In
the past several days, as I’ve been contemplating my apparent need to spice up my daily routine,
I’ve been noticing cool things in my life that I seem to have been taking for
granted. Things that are already there that are pretty “extraordinary” (to
borrow from my last blog), but that I’ve stopped noticing because they’re so …
well, there. I had an experience like
this just the other day when my partner and I teamed up to do an interview for a this week's rendition of the radio program we’ve been working on for about a year and a half—“Outsources,”
KGNU’s weekly prime-time LGBTQ feature show (FM 88.5, Mondays at 6:30, or
anytime at kgnu.org/outsources, just in
case you were wondering how you could hear it. Soon, we'll have podcasts).
Sometimes,
doing this show feels more like a chore than like fun, and in my doldrums, I
believe I’ve been a bit caught in that view of it. It’s not hard to get there
if I focus just on the tasks it requires. Our radio station, KGNU, is scrappy,
low-budget community radio, and our little team, the “Outsources Collective,” has
to do everything for ourselves. Unlike Terry Gross and company, we have no station
staff who will produce or run the show so that we can just chat with the guests.
Nope. We, radio novices all, are responsible for every step in making a show
happen. That includes coming up with ideas, discussing those with the group in
our bi-weekly meetings, tracking down potential guests, developing a “script”
for the show in collaboration with the guest(s), creating a “promo” to attract
listeners, and then producing the actual show by recording and editing it or by
hosting it live—including running the recording and/or broadcast equipment, doing
all necessary editing, and being sure that it all gets to the right place for
it to air at the right time. In all, each show typically represents several
hours’ worth of work, so it’s no minuscule undertaking.
But
that’s just one way of looking at it—the way I’m prone to think of it when I’m
feeling bored. But the other day, perhaps energized by my attention to livening
up my life, I slipped into a very different perspective on this project. Instead
of the show-as-chore story I just wrote above, I was hearing a different tale
as we produced this show. In this version of my life as a radio show host, I marvel
at the amazing circumstances that grant a handful of local LGBTQ folks—with no
particular qualifications for or even prior interest in radio broadcasting—half
an hour every week to explore topics that matter to the LGBTQ community and our
allies and to share those explorations with whoever wants to listen. Half an
hour of public broadcast time, ours to do with as we wish. Well, within reason—there
are those seven words we can’t say.
Although we’ve
been doing this show for a while now, we haven’t even come
close to running out of topics. Over this time, we’ve had shows on topics like
an “out” grade school principal, Denver and Boulder Pride celebrations, a play
written by a straight man based on his gay uncle’s journals, conversion
therapy, a local queer musical group, allies in middle school, LGBTQ aging,
community choruses, AIDS, interviews with authors of queer-related books, dance
in the queer community, a national queer activist conference, immigration
issues, Grindr and other social media, a critique of same-sex marriage, future
directions for PFLAG, queer philanthropy ... the list just keeps growing.
It’s
a cool setup, actually—individual members of our small collective are variously interested
in a variety of domains: local community agencies and organizations, the arts, social media, trans
issues, LGBT history, public policy, queer psychology, local politics, diversity
within the queer community, and on and on. Collectively,we’re all
interested in giving voice to people and issues that folks might not hear much
about otherwise, topics found outside the scope of mainstream coverage.
So
I was thinking about this on Monday as we interviewed a local attorney about
the recent Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage. Maybe surprisingly, we’ve
barely mentioned marriage on the show, largely because there are already plenty
of people talking about it. In fact, our one show on the topic was a critique of marriage. But the Supreme
Court hearings were all over the news last week and this really is a huge case
(or cases, actually) that could have profound implications for couples in
Colorado. So it seemed right to give it some thoughtful—even thought-provoking,
we hope—coverage.
We
wanted something more nuanced and more particular than the mainstream presentations.
We wanted to do a hyper-local discussion—just two members of the radio
collective and a local attorney who is really smart and thoughtful about such
issues—not to mention clear in her explanation of them. We got to talk, the
three of us, about the comfortable but questionable certainty that
the Court will rule in our favor. About our curiosity around the unexpected
questions raised by Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts. About whether
the “swing vote” will rest with Kennedy (as has been the case in other recent
LGBT rights cases). About what sort of confusion might ensue if the court now
rules that state prohibitions against same-sex marriage are constitutional—after
thousands of couples married under the Circuit Court rulings saying they’re not constitutional. And especially, about
what all of this means specifically to Colorado couples and their families. (If
you’re curious about what we said about all these things, you can listen here.)
The
whole thing is astonishing, really. What a gift to have this time set aside—the
only such show in the state—for a topic that’s rarely addressed with much depth
or texture in the outlets that most of us rely on for our daily dose of
information. And what a privilege to be involved in it. True, the demand to
create new shows sometimes feels daunting. But when I’m actually in
the middle of one, like this week, it seems well worth the hassles and headaches.
It even seems extraordinary.
Wait!
Did I actually say, just the other day, that my life was feeling boring?
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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