Radio Church

Making space for little mysteries

I had a radio when I was a kid. A tiny electric blue one, transparent so you could see its inner mechanisms. I miss that aesthetic dearly — how it let you peek inside the technology you used, imagine the ways in which all the different parts might work together.

I am interested in what radio requires of the listener. Rotating the dial to get just the right quality of sound, adjusting antenna. To me, radio feels active in a way that streaming does not. The soft static coming through the speakers is its own signal: you’ll have to work for this.

This month I adopted a new Sunday ritual. At the same time each week I set a small pink Studebaker on my desk, extend the antenna like a magic wand, and turn the dial until I catch something I want to hear more of. Sunday mornings: radio church.

My radio features no song titles or station names. I don’t look up any of the songs I hear. I haven’t sought out a guide or a schedule or a programming list. For now, I’m just listening. Wandering through a new sonic world with nothing to guide me but my ears, making my own mental map as I go. Just me and the radio dial.

In the years since that first radio belonged to me, I’ve shifted the bulk of my listening over to personal playlists, meaning that I’m overwhelmingly hand-selecting the soundtrack of my life. My relationship with radio has shrunk to what I hear in the truck before I connect my smartphone — one of those stations that plays hits from the ’80s and the ’90s, songs I already know and like. And certainly there’s something to be said for curation, and devoting time to what you love. But lately I’ve been balancing that with the radio’s element of discovery. I always liked the idea of a DJ live on the other end, pressing play on something they want their audience to fall in love with, too.

This month I’ve heard so many songs for the first time; I found a college radio station that plays really funky stuff. And every once in a while, in between songs, a recording of a local scout troop advises you to do your best. There’s something about radio that feels so expansive to me. The magic of so many things happening simultaneously. The significance of picking only one.

Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower was hugely influential on me when I read it as a teenager. It’s a story of beginnings — a young person learning about the world, about relationships, about how to put himself out there (to “participate”). What I most connected with on that first read was Charlie’s experience of discovery and appreciation — music and movies and books. There’s one scene in particular that I think about a lot:

The feeling I had happened when Sam told Patrick to find a station on the radio. And he kept getting commercials. And commercials. And a really bad song about love that had the word “baby” in it. And then more commercials. And finally he found this really amazing song about this boy, and we all got quiet.

Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.

“I feel infinite.”

And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way. I have since bought the record, and I would tell you what it was, but truthfully, it’s not the same unless you’re driving to your first real party, and you’re sitting in the middle seat of a pickup with two nice people when it starts to rain.

I’ve always loved the fact that Chbosky chooses not to name the particular song that Charlie and his friends hear together that night. Instead, he focuses on the feelings. Because you might not feel the same way about the music itself, if you knew what song it was. But the link to feeling itself — the connection with memory and the mystery of timing — that’s universal. A song has the power to make you feel a specific way because of where you were, and who you were with, and what happened next.

The summer before I left for college, I worked in a little frozen yogurt shop. I made great vats of flavored yogurt and prepped a bona fide rainbow of fruit and fought a never-ending spray-bottle battle with the persistent stickiness of various surfaces, and through it all the same radio station played on the overhead speakers.

I remember how every song felt like a fortune told just for me — a way of divining my future. Something to unravel. A pathway for dreaming about the life I might have, and the people I might meet, and what it was all going to be like. So much yet to happen. A whole world out there, waiting.

Bonus Rabbit Holes!

• Read about the summer I decided to listen to a favorite band’s albums in chronological order. “I had a theory that I could hack my memory: If I listened to the same song over and over in the wake of a significant moment, I could auditorily mark certain periods of my life through sheer force of will. Then, when I heard that particular song in the future, I’d be transported to that day, that feeling, that moment. Like time travel planned in advance.” Full essay here!

• Watch a movie about a lonely pirate radio DJ. Pump Up the Volume is about what it’s like to be a teen, fight authority, and try to find someone who understands you. Most people know Moyle’s 1995 cult classic, Empire Records, but this one’s my favorite of his. (Plus, Christian Slater and a killer soundtrack!)

• Discover the station that brought new wave to American radio back in the ’80s. New Wave: Dare to Be Different is a neat little documentary about a very weird and very cool Long Island radio station. So much heart, creativity, and passion for music here!

• Donate to your local NPR station. Congress has voted to eliminate government funding for public media. If you enjoyed this month’s Microfascination, please consider making a small donation to support public radio — every dollar counts!

A couple fun personal announcements this month:

Paranoid Tree is running a sale on my King Kong zine — just $3 plus shipping. Now’s your chance to scoop one up before they go out of stock (and don’t forget to peruse past issues too)!

If I Can Be Honest is officially out in the world! A new anthology from Autofocus Books featuring a bunch of different voices (including yours truly). I’ll leave you with the quote from my essay I’m perhaps most proud of:

Perhaps we are all leaving a trail of ourselves, our evolutions not just as writers but as people, and this is part of the point — not saying what we want to say with perfect clarity, but depicting a process of creative evolution.

See y’all in August!