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Spoken Word with Geoff Finan and Greg Clifford
187 Plays4 years ago
I hope you enjoy this short episode featuring spoken word pieces by
Greg Clifford (Episode 81 guest)
and
Geoff Finan (Episode 66 guest)
and
listen to a teaser/reminder to catch The Skylark Bell Season 2 by Melissa Oliveri (Episode 94 guest)
Thank you for supporting the show, its artists and their creations.
https://www.youtube.com/@gregcliffordmusic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XHpH57TSBA
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Special Episode
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Vellante, editor and producer Peter Bauer. Ken Vellante here with a special episode of Something Rather Than Nothing with a show update and two spoken word pieces by Irish writers, poets, artists,
00:00:30
Speaker
Greg Clifford and Jeff Finan. I hope you enjoy the two pieces in this episode.
Podcast Milestone and Support Request
00:00:37
Speaker
Really like to thank them for their contribution and for their appearance on the show in the past. The podcast has been recorded for almost three years. This is episode 131. And asking for your support and reviews on all your podcast portals.
00:01:01
Speaker
Apple Podchaser
00:01:05
Speaker
Spotify, Audible, and all the places where you find your podcast, including where it's produced, Podbean.
Upcoming Episodes and Teasers
00:01:15
Speaker
So I would appreciate your support of the episodes, sharing them with friends, family, philosophers, artists, thinkers, reviews of individual episodes, and of the show as a whole. I'd really appreciate it.
00:01:33
Speaker
So we have those two spoken word pieces in upcoming on the next few episodes. We'll have guest hosts with new artists and Asking the questions we've been asking about art and philosophy throughout the the entire show. So I hope you enjoyed those those upcoming episodes with some special special guest hosts
00:01:59
Speaker
Again, thanks for Jeff Finan, Gray Clifford, and their pieces on this episode. And listen to the end for a little teaser and a prompt for you to listen to Season 2 of The Skylark Bell by Melissa Oliveri, who's been a guest, and that lovely story and sound design and presentation on The Skylark Bell that'll end this episode.
00:02:24
Speaker
Thank you so much, thanks for supporting the show and take care and keep creating.
Greg Clifford's Spoken Word Piece
00:02:33
Speaker
The first piece you'll hear is from Greg Clifford and following from that, Jeff Finan.
00:03:01
Speaker
As Boethius theorised, history is a wheel. Inconstancy is my fairy essence, says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like, but don't complain when they're cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is a tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of the times, like the best, are always passing us by.
00:03:24
Speaker
I find solace in this harsh perperting intrude. Although incessantly nebulous in nature, I'm serene and lucid. It's very clear in my mind that life owes us nothing, not one of us. No divine path to contentedness or wholesome comforts. We create our own focus, our own meaning. With this, I've made my peace. Sink or swim, surrender, or strive to survive. Life is a series of cause and effect.
00:03:54
Speaker
Mistakes in madness, mystery, happiness, laughter, surprise, sadness, delight and devastation. No one exempt from the fragility of life. And how vain early glories truly are, how futile to rationalize, but as inherently irrational.
00:04:13
Speaker
The constant conflict, crippling. Consumed by mistrutes and moral panics, how does one objectively intervene? Before sanity is irretrievable. Damage, irreparable. Tears roll silently down my face as I gaze vacantly into the self-imposed abyss. Drifting into the eater. Into nuttiness.
00:04:40
Speaker
Flashing images commence, dancing, skipping, tripping, flickering, a candlelit wall. Entering a strange and salubrious room, I now reside within a framework alien to me. Illusions, confusions, people's warped perceptions reverberating in my head, recalcitrant, belligerent, sadistic.
00:05:02
Speaker
my regular reference point all but extinguished, dissipating, evaporating right before my fairy eyes. Yet still a certain comfort lingers in the realisation. A knowing primitivism prevails, the understanding of the great paradox of life, the real paramount, yet paltry. I close my eyes. A sinister soundscape ensues, waiting in the long grass, waiting to pounce.
00:05:32
Speaker
An impending onslaught. Klaus Kinski's Jesus Christ Saviour emerges bold and brazen. His words intensify. Entwine, amalgamate. Growing increasingly layered and convoluted. Challenging, the sinister. Momentary silence. The plug is pulled under lunacy for now. Cacophonous church bells commence. I look up. I hear the birds.
00:06:01
Speaker
Maybe Aldous Harding was right when she mused. What if the birds aren't singing? They're screaming. A light rain descends. Like being baptised again. Like being absolved from my unflagging feverish folly.
00:06:29
Speaker
Further imagery now evoked. This time a recurring dream, in which my beloved leads me down to the coast blindfolded. It's tranquil. Incremental movements. We arrive. I feel at ease. But then a knife enters and I descend. I reach out, but my bed has already been laid.
00:06:53
Speaker
And very still as I bleed out I become very present in this moment No longer afraid Free from superfluous luxuries The future pales into subservience The future's uncertain but the end is always near Let it roll, baby roll
00:07:16
Speaker
Let it roll on a moonlight dry Let it roll, let it roll all night long Until there is no more on Court cut Light switched off I am meager in comparison to the crashing waves They are majestic Constant yet in motion I vanish from the frame A faint ghost lingers Liberated at last
Jeff Finan's 'Falling'
00:08:29
Speaker
Falling by Jeff Finan Falling Part 1 I walk these streets for inspiration, pounding cobbles to beads dropped from my head as perspiration and sick of imitation or cunts that leave citations. I'm left room my friend who like others have left these shores to emigration its farming ships in old Ireland's sun.
00:08:52
Speaker
I fell asleep at the wheel. I missed the conversation. Instead, I'm sitting alone at a bar dreaming of a butterfly who's dreaming of my own imagination. I'm the poet who sells cigars to feed his hobble filled with mitigation. It's the metaphysical act of depravity that's made me like this. And I like this.
00:09:11
Speaker
Fall in part two. Pale eyes stare at bright screens. There's no line between us and this tink tech. We're the new gunslingers slinging guns for fun. It's a pity the bullets are rubber. We only ever retweet bull. Unedited information becomes edited lies and news isn't new as I search for old truths. Any truth. I'm finally lost in a cave looking at a flicker of a shadow that I put there and I can't take my gaze away.
00:09:39
Speaker
I stare at these puppets as they pounce for them back I'm sitting in a hole my favourite colour's painted black I'm grieving for humanity and I want my future back Echo chambers that changed my soul and left a hole not white but black
00:09:57
Speaker
I walk these streets of incipitation. Insipid fuckheads who are once well read are now as easily read as books. And they don't give a fuck. Controlled like puppets without even a string. Fuck this broad in the mineship, man, I'm just doing my thing. If this was a fight, the tell would fall, the bell would ring. But you can't throw the tell until the fat lady sings and Mother Nature's just warming her throat. Falling, part three.
00:10:24
Speaker
Lesson likes is where we came from. Walking stained streets that feed our fears. We'd choose what holds and ill-lads read our strung out around the dole. It was like the roads walk backwards and that was my childhood. Nothing was ever expected so most affected. It was like the darkness was the least thing affected and kids who grew up never trusted their self-respect and a dialect of their intellect was always put back in check. If only somebody could reflect their son.
00:10:50
Speaker
Most anywhere left there. Like an empty cupboard bear or a life without care. This is the essence of a Dublin that was rare. That drumbeat that focuses solely on the snare and that squared up cunt and that fearless fucking snare. The harmless punch that rocks from the old pair or that resentment that this life I lead. It's not fair.
00:11:14
Speaker
I walk these streets in the batter. Jovial dickheads who have waltzed right in leaving this place without saying, well I watch it shatter. This is where I'm from and what's it that matter? There's posh cunts and low class cunts and I'm glad I'm the latter. There's old shops and new fronts leaving heads on silver platters and there's cold shunts and slow dumps as we leave with pitter-patter. Maybe I'm not welcome anymore.
00:11:53
Speaker
Meadow Lane is a scary place. One night, he just disappeared. No one knows what really happened. You need to climb the Skylark Bell.