First of all I have to admit that putting my essay in to audio format scares the daylights out of me.  I like the idea of putting my written words into an audio format, but I honestly have no idea how I am going to go about this. The pieces that we listened to this week were, in my opinion, so well crafted that I feel as if my piece will never measure up. While there were aspects of all of the pieces that I identified with I have to say that the audio essay that struck me the most was ­­­Sarah Vowell’s piece about the relationship between her and her father.

“One of us was a republican and one was a democrat”. This sentence for me starts to paint that picture of the “divided” household that the author grew up in. At the beginning of the essay it seems that Sarah and her father have nothing in common. The daughter of a gunsmith, Sarah grew to hate these “death sticks” that her father worked on. The way that Sarah describes these “death stick” makes me as the listener almost able to visualize the home in which she grew up. ” I had to revolvers out of the way to make room for my bowl of rice krispies on the kitchen table.” I can not imagine having guns on my kitchen table, I have never even held a gun. Thus, I have no idea what it would be like to grow up in a house surrounded by them. It seems by the way that Sarah describes her father that the two will never see eye to eye on anything. However, the listener soon learns that this is not the case.

Knowing that Sarah was never going to connect with her father over guns, Sarah decides to show interest in his latest endeavor. The gun loving man that is Sarah’s father decides to create his own cannon. Wanting to connect with her father, Sarah asks if she can go with him when he decides to shoot off the cannon. This I have to say is my favorite part of the piece. I think that the fact that Sarah chose to record her father is a brilliant idea. While, I feel like I her some sense of the man through her description getting to actually hear her father’s voice takes the piece to a deeper level. I know feel that I have connected in some way with the author’s father. Though I was not there when they shot of the cannon, I know what was said and I know what it sounded like ( well almost). As the author states you can’t begin to imagine how loud it was unless you were there.

The real connection that Sarah feels with her father really has little to do with the event that took place that day. It has to do with the realization that Sara was able to come to through this event. ” We are the same person”.  Sarah realizes that both her and her father make their livings from sounds. Her father, from the sound of the  shot from a gun and her from making art out of sounds. Sounds, it turns out were what would unite these two seemingly opposite people. So, while one may be a democrat and the other may be a republican there is one thing that will not change; these two people will always be transfixed by sounds and this will always hold them together.

The use of sound in this piece is truly remarkable. As the listener I become transfixed by the sounds in the piece. The use of twang in the piece makes me feel that I am in a southern household. One not unlike the one Vowell describes in her piece. While listening to the pieces for this week I tried to think of the sounds that I wanted to use for my piece. In doing so, I came to realize how hard of a decision it is. The sounds that Vowell uses in her piece blend seamlessly with the spoken text and my hope is that my essay will do the same.