there’s something about being alone in a radio station
there’s you and the music and your thoughts during the commercial breaks after the lights dim and the doors lock
Do you know where your voice goes
how you’re in one place and many at the same time
you are someone’s daytime sky and night light lullaby
This is an ode to the airwaves that set me free.
From CBC’s vinyl café
to the Richmond Sockeyes and the White Rock Whalers
and anyone else who ever dared take a chance on me
to TSN 1040 and growing up without cable
Shorthouse Hughson and Bachelor painting the “you had to be there” picture
the chest heave listen along
each magic word made me feel like I was in a building I had only been to in my dreams
And this industry has gifted me my wildest dreams.
Please I don’t ever want to wake up.
But/if I do/you can scatter my ashes in the press box at Rogers Arena
play my last words through my headset microphone
bring back every goal I’ve ever called and relive the joy 10-fold.
Sound is far from stationary
and it is with my voice
that I learned I can literally move mountains
When I say I want to be a sports journalist
what I mean is I don’t know what else I could do
call me passionate
because where else would all this good love go
call me human
because everyone wants the story of the girl who breaks the glass ceiling
but no one wants to be the one to pass a hammer my way
I said call me human
and watch as i build a castle from the shards of my own persistence
the surprising resilience
the give inch take mile/fight back grit/the guts/the must have the stomach for it
knowing you are not alone
here’s to the drama/edge of seat spectacle/my story threaded with yours
this is…ours/here’s to the conversation/record skip small talk/the intimate connection
woven tapestry of an entire country’s shared fever dream/the fierce exclamation and a whispered love
I care/I care/I care and I want to tell you all about it/how these words bubble up and burst out because I’m nothing/ if not feeling everything and I never want to stop.
Dear Radio/we know what and who we are despite being continuously underestimated
expected to die just to come back swinging/go the distance in an fight we should be outmatched in
Bless the urgency
the honest and earnest authenticity
holy the unwillingness to be anything other than what we are
the deep breath consistency
holy the heady things from other timelines and time-zones wondering who is listening to….for….with you
When you catch the end of the perfect song/the way it hangs in the air afterwards
my first and last memory/my most consistent, steady, love
my heart dozes off in my parents van
listening/wakes up in a tangle of knotted limbs
listening for when
the noise finds you
but the sleep never does
I miss my mother’s kitchen radio
the twisted sheet music of the main floor wake up call
the lonely way jazz glitters after dark
hearing your friends on air right before you
we know what we’re getting in to
When we die
our voices won’t
so
when it’s my turn to dull the noise
will you let the dead air play a moment longer.
