No Way Out but Through

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 ...

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 torpe...

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 level...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

Stories, poems, and monologues with music for that special sheltering-at-home time of your life.

1. Messages (Taylor): A woman sends messengers into the afterworld 

2. Sweet Darkness (David Whyte): 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.

3. Cosmodemonic (Taylor):  If you want to speak to a human being who will sympathize a...

An excerpt from Episode3: Matter 
 
The Race is On 
(after George Jones, with inspiration from Tom Durkin and Larry Collmus)
 
...Now on the back stretch,
Happily Married is leading along the rail
followed by Is This All There Is
Stuck in the Middle with You is three lengths back
it’s still Happily Married, Is This All There Is,
and here comes Late Night at Work,
now Attractive Secret...

An excerpt from Episode 1: Past Tense

The Past Comes Calling

The past is the pitcher
who does not bother
backing you off the plate with high heat
but simply throws at your unhelmeted head.
The past is the catcher who kicks you in the nuts
while you’re sprawled out on the ground.
The past is the umpire who laughs,
and calls you out.

Words and music © 2020 by Scott Taylor   
...

Imagine yourself in the middle of a world-destroying catastrophe. Now imagine that we have a short quiz for you. It won’t take but a minute. The world is a dusty, dark chaos, and the trap our unreliable narrator finds himself in, gets more dire as the story goes on. Agents Angstrom and Kinski find themselves in a different kind of trap—and due to a lack of budget, and thus, vocal talent, poor Kinski doesn’t even get a speaking part...

A chance meeting at the airport, a serious case of misplaced empathy, and an obsession that destroys everything.

This show is actually Episode 0. It was originally recorded in November 2018, and released on my YouTube channel. Because of the feedback I received—and the fact that I had a great time making it—I decided to change gears and develop No Way Out but Through.

Words and music © 2019 by Scott Taylor   
...

A psychic finds a strange piece of metal with a map brought back from her dreams. Scott draws some questionable conclusions about the present, based on serial misreadings of his own past. A town reacts to long-awaited infernal signs. The Past is your permanent crazy ex who knows all your passwords—and secrets—by heart. From the radio desk, Scott suggests a weekend activity for the kids at the Armory, involving art and knives. He th...