Podcast Categories: Arts

Works written and produced by Soren Narnia. The text of these stories is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA. Email: songofsadbirds@aol.com — When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher asked me to sit next to a handicapped kid named Sean and help him along a little if I could. It wasn’t easy, because he was quite slow, but I tried. When Sean got especially excited about something, or if he was told he had done something well, he would smile and shout out nonsense words. One of them I remember, which he used to shout many times over the few months I sat beside him, was “Sorinarneeya!” Again and again, it was a harmless word he used when he was happy, and seeing my puzzled expression would just make him say it once more, even more pleased than the first time: “Sorinarneeya!” For some reason that word stuck with me for years, until one day as an adult I realized how neatly and curiously it cut in half. And I thought that was so perfect, how this little gem of a thing had sprung from a bit of the absurd and a bit of the tragic. That seemed like all of life to me: momentary bits of perfection out of all the absurdity and tragedy. And amazingly, they just keep on coming. – SN

Episode 1 released: 22nd December. Although Terry left the party early, in March 2015 the echoes of the conversations we had, the jokes we shared and the drinks I brought, still rattle around in my head. So, with help from some friends, I’m sharing them. Stories about great men sometimes miss out the human being underneath. Terry was a world-famous author and a genius. He also possessed a wonderful sense of humour. Sometimes delivered in the same way you wrap an iron bar in a sock. In his case, thankfully, it was often a rod of irony rather than heavy metal. I enjoyed his company and I think he did mine, mostly. I was his ‘warm up act’ the stout party on the stage first. The bugger of it is, he’s left the stage and my fool’s bladder isn’t what it used to be. But anyway, no matter how frequently I need to micturate, I can still sit in front of a microphone long enough to tell you some of my stories. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty and it may contain nuts. I hope you enjoy them.