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.