Category: Listening

Listen to this

Listen to this post:

The on-again, off-again experiment is on again. Since Aug. 1, you have the option to listen to me providing a dramatic reading of this daily visit. Audio is the fastest-growing segment of the book market, so it behooves me to encourage you to start listening to me.

It’s not like I’m new to this. The first two decades or so of my career was in audio, specifically radio newscasting, and I’m told I have a pleasant enough voice, so why not? 

And the sound of my words can give you a fuller understanding of what I’m trying to say. How many times has someone misunderstood a text you sent because they couldn’t hear your tone of voice?

For a long time I called myself a “wordsmith and podcaster,” but it’s been a while since I assembled an actual podcast. It was fun to put together a show, but as a one-man operation it’s also tough to maintain a regular schedule. This, on the other hand, is a five-to-ten minute add-on to the daily blog. As a bonus, as a literal read-through, it’s an extra chance to proofread my work before it goes out into the great beyond.

In the past I’ve tried this for a little while and then lost interest when not many people took advantage of the opportunity to hear me reading these words. And maybe the same thing will happen this time around, but I think I’ll stick with it this time. For the most part I’m just doing a straight reading, no extra frills or production values, so what you see on the page will be what you hear — although maybe I’ll add some bells and whistles if I get bored. 

So for an extra five minutes or so of effort, I can offer something to people who’d rather listen to someone reading to them. Win-win, as they say.

Go ahead, press the “play” button and give it a try. At the very least you’ll find out what I sound like, or if you listened to much radio in northeast Wisconsin 30 or so years ago, maybe you’ll even say, “Oh yeah, that guy.” 

This is living

I have set up my stereo set in the living room like my father did. On Saturday mornings Dad would celebrate the beginning of his weekend by cranking up big band music, sometimes before his three boys had crawled out of their beds. Believe it or not, it is a fond memory.

This Saturday morning, while I fiddled on my laptop, I put Artie Shaw on the turntable, specifically The Complete Artie Shaw, Volume IV: 1940-1941, a two-record set from Bluebird Records.

I think my dad was aghast when I confessed one day that I thought Shaw was better than Benny Goodman, whose music I heard on many a Saturday morning growing up. I am no judge of which man was better on the clarinet, but I thought Shaw was more adventurous, as when he incorporated harpsichord on Gramercy Five recordings like “Cross Your Heart,” the first track on this album.

This particular album covers studio sessions in chronological order from September 1940 to March 1941. I found myself once again marveling at the technology that enables me to time-travel and listen in on performances from more than 85 years ago.

The set includes Shaw’s version of “Moonglow,” the song that was playing when Dad proposed to the girl who would become my mother a few years later. I’m pretty sure they were listening to Benny’s take on the song.

It was a very long time before I discovered that “Moonglow” actually has lyrics, as none of the versions I’d ever heard included singers. “It must have been moon glow that led me straight to you … I still hear you saying, ‘Dear one, hold me fast,’ and I start in praying, Dear Lord, please let this last.” That’s an appropriate song for a marriage proposal.

I have no special message to share today, other than life is better with music, Artie Shaw was a remarkable talent, I’m glad I kept my records, and my parents were always a cute couple. That’s probably enough.

Dance at times like this

I am grateful to live in a world where music is readily available at my fingertips. I can’t imagine a world without music — no, wait, yes I can.

A world without music would be a desolate place with no way to express gratitude for being alive adequately, no way to release the joy inside our hearts, no way to come to terms with the needs for which we have no words.

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance,” E.E. Cummings said breathtakingly in a poem.

The world is full of voices screaming, “How can you dance at a time like this?” while I am desperately listening and trying to learn how to sing in this darkness.