The Telling Itself

The Telling Itself

By Steve TellArts
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The Telling Itself episodes

  • So Very Special

    The Object of Intent Is To Get There


    One lifetime meets another lifetime
    in a constant lifetime of wars.
    Leaning cities greet us at every station
    and every wound points to the same place.
    If your unique pain cancels out my unique pain
    then there is nothing unique about pain.
    What’s left to do
    but carry your troubles to where they’re going;
    once there, you stumble on the rest of us.

    Luis J. Rodríguez

    --

    Aja Romano's fabulous doc on LGBTQ+ Harry Potter, and much much more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08y8x0s

    I Love Therapy snippet from Joe List: https://youtu.be/odtAJ2kPdqc

    Paulina Villarreal's cover of Creep (thank you Paulina - this is magnificent!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Y4XpBxjU0&ab_channel=TheWarning

    Arlo Parks' perfect Creep cover:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRDbsLYSwe0&ab_channel=ArloParksVEVO


    40 min
  • I've Always Been Crazy, But It's Kept Me From Going Insane

    Proposition


    These are the first citizens of contingency.
    Far from the doctrinaire past of the old ones,
    They think in their prudent meditations

    Not about ecstasy (the soul leaving the body)
    Nor enthusiasm (the god entering one’s person)
    Nor even about sanity (which means

    Health, an impossible perfection)
    But ponder instead relative truth and the warm
    Dusk of amelioration. The cautious

    Young augurs with their family-life, good books
    And records and foreign cars believe
    In amelioration—in that, and in suffering.

    Robert Pinsky, from “Essay on Psychiatrists”

    --

    We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse by James Hillman and Michael Ventura (1993).

    I've Always Been Crazy - Waylon Jennings cover by Jaime Wyatt (thanks Jaime!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RBr_R5pwRQ&ab_channel=JaimeWyatt


    27 min
  • A Door Boarded Up From The Inside

    COMPOST HYMN


    A worm split in two must be
    an ideogram for something.
    Someone once said nothing
    incomprehensible on earth can exist—

    rather, one’s vantage point
    obscures understanding past
    the point of sanity. Yes, this world
    belongs to scavengers, and yes

    we are briefly a part of it. This city
    could be any city alive enough
    to be mistaken for an elsewhere.
    Often our linear notions are nothing

    more than whims: the weather carries
    this thought like a balloon to the clouds,
    the lake below a tiny memory
    of a door boarded up from the inside.

    Adam Clay 

    —  

    I’m climbing this ladder

    My head in the clouds
    I hope that it matters
    I'm having my doubts
    I'm watching the skaters
    Fly by on the lake
    Ice frozen six feet deep
    How long does it take?
    I look out on peaceful lands
    With no war nearby
    An ocean of shaking hands
    That grab at the sky
    I'm singing this borrowed tune
    I took from the Rolling Stones
    Alone in this empty room
    Too wasted to write my own
    I'm climbing this ladder
    My head in the clouds
    I hope that it matters

    Neil Young

    -- 

    LINKS: Borrowed Tune (Neil Young cover), played by Hayo van Reek (thank you Hayo!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edbu1136Dbg&ab_channel=HayovanReek

    5 min
  • "We Were Getting Ready To Win This election. Frankly We Did Win This Election. We Did Win This Election." (Trump: November 4, 2020)

    SOMETIMES


    Sometimes things don't go, after all,
    from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
    faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
    sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

    A people sometimes will step back from war;
    elect an honest man, decide they care
    enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
    Some men become what they were born for.

    Sometimes our best efforts do not go
    amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
    The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
    that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

    Sheena Pugh

    --

    The 72 Objects Marina Abromovic allowed the spectators of her Rhythm 0 performance piece (1979) to use on her:  

    1. a rose

    2. a feather

    3. perfume

    4. honey

    5. bread

    6. grapes

    7. a small wooden cabinet

    8. an ivory tusk

    9. red meat (provenance unknown)

    10. wine

    11. an indian pipe

    12. orange lollies on silver sticks

    13. slices of fish flesh on orange prongs 

    14. scissors

    15. acetic acid in a sealed tin

    16. rubber breasts

    17. a rubber crotch

    18. salt cod

    19. a scalpel

    20. a cauldron

    21. a large wooden frame

    22. peanuts

    23. nails

    24. soft rugs

    25. some communion wafers

    26. candlesticks

    27. canvas pliers

    28. 3 sighted mice

    29. nitrile gloves

    30. a mirror

    31. a rouge pot

    32. some saints relics

    33. a pink plastic limb

    34. cloves wedged in an apple

    35. arrows (but no bow)

    36. five bright brass balls

    37. some kind of stopper

    38. cubes of fresh yeast

    39. a bottle of gin

    40. honeycomb

    41. lipstick

    42. eyeliner

    43. strips of tinfoil

    44. a green helmet

    45. shiny gloves

    46. an oversized white suit

    47. mirrors

    48. flags

    49. shoe-blacking

    50. lime leaves

    51. the branch of an elm

    52. narcissi and tulips

    53. an antique billhook

    54. a woman’s handbag

    55. and a baby’s crib

    56. some fat snails (dead and alive)

    57. some keys

    58. some cufflinks

    59. a large hessian sack

    60. much unwashed laundry

    61. a bowl of blackberries

    62. origami figurines

    63. snakeskins

    64. fox fur

    65. a glass eye

    66. some false teeth

    67. a metal bar

    68. a very fine camelhair brush

    69. some Japanese silks

    70. a melting ice-sculpture of the artist

    71. a rapidly souring pitcher of milk

    72. a gun loaded with one bullet

    --

    LINKS: 

    Trump's Premature Ejaculation: https://www.newsweek.com/what-donald-trump-said-election-victory-speech-full-transcript-1544716

    Can't Touch This cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK9hqQ-rKlU&ab_channel=AimTV

    Reading of the poem:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_uA8glDYvI&ab_channel=KnightOfCups


    17 min
  • I Stuff My Tummy Like a Goop With Animal Crackers in My Soup!

    RUNNING OUT OF WORDS


    A well runs out of thirst
    the way time runs out of a week,
    the way a country runs out of its alphabet
    or a tree runs out of its height.
    The way a brown pelican
    runs out of anchovy-glitter at darkfall.

    A strange collusion,
    the way a year runs out of its days
    but turns into another,
    the way a cotton towel’s compact
    with pot and plate seems to run out of dryness
    but in a few minutes finds more.

    A person comes into the kitchen
    to dry the hands, the face,
    to stand on the lip of a question.

    Around the face, the hands,
    behind the shoulders,
    yeasts, mountains, mosses multiply answers.

    There are questions that never run out of questions,
    answers that don’t exhaust answer.

    Take this question the person stands asking:
    a gate rusting open.
    Yes stands on its left, no on its right,
    two big planets of unpainted silence.

    Jane Hirschfield

    --

    Shirley Temple at Dancing School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEx7UgFBmoQ&ab_channel=ShirleyTemple

    Animal Crackers In My Soup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNwFXLcrsbc&ab_channel=myvideosym

    7 min
  • Peel Your Own Image From The Mirror (Message for Monica)

    The time will come

    when, with elation
    you will greet yourself arriving
    at your own door, in your own mirror
    and each will smile at the other's welcome,

    and say, sit here. Eat.
    You will love again the stranger who was your self.
    Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
    to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

    all your life, whom you ignored
    for another, who knows you by heart.
    Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

    the photographs, the desperate notes,
    peel your own image from the mirror.
    Sit. Feast on your life.

    DEREK WALCOTT

    19 min
  • Time And Touch

    "It’s time and touch, he thought. It’s these two things. It’s because we are aware of them. The draw to go upstairs and climb in next to her warm body was unbearable, but he knew he would not do it. He thought of the way he could feel right through her skin. I wonder if that’s why we get so desperate in everything. It’s like we’re touching something we weren’t ever meant to feel."

    -Cynan Jones (from The Dig)

    --

    the way I could tell

    today
    that yesterday is dead
    is that
    the little gray bird
    that sat
    in the empty
    tree
    yesterday is gone:
    yesterday and
    bird are gone:
    I know there's no use
    looking
    for either
    Of them, bird
    running from winter,
    yesterday
    running downstream
    to some ocean-pocket of
    rest
    whence it may sometime
    come again (changed), new
    as tomorrow:
    how like a gift
    the memory
    of bird and empty tree!
    how
    precious
    since we may not have
    that configuration
    again:
    today is full of things,
    so many,
    how can they be managed,
    received and loved
    in their passing?

    -A.R. Ammons


    --

    Penn and Teller trick by Xavier Mortimer on Fool Us Season 7, Episode 13



    5 min
  • For All We Know The Default Mode Network Is Made Up Entirely Of Stories

    I well up, not telling

    if I die in this wave there is no such thing
    as dying, because
    there’s this wave, or surge and not
    so powerful, except for
    as much as needed
    all that I am, as
    much as that

    ALICE NOTLEY

    --

    All you ever wanted to know about The Default Mode Network (but were afraid to ask): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network#:~:text=In%20neuroscience%2C%20the%20default%20mode,cortex%2Fprecuneus%20and%20angular%20gyrus

    My faded zafu cushion: https://photos.app.goo.gl/u7B4ASqist8Udmmw8

    5 min
  • Where The Mess Is, That’s Where My Heart Is

    There is the question

    of bearing witness, of being yourself seen
    by yourself, & seen clearly, cleanly,
    without weapon or bible in hand;
    as this was the wish,
    the sturdy & not-so-secret wish
    of those who named us—

    our parents wanted us to be
    known to ourselves without confusion:
    without judgment,
    sans suffering. Never force it,
    they said, always find it.

    OK, strictly speaking, that’s not entirely true.
    My particular, sole, insistent, moody mother & father
    probably never thought much about it at all.
    Those two anxious citizens,
    they were never exemplars of patience.
    The weightlessness of detachment & acceptance
    as I think of it now
    would have frightened them—
    for good reason.

    If you could see these words
    I’m speaking to you tonight printed on a page
    as typeface & magnified x 500
    you would feel just how ragged & coarse
    they really are, heavy.

    Well, playing the part of a butterfly
    must be tiring, right?
    I’m happier being the old ox, right?
    On some plane of existence
    these two scraps are all my news:
    where the mess is
    that’s where my heart is.

    DAVID RIVARD

    4 min
  • Ship Creative Work

    “I think the telling itself must be the inclusion

    of everyone. It isn’t about technique, it’s about
    inclusion. I don’t want to be included, but
    I can’t refrain from speaking. I know I sound
    plaintive. I sound desperate. I sound happy,
    even though the world is a frightful dream.
    I am standing somewhere underground, in
    an underworld, with all the others. I never
    wanted this. I am one of many, but I am
    unique. Saying “one of many” and saying
    “unique” hurts me. I am just a record player now.
    I am the dead. Or, I am a dead man. I
    have never been words, but words have never
    been words. In language I combine my flesh
    with yours, and you with mine; my flesh
    is tender, my skin aches from knowing you,
    my hand can’t really touch you, but if you
    say “I” I’ll say “I.” I want to say “we” but I can’t.
    I can; but I think that I won’t do that here.
    I take a word like “morals” and try to weigh it
    in my mind. It has no weight today. I think
    it has, I just accept it. I don’t ever want to leave.

    ALICE NOTLEY (from Certain Magical Acts)

    --

    Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast: https://www.akimbo.link/

    For more on graphomania & hypergraphia, check out Alice W. Flaherty's excellent The Midnight Disease.


    12 min

About The Telling Itself

From the publisher's feed

There’s a bird crying outside, or maybe calling, anyway it goes on and on without stopping."