Shadows and Haiku
Airdate:
Thursday - November 28, 1963
WOR Show Original Airing
Show Description
"For this week we are dispensing with our loud and raucous and sometimes sinister theme. But I'll tell you this - we not dispensing with our loud and raucous and sometimes sinister attitude! That is impossible to eradicate I'm afraid in this somewhat loud, raucous, and sinister age"
"Education either sneaks up and belts you behind the ear or it doesn't"
"Life is a fist fight and we all feel that one day it's all going to straighten out"
Looking in the microscope at school he compares what he sees with life and people. The Brownian Movement - being bombarded by things we never see. - Life is like this.
Shadows - Shep talks about a cartoon the Clown and how the artist's hand was seen drawing the image and the shadow followed him. The cartoon had an effect on Shep for a while about the shadows around him. He talks about the old radio show "The Shadow".
The myth of the 'man who casts no shadow'. Is history the shadow behind us? Then there is the myth of the man who casts his shadow before him. Is that his future?
Great literature is being replaced by film in today's world. The unforgettable films that you can't remember 2 years from know.
Remembering what you read puts responsibility on the reader and we are in the age of no responsibility. The world is getting more and more irresponsible hence there is less and less reading.
One Shep's favorite forms of writing is the Japanese Haiku because it has said more in less action and phraseology and because of the ancientness of it. Haiku is a 17th century classical form of Japanese poetry consisting of 17 syllables. They refer to time and seasons.
Shep reads a few Haiku poems to close the show.
Notes
No theme - For the week after Kennedy's assassination Shep played no opening or closing theme. Shep has the gain turned up so the listeners can hear the fire trucks going by outside the studio.
