Nocturnal Fissures

A particularly vivid experience is coming home late at night and tuning into a most perverse strand of Festival Radio programming called Nocturnal Emissions.  This was put together by a couple of moody looking gents – Lance Dann and Orlando Harrisson.  They would come into the office in sartorial black and skulk around…they disturbed my frail sense of order.

I think I’d been to the pub that night and was perhaps somewhat disorientated as I tuned in and experienced a strange brew of synthy sounds, echoing voices and malignant poetry.  I really didn’t know what this was.  In those days my telephone was next to my bed as anything could happen…any number of crises might occur with Festival Radio every day.  As I started slipping into a state of semi sleep unnerved by the radiophonic echoes swirling around me the phone rang abruptly.  ‘Can there be no fucking rest?’  Running Festival Radio was an adventure but also stressful.

There was a voice speaking to me from an otherworldly place.  ‘Hello, Hello?’…. I answered with ‘who’s this?’ or ‘why are you calling?’ or ‘what’s wrong?’ or some other question.  My voice had become an echo but where was this echo from?  Was it a strange after effect of the four pints consumed earlier…I asked again ‘who’s there?’  ‘what is this?’ and again heard my voice as a distorted and muffled echo of myself filling the semi-darkness.

Panic was rising now as I started to wake up and insistently ask ‘what the fuck is this?’ ‘why can I hear myself?’  ‘What is going on?’ …  I began to move my hands around the detritus in the semi dark attempting to make sense of my surroundings.  ‘What is happening to me?’ my voice had a life of its own and I was no longer in control.  This rising panic carried on until a mirthful voice confessed that I had been part of an ongoing psychological experiment that necessitated me going on air without my prior knowledge!

It was hard to sleep that night as I contemplated the existential fissure experienced earlier…