Tuning In to the Story
I seem destined to learn the same lesson repeatedly. And I’m glad for it.
My Monday was planned perfectly. I was to meet Wayne at the door and show him to my “project” - a 1960s Hi-Fi unit that had been a wedding gift for my parents. I spent the first 19 years of my life listening to the robust tones of yesteryear emanating from this chunky Viking Console which I think of as half-furniture-half-electronic wonder. A number of enquiries across southern Ontario led me to possibly the last remaining person willing to tackle the next stage of restoration. And thus he appeared, bag in hand, backlit by the morning light. The plan was to leave the expert to his work as I would attend to the pressing matters of film editing and post-weekend correspondence.
In what started as a hold-this-flashlight scenario, I became an apprentice for the day. Truly, Wayne’s penchant for colourful metaphors exceeded the bounds of the technical language I had been expecting. While the tale of Wayne versus the Viking would certainly have earned an E rating if told verbatim, the story that emerged throughout the day is the one that I continue to treasure.
As the old Hi-Fi yielded deeper and deeper layers of transistors, resistors, capacitors and relays, it was clear that Wayne was in his flow. Undistracted by the world beyond this tiny electronic realm, his story emerged - faintly at first, then in a more coherent stream. I was undone by his narratives about the straitjacket of education, the promise of opportunities in the military service, the allure of psychoactive substances and the outcomes of choices made. The analog logic of the micro-powered world was, for Wayne, far more predictable than the organic plane of life, love and loss.
A mid-afternoon field trip to every pawn shop and thrift store in town was ostensibly to find a suitable donor amplifier. At 52 years old, I trotted alongside like an eager child on a mission to the hardware store with his Dad. This was a quest of old - free from the easy wins of Google and Amazon Prime. It was a deepening of my education as the wizard’s apprentice. We chatted as we rummaged through second-hand gadgets older than hip hop. More opportunities for anecdotes and memories.
When the Viking finally assumed its voice, it came as Wayne’s life story - staccato at first, then legato. What I thought would be a straightforward service call became a way for me to tune in to something important. As I now sit inches from the speakers adrift on high fidelity swells of saxophone-driven jazz, I appreciate the music all the more as I perceive echos of the story deep beneath the waves.
