---
layout: post
title: Ballad of the Sandman
author: Steven
date: 2003-11-29 10:55:10
categories: 
- Musings
tags: 
- media
featured_image: https://www.stevenjaycohen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/wsi-imageoptim-ge-radio.jpg
---

[audio src="https://www.stevenjaycohen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Ballad-of-the-Sandman.mp3"]







When the broadcast room's a living tomb of cracked acoustic tiles,
And you're left alone with your microphone and your playlist and your dials,
And the hands upon the studio clock pass midnight, creep towards one...
Then it's time to take the air once more; the graveyard shift's begun.



The day shift and the engineers have all left hours ago.
You close the heavy soundproof door and set your board aglow.
Cue the first two records up; settle in your chair,
Uncap and flip the "transmit" switch, and you are on the air.



There's magic in the radio, enchantment in the ether.
A power born of mind and brain, and yet a part of neither.
A power to be reckoned not in kilowatts or joules,
A means to let a single voice touch half a million souls.







read more



--Mike Agranoff



The power of a singular existence. The full moments of silence, that I now find once my daughter is a sleep and all of the days queries are behind me, make themselves known. They wash over me in the most dense of emptiness.



That poem/song by Mike Agranoff comes to me every now and again. Always unbidden. But there is something in it that makes the most of silences. I don't really analyse it because I don't want to disturb its art.