These Elusive Flickers

A dream…

 

This defines what the best air talent in Radio have always done, what they — rare as they are now — still do today:

As we speed past moments in a day, we want to give form to what we feel, what was obvious but got lost in the shuffle.”

“We want to know that someone else noticed that shape we suspected was hovering just beyond our periphery. And we want that shape, that flicker of shared life experience, captured in a bottle, playing up on a big screen, gracing our living room wall, or singing to us from a speaker. It reminds us where we have been, what we have felt, who we are, and why we are here.”

“We all see something blinking in the sky at some point, but it’s a damn lot of work to put it in the bottle. Maybe that’s why only some of us become artists. Because we’re obsessive enough, idealistic enough, disciplined enough, or childish enough to wade through whatever is necessary, dedicating life to the search for these elusive flickers, above all else.”

“My job is to see what’s blinking out of the darkness and to sharpen the skill required to put it in a jar for others to see. Those long hours of practice, the boring scales, the wading through melodies that are dead behind the eyes in search of the ones with heartbeats. And all that demoralizing failure along the way. The criticism from within, and from others, and all the unglamorous stuff that goes along with the mastering of a craft. It’s all for that one moment of seeing a jar light up a face.”

“At its most basic, making art is about following what’s luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others.”

The voice is Ben Folds from his book (Yes! He writes as well as composes and sings songs): A Dream About Lightning Bugs

There are many, many voices that will demean your purpose, scoff at the thought that you are an artist, label you as an egoist, laugh at your pretension, insist that you shut up and read the liners.

I am not one of those voices.

Stun me with your gift. Dazzle me with your audacity.

Make me laugh out loud. Make me cry, softly, alone in my car or working in my office, tears there for all to see.

Do more than what’s being asked of you today: Make me feel the specialness of your view of our world.

Don’t let anyone make you less than you know you are.