The Spirit of Radio

Yes, I know that's the title of a Rush song. I like the song, and I would agree with it that the major downside of radio is the ads. But I actually just borrowed the title to talk about what I think about the radio.

I started listening to the radio the other day just for something to do. It was too quiet and I was tired of every note of music I own. So I fiddled with the dial and listened to pretty much everything that was on. Since then I've found a station I can live with, mostly, and let it rattle at me much of the evening.

Several years ago, I stopped listening to the radio because I didn't see the point. Full of ads and needless yammering from the hosts, when I just wanted to listen to music. Furthermore, they only played stuff I like less than half the time. Why shouldn't I just listen to my own music, which I know I enjoy?

I realized the other day that my feelings about the radio were largely based on my circumstances. Living at home, most of my life wasn't under my control. I had to interact with other people and make decisions based on what the family was doing. My music I wanted on my own terms. Familiar music I owned myself was perfect--something exclusively mine, which I could choose. I didn't want to listen to strangers talking at me, because my family talked to me plenty.

Now, living (for the present) alone, I suddenly can see why people would want to listen to the radio. Right now, my schedule is almost completely under my control. I have about three hours of tutoring to do a day. The rest of the day I arrange however I like. I make my own dinner, based on what I happen to feel like at the moment. I have the choice to read, or write, or take a nap--it makes no difference to anyone but me.

So, oddly enough, I find myself craving what I never used to--a world that is out of my control. I remember hearing in a theology class that the amazing thing about human relationships is that the other human being is completely independent of oneself. You can have a conversation with someone else who may say anything, things you haven't thought of before. We pay for this with a lack of free choice. We can't guarantee we're going to like whatever comes out of our friend's mouth. But that makes it so much more exciting when we do. A human companion is an unknown factor, which can go along with our ideas or sharply counter to them. The interplay of two people is so complex that an infinite number of good novels, each with a different plot, could be written with only two characters.

In my situation, then, I guess the ideal solution is to find another human being to interact with me. But Olivia's not arriving till the 14th. My next best choice is the radio. It leaves an element of uncertainty in my life which I'd been needing. Maybe it will play something I like, and maybe it'll just have a huge block of boring ads. But maybe--just maybe--it will play some song I've never heard but will love. Maybe it will play something that makes me laugh or cry. When I pull up one of my favorite songs on my computer, it's just a song. I hear it all the time, and since I have it on call all the time, it's not special. But the other day I turned on the radio and "Don't Stop Believing" was just beginning. I own that song. I listen to it all the time, whenever I want. Yet when I heard it on the radio, I was all excited. I didn't even think to want that song, and there it was beyond all expectations. A surprise, instead of just the same old song. It made all the difference.

Another time I was just sitting around, feeling idle, when a song I'd never heard came on. It was called "Hey There Delilah" and it made me cry. A song I've never heard can surprise me, prod my emotions in a way a similar song on my own computer can never do.

The DJ's and talk show hosts can be on the corny side, and they have a rather excessive obsession with giving away free concert tickets, but I'm still grateful to them. They say things I wasn't thinking of before, give me something to think of that didn't come from myself.

Life is best when I go off to the laundromat and exchange smiles across the langauge barrier with the immigrants using the washer next to mine, or trot off to the coffee shop (where I'm getting to know all the baristas and they know me) to say, thoughtfully, that I think I'm in the mood for iced tea and they accidentally give me iced coffee, or my mom calls me up just as I'm resigning myself to an empty evening, or a friend suddenly appears outside my living-room window after dinner, making me jump. All of these things are exciting, uncertain--that exchange with someone which can go in any direction. Even the accidental iced coffee is a thrill. It's a chance for me to cheer up the poor barista that gave it to me by smiling and saying we all make mistakes. It's a chance for me to enjoy the iced tea when I get it.

But when I'm not doing these things, the radio is good to have around. It teaches me that I don't own the world. I don't even want to own my little apartment. I want to share the airwaves with a stranger, even if a stranger from a hundred miles away in a soundproof booth.

Take a walk outside yourself
In some exotic land
Greet a passing stranger
Feel the strength in his hand
Feel the world expand ....
(Rush)