Day 3

Day 3: Community Folklife Confrence-

I have a minute before we are gathering to listen to our ENORMOUSLY unsuccessful audio projects. Using fancy recording equiptment (to the tune of $400-500), we spilled our guts into a microphone that was held 2 inches from our faces. Then, having spilled such relevence, we expected to emerge with equally relevent pieces of audio.

Using the equiptment: I managed to stumble through this process with mild ease, flashing back to days of fucking with mic levels in the band. I understood when the mic was overloaded, i knew what happened when the mic is too close, u know what “popping p’s” are. Once i managed to get situated with my partner, trying to ignore the red ants on the picnic table where we were sitting, I was completely suduced by the sounds i hear amplified from “nature” (i was sitting in the middle of Durham).

I was really looking forward to reflecting on these momments, hearing the wind and birds. I was curious what i might be able to accomplish by inserting these sounds, using them to transition into different pieces of the interview we were about to conduct. Then i was thinking ahead to my own projects, where i might paint large canvases and insert sounds from my own field recordings. Or what could i do to creat an audio pattern out of these sounds?

Next we breeched the interview. Niki, forever assuming that everyone wants to share their lives as much as she likes to share hers, dives right into the messy questions and proceeds to lead her poor partner on very serious and personal venture. And vice versa. But i discovered 2 things: I LOVE the sound of someones voice (even my own b/c it is still largely unfamiliar on high quality digital recordings) close to me. I like to hear their voice in my headphones, like it’s some fuckin spirit or angel or real live warm body speaking directly into my ears.
The second thing i discovered was that my voice isn’t so bad to listen to so long as it is recorded with quality equiptment. I sorted remembered that i used to sing and it didn’t suck.

Anyway... I arrive at the computer lab with large dreams and great expectations. We get settled into a computer pull up the program (Audacity) and it proceeds to crash after ever single action. Sometimes more often than that.

All my hopes and dreams went out the window. I am defeated