The first real adult book I read (that wasn’t a classic) was Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay. Up until that point my mother had strictly limited my reading material to the children’s section of the library and anything nominated a classic by whatever absurd and obscure metre determines what is worthwhile, enduring and exemplary of good taste in its literary genre. I think she hoped to save me from my reckless reading habits, which, had they been left unbridled, might have landed me in some rather embarrassing adult reading situations. So my until that point innocent and unaware eight year-old self plunged headlong into Shakespeare, and learned about the mysteries of life and love and mice and men and women from him. I still feel that something more along the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey might have made for a less shocking introduction to romance and sex, but the past is the past and the future can do nothing to touch it.
Late Nights on Air, despite being my first big-girl book, was fairly tame in comparison to the bard. Though desire was one of the many major themes it dealt with, sex was always shuffled modestly to the background. It glossed over the things about adulthood that were already beginning to worry my young teenaged mind while still dealing in a well-phrased but simple honesty. It didn’t have too happy an ending. People died unfortunate, untimely deaths without any great fanfare or too many tears shed. No one triumphed over any significant hurdles and most of the characters ended the book in worse shape than they had been in on the first page. Some of the characters grew, matured or changed as the story wore on, and some did not. There was no main character. No protagonist, no antagonist. The climax was understated, the resolution quiet. It was life- real life, captured and put into print. I was enthralled. This, I thought, this is what good modern story-telling looks like.
But more than I loved Late Nights on Air for its honesty and simplicity, for its genuine, real-as-can-be, boring and normal characters and its realism, I loved the novel’s romantic air. Hay spun a story about average, plain-Jane and Joe people doing average things in a humdrum place and somehow made it compelling. It was set in Yellowknife for Chrissake! A Yellowknife radio station in the seventies- what could be less exciting, less romantic? Yet the novel captured me soundly, whisked me off my feet in such a smooth and simple sweep I barely saw or felt it coming. I fell into that book; for a week it consumed me. I sat in classes thinking and dreaming about Hay’s prose, about her characters and their hopes and dreams and fears. They were more real to me than the people I was surrounded by, their concerns were more pressing, their lives more compelling. And in the same lazy way I fell in love with the notion of old radio. At twelve years old I fell in love with the idea of classic Canadian radio and never have I once looked back.
I suppose I have Hay to thank for this enduring love-affair. I still read her book- once a year I fit it into my busy reading and rereading schedule, but the ideas and loves it sparked in me have proven much larger and infinitely more valuable- radio is one, certainly the largest, but there are many more.
I still listen to AM radio whenever I can. I bought a vintage radio-clock just to hear the crackle of the CBC first thing in the morning. I don’t listen for the news- I read that on my iPhone. Nor do I listen for the music- I can play that for myself. Instead I listen for the sheer joy of it, for the romance of turning the dial and listening to a familiar but still unfamiliar voice drift over the airwaves and into my bedroom. For the thrill of feeling that I’m a part of something bigger than myself, of a network that transcends space and physical boundaries, shared in the privacy of others homes and cars and linking us with each other, with the rich heritage of public radio which stretches back to a time before I was born, and with all people like us who have been inspired and enthralled by radio enough to take the time to pause and listen over the years.
If I could host my own radio show, it would be called Business As Usual. I don’t know when I got this idea, but it’s been kicking around my head for a while. I’d talk politics and sports, music and books. It would be brusque and simple but wildly entertaining. The whole point would be to get people to look at things in a light they hadn’t before. To put a different spin on things, in a lighthearted but (hopefully? maybe?) still poignant way. It will probably never happen, but if I ever had the chance, I’d jump at it, just for the chance to hear my own voice drift over the airwaves, and the hope that someone might stop and listen, entranced as I was and am by the poetry of radio.
On another note- that was a ramble. Next time I won’t talk for so long or write something so tangential. Anyways… this is what writing at night does to your brain kids. Not healthy, not healthy at all.