Ontological Damnation

I would sit in my Driftwood Room in Cloquet, Minnesota in various positions throughout the tiny, confined space listening to his stories. I would sit with my back aligned horizontally across the mattress, my legs dangling from the edge of the bed. I would sit sometimes half upon the sheets my upper body and head hanging upside down and the blood would rush in great waves of discomfort to my brain and I would be listening to his stories. I would sit standing upon my feet pacing the entire length of the ten foot room. I would sit on the dresser where the cable television sat, my arm resting on the television’s shoulder and my legs crossed as I thought superficially about the story he was telling. I would sit in the chair before my computer screen and I would have the look of staring with great concentration at something on the CRT but all I was doing was listening to his stories.

Benjamen Walker’s Your Radio Nightlight was a sporadically produced radio program broadcast on WZBC Boston during a four-year period spanning 2000 to 2004. I don’t know what WZBC Boston is, but I happened across the radio program no less. In 2005 and 2006, Benjamen Walker was producing a different, but similar, radio program called Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything and on that program’s now defunct website toeradio.org, Benjamen Walker made available the MP3s of thirteen Your Radio Nightlife episodes. I sat and listened to them each during a short stretch of time. I would work during the day in my Driftwood Room on market research, telecommuting to Cedar Rapids, Iowa from Cloquet, Minnesota and I would put in my hours during the day. Afterward, at least during this stretch of time, I would listen to Benjamen Walker’s Your Radio Nightlight in three episode bursts with lengthy, arbitrary breaks in between episodes.

Your Radio Nightlight tells the stories of the depraved individuals living and working among us in a documentary fashion that any listener of Radio Lab or This American Life is surely familiar with. In Your Radio Nightlife, Benjamen Walker interviews the principal characters involved in these post-modern fantasies and more often than not, the stories he tells are his own. During the show, Benjamen Walker asks these many curious bystanders penetrating questions about the absurd circumstances of his stories, for instance how did he come to meet a three-headed dog and what are these men chasing us with guns for? Listening to these observant people calmly explain to the excitable and dramatic Benjamen Walker how these total fucking insane events came to pass you get the unnerving feeling that these people are agents of the situation. These people are responsible.

Benjamen Walker narrates his radio programs, sometimes in the first-person and sometimes in the third-person, in a stressful tone. Sometimes listening to Benjamen Walker I would hold my breath for long periods of time. I would stop breathing so that I could hear perfectly what he was going to say next. More often than not, he would surprise me with a quick plot change or witty turn of phrase but even in those moments, I could not shake the feeling that I was induced to choke myself at the sheer drama of his stories.

At some point in the recent past, the episodes of Your Radio Nightlight detailed below went offline. Through various re-formats of my hard drive and the accidental disposal of DVDs containing my archive of Benjamen Walker, I lost possessions of these stories. Thanks to the awesome power of Ask Metafilter (in particular, the gallant knave), I now once again possess thirteen episodes of Your Radio Nightlife. I make available these thirteen episodes as a service to the public, may we all enjoy Your Radio Nightlife forever more.

• Escape
• Underworld
• The Night
• Holy War
• What a Wonderful World
• Greater Depression
• Greatest Depression
• Noa Noa, Part I
• Noa Noa, Part II
• Noa Noa, Part III
• Man without a Country
• Resurrection Rashoman
• A Sacrifice