Out of My Head

Available for 25 days

Out of My Head is a binaural journey about intoxication and inspiration. Like any good party, we begin with an invitation from Kurt Weill as he staggers from bar to bar in Alabama Song. He’s joined by Baudelaire and Rimbaud, but age and time are elastic, and before long we are battering down Huxley’s Doors of Perception and entering the psychedelic realm of Jefferson Airplane. It will sound like it too, particularly if you put on headphones, as the programme is a binaural transmission. You will hear the sun moving across the stereo picture talking to Frank O’Hara and nightingales jamming with Clive Bell’s shakuhachi flute; you will hear rain and footsteps as you enter the upside down world of Thomas Traherne's great metaphysical poem, Shadows in the Water. Imagination is our vehicle – the imagination that leads Sasha Dugdale to conjure the grieving spirit of William Blake’s wife, Catherine: or allows us to leap with Anne Sexton into the heart and mind of an old woman stricken with Alzheimer’s but still able to recall a favourite tune as writers conjure different images of mental health. The voices you’ll be hearing in your head are those of the actors Grace Cookey-Gam and Toby Jones. Producers: Zahid Warley, Christopher Rouse and Georgia Mann Smith READINGS: Baudelaire - Be Drunk Aldous Huxley - Doors of Perception Rimbaud - Deregulation of the Senses Lewis Carroll - The Hunting of the Snark Emily Dickinson - The brain is wider than the sky James Merrill - Voices from the Other World Shakespeare - Ophelia's soliloquy from Hamlet Sasha Dugdale - From Joy Anne Sexton - Mister Wait Rumi - The Turn Clare Shaw - Tree Frank O'Hara - A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island Thomas Traherne - Shadows in the Water