I can only hope that one day soon, I can repay this debt, and pledge renewed loyalty. My primary commitment is to public radio, and the dear, dear tote bags – raising whom must now take center stage.
Just a few minutes ago, I watched Kerry tease the cat with a ribbon. It’s one of my favorite things in the world to watch cats try to hunt their toys. The best part of all is when the cat hangs out underneath the couch waiting for just the right moment to take two careful [...]
There are two things I don’t understand about my post from yesterday. (1) Why it didn’t show up until today. (2) Why its formatting is wonky.
My life is noise. Between this blog, music projects, living near an airport’s landing flight path, and driving interstates with the windows down (and if I’m not doing that, then the a/c fans are blasting in my face). I live in the middle of a car-focused city, three or four streets over from the interstate. My life is noise; noise is my life. Even right now, while I write this, I’m listening to an Evan Dando cover of Big Star’s ”Ballad of El Goodo.” It’s a great cover of a great song, but unless I make a point to listen to it, it’s just noise. Similarly, unless I sit down to listen to it specifically, the distinctly public radio style of reportage, editing, storytelling, and sound design - and the love of said style is this blog’s bread and butter - is reduced to mere noise. Right now I’m hearing it as though it’s noise. I realized this on the way to work the other morning, when, speeding down one of the main thoroughfares through town, I turned up Morning Edition to hear it, but I wasn’t listening. I was, instead, singing ”Total Eclipse of the Heart,” because that damn Hurrah Torpedo version won’t get out of my head. I’m not hearing like the active listener that you guys know I can be. So I’m going to try something here. I recently updated my iPhone, and they’ve included a quite nice Voice Memos app. (Nevermind that I already have a four-track recorder for my phone, for these purposes, Voice Memos is better suited.) So what I’m going to do is begin to document, in very short sound bites, the noises that keep me from paying full attention. Any time i realize there’s too much noise, I’ll bust out the app and document it. I’m hoping this will achieve at least two things: Make me a better listener by forcing me to recognize when I’m getting distracted. Make me pay attention to silence. It’s not always noise that distracts me. It might be a thought or a splash of light. So here’s my first attempt. Talking to myself while listening to Paul Westerberg
NPR Music launched a new series today called “You Must Hear This” that has artists talking about the bands or records that influenced them the most. Or, in the case of Maroon 5′s Adam Levine, reading about Prince’s “Purple Rain”. There’s no question that Prince is insanely talented and influential, but poor Adam didn’t seem [...]
Another episode of On the Media, another reminder that NPR employees are the only people who can pronunce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s correctly on the first try. Brooke is back (yay!) and the lead story is the election in Iran and it’s parallels to the 1979 revolution (of course). The Iranian government has been doing all kinds [...]
I saw this image on Tumblr about a week ago, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I just thought someone had made an awesome monster out of barrells and that was it. Apparently, it was a college kid who had a previous record of theft. The barrell company isn’t going to press charges – [...]
About a week ago, I saw a post on npr.org inviting people to send in the worst musical selections that they had ever heard at a wedding. I thought of all of the inappropriate songs that almost made our playlist – “Rudie Can’t Fail”, “Mama Tried”, Jens Lekman’s “Postcard to Nina”. The list of bad [...]
We’re about two weeks into being homeowners, and we’re still without internet at home. Sort of. Right now, I’ve got myself tucked away in a corner, sniffing out whatever dregs of internet seep out unprotected from the neighbors’ houses. We’ve been trying to unpack, but the thing is, most of our boxes are packed tigher [...]
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I know that I shouldn’t get all excited about this, but I love that sometimes, I find tomorrow’s Morning Edition stories today. It’s the little things, you know. Tomorrow morning, there’s going to be an interview with Kathy Griffin, who I love more and more every time she talks about her life on the D [...]