As it does every once in a while, the subject of, “How do you visualize OTR” has come up again on the Internet OTR Digest. The question always seems to come up in terms of, “do you see color or black-and-white?” No one else, apparently, experiences OTR the way I do, or there’d be a third choice - none-of-the-above.

See, I don’t visualize OTR…never have. I don’t see the room, or the walls, or the gun, or the moll (sorry, thinking about Phil Marlowe). I don’t “see” much of anything, although I might occasionally get a glimpse of something, the same way you might remember seeing a friend at FOTR when describing it. But I don’t have moving pictures running in my head when I listen to Old-Time Radio. I experience it aurally.

About the closest I can come to describing something so terribly subjective and, frankly, non-intuitive, is…well, think of yourself listening to your family at dinnertime while sitting in the closet. I know, it’s an odd concept, but while you’re “eavesdropping” on a conversation, you don’t “visualize” the dining room, the curtains, and such, you instead concentrate on the discussion while seeing nothing more than the darkness of the closet. This doesn’t take anything away from the experience…indeed, it has a tendency of placing me “within” the action, as I’m right around the corner listening to the action as it takes place…a gunshot in the darkness is much more terrifying than one you see.

This might explain why I am so easily able to enjoy television and films; unlike some extremists, I enjoy television as a separate yet equal medium from OTR, not comparing the two and finding one or the other lacking because of some romantic connection to a favorite artform. (Although I’d love to have the disposable income to produce an audio drama version of 24, but that’s a pipe dream for another post.)

When people talk to me about how characters like Philip Marlowe or Luigi “look,” I admit I get a little confused, since I have no “mental image” of any of the characters I hear…they are disembodied voices that waft in over the transom of my consciousness, as near to me as voices outside in the hall, sometimes plotting a murder, other times opening a closet door…