Story Paths

Today is my birthday, a day of celebrating. I'm grateful for storytellers, for my family and friends, for land, for creativity, for learning both easeful and hard, for deep thought and silliness, for songand much more. Here is an audio landscape, with found-sounds and spoken-word telephone calls. My hope is this evokes curiosity in the daily doings in your own life...the small things that are no s...

Into Dark Solstice - A Poem We have walked down this way before. Along trails hooved by deer’s morphing ancestors, where light-loving leaves give way to moist stone. We crossed these lands an orbit ago, the constellations just a little different, herding us into this shadow valley where day’s inbreath grows short, and nights outbreath long, where old calendars exhale completely, dissolving into dr...

Here we are. You. Me. I in my body, you in yours, they in theirs. I with my personality, upbringing, influences, opinions. You with yours, they with theirs. Yet here are ways we are more than ourselves. We overlap not only with each other, but with other species, and those in other times, and more. Wandering time and place, ancestry and other lives, from love’s dissolving of boundaries to the inte...

I was cast out from my home. Or maybe I ran away. To dry lands. I’m hungry. I need to become something more, to shed a part of me that seemed intrinsic. And the waters are rising. A slow, meditative and moody song. Lyrics: I ran from all l've known to a dry land where now seeking, seeking, seeking home Fortnights passed aplenty, & was living hungry learning from the serpents who hunted with the mo...

It’s time to die, old man. Past time. You’ve fucked things up. I don’t even want to see you. Damn, and you’re afraid. What dignity will you be able to die with? Alright, old man, here’s a song to help. Subscribe & Support Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit s...

Do gifts leave gaps? If I’m good at one thing, does it leave me floundering in another area? And here’s a big thoughts, on the level of our whole human species, perhaps our gifts leave holes. Here’s a meditation on self-awareness and our relationship with our living home. Subscribe & Support Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discu...

If you’re working with stories and you’re not crazy, don’t worry, it won’t take long. Turkey vultures circle overhead. They’re not waiting until I die, though they wouldn’t turn down the meat. No, they have a message for me. Who’s speaking to you? Subscribe & Support Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscr...

Imagine a map with no cities, no provincial or national borders, no names of colonisers claiming land. Instead, this map is dotted with mythic sites. It is a record of story-sites rooted in land, and webbed together. Hear more, in this melodic meditation, quoting Sean Kane’s excellent book, Wisdom of the Mythtellers, with a passage from a Haida origin myth. Subscribe & Support Free Story & Media C...

As a young man, with my fabric of my life dealt a sudden and grave wound, when I most needed culture, India took me in. But my relationship with Indian culture and myth is complicated. I traversed story paths walked by sages for thousands of years, heard the tales sprouting from those places, found culture and community and meaning. And there is hierarchy, racism, sexism, caste, and other violence...

Overwhelmed by rapid change in my life, inside and outside, I walked a beach in South India, my head spinning between continents. A fellow pilgrim’s rambling advice saved me. As did potatoes. As did a slug, years later, in a very different scenario. Intrigued? Confused? Have a listen to increase both of those. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If...

A tribute-song to two supernovas—Joanna Macy and Andrea Gibson—who in their passing away are spreading life-building gifts. A story-song. A metaphor. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here 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

The rhythm of Jupiter doesn’t quite fit with the birdsong at home. Peeling potatoes and rambling might be the path to enlightenment. Frogs are always singing to someone—maybe to you. My friend Sean Shea and I sat down for a ‘business meeting.’ A mother, a deathbed, and the music of the spheres. Somewhere between devotion and dance floors, between discipline and dissolution, we stumble forward, han...

Human skin against goat skin. Who leads, who follows? Rhythm is a language, but who speaks it best—the swirling hand or the desert wind? My friend Rasha taught me Egyptian rhythms beneath the stars. We sync, I lose the thread, we laugh. But the stars keep time, and the drums keep calling us back. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment & Subscribe Here This is a public episode. If you'd like to di...

Bats cut the badlands sky. A traditional man softens. Who gets to cry? Who gets to weave? Another man steps into the ocean and forgets himself. He comes back with nothing. But what’s that he’s offering to the being who sent him in? The waters are rising. Step in. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acces...

A king devoured by his own hunger. Skin dissolving into fur, into feathers, into scales. The tunnel calls, but will you step through? The sign above the entrance reads: Weird. Is that just another way of seeing? Breathe deep. Submerge. Listen. The water is speaking. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscri...

Looms clatter, voices hum, a temple echoes with recitations. Gods wander through the Himalayan foothills. Are we moving? Sliding, flying, riding: through sound, space, a weave of voices. Let your headphones slide other worlds into your noggin. Listen close. The loom is weaving. The temple is calling. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like...

Every tool is a spell, every technology a superpower. Clamshell knives slash AI cloaks. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here 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

Leaving monkhood was easy. I just got in a cab and changed out of my robes. But what about the aftershocks? The lost rhythms, the misfit loves, the phantom schedules? My friend Sean Shea and I sat down for a ‘business meeting.’ I do love our business meetings. Or rather, our deep and personal conversations. Sean also reflected on helping his father pass through the portal of death. Somewhere betwe...

What happens when God’s wife just wants some peace and quiet? Creation. If worldviews are bubbles, what happens when they pop? Listen in. Float through the bubbles. Find the third spiral. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here 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

Voices resound on stone, and trumpet through abandoned pipes. A hum, a howl, a half-remembered hymn— Sticks whack PVC pipes, the sound swallowed and reshaped. Somewhere, a songbird forgets its own tune. Somewhere, a coyote grins in the dark. A card is flipped, a role is claimed. Sing low enough, and the walls might sing back. Step inside. You might just hear your own voice waiting. Free Story & Me...

A fence stands, half-built, half-rotten, full of holes. Birds nest in its holes, vines curl through its cracks. This fence is language, with old myths slipping past the pickets. Step through. Again, step through. Let your ears grow fur. Three readings from three random pages of wonderful books. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to di...

A poem from Rilke converses with the Hindu aesthetic system of rasa. A good book about rasa. Rilke’s full poem: The Man Watching By Rainer Maria Rilke I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes that a storm is coming, and I hear the far-off fields say things I can’t bear without a friend, I can’t love without a sister. The storm, the shifter of shapes,...

Snuffle, sniffle… A podcast isn’t interviews, or music, or rants, or radio plays. Not necessarily. A podcast is sound. Except when it’s a puppy. This podcast wanders and wags, following trails through mossy soundscapes and whispered words. Curious, it circles someone’s feet, nuzzling the edges of what is knows. It trots off again: tail high, ears perked, seeking stories in the wind. Sniffle, snuff...

A man is pulled into a wild current, and emerges more curvaceous than he went in. Needles pierce fabric, thread pulling tight, creating and mending. Between drowning and dreaming, between bed and abyss, something is being stitched. Something is unraveling. Free Story & Media Consultation Comment & Subscribe Here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get...

An agreement broken. Hillsides torn open, stone bones exposed. Trains roll on—steel to wood, wood to stone, stone to soil, mile after mile. Some circle familiar fires. Others wander to where tangled stories grow, where a truth too large splits its own shell. When the story cracks, something new sings through. Come listen, sit beneath this tree, even if it drips sap. Free Story & Media Consultation...