Road to Nowhere

I love the song Road to Nowhere by the Talking Heads. I am listening to it right now, just as I am typing this.

This post is a bit complicated, so let’s see if I can put it all together and make some sense out of it:

It all started with the DS106 Radio Summer Camp, an online, radio-based conference that happened for 12 hours on Tuesday (and it was FABULOUS). I always play the song as part of my set, as I associate it with all the things that I treasure about being a citizen of the open web and the DS106 community.

…would you like to come along? You can help me sing this song. And it’s alright…

At the end of a long day of connecting, chatting and sharing tunes on the airwaves, I started to read a book I recently bought in town (TJ Klune’s We Burned So Bright). It’s a story of a road trip, during the apocalypse. There’s a black hole approaching that promises the end of the world and against that backdrop a journey across the US brings many encounters and adventures.

I haven’t yet finished it, but it’s a beautifully written book, and very much a book of our times. In one chapter the Golden Records get a mention, and it really captured my imagination. If, like me, you don’t quite recall, the Golden Record is a “phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth” which was launched into space in 1977 on the Voyager spacecrafts.

The day following the summer camp, I was working on a postgrad module about leadership and organisational culture, and as part of that research I was seeking some inspiration in the work pioneered by Lou Mycroft. As it happens, Lou just posted a newsletter that really chimed with me on Joy and the Planetary Crisis, a great read and full of valuable, practical reminders of what we can do to make a difference every day.

One of the questions Lou leaves us with is this: Ask yourself, ‘What am I fighting for, today?’. And that is where this post comes in.

I was thinking what I would put on my own version of a Golden Record, what I would treasure enough to tell the universe about, even in times of apocalypse (and this summer the climate crisis has certainly focused my mind on those times).

Most of my list would be about the people I love. my husband, my family, my friends, my dogs. Some books, art, music. There’s a lot in the world I love and want to protect, and many experiences I treasure. Blogging and radio, too.

On Tuesday I felt that once again. How important this lifeline of connection and community is to me, and how joyful it was to cut across the digital noise and celebrate the things we are curious about and the stories we want to share. If our 12 hours of radio became a Golden Record, it would surely give anyone listening a sense of hope and joy, of what we hold dear and what we want to protect and fight for.

Thank you DS106 Radio for making it happen. #4life.

Thank you to Chahira Nouira, Simon Horrocks, Phil Walker, Clint Lalonde, Martin Weller, Alan Levine, Mark Corbett Wilson, Sarah Honeychurch, Joe Murphy, Taylor Jadin, Alexis Block, Laura Gibbs, Sam Hooper, Jason Teitelman and especially Jim Groom, for everything.