I claimed that I wasn’t a podcast person, but I was wrong. As it turns out, I enjoy listening! This is a well-timed discovery because I just acquired a commute.
Most recently, I played an episode of Neighbors while walking the dog. Neighbors is about connecting “ordinary” people — of course, the hidden point is that each of us is quite special. (Trite but true.) The episode “Purpose” is part of Neighbors’ series of interviews with homeless people, called “Sans Houses”, which producer Tasha Lemley has been conducting since 2006. I was particularly struck by Cowboy, who recited this poem:
“The old man used to speak
of the portraits he’d seek,
now he lives in a room
where they pay by the week.His saddle’s all tattered;
his pony’s gone lame;
his bones always ache
when the sky feels like rain.I know his last mountain’s two flights of stairs
and his saddle’s turned into an old rocking chair.”
These words are lyrics drawn from Chris Ledoux’s “There’s Nobody Home On The Range Anymore” (Songbook of the American West, 1991).
After reciting the last couplet, Cowboy said, “I don’t wanna be like that, you know? I don’t wanna lay up in that room and die layin’ up in the bed. You know, I wanna go out in a gunfight or something.” A little later he explains, “I’ve always been active, in whatever I did. If it was wrong or right, I was active doin’ it, let me tell you what!”
I love that line. “If it was wrong or right, I was active doin’ it, let me tell you what!”
Let me tell you what: I’ve only listened to one episode of Neighbors so far, but I deem it worth my aural attention.
I also loved the “Drivers Wanted” episode of Anxious Machine — it made me want to see Mad Max: Fury Road a third time, except that might make my heart explode.
