Judi Dench, Philip Glass and Me, or How I Ended Up Being Interviewed on New York Public Radio

It’s another one of those crazy internet things.

I saw somewhere that there was a flickr pool related to the new book Taking Things Seriously. I’d never seen the book in person, but I had seen and loved the book's cover image on the Web. The pool description said that they would be talking about some of the entries on an upcoming show on WNYC, New York public radio, and I thought it would be kind of neat to be a part of that.

The book is a collection of odd objects that live in the homes of artists, writers, musicians, etc. and that hold special significance to them. A photo of each contributor's item appears alongside their description of why the object is meaningful. (My favorite is here.)

I decided to add a picture of my horse chestnut collection to the pool along with a description of why and how the collection started. (Click the image above to see the description.)

The next day, the phone rang. It was an associate producer with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show: one of the book's authors, Joshua Glenn, was going to be on the show, and would I be willing to come on air during that segment and talk about my horse chestnut collection? Well, um, sure, I guess...

Good thing I didn’t know more about the show when I agreed to do it or I might have been intimidated and said no. Turns out Mr. Lopate has been on the air for quite some time, speaking with guests such as Philip Glass, Chuck Close, John Cusak, Linda Thompson, Judi Dench, Sara Jessica Parker, etc. etc. etc. [Gulp.]

I did the interview live on the appointed day. I drew on some of my media prep skills from back in the public relations days, so I don’t even think I made a fool out of myself. (If I had, I’d never have mentioned anything to anyone about it, of course.) You can listen to it by going here then scrolling down to the “Taking Things Seriously” portion of the show. (To be frank, my submission didn’t make exactly the right kind of sense to be featured, but the producers didn’t have all that many submissions to choose from. So I’m happy to be filler.)

Weird. Exciting. Strange. But I guess I can both add and cross off “being interviewed on New York City public radio” from my life list.

The only thing I regret is not having said something more profound about my horse chestnut collection during the interview. I would have wanted to say that part of the reason I collect and photograph the chestnuts has something to do with reminding myself that the utter uniqueness of even the most lowly natural thing reveals something true and mysterious and beautiful about its creator. Or something like that.