Tag Archives: radio

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Spring achieved, and a ‘writing’ update

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Photo credit: Matt Botsford. Unsplash license.

Before I get to my tale of angst, I feel I ought to note that today was beautiful in terms of weather. Nearly 70 degrees. It was the first day of the year I slid the screens down in a couple windows and opened them for fresh air. I always feel an easing of the soul when this happens. The dark time is ended. We’ve made it through alive.

I have another ‘writing’ update – and the collective holds its collective breath. (No breath for you! Your social credit score has fallen below permissible levels!)

As I’ve told you before, I’ve been plugging along, trying to learn Audacity, the free recording software that most aspiring book narrators seem to start with. Audacity is quite sophisticated, really, which is part of what scares me.

Thinking back to radio school (Brown Institute, Minneapolis, 1980), I enjoyed a peculiar place in my class. Aside from being one of the oldest students, I was generally considered (or so I remember it) the best copy reader and the worst engineer. A popular, oft-repeated story told of how I panicked in the control room one day, reached desperately for some dial or other, and went over backward in my chair (it had casters), so that I presented the spectacle, through the control booth window, of my feet waving in the air.

This story was completely true.

The disconnect I seem to have with my hands – sort of like a seven-second delay – has always prevented me from handling any mechanical device with confidence, from a can opener to an automobile. Also, I seem to lack the common male aptitude for spatial visualization. So I’m clumsy with any kind of equipment. Typing is a repetitive and minimalistic task, so I can handle that. I’m not much good for anything more demanding.

But today, my drilling with Audacity – just recording and playing and editing a little, throwing my work away at the end of each session – seems to have begun to bear fruit. I’m feeling a little more confident with it. Not a master, but not a stranger in town anymore. That’s gratifying.

One of my major regrets in my life comes from those radio school days. One of my instructors, a professional broadcaster who taught as a side gig, offered to help me get into voiceover work. He considered me talented enough to make it in that business. I was flattered, and made a preliminary demo reel, just for his critique.

He critiqued it. Suggested some improvements.

I was embarrassed that it wasn’t perfect, and I gave up.

This was stupid. I had a chance to get into a field where I could have prospered. But that never-silenced Voice In My Head argued me out of trying any more. My whole life could have been different if I’d accepted the criticism, made improvements, and kept at it until I made the thing work.

The Voice In My Head, I realized recently, doesn’t really hate me. It’s just terrified of failure. It’s trying to protect me from getting hurt. It fails proactively, because it’s less painful to just surrender at the start, rather than trying and falling on my face.

This book narration thing, it seems to me, is a second chance. This time I’m going to try. This time I’m going to take the risk.

Honestly, what do I have to lose?

Religion, Uncategorized

Swimming in linguistic waters

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Nothing to review, and I’ve done little but work in the last few days (no, that’s not true. I loafed yesterday. It was Sunday). So I’m journaling today, I guess. Yet again.

It was warm today, in the upper 30s. Tomorrow will be even better, and I don’t see a freezing day on the horizon. I approve of this development. I shall tip the waiter generously.

I complained, the other day, about my inability to understand spoken Norwegian, the language I translate professionally in text form. One of our readers, Deborah HH, suggested I listen to Norwegian radio. I thought this an excellent suggestion, and installed a Norwegian radio app on my cell phone.

My strategy (or wishful thinking) is to attack the problem subconsciously. I will just have the radio on, listening idly as I do other things. No sustained effort to understand what I’m hearing. My working theory is that that effort is a part of the problem. I know all these words. I just don’t process them when they come in through the audible gate. When I consciously try to interpret, I get hung up on individual words and lose the flow. What I need is an involuntary response. I’m hoping that as I listen over time, my subconscious will jump the gap and connect to my dictionary storage unit. Something like “total immersion” learning.

It took some searching to find the channels I wanted. Most Norwegian radio is indistinguishable from American radio, except for the announcements. They play music, and it’s mostly American music. I wanted talk, and in the Old Country language. There’s an NRK (Norwegian National Broadcasting) channel that’s all news, and that’s just the thing, as far as it goes. But around 2:00 pm (our time) they switch to BBC News, which is no use at all (in more than one sense).

But I finally found a channel to listen to after that. It’s Jæren Misjonsradio (Jæren Mission Radio). If the name Jæren seems familiar, its old name is Jaeder, and it’s the region where Erling Skjalgsson lived in his time (around Stavanger). A region with a great evangelical tradition, of which my ancestors were a part.

They feature preaching in Norwegian, which is good. I recognize the Bible passages, and that helps me along. And the music they play is mostly in Norwegian too – and some of it’s quite excellent.

Today I heard one preacher – a good one – and happened to notice his name on the crawl. Carl Fredrik Wisløff. This was thrilling. Wisløff was a prominent evangelical preacher, teacher, and writer in Norway up to his death in 2004. I used to sell some of his books in the bookstore at the seminary – we had a large stock of one of them. He even visited our schools once, I’m told, but that was before my time.

Now, back to work.

Uncategorized

Taking care of business

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Weird week. Good, but weird. I am a dull man leading a dull life, but occasionally things pick up. They’re up right now.

Saturday I’ll be doing the first actual Viking event I’ve done in over a year – not strictly a Viking event, but a military history timeline thing at Dundas, Minnesota: Minnesota Military History Days. I’ll only be there Saturday. But it’s an event, and I’ll be setting up the tent, so I’m feeling the “tension.” (“Tent,” “tension,” get it? They actually do come from the same root.) Sunday is another event, but that’s not open to the public, so I won’t tease you with it.

(I probably won’t be posting anything Friday, because it takes me at least a day to do anything.)

And then translation work showed up. Fairly big project, fairly tight deadline. On top of that, it’s got a subject that really appeals to me (can’t tell you what). So I’m busy with that right now (should be working on it this minute, in fact).

And I got an invitation to be interviewed on a talk show a good friend does on a station in Des Moines (Truth 99.3). I can’t find a way to link to the recorded interview yet, except through Facebook. I’ll let you know if I find it (or, more likely, if somebody points it out to me, as one directs an elderly tourist to local points of interest).

Last night, I got a toothache. Went in to the dentist today on an emergency basis. He looked inside my maw and found nothing. He asked, “Have you been tense lately?”

I hadn’t thought I had, but maybe I have.

Bookselling

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This Saturday at 2:00 p.m. I’ll be on the Northern Alliance Radio program, with Mitch Berg, on AM 1280 the Patriot (Twin Cities), at 2:00 p.m.
I’ll be talking about Viking Legacy.