Thursday, October 27, 2016

Reflections from a windswept parking lot

The glamor of radio
Laval, QC
October 2016
Thematic. Autumn. Here.
Note: Sometimes I like to stop what I'm doing so I can jot stuff down on my phone. I can't explain why. Probably because I'm a writer, and that's what writers are supposed to do. We feel stuff, sometimes deeply, and when life throws us curves - or even perfectly normal straight lines - sometimes the only way to make sense of it all is to pick up an admittedly virtual pen and capture the moment. So as I sat in my wife's car parked behind my father-in-law's condo and gathered my things after a thoughtful, engaging and fun radio interview, I did just that. Here's what I came up with, along with the photo you see above:

The glamor of early-morning live radio, where you sit in a car in a leaf-strewn, deserted and miserably damp parking lot and hope the winds whipping off the river don't overwhelm your still-sleepy-sounding voice when you go to air. And you get to stare at a similarly wind-whipped Chevy Aveo malaise-mobile because nothing says vehicular sadness more profoundly than a Chevy Aveo.

I must have missed this particular class in j-school, yet I wouldn't trade it for anything. There's something soul-refreshing about speaking live with really smart people, painting a picture with little more than the thoughts in your head.

Theater of the mind? It's even better than I ever imagined it would be when I was that kid sitting on the receiving end of this magical process, listening to long-vanished broadcast heroes spin similarly magical stories for me.

I like to think that there are still kids out there, also listening, also dreaming. And that's why even the most barren, wind-whipped parking lot on a damp, monochrome Sunday morning is as exciting a place and a time as I can possibly imagine. Because it's up to us to seek out these moments, wherever and whenever we can find them.

2 comments:

Kalei's Best Friend said...

I know u know who Vin Scully is... I remember the times where I'd find my Grandfather listening to him do play by plays of the Dodger games... after my Grandpa passed, my Grandmother would sit and listen to Vin Scully..She had a tv but preferred to listening to Vin's voice... He was a comfort, he was baseball....the radio brings out a lot of imagination to the listener.. Vin's puns could get a great laugh or you'd sit back and wonder wth did he come up with that... The radio is not only informative but magical.

Common Household Mom said...

I am in awe of journalists who get up in the middle of the night in order to bring us our morning news programs on the radio. They can speak coherently about lots of complicated topics, at 5:00 in the morning! (My program of choice is NPR's Morning Edition.) Thanks to you and your colleagues for being in those windswept parking lots, so that we can understand the world better.