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Free MP3 Download - Robert Bly classic - What Stories Do We Need?

It's free download Monday. This classic with Robert Bly is free through Weds evening. Get this wonderful, insightful and entertaining program on MP3 now. Enjoy!

James Hillman - A celebration of a great man, thinker, friend, author and publisher

It is with great sadness we note and mention the passing of our longtime time friend and author, James Hillman. It is perhaps fitting and synchronistic that on the day of his passing we release for the first time in digital format the recordings A Blue Fire Part I and Part II.

All of the recordings we are priviledged to offer with James bring to light the wisdom, depth and humor of this great thinker and human being. Over the next month or so we will do what we can to honor his vast contribution.

Robert Bly - The Human Shadow - Free Download Friday

Free Download Friday: The iconic Robert Bly title based on the classic A Little Book On The Human Shadow. This awesome title is free throughout the weekend (and maybe longer if Irene knocks out our power for an extended period.)

Click here to download. Enjoy

Excerpt 3 from "Men & Women: Talking Together" with Deborah Tannen and Robert Bly

In this insightful transcribed excerpt from "Men & Women: Talking Together", men's movement pioneer reflects on Deborah Tannen's classic book on male/female communication -- You Just Don't Understand -- and how Tannen's observations play out in his own marriage.

Let’s go on a bit and I just want to say a few more words about her book. The first time I came in contact with her, my wife and I were having dinner up in northern Minnesota and someone started to read out of the book. We both fell off our chairs laughing because of every mistake we had made including every misunderstanding, and I remember the first one that was said was this one: The woman says to the man, “Would you like to stop for a drink before we get home?” I think she is asking for information.

Excerpt 2 from "Men & Women: Talking Together" with Deborah Tannen and Robert Bly

"Men and Women: Talking Together" is an enlightening program with men's movement pioneer and poet Robert Bly and communications expert Deborah Tannen talking about the different ways men and women communicate.  Enjoy some of Robert Bly's exquisite poetry that he performs in this award winning program.

"After we had loved each other intently, we heard notes tumbling together in late winter.

And we heard ice falling from the ends of twigs. The notes abandoned so much as they moved. The notes abandoned so much as they moved.

They are the food not eaten. The comfort not taken. The lies not spoken.

The music is my intention to you. The music is my attention to you. And when the music came again later in the day, I saw tears in your eyes. I saw you turn your face away so that the others would not see.

When men and women come together, how much they have to abandon. When men and women come together how much they have to abandon. Wrens make their nests of fancy threads and string ends. Animals abandon all their money every year. That’s my best line. Animals abandon all their money every year."

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Robert Bly Bio and Links

Excerpt from Robert Bly's "What Stories Do We Need"

The following is a transcribed excerpt from "What Stories Do We Need" -- a thought provoking and timeless recording by poet and men's movement pioneer Robert Bly.  "What Stories Do We Need" reminds us that we all carry a personal mythology, but the stories we tell ourselves may not be entirely true... Recorded live at The New York Open Center.

We’re talking about mythology today. And mythology moves towards the soul in the same way that philosophy moves towards the brain. In fact, I think Joe Campbell said the other day, all philosophy is a frozen form of mythology and if you really love a philosopher, then try to recognize the philosopher as being a kind of an ice over the water on which you could walk. And that’s nice, but try to go below and see what the water is doing down there. And in that case, he believes that every philosophical idea has a mythological image underneath it, including all those ones, Heraclitus, and all of that. They come out of centuries of wild mythological imaging.

Excerpt from "Men & Women: Talking Together" with Deborah Tannen and Robert Bly

Note: this award winning  title is Free through this Wednesday evening, Enjoy!

Men's movement pioneer Robert Bly and relationship communication expert Deborah Tannen help us understand how men and women communicate differently and how they can learn to appreciate the other's point of view, as evidenced in this transcribed excerpt from Tannen and Bly's terrific program "Men & Women: Talking Together".  Recorded Live at The New York Open Center.

In a way, a conversation is a ritual. And to come home and tell everything that happened is a ritual, and it’s a ritual that women have engaged in from the time they were very little. So to feel that life is going on as it should, you just want to play out those rituals because it’s not a ritual that men understand. It’s not one that they’ve done. And I want to say right here that all evening we are going to be saying women and men. And nothing that we say will be true of every woman and every man. There are a lot of cultural differences here, too.
 
So I do hear from couples who will say the husband comes home and wants to tell everything and the wife says if it’s not a problem, don’t talk about it. Stop complaining if you don’t want to do something about it. So you hear it from both sides. But because it’s a ritual that most women understand and most men don’t, he looks for the literal reason for the talk and he doesn’t see a reason for that talk. And it’s very frustrating to do something that you don’t understand the reason for. So I’ve had people say, “Well, you know, just say to him I don’t want you to tell me what to do. Just listen to me.” And that makes perfect sense except it will drive a person crazy to sit and listen to something that they don’t understand why they’re listening and what it’s getting at.
 
So sometimes, it’s just as reasonable -- I sometimes use my own husband as an example here. I don’t think he’ll mind. He’s sitting out there. He’s smiling so far.  So I remember I was talking and he said, “Well, I know you just want to talk about it and you don’t want me to give you the solution, but it’s too frustrating for me to sit here and listen when I know the solution. So let me tell you the solution and then you can keep talking about it if you want to keep talking about it.” So that is just as good a compromise, and I’ve heard of couples, too, that compromise in the following way. Not just as you said where they both kind of find different ways of talking but they may have an understanding where she will give him a half hour to not talk and then he will give her a half hour to talk.

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Robert Bly Bio and Links