Everyone has secrets. Some construction workers lock themselves in a room with no windows or doors on the weekends and write romantic poetry while listening to opera. There are body builders out there who prefer to spend their alone time wearing a leotard and dancing to the soundtrack of Grease in their living room by the light of the fireplace. For Toph, it was the radio station. On Wednesday nights at around ten o’clock he would sneak out of his dorm; shortly after the nightly pot smoking walk ended and just before the discussion about political conspiracy theories and religious propaganda in Hollywood started. Every week he had a different excuse: seeing a girl across campus, going out for late night food with an old friend he hadn’t seen lately, etc. The whole experience was exilerhating to him, partly because he was terrified of his friends and roommates finding out what he was really doing. Luckily, none of them even were aware the college had a radio station, so his secret was safe.
The ornate building that was the Wakehurst Student Center stood in a beautiful grove of trees set back from the heart of campus. Although it was a hub for activity during the day, by ten o’clock at night it was always deserted. This added to the thrill of Toph’s escapades down the old, wide wooden staircase and into the basement of the Newport mansion turned college building, his heart racing as he readied to broadcast his thoughts and feelings in the form of other people’s music over the digital airwaves of this New Frontier.
The inside of the radio station broadcast room was the best place Toph had ever been in his life. Top of the line audio equipment was everywhere, from speakers to mixers to Macintosh computers with libraries of over 60,000 songs. They even had those badass headphones that were made for planes and canceled out all other noises. The best part was the fact that down here, you could play whatever the hell you wanted however loud you wanted, and no one could complain or judge you. The building was virtually empty, the studio was basically soundproof and if anyone caught you playing Cyndi Lauper or a bad KISS record, you could blame it on the request line.
The radio shows Toph ran for two hours consisted of very little talking. He preferred to play long, unorthodox tracks that regular radio simply wouldn’t ever imagine putting on the air; stuff like B-sides off of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album.
On one particular Wednesday night he decided to start off his show with the Bob Dylan epic “Desolation Row”, only to lead directly into “Spirit of the Radio” by Rush, his favorite song to hear on the $600 speakers he was surrounded by. The absurd transition from Dylan’s soft acoustic to Rush’s hard progressive rock made the power of the song that much better. That night he had logged four listeners so far, most of which were probably other DJ’s from the station who tuned in just to hear what everyone else liked to play during their show. There was a late night hip-hop show put on by a kid from Chicago, a smooth jazz show that played Monday nights and most lunch hours, and the Party Boy Power Hour, the most popular show at the station. That particular show ran Thursday nights at eight, and played whatever was on the charts that week. As unfortunate as their taste in music was, the DJ’s were pretty cool guys and usually logged into Toph’s show to see what he would throw on the air.
All the music DJ’s felt a kind of brotherhood; the feeling of being able to control what was being sent out on the airwaves was an addictive one that could only be understood by those who were as passionate about their music as these students were. The talk radio DJ’s had their own uniting force: the love of their own voice. There was no doubt the Political Talk Show host and the host of Dorm Drama had much in common. The only person from the station who didn’t fall into either camp was the station director, Matt. He was a portly kid with a thick brown beard and short messy hair. His messenger bag and navy blue Chuck Taylor’s were like staples of his personality, and might have even had more personality than he had himself, or at least let on to others. Undoubtedly Matt stood for everything the other DJ’s hated: station regulations, cheesy station identification breaks, and hipster indie music that every god damn college radio station was playing constantly. God Speed You! Black Emperor and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club seemed to magically appear on other DJ’s playlists, and Elliot Smith was always playing when Toph walked into the studio on Wednesday night, even though Matt supposedly put the station on shuffle after his five o’clock show.
Needless to say, when Matt showed up to Toph’s show as “Spirit of the Radio” faded into “Breathe” (the Easy Star All Star version, off of Dub Side of the Moon of course) and waltzed into the studio, dropping his messenger bag at his feet, Toph was none too pleased. Sometimes he simply liked to show up during other people’s shows, which was most likely for lack of anything better to do rather than out of interest in the station itself. This forced someone to interact with him not only socially but in an environment that involved music. This was almost like shooting fish in a barrel, but far crueller. This was like putting innocent fish with good taste in a small bowl and playing Damien Rice records for hours on end out of audio equipment meant to blare Zeppelin or The Stones. Toph was done for.
“Hey buddy,” sang Matt as he hunkered down into the second DJ chair that looked so much better to Toph when it was vacant. “What’s on your playlist for tonight? Anything I’ll like?” All Toph could do was sigh on the inside and think to himself that the next two hours were no longer going to be the most relaxing of his week as Matt rifled through the playlist Toph had prepared earlier that day in Psychology class.
An hour later, they were listening to Radiohead’s “Palo Alto”, one of their newly discovered mutual likes, while enjoying a flask of scotch together. They hadn’t stopped laughing or raving about teriffic albums for at least forty minutes, leaving the microphones off and letting the tracks play right into each other. “I still just can’t say that they’ve made a better album than The Bends,” confessed Toph, “I know OK Computer is great, and it’s certainly genius, but I don’t think it’s better music. Better rock music.” Matt responded with his favorite retort: “Bullshit! OK Computer is a rock album! Airbag! Electioneering! Lucky! Great fuckin’ rock tracks!” “I don’t know,” Toph replied, “it just isn’t as raw and true as The Bends for me. Want to smoke another joint?” “Jesus Christ,” Matt said, “I thought you’d never ask.”
As they continued their downward spiral towards utter insanity they put on The Strokes’ “Barely Legal” and sat back, letting the studio fill with smoke while they listened to the raw garage sounding rock. “Do you ever feel like they’re out to get you?” Matt asked casually, out of the blue.
“All the time,” Toph replied with certainty. “Wait, who do you mean?”
“Everyone who tells you what’s right and what you’re supposed to do,” Matt answered. “They just tell you what they were told when they were your age by the people that they despised and rebelled against, don’t they? They don’t have any original advice, and they know how much the advice they were given fucked up their own lives, but they still regurgitate it. They’re trying to kill us, and pretty consciously.”
“Well ya, I guess, but I think they at least sincerely believe it all now…you know, all the bullshit. I don’t really think they’re trying to crush my spirit or ruin my youth, most of the time at least. I just think they were told all that shit enough to finally actually buy into it.” Toph paused and thought about it for a minute, “I think it would kill them to realize that they’re doing to us what all the parents, professors and jackasses did to them when they were young.”
“I think they just hate me,” Matt said. Toph remembered how he felt about Matt when he wasn’t stoned with him in the radio station. In Matt’s case, maybe they did just hate him.
“Someday we might be like them,” Toph said. Matt turned red with anger, looking as if he couldn’t be more offended ever in his life. “Bullshit!” Matt replied, as usual. Toph thought this struck such a chord with Matt because, in truth, he had already begun to buy into the idea of authority and blend into the vast canvas of those who ran other people’s lives. His job as the station manager proved that, and he probably realized that. The thought clearly terrified him…he was becoming a part of the very organization that he claimed was trying to kill him. To him, accepting the life they had pushed him towards was death, and he was well on the way to the grave if that was indeed the case.
After shifting the topic of conversation to baseball, something Matt surprisingly knew a decent amount about, the two traded a few more song choices. It was The Shins and City and Colour that set the backdrop of the conversation about the lack of quality catchers and second basemen in the league these days. Morose songs by sad bands that acted as a casual reminder of the conclusion of their previous conversation: Everyone dies, but most people die twice. Once in spirit, somewhere between the age of 15 and 50, and once in body, a true death that is probably far more painless to the one it actually occurs to.
Once the reel had run out on “California One” by The Decemberists, Matt grumbled his way to his feet and thanked Toph for his company in the studio. Without commenting on how the show had gone, he grabbed his messenger bag and sauntered off, reminding Toph to lock up the studio before he left: A clear sign of the terminal illness of the spirit that Matt was suffering from yet denied so vigorously.
Toph sighed, scrolled up for a few seconds and decided on a Dave Matthews cover of “All Along the Watchtower” to close out the night. The radio station that usually calmed him down so well had filled his head with unsettling thoughts that night; thoughts embraced far too readily by his paranoid mind. He would be back next Wednesday, and would play a very unique radio show that featured Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and The Flaming Lips “Fight Test”. That particular playlist might have been the most open to interpretation as any he would ever make, even to himself.
