Monday, May 5, 2014

Music at large

I don't ask for much. I merely wish the the radio was as good as the random music playing in my city.

In a dedicated fit of anachronism I listen to the radio when I drive alone in my car. It is transmitted by radio waves and received by my car radio. My car radio includes no CD player, no Internet radio, no 8-track tape player, and no 78 rpm wind up record player with a giant brass speaker. I am left at the whim of the air waves. I see no point in addressing the talk radio portion of the equation. It's as expected, a long, bitter hunt for transcendence that comes just tauntingly often enough, usually via Public Radio, to keep one going on its drip feed. But music, music, what could be easier than music?

I can walk into any coffee shop in this city and there is an astonishingly high chance, let's put it into the 90 percentile, that there will be something truly interesting playing quietly into the space. My god, I was in a Walgreen's a few days ago that played half lost pop semi classics of the early to mid sixties (Cathy's Clown!) that was entirely fascinating. This afternoon I write from an ice cream parlor/Cafe and in the time I've been here, through 10 or 15 songs (off the beaten path Sinatra and Louis Armstrong) there has not been a one that hasn't been worth a close listen. But, importantly, neither has there been one song that I've heard too often.

On the contrary, any time of the day or night it is within the realm of possibility that I could rotate through the entirety of my radio dial and find... nothing. Nothing!

What's going on?

I don't want to go into it. It's all too bitter, and I don't want to disabuse you of your love for the world today. Go ahead, love the world.

But I will say this: there are very few jobs easier than disc jockey, and when you have a very easy job, like librarian, or President of the United States, or disc jockey, it is incumbent upon you to step it up, take chances, defy management, and risk everything. Without that you're just stealing. Yes, you are stealing all the joy, the life of the music that is the birthright of us all, but perhaps more importantly, you are stealing the very dream at the heart of your job, just so you can keep the image of it.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks be to you, mysterious and intrepid librarian, the universe is once again illuminated!
    Ummm. .. do you emit a lot of greenhouse gases during this illumination? Just curious. :-)

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