Turn the Dial for Audio Art: Storytelling, Public Radio and me.

I am a sucker for a good story. And I fall easily for a good storyteller. Most notable in my book is Garrison Keillor of "A Prairie Home Companion". I grew up tuning into "Prairie Home" on most Saturday evenings AND Sunday mornings. My parents were (and are) devout listeners and it wasn't until I had lived enough life to be able to look back on it did I realize I have unassumingly incorporated this radio ritual into my own routine. (My mom even listened to "News from Lake Wobegon" cassettes in the hospital when I was born. It's as if the radio show transported through the airwaves and under fluorescent lights right into my DNA.) I know I like listening to the show the same way I know I like mash potatoes - I just always have. It has never been questioned.

As I transitioned into young adulthood, though, the "Prairie Home" took on a different role in my life. I fled my humble Northland nest at 18 for The University of Arizona in Tucson where I resided for a total of five years (before crash-landing back in Flagstaff). In the thick of homesickness or heartache (and with thanks to modern technology), I would click on an archived episode of Prairie Home on my laptop, close my bedroom door on the burdens of the outside world and crawl into bed. Most often I would skip ahead and listen only to the "News from Lake Wobegone" segment. With Mr. Keillor cooing softly about mid-western common folk sorting out their own oddities, my world became right again.

Once in college, I "discovered" another NPR weekend radio show, "This American Life." I was so fond of it, I wrote when it aired on the local station into my planner or to-do lists . I didn't listen to A Prairie Home Companion any less, but adopted the two radio programs into my cache of personal entertainment and coping mechanisms. Amidst all this discovery of NPR weekend radio programming, I experienced another revelation: I could write. And I was good at it. Despite the hard fact that I was most attracted to creative writing, I majored in print journalism, hoping to marry my desire to write compelling narratives with my interest in media.

Now that I'm an educated, relatively-well adjusted 25-year-old...adult, I consider myself "above average" because of my fondness for public radio entertainment. (I should mention that "Car Talk" and the news-quiz show "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" have also been long-time favorites, introduced on to my radio radar sometime between grade school and high school.) My brain, my character, and my soul feel conditioned after an hour or so of mentioned radio programs. I'm usually inspired to write something - like, this blog :)



So tell me, what inspires you to be introspective or creative?