Audio Essay Draft
http://soundcloud.com/daniel-golub/audio-essay
My audio essay is meant to inform my listeners of the critical components that comprise my core personality. To this end, I had three longtime friends of mine comment and reflect on some of my more idiosyncratic behaviors given that they [my friends] have long been exposed to such behaviors and have brought them to my attention on countless occasions. They are opinionated enough to offer their own decisive outlooks on what they make and have made of my behaviors. I formatted my audio essay to start with my interactions with friends in freshman year to sophomore year to junior year. Different people with different ways of thinking encountered my antics and me at different times. This can effectively paint trends that persist as will as evolutions, if any that have occurred. My only legitimate problem was recording over background music in Dunkin Donuts with my second guest. I had to lower the volume to make the background noise less conspicuous and the vocals more audible.
I have no intention of tailoring my audio essay to fit the advice / mold offered by Ira Glass. I was not entertained by his audio show and was put off by its format. I did not find much to enjoy or connect with in his commentary on what constitutes good storytelling. I have changed my opinion from what I had wrote in Required Blog Post #6 now that I have had more time to think about it. I have no intentions of establishing a professional work. To me, a professional work follows a set of widely accepted guidelines with slight variations and hints of personal touches. I prefer to break the rules and make my own rules, such as being loose with my material and allowing spontaneity if I think that it will enhance the purpose of my essay. I don’t remember Ira Glass being “brave” or “professional” enough to risk live recording in a public place with background music. From what I remember, he didn’t use music to identify or highlight key traits of his guests or panel of fellow speakers. This project came to me from a spontaneous thought in class and I rolled with it and did what I thought was best. Although I didn’t go along with a demonic voice in my audio essay, I do acknowledge that there are some basic rules that one must follow, such as being easily audible and heard, which I tried my best to do. But once the basic rules are established and followed, I did my project how I felt it should be done, not what Ira Glass thought should be done. I AM…A CULT…OF PERSONALITY!
3 responses so far
Daniel, While I’m glad to see you’ve posted a cover letter, even if it is a day late, I must take issue with your refusal to look for any advice from Ira Glass for a number of reasons:
1) Listening to his show was assigned “reading” and choosing some advice, from the many worthwhile pieces of advice that he offered, is an assignment for this cover letter. Choosing not to do it is like writing the letter late: it is failing to meet the expectations of the assignment and, I’m sure you realize, impacts your grade. Of course, you’re free to choose not to complete all the terms of the assignment, but generally I’d recommend you not call attention to that choice by dismissing the material that the professor has chosen to assign, which suggests she sees it as valuable.
2) You don’t have to be a fan of This American Life to show a healthy curious respect for an award-winning journalist, not to mention your professor, and engage with their ideas and/or the ideas that they have identified as potentially worthwhile. Once you engage with the ideas and give them serious thought, you’re free re-imagine them for your purposes or even to reject them. That’s the work of the scholar–to try out, try on, struggle with, and filter–and it’s the road to creativity. You really have to know your stuff before you can, as you say, make your own rules and really be creative.
3) Ira Glass did record live and in a public place (in the Letters show), and often uses music quite subtly and brilliantly. Listen to the Superheroes show, among others.
4) Ira Glass conceived of and produced the Superheroes show, and I recall you enjoying that show very much when we listened to portions in class.
On to your piece: I think the structure of opening the three interviews with your reflections is a good idea, but you need to close it, too, offer a wrap up. Overall, the impulse behind the structure of your piece are good: you have it set up in chapters; it’s not 9 minutes of listening to one talking head. The music changes with each chapter, which is probably a good idea. The execution, however, needs quite a bit of work. The three chapters are too discreet. The pauses between the pieces, and the significant differences in sound quality, make the piece sound disjointed. The first one was very very difficult to hear; the music is quite loud. I could understand it better using headphones, but that’s not a reasonable expectation to have for listeners. They have to be able to listen without aids if they have trouble, they will tune out, understandably. Throughout, the sound quality falters and deserves your attention.
All three friends have good voices and come off as authentic and interesting, and your interaction with them, how you relate, becomes part of what’s interesting. Yet, you don’t establish a main message, a reason for sharing these somewhat intimate interviews, where you get three people to open up to you. What’s the point? Not making that clear gives listeners another reason to tune out. You can’t really just have a story about how you became friends with three people. What’s the point? Your opening, which might help establish a point, is rambling and doesn’t provide a clear enough foundation for your project. You say you’re going to “capture my social interaction with three individuals,” (not a message or point) and “relate an anecdote about how I initially met them, through a specific circumstance, whether it be a specific action or a particular message of some sort…” Is is a circumstance/action or a message? What do you mean message? Where are you headed? It’s very hard to tell, so you’ve got some great material in the interviews with three engaging folks, but the set-up fails to give readers a foundation for listening. And there’s no wrap-up to help make sense of it. It ends suddenly and without closure. The interviews will require some editing for the highlights, some tying together, some transitional devices between them, and some structuring reflection before, perhaps between, and after to make sense of it all.
There is, in fact, a very intriguing thread that ties the three very discreet interviews together, something beyond you and your association with them. Competitiveness. All three talk about, or respond to, competitiveness in your character or competition with you. This is potentially interesting, especially in a piece about friendship: how does someone who is naturally in competition with others form bonds with them? How do you turn the impulse to compete into a history of having one another’s back (as the last interview discusses). You could work on this theme and find a way to turn it into a message that gives this piece some meaning. If that’s not something that resonates with you, mine the interviews for other themes that you can massage into a message. You can’t just present a vanity piece, as it were, a story about three of your closest friends, and expect it to stand up as an engaging audio-essay.
Hi,
I liked the opening. It seems to show more about you than the actual interviews did. The background music, of course being “Cult of Personality,” shows me what kind of music you like to listen. I am not sure if you were listening to the music while you were recording or if you added it in later, but if you were listening to the music while recording it shows. You seemed to show more about yourself in the beginning.
I also agree with Professor Smith, the music was loud and intrusive. I know you seem to like rock and roll, so maybe add a variation of that? Specifically something without as many lyrics. These songs are very popular and I must admit it distracted me a tad. The spaces between the interviews was also a minor problem, it should be easily fixed though. And making the pieces flow better with a few transitions might be in your best interest.
Professor Smith makes a great point that all three interviewees mention your competitiveness. Maybe that can be a main point of your project? Also a few mentioned how you sparked a conversation on Facebook. Do you mainly use Facebook to establish connections with people? If so, then maybe that can be something interesting to talk about.
All in all I did think it was interesting. Good job on the first draft.
Hi Daniel,
I like the idea that to present yourself as the cult of personality, you didn’t choose to narrate it all the way through. The interviewers’ responses were also unique, especially effective when talking about how you guys met. It helps to reveal a lot about you.
Like what Joseph and Professor Smith said already, I think it would work to your advantage to reduce the background music – lower it so we can hear your conversations better. It was fine in the first part where it was just you talking. But it got distracting when it comes to your interviews with your friends. The sound quality of the 2nd interviewer is very different from the other two. You might want to edit or record that again.
Last point, I think it would help if you add in a reflection based on what your friends have said about you in the end. Make it so that it reminds us to think about why we are listening to this again.
It’s a good draft. I hope you’re revision will make it shine even brighter.