No Way Out but Through

After long winter, giving  
each other nothing, we collide  
with blossoms in our hands. 

by Chiyo

Chiyo (1703-1775) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period, a Buddhist nun, and widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of haiku (then called hokku). After Long Winter is one of the best haiku ever written. Period. Translated by David Ray.

This piece originally appeared in The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters episode.

Featuring: Susan Kay Anderson, Glen Stohr, Curt Hopkins, Richard La Rosa, and Maren Euwer.

Words and music ©2021 by Scott Taylor, unless otherwise noted.
Transcript can be found at scott-taylor.co

The Playlist:

1. Thanks 
   Gratefulness puts the pedal to the metal and crashes into the void in W.S. Merwin's poem Thanks.
2. Once   
   Once I was in love with my future. It was lit like a Japanese city. My life was charmed. I got into fistfights. I turned on a dime. I was fiercely optimistic. I was the luckiest man alive.
3. Self Portrait 
   It doesn't interest David Whyte if there is one god or many gods,
   he wants to know if you belong — or feel abandoned.
4. The Sleep of Reason 
   We collaborated across oceans and created The Sleep of Reason. If, in 2020, you couldn't see the point of getting up because you had nothing to look forward to—this one goes out to you. Featuring Maren Euwer, Glen Stohr, Richard La Rosa, and Curt Hopkins.
5. Hellenism 
   We live in is a field filled with sunlight
   The exact moment when the echo of a city
   Collapsing dies away
   As Curt Hopkins reads his poem Hellenism, you will find yourself flying over the fence and into the void where you will land on the hood of W.S. Merwin's oldsmobile. Splash!
6. After Long Winter 
   Chiyo (1703-1775) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period, a Buddhist nun, and widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of haiku (then called hokku). After Long Winter is one of the best haiku ever written ( I will fight you about that and you will lose). Featuring Susan Anderson, Glen Stohr, Curt Hopkins, Richard La Rosa, and Maren Euwer.
7. Kindness 
   Before you know what kindness really is
   you must lose things,
   feel the future dissolve in a moment
   like salt in a weakened broth.
   Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. Krista Tippet's interview on her On Being podcast is excellent.
   
   

As 2020 rolled by, and I tried to get my head around the whole thing, trying to address it somehow in terms of my podcast, the idea of working with collaborators was finally what inspired me to get some work done again

Thanks so much to said collaborators:
Maren Euwer
Glen Stohr
Richard La Rosa
Curt Hopkins, The Dog Watches
Susan Kay Anderson, Mezzanine

Words and music ©2021 by Scott Taylor, unless otherwise noted.
Transcript can be found at scott-taylor.co

Kindness is the second single from my upcoming podcast episode, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, and an amazing poem by  Naomi Shihab Nye.

The Transcript can be found here

Once is the first single from my podcast episode, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. 

Once

Once I was in love with my future. 
It was lit like a Japanese city. 
My life was charmed.
I got into fistfights
I turned on a dime.
I was fiercely optimistic.
I was the luckiest man alive. 

Once, I was shot out of a cannon,
I landed on the moon,
I killed seven with one blow,
I balanced ten torpedoes 
on the tip of my tongue like a sailor.

The future was up for grabs,
The past was simply a benign ghost 
living in the back of my head.

Then one night, 
the gods had had enough
and manufactured a monster
to distress my every dream.
Soon the days muddled into months.
Was I half asleep or half-awake?
No sound was distinct.
All the colors on the wheel
ran together into a bleak, unlovely gray.

Now, a complete disappointment,
I let down my guard,
and gave up the ghost.
I was surprised to find myself 
eager for doom.

The Future reared up for a final foray, 
but changed its mind. 
It came inside, and stayed inside.

Once I felt certain the Future 
would make the Past pay. 
It would shove its face into the mud 
until it whimpered, and slinked off 
into the dark woods forever.

Once, I saw the moon disappear 
like it had been deleted. 

Once, as per your request,
I dreamed a little dream of you.

Words and music © 2021 by Scott Taylor   
More at Scott Taylor's cover is blown

Excerpted from Separation Energy
It is also included in my upcoming book, October.

October 20th

The temperature has dropped, 
the constructs have vanished, 
and the woman 
the lab assistant’s been seeing 
will not return his calls.

He shakes his head, saying,
The tensile strength 
of the bridge cables
will not hold 
if the vibration continues 
at these unprecedented levels.  

How will it continue 
to function, he wonders, 
if the party in power 
channels her resources 
towards some candidate 
of unknown potential?

Only the victim, he says, 
ear to the ground, will know 
and only after speech 
has failed him already.

This is excerpted from Episode 4: Separation Energy


Sweet Darkness

by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

This is excerpted from Episode 4: Separation Energy


When Death Comes

By Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world




More on Mary Oliver 1935-2019

Lines to a Poet

by Josephine Jacobsen

Be careful what you say to us now.
The street-lamp is smashed, the window is jagged,
There is a man dead in his blood by the base of the fountain.
If you speak,
You cannot be delicate or sad or clever.
Some other hour, in a moist April,
We will consider similes for the budding larches.
You can teach our wits and our fancy then;
By a green-lit midnight in your study
We will delve into your sparkling rock.
But now at dreadful high noon
You may speak only to our heart,
Our honor and our need:
Saying such things as, “See, she is alive . . . “
Or “Here is water,” or “Look behind you!”

Josephine Jacobsen (19 August 1908 – 9 July 2003) was a Canadian-born American poet, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She was appointed the twenty-first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1971.[2] In 1997, she received the Poetry Society of America’s highest award, the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.

More about her here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/josephine-jacobsen

Music and performance ©2020 by Scott Taylor

A performance of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's great poem I am Waiting—excerpted from episode 4: Separation Energy.

Music and performance by Scott Taylor ©2020.
 
Listen to the whole show here: Separation Energy

Stories, poems, and monologues with music for that special sheltering-at-home time of your life.

1. Messages (Taylor): A woman sends messengers into the afterworld 

2. Sweet Darkness (David Whyte): Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

3. Cosmodemonic (Taylor):  If you want to speak to a human being who will sympathize and empathize, someone who will actually listen to you and help you to solve your problems, please press 9 now

4. I am Waiting (Lawrence Ferlinghetti): I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right. . . and I am waiting for a reconstructed Mayflower to reach America with its picture story and tv rights sold in advance to the natives

5. Separation Energy (Taylor): How will it continue to function, he wonders, if the party in power channels her resources towards some candidate of unknown potential?

6. When Death Comes (Mary Oliver): When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut . . .

© 2020 Words and Music by Scott Taylor, unless otherwise noted.
Transcript can be found at scott-taylor.co




Poetry credits:
Sweet Darkness by David Whyte
I am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

SFX Credit Attribution:
Latin Elevator Muzak by achase4u/Pond5
Phone, internal, ring, standard by bigroomsound/Pond5