Tonight We Fly

I was fortunate enough to be at a taping of "West Coast Live" several years ago when they visited Ashland, OR. My hand shot up like a kid in class who finally knew an answer when host Sedge Thomson asked for audience volunteers to come onstage and play the Biospherical Digital-Optical Aquaphone, a special effect that opens each and every show. My task was to operate a secret device that evokes the sound of water. I was sworn to secrecy, so all I can say is it took both hands to work this instrument.

It has been said radio shows like WCL, A Prairie Home Companion and The Vinyl Cafe are, in some ways, relics of better times, invoking images of front porches, warm evenings, kids on bicycles, parades, flags flying, visiting with relatives after church, hanging out at the drugstore.

If that is truly the case, then tonight we get a front row seat for a look at the past. The Vinyl Cafe is on tour and is stopping in Bellingham at the Western Washington University Performing Arts Centre tonight (Saturday, October 16th, 2010). Canada's answer to Garrison Keillor, Stuart McLean is a beloved storyteller. I am one of the 1 million listeners who tune in weekly for whatever awaits us: eclectic music, The Story Exchange, the trials and tribulations of Dave (the owner of the world’s smallest record store…where the motto is “We May Not be Big But We are Small”), his wife Morley and his children Stephanie and Sam.

The familiar voice of the narrator flows effortlessly as the story is told, with pauses and inflections we have come to expect and love. As the audience, we sit by, thoroughly involved in the telling. In the best radio tradition, a listener's imagination fills in all the blanks. Prose and masterful narration help us develop those spaces in between. And I get to see it happen live. I am one lucky person.