Radio address for June 1, 2013. A venture down to the lowest place in the house, floods and sinking houses.

The second section draws pretty directly from Psalm 107, which are well worth a minute or two of supplemental reading.

I recorded both voice and music for this particular episode on my iPhone using the built-in mic and the app Bossjock, with some editing in Audacity.

Radio address for May 27, 2013. Getting ink everywhere but on the page, and coming back to life after being submerged in activity.

As you may have guessed, things have been a bit nuts in my life lately. I’m trying to make some changes to reduce the work involved in production. If you’re a regular listener, you’ll probably notice what those changes and tradeoffs are over the coming weeks, but hopefully they won’t degrade the experience in ways that matter to you. The goal of regular production in the middle of a heavy work schedule continues to dangle in front of me, just out of reach.

The pen mentioned in this episode is a Noodler’s Ahab flex nib. I have two of these cheap pens: one is dry as bone (no ink) and the other - this one - is constantly hemorrhaging ink all over the place. The reviews I read seemed positive, but I just have never had any luck with a fountain pen that cost less then $100.

My bleeding fountain pen.

Radio address for May 4, 2013. What it feels like not to have words for things, or to suddenly acquire them.

The unannounced poem in the middle is The Truth by Randall Jarrell.

The music is Tarr and Irina by Alberto Iglesias, Nash’s Dark World by James Horner, and Assassin by Ilan Eshkeri.

Radio address for April 13, 2013. A report on the weather: of the neighborhood, of the mind. Mention is made of our April snowstorm.

From The Dogwood Tree, by John Updike:

Goethe — probably among others — says to be wary of our youthful wishes, for in maturity we are apt to get them. I go back, now, to Pennsylvania, and on one of the walls of the house in which my parents now live there hangs a photograph of myself as a boy. I am smiling and staring with clear eyes at something in the corner of the room. I stand before that photograph, and am disappointed to receive no flicker, not the shadow of a flicker, of approval, of gratitude. The boy continues to smile forever at the corner of the room, beyond me. The boy is not a ghost to me, he is real to me; it is I who am a ghost to him. I, in my present state, was one of the ghosts that haunted his childhood. Like some phantom conjured by this child from a glue bottle, I have executed his commands; acquired pencils, paper, and an office. Now I wait apprehensively for his next command, or at least a nod of appreciation, and he smiles through me, as if I am already transparent with failure.

The end music is Welcome Home, Son by Radical Face. I first ran across it on Internet radio several months ago and was disappointed to learn it had already been used in the soundtracks of several films, tv shows and commercials. However, I feel the poetry in the song is good enough to be worth rescuing from brand entanglements, and felt this was as appropriate a context as any for doing so.

Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline
Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass
Was never much but we made the most
Welcome home

Ships are launching from my chest
Some have names but most do not
If you find one, please let me know what piece I’ve lost

Peel the scars from off my back
I don’t need them anymore
You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars
I’ve come home

As the original music video makes clear, this is in fact a song about returning to the haunted tatters of one’s childhood home. Ships are launching from my chest…

Radio address for April 6, 2013. We contemplate the value of stolen and saved moments doing what you love in between work and sleep.

This address was partly inspired by a satirical article at The Onion that is so depressing and close to home that I won’t even bother linking it here.

Music is The Journey Home by Phil Keaggy.

The snow cover in our front yard, dwindling ever so slowly.