impossibly: a live story recording

vishnu + narada; plus making my past story recordings public

i am on the floor of my teenage bedroom, upstairs in the house where i grew up. i just did something that felt Impossible during the hell that i have been traversing: i just sat on my stoop, in the night, and told a story. a story i want to share here, with you.

in 2019 towards the tail end of that part of my mental health journey, my friend and fellow artist devra freelander was killed in a bike accident in brooklyn. she was too fucking young, bright, Full of Life; it Shook me. for All the reasons. including; for me, a person living on the edges of death-ruminating, it pushed into High Relief the question: if something happened to me right now, if ‘i didn’t make it’ for whatever reason, what would i Need To Know was in the world? my 4th and last currently published book, THE BOOK OF LEGEND, was the answer.

through what has been going on over the past days, weeks, nearly month— this question has returned to me in the Terror. if something happens to me— if i don’t make it through to ‘the other side’ of this experience— i thought i had so much more time to grow old and sit and record my stories; to have them available like my late great teacher danny deardorff’s are. yet; i have protected them so much. rightfully so, i always felt. sacred space, the spaces we’ve shared together on zoom, or in person.

today for whatever reason i have had computer faculty. brain/hope faculty. and the previously unlisted youtube playlist of some storytelling videos— the few i have— are now published, and live.

you can find that Here.

it includes a full-length telling of parsifal; blind tarvaa; the first part of the handless maiden; my first longer-length story from sharon blackie’s now-defunct mythic imagination network; the moon palace told at 5:30am ..

please don’t take this as some indication that ‘i am not going to make it’; i just always felt that i’d know when it was time to make them public. and apparently that time is Now. i can’t do anything, at this moment, about going back in time and recording epic things like gilgamesh, or the listener, or the nixie or sedna … those who were there — you Know. you know why i didn’t record.

the stories are Alive. and you will Re-Member.

i have some other things for you, too.

i have an audio of ‘the maiden king,’ the russian tale i learned from the quintessential robert bly and marion woodman, from the first and only time i told it, in march 2024.

and, even more surprisingly— as originally alluded to.

i recorded something on my stoop, tonight. Impossibly, for you.

i first learned it from a book by my new york brethren, legend, michael meade, with my then-partner in the UK; it found me again later on meade’s living myth podcast as ‘a divine wake-up call.’ it is a hindu parable. i have felt so blocked to the point of abandonment and betrayal at what has happened to my connection to the stories, to the earth, to myself, to my magicks, during this process of dismantlement et al. but it Found me, this morning, Somehow.

and after creating the gofundme page i will share at some point soon; i felt like i needed to go outside and just— tell you a story.

so. from my new york city stoop, to you. Here You Go.

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vishnu + narada, or, a divine wake-up call.

part 1:

part 2:

part 3:

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as always. thank you for reading; thank you for listening.