These are transcripts to events. People gather, sometimes on bike, sometimes on foot, always at night. They bring their radios to guide them. For a half hour our show illuminates a path through the city. These words are meant to be heard and spoken. Some of these words are directions. We want you to follow us as we explore the city.

Instructions:

Find a copy of John Fahey's song "Sligo river blues" and play as accompaniment while reading.

Definitions:

Mixtape - A collection of songs and sounds put together. When you compile a list of songs into a new order, you have recoded the language of the music into your own series of meanings. Often, this is intended for someone you care about, given as a present.

{Okay, this is a letter to a friend. We're going to go for a bike ride. The first thing you are going to do is step out of your house and start riding towards the nearest major street. Don't go too fast -- we'll turn down the first side street.}

Active Radio - To mobile community, a verb. This word is what the project is all about. The term is still elusive because we are in the process of defining it for ourselves.

{While we're riding, lets talk about what this all about. Radio is a very personal thing. When you listen to it, it feels like one person is talking to you, not to a vast group of listeners in an auditorium somewhere. Radio is a very local thing too -- these conversations are flung through the air and only reach as far as the strength of the signal. We've created this to emphasize radio's greatest strengths, that it's local and that it's personal.}

The City - A center of population, commerce, and culture. A town of significant size and importance.

Our city is Providence, a post-industrial town in New England, where we make our livings. It is the "Renaissance City." A couple hours between New York and Boston, it is the awkward sibling stuck in between. Roger Williams called Providence "a place for persons distressed for conscience." In certain ways we're part resident, part outsider -- in a culture of cars we ride bicycles. This place might not be our city forever. By being here and living here we make it ours, and we share possession, it's not my city or your city, it's our city.

{Go straight for one more block past the school buses. See the house on the corner? There's something I want to show you. Look behind the gates, there's a fountain. When I biked by during the summer, the fountain was on, it was gurgling, but now every time I ride past, it's silent and it just looks sort of wet because of the way it is painted. I don't know why I think this fountain is important, but it's not just because of the pretty water sounds it used to make. Something about the spirit of placing this gurgling thing in the corner of a yard, facing the street, makes it like a little offering to the neighborhood. And without the water, it seems muted in some way. Every time I ride by I have this small wish that the water will be on again. That thought keeps my walks around this corner feeling expectant, like waiting for a postcard or a letter in my mailbox without knowing if it will ever come.}

Density of the city - We pick and choose our place in the layers of the city. The maps typically associated with a place only illuminate roads, water bodies, and the occasional landmark. But the city is composed of much more. Each day we carve pathways and lay out new maps with our stories. In this density of different routes we can easily find ourselves lost.

{At the end of the block, we're going to go to the right around this corner underneath the large tree.}

So much of this is a confusing love affair -- many romances overlapping: Providence, urbaness, the night, music, friends, and riding bicycles.Traveling to other places it becomes clear how much of this is about the bonds of community. Providence is familiar, Providence is home, Providence is more than just its morphing physicality of brick buildings and bombed out pot hole riddled streets, sweeping up into a neat, hip, clean city. There are a lot of people involved in this constant growth, a lot of people in love with this place.

{Coming up on the left there is a chain link fence, and the bunny is not there... there's no bunny. In late spring, my partner and I would pass by, there was a bunny that was living in that fence, it was shoved waist high into the pole at the end here - -some child's discarded stuffed animal left to linger on the sidewalk. It was moved a couple of times but never left the corner. Sometimes, I used to find it shoved inside the pole head down, butt up. Any time I had a flat tire, or for some other reason decided to walk home, I'd pass by this corner to check on the bunny, and it was always there. The afternoon I broke up with my partner, I went by the corner and there was no bunny. And so I thought, no bunny, no more, it was over, and my partner agreed.}

For the people who experience these events first hand it is contrived and not imaginative. They are not there by happenstance, their route is intentionally planned and ordered. The radio talks about, and scores music to what is immediately in front of their eyes. In a way it's like going to a play, with participants as both spectator and performer. The performance of the participant is scripted but unrehearsed, and as directors we have little to no control over their improvisations. Misreading a line could lead towards a wrong turn. The performance they are viewing is the city; the performance city is viewing is them.

{I was recently talking with my friend about the nature of Providence. There is this constant wall that is put up between strangers on the street. This disassociation is so strange in a city that is at times painfully small. There are pockets where those walls fall, but at most times when wandering the streets you often feel the stares of the people around you. A weight lies on top of the city and its inhabitants compelling us to shut out others, a weight that can be lifted simply by a smile and a warm hello. But at times it seems unmovable.

At the end of this collinade of trees we reach our conclusion. This place is somewhere I like to take my friends, particularly at night. For many, the journey is their first time to the space, most never even imagined it existed. This massive plaza is swallowed in the tininess of downtown and its unconnected streets, left for only the pigeons to enjoy. I found this place the first summer I was in Providence. I was making this place my home. I love to wander the city at night, because the streets are left open for anyone to claim.}

Click here to listen to an episode of Mixtape for the City.

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