Femtography Light and Sound
The idea that not light is traveling, but the em substrate, might be difficult to countenance. Still, this model is what is used to explain sound.
Nobody claims that sound somehow travels through space. Everybody finds it normal to think that the original sound creates vibrations in the air, and that it is these vibrations that finally reach our ears and create sound sensations.
In other words, different listeners hear different copies of the same original sound, even if the sound itself never went anywhere.
That was one of the reasons why the idea of light as a wave was difficult to accept. Where was the medium that transported light?
Huygens thought that it was the ether, but then the ether lost its reputation, and light had to find a new substrate.
That became Faraday's lines of force, and later, Maxwell's field.
But in fact, the idea is the same. Instead of air, a substrate, whatever it is, travels through space, and recreates for us the sensation of light.