March 4th, 2004
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Emerald city radio, shining in the night
People like custom, habit, things that are familiar. One of my favorites right now is listening to c89.5 FM every Thursday afternoon at work. I tune in quite often, actually, but Thursday afternoons one to five are special because that translates to Wednesday nights eight to twelve in my much pined-for Seattle- the timeslot for Resident Transmission. Guest and studio DJs assemble in four hours of sterling symphonic (56K) streamed trance goodness.
The Pacific Northwest is a territory, not a collection of states. It’s a wilderness, a frontier, a vast expanse of rugged earth full of sharp experiences and thin air. Narrow, scrubbed trees stab into the sky, dense and uniform like the sides of a verdant canyon. Shimmering highways snake through forests and mountains; wide, asphalt veins in a silent strata. The air is dry and clean, tingling with the sterile breath of a hundred million unmoving creatures. I-90 pours down from the mountains, a pathway to the great untouched horizon, big sky. I-5 darts past Portland, Tacoma, whispering of San Francisco and racing towards Vancouver. At the nexus of these two great migrating wonders is the jewel of the west, a city on a sound, the unintentionally stylish Seattle. So far removed from every metropolis, so recently come to maturation, so well planned and maintained. A downtown with wide sidewalks and an plaintive layout. Parks, trees, docks, fish, shopping, coffee… a city that remains manageable and inoffensive in its singularity.
The grass was soft under my bare feet, tendered with orchestrated self-waterings from the ground below. The sky was blue, the sun shone from five thirty, every countertop was new and polished. Organic food, patio tables, fresh carpet so pristine I’d fall asleep in the sun by the screen door.
I rode in a scotch-guarded boat, a cornflower 1997 Oldsmobile Achieva, a dark, rolling vehicle that turned and decelerated like the citizens around it, slowly, surely, relaxed, but confident. More than once I ventured along those wide-laned wonders, across the border into Canada, or south to the tip of Oregon, the fresh white center line feeding into the left fender. Across the 520 bridge to Seattle proper, a party at Jillian’s, or an evening game under opening stars at Safeco. Smoothly, silently, surrounded by open space. That was how I travelled.
And at night I lay in bed, by a Fred Meyer clock radio, listening to the pulse of the city. c89.5 FM. Nathan Hale High School’s student-run radio station. Dance, techno, electronica. Remixes and revolutions without corporate ownership or commercials. Just music and event news. Raves, clubs, releases…laid back people without agendas. Just like Seattle. The station is a soundtrack for the city, for being independent and young, for wanting more meaning than anything back east.
