TUM - EPISODE 4 (The Someday Standard)

Long before I knew what I wanted to do with my life, I had one place where I could simply just be myself.

Episode Four traces the origins of what I now call The Someday Standard—the quiet belief that another life was waiting somewhere beyond the one I was living. It's the story of a bedroom in suburban New York, two unlikely companions named Self-Esteem and Confidence, an unexpected Saturday afternoon with John Lennon on the radio, and the realization that the places we escape to as kids sometimes become the places that quietly shape the rest of our lives.

The Unemployable Man is a spoken-word series by Ray Whitaker featuring original essays about work, identity, memory, mental health, creativity, culture, and the ongoing business of becoming—and laughing at—yourself.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before society's expectations began dictating who we were supposed to be, most of us had one special place where none of that carried any weight. A place where we imagined our future selves, escaped everyone else's hopes and assumptions, and became the most authentic version of ourselves. We may not have realized it at the time, but that place wasn't just where we grew up. It was where we literally met ourselves for the first time. And today we're going back there. This is the unemployable man. Wasn't just where I listened to music, and it wasn't just where I, you know, made a few, well, more than a few, half-hearted attempts at homework. Or stayed out of my father's crosshairs. No, it was a meeting place for a secret society where there were only three members. Me, myself, and I. Actually, scratch that, they were five. Because there were two other members who had far more influence than the rest of us combined. And they were my self-esteem and my confidence. And those two, they were like a couple of Indian mystics who'd sequestered themselves away in some cave in the Himalayas. They rarely, if ever, ventured outside. They spent their days contemplating the great existential questions. And wondering if they'd ever find a less embarrassing alternative to that pink Scotch hairset tape for those goddamn flippy banks. And it was a rare day when I would ever leave them by themselves. 1974 was a watershed year in that room, and one day in particular. I was eleven years old, living in Mohegan Lake, New York. It's a weekend. And while I probably should have been outside doing something productive and fun, or at the very least, pretending to, I was, of course, in my room. Self-esteem and confidence, they were over there on the corner, you know, contemplating whatever. While I scoured New York City rock stations for the next thing that might excite me or alter my reality. And for the record, I didn't have what anyone would ever call a cool room. And truth be told, I really had no idea what a cool room was even supposed to look like. If I had to guess, probably lots of posters, guitar. And if it was a really cool room, an electric guitar with an amp. But that was the full extent of my interior decorating aspirations right there. Cause you know, I wasn't one of those kids who longed for stuff. The only thing I longed for was to be left alone. Cause family life in the Whitaker household was not exactly the Brady Bunch. And my friendships didn't much resemble happy days. Being a kid who had to shop in the husky section and sporting a fairly prominent schnauz, not to mention a head full of thoroughly uncooperative hair. I was not especially fond of the invisible bullseye that seemed permanently attached to me. But that right there was the magic of my room. No matter what I might have been dealing with at school, in the neighborhood, or at home. Once I made it to my room and closed that door, this incredible feeling of safety, invincibility, and possibility washed over me. And then on this particular Saturday afternoon in September of 1974, something happened. Dennis Elsus was on WNEWFM out of New York City, and he was talking to someone that I'd already considered an old friend. Someone I'd never met, never spoken to, never even written a letter to. But somehow, and I know how this is going to sound, I considered him one of my best friends. John Lennon. And for the longest time I wondered if I was just some weird kid who couldn't relate to my peers. But then I would say to myself, you know what, it doesn't really matter. When I'm on my own and I'm in my room. So for those few hours, on that Saturday in September, that live conversation between Dennis and John planted a long dormant seed in me that I didn't even realize was there until a decade or more later. Because this medium, that being radio, was the perfect companion to a room dweller like myself. And while I wasn't thinking of anyone else who might be listening at the same time I was, I now understand that I was privy to a private conversation that happened to be in a public forum that perhaps hundreds of thousands of people were listening to at the same time I was. And I honestly believe that that is when the first notion of going into radio quietly took root. I mean, think about it. My favorite Beatle was sitting there answering questions from a radio guy that I genuinely enjoyed listening to pretty much every day. The mystique of the whole thing was almost overwhelming. That wasn't just setting the bar high. For an 11-year-old loner like myself, it pretty much put the bar in another dimension. But hey, at the very least, it gave me another world to create inside my room. There it is. And then there was what they actually talked about. As interviews go, and I didn't realize this at the time, this was exactly what I needed to hear. John Lennon was an absolute geek about radio and records, just like I was. I mean, he even brought a stack of 45s from home to play on the air. That's how excited he was. And I want you to think about that for a moment. The most famous musician on the planet was talking about the records he listened to while he was sitting in his own room. And that symmetry was not lost on me. I just didn't realize what it meant until, well, right now. For most people listening to that conversation on the radio, it was probably just another, you know, rock interview. But for me, he was transformative. Because like a lot of kids, I had rock star dreams. But even at 11, somewhere deep down, I knew I was never going to be a Beatle. And as absurdly obvious as that sounds, there was something else that I could not quite put into words. I just had this ever-present feeling that my life was supposed to roll out a little differently than anybody else I knew, my family included. Whether it was through a job or some creative quest that I hadn't yet detected, I carried around this near obsessive need to put my thoughts, my ideas, and whatever unusual way I saw the world out there into the world. And that's what I so appreciate in John Lennon. Not his fame or his legend, but his unwavering and unapologetic drive to create. He literally embodied that old proverb, talent does what it can, genius does what it must. And as the interview progressed, my room began to feel like it was a different place. Wasn't anything I could clearly identify at the time, but in retrospect, it felt like it was slowly morphing into something more than just a sanctuary for the neighborhood fat kid. It became a sort of dream tank as opposed to a think tank. For the first time ever, my imagination had somewhere to go. Granted, these possibilities were not fully formed, but the one thing that was clear, whatever the conjured fantasy, it did involve a microphone. And I would be lying my ever-loving ass off to you if I told you that I did not conjure scenarios of playing music in front of other people, folks I knew or didn't know. And they were all just bowled over by my everything. But the other vision involved being in a radio station, surrounded by records, and being one cool ass bastard, you know, speaking wisdom and clever witticisms to the masses. So in the span of the two hours or so that John Lennon played DJ, talked Beatles, complimented Electric Light Orchestra, and genuinely seemed to enjoy chatting with Dennis. It wasn't his fame that lit me up. It was his humility. It was his normalcy. Because here he is, the most famous musician on the planet, the most visible for sure. And he sounded like some kid who just loved radio and records. You know? That's what got the synapses firing in my brain. It was like that neon Pepsi sign overlooking the East River that I'd seen throughout my childhood, especially driving along the FDR at night. One second it was pitch black. Ordinary stretch of Queen's skyline. The next it was this huge red fluorescent heartbeat reflecting off the water. That's what happened inside me that afternoon. And in the aftermath of eavesdropping on this unique little slice of history, I found myself feeling surprisingly low, depressed, even. And to be honest with you, everyday life really never held much luster for me anyway. I think you can tell that. Home life was not especially remarkable, let alone enjoyable, and life outside the house was not much different. It was just eh. But I had just heard proof that there was something more out there beyond my little New York berb. Something special. And I wanted special. Almost without realizing it, I am started seeing the world through a British rock and roll lens. And it wasn't just the music, it was the wit, the phraseology, the sensibility, the feeling that life could be clever, imaginative, and just a little more than eccentric, which probably explains why I fell for Monty Python's Flying Circus so hard. Because it all seemed to come from the same place. One that was infinitely more interesting than the one I happen to be living in. The connection between all of it, the British comedy, the British music, all that stuff. It practically screamed at me. But there was something else buried in there too. It was almost like one of those Paul is dead messages that people swore they heard when they played certain later period Beatles records backwards. Only this was not a hidden message. It was an underlying philosophy that seemed to run through both British rock music and British comedy. Nonconformity. Make your own rules. Just be goddamn clever about it. It was the first time in my life that I'd been creatively turned on, though I didn't consciously think of it that way at the time. All I knew was that whenever I listened to music or comedy from across the pond, something about it just felt right. I felt like I was amongst my people. I felt like I was home. And I think I finally understand why. It wasn't just the way they spoke, it was the way they told the stories. It was their ease with irreverence. There it is. The stories themselves were wonderfully ordinary. There wasn't anything particularly earth shattering about them, but somehow the people telling them made the ordinary feel fascinating. They made you lean in. Now take John Lennon that afternoon with Dennis Elsus. He was not trying to sound profound. I mean he was talking about records he loved, he was giving Electric Light Orchestra credit for taking ideas beyond where the Beatles had gone, and casually admitting that he had nicked, which is another way of saying stolen, little musical ideas from other artists. I absolutely loved that. I mean, think about this. One of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, a total legend, openly giving credit to other musicians, laughing at himself, not taking himself seriously at all, and talking about music with the enthusiasm of a lifelong fan instead of a rock god, which so many of us considered him, and still do. Honesty, humility, and a parched, unpretentious wit. That was the template right there. It was probably just another Saturday afternoon for John Lennon. Or maybe not, considering his love for the medium of radio. But for an eleven-year-old kid sitting alone in his room in upstate New York, it just very quietly became a moment that changed the direction of a life. But the trajectory of an eleven year old's life can only shift so much. It didn't much matter if I was scouring New York City rock stations for the next thing that might alter my reality. I still had to go through the motions of being the youngest Whitaker in the house. And punk Williker in the neighborhood. See a lot of kids in the neighborhood, they couldn't pronounce Whitaker, so punk Williker. And truth be told, I was not especially psyched about either assignment, at home or out there in the world. What did change, though, was where I devoted my imagination. I obsessively listened to my brother's albums, the ones he treated like shit, by the way. I devoured music magazines, I watched every rock movie I could find on television, which was normally Thanksgiving because Yellow Submarine was on, and that was fine. Always checked out Don Kirschner's rock concert on Saturday nights, and became like Olivia Newton John. I was hopelessly devoted to Monty Python's Flying Circus on Channel 13, W-N-E-T, if you're a call there buff. Though none of it felt like a calling at the time, not even a glimmer. I wasn't sitting there thinking, hey, you know what? This is what I'm going to do with my life. I was just entranced with the music, comedy, and the stories that were being featured across so many different mediums, you know? Radio, TV, movies. So without realizing it, my life slowly began to revolve around these moments when I could disappear into that world again. And considering all this, you'd think I would have been one of those dorky kids who pretended to have his own radio station in his bedroom or pretended to interview rock luminaries from the 60s with a hairbrush for a microphone or something. But I was not that kind of kid. As dorky and chubby as I was, I still felt that was not cool. For some inexplicable reason, I had that internal standard that I held myself to, and I still do. And I've only recently come up with a name for that. The someday standard. Of course, I wasn't nearly as cool in real life as I imagined my future self to be. So I totally would not have called it that back then. But then I think about the feeling that lived inside me throughout the 70s, and that's exactly what it was. I actually believed that there would come a day when I would have a cool job like that. Not then, definitely not the next day, but someday. And I think something just clicked on me. Just now, actually. I have spent an awful lot of my life living in the future instead of the present. Which, now that I think about it, it meets out something my wife has been telling me throughout our entire 30 year marriage. Almost thirty years. You're never really in the moment. And she's right. As many times as I have refuted it, she is absolutely right. And it all started with that goddamn Sunday standard. It was there in the 70s. It followed me through the 80s and the 90s, and if I'm being completely honest, it is still riding shotgun. It's a very odd, yet kind of comforting feeling to trust your future self more than your present self. And while this was all well and dandy in the dream tank, life has this pain in the ass habit of insisting you participate in it. Whether you're ready or not, adulthood starts sending you these unwanted invitations. School, chores, jobs, responsibilities, and the worst of all, expectations. And in my case, a whole lot more responsibility than I probably should have been carrying, you know? Because I did. I showed up for family and friends and school and work. I did what needed doing. I don't deserve a medal for that. But you know what? Mentally, I was never there. Well, almost never. Whenever I found myself doing something out of obligation, which was pretty much anything outside my room, the Sunday standard would quietly tap me on the shoulder and say, um, pardon me, but no, this is not it. And as devoted as I have always been and always will be to the Beatles, it was the Rolling Stones who, unknowingly, provided the soundtrack to the Someday Standard. A month after the Dennis Elsis John Lennon interview, they released a song called Time Waits for No One. And it wasn't considered a Stones classic, but for some reason it took a permanent residence in my mind. There was an eerie yet raw yearning to it. A quiet sense that life was moving forward whether I was prepared for it or not. Because that tune really was the perfect sonic companion piece to the Sunday standard. Even as an 11-year-old, I had this persistent feeling that there was something waiting for me out there in the ether. Had no idea what it was. I just knew it wasn't whatever I was doing in any given moment. But what I could not have possibly predicted was that another 17 years would pass before I would finally shoehorn my head out of the southern hemisphere of my body and grant myself permission to pursue the life I'd suspected was waiting for me all along. Never being one to seriously consider what was right or even good for Ray Whitaker, I finally decided it was time to look into this whole radio thing. And yes, I am very much aware of the douchebag pretentiousness of referring to myself in the third person. It just entertains me. So there it is. Not to dream about it, not to imagine it, but to actually do something about it. So it's 17 years later. Living down the Jersey Shore, there are several radio stations in the area that I could have just walked into and started asking questions and just starting at the bottom, you know. But I was so intimidated. I was scared to death. But thankfully I remembered that there was a gentleman who lived across the street from my parents, who was a well-known announcer at a Nashbury Park radio station, WJLK. His name was Dick Lewis, just a lovely man. So I went to him. I said, listen, what should I do? And he said very warmly, without hesitation, just go to Brookdale Community College and take the radio course. That'd be your first step. So I did. It's 1988, 89, something like that, I forget. And not long after my chat with Mr. Lewis, I found myself sitting in a classroom with students who are about eight to ten years younger than I was, you know, learning the history and the fundamentals of broadcasting. And not being a very classroom-oriented person, it didn't take very long to realize that that was not where I was going to learn radio. Not for me. In that tracks, because I suck as a theoretical learner. But what was very necessary, even sitting there in that classroom, was that for the first time in my adult life, in my entire life, I was honoring myself. And considering that, you would have thought that the Someday Standard would have finally stretched out in a hammock, stamped the search officially over, and taken a long overdue nap. But it didn't. And it's very strange to carry something around in your imagination for all those years, and it finally begins to take shape in the real world. Because up till then, radio had just been an ideal. Something permanently held in the poised position or paused position, whichever. Always waiting, always, you know, someday. And then, almost without realizing it, I crossed an invisible line. Kind of like Dorothy, stepping out of the farmhouse after touching down an Oz and into Munchkin Land, from a sepotoned world to a technicolor one. I wasn't fantasizing about it anymore. I was actually, surprisingly, walking toward it. And what made it even stranger was that I was choosing a direction that didn't make a whole lot of sense to anyone else I knew. And that was fine. I mean, some paths are not meant to be explained while you're walking them. They may be understood years later, they may not be, but that's their problem, not yours. Anyway, the actual on-air studio at Brookdale totally exceeded my long mystical wonder about what it would be like to be in a broadcast booth. It turns out that it felt less like a professional booth, and more like another room that made perfect sense for me to be in. The board, the wall of records and CDs, the real-to-reel machines, the acoustic panels, the dim lighting, it just screamed at me, where the hell have you been? For Christ's sakes. But I will tell you that in the top tier of my imagination, I always pictured my first station being a rock station. That was the ultimate. But this was a smooth jazz station. And I was very alright with that. Because at the time, New York City had a station called CD 101.9. And for my money, it was the coolest goddamn station I had ever heard. The late 80s. Emotive saxophones, sultry singers, everything sounded sophisticated, unhurried, and kind of cinematic, really. And I remember being in this community college radio station that played the same kind of music, and I'm thinking, you know what? This feels right. And thinking back on it now, I was simultaneously proud of myself for taking these initial steps toward what would turn out to be a much longer journey. And absolutely terrified at the thought of cracking the mic for the very first time. I mean, all those years devoted to wanting to be in this environment. And now there I was. This close to being the one who lit the on the air sign outside the studio door. And I was not at all acquainted with my actual voice. Not just the sound of it, but the character and the comfort behind it. I had no clue how many years it would take before I would discover exactly what I wanted to hear coming out of my own mouth and what I wanted to feel when it happened. It had to be a solar plexian moment. You know the feeling. Right there in the pit of your stomach, where something just feels undeniably right or wrong. And truth be told, if someone told me it would take another 36 or 37 years of mistakes, stumbles, crushing self-doubt, and more than a few firings before I finally begin sounding like myself, I honestly don't know whether I would have had the courage to power on that on the air sign at Brookdale Community College. Then again, maybe that's the whole point. In certain instances, ignorance really is bliss. Or maybe that's how the roadmap gets written in the first place. And to go back to the egg, as it were. I mean, I couldn't very well wrap this up without at least one Beetle reference. Fast forward to 2010, maybe it was 2011. My wife, Laurel, and I were working at the radio station on Martha's Vineyard, WMVY. And we were manning the station's booth at the Newport Folk Festival. And I'm standing there, you know, handing out stickers and talking to other people, when I hear this incredibly familiar voice talking to Laurel. You know, asking about the station, where we're located, what the format is, all the usual questions. But that voice, I knew it. It had been living in my head since I was 11 years old, so I looked over, and god damn it, it was Dennis Elsus. What in the holy hell? So I waited until he and Laurel were finished chatting, and I walked over, shook his hand, and I said, You're Dennis Elsus, right? He smiled and said, Yes, I am. And I told him that I'd listened to his John Lennon interview in real time back in September of 74 when I was an 11-year-old sitting alone in my room in upstate New York. And I told him how much that afternoon meant to me. And that I now host my own Beatles program on WMBY called Just Four Guys. And I also mentioned, and this is true, I was putting together a show about the Beatles and Electric Light Orchestra because of something John had said during that interview with him. Without missing a beat, Dennis said, you know what? I'll send you that clip. What's your email address? And within a week, I had it. And today, that very program, thanks to him, is sitting in the MVYradio.org archives. It's also on TuneIn. Now you have to remember, this was before you could simply grab the audio off YouTube and use it. But there I was. 36 or 37 years later, shaking the man's hand at Newport Folk Festival. I'd been working at that radio station on the vineyard on and off for a long time and many other radio stations up until that point, and then receiving the very piece of audio that had unknowingly set my direction in life. You know what? There is no maybe about it. The detours, they really were the roadmap. I'm Ray Whitaker.