By Dan Roark

During the school year last year (she works with ESL students as a teachers’ aide), Cyndy quit listening to the radio in the car. With all the noise of the school day, she began to crave silence when she got in the car to go home or to New Hope Equine Assisted Therapy. And that continued into the weekend when we went places.
At first it bothered me. I’ve almost always listened to music when I’m driving or riding. But I generally just listen to two stations.

I tried to argue against the silence. I didn’t try very hard though, simply figured I’d just listen to music when I was driving the van. Sometimes, when Cyndy was driving, I wanted to listen to music. But I got to thinking about something else and the urge went away. Being a writer, my mind is good about wandering.

After that, there were times I would be driving when I would realize that I hadn’t turned the radio on. That’s still true much of the time. Sometimes I’ll give each of the two stations a couple of songs to catch my ear, so to speak. If the station plays two decent songs in a row, it usually goes south after that. Either way, at the beginning of the first “clunker,” I just turn the radio off.

What sort of surprised me about this little experiment is all the garbage I actually listened to without thinking about it. Not the commercials – I always turned the volume down. But the crap the DJs say. As if anyone cares what they have to say. And the crappy songs. Definitely, the crappy songs.

If the song is good, but I just don’t like it, I’ll admit it’s a good song. But I’m not talking about those songs. I mean the songs that really suck. The songs you wonder about why they’re actually playing them on the radio. The songs which are really painful to the ears. And the songs that don’t seem to make sense. The music is catchy, and designed to keep the focus away from the lyrics, which, taken by themselves, are just a bunch of words thrown together.

So I turn the radio off.

_________________________

Keep writing the songs that are in your heart.

Peace be with you.

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