a life more ordinary

Embarrassingly, the moments directly following this year’s “Best Picture” Oscar montage found me in the kitchen, red-faced, and crying over the fact that somehow, in my inadequate movie-viewing past, I had missed Ordinary People. Just irrational enough that I felt the need to move it right to the top of my list. (After the time it took to track it down, it wasn’t rented painlessly--the smart-ass video store guys had a thing or two to say about it’s relative inferiority to Raging Bull, which was “robbed” of the Oscar in 1980…)

And so last night was the night I laid (at least those) inadequacies to rest. After 2 hours of a film about therapy, it makes sense to talk out my feelings about it.

What I watched last night picks up on what I’m loving about certain radio pieces right now: when, and how, we "hear people out. " With so much scene-changing of our own, with so many interruptions (many of them self-imposed), how do we learn to just let people work through what they’re thinking, to finish what they started? We like to think we’re listening to people when they discuss something difficult, we like to think we’re giving people the time they need, but we cut in when it's awkward, or we see an opportunity for ourselves to speak, or when it makes us uncomfortable. We’re constantly editing our own conversations for the best result. We do it in the name of keeping the conversation lucid, but increasingly, I'm becoming an advocate for indulging people occasional incoherence.

With the constant fear that listeners will “turn the dial,” radio-makers have relaxed into creating flawlessly-edited stories that are undeniably interesting, but predictably revelatory--a style tends to create reality instead of reflect it. I’m more and more drawn to the radio pieces that are conscious of that fact and that make some specific changes to reverse it—keeping the less-than-perfect cut, the off-mic quote, letting people speak as they come across, instead of how you wish they’d sound. By encouraging people to keep talking, the revelation happens on its own, and not through the grace of good editing.

Now is as important a time as any to let ourselves, to let each other finish what we started. Not to edit our long awkward silences, to avoid the urge for polish, for professionality. In life, just as in Art, the revelation will happen on its own.