Weird, I Know… I Still Dream of Radio

I’ve always been a dreamer.

My imagination is rich, and it has led me along some intriguing paths and along delightful roads. It is certainly not idling at night either. It’s grinding out dream after dream as I sleep.

Invariably the first words I speak to Joan upon waking are, “Well, that was some dream.” They say that if you wake up two or three times during the night, you’ll probably remember the dreams you were having as they were interrupted. (Don’t parse the grammar; just move on.)

Oddly, after all these years, I still have a dream about radio almost every night. Maybe it’s not so odd. I did spend much of my life dreaming up radio show themes or ideas. Then I produced the content by writing scripts, calling guests, choosing music, setting up the studio, recording the programs, editing tapes, and delivering the final products to the stations that gave me chunks of airtime so the dreams (fodder? debris? wonder?) would be broadcast.

Still, these almost nightly sojourns with radio are puzzling. Am I dreaming these fragments as something fed by memories? Or, are they left-over fears and frustrations that haunt me? Or, are these dreams a kind of prompt, perhaps the seeds of some call to actually act on what I am doing in my sleep world?

One night, I’ll be returning to the dark, ultra-cluttered closet of the church that housed the studio in which I created so many radio programs. I’ll be peering into the boxes I may have left behind, discovering old relics that ask for new life: old records that want to be played again…reels of tape that are ripe for “racking up” on the studio equipment. In one dream, I’m disappointed to find that perfectly good shows have been tossed aside, or erased. Another night, I’ll have dreamed that someone cleaned the place out and valuable things have been lost.

But on many mornings I awake from dreams where I’ve been producing anew. I have a program to get to a station within an hour of broadcast time. Or, I’ll be building a music list for a show, and finding that all my records are somewhere else, and maybe it means swimming some distance for them. Or, I’m working with a youth group on some theme, and we need visuals to go with the songs they’ve chosen.

Now, I dream about other things besides radio. Usually I’m at a conference of some sort, or in a meeting. I rarely dream of people I know or places I’ve been. Almost all my dreams take place in a parallel universe with little or no recognition of anything familiar. On rare occasions a member of my family makes a cameo appearance. But not often.

If there is a recurring theme, Dr. Freud or Dr. Jung, it is that of having an opportunity to create something new to get on the air. It might be frustrating or fulfilling, the sensation I’m having as I dream. But there it is. One way or another I am “back on the air.”

I suppose that I should admit this now, as I move toward a conclusion. The radio I once worked in (with, through, and for) no longer exists. Rare is the station that gives away “public service time.” And rare is the station that does creative local programming. The skills I had that brought spiritual meaning (I hope and pray) from vinyl records, magnetic tape, and thoughtfully-written scripts will find no home in today’s broadcast arena. That’s history, folks.

But, I am trainable, digitally-speaking. I can still imagine. I can still write. I can still speak, though, as I have previously written, my voice is changing…maturing, one might say. Aging.

I have this spiffy new contraption of a microphone that records pristine audio onto a memory card. I have a list of people in my community I imagine interviewing. The audio editing capability of my computer has already been put to good use. I dream of doing this show…but finding someone to listen in this day and age…well, that’s the catch isn’t it?

Weird, I know.