W If it were up to me, I would lie down straight back after breakfast. Mainly because listening to the radio in the morning is so exhausting. I constantly have to classify, decide and act. I have five very different stations programmed into my kitchen radio and I constantly switch back and forth in a mixture of desperation and hope. Despair over what you just heard and hope that things aren’t quite as miserable a few frequencies away.
Some days the pieces of music I’ve heard a thousand times, and on others the depressing news, make me press the program selection button again and again. But often it is also the hysterical tone of the pop radio chatterboxes or the performative frown of the speaking staff of the educated middle-class culture and information stations.
A few days ago I heard a program in which an actor was interviewed about his work. He was talking about a recently made television film and then actually said the disgusting sentence: “In this role I had to go very deep into the pain.” Reflexively, reacting vegetatively, I switched off. It’s terrible: the boundaries of what can be said publicly are unfortunately being pushed further and further.
To escape the pain of acting, I ended up working for the regional division of NDR. The music selection there is based on the average taste of baby boomers. ABBA plays at least five times a day. I heard the lines “Ring, ring, why don’t you give me a call? Ring, ring, I stare at the phone on the wall.” And thought: What would teenagers think if they happened to hear this song? Maybe: Who stuck or nailed the cell phone to the wall and why?
Telecommunication like before
Or have you ever seen in a film how telecommunications used to be used? Namely not only with rented landline telephones that stood on little tables decorated with crocheted blankets in the hallway and ideally had a long cord so that the telephone could be taken into every room, but sometimes also with absolutely immobile “wall phones” that were sent by non-cancelable, pensionable post officesofficials were doweled into the wall during installation?
Since my teenager is no longer a teenager and has already left his parents’ home for a long time, I didn’t get an answer to these questions. Just like those who stood up after the switch again: Who actually came up with the title of the German radio program “Klassik-Pop-et cetera”? How much arbitrariness can there actually be in a formulation? Why don’t we call the show “Cabbages and Turnips?” Or: “Some kind of music!” Or is it perhaps not about arbitrariness at all, but about diversity? Then why not use the old swinger club motto “Everything goes, nothing has to!” recycle?
And there it was again, that exhaustion. I have to stop this.