Self Help Radio 102414: Walk Away

(Original photo here.

This morning there was a Self Help Radio with the improbable theme "walk away."  I wonder how many people subconsciously stop listening to a radio show that constantly tells them to walk away?  It's something I should've thought through before I went ahead & did it.

But!  Did it I did, & it's available now at the Self Help Radio website for your listening ambivalence.  Pay attention to the password information on the page.  & you can see the songs I played below.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Walking Away by C. Day Lewis" Jill Balcon _Poetry Please: The Anniversary Edition_
"Walk Away" Jess Conrad _Jess For You: The Decca Singles Compilation_
"I Walked Away" T-Bone Walker _The Complete Imperial Recordings: 1950-1954_
"Walk Away" Mitty Collier _Shades Of Mitty Collier: The Chess Singles 1961-1968_

"Walk Away Renee" The Left Banke _There's Gonna Be A Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966-69_
"Walk Away Renee" Billy Bragg _Reaching To The Converted_
"Walk Away" Suburban 9 To 5 _Quagmire, Vol. 7_
"Walkin' Away" The Fifth Order _Sixties Rebellion, Vol. 1_
"Walk Away" The Dirty Shames _Coconut Grove_

"Walk Away" Ann Peebles _This Is Ann Peebles_
"Love You Just Can't Walk Away" Dean Courtney _Big City Soul, Vol. 3_
"Walk Away" Frank Sinatra _The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings_
"As If You Walked Away" Claudine Longet _Cuddle Up With Claudine Longet: The Complete Barnaby Records Sessions 1970/74_
"Walk Away From Love" David Ruffin _Hard To Find Motown, Vol. 1_

"Walk Away" TV Smith's Explorers _The Last Words Of The Great Explorer_
"Laugh & Walk Away" Shirts _Street Light Shine_

(part two)

"Walk Away Boy" The Hit Parade _The Sound Of The Hit Parade_
"All You Ever Do Is Walk Away" The Magnetic Fields _Holiday_
"Walk Away" The Sisters Of Mercy _First & Last & Always_

"Walk Away" The English Beat _Wha'ppen?_
"Don't You Walk Away From Me" Miss Ludella Black & The Masonics _From This Witness Stand_
"Walk Away" Pink Industry _Who Told You, You Were Naked?_
"Don't Walk Away From Love" Simon Bonney _Everyman_

"Walk Away" The Sleepers _Painless Nights_
"Walked Away" Shirley Lee _Shirley Lee_
"Walk Away" Tony Molina _Dissed & Dismissed_
"I Love You When You're Walking Away" Plumtree _Moshi Moshi (Pop International Style)_

"Atmosphere" Joy Division _Closer_
"Walk Away" Shimmering Stars _Violent Hearts_
"She Tore It Up & Walked Away" Go-Kart Mozart _Instant Wigwam & Igloo Mixture_

Whither Walk Away?

This is a story about a man named Gary, who was always walking away.  For example, when he was
young, in the mornings, he often walked away from his home, &, later, walked away from the school where he spent his days.

Later, he walked away from every class he took, at least once a day.  When he got older, he walked away from home nearly every weekday morning, & then in the late afternoon, sometimes later, he'd walk away from the place he worked.  He did it so many times, it's a wonder he was never fired!

He does a radio show now, on Friday mornings.  But after two hours, he walks away from it.  Every week.  & perhaps to flaunt it, this week he's doing a show with the theme "walk away."  What nerve!  What gall!

Don't encourage this disrespectful behavior!  If you have the radio tuned to 88.1 fm WRFL (or are listening online at wrfl dot fm) tomorrow morning from 7 to 9 am, just walk away from the show.  Make him understand what it feels like, all that walking away!

It's more well-mannered to run away, after all.

Preface To Walk Away: Walk Over Here

Is it that time of the time again that I plug the Self Help Radio Tumblr site?  Initially I used the site for music videos because I had no other real use for it.  Now I use it as a place to put all the dumb digital photos I take when I am walking the dogs or am walking around in other places, including my home.  Some pictures I think are neat, some I think are dumb, & some I think are curious, but none of them I think are good compared to photographers who have a great eye.

I especially like the pictures I take that are turn out fine even though the circumstances are accidental.  This one, which was taken on my dog Pauline's birthday, was me snapping the picture before she got into place - but it was better than any other picture I took of her that day:

Anyway, there are lots of pictures of stuff that I notice while I'm walking, & lots of pictures of my pets, & thankfully no pictures of me, at selfhelpradio.tumblr.com.

All right!  Time to stop the bad self-promotion for awhile.  I'm really uncomfortable with it.

Dreams Are Boring

A scientific fact: dreams are boring.  Not individual dreams specific to the dreamer.  Dreams except for ones that you have dreamt are boring.  Unless.  Unless you believe dreams are full of hidden imagery, a signal that your subconscious is trying to explain you to yourself, or any number of supernatural other explanations of dreams.  In that case, both the dreams & the people who feel that way about dreams are boring.

It's fun to fuck with people like that.  They're so self-important & faux-earnest.  One fellow I knew, once upon a time, when I was telling someone else within his earshot about a recent dream (I was boring the hell out of her, though it had been a neat dream), overheard me say something in the (long-forgotten) dream about a window.  "Whoa," he said, exaggeratedly wide-eyed in an exaggerated manner, "Don't you know how important it is when you dream about windows?"

Boring.  But I affected a wide-eyed manner & asked him to explain what windows mean in dreams.  It didn't take too long before he used the word "archetype" & of course "Jung," which he pronounced with a hard J.  The other person I was talking to knew I was pretending like I gave a shit, so she did her best to stifle her laughter.  It ended with the dream interpreter giving me his card & telling me he'd give me a discount on the first visit.

Having said all that, I have to tell you about a dream I recently had.

No, I don't.  I don't have to.  I feel compelled to tell you because sometimes dreams are the most interesting thing to happen to me.  They're not only interesting to me, they're mostly consistently interesting.  Things one might think are interesting that I do aren't always as interesting.  For example: I enjoy doing my radio show, but talking to people about my radio show, the process of doing the radio show, things that may happen behind the scenes during my radio show, those aren't usually too terribly interesting.  The show itself may be interesting (probably not) but what I do during the show - with the exception of the occasional goofy phone call - not too interesting.

My dreams, though - virtually every morning I wake up & think: wow, that was an interesting thing that happened to me!

One reason dreams are boring to anyone except the dreamer is that most dreams are experiences that are felt & don't travel in a narrative arc.  Last night, I dreamt that I was in a bad part of town (what town? who knows? in the dream KVRX & WRFL were basically the same place) but when I wanted to show the bad part of town to someone, suddenly there were shops & stores there, & it didn't seem as derelict as I believed it was earlier in the dream.  The whole place changed, & I was a little surprised, but the dream moved on.  That was probably very boring, but it wasn't for me, & whatever the narrative was in the dream, I thought about it a lot when I was waking up.

In fact, I (& I'm probably not alone) often try to get back to dreams if I am wakened before the time I've supposed to actually get up.  That's how interesting my dreams are to me!

& yet - boy, are dreams boring.  It's sneaky of me to have shared a snippet of a dream in this denunciation of dreams.  I didn't meant to be sneaky.  I needed to make a point.  A point of how tedious dreams are.  Oh my god.  Let's not talk about dreams anymore.  Not to each other.

Please.

The Weather Turns

I've probably observed/complained here before that I now live in a place where it's cold much more often than it's hot.  Having grown up in Texas, & spent most of that time in Austin, I am used to the opposite.  Austin has a fitful winter, which is often interrupted with warm spells, & a truncated autumn & spring.  Lexington (where I now live) tends to have a spring that slowly frees itself from the icy muck of winter & then casually waits around for summer to get started.

But autumn officially began last month & the idea of it has taken hold.  I write this with a window to my left, & out of the corner of my eye I can see the occasional yellow leaf fall.  The trees here are still mainly green, but there are those that have embraced the autumn colors of red, orange, yellow, & a few that have already dumped their leaves for the winter.

& it's colder.  This week it'll get no higher than 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  Just like the house gets warmer when it's warmer outside, it gets colder in here when the nights are below 40 degrees,

But the reason this is on my mind is not because I think you're interested in the weather, or even my banal observations about differences in geography.  It's because - well, here, let me show you.  This is what my left hand looks like right now:

(I couldn't take a picture of both hands because one had to hold the camera, but my right hand is equally attired.)

I am not a beggar on the cold streets of London - I am a person whose hands are freezing.

That was the most fascinating thing about living in this part of the world - it gets cold in your house during the winter, & one's extremities get cold.  When we first moved here - the first season in this clime - I suffered through the entire winter with frozen hands.  My arms, legs, feet, even head, I could keep covered, but as long as I was tapping on my computer, my hands were exposed & it was cold.

& generally speaking, it's hard to use a keyboard in mittens or your average winter gloves.  It was probably the wife who suggested these - probably after watching me try to warm my hands by sitting on them, or, worse, putting them down my pants.  To warm them, I mean.  Anyway.

(My fingers are still cold.)

The summer seems short now, but there were days when the heat & humidity were pretty unbearable.  All of that now is so very far away - we have at least six months now of mainly cold, cold weather, with the prospect of a crippling winter & the return of the polar vortex on the grey horizon.

My dumb point is this: when the weather turns around here, it doesn't turn back.  Not for a while.