Dear Mr. Deprado,

You told us that the radio was a far more effective tool than television because it allowed us to collaborate with the performance; we could use our imagination as we listened. You told us about how in October of 1938, a low, broad voice hummed through the airwaves that an alien spacecraft had landed in a rural cornfield. Pretty soon mass hysteria broke across the Eastern Seaboard as a nation panicked at the invasion from Mars because the small box in our living rooms proclaimed it to be true. It didn’t end there. 10 years later, hundreds of Ecuadorians ran to the mountains outside Quito after a local radio station also broadcasted H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. This mystifies me. Are our imaginations so utterly powerful that when combined with a strong or sultry voice, the probabilities, the possibilities of our world actually change shape?

I have become addicted to a small voice leaking into an empty room. I need musical accompaniment in my everyday toils. I need the volume turned up when I am in the shower, and I need it turned low as I fall asleep, but I am learning that there is always a breaking point, an impulsive moon that changes my tide. Here is one such episode for your amusement.

As it turns out, I like the mornings. I always sort of thought that if you could live your life sleeping in, then everything would be wonderful, but the truth is, the energy is all in the morning, and as I get older, I don’t dare miss my opportunity for any kind of energy or motivation. So each day, I get up, I look around my small apartment, imagine that the carpet is really much cleaner than it actually is, and move across it in clumsy steps to where the cereal is, and if I am lucky, there is milk there. It’s just about then that I reach for the radio. Today, the alarm is especially loud, and my eyes unfasten to one of those rare moments when there is a break in the jibber jabber of the talk show hosts. The stereo/clock is on the upper shelf of my two-shelved, two-seater breakfast nook, which I am very proud of. I’ve got a little round table pushed up against the second floor window overlooking Seventh Avenue. I’ve even got a small candle in a brass-pine-cone candleholder, I picked up at the Pier 1 clearance store for $3.95. Who says I don’t know anything about style or being hip? I stumble to turn the alarm part off, plant my feet on the floor, walk towards the kitchenette, and with one-eye-closed-surgical-precision, yank the Lucky Charms from the top of the fridge and pour them into the bowl, chomp in unison with the morning talk show theme music, trace the maze on the back of the box with my mind, already pondering the next bowl. There is just something about cereal.

I need the radio in the morning. I actually enjoy the pathetic nature of morning radio, the endless talk shows and their hosts. I like hearing the traffic reports every 3-5 minutes, or the one-minute headlines news bits like "trouble today in a Helix Town home when two men are caught in a pyramid scam!" I wonder sometimes why they even try to have news. It seems as if the stations are trying to show that they aren’t behind or stupid, and that as listeners we dare not stray from the perpetual sound bytes that stream forth.

The greatest strength of radio morning shows is the connectedness they bring. Never before have I felt more connected to a group of other people, who, for one reason or another, need to propel themselves into this alternate universe where we are all part of a different style of virtual reality. It is a community based on our singular relationship with the hosts of the show, a perfect little world inside the little radio receiver, and we are able to give our opinions and have them heard without revealing our more corporal form.

Every so often the listeners are challenged to step outside "the box" and participate in some kind of contest or radio show promotion. These contests bring out the truth of us. We are desperate to win those tickets to the game, or a bundle of cash, a day off of work, a moment of attention, and we are willing to do whatever it takes for fortune and fame. Contests like: "Dress in a gorilla suit and try to do your banking," or "live in a minivan with seven strangers until most of them have almost died (or at least smell like they have) and be the last one stuck to the vinyl seat," or my favorite, "throw whatever you can from a really high point and try and make its guts land in the shape of the Virgin Mary, or Ricky Martin, or Michael Jordan’s head." Imagine the joy of far-flung fruits and vegetables, old televisions, old brass picture frames—the ex-loved ones smiling in the air along their ultimate descent. Watching our possessions—tangible evidence of our personal history—fall from greatness into oblivion, fascinates us.

I like to imagine the radio audience in the morning (often forgetting that I am clearly one of them, yet thinking I am somehow set apart) who have just arrived to cubicles and are seated in their ergonomic, lawsuit-proof swivel chairs, pursing their lip around the conveniently holed $3.75 coffee. They are jamming their speed-dialers, feverish about getting on the phone and winning those tickets, or a CD, or a chance to do something other than what they are doing right then and there.

These talk show hosts keep our hopes and dreams alive. They offer the world through "Thousand Dollar Thursdays, and "Screw Your Boss Campaigns," and they promise to get you to Friday just as soon as possible, so that you can, "come aboard the Single’s cruise of a lifetime!" Three decks, 5 DJs, a band, and everyone is single.

Sometimes I picture myself on one of these "cruises." The moonlight pressing against the harbor, the water lights chiming in the deep blueness of midnight, the gentle lifting of ocean air along the deck, and the quiet walk along the promenade. Beautiful. The only thing wrong? The people. This is where the reality of our perfect little radio world is exposed. All of the melodious and soulful voices crooning along the airways are suddenly matched up with their unimaginable sources. Imagine the outfits and the glued-on personas of so many of those people, everyone trying to look more respectable, more successful than the others. Some trying to look "natural," like they don’t want or need to be there, but it is the manufactured "natural" hair a little long, a little too curled or pumped, too much gel. They drink bottled beer instead of pints because it is easier to manage a bottle, and the "cutting edge risk" of a pint glass spilling over is a little bit too much for them to handle because they were told in their self-esteem workshops to "play it safe." They have their hand perfectly placed halfway into their pocket while the other hand clasps the beer, all the while leaving one finger free to point at babes as they walk by.

Their dream is to stand out, to be noticed and get attention while acting like they are just along for the ride, that they would never be a part of this scheme of a single’s cruise, and that they are just here maybe "jumping on the grenade" for one of their buddies. They stand at the food buffets picking fried shrimp and cheese balls, plucking them one by one into their mouths. They are talking about how much money they make, or how they love to go boating, to experience the open world and travel the high seas, even though they are currently adrift in a 4000-square foot steamboat going back and forth in a man-made bay.

BUT—behind it all, some of them are real. Their hearts are empty or betrayed, and they are searching, like all of us searching. When I think about them, I find myself swimming in the shallow pool of my own superficiality, backstroking my way through denial. "I am not like that. I’ve got my act together. I feel sorry for those guys." But soon enough I realize that I am actually drowning in this shallow water. I am searching too, pretending to be along for the ride, but desperate for unconditional attention.

When the talk show hosts finally return to the air, they are humming with excitement. It was the kind of unmanufactured excitement like you used to have Mr. D. when you brought out your record player and spun some Bach or Coltrane. The hosts are talking about how they are so "pumped" and "hyped" that Superstar Seven are "in-studio" today. "SS" is one of those boy-band, six-hit wonder groups, that jumps on the scene completely packaged and ready to go. Somewhere I think there must be a grand machine that sucks up all of our subliminal emotions, attitudes, desires, fears, and intentions, and what pops out are these made-to-be-seen bands that give us music to hum for a few years. Some of them will even be classics when my kids hear them. But today it seems little bit different. When the leader-singer starts to speak, (His name is J.T. or Fab, or Grinko, or A.G. I am not sure), he is depressed. He’s talking about how his heart is broken, and that he thinks he will never find love again, his voice getting low now—what a lead in. After the dramatic silence, a smooth and steady syncopation of keyboard pops fills the breakfast nook. The words are about how much this guy loved this girl, and how he couldn’t stand to be without her even for a second, and how he had always loved her, and that he had blown it by letting her go because now she’s with J.T. or EJ or LM or FBI or whatever, and that now he is on a quest for something different in his life, but he’ll never stop fighting for his girl. At first, I find myself making facial expressions of agreement and empathy, saying "yeah! I’m with you brother!" But then I realize that this guy couldn’t be more than sixteen, and I was never allowed to be in love at sixteen. Maybe love is a code word for something else like lust or acceptance, or hope. The chorus rolls on, and the cereal flakes droop and sog up in the warm sunlight of the morning, and as the music plays I begin to think about all of the reasons why I loved songs like this so much, even in eighth grade, and maybe why I hate them now.

Then: innocence. Everything ahead is possible, and even if things are horrible like getting a bad grade, or tripping on your way to homeroom, or like when the girl you like smiles at you, but she’s holding the football star’s hand, or a more severe tragedy like when our parents get separated. There is still the vastness of the unknown stretched out before us, thousands of different life paths for us to walk down.

Now: We begin to see where our path has been taking us. Each decision grows more important, more dire, and through all that we achieve, we find that we have less than we imagined. We are on a path, but we are desperate to know if our path is the right one. Is it a path of destiny, of choice? We have a gnawing suspicion of a possible wrong turn we have made, and suddenly, we find ourselves longing to be children again, peeking out from the tent during the rainstorm, content to stay inside. We want to find our way back to the starting point so maybe we can choose a different path. We circle these dark roads in search of our lost innocence. We are confident we can find it again, and something inside tells us that we can.

This sixteen year old pop star singing through my speakers is standing at the intersection of so many paths before him, and he senses the vastness of possibilities in his life, and it is bringing him joy and peace.

In any case, the fact is, I can’t stand this music. And as the morning unfolds, the songs get worse and worse, and the Superstar Seven bring more fabulous "insight" to the audience about the War, about politics, about abused kids, and all the while they interpose their music. The same rhythm every time, the same crack in the voice, the same lyrics, and pretty soon something takes hold of me, some impulse from a forgotten place. I want only to stamp them out. And I don’t really know but it is somewhere between "I won’t ever Forget you," and "I can’t live without you" that, in a rush of unsustainable fury, I pull the stereo from the wall, let out a triumphant Viking scream, and send that cheap boom box crashing two stories to the pavement below.

For a moment—or at least for these two bowls of cereal—I feel I have conquered technology. I have silenced the morning voices and the ridiculous sixteen year olds and their false wisdom. But it isn’t long before the lactic acid starts to settle down, and I am confused a little about what happened. Pretty soon I am at the magazine rack by the couch. I pull the clump of glossy guts from the middle of last Sunday’s paper and scan the limitless ads of the Good Guys Wherehouse, Frys, Circuit City, anywhere that might sell boom boxes at a decent price. And below there, in a million pieces on that fresh sidewalk, are the remnants of my inner conflict subtly formed into the shape of the Virgin Mary, or maybe, it is Michel Jordan’s head.

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