To drive this home was the senior-level advanced television production class where students had to not just come up with their own episodic television program but script it, record it, and – again, because faculty thought everyone wanted to be on television – host it.
Recording the program was never that much of a problem but then came the tedious debacle of editing an hour or so of raw footage down to a 15- or 30-minute program for airing on Community Channel 7. I’m sure the instructor would have preferred 30-minute programs but there was never more than one or two a semester that long when I was there. Editing an hour of video down to fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like a lot or work but we were required to include room for opening and closing credits, commercial bumpers, and even the commercials themselves. And with a couple dozen programs being created and edited, that meant production rooms and editing equipment was a premium. How many nights did we stay late into the early morning hours to meet a deadline? (See The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder)
I forget the details now but on one of the classes, toward the beginning of the semester, we were to have something completed and turned it at class that morning at 8 a.m. Whether it was the opening credits or promos for our programs or an actual episode I don’t recall, but I had been up all until the early morning hours editing. Sleep that night was brief so I could ensure I was there for class.
Neither the class nor the project are that important to this story. Instead, this story centers on the brief bit of sleep. Few people remember their dreams the next morning, yet decades later. This one played out as a 1980s sitcom version of life at the radio station. I was there and other student directors and the faculty advisor all made appearances in what was blocked off as a traditional three-camera program with us going through, seemingly, our normal daily interactions. What made it different was that there was only one sound, that of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers singing "Refugee" in what could be described as ad infinitum ad nauseam. You can try it at home, too. Watch any sitcom, turn the television volume all the way down, and then repeat track one of Damn the Torpedoes forever. Or at least the length of the sitcom.
Somewhere, somehow that what my dream that night. No laugh track. No chitter-chatter. Just...music.
I suppose Petty had been playing here and there at the time – Wildflowers was a couple of years old by that point – but I don’t know why this of all of his songs (or really, any song) was chosen to be the soundtrack for this sitcom farce. One seldom questions one’s own dreams on such things.
Come wake up time, it was turning out to be one of those mornings where you felt more tired getting out of bed than you did hours before getting in. Sitting in the classroom that morning, there to turn in the project (and arguably to keep up my thus-far perfect attendance), I remember thinking that was a terrible dream. For most of that day, close to 20 years ago, the sound of "Refugee" echoed in my ears and it and for a while I tended to bristle at hearing it.
This week I listened to it - and much more - again. He made it seem so easy. So damned easy.
Rock on, Tom. Enjoy side two.
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Wake Up Time
(Tom Petty)
Tom Petty
From the album Wildflowers
1994
You follow your feelings, you follow your dreams
You follow the leader into the trees
And what's in there waiting, neither one of us knows
You gotta keep one eye open the further you go
You never dreamed you'd go down on one knee, but now
Who could have seen, you'd be so hard to please somehow
You feel like a poor boy, a long way from home
You're just a poor boy, a long way from home
And it's wake up time
Time to open your eyes
And rise and shine
You spend your life dreaming, running 'round in a trance
You hang out forever and still miss the dance
And if you get lucky, you might find someone
To help you get over the pain that will come
Yeah, you were so cool back in high school, what happened
You were so sure not to have your spirits dampened
But you're just a poor boy alone in this world
You're just a poor boy alone in this world
And it's wake up time
Time to open your eyes
And rise and shine
Well, if he gets lucky, a boy finds a girl
To help him to shoulder the pain in this world
And if you follow your feelings
And you follow your dreams
You might find the forest there in the trees
Yeah, you'll be alright, it's just gonna take time, but now
Who could have seen you'd be so hard to please somehow
You're just a poor boy a long way from home
You're just a poor boy a long way from home
And it's wake up time
Time to open your eyes
And rise and shine
'Cause it's wake up time
It's time to open your eyes
And rise and shine