Column Chronicles
 
A summer of poetic poise
 
 
Frank Cotolo
June 30, 2011
 
Every summer since our show (Cotolo Chronicles) began over a decade ago, we notice growth and personal progress. Unfortunately we never see these things in ourselves, just in our audiences and fans (sometimes the two are different categories - go figure).
 
It's not that we don't change through the years because we do change, we just don't grow much. In fact, we are decomposing at a frightening rate, and by "we" I mean me. This is bound to get worse over the next twenty years, unless a piano falls on my head in the next few days and ends this natural process.
 
I don't weep. Well, not much anyway. I feel that sustaining my meager presence on this planet continues to contribute, if only through my association with Cotolo Chronicles. In fact, I cannot think of another area in my life that supplies people with influence, inspiration and other positive reactions to a man talking his way in and out of rabbit holes for two hours a week.
 
The months and seasons have long been metaphors in the path of a person's life. The summer months are the bridges to the "September" of one's years. That autumn looms boldly once a person has reached 60, such as me. So this is a very special summer, a summer of poetic poise.
 
My personal life has been sheltered from the product that I have so liberally presented from the early days of Internet radio and through the launching of a new millennium. Once in a spell a son or two of mine have co-hosted, commingled and cooperated with the broadcasts. Another time, a wife of mine was a member of a panel of cohorts that supported the broadcast. But it wound up being my sole voice and rhythm that perpetuated the show's hours.
 
Even after all these years, people who listen to me for the first time want to know what drug I am using. Funny, but the more they listen the more they face addiction to the very voice they felt was artificially stimulated.
 
I also think about all the personalities that have come and gone since I began doing Internet radio. Most of them are on Facebook but none of them have sustained a weekly broadcast.
 
So here is the summer of Y2K plus 11 and although I still look vivacious and handsome my heart is in disrepair from the strain of love lost and the inheritance of cholesterol. And as the tepid weeks ensue I realize that this is not the summer of my discontent, this is the summer of my poetic poise. I am a walking, talking composition written in metrical feet forming rhythmical lines; some rhyme, some do not rhyme.
 
As the lightning streaks through the steaming dark of broadcast nights and sometimes shuts down the stream, I sit and sizzle, I quiver while the thoughts drizzle and when comes the images that were so vaguely defined in the motions of my mind, I still exist in the realm of all that is real. It is a realm I would never call real because that is bad English and I am here to communicate with the finest of immediately constructed language.
 
And all it comes down to is love, as the ancient poets read. It is love that is not luring or latent, indisposed and hidden. It is love that if it had a name would have no name that could be pronounced in the warm winds of summer.
 
I will never stand corrected. I will always be poised to pounce. I am a poet poised to pounce, an imperfect person providing the public with perception.
 
Is it August yet?
 
Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.

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