Techies

In the last month of my life, I’ve re-found a part of myself that I’d forgotten existed:  I love techies.  Those behind-the-scenes souls who fly low under the radar and like it that way.  Designing sets, lighting stages, filming show offs, minding their soundboards.  I loved them in high school, and in college, and now I’m loving them all over again in radio stations as I travel around doing interviews. 

            Techies are a special breed.  I think it has something to do with so long ago giving up on the thought of being “cool.”  And because of that, to me they define “cool.”  They possess a particular brand of freedom.  Often, they have what they call “radio faces.”  And they say it smiling, because they know that traditional good looks can be as much a “curse” as a “blessing.”   These are people who sometimes wear Coke-bottle glasses rather than bothering with contacts, and have un-fussed-over hair, big noses, skyline teeth.  These are people with huge smiles and vast minds.  Who have maybe spent less time looking in the mirror trying to change what they see, and more time with books, or listening to current events, or sitting on old couches in Green Rooms discussing the state of Humankind. 

            I have never been much of a techie.  And as a young woman, I was not an immediate match for their Green Room discussions.  In high school and college, the conversation would pause or lull when I’d walk in, but I refused to let them categorize me just because I liked life literally in the spot-light, singing and acting my way through school on a stage.  I was a girl who always had a boyfriend.  Who maybe wasn’t great at sports, but who generally got invited to do things with the ones who pushed field hockey balls around and whose hair bounced, blonde, around their high cheek bones and white, straight, teeth.  I liked those invitations.  I’ve always been able to see the human being behind the credentials, high-faluting or otherwise.  I pride myself on that.  In fact, I’ve always thought that my lack of ball-worship, and general sports spazziness, saved me from some of the pain in life.  And lead me wandering in to Green Rooms, like free zones, in the first place.  Like the one I wandered into yesterday, at Montana Public Radio.

            Immediately, I felt that old draw.  These are my people, even though they don’t know it.  I love how they laugh at things that are long crafted personal jokes, their origins in things just a little over my head.  Who have quotes taped to their desks like, America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.  — Oscar Wilde.  Oscar Wilde, who probably was the dandy he was because he was a repressed techie. 

            I’m more of a techie wanna-be than a repressed one.  I actually gave it a good shot in college, realizing that the thing that made me want the spot-light was not altogether the healthiest element of my personality, and decided that what would keep me honest in life stood a better chance behind a movie camera.  So I switched my major from Theater, to Film.  Turned out I was horrible at it.  Never had much of a mind for things like “aperture” or buttons and dials and numbers.  Ended up finding out that what I really was…was a writer.  But that’s a different story.             

              In the last month of my book tour, I have been in many radio stations across the US, and I have to say that I am at home there.  I want to go to THESE office parties.  People say all kinds of things when the tape isn’t rolling or the microphone isn’t hot.  The jokes are flying from the production room to the radio personalities—hysterical, innocent, brainiac.  I am breathless wanting to keep up, or show them that I am one of them.  But really I’m just an interviewee.  The girl in the “spotlight,” after all.  Forget promoting my book– I want to show them that I’m real.  Grounded.  That I don’t spend that much time in the mirror.  Just like in the Green Room back in high school.

            One of the radio interviewers paid me a high compliment.  It was in San Francisco, and she said, “Wow—14 unpublished books and 20 years of rejection.”  I swear she was having a flashback from her own high school days.  I nodded.  Then she said, “Were you popular in high school?”

            I didn’t know what to say.  I know her assumption was that I wasn’t.  And therein lay the compliment.  As far as she knew, I was maybe as she had been.  More techie girl than spot-light girl.  And that now, with a book on the New York Times best seller list and a big book tour under my belt, there must be people out there that I can’t wait to stick it to.  Pay-back from some sort of “Carrie-esque” prom episode.  But I can’t cough up people like that or moments like that too well.  There was the time in college when somebody let the air out of my car’s tires, and stuffed my back seat with dirty gym socks.  But that was about it. 

            “I have a lot of friends all over the place.  From all sorts of backgrounds,” I said. I wanted to say, And plenty of them are techies!  But didn’t think that much mattered to her.    

            I think what I love the most about this sub-culture of people is their lack of interest in drama.  For all their dial twisting and button pushing, to me they feel like old fashioned conversationalists.  But they don’t talk about people down the hall, as much as ideas across the radio waves.  They kick around the collective unconscious, and in their own way, help form it.  Techies simply don’t seem to take people personally.  Maybe they learned the pain in that early on, and chose instead a different perspective.  Instead, techies seem to take the world personally.  And therein lies all the interesting conversation.  Because they aren’t interested in gossip.  They’re interested in how things work and don’t work.  Operating systems.  Political machines.  Civilizations.

            And with their “radio faces” they move and shake in small rooms making sure that other people’s talking levels are sufficient, giving sound to microphones in front of other people’s mouths, and power to other people’s ideas.  I’ve never met a mean one in the bunch.  Or one I didn’t trust.  Or one that was particularly comfortable being bumped into on the street. 

            So to you techies out there, I say thank you for tolerating me all these years.  For going gentle.  For re-defining “cool.”  Sorry for shining the light on you.  Luckily, you are the ones who know how to pull the plug.