Transistor voices

 

October 19, 2020

 

Greetings from the voice we know,

 At night I would only have the wind for company.  Whatever whisper it would make in the trees, or amidst the blades of grass.  It would tug at my tent, billow it out and make the lines hum, if it felt playful.

 In the day there was the sound of my own voice, or that of the people I would meet, often a long way apart.  And perhaps the wind in my ears as I rode along.  There were times this was the background to my own thoughts, and sometimes it was enough.  And other times, not.

 When I was a teenager, I explored the country on my bicycle, wandering between small towns, for a few days or sometimes weeks or months.  I would follow little used two-lane roads that framed farmland and split mountains, hugged the banks of lakes, forked in yellow woods.

 Sometimes I traveled with a friend or met other riders along the way.  Many miles I spent simply in my own company, which is a gift and a burden.  There is a loneliness that comes from being on your own for a long time, many times hours or sometimes days between conversations with other people.  There is a lot to learn from this experience, and I did, but it sometimes needs to be taken in small lessons.

 I slept under bridges, on picnic tables, in fields, sometimes in my tent, but usually wherever I could lay down my gear.  At night, I would sit with the darkness, and then the stars, and then the quiet.  And with that its companion, a loneliness.  It felt like an ache, sometimes sharp enough to feel like desire, or fear.  I found comfort in reading, in thinking, and in the voices.  Sometimes the ones in my head, but often those of invisible strangers.

 I had a small AM transistor radio, small enough to fit in the breast pocket of my jean jacket.  It had a leatherette carrying case and, for a while, a little strap.  I would snick it on, and then thumb the round dial on the front and search for the sound of a voice. 

 In my own town I knew where to find the music I wanted.  WTAC for top 40, or WAMM for soul music, or the ubiquitous CKLW for all the great music of that time.  But in the bare places between farm towns, or the emptiness of deserts, it was like searching for life on other planets.  Scanning around the little coin size dial, the hiss of static, then maybe something, go back; no. 

 I would sometimes strap the radio to my handlebars, listen to whatever music I was gifted with as I rode along, tinny and scratchy with static, often dimmed by the wind.  It would be background, but a small comfort, the sound of stranger’s singing or talking. 

 It did occur to me once that many of the voices were of people who were no longer alive, saved in song, and through whatever magic, somehow set free into the airwaves for me to capture in this tiny plastic box of solid state magic.  Voices from the other side of this life, spirits in the open waiting for someone to hear their sound.

 Sometimes as I ate on the side of the road, I would set the radio on the ground next to me and listened to Paul Harvey, or whoever the local radio preacher was.  There would be advertisements from the hardware store, and farm reports, and the weather.  There were a lot of gospel stations, a lot of country music, a lot of empty ‘fffffff’ in between the tiny numbers on my dial.

 At night, I would patch together whatever was my dinner, and then settle down to read or watch the world go darker.  Sometimes I would turn on the little radio, praying for its little nine-volt soul, and then cast my net into the ether, hoping to find company for a little while.  I would listen to whatever I could bring in, grateful for the sound of the DJ in between songs, whether they were big band or country or rock. 

 Crossing Nevada, a very lonely stretch, I somehow managed the signal from Las Vegas, two hundred miles away, and for a little while had the Beach Boys and Eagles for company before the sound faded away.  Some nights I would get scraps of music from ten states away. There were a few places in the mountains where I fell asleep listening to static. 

 In time I grew weary of the news or the fire and brimstone messages, and the price of beans or the twang of another mournful pick-up-truck song.  Even my own music, whatever I could cadge from the sky, became tedious to me.  In time, my own company, and the ideas I gathered from people during the day, became enough to hold the loneliness at bay.  There came a time when the battery faded in the little black radio, and I didn’t replace it.

 And there was the wind.  Some days it tore at the world, whirled pieces into the air in frustration.  Other times it was gentle, sensual, softly bending the trees, parting the wheat, riffling the tips of corn, frosting the lake with white swirls.  The wind teased birds into flight, hung hawks in the sky, pressed the clouds to the horizon for the sun to play with.  The wind sighed and spoke, gave voice to clattering branches and restless leaves and creaking windmills and fluttering sheets strung in the sun.

  It gave me the sound that I didn’t have to search for on any dial, the company of creation, a companion I count as friend even today.  I have felt it in my face and at my back, been irritated by it and grateful for it.  It has brought me change in weather, warmer and colder, new seasons, new reasons to go out and soak up the world. 

 I still turn on the radio, no longer as simple as it was, and listen to music and more rarely, the voices of opinion and news.  But just as often I open the windows and listen to what love the wind brings to salve what loneliness there may be.  And I am never sorry.

 

Hope this finds you listening,

 

David

 

Copyright © 2020 David Smith