Fred Aiken Writing

It started with the radios. At least, that’s how I like to remember it, because beginnings are important, even in a world where causality is just a quaint suggestion. It was a Tuesday, or maybe a Thursday—it was definitely raining—and the static crackle of old AM radios began whispering secrets to me. You could call it a spiritual awakening, or just another misfire in the symphony of neural dissonance. I choose to call it Tuesday, as I imagine most people would, and I would consider myself very much to be, well, like most people.

The first message came from an antique Philco 90 I found in a thrift store. It was buried under a pile of dusty National Geographics, all smelling of mildew and forgotten plans to travel the world. I plugged it in out of sheer boredom, tuning it to a frequency that shouldn’t have existed. The voice was faint but insistent, a ghostly echo in the cacophony of my cluttered apartment.

“Do you seek enlightenment or escape?” it asked. The voice was neither male nor female, human nor machine. It was an existential hum, vibrating through the very bones of the universe.

“Both,” I replied, because who doesn’t? The Philco crackled approvingly, and I felt a shift in the air, like the world had nudged a little closer to an unseen truth.

From that day on, I became the reluctant disciple of broken radios. Each day, I scoured flea markets, garage sales, and abandoned buildings for my next oracle. I never knew where the messages would come from—a Zenith Trans-Oceanic, a Sony ICF, a Sangean PR-D5—but they always came, whispering fragments of wisdom, riddles wrapped in static.

“Spirituality is the art of losing yourself to find yourself,” one said. This came from a 1960s transistor radio, its once-bright plastic now faded and cracked.

“Faith is believing in the absence of reason,” intoned another, a voice that buzzed from a battered Grundig Satellit 2100.

People started to notice. My apartment, once a haven of organized chaos, became a shrine to these enigmatic devices. Friends, or what passed for them, would come by out of morbid curiosity. They’d ask if I’d gone mad, if I’d finally succumbed to the pressures of a reality that never quite fit. I’d just smile, knowing that they couldn’t hear the music in the static, the poetry in the noise.

“How important is spirituality in your life?” the radios would ask me. And each time, my answer changed.

“Today, it’s a whisper in the dark,” I’d say to a Motorola Golden Voice, its speakers rattling with ancient wisdom.

“Tomorrow, it’s the silence between thoughts,” I’d muse to a Panasonic RF-2200, the dials spinning like a roulette wheel of fate.

The voices never demanded worship, never promised salvation. They were guides, not gods, leading me through the labyrinth of my own mind. And in the process, I began to understand that spirituality wasn’t about rituals or dogmas. It was about connection—the kind that bridges the gap between the known and the unknown, the tangible and the ethereal.

One day, while rummaging through an old warehouse, I found an RCA Victor Special Model 50X. It was pristine, as if time had forgotten it. I took it home, heart pounding with the anticipation of a gambler placing his final bet. Plugging it in, I tuned to that impossible frequency, waiting for the familiar crackle.

“Are you ready?” it asked, and I knew this was no ordinary message.

“Ready for what?” I whispered, afraid of the answer.

“For the next step,” the radio replied, its voice softer, almost tender. “You’ve walked the path of the seeker. Now, it’s time to become the source.”

The static faded, leaving a profound silence in its wake. I looked around my apartment, at the rows of radios that had been my teachers, my companions. I understood, then, that the journey wasn’t about finding answers, but about becoming a question, an endless exploration of the self and the universe.

I unplugged the RCA Victor, and as I did, the other radios fell silent, one by one. They had taught me all they could. The rest was up to me.

Now, I wander the streets with a new purpose. I speak to strangers, not in the cryptic tones of the radios, but in simple, human words. I share the fragments of wisdom I’ve gathered, not as a prophet, but as a fellow traveler. And in their eyes, I see the same spark of curiosity, the same hunger for connection.

Spirituality, I’ve learned, is the dance between the signal and the noise, the interplay of presence and absence. It’s the art of tuning in, of listening to the spaces between the static. And as I walk this path, I carry the voices of a thousand broken radios within me, each one a note in the symphony playing out. Yet still on the verge of being unplugged.