"Not to mention the great recorded quotes that dot the aural landscape. Thank you for creating these wonderful collages that are just as good the fifth time around."
A very astute listener recently sent the above email about how much they enjoyed EclecTopia, but the thing that grabbed my attention was that they mentioned the many voices that appear, unannounced and unexplained, throughout the show.
I rarely talk about nor identify, with the exception of Mailroom Dave (our staff storyteller and philosopher), any of the voices, but it has always been curious to me that in nearly a decade of being on the air, that only THREE (maybe four) listeners have even asked or mentioned these "quotes."
I believe one listener correctly identified T.S. Eliot, who frequently gets the last word, with his immaculate ending to The Four Quartets:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
I have always been fascinated (and sometimes fixated) with sounds in general and with people's voices. Brando, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Walken- the list goes on and on. It's an obsession. I have a real bad habit of using a different voice when I talk to people to underscore my meaning. It was worse when I was younger as people would ask, "Why do you talk like that?" or "Why do you sound like someone else?"
Although I know that people may not see it that way, but I use the voices as a narrative- a unifying device serving to baffle, to amuse and sometimes to comment on the music that follows.
Then who are these characters that walk so briefly upon the EclecTopia stage?
To quote one of my favorite voices, Peter Gabriel: "I'll leave that for your detection."
T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets are essential for any civilized living. Buy me at Amazon.
So is The Wasteland.
Sorry. There are no Ernesto Magnito or Mailroom Dave downloads at this time.