"Ephemeral"

I've been dreaming about my decades long career in broadcast. Specifically dreams about doing shows. Much as soldiers dream of wars conductors dream of concerts, and mystics children dream of gawds.

Just now I dreamed of being in studio with old friends. Some of them now gone. It made me wonder if we did any good. Did we help at all?

I hope we did I think we did. I mean in that time for those people. I think yes.

It doesn't matter if we're not personally remembered. In the that medium it's rare that anyone is. Our contact was intimate, and on the whole to the good. As we best we understand the "good". In the sort of performance we gave. A kind no longer really done. A one on one with a person in the deep of night...you, and them.

Each member of the audience was being spoken to individually. It was a command performance for folks in the sanctuary of their most private places.

I told stories from my life, and related them to the world as it was then. I wrote stories, and performed them. I deliberately played music that I both loved, and hoped would help the folks get through the night. We did this. There was a whole crew of unique brilliant people speaking into the night. We shared intimate space for a few hours in the depths of dark once twice or several times a week for yes decades.

Margot Adler whom some of you know from NPR started at the same public station I served. I remember things I heard from her on the air that she said near 40 years ago, and they still matter.

What we did mattered.

I have no awards or trophy's. These were rare in the era I worked in. Now there are awards ceremonies in the industry for wiping your butt, and flushing. What we have. What we were given is more ephemeral, and more lasting. We touched hearts souls. We informed were informed gave laughter hope rage confusion insight the whole catalogue. 

It was what it was, and still lives in those that were there to share it.

Amen.

An Addendum.

( Performers, actors real on the stage actors amaze me. They can transform into another being. The do so right before your eyes.  This much as Shamans did. They changed into the animals their tribe was hunting. 

Their stages their props survive today as the flowing cave paintings still being discovered. There's a straight line from them to the sagas to the story bards to the likes of my broadcast comrades, ...even in a way to me.)