Benjamin Walker at the Guardian (UK)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/benjamen-walker

Benjamin Walker Your Radio Nightlight (A handful of episodes)

http://www.4shared.com/folder/cNQtoBCW/_online.html

heart hurts

Yesterday as i was driving a client to lunch, i became increasingly aware of this clenching feeling around my heart. It felt painful, and i tried to influence it with my thoughts, like, 'Okay, take it easy, whatever this is, it's probably stress related. Try sending some care towards my heart, imagine this pain easing away as i show i care for myself'. We picked up something for him at a drive thru and i told him i was really sorry but i had this pain around my heart and it was getting worse as i was driving and i think i needed to stop back at his house, atleast for awhile.
My supervisor suggested i get checked out, and i drove to the walk in clinic nearby. An xray and ecg came back normal and healthy. Same for blood pressure. I said the weather can make it harder to breathe, which it had that day, and the couple of days before it. I had quit smoking after new year's and my breathing was gradually getting better. I don't exercise, work in a higher-stress house now with three mentally handicapped guys who need alot of attention, care and guidance, and i can't remember the last time i went more than a week without drinking.
She said she was more concerned about my breathing then my heart. She said she'll call me next week and recommend a pulmonary doctor to look further at my heart and lungs. She gave me flonase, a nasal spray, and advair, an inhaler, which she said may produce a positive effect over time. i've spent half my life smoking, what if i did do something permanent?
It's just weird. I start to feel better, and then this happens. i sense it is stress and emotion, or those are atleast a factor of it's appearance. It felt better after leaving her office after a few hours there, but i noticed it again, although more subtly and constant, after i arrived at home. Even when i tried to sleep, it was there keeping me awake enough, wanting to tell someone or cry. i felt better this morning, but then it returned not long later.
It's been there ever since. It's there right now. I'm in my early thirties, this has to pass.

Long Gone Found, Benjamin Walker

After years of searching... years of wondering if i'd ever hear his melancholy voice carry me again through his obscure imaginations- We've got

Your Radio Nightlight.

So, So, So, So, So much thanks to

Panoptican of Ontological Damnation

and his investigating my querie through metafilter.

It seems from his writing about it, it's impossible to not remember where you were when you first heard BW (Fall 2000 Boston). His stories just go so beyond what i had ever read. For the unrushed listener, they span an hour or more, each spliced with rediculous, or horrifying, true and fictional interviews from persons and his own electronic sounds hypnotically filling up time.

So gather some friends, light a joint
and lie down on that mattress together,
it's storytime.

M

M called me from san francisco this sunday, four twenty- some pot smoking holiday for major cities and small enclaves of suburban kids. he kept crying while there were long pauses in our voices. He said he was sitting in delores park, right where my van was when he shared it with me over a few months some time ago when i attempted living in s.f.

he had said on friday he had something important to tell me, i was hating the guess i picked from my mind. He was saying everything but. ' look, M, when you called me on friday you said you had something important to tell me, and i already have a feeling its something really shitty, but i want you to tell me what it is'.

something about a clinic, a test. HIV positive.

i wish i had half of his light.

M i am so sorry. i don't know why good people are always being taken out of this world, it seems. that i ever met you seems now even more special. You are like light which cannot be contained but shines on everything it sees. thank you for your smile, your dancing, your walking with me through the forest of the city, your night conversations, your music and singing, your friendship.

...

last night i dreamed i was lying in wait, following a heard of bison through a wooded land. A man i admired lied beside me, teaching me the ways of hunting. I wore a wolves skin over myself. I had just watched a special about this that night. The natives would sometimes herd hundreds of bison into areas by pretending to be wolves.

I felt admiration and trust toward the man beside me and thankfulness to be allowed instruction in this ageless, human custom. but then i looked down into myself and felt fear. i mean, this was dangerous. I could be trampled. What if real wolves came by and figured out i wasn't one of them? would i get attacked and eaten?

i wish i had written it down right away so i could have brought more understanding out of it.

www.pandora.com