There's nothing on tv

I am living as if I’ve left the tv on all night.

When I wake there’s a war going on in several different mid-eastern caliphates, and it’s the anniversary of a bomb dropped on a country we’re now friendly with.

Judy Woodruff, the news reader on PBS, is selected as Joe Biden’s VP. Judy demurs as she’s a registered Republican.

Harry Truman, Democrat, Missouri, makes a statement on Fox News. He appears presidential but the sound of his voice is not reassuring.

The sound of Harry’s voice reminds me of the sound of a poet’s voice I once heard that was so disappointing. I loved the poem, I knew every word of it, but when I heard the poem read by the poet himself the words lacked the vision achieved in the poem itself.

The poem as it appeared on the page was larger than life, but the poem as it came out of the poet’s mouth sounded much too high, as if a bird was singing and not a man. The poem was, as the news reader on CNN just said of another matter, “very unique” , but the poet’s voice did not do the poem justice.

In the old days if one left the tv on all night and happened to rise at 2 or 3 am a ‘test pattern’ could be seen on the screen, there being no tv programming after midnight. The test pattern was purely visual, having no sound, and was highly disorienting, to the degree that a viewer could honestly say, “there’s nothing on tv.”