Episodes

  • After Long Winter
    Mar 7 2022

    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

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    2 mins
  • 5. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
    Jun 24 2021

    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

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    13 mins
  • Kindness
    Jun 9 2021

    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

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    2 mins
  • Once
    Jun 2 2021

    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

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    2 mins
  • October 20th
    Sep 22 2020

    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.



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    1 min
  • Sweet Darkness
    Aug 8 2020

    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.


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    1 min
  • When Death Comes
    Jun 26 2020

    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

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    2 mins
  • Lines to a Poet
    Jun 1 2020

    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

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    1 min