23 January 2007

Change of Format



I knew something was wrong when I headed for bed last night, though I have known something was off for weeks. I wrote it off to everything else that was going on. The pretty music on the radio was ominous. It should have been the voices that murmur to themselves all day, back there in the bedroom.

Normally, the first bad news of the day from the Middle East is coming in as I turn off the radio at night. It was one of the bloodiest weekends out there, so bad that I had to retreat to another war to get away from it. The bad guys are now masquerading as Americans, and suicide attacks are increasing in the smaller war in Afghanistan that we should have secured when we had the chance.

The President is going to have his first State of the Union speech tonight with his party in the minority. There has been considerable discussion over whether he is capable of changing the policy about the war, the format of it, if you will.

I stood on the red rug next to the bed. The hairs on my neck stood up. There should have been some plum-toned BBC announcer talking about the Football Association standings, or a retrospective on great moments in Cricket.

It was not happening. There was music, sweet notes of whimsy. I turned off the light, steeling myself for panic and confusion in the morning.

My eyes popped open just after three. They say you sleep less as you get older, but when I am sleek and content, I have no problem in dozing until London calls me at five, sharp.

I am anything but that at the moment.The new job started last week at a mighty and implacable corporation with which you are acquainted. I joined on a lark, impressed with the offer package, but was growing queasy about my choice. The first day after orientation, the Monday of real beginning, began as I tried to position a Japanese Battleship over the fifth atomic blast in the world.

One last little chapter and the story would be complete, the context for one man's death against the great forces that swept so many along to their doom.

What is the nature of this compulsion? Is it the equivalent of riding on the handle of a digital bicycle, electronically shouting, “Look at me! No Hands!”

Maybe no brains would be better. I succeeded, barely, in completing a long rambling chapter story about eels and radioactive coral. It was not one of my better efforts, but that is all there was time to do.

It had been a good story, and worth telling. But as it slipped off into the ether, I knew that there had not been enough time to mold it and make it real. Then the phone chirped and there was business to attend to, and then more business. I looked out at what was left of the first snow. The way forward is not at all what I thought.

I spent the rest of the day filling out electronic forms, gray as the melting snow on the parking lot below the windows of the unit in Big Pink.

Gray. Wet. Empty.

I realized, flipping between screens on the three computers on the desk, that all this does not all fit in one sock. Not even close.

I arrived at the end of the day precisely as the sky turned from gray to black, the nadir of the year, halfway through the winter.

I read a book and turned something frozen into something mushy and hot in the microwave.

To cap it all, it appears that the radio has changed format, again, and now pretty music plays in the background, twenty four-seven. I guess management has decided that people want to hear less about the madness overseas, not more.

I lay quietly in the darkness waiting for the alarm, which is set precisely to beep with the words “It's ten o'clock in London, and five on America's East Coast.”

The words did not come. Only pretty music.

The soft soothing music made me jump up in alarm. I rushed first to the kitchen to turn on the coffee, and then raced to the spare bedroom where I have established my office.

I turned on one of the computers and called up the BBC's IP address. The World Update show was still there, constant as the northern star.

I can certainly understand why the radio has changed their programming. Classical music needs a home in the capital. But perhaps they are saying something more profound. I drank coffee and considered the options.

I think I will call a meeting this morning, inviting all those who work in my home office, and consider changing formats.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com


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