Self Help Radio 081619: Floating

(Image from here.)

It's at times like this, when the show is done & I'm wondering what I could've done to make it better, that I think about Muhammad Ali's maxim, "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."  I wouldn't mind floating like a butterfly - they seem to be susceptible to the slightest of breezes - but of course when a honeybee stings you, she dies.  That seems not only unfair, but inappropriate.  Might I just float like a butterfly, & enjoy honey like a bee?  I'll bet eating while you're floating is fun.

Would you go up on one of those planes which gets just so high that you experience weightlessness?  Or would you go into space, just to float a bit?  I might.  Or I might just take the rest of the afternoon, fill a tub up with water, & float until it gets too cold, or too lukewarm anyway.

The show is done, though, so please, float over to it & have a listen.  It's mostly intangible but you can find it at the Self Help Radio website.  There'll be a username & password there, those are SHR & selfhelp.  The show has lots of music plus some ridiculous interviews which you can find out about by looking below.

Just don't float away.  If you can in fact float.  Which you probably can.

Self Help Radio Floating Show

"Floating" The Moody Blues _To Our Children's Children's Children_
"Floating (SSRU Demo)" Section 25 _Illuminus Illumina_
"Floating" Julee Cruse _Floating Into The Night_

introduction & definitions

"The Float" Hank Ballard & The Midnighters _All 20 Of Their Chart Hits 1953-1962_
"Float" Palindromes _Muy Muy Pop Yum Yum_
"Free-Floating Hostility, Part I" George Carlin _Back In Town_
"We Are Floating" Archie Bronson Outfit _Wild Crush_
"Does It Float" Dinosaur Jr _Dinosaur_

interview with the Rev Dr Howard Gently

"Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" Spiritualized _Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space_
"California Floating In Space" Call & Response _Call & Response_
"Free-Floating Hostility, Part II" George Carlin _Back In Town_
"Floated In" Frankie Cosmos _Next Thing_
"Floaty" Petra Haden & Bill Frisell _Petra Haden & Bill Frisell_

Ned Dry makes his famous ice cream float
phone call from Mary Poppins' daughter

"Floating In A Vacuum" Plastic Mermaids _Suddenly Everyone Explodes_
"Floating In The Forth" Frightened Rabbit _The Midnight Organ Fight_
"Free-Floating Hostility, Part III" George Carlin _Back In Town_
"Floating In Space" The Apples In Stereo _Travellers In Space & Time_
"Floating By" The Red Button _She's About To Cross My Mind_

interview with poet Phineas Johnston

"Dead Man's Float" Sage Francis _Copper Gone_
"She Floated Away" Hüsker Dü _Warehouse: Songs & Stories_
"Free-Floating Hostility, Part IV" George Carlin _Back In Town_
"Float My Bed" Lorelei _Why Popstars Can't Dance_
"Float To The Top" Madder Rose _Tragic Magic_

conclusion & goodbye

"Floating" Xerox Feinberg _12 Big Hits (Of 1985)_
"We Float" PJ Harvey _Stories From The City Stories From The Sea_
"Floating Dream" The Peanut Butter Conspiracy _Spreading From The Ashes_

Whither Floating?

(This image from a terrifying article called Why Do Corpses Float?)

Just imagine this: you're floating.  It could be in warm water, it could be in the clouds.  You aren't expending any energy at all, you've given yourself up to whatever forces of nature will keep you afloat.  You feel lighter than air, you could be a leaf suspended in a gentle wind, or part of the very clouds in which you float.  That's a nice thing to imagine, right?  Calming, even relaxing.  It might even make you a little drowsy, the experience so pleasurable you imagine it would be nice to doze off in such a state.

That would be a mistake.  The safety you feel while floating is an illusion.  Suddenly you're taken under the water!  Or you begin to fall!  Gravity is again the master!  You cannot escape its ruthless hold no matter how hard you try.  You can struggle but there's a part of you that knows you're utterly doomed, your foolishness in believing you could float forever leading you to a painful, untimely end.

That feeling there, that sense that you made a horrible mistake & won't be able to correct it no matter how hard you try?  That's the normal emotional reaction to Self Help Radio, which this week will be about floating.  If you're strong enough to ignore that feeling, you probably also text & drive.  In which case, please listen!

It'll happen Friday at noon at Self Help Radio dot net.  It will not, alas, float in the air on radio waves - that's still a couple of weeks away.  But perhaps you'll welcome the sound waves floating into you as you listen, & as always standard disclaimers apply.

Preface To Floating: Recurring Dreams

Believe it or not, I used to have a recurring dream where I was floating.

This dream would usually happen at the apartment complex I lived in from the ages of around ten to fourteen.  They were called Villa Cordoba & I've written about them on this blog before, namely here & here.  I hadn't really thought about it before, but perhaps one of the reasons I dreamt about floating there is that I had actually seen the apartment complex from up high, as I often climbed trees which grew higher than the complex.

The apartments were in a square configuration, with the front doors looking out on all four sides, & each unit having a back patio.  The patio walls were solid, they looked like stucco but were perhaps made of concrete or even stone, I'm not sure.  You could clamber up onto the walls of the patios & jump onto trees in the complex, all of which grew inside (in the middle of the complex was a pool & a few apartments whose patios were in the front of the unit, outside the front door).  I wish I could remember what kind of trees they were, but they grew taller than the second story, as I said, & I could even see over the apartments to the middle school to the northeast & the back of the shopping center to the southeast.

In my dreams, I'm not flying, I'm floating.  Hovering, really.  There's no indication how I got up there, & friends & family below me - I'm floating higher than the apartments - don't seem at all impressed that I'm up there.  I recall that I have to strain to hear what they're talking about, & to yell to get their attention.  At some point in the dream, either someone asks me or I become concerned about the prospect of getting down.  I'm over two stories up & not really moving, just floating there.  The rest of the dream is all about how I get back to the ground - sometimes scarily, I just lose the ability to float; sometimes cleverly, I manage to get to a tree or a window; & sometimes skillfully, I figure out how to slowly descend.  In no cases do I actually hurt myself - I would usually wake up before that happened.

But I did write that I used to have this dream.  I haven't had it in years.  Probably not since my twenties, which is more than half my life ago.  But I had them enough to remember them vividly.  & like everything else I no longer experience, I realize now I miss them terribly.

In Case You're Keeping Score

Today I was trained at a third Portland radio station.  It went well, I think I could navigate the set-up, & I thanked the person who took the time to train me, & as I was driving home, I got a text:

Can you sub next Tuesday from 2-4pm?

My response was:

Wow! Sure!

(Not that I texted while I was driving!  No, I waited till I was stopped.  So I was texting while I was idling.)

That means that - if we arrived roughly three months ago - by this time next week I will have been trained at & deejayed at three different radio stations.  That's a personal record for me.

& almost certainly something Portland will soon be sick of.

T-Minus Three Weeks & Hey What Does T-Minus Even Mean?

It says here, "In a NASA countdown to a rocket launch, 'T-minus' translates to 'Time minus'; the T stands for the exact time at which the rocket is scheduled to be launched. In more technical terms, the T in T-minus is a designator for the main sequence countdown time that serves as the synchronization device for most of the equipment & procedures that must be completed before, during, & after the launch."

It appears I was wrong above.  I am writing this close to nine pm on Monday, August 12.  Self Help Radio's debut on Portland radio is at 6am Monday, September 2.  Which means it would be more proper to say "T-minus twenty days & fifteen hours."  Anything more specific would be weird, since I sometimes start writing these things, get distracted, & return much later.  But "T-Minus three weeks" is definitely incorrect.

It's weird to think that Self Help Radio will be back on the air.  I am trying to think of something special to do but to be honest it's best to be as normal as possible.  The theme will be "a new start" but nothing will be terribly new about the show.  Except I'll be doing it live!  That's so exciting!

This week I wasn't able to snag any sub shows so it'll be a week without me irritating Portland radio.  Myself, I spent the day listening to songs about floating.  There are lots of electronica tunes about floating.  It's a theme that lends itself to pretty electronica.  Should I do an all-instrumental show one day?  I probably have before, but I don't know if I should try it again especially when I'm about to be introduced to the Portland airwaves.

These are things I think about all the damn time.  Sometimes instead of doing something.

One last thing: I just watched a film about a person who was in an awful relationship with a junkie & at the end (no spoilers, I won't tell you the film), the junkie died - ODed - & I thought, "That's the happiest ending, isn't it?  The junkie dies."  This is despite me knowing a couple of people who would self-describe as junkies who managed to kick it & not destroy themselves.  Maybe I should rethink my own attitudes about people with addiction.

Anyway.  T-minus what?  I can't be expected to keep up with this!