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May 17, 2009: Gregory Whitehead


Gregory Whitehead Website
read Wings of Eros manifesto on Transom

sayeth GW:

I begin with the idea of radio as an adventure, and part of the idea of an adventure is that you don't always know precisely where you are. To my ears, a good radio program invites the listener to navigate. Sometimes the waters get choppy, or the fog rolls in. I always remind myself that the first community of radio artists was a community of maritime distress and rescue, the community of S-O-S.

In fact, the first trans-Atlantic radio broadcast was the single letter "S" in Morse code, dot-dot-dot. It's a twitching finger, a nervous finger, and radio is a nervous medium, we never really know who is really speaking, or why, or from where, it is a medium of permanently suspended disbelief. Rather than pretend the fog doesn't exist, I've always tried to embrace it, listen for the buoys, and hopefully float a few of my own. There's nothing more pretentious than imposing an artificial clarity on a nebulous, and even convoluted, world.

I believe it was the poet Leopardi who said that the smallest confused idea was superior to the most lucid grand idea. Not to say that we should aim to create confusion, but good programs, to my mind, are an invitation into a field of associations, where the conclusion may not be entirely clear. The open adventure of thought, not the delivery of predetermined conclusions.

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