After a long day of nothing and bliss, I exited the train and immediately realized the quality of light had shifted from the familiar evergold of permanent sunset to harsh neon bleeding out onto wet pavement. I had left the city, perhaps for good, and found myself somewhere distant and familiar.
It took me a while to find a job without references or prospects, but eventually walked into the right place and spoke to the right people. After all, the time I found myself in still had need of television and stereo repair, and I know just enough about electronics that I can follow a manual to get the job done as long as I remember to discharge the flyback transformer before I go sticking a screwdriver in it.
I know how this goes. I am not to talk to myself. It seems like a sensible rule, given the ripples it could cause. But it kills me. How much could I tell myself to improve my life… not just the obvious financial advice but the more important, personal things (you’ll be ok. you’ll figure yourself out. it doesn’t stay dark inside forever.)?
The best I can do is this: I stockpile a lot of equipment. Transmitters and CD burners and disc changers and a portable but powerful antenna. I wire a few alternators & batteries into a bread truck and build a mobile operation center. I broadcast from every foothill and parking garage roof.
One day — and I have no idea when — I find myself on the radio, tucked neatly in the dial between top 40 trash and contemporary country. I tape for hours, intricately decorating the J-card with hearts and skulls as I listen, spellbound. I wear the tapes out on the way to school, to work, walking around a sleepless city, letting it sink in: there is more, always more, and I will leave one day to find it all.
Tasting notes
This started out as a pretty simple concept: I make a mixtape to myself, but only from stuff that would have been out by the time I left high school (class of ‘97 yikes), and only stuff that I’d probably be into around that time. That rapidly filled up with The Cure and New Order and at some point I didn’t want to make a mix of stuff that I listened to in high school… I wanted a mix of stuff I should have listened to in high school.
And then I remembered Eggplant.
Eggplant had a knack, a way of touching a broken machine and singing it back to life. His house was full of old TVs and VCRs and radios, but not in a disordered way. An organized clutter. He was a friendly, soft spoken man who drank herbal tea, kept his door open, and patiently shared his passions with any who were interested.
He also ran a pirate radio station that blasted deep cuts from well outside the firing range of the town’s typical ClearChannel stations.
It didn’t last long: eventually the FCC caught up to him. Not long after, he succumbed to complications from diabetes. His spirit is strong, though, and has lingered alongside all who knew him through all these years.
The Sisters of Mercy on this one… that’s for him.
Maybe I’ll make the other side of this one day — only music i would have listened to in high school — but for now it’s sufficient to wrap this up and toss it back into that distant foreign country of the past and hope it finds its way.
The tapes fell out of my grasp: I lost them when a landlord illegally evicted me and seized most of my possessions. They sat in a storage facility for years, then tumbled from hand to hand before gathering dust on the shelves of a thrift store.
It is there where long fingers are laid upon them, causing a thin smile to spread across the lips of The Proprietor. He is looking for a way home. He may have found it.