A Presence Conjured From Thin Air: Transmission 278, 2016 May 14

Another successful journey to the "Exterior Realms" (at least I think so) gives me the opportunity to go "off-topic" and give you a more general update. I promised last time that I would share another story from the Senior Catharses' visit as well. Fortunately we can put our hands together in this case.

Grandpa Catharsis asked me why I hadn't done any interviews latey, pointing out that the Hall of Legends specials were one of his favorite things about this program. That's nice! (In my tradition of turning every compliment into a negative, I started wondering what might be wrong with regular, non-interview programs like this one.) It just so happened that we drove down to DJ Segundo's crib for a short visit and HE asked me the same thing, so clearly we are facing a wavelength with room for more than one person.

Very well--let's talk about the Hall of Legends and why it has been dormant. Turns out there is no legitimate reason except What Is Going On With Me, so I'll discuss that. [REMEMBER: this is my diary, so GTFO if you are not entertained.]

Sometime around the HOL interview with the great Breathless I experienced a personal trauma that was as serious as it was ridiculous. In a way I couldn't actually believe it was happening, in real-time, and didn't read much significance in my immediate response to it. Surveying the damage in retrospect, I stopped going to the gym (which for me substitutes for depression meds), gained weight, increased my alcohol consumption, and generally became very angry.

"But Breathless was not the most recent Hall of Legends special," I hear you saying. (I do not actually hear this, except in an imagined conversation with the Platonic Ideal of a Regular Listener.) It's true. Three months later we spoke to the legendary Vini Reilly, but I literally can't tell you how long that was in the planning, and it just kind of happened one day. A little over a month after that, we did the Heidi Berry interview. But that was "in the pipeline" when the Breathless thing was happening, because the legendary Ari was prescient enough, and kind enough, to ask if I'd like to be placed in contact with the legendary Heidi and I wasn't a big enough idiot to say "no." So because I am a PROFESSIONAL (albeit an unskilled and unpaid one) I held it together long enough to see that through. And then we stopped.

MEANWHILE I was supplementing my permanent half-time sinecure with temporary half-time sinecures that filled me with despair. I continued to do the job of Program Director at WRFI all by myself although there were nominally two of us; there were negative aspects of that which were practical, personal, and racial, none of which helped with my demeanor or general outlook. When I "quit" that position last June I somehow found ways to become more angry, more bitter, and more destructive. I KNOW: I am special this way.

Amazingly, last (summer? fall?) I did get up the nerve to contact a Legend In Waiting, and we had a promising dialogue in some etherspace or other. Something was going to happen, and then it fell through, because I have become a flake. I also received an assurance from one already-Legend that something could be arranged with yet another Legend In Waiting, but this never happened because the person in question never uses the internet. At least that is why I'm telling myself it never happened. I am capable of protecting myself sometimes.

Thus, out the window flew one possible way of spending my newfound free time as a non-management type at the radio station. Other possible hobbies went unexplored as well. I was, as I concluded, using alcohol at night to self-medicate. It is very good at killing feelings! How anxiously I looked forward each day to the murder of my feelings.

In October I came around to thinking that maybe this was a bad idea, that this daily homicide wasn't taking me anywhere good, so with Lady Catharsis's help I stopped altogether. But the Feelings, which I had decided I needed to feel, were so awful, and the lack of medication so excruciating, that I filled the void not with productivity but with food. Because of course I can't just suffer from depression and PTSD and anxiety. THAT is boring. I must also have Binge Eating Disorder and Body Dysmorphia in my life to keep things interesting.

(It's funny to think that, all the while, I've been doing this ridiculous little program on the reg, cracking up at my mistakes like nothing relevant is actually happening around it or me. But this has saved, and is saving, my life, as LC tells me, so there's that.)

I started having suicidal "ideation" --if you know how that might differ from "thoughts," please explain it to me--in November of last year, and I was able to keep them at bay only by telling myself "you wouldn't just kill some random kid's dad, or some random woman's husband, so how can you do anything to Catharsis Junior's dad, or Lady Catharsis's husband?" Meaning that I had to get outside my own self to see me as something worth preserving, in the abstract. I figured that maybe the time had come for me to talk to somebody, so I did.

Things are not miraculously better--it has taken work--but some healing is taking place. I can "containerize" the feelings and set standards and boundaries for myself--these are novelties! My work situation has improved in ways that it could not have done for 2015 me. So, yeah.

Anyway, were I a Legend I would not have wanted to talk to this community radio jackass in a bad mindframe (there's something to add to the ol' email signature) for any amount of time, much less for the amount of time I demand from people, MUCH MUCH LESS the TWO times poor Andrew Gray was subjected to the experience.

So that's why the Hall of Legends hasn't had anything happen in seventeen months. But things are revving up again. I have to convince that one Legend that I am not actually a flake. Maybe I will send them a link to this. I have a feeling they might understand.

I sincerely hope that if you need to talk to someone, you find a person. Or that if you need something like an amateur radio hour to keep you tethered to this world, you find an outlet. Maybe we can be that outlet. It's working for me.

Thanks for listening.

BOMBAST playlist, 2016 May 14, 2100-2300:

1. "Jah I" | Lee "Scratch" Perry & The Upsetters | Mr. Perry I Presume | Pressure Sounds
   
2. "Blackhole" | Deviant Amps | A Warmer Welcome | digitalDIZZY
3. "What a World!" | Parade of Sinners | Domestic Landscape, Vol. 2: Underrated Synth Classics 1982-1990 | Domestica
4. "Bubble" | Stabat Stable | Ultrissima on the Junk's Moon | Cache Cache
5. "Angora - Fairmont Remix" | Ricardo Tobar | Ricardo Tobar - Collection Remixes Pt. 1 | Cocoon
6. "R-Type" | Anna Meredith | Varmints | Moshi Moshi
7. "She Wore Lilacs in Her Hair" | Magic Castles | Starflower | A Recordings
8. "Head Body" | Not Waving | Animals | Diagonal
9. "Shanpan" | Roger West | En Asie | In Paradisum
10. "The Wheel" | PJ Harvey | The Wheel | Island
11. "Sequencer Roll" | Baumann / Koek | Baumann / Koek | Bureau B
12. "I Had A Dream (instrumental)" | 5 Revolutions | Can't You Hear Me? | Now-Again
13. "Macka Talk" | Mabrak | Drum Talk | Dug Out
14. "Foxtits Funkdrive" | Zach Christ | Sonic Doucheclap | Husoptageiser
15. "Aokigahara (feat. Tobi)" | Asian Psilocybe Foundation | Water Vein EP | Mental Groove
16. "Galacticon" | Ummagma | Frequency | Moon Sounds
17. "break glass actions" | Cavern of Anti-Matter | void beats / invocation trex | Duophonic
18. "Powers of Ten - Marco Plex & Shall Ocin Remix" | Stephan Bodzin | Powers of Ten (remixes) | Herzblut
19. "Comin' Home Baby" | Booker T. & The M.G.'s | Green Onions | Rumble
20. "The Shag" | Trouble & Strife | The Delaware Road | Buried Treasure
21. "Thousands Below" | 12z | Trembling Air | Other People
22. "Always" | Flying Saucer Attack | Chorus [reissue] | Drag City
23. "The Sombre" | Shallow Sanction | Without Light | Alter
24. "Numbered" | Wire | Nocturnal Koreans | Pinkflag
25. "Earth (Gaia)" | The Orb | The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld [reissue] | WAU! Mr. Modo - Island
26. "Bestandteil" | Irmler | Bestandteil | Klangbad
27. "Favourite Descending Intervals" | The Durutti Column | Amigos Em Portugal | Durutti
    

For you I steal, for you I kill

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