Bill Morelock
The popular notion is that any self-respecting ghost story must pack a nightmarish punch. But Bill Morelock tells a tale of two amusing and inspiring spectres.
(10/30/2012)
In 1965, Walker Percy published an essay called "Notes for a Novel about the End of the World." I wondered if we might not sketch out something similar for a radio show. Again, purely theoretical, but if the notes turn out to be a practical blueprint for an actual broadcast artifact, so be it.
(07/16/2012)
What's wrong with Sisyphus, anyway? Whenever we refer to someone working endlessly to no apparent purpose -- in an office cube, a fast food restaurant, writing a blog -- we invoke Sisyphus. I don't get it. Futility was only one facet of his professional life.
(07/02/2012)
In this curious negotiation between us and you about the hows and whens and whys of listening -- digital platforms turning what once was the simple arithmetic of radio into a calculus requiring armies of very smart people to solve -- we don't know what's going to happen next.
(06/18/2012)
I'm not a performer by nature. Given a Briggs-Myers choice between getting up and doing a song and dance in front of a crowd and undergoing a colonoscopy...
(06/11/2012)
Paul Fussell was the author of "The Great War and Modern Memory" (1975). It was a compelling, and surprisingly popular study of literary perspectives on the disasters of World War One. Among his trenchant theses, that the war introduced irony as a pervasive mode of thinking which affected the entire culture.
(05/28/2012)
I lived in Pullman, Washington when Mt. St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980. Though 250 miles away, Pullman was in the path of the twelve-hour ash fall that turned day to night on that Sunday 32 years ago. Because it coincided with another significant but small spreading of ashes on that same day, I've tended to recast the event in largely symbolic terms -- in a sense turning the mountain upside down.
(05/18/2012)
Last week I filled in for Fred Child on Performance Today for a few days. One day the show featured George Gershwin's Concerto in F, played by a Quebecois pianist named Alain Lefevre.
(05/14/2012)
Literary movements are, in certain ways, like theoretical physics. They both operate mostly under the radar, undergoing subtle changes, describing rarified events too arcane for the likes of you and me to grasp or care about. But then, every once in awhile, a charismatic personality with a catchy equation (E=mc^2), or a thermonuclear device, demands our attention.
(04/30/2012)
Non-fiction can be as imaginative as fiction, given a strong imagination. But when those sinews fail, when the muscles refuse to twitch on cue, and exuberance parts company with clarity once and for all, what does one do? In baseball, the aging power pitcher re-tools and defends himself with off-speed stuff. Indirect, but effective.
(04/09/2012)
Possibly you've heard all you need to hear about the aesthetics of baseball. And here I am adding innings.
(04/02/2012)
Bill Morelock takes a close look at W.B. Yeats' famed 1919 poem "The Second Coming."
(03/26/2012)
For the anniversary of Bach's birth, even as we marvel at the unearthly nature of the music, we might stop and remember that Bach also had to earn a living. Here's how and where he earned a paycheck during the 45 years of his working life.
(03/20/2012)
For the anniversary of Bach's birth, even as we marvel at the unearthly nature of the music, we might stop and remember that Bach also had to earn a living. Here's how and where he earned a paycheck during the 45 years of his working life.
(03/19/2012)
The quiet that Edvard Grieg needed in order to work is a scarce and, it would seem, non-renewable resource.
(03/05/2012)
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