Personal essays
Launching a Podcast
Old news
I worked at a fancy restaurant with a chef, a sous chef, and a couple of cooks that I really respected and learned a lot from.
The house specialty was risotto and they always had chianti risotto on the menu (although it was made with Syrah as the color was a more dramatic deep purple) and then had a risotto of the day with whatever the chef or sous chef felt would be best.
We also made a soup of the day but we held it back a day before serving it. You know how much better a soup is after it’s had a day to develop. It was listed on the menu as the “Soup of Yesterday” so that the customers knew it had had this time.
I started this newsletter three years ago this Friday.
Two years ago, as I approached the first anniversary I thought of launching a podcast where I’d read the essay from a year earlier.
The anniversary came and went and I didn’t do anything about it.
There’s nothing special about a year - I could have launched the podcast any time. But I didn’t.
And then the second anniversary approached and I thought about the project again.
And again, I did nothing.
Just do it
This year I decided that at least I’d give it a try and record something. So Saturday morning I took out the first essay I wrote for this newsletter, made some notes on commentary I should add for the audio version, and headed up to my studio to record.
It took six minutes to record a two minute script - man am I rusty.
It took me an hour to process it and edit it - I’m out of practice with that too.
I experimented with using two voices. It’s a technique I’ve used before based on Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz - if only I had his pipes and his poetry.
I take one of the voices and treat it as if it’s the other end of a phone call - in those days when voices over the phone sounded tinny.
Once I heard it taking the shape I thought I should soften the second voice with some scoring so I put together some loops in Garage Band and placed the music underneath the voices.
Good enough to share with friends.
And so I sent the demo out to some friends and family for their comment.
They were receptive enough that I’m going to launch the podcast on Friday on the third anniversary of this newsletter.
Will I stay with it? We’ll see.
Not my first rodeo
I showed my sister the artwork for the podcast and she made a suggestion. I addressed her concern and she texted “So exciting.”
Actually, she didn’t use a period. She used more exclamation marks than I’m comfortable with.
I don’t feel excited so much as that I’m trying something. I also launched a new type of video on my YouTube channel. It’s that kind of week.
I did a podcast for a while with my friend Jaimee and did a very early podcast when I worked at O’Reilly.
I named the O’Reilly podcast “Distributing the Future” after the Neal Stephenson quote that Tim O’Reilly often repeated in his conference addresses, “The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed.”
A quick look at the conferences, web sites, books, and other O’Reilly projects convinced me that that’s the business O’Reilly was in: Distributing the Future.
I loved the project. I mostly edited myself out of the conversations and I was learning as I went but I think it could have become something.
In the years since, I’ve produced internal and public podcasts for companies and events, but it’s been a while and I miss working with audio.
This podcast is called “Keep Two Thoughts”.
You may now know that this newsletter is also called “Keep Two Thoughts” after something I said during my eulogy for Kim nearly seven years ago. It’s the idea of living as if today is the last day of our life and living as if it isn’t.
First shows
I don’t know that I’m excited about this project so much as nervous.
I’m always a little nervous before I go on the air in a new situation.
The first professional radio station I worked at was WERI in Westerly Rhode Island. After being hired by the program director Steve Feldman, I was trained by the music director Ulysses Gallman.
We had a complicated system where we chose our own music based on rules that included the tempo of the song, the genre, the release date, and when it had been played last on the station.
I drove down from Boston in time for my first overnight shift.
After I passed through Providence on my way south on I-95 I picked up the station and listened.
Because the jocks picked their own music, most of us listened to the station whenever we could.
Linda was on the air and she sounded good.
She came out of a record and did a call back of the songs in the set she’d played. She talked about an upcoming event, teased the next set of music, and gave the weather.
She went to her first commercial and played the wrong one.
No one would have known except that she still had the mic open and said, “Oh, Sh**.”
This moment might have passed except that she heard herself swear on the air and with the mic still open said, “Oh, F***.”
I’ve got to tell you, it did a lot to relax me and I had a pretty good first show.
Now I’m mostly nervous about what you’ll think. The show is my audio soup of yesterday.
Bon appetit.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 157. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe