single malt scotch

It's amazing how much your life can change in a couple of weeks. This time last week I was in a state of mild anxiety because I was about to be going live the following morning at 6am - gazing at a board of lights with hundreds of dials, buttons, keys, and faders and a wall of computer screens. Like the first monkey to space staring at the cockpit array during the pre-launch countdown.

A week before that I was looking at my entire life packed into a suitcase, guitar case, and duffle-bag on the floor of my dad's place in Ottawa.

This past week has been a 5 to 5 marathon of learning the systems: How to load commercials, how to load the news, PSAs and spots, how to record a conversation, how to voice-track, how to change the face of the day-to-day programming, learning entire software and hardware from scratch, battling the edginess of a moody mixing board, learning how to use an FTP window, how to log the day, how to set the system up for the next day, and a myriad of other technical ding-bats, whatsits, and blubbersnaps. Yeah I know you stopped reading. I don't blame you. I did too.

...And that was just behind the scenes. On top of that I was getting used to proper on-air levels for my voice, where the mic should go in relation to my face, that certain buttons will broadcast the wrong things on air, that the weather needs to be shorter, that my voice needs to be longer, that I need to sound more enthusiastic about Mission Distract, Rod Stewart, and Hedley.

Then there's the interviews: I've recorded interviews at an average of about two a day with everybody from the United Way, to theatre organizers, to cops and hockey coaches, to people who've made calendars that they think are amazing enough to be talked about on-air. I am the major source for news clips that are sent to Courtenay where the news guys, namely Derek Bouchard, turns them into something newsworthy.

All this while dealing with the usual crap associated with living in the digital age; email crashes, program glitches, and generally stuff that you never saw Chris Stevens deal with on Northern Exposure.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that I was alone out here?

When I agreed to the job at the end of August I was told that that it would be me and two others - that I was meant to show up and “show some initiative” and “take charge”. When I arrived to the Courtenay station on the 8th, to “learn” software from people that have a hard time elucidating, I was told the station in Powell River was down to one person – Bobby Fields. More about her in a second.

When I arrived, via ferry, to Powell River with Derek Bouchard, my guide, there was no one here. Bobby Fields had been laid off.

Derek is a good soul, he drove me all over the place so I could get a bead on Powell River. The trip was a blur as I fought exhaustion and could only muster up, “Yeah, it's stunning”, or “Wow, it's gorgeous”, or, “Hey, that's awe inspiring” without the conviction of being in -as people keep telling me- “God's country”.

God is definitely here in terms of the imaginations of the kinds of people who host a Creative Arts event in honour of it being “Creation Month”. An event that I cringeingly had to promote on air.

I counted several fundamentalist churches here including the Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventists, and a huge amphitheater with the unmistakable look of an evangelist's hollering block.

Yes it's beautiful here. It's the kind of place that the Alien and Predator do battle, and the whole town gets nuked at the end. It's the kind of place where Jack Nicholson is a “dull boy” and later shows up to seduce three middle-aged women. It's the kind of place where angsty scowling teens screw each other, and others die in horrible drunken collisions. It's a tiny San Francisco without the homosexuals and nightlife. It's the set for any chain-saw wielding horror flick. It's pick-up trucks and Indian reservations, farmers markets and opulent sea-side houses, massive trees and a crumbling airport, two stoplights and a much ballyhooed junior hockey team.

There is a lot of nature here. There is a dying lumber mill, yet the town still keeps it's head significantly above the water line. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of this.

And once again I am the incongruous 'other' who looks entirely out of place and draws looks from the population which averages about 50-years-old. People here are white. I saw one lady at the Telus counter who might have been East Indian but perpetrated a homey small-town Canadian drawl. I did see one brother speed by in an SUV with his head ducked behind the steering wheel as he made his way to the wild nothingness North of town. I thought, “That can't be right.”

Embarrassingly, in a town filled with trucks jacked-up on tires so large they could crush a house, i'm driving a white Toyota Matrix with a baby-blue and orange Sun FM logo blasted on it's sides, hood, and bumper. A car that can only be described as “gay looking”.

This draws looks. Even more when a tall, bald, dark person emerges.

A couple of days ago a gas station attendant saw me coming and was scrambling to find the Sun FM signal on the radio when I walked into his store. He apologized for not being able to find it. I said, “I'll tell you what, in the studio where I work I can't tune in the station either. I have to stream it online.”

He said, “That's Powell River for ya.”

People are not used to change here. And it doesn't help that Sun-FM has a revolving door. I can't count the number of times somebody asked me, “Where's Bobby?”. Indeed, where is Bobby? Well, she's often at the studio moping depressively, or twisted on caffeine, picking up her mail and talking endlessly as I try to get work done. I don't have the heart to kick her out. I did, after all, unwittingly end up with her job. I don't know the exact circumstances of her firing, so I exist under the threat of suddenly being canned for doing, or not doing, something she did or didn't do.

I've found a one-bedroom apartment to live in. It's filled with the following furniture:

A bed

I've had to pace myself in terms of expenditures towards housey type items. I have three forks, three spoons, and three butter knives. I've got a cutting board. I have my computer and an internet connection (thank the cavalry). I have my clothes and my guitar. I have a mobile telephone.

Okay, this all may sound grim. But let me put it into perspective:

This is a dream job for someone right out of college. It happened faster than the average grad will achieve. I've skipped over all the usual garbage surrounding trying to break into The Industry including mindlessly pushing buttons and dancing like a doof near banners and other branding silliness. I have a lot of lateral leeway in terms of where I want to take the station and what the output is outside of advertising (awful, awful, evil advertising).

I'm learning everything about the day-to-day operating of a radio station.

I'm working with (remotely of course, everybody I answer to is across a massive body of water in an entirely different station) really nice patient people.

The music is not country.

The landscape is not prairies.

I'm on the ocean, which has always been where I hoped to be. I know I'm near the ocean because I've tasted the water. It was salty.

Finally. I've been lonely before. I have my parents to thank for making me an only-child and equipping me with the right shoes to stride right through it.