Just tell ‘em where (and how) it hurt

Whether it’s a paper cut or severe head trauma, all accidents are welcome at “The Gory Details,” an audio archiving project designed to collect first-person medical emergency narratives. A sort of “StoryCorps” for tales of broken bones, burns, cuts and poisonings, “The Gory Details” has been up and running with a 24-hour toll-free hotline since March 6.

Each Sunday in April, it will also venture via ambulance into Los Feliz, where a staff of “nurses” will be on hand to answer questions and guide interested parties in offering up their own stories or listening to those that have already been collected.

So far, more than 20 narratives have been archived, including one from a fledgling stilt-walker who fell against a wall, caught her ring on a screw and skinned her finger as she crashed to the ground.

“A lot of people have the misconception it has to be something involving a bathtub full of blood, and it doesn’t. A lot of times the interesting aspect of the story wasn’t how severe the damage was but the strange or colorful way the injury might have happened,” says project creator Al Ridenour, the L.A. counterculturalist behind the now-defunct Cacophony Society guerrilla theater group.

“The Gory Details” is the latest offering from his venture the Art of Bleeding, a performance group that Ridenour calls “a health and safety circus.” All stories collected for the project are available on the group’s website, www.artofbleeding.com, as streaming audio. Eventually they may be compiled onto a CD or incorporated into the group’s live performances.

The only guideline for contributors is that the stories be true and told by the person who experienced the injury.

According to Ridenour, “We look forward to receiving multiple stories from the more accident-prone.”

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Susan Carpenter

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“The Gory Details” ambulance recording sessions, Vermont Avenue between Sunset Boulevard and Franklin Avenue, noon to 4 p.m. Sundays throughout April. Free. Hotline: (888) 467-8535.