The Telling Itself

By Steve Tell

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

-Kim Addonizio

“If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth abo... more

· Arts

FAQs about The Telling Itself:

How many episodes does The Telling Itself have?

The podcast currently has 34 episodes available.

The Telling Itself episodes:

October 21, 2020 I'm Just An Animal Looking For A Home
SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension—though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal—then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
—but we have changed, a little.
DENISE LEVERTOV
--
Notes:
-Gateway to Heaven quote: https://solitudes.qmul.ac.uk/podcasts/
-Other audio quotes from Richard Holloway's Stories We Tell Ourselves
-Kafka's Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and Other Fantastic Beings (PDF): https://bookos-z1.org/book/960274/09138f
-José Ortega y Gasset quote from: “The Self and the Other,” in The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture, trans. Willard R. Trask (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), 178.
-Second reading of the poem: https://vimeo.com/269056790
-"This Must Be The Place" covers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCxrEUEO43M&ab_channel=HaleyBlais
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nahv3rqguDs&ab_channel=BartonStrings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsgMqgi2pg&ab_channel=SureSure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7s38Lwk7T4&ab_channel=Myndset

...more
15min
October 18, 2020 I Speak Because I Am Shattered
The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
-Louise Glück
NOTES:
"As to future pharmaceutical approaches to major mental health problems, there is nothing on the horizon – most of the large drug companies have abandoned the search for new drugs to treat conditions such as depression or anxiety, considering that both the costs and the risks are far too great. This situation is not surprising – if we do not yet properly understand the functioning of even the simplest animal brains, there does not seem much prospect of responding effectively when things apparently go awry in our own heads. " (Matthew Cobb, The Idea of The Brain)
“I’m more like a cow. Cows move at their own pace.” from "Many A Little Makes" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum: https://www.newyorker.com/books/novellas/many-a-little-makes
Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfwF7-suGD4&ab_channel=Music%2CSpokenWordandMiscellanea
Modest Mouse Lampshades on Fire (cover): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulpm_YOaec&ab_channel=Gabrielle

...more
9min
October 17, 2020 Who Needs A Pillow To Sit On, When You Can Have A Puzzle (Ma)?
Who would have thought that 2020 would also go down as The Renaissance of The Puzzle!
...more
1min
October 16, 2020 Honey, Ah Sugar Sugar
every little meth
runt crouched in
the dark part of the culvert
every sugar road
half a bag shy
of the flour roads
every here we go crow
spoiled at the touch
of gun holes in signs
love is inside
light wet seeds
nailed into
the crawlspace
between eyetooth
and barred goon
-Abraham Smith
(Music by Bailey Pelkman)
...more
8min
October 15, 2020 Chilli Hiccups
For caressive calling or homophonous hiccoughs, transpose the laugh. Let them suppose that tears are snowdrops or molasses, or anything than human insufficiences.
MINA LOY
...more
4min
October 14, 2020 Maybe The World Without Us Is The Real Poem?
I have dreamed
of accomplishment.
I have fed
ambition.
I have traded
nights of sleep
for a length of work.
Lo, and I have discovered
how soft bloom
turns to green fruit
which turns to sweet fruit.
Lo, and I have discovered
all winds blow cold
at last,
and the leaves,
so pretty, so many,
vanish
in the great, black
packet of time,
in the great, black
packet of ambition,
and the ripeness
of the apple
is its downfall.
MARY OLIVER
--
Pronunciation of on Forvo.com: https://forvo.com/word/%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%B5%E1%BF%96%CE%BD/
How to make (and pronounce) Kolokythokeftedes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Krujpbi8Sg&ab_channel=Dimitra%27sDishes

...more
15min
October 14, 2020 Thoughts Meander Like A Restless Wind Tumbling Blindly As They Make Their Way Across The Universe
SAFETY BEHAVIOUR
The thoughts, I’ve been told, to put somewhere else.
So I put them on the roof. I put them in a box
and post them. I put them in shoes I never wear.
I split them up from each other and put each one inside
a stranger’s pocket, to be taken home and washed so
the thoughts drown in several different washing machines.
I put them on the wing of an aeroplane. Inside a hollow
bit of wall. I tie them to balloons and they fly off.
I put them in the ocean and they swim away. I hold
them over a candle and they evaporate. I hide,
no, bake them, inside an enormous, delicious cake,
seven tiers high, and I give a piece of it to everyone.
EMMA JEREMY
...more
7min
October 13, 2020 A Pixel, If That
Hello, then, you at the front, yes you
With the puzzled blinkers. If you like
I’ll make arrangements for you to sit
Here with me on the other side
Of language for a spell. In a way
You’ll see it from the inside and as
The quick stations of silence slide
Past our ears, we might, I might
Slip you a message to take back.
…
You are with me here behind the alphabet
Silence has raked and chosen us from.

W.S. GRAHAM (From Aimed at Nobody)
...more
14min
October 12, 2020 Until The Guilt Becomes Too Burdensome To Carry
Other guilts as far as a life away turn up to mourn me back over into early outworn linens of fear. Over a time again gathering up the old sore Self house and servants, the far parts send their name.
I am not that man now as I read the rowan and make a book of a tree.
Better I’d make some new guilt shine?
W.S. GRAHAM
...more
7min
October 11, 2020 Human Kind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
NOTES:
How racial inequalities contributed to Darwin's evolutionary theories: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gbf2g
Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (by Elise Aaltola): https://book4you.org/book/2687438/e43ff7
Jo Jo's Jacket (Stephen Malkmus): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS90RLeWILY&ab_channel=Hubadaeus
Eliot reading Four Quartets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8tQrG4ZSw&ab_channel=vinyhilist
...more
16min

FAQs about The Telling Itself:

How many episodes does The Telling Itself have?

The podcast currently has 34 episodes available.

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The Telling Itself

FAQs about The Telling Itself:

How many episodes does The Telling Itself have?

The Telling Itself episodes:

FAQs about The Telling Itself:

How many episodes does The Telling Itself have?