Last Wednesday I drove down to Miami for my appearance on Topical Currents. As usual, I arrived ridiculously early. (You never know what horrors await on I-95.) I grabbed an empanada at a cafe on Biscayne Boulevard and then, at about 20 minutes to 1, just as it started to drizzle, I arrived at the parking lot of WLRN.
"You can't park here," the guard told me. "You have to park in the lot across from the entrance."
"But I parked here two months ago when I came for an interview," I said.
He knew nothing about that; only that I was not allowed, now, in the lot that seemed to belong to the building. One that, I couldn't help but notice, had a number of empty spaces.
He opened the electronic gate at the other end of the lot and I took a left onto 15th Street. A sign in the lot he had directed me to read "Police Vehicles Only." I drove around the block and returned to the guardhouse.
"It says it's for police vehicles only," I told him. "Can't you just let me park here?" It was now starting to rain harder.
"That's only one section," he said. "You can park in the middle."
He opened the gate again and I hurried on through. Now it was getting ridiculously late. I pulled into the lot, which was quite large, and completely full. I returned to the guardhouse, and begged to be allowed into the lot just behind it. The rain was now falling in sheets. I was sent instead to a lot that sat next to the Arsht Center.
After finding a space, I reached in the back for my old umbrella, which Hania had tied using a thin thread. I couldn't see the thread, or which way the button needed to be pushed to open the umbrella. I tried breaking the clasp, without any success. Of course. It was now, incredibly, five to one. I imagined Joseph Cooper saying, in a few minutes, "Good afternoon. We're NOT here today with travel writer Thomas Swick."
I felt, to use the old cliche, like the star of my own nightmare. Finally, the cord loosened and I was able to open the umbrella. I ran toward the studio, splashing through puddles the size of lakes, only to discover that I was blocked by a fence. I retraced my watery steps, found the exit - did I need to pay? I had no time to look for a machine - and ran through rain that now resembled a monsoon.
Across the street, past the guardhouse, I had a split-second decision to make. Do I try the entrance by the lot I wanted to park in but wasn't allowed to, or the one by the lot I was told to park in but wasn't able to? I went for the former. My shoes, pants and shirt were now completely soaked. I dialed the number of the receptionist on the outside phone; nobody answered. Finally, the producer Richard Ives appeared - he had come down to look for me - and opened the door.
It wasn't until I entered the studio that Richard noticed how wet I was. Good thing this is radio, I said. Richard went and got a shirt - a handsome blue denim number with the station's letters on the pocket - for me to change into. When the show was over, and I offered to give it back, he told me I could keep it. I was the first guest, he said, who had ever required a wardrobe change.
When the New York Times Book Review interviews authors, it sometimes asks them what book they would like to read that hasn’t been written. For me, it would be a book on the history of magazine advertising. I would like to know when it was that an advertiser first made an editorial demand and, of course, the name of that advertiser. So I could boycott them.
Once on the old Tonight Show, Truman Capote told Johnny Carson that "the better the actor, the more stupid he is." Today, ninety percent of the guests on late night talk shows are successful actors.
Bravo's new show Tour Group has convinced me that the only thing worse than being on a tour is being on a tour for television.
It is a shock returning home from a trip, especially a short one, and getting in the car, turning on the radio, pushing a button to silence the discussion about presidential candidates and finding generic pop music where you once heard celestial sounds.
As that paragraph indicates, Classical South Florida was not my first choice when I got in the car. The station I listened to most frequently was WLRN. But sometimes you need a little night, and even day, music (particularly when the talk turns to the race for president). After the oldies station reduced its collection to two songs, "Light My Fire" and "Piano Man," I found myself going back and forth between WDNA - which, like all jazz stations, often features musicians who engage in instrumental masturbation but makes up for it with its wonderful Latin and world music programs - and Classical South Florida.
My Honda has a CD player, but there's nothing like the range, serendipity, and edification of music on the radio. After I graduated from college I moved to Washington, DC, where the local classical music station was the only one I listened to. I thought it was time I learned about serious music, and to do that I went cold turkey on rock.
Classical South Florida played the same educational role, introducing me to musicians, works, and even composers I'd never heard of. Every once in a while they'd do a pledge drive and I didn't give (as I do to WLRN) because it wasn't my go-to station. Also, they had no Ira Glass bullying you into parting with your money. And, I told myself, there were plenty of wealthy people around who would step in and help.
It was a strange thing for someone to think who'd been here when the Florida Philharmonic went out of business.
Driving around South Florida, never a joy, has just gotten a lot grimmer for the small and apparently impotent community of music lovers here. I'm already thinking about December when, starting around the 15th, Classical South Florida was all I listened to in the car. It was the great season of choral music and, driving I-95, you could hear not just "The Messiah" but heavenly Swedish choirs (you could almost see the candleglow) and hauntingly beautiful carols like "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" and "In the Bleak Midwinter."
This midwinter promises to be, musically at least, very bleak.