She's he's older than me, and she said, you've got three years enjoy it.

Yeah.

I didn't get like hot flashes or anything like that. But I just felt like wekain and everything fell apart, and I was crabby and I was so fucking invisible, like hello, can anyone pay attention to me? And it was rough, not menopause, thankfully, because then I would have really lost it. But it was just like the invisibility factor, and the concept, the inner feeling of how do I stay relevant in this world was just looming at all times.

And I'm a.

Very curious person, and I feel like I'm a lot younger than most of the people I know, and I still felt like highly irrelevant, you know. And it didn't last long, but I know that so many women that I hear from are just like straw on the struggle bust for that irrelevant feeling.

Yeah, in the air. It's weird.

It is weird.

And I read some research last year and it's something like seventy five percent of women, or even more a higher percentage of women over fifty do feel invisible, even in the everyday stuff of like walking into a shop. It's like no one can see me. It's like I'm a vampire.

It's wild. It's really wild. And it really did happen overnight.

You know?

Yeah, if some shopkeepers not looking at you, that's her fucking problem, and make her aware that you are standing in there, you know.

But it's all how we carry.

Ourselves in those situations because we feel less than because we've been told when you hit that age, you don't matter.

Yes, And that is the conclusion I came to when I was looking at these stats, because I I don't feel invisible, because I've never put value on being objectified or being seen that way physically admired. I am fascinated with the fact that you spent decades with the name Sharon, Yeah till 's twenty four? When did you have to remember that you were Sharon?

Now? Did that happen when you arrived in Australia.

No, So in Malaysia everyone has an English name. My mum's Christina, dad Steven, and my brother's Casper. Everyone has an English name. What were you called day to day in Malaysia? Okay, it's I was called polling at school and at home I'm called b because that's just my nickname, because it's from when my brother was tiny and he couldn't say my name.

So he'd go, baby's crying, baby's crying.

That just to be He's cute.

Yeah, so everyone in my family just calls me be.

So when you started school in Australia, day one, were you Sharon?

I started Sharon because I started with polling and then I got teased once by one boy and he was like, let's go bowling polling and I was like, fuck that, I'm.

Going with Sharon. So that's how that started.

But I'd always written as a kid, even in Malaysia, Sharon Poling. Now, oh so Sharon yoo Poling. Actually we always have last name.

First, right, And what was the catalyst for you going actually getting rid of Sharon altogether?

I'm not Shaz any more. I'm going with Poe.

So my first husband. My name's Elizabeth Taylor.

Yes, haven't of yet to choose a lot, so my first.

We have a third? Do you think?

I say no, But you know, I never like to say never, but.

No, because we don't know what we're thinking from one day to the next.

Exactly, yeah, exactly agree because I'm not pessimistic, but I just don't can't see how it's going to happen.

Yes, I know what you mean. I feel like proper connection like that is rare for normal people. And then throw en us and apps.

I can't do it.

Oh god, no, yuck.

I saw this meme the other day says I'm just happing to meet someone in my.

Lounge roop, I know, knock on the door.

Yeah, but uh Sharon, Yeah, getting.

Rid of shoes.

So Matt's a filmmaker, that's right. And he made this short film that had me in it, and he goes, I'm going to call it polling, I'm going to call it your name, and I was like okay, and then he won this massive film prize. It was actually the biggest short film prize in Australia at the time.

Wow, the Zoomer Woods.

And we had a little bit of like local press and stuff, and he just wrote in the credits Polling played by Poling.

He goes, let's just do this now. He goes, because he's been big, he'd been begging me for years.

He goes, you need to ditch to Sharon. And I'm like, no, no, I can't. It just feels really pretentious now. And he goes, what do you mean that is your name? It's just you're just shedding the Sharon. And at the same time, I was looking through some documents and found that Sharon wasn't on my birth certificate, and so he's like, let's just try it.

Let's just get.

People to call you that from now on and just see how that What was that like? And everyone just latched onto it. I felt a little bit self conscious because it was also when I just started painting, and I thought everyone thought I was being a pretentious skitch oh yeah, and being oh no, they I'm a painter.

Can you call me pooh?

But it's my num plume.

So but everyone just latched onto it so quickly that it just there is.

No other name for you, like it is absolutely there is just no other name.

You are poked through and through. Do you feel that yes I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah I do. Gosh, haven't we had a lovely time.

I'll see you back here next week for a few more highlights that you might not have heard.