Preface To Rising: Turning Points

Whatever reason the show has the theme this week, I approached it with a kind of dread.  Rising?  What the fuck sort of theme is rising?

Add to that the fact that I had already done a show, three years ago, about sunrise.  Wouldn't that hamstring a show about rising?  What else rises, but the sun, & maybe bread?

But over the course of the few days I took gathering material for the show, something happened.  Something always happens.  Maybe it's just that there's a giant library of music that I have access to (my record & CD & digital music collection).  Maybe it's that I have a goofy process for looking for songs online.  Maybe it's that, despite doing this for years, I generally imagine I'm always going to fall short of the necessary two hours of music required for doing a proper show.  Despite/because of all that I steel myself for disappointment & instead find myself with too much!  There were too many songs about rising!  It's making the show hard to put together!

This probably sounds like a minor problem, but like with a fever - how long has it been since you've had a fever?  Do you remember, the last time you had a fever, that moment when the fever broke?  It's almost like an epiphany when a fever breaks.  If I am asleep, & the fever breaks, I will wake, & I will feel a calm that I assume is like when an acolyte finds herself in meditation for the first, & she is able to clear her mind completely.  It's that good.

In fact, it's a wonder I don't try to give myself horrible colds so I can experience more fevers.

A similar sort of thing happens when I realize that the show has come together.  I will stop what I am doing & take a breath.  Sometimes I don't even know I've done such a thing until after the fact.  I'll say, Oh yeah, when I listened to that song, I knew it would be all right.

Which is my way of saying that happened just today.  I realized that - whether it's actually going to be a good show or not - this week's Self Help Radio would pass my own test for a decent mix of music.

This is not a thing I expect, even after all this time.  It still surprises me.  It surprised me today.

That's a good thing, right?