I can listen to this long running show for months and months, while doing weekend chores, and think only “Eh, there they go again”. Sometimes the music is great; usually it doesn’t suck. And the variety of skits and gimmicks are, after all this time, safely predictable, steadfast.

And every week I listen as Garrison Keillor continues the same story he’s been telling over 2 or 3 decades, in that same voice, with a narrative style like a spring lake’s sun-broken sheets of ice bumping against each other, as they melt into something else. It’s like half listening to an old friend who repeats himself, as the tea grows cool in my cup.

Then, every once in a while, the rutty rambling, sliding and shifting nudges me out of the micro and into the macro — onto the desolate prairie that no one settled, until there was no place else. Then for a minute, I slip beneath the deep water, immersed in something that was hidden. Every once in a while, like a hypnotist who made me forget he was even speaking or that I was listening, Garrison completely nails it.

Then I listen with both ears, and I remember what I’m listening for. On the prairie I’ve never been to, in the waters where we’ll all sink or swim.

- Mykl