Gathering Wool

Today at 5:00/4:00 PM central I will appear on my final WUAG radio show (probably) after six humbling years of unquestioned, unqualified airplay. For two hours I’ll be talking sports on The SportsCycle, truly, an unbelievable feat given that, as a freshman, the 10 minutes of speaking that was required for a normal radio show gave me the shakes. I have to remember that when I close this chapter in my life, what the 18-year-old me would think about all this.

When I graduated high school, I had three goals for college:

1. Study Abroad
2. Join the Ultimate Frisbee team
3. Be a DJ

While I eventually accomplished all these things, being a DJ was the first thing I crossed off and maybe the first thing I wrote home about that wasn’t about a girl. I remember giggling through my DJ training with Lynda Kellam, who rolled her eyes and gave me a time-slot of 4-7AM.

After a couple months of playing music for truckers and stoners and midnight tokers, the slot after mine opened and I was offered it. I accepted AND asked to keep my first shift too. So for half a semester I had a 4-9 AM time slot that no one listened to and it earned me DJ of the week because I played five hours of music that no one listened to. At that time, WUAG posted the DJ of the Week on the website with a short interview and I’m pretty sure they stopped doing this after my interview, which included “sexy” and “OWEN” in the same sentence.

I brought a “Dave Matthews Band 2004 Tour” shirt to UNCG as a freshman, so you can imagine most of my five hours was spent whispering “FUCK” and “SHIT” and “Kings of Convenience?” as I scrambled to fill the time. When music played, I’d sit on the floor of the studio, fingering through the stacks and reading the reviews of records I’d never heard of. One of the first of these discovered records that I fell in love with was Superchunk’s “Come Pick Me Up” and I was convinced “Cursed Mirror” was the pinnacle of modern pop rock. To me, it defined indie music and WUAG and was the record I’d play if someone asked “What kind of music do you play?” If you’re a DJ, there is no more important question in your life.

For 10 of the next 11 semesters (minus the one for study abroad), I occupied every possible radio slot from 4 AM to 9 PM. I opened before much better shows, like the Movie Show, In The Beat of the Night, The Pipeline and “LISTEN! with Bootz Durango”. I sang a duet with Treasure Mammal at a WUAG Presents show and I recorded beach volleyball superstar Misty May-Treanor saying “When I’m not winning Olympic Gold Medals, I listen to WUAG 103.1.” All of these things are on my professional résumé, under “Over-Qualifications”.

Last night, I went to a concert in Saxapahaw and the first act was a two-member, acoustic Superchunk. They played only a handful of songs and one of which was “Cursed Mirror”. I have seen Superchunk now, more than any other band. Close to ten times now I’ve seen this band, and I have never heard them play “Cursed Mirror”. On the eve of my last radio show, a line about bad luck reminded me of the opposite and nothing could have been more appropriate.

The mirror gets cursed
For what’s reflected.
So you disconnect it
Will you disconnect it?