With sleeping disorders growing to epidemic proportions in our society, I feel that it is my responsibility as an oboist to offer up a unique solution to this problem, born of the countless hours I have put in to keep up my oboe playing. To that end I offer the following proposal as a boon to all insomniacs of every stripe and with every personality disorder.
My proposal is that we immediately establish “The Reed Channel”. The channel will be aired from midnight to 6 am. It will feature close-up shots of hands making oboe reeds. That is all that can be seen on “The Reed Channel”. The motto will be, “All Reeds All the Time”.
Just imagine the effect 5 minutes of watching “the Reed Channel” will have on insomniacs. I’m envisioning, and hoping for, catatonic stupor all over the late night spectrum of viewers. I have found from personal experience that even talking about “The Reed Channel” produces a kind of bemused stupor in my friends and associates.
To fill out the proposal a bit, I am also thinking of a “sound only” version of “The Reed Channel” for radio. This will feature testing oboe reeds, known as “crowing the reed”, in all stages of production. The natural white noise environment of reed crowing should help all those who resort to white noise in order to sleep.
It has been suggested that “The Reed Channel” programming be varied. Sometimes it would feature bassoon reeds, sometimes English Horn reeds, Renaissance reeds, like shawm reeds, or Crumhorn reeds. I was a bit shocked by the suggestion. I believe this kind of creativity would not serve the purpose of “The Reed Channel”, and may lead to its being too interesting. I may need to do some testing among my friends to see if this concept is as sleep inducing as the original concept of “The Reed Channel," oboe reeds only.
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Oh yeah, I knew clarinet reeds for a while, always needing to get them appropriately moistened and warmed up before they were up to the task of making noise. But then, I'm not prone to insomnia, so I'd be sleeping during the broadcasting of the wakefulness-sapping late night show.
ReplyDeleteLionel, thank you for this. I love the line: Wakefulness sapping. I bieve this should appear on all advertisements for the Reed Channel
DeleteHelp! My beautiful reply just disappeared when I pressed the Reply button above. Where did it go?? Should I have pressed the publish button below?
DeleteThis is the FIRST TIME (no kidding) that I have ever joined a blog. I'm a willing virgin, and very naive about how they work.
This time I will press the Publish button below. :o) bow for bruce
I see, above this box, a note that my comment will be visible after approval. What do I have to do, or avoid doing, in order to gain approval?
DeleteWho is doing the approving?
How long do I have to wait before I know if I've been approved of or not??
Sigh .............. :o) bow
PS: I think I've punctuated it correctly, though I'm a little unsure about a couple of the commas.
Please accept my apology that in all of this chatter, and the one piece following your chicken story, it's all been about my frustration with HOW to respond, and NOTHING about the two stories you had written. They were both wonderful. I loved them both! :o) bow
DeleteYou are NEVER going to believe this! I just woke up! No kidding!!!! What a kick.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this gift. I think I will make a copy of this article, and put it on my night stand. :o)