April 20, 2005
wizard of air waves
When I arrived for the first of my interviews of the remarkable Leif Brush --- Professor (of conceptual and sound art) Emeritus --- he had five (5), count 'em, fünf (cinq) microphones set up on the table, microphones from different decades, a history of postwar radio and recording. The jewel of his mic collection in my eyes, the old RCA double-diamond-shape; how beautiful! |
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I was asking him about his adventures in radio --- in the Army, as a "tape reporter" in the '50s & '60s splicing news reports with a razor blade and sending them to the station from the mobile VW bus --- and I was enthralled with the answers. Radio is the other half . . . the hidden half . . . of my inspiration for writing (the more obvious half being the visual/verbal intersection between graphic design and writing.) |
My lifelong love of radio is what gives me a sense of the musical/temporal beauties of serial literature . . . effects that reveal themselves in episodes over days, weeks, months, Leif's sensibility to radio is so resonant with mine . . . a love of the sheer connectivity of networks: he describes with glee the moment in the old days when the entire NBC radio network would switch from originating a broadcast in New York to originating one in San Francisco . . . the gorgeous series of clicks as operators manually unplugged and replugged big-ass, olde-school regional switchboards . . . the original web, |
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