I often have "Late Dreams" that arise from circumstances beyond my control. For instance, I dream I have taken a wrong turn inside the building and I have somehow wandered into my sister station and yet, for some strange unfathomable reason, I am unable to navigate back to the studio to which I belong, the building having turned into a weird kind of labyrinth covered with posters of Howard Stern, Don Imus and warthogs. There are also normal 'Late Dreams' that are due to the normal kind of situations everyone else in the universe experiences. We are talking, late due to alarm not working, late because of traffic, and late because you tripped over the dog getting out of bed and broke your nose.
Other anxiety dreams arise in relationship to the dreaded "Dead Air." Nobody likes the idea of 'Dead Air." See, I bet I don't even have to explain to you what that term means. But just in case you don't, "Dead Air" is nothing but complete silence on the radio. Either you stopped talking and you can't think of anything to say or somehow the song you were playing suddenly stopped, won't continue playing and you can't find ANYTHING else in the studio to play...except a hoary old obscure Lawrence Welk single covered with dust leftover from the previous format.
There is another type of 'Dead Air Dream' that resulted from having been locked out. However, it is more than real for many, the majority of times due to the location of the Porcelain god. My locked out nightmare was a reality. I was working in San Francisco, when after having checked out the facilities down the hall, I returned and realized I locked myself out (the door rigged to lock behind you once you leave). After bellowing and banging on the door (it was early, a little after 6:00AM in the morning), the news guy finally heard me and opened up the door. I was locked out long enough that the entire record had tracked thru. I distinctly remembered the sweating and the dread had he not heard me, altho' I'm sure he would've noticed me not patching him in for his 6:30 newscast. If I had significant amounts of "Dead Air" that morning, there'd be hell to pay. Luckily, it was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which tracks together, so there was no dead air in between the tracks.
After my last post touching on dreams, I received this post from Jon Melander, a radio guy I connected with thru Google Plus. He wrote about his 'locked out' experience:
"I once worked for a station that was in the last 4 rooms of the ground floor of a Holiday Inn...the two bathrooms that were a part of the area the air staff had access to, had been converted to a record library and storage, so when you needed to go, you had to put on a long song (not real easy at a Top40/Easy Listening station, depending on who was in charge of the format that week) and then run down the hall to the restrooms by the pool area. One early morning, I managed to leave my key sitting on the broadcast console, realizing this right as the door locked shut behind me...I had to run to the restroom, then run to the hotel front desk and wait for the attendant to finish checking someone out before asking for their spare room key...I got the door back open just in time to key the mike as the song ended (didn't even have time to sit down), threw a PSA cartridge in and started it, then cued up another song, read two commercials, started the next song, grabbed my key, then ran back to the front desk to give them back the spare key...I still have nightmares occasionally where I can hear the song ending and can't get back through the door.
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