An imperfect week at KRML. And perhaps a little wisdom from the ancient Greeks.
The ancient Greeks went to extraordinary lengths to make their buildings slightly imperfect.
The Parthenon’s columns swell subtly in the middle. Its horizontal lines aren’t entirely horizontal. Even the columns lean inward.
These weren’t construction errors. Someone thought very carefully about making something not quite straight.
I love that.
Perfection may satisfy the intellect of some. But perfection is entirely subjective. One person’s architectural masterpiece is another person’s Soviet government ministry.
Imperfection, meanwhile, engages the imagination.
Which brings us to KRML, where we’ve been engaging quite a few imaginations this week.
Our transmitter developed an attitude problem.
A live podcast didn’t start on time because several technological gremlins apparently decided to form a union.
And some necessary roof repairs provided our studios with an unexpected percussion section. One that couldn’t keep time and didn’t take requests.
Nobody was particularly enchanted by any of this.
Especially us.
But it got me thinking about what makes something worth listening to.
A perfectly predictable rhythm eventually disappears into the background. Yet the faint scrape of fingers sliding across a guitar’s frets during a particularly passionate passage? That makes us listen.
Someone is there. Someone is feeling something.
We could digitally remove that noise.
Please don’t.
And now we’re entering a peculiar era when even a beautifully constructed essay can arouse suspicion because it’s too beautifully constructed.
Too polished. Too balanced. Too relentlessly reasonable.
Must be AI.
What an extraordinary reversal. For centuries we’ve taught people to eliminate the rough edges from their creative work. Now those same rough edges may be what convince us there’s a human being behind it.
Of course, there’s a difference between an intentional imperfection and a transmitter throwing a tantrum. The ancient Greeks probably didn’t regard collapsing scaffolding as an exciting architectural flourish.
And neither do we regard a late podcast as artistic expression.
We’d prefer the transmitter behaved, the podcasts started on time, and the roofers discovered the joys of silent construction.
But the point of KRML was never to create a perfectly polished machine.
It was to create a gathering place. A home for unexpected music, imperfect conversations, interesting neighbors, local artists, and ideas that sometimes take a decidedly crooked path before arriving somewhere wonderful.
Human-curated radio. Made by actual humans.
Humans who occasionally push the wrong button, mispronounce the name of a band, or discover that their transmitter has developed strong opinions about its working conditions.
We’ll keep fixing the equipment. We’ll keep improving the broadcasts. And we’ll probably keep apologizing when things don’t go quite as planned.
But we’re not particularly interested in removing the humanity.
Because sometimes the most memorable part of a song is the sound that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Leave the fret noise in.
Just maybe not the jackhammers.
KRML 94.7 FM — Monterey Bay. Wonderfully human. Occasionally operational.
That truck is perfect. Especially with its patina. JMHO