My guest today is Angelo Rosso, a creative mentor, published poet and writer, and a creative writing coach, living on the same island as myself, Salt Spring Island off the coast of Canada, Quw’utsun territory.
In this deep and deepening conversation, we wonder whether artists must be solitary creatures, about where creativity may dwell within each of us, and what kind of patient and caring attention might bring that out.
I first asked Angelo about his own journey into creative mentorship.

To find out about Angelo's creative and mentoring work, visit his site here.

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The podcast Instragram is here.

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Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Why three episodes about community on a storytelling podcast? Well, community is where storytelling takes place, after all, and it's who stories are about. Stories weave webs between communities, and not just between human communities. Stories also reveal existing connective strands that we might have otherwise missed. And really, all our human stories are within the larger stories of water movement, evolution, geological and climate shifts, and the life cycles of stars.

Be that as it may, we’re here on Earth, and some of us are really trying to learn to be better members of the wider Earth community. One such person is Kester Reid, co-founder of the awesome Fianna Wilderness School (fianna.ca). In this episode he talks about the games, songs, ceremonies and yes, stories, employed within the school. All of them help make a cultural container to reconnect with the other wondrous beings we share this world with.

Before this, Chay Beriault makes a cameo to touch on some interesting and useful psychology and communication methods. They may help you deepen your sense of self, as well as your relationships.

See you on the other side.

Share this podcast with a friend by copying this link: https://storypaths.buzzsprout.com/

To support the podcast and get goodies, go on over to Patreon.

The podcast Instragram is here.

To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

There were many songs and sound effects in this episode. Thanks especialy to all who offered these up freely on Freesound.org and dig.ccmixter.org.

I couldn't put them all in the show notes here, but you'll find them in the transcript.

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

With Tyson Yunkaporta, Daniel Robert,  Chay Beriault, Jessie White, and John Wolfstone.

In part two of Community, we get into the path toward community, a zigzag and emergent pathway that can be confusing and extremely challenging. Which is why the alternate name for this episode is Community is a Pain in the Ass.
It's not easy to be building community while dealing with ancestral grief and despair over living in a fragmented, partial society.
And yet people make this effort, with goodwill and humor, and I doff my patchy hat to them.
We get into communication, communion working through conflict,
and we also get into nomadic community, which may well be the oldest form of community for humans, and is less about just roaming through the landscape and more about cyclically tending the land.
We'll be hearing from Tyson Yunkaporta about this from the Apalach band in Australia, who is working in the indigenous knowledge lab in deacon university working on bringing in functional nomadic communities in the modern world. And we'll also touch on the wonders and terrors of online community.

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To learn more about Tyson Yunkaporta excellent book, Sand Talk, you can go here.
In this episode Daniel Robert tells the story of the founding of the School of Mythopoetics. To hear more about this you can listen to this episode of the Mythic Masculine Podcast.
Jessie's beautiful art is here.
John Wolfstone's site, about rites of passage, is here.

Hear you in there!

To support the podcast, and receive additional artwork and stories related to its theme, go on over to Patreon.

The podcast Instragram is here.

To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

There were many songs and sound effects in this episode. Thanks especialy to all who offered these up freely on Freesound.org and dig.ccmixter.org.

I couldn't put them all in the show notes here, but you'll find them in the transcript.

Music credit
from ccmixter:
romancito_-_San_Geronimo_Feast_Day
From freesound.org
165864__ananth-pattabi__traditional-folk-drums-hyderabad-india.mp3

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

What does community mean to you?

Is it wonderful? Complicated? 

Community is the container for storytelling, and for so much of what we do. It exists in healthy and broken forms, in motion, in transition. It’s critical to our survival, and our flowering. Did I mention it's complicated and frustrating too? Community is infuriatingly, thankfully, necessary. 

It is a vast landscape, and today we venture out to explore a wee bit.

 Featuring interviews with John Wolfstone, Jessie White, and Chaitanya Beriault.

The supplementing voices of Jessie, Blair, Boots, Sophie and Maggie.

Share this podcast with a friend by copying this link: https://storypaths.buzzsprout.com/

To support the podcast, and receive additional artwork and stories related to its theme, go on over to Patreon.

The podcast Instragram is here.

Jessie's beautiful art is here.

John Wolfstone's site, about rites of passage, is here.

 To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

There were many songs and sound effects in this episode. Thanks especialy to all who offered these up freely on Freesound.org and dig.ccmixter.org.

I couldn't put them all in the show notes here, but you'll find them in the transcript.

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Season 2, and a deeper dive into the many facets of story.

Tyson Yunkaporta is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, Australia. He’s a systems thinker, a traditional carver, an arts critic and a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He’s also the author, along with his land and community, of Sand Talk: How indigenous thinking can save the world. And today, he’s going to bring us into this question:

What are people for? 

Ecologically speaking, in relation with the other species whom we’re here with, what are we for? In this context, why do we tell stories, think in metaphors and symbols, and enact ceremonies?

This episode includes guided meditations, original music and much more. It was quite a journey making it; may it be a gift for you and your kin.

Share this podcast with a friend by copying this link: https://storypaths.buzzsprout.com/

To receive additional artwork and stories related to its theme, go on over to Patreon.

 To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

Credits
There were many songs and sound effects in this episode, which I’ll list here. Thanks to all who offered these up freely on Freesound.org and dig.ccmixter.org.

I couldn't put them all in the show notes here, but you'll find them in the linked transcript.

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

I started this podcast to explore the word story, and found that this word is as big as words like culture, god, and Earth. Today I review some of what I've learned thus far in my journey, distilling some essence from what my guests taught me.
Thanks muchly for all of you who've joined me in this. The plan is to recommence in February. My wife is becoming a contributor, which is great, and we have some amazing guests lined up, as well as plans to weave interactive practices into the podcast.
Until soon. Best wishes in the new year on this popular calendar system.
Sincerely,
Theodore Lowry

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 To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here.

Music by Theodore Lowry and Doxent.

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she’ll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. In every neighborhood she’s ever lived in she has been known as “the walker”. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients.

Her first book of essays, The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine, is forthcoming in 2022 from Inner Traditions. Her books of poetry include Love Song to a Blue God, Those Other Flowers to Come and The Approach (The Swan). She has recently finished a work of historical fiction, The Madonna Secret, that offers an eco-feminist revision of the gospels. 

You can read Sophie's work on her website, facebook and instagram.

Share this podcast with a friend by copying this link: https://storypaths.buzzsprout.com/

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Music by Keli Marks
Artwork from Noun Project by Icon Producer, 

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

What does Lord of the Rings have to do with China? Can maps grow and change? Metaphors expand within the story sea. A story-eel is guided by tiny fish, gradually changing course until he is in an entirely new part of the sea, as was I, in this solo episode.

 To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

In the old ways, story was woven through landscape. Each peak and valley, river and bay was threaded with stories which interlinked with others, covering the land with a tapestry of narrative. In this age of uprooted peoples and rational thinking, much of this has been lost. Can landscape be storied and restoried? In this solo episode, I weave a wee tale for the island I'm on, on the west coast of Turtle Island, and for those yet unborn.

 To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Nations and religions have collective stories which include many individuals. My friend Eliad speaks about the story of Judaism as he's come to know it, and how his own life has interwoven with this larger history and mythology. We touch on union and separation from God, the contrasting stories of ascending and falling, the difference between spirit and soul, and more.

Share this podcast with a friend by copying this link: https://storypaths.buzzsprout.com/

 To be notified about upcoming creative writing and art workshops, sign up for the Story Paths mailing list here. 

Trailer for Creative Writing: Brainstorming Story Ideas
Link to the course and a free month on Skillshare.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe