Inside Voices
You can really see how good the 9 AM host of KQED’s Forum is at his job when you’re in the room with him, across a console of microphones and wires, because that puts you inside the instant, intuitive decisions he’s making, as he makes them. There were four of us there, from four nascent publications, and you could see it in his eyes as he passed the ball to whomever, among Soleil Ho and Justin Gilmore and Lauren Markham and myself, that he could tell was ready to run with it (and then after that, just as tangibly, you could feel yourself not being asked the question you weren’t itching for, about, for example, your brilliant business plan). It’s in the eyes, the way you emote a “yes” or “no” as the question winds down, on a frequency you don’t realize you’d been broadcasting until you see yourself being seen.
When we’d been carpooling across the bridge, at the worst time of day, I had vowed to point out on the air about how we were all coming from Oakland, or the East Bay (oh and also, Aaron, remember to say that the entire East Bay is *really* Greater Oakland). Did I remember to say that? I have no idea. You’ll be shocked at how quickly an hour flies by when you are inside it, and how hard it is, afterwards, to recall what you said. But inside KQED’s lovely and spacious building (half- or more than half-empty due to ill-timed renovation that, like so much of West Bay real estate, didn’t see the pandemic and WFH coming), all those East Bay faces and voices in that room were a reminder of how much the Town, and all the other bay area towns, are where the people who host radio shows and start publications (and read them?) seem to be living.
The studio window overlooked OpenAI, we were told, though it just looked like another building to me.
Anyway, there was so much broadcasting in that room that didn’t get on the air, but now sticks in my memory: the glances, the half-nods, the eyebrow raise, the smiles, and most of all, the chit chat between and after and before the hour that was blasted out across the Oakland bay area. I hadn't missed the opportunity to get a taco recommendation out of Soleil before the show, who didn’t miss the opportunity to leave some Coyote Media brochures in the waiting room (to the grins of one of the genial producers in charge of whisking us in and out and making sure we were hydrated, caffeinated, and aware of how to access the bathroom.) Over the sound of the on-air programming just slightly too low to be made out, we had all chatted about whether the American accent is ugly, about balancing asynchronous meetings with in-person hangs, and about the Bay Area Current’s launch party the other night (and the story they just dropped). Despite repping the least online publication of the four, The Approach’s Lauren had to be piped in electronically, so we weren’t able to gossip with her about the media dudes we’re glad to no longer hear on the air (at least until tonight's in-person launch party).
On air, I tried to explain the concept of the ORB vibe report, the idea that the fleeting and in-person needs to be chronicled and gossiped and cared for, in print, because however superficial and transient such social textures might seem, being together in space and time and community is something I think we all think a little differently about, now, after whatever this is that follows whatever the pandemic was. From the texts I got afterward, I must have remembered to say into the mic that “Annex Piedmont” will be the piece, or pieces, that will best exemplify ORB's whole thing: a very sincere and Oakland kind of civic-minded chaos. Everyone in the room seemed to instantly get it; Forum Producer Grace Won suggested we make tee-shirts with the slogan. It’s such a great idea, now we have to do it.
Afterwards in the hallway, Grace told us to pose for a picture like we all liked each other, which was extremely easy to do. Later, I’ll tell a friend, who is a friend of the host’s, about the trace of mischief in his eyes when I saw him deciding to relay a caller’s fairly off-the-wall question to me, and which prompted me to talk about some things I had definitely not thought about two seconds beforehand. Once a rapport had been established, once the conversation got into an easy groove, you could see just a bit of that good evil creep in his eyes as he passed the ball right at the edge of where I could catch it. But how dull would a conversation be if everyone was too comfortable? Stretching keeps you limber. And then this friend of his passed on what another friend of his had once said, that he’s “the kind of good that has juuuuuust enough edge to not be boring.” “haha” she then typed, because an “evil Alexis Madrigal” is a pretty hilarious concept.
