When my caffeine-spun words begin to acquire a texture that I can taste as strongly as the adrenaline, I begin to feel the lilt and swell of every word in my mind, the thick scratch of feedback and microphone fuzz in my ear (my auditory cortex, to be precise, because I am indeed not hearing anything, oh astute imaginary reader; do meet the rest of the imaginary friend crew I tote along in my ravenous musings). Radio, of the talking variety at least, is perhaps a dying art form now that we have had TV and netflix and cinema and Ipods for quite a while, but in our resurgence to all things nostalgic, esoteric, intellectual, and elevating, radio lives on; if not as an art, at least as a science. (And by that I cryptically mean that we still get radio news).
Our resurgence is fear of the unknown, a step back from the waves of innovation and multitasking that crash into our lives in a steadily progressing storm. Just as skinny jeans and high-waisted skirts, rompers, fedoras, cigarettes and stupid mustaches have marched back into the progression of life; of both the hipster and mainstream varieties; so do means and forms of expression that are reminiscently beat or conservative. Sometimes our reaction to change is the negation of change, to ignore it and fall back to something comfortable and known, or perhaps to confront the unknown in the soothing embrace of the familiar.
I've grown up listening to NPR because my parents were raised in a country where TV was not a commodity for a long time. Especially in my dad's village upbringing, I don't know that he had a television until perhaps his undergraduate education. So for me, radio is one of those mediums that is tried and true, visceral, and of that powerful vein where nostalgia lies; just beneath the surface of your temple, easily tapped, releasing a heavy flow of ethereal static-y sepia-toned memories.
What I like most about radio is peoples' voices. There is a unique sort of emotion transmitted when you can only hear a person's voice, and can't even see their eyes, that medium that is said to be the most expressive of all. Very soon, you stop imagining the face that might go along with the voice and instead understand the emulation of emotion that is their voice; the muted, careful way that interviewees soften their sentences to come across with perhaps more profundity than lies even in their words, and the commanding bass and carefully nuanced sounds of the broadcasters, who are chosen just for those charming lilts and lisps that we can fetishize and emblazon in our memories. More than their intuitive reporting skills or incisive questions, I like how each NPR broadcaster is identifiable the second their tones fill the car, the way they conversate with fabled characters as though they were old friends to you and me, and how their ponderously-placed words shape music and warm the air. Words find a new texture in their splendid baritones and ebullient sopranos, and every story and snippet of reality becomes enhanced, marked, and palatable. I realized once that NPR's news stories are not half as long as the same stories on TV or in print; perhaps because voices, when overexerted, will soon fall into insipid monotone, or perhaps because NPR survives on interviews and Car Talk and Garrison Keilor as much as it does on hard news. But each piece of news, though often abrupt in content, is smooth and digestible solely because of its mode of delivery.
Voice is a visceral medium, even to the not-attuned ear. A phone conversation can burst with the sweetness of a smile or chafe with indifference, mollify with muted tones or enrage with distracted abruptness. Stress and nerves are harder to compensate for when all you can hear is a voice; no endearing eye tricks or simpering smiles can cover the raw emotion of a quivering voice. So there is a bare-bones reality to radio, a purity that resonates because it is, frankly, hard to lie when you cannot also deliver physical cues. I feel that I have read somewhere about maneuvers associated with lying and lie-detection, and how the entire package of human form is crucial in delivering a believable lie. So perhaps over radio we are keen to embellishment, which is why NPR keeps the news short and sweet. Perhaps this is also why the most touching stories are delivered over radio, or conversely, why we find them so touching at all. NPR's series 'This I Believe' was such a cool, inspired idea; but I cannot say that I would have enjoyed reading these stories as much as I enjoyed hearing them, feeling the gristle of their thoughts and the microphone fuzz at their slight lisps.
Voice is an intimate medium; more intimate even than writing or television because of the honesty it demands, the lies it reveals, and the visceral pull of human voice. After all, when we are in the womb we do not see anything: we only hear. We hear a steady heartbeat, our mother's voice, and the voices and sounds of the world around us. Radio lives on as an art because it resonates across time and human differences, eternally unparalleled.
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