Recently, someone at the station who peer-evaluated my show said that, although they liked it, it seemed like my themes were "arbitrary." I liked that comment, because it's not that it seems that way. It is that way. I come up with themes at a moment's notice, sometimes, when something strikes me. For example, just today, I was listening to my iPod on shuffle & Darren Hanlon's wonderful song "(There's Not Enough Songs About) Squash" came on, & I started thinking about a show about obscure or little-celebrated sports. & that's an example that's got a reasonable beginning. Some of them are so random & inexplicable, I can't remember why or when I thought of them. (That's when I make something up.)
But there are shows that I do & have done every year since Self Help Radio began four years ago. Those shows are:
1) A Christmas show. But just one. Christmas music is fun, but too much is hard to swallow. Plus, people who do Christmas shows play all the same songs every year. Sometimes for the entire month of December. One Christmas show per year. That should be a law.
2) A "best of" [insert current year here] show. Sometimes it's hard to do, but I feel I should be trying to keep up. You know?
3) My birthday show. I was born in 1968, & three years back, on the week of my birthday, I played songs from my favorite albums from the year of my birth. The next year, it was from 1969, etc. This January, it'll be 1971.
4) A Valentine's show. I didn't get to do one this year (since KOOP had burned down & we were off the air). But I'll hopefully get to do one this next year. (The theme this year was going to be "breaking up." I don't know if I'll revisit that for 2007, or think of something else.)
5) A South By Southwest Show. As a public service. Especially if you, like me, don't really want to pay for the wristband or stand in line for all those shows.
6) An Arbor Day show. I love trees! (Okay, that's not true.)
& finally:
7) A Halloween show.
This year the theme is Monsters. I didn't want to just do a theme about Frankenstein's monster, although there are plenty of songs about him. I wanted to do a theme that talked also about humans becoming monsters. Or human who are monsters. & I take as my text for this venture this passage from John Steinbeck's East Of Eden:
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen & horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents & no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.
And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face & body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted norma to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, & that to a monster, the norm is monstrous.
Yes, don't forget! It'll inform the show Friday. More about this tomorrow.
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