I arrived in Colorado Springs two weeks ago, for what might as well have been the first time. As a Winter Start, I saw my second semester entrance to Colorado College as an intrusion on a place full of people who had already formed an intimate relationship with a city I knew nothing about. What I naively failed to realize, however, is that people who have been here much longer than I may ever be have dedicated their lives to understanding this place, and have yet to find an answer.
On Monday afternoon, I sat down with Jake Brownell of KRCC to discuss his podcast “Wish We Were Here,” a program “devoted to unpacking the strange, overlooked and forgotten stories of Colorado Springs, Colo. and the Pikes Peak region.” Graduating from Colorado College in 2012 with a major in philosophy, Brownwell’s first exposure to radio started with an interest in playing music and listening to NPR’s “This American Life.”
Deeply involved with SOCC, Brownwell “[used] music to tell stories and [was able to] apply the analytical skills [he] had developed as a philosophy major and the composition skills [he] had for music [to make radio] very intellectually and creatively satisfying.” The summer after his graduation, Jake began at KRCC as an intern, contributing to various projects, and then working as a freelancer before working full time at the station. About a year and a half ago, he and co-producer Noel Black wanted to create a podcast based “here in Colorado Springs that would appeal to a broader audience.”
“Colorado Springs is a place that has been at the crossroads of a lot of different historical, economic, political, and cultural trends,” said Brownwell, “so maybe we could do a show that looks at Colorado Springs as a microcosm of the broader country.” From there arose “Wish We Were Here.”
In this small, padded room sat the champion of an overlooked place and its untold stories: a city much more complex than the one I believed I had moved to. When discussing his and Noel’s choice of title, Brownwell said he “wanted to play on the whole tourist concept ‘wish you were here,’ for [Colorado Springs] is a place that, from its inception, has always been searching for a way to get people to come here.” Brownwell describes Colorado Springs as “a city perpetually wrestling with an identity crisis:” one that has “always been in search of itself.” This is a city that is “beyond a ‘conservative, military, and religious town,’” for “there are so many aspects of this place that haven’t been explored and stories that haven’t been told.”Brownwell and Noel set out “to cast a light on the shadows” on the intricacies that make Colorado Springs more than its face value reputation.
“There’s something about radio that allows for a certain kind of intimacy that you can’t get in a lot of other forms of media,” said Brownwell. “For example, our most recent episode was on this guy ‘Dragon Man,’ who is Colorado’s most armed citizen. He has all this bravado and likes to project this big, scary image, but he’s this Jewish guy from Brooklyn who moved out to Colorado Springs in the ‘80s. He is a kind of nerdy, obsessive collector, which you may never realize if you just watched the nightly news, where they’ll go to Dragon Man every time a story pops up and be like, ‘Let’s see Dragon Man shooting some machine guns.’ I think in some ways, not having the visuals there allows you to go past the obvious – the explosions and the machine guns – and inside a person’s head.”
There is something about radio, about “being able to hear the person speak their own words,” that allows for an investigation into the contradictions of a city, according to Brownwell. Just existing in a place is not going to uncover its complex idiosyncrasies and deeply woven stories; I came here because I wished I was here, and I want to be a part of this place, not just an occupier of space at the edge of the city.
“I feel like Colorado Springs is at an inflection point right now,” said Brownwell. “I feel like some of the baggage associated from the ‘90s and 2000s around this religious right has toned down a little bit, and there’s a really strong desire among a lot of people to make this into a place that people want to come to and live in.”
I want to someday be like Jake by making somewhere home through art and helping people who live there understand why they call it home. Brownwell “[thinks] it’s just a matter of time before the lid gets blown off of Colorado Springs,” and I cannot think of somewhere I would rather be.
Samantha Silverman
Latest posts by Samantha Silverman (see all)
- If You Rip a Juul and No One Sees, Are You Really a Smoker? – May 15, 2018
- Why Do You Spend $8 on a C-Store Kombucha? – May 9, 2018
- Conversations on Privilege > “Frankenstein” – Apr 10, 2018