To Do Anything Nameless and Joy-making.
Two weeks from today I’m hosting something very special to me: the One Year Anniversary of the Morse Code Podcast. It’s happening Sunday October 13 at the Five Spot in East Nashville, 6 - 8 pm. I want everyone to come so tickets are just ten bucks. Grab your tix here.
There's nothing quite like the Morse Code Podcast live show. We did a version of this back in April and it was the most fulfilling night of my professional life.
A friend asked me at lunch the other day where I thought I was heading, what I might be in five years. I hadn’t put it to myself in words until that moment but I just blurted out: “I want to be this generation’s Garrison Keillor.”
Maybe this is the beginning of that journey.
Several excellent artists will perform. We’ll watch 3 short films from directors whose work just screened at the Nashville Film Festival. And I'll lead a piquant interview with three published writers from Nashville’s exploding literary scene.
I’m excited about this show for three reasons:
First, I’m a huge fan of each of these artists and have drawn personal inspiration and encouragement from them, both in their work and in the vulnerability and candor they've shared with me on the podcast.
Second, the live aspect addresses what I think of as a critical vacuum surrounding podcasts and device-bound communication in general — the absence of physical gathering. I love live events, the uncertainty that surrounds them, the unduplicability of a single, unscripted gathering. It’s so fun, and a little scary, to walk into a room not quite knowing what will happen.
Finally, the Anniversary show is, as best I understand it, in line with my life’s purpose, which is to promote the growth of creative expression in people and in culture, and increase human fellowship through a collective, repeated exposure to the essential vulnerability that is making art. That’s what I’m trying for. We’ll see how good I do.
As I've said many times, I'm in love with talent. My need to be around it has governed most of my decisions — right or wrong— my whole life.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing someone dowhat they were so obviously put on earth to do. Like Salinger wrote in Frank and Zooey, “to do anything it all beautiful on a stage, anything nameless and joy-making, anything above and beyond the call of theatrical ingenuity…”
More that, please. More joy-making. Less obsession with wealth and fame. More focus on doing, less on getting.
The Morse Code Podcast is an oasis of experiment, a place apart, where we can spend a few precious minutes in a community of tryers and tinkerers and wizards and yeomen, people for whom the grip of daily living has acquired a hold not yet total. We who sneak out to the shed to work on a painting or a poem, who take the time to venture down an weirding path, who make the green garden of a human life a little more gentle, or wild.
It’s a place of practice, of endless arriving. Whether you’re a full time professional or just starting out, I want you to be — as I have been over and over again throughout the course of this first season and its 46 episodes — inspired, emboldened, encouraged — to take a chance on yourself and your imagination, whatever form that takes for you.
If my mission resonates, please buy your tickets to the show. And want to know a super easy way to help me spread the word? Share the poster I put on my IG, on your stories.
I’m checking with the 5 Spot to see if there’s a live streaming option. Will share the result of that inquiry next week.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me. Season 2 of the Morse Code Podcast launches October 17 with Mason Mecartea from Stranger Things.
Korby
One last look! Check out the lineup!
Music by:
Abigail Rose
Alex Wong
Andi Marie Tillman
Andrew Combs
Anthony DaCosta
Korby Lenker
Robby Hecht
Walker Burroughs
Short films by:
Cody Duncum
Mason Mecartea
Mila Vilaplana
Interviews with authors:
Claire Gibson
Liz Riggs
Yurina Yoshikawa