Radio documentaries, audio features

programs on Sound and Music, Listening and Language

explorations of the Body Mind

new directions in Psychology, Natural Science, Spirituality, and the Arts

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“Your tapes are fine, power filled and important. You are hanging out with the pioneers of the soul.”
— Don Campbell, Boulder, Colorado

“I see you as Keeper of the Word ... The way I and others get nourishment from beauty — that is the way I feel reading and listening to your work.”

— Dr. Bradford S. Weeks, Whidbey Island, Washington

“You have developed a most impressive audio catalogue, from which I have selected some tapes that speak most directly to my interest in the psycho-spiritual continuum, and fascination with all aspects of music and sound..”

— Barbara R. Markovits, Lake Charlotte, Nova Scotia

Three-Horned Enemy meets Wolf in R. Murray Schafer's wilderness music-threatre epic "Princess of the Stars," featured in the CBC IDEAS documentary "One Man's Noise"

      — photo courtesy Andre Leduc www.andreleduc.com

One Man's Noise

An intensely personal reflection on the ecology, metaphysics and rich inner meanings of sound. What of soul-quality risks getting lost in the process of digital recording? How do we prevent the de-tuning of the world?

The Second Circle: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Soviet Dissidents

a unique survey of Solzhenitsyn's work, with dramatic excerpts from “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch”, and the voice of the author reading his own poetry (recorded clandestinely in his garden in Moscow before he emigrated to the U.S.). It also features poets Robert Lowell and Joseph Brodsky, and readings by actor Tom Courtenay 90 mins.

Disciples of Kitsch

on “the inspired bad taste” of the art and architecture of Nazi Germany. With Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, former British war correspondent Sefton Delmer, and BBC music critic Hans Keller. 30 mins.

The Gaia Hypothesis

with biologist Dr. Lynn Margulis, about the provocative theory that the earth's micro-organisms regulate the biosphere in the same way as do the constituents of a single cell. It's about our earth, a living creature, “the most exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos.” 30 mins.

The Body Ear

an investigation of musical and environmental sounds and their effects on states of consciousness; fetal audition; chanting; bio-feedback; Muzak. 60 mins., stereo

To Findhorn and Beyond

a profile and intimate personal account, recorded in 1974, of the community in the north of Scotland which became famous for its contact with nature spirits. The community has itself used this program for years as an introduction to the spiritual principles it practises. 60 mins., stereo

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

an interview with Robert Pirsig, author of a milestone in recent American letters. An “Inquiry into Values,” Pirsig's book is a discussion of the Quality experience that sits “at the heart of things.” He discusses meditation, of both the Zen kind and the day-to-day mindfulness required in a basement workshop. Also a harrowing and moving description of the author's experience with electro-convulsive therapy. This program has been repeatedly broadcast on CBC Radio's Ideas program. 55 mins., stereo

The “I” of the Cyclone

An experiential investigation of the “sensory deprivation” research of Dr. John C. Lilly. It's really about observing the workings of one's own consciousness by reducing the external inputs to the brain. Find out what it feels like to enter Lilly's flotation tanks, and to talk (not in the same tank…) to dolphins. 60 mins., stereo

Fasting: Giving Your Body a Break

Refraining from eating all but essential fluids for several days is normally thought a deprivation, a denial, even a punishment. Far from starving, it is a sensible route to cleansing and purifying of the body. It's also a ‘spring cleaning' for the mind and appetite. This documentary is the personal account of an easy 3-day fast, with advice from medical experts on the benefits you too can expect. With Dr. Allan Cott, author of Fasting: the Ultimate Diet, and Dr. Jack Goldstein, author of Natural Hygiene. 55 mins., stereo.

The Darkening Mirror: Reflections on the Bomb and Language

with the philosopher Jacques Derrida, literary critic (The Great Code) Northrop Frye, author (The Fate of the Earth) Jonathan Schell, and Shelley Youngblut, a young English student whose apocalyptic dreams make her an uncanny cipher for humankind's dilemma. She becomes Alice Through the Looking Glass , and the program an attempt, in the words of George Steiner (Beyond Babel) to “leap beyond our own shadow,” to envision and describe the absurdity of an end to Being. 55 mins., stereo

Language seems unequal to the task of describing the magnitude of the destruction of which we have become capable in the nuclear age. This program considers the adequacy of language as a tool for understanding our present dilemma. Given that language is our primary tool for thinking, that there may even be much that we cannot even perceive without first having a linguistic category for it, is the extinction of human life on this planet literally "unthinkable"? The program also shows how such euphemisms as "nuclear exchange" numb us to reality. Among the voices heard in the program are those of: Northrop Frye, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Jonathan Schell, and Derrick de Kerckhove.

A Rodeo Reverie

Every year in Brooks, Alberta, they hold the world's biggest one-day rodeo. Listen to a heart-warming sound spectacle as it's experienced by a 12-year old boy. You can almost smell the hotdogs sizzle. 25 mins.

Chant : The Healing Power of the Voice and Ear

an investigation of the pioneering work of the French hearing psychologist Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, who discovered an energizing effect of Gregorian chant that is related purely to its sound content. The tape includes a demonstration of Tibetan ‘deep voice' chanting, and the voice of Thomas Merton. A subtle yet profound meditation on Listening, this tape has been repeatedly broadcast and requested for nearly three decades and is about to be released in a new, updated version. 55 mins., stereo

Tomatis       

recording of an informal presentation made by Dr. Alfred Tomatis to the Marshall McLuhan Seminar in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. In French, with English translation. An introduction to the whole body of Tomatis' important work on the primacy of the ear as an organ of consciousness, and reflections on McLuhan's notions of aural vs. visual culture. 90 mins., stereo

Hearing: More than Meets the Ear

This award-winning program, recorded in the “kunstkopf” binaural head stereo technique, investigates the inner workings of the human hearing sense. It vividly demonstrates how we tell where sound is coming from and how, in an anechoic chamber (a room without echoes) we can actually hear the operation of our own nervous system. 60 mins. (binaural stereo)

Silence          

four radiophonic essays on the physics and metaphysics of sound and silence; the ‘still point' in the poetry of T.S. Eliot; the mime of Samuel Avital; John Cage's anechoic chamber; Karlheinz Stockhausen's “acoustical garbage machine”; and R. Murray Schafer's philosophy of silence in composition. 75 mins.

A Celtic Music

a “documentary fantasy” this program is an exploration of Celtic myth and traditional music, recorded on location in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany. The program re-tells the story of Ys, the sunken city, (the Celtic Atlantis) through the lives of fishermen, grouse hunters, miners, housewives. With music by The Bothy Band, The Boys of the Loch, and the Irish harpist Grainne Yeats. An aural feast. 90 mins., stereo

Good People All

The music and sounds of Christmas inside the walls of an Irish Benedictine monastery (Glenstal Abbey, nr. Limerick). Lovely 17th and 18th Century traditional carols, never before sung in this context, and a real-life cast of ribald, inimitable characters like Bro. Ciáran, the woodcarver, cheerfully making a drinks cabinet out of a coffin, and Father Patrick, the Prior, singing a rousing version of McNamara's Band. First broadcast on National Public Radio. 45 mins., stereo

African Chant

Music from another monastery, Keur Moussa, also Benedictine, but in Senegal, West Africa. An exotic blend of local tradition (accompaniment of chant in African language by kora and tam-tam) and a European liturgy. With explanation from the monastery's music director. 60 mins. stereo

One World Music

A celebration of the first performances in North America of the Gyutö Tantric monks from Tibet. Theirs and other forms of sacred music are discussed in a forum which brings together modern minimalist composers Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, and David Hykes of the Harmonic Choir. The monks practise a unique style of overtone chanting, also performed by the Harmonic Choir, in which each singer is able to produce, simultaneously, as many as seven notes in a chord. Recorded at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, and broadcast on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves. 120 mins., stereo

Winter Solstice Celebration

also from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a live bnoadcast of the annual celebration of the solstice, featuring the Paul Winter Consort, Dmitri Pokrovsky singers, Noirin ni Riain and others

Notes from a Nepal Diary

An intimate personal account, modeled on Peter Matthiessen's Snow Leopard , of the journey up a mountain. The encounter with a grieving woman at a well prompts meditations on the spiritual — and not so spiritual — path. First read on CBC's Morningside . 17 mins.

Men and the Wild Child

with Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade.

At a secluded camp in the north woods, these leading elders talk with men about passion and purpose in the male soul. They discuss Blake's images of the inner child ("a fiend, hid in a cloud"), the value of grief, and the place of imagination in male sexuality.

55 mins., stereo

The Divine Child

with Robert Bly and Marion Woodman.

A poetic and penetrating examination, with illustrations from myths and fairy tales, of the many kinds of “inner child”, from the shamed and sooty one, to the radiant and divine. 2 x 90 mins.

Voice in the Wilderness: the Creation Spirituality of Matthew Fox

A moving and prophetic vision of earth-centred spirituality by the author of Original Blessing and The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. The program was recorded in the final hours before Fr. Fox was silenced by the Vatican for his "fervent feminism," pantheism, and for calling God, “Mother.” First broadcast on American Public Radio.  45 mins. stereo