Month: October 2015

The audio essay, as far as the two that Vowell created, appears to be a essay of voices–  the narrative of the creator does not over power that of the voices it calls upon. There is an enormous difference, of course, between this and the Lovell piece, in which the creator of the audio essay is the only voice we receive as listeners. Vowell utilizes quiet background sounds and the whimsical voices of her family members in her Act, “Country Mouse, City Mouse”, and the exciting events of her father’s strange relationship with a cannon. The Lovell piece creates a singular mood, one of fear (related to the entire radio feature’s theme) and as a listener I felt the helplessness and pain of insomnia from the strange music to the monotonous, yet descriptive, narrative. I see both essays as effective in their projects, though different in their ends. Vowell sought truly to bring this essay of voices together, moving seamlessly from one to the next as if we were all in the room together and she could call upon their knowledge at any moment– mother and sister respond automatically to her questions, a young Vowell sings to us from her childhood. In Lovell, the author’s voice and the atmosphere of insomnia dominates. Again, what is incredibly different about Lovell is the intensity with which the subject is presented, the mood that is created with sound and music. The singular voice reflects too the singular subject of the essay– his insomnia– though he too moves through the related topics and neurotic tendencies in his life.

What certainly remains true about the audio essay that we find in the written essay is the personal. Each of these audio essays was intensely personal and calls upon real experiences from the creator’s lives. Vowell recalls her move from country to “city”. Lovell relays his experiences with insomnia. Each moves expertly within their subject, deviating here and there to cover larger topics but ultimately returning  to the topic at hand. Vowell could not discuss the country without discussing the Pentacostal religion of the small town in Oklahoma. She could not have spoken of her move to Montana without talking about and to her family members. Each voice creates, though odd to say, a clearer picture of the essay’s subject. The pieces move with each other to build this picture for the listener, just as a reader of an essay follows the thoughts of its writer.

I wonder at how I may construct my own essay in this fashion, which voices will be used, or if only mine will carefully transport the listener across a morning commute. I certainly want an atmosphere created, as in Lovell’s piece, and I’m not certain my voice can expertly create this atmosphere as Vowell is so capable of doing. I have recorded, thus far, train sounds and the familiar bells and whistles one may experience on any commute. I hope that I may carefully place these within my audio essay, to create this “feeling” of the commute for a listener that my voice and story alone may not provide. I will certainly need to present my own voice in a certain mood or tone in order to add to this effect, as Lovell did in describing the fear of sleep.

History of Boston

You can only stare at length into your own face, reflected in dim morning light through the glass T windows screeching along Commonwealth Avenue. Other faces reflect next to yours but none stare as deeply into your eyes as your own do. Without warning– though you weren’t really paying attention, were you?– the train jerks to a halt and others jerk you along to the rear of the car. Each commuter wishes to have their own special place to sit, to stand, to take up space. Each commuter, though, comes prepackaged with their own annoying and pretentious ticks, assumptions, and preoccupations related to commuting. Commuters have a certain predisposition to not allowing other passengers on– instead squashing their squishy body against the wall in an effort to shrink themselves to allow a flood of commuters exit. This is one of many Complaints of Commuting. Others include lack of personal hygiene, lack of spacial awareness, neglecting to cover one’s mouth during flu season, and a general inability to be a decent person. Some days you are perched happily in the back of a bus, no one to push you and cajole you into some new place. Others you find yourself not so lucky, hastily gathered at the front with the driver, avoiding eye contact with the one person keeping others from prime bus real estate. As a child, you were not so concerned with where you stood– because you sat. Everything and everyone in a seat. It was to be expected. The most pressing human need, it seems, is getting from one place to another.

Next stop, Allston Street…doors will open on the right…

This stop looks like any other. An iron gate delineates outbound from inbound, north from south Commonwealth, a severe and winding structure on the Allston landscape. Yet another small convenience store stands as a yellowing monument to where you used to go as an undergraduate student, the long quiet streets beyond lined with grey apartment buildings and, at night, bring marijuana, cigarettes and cheap beer. At this end of the line, the end of your glory days. Another one-stop destination for liquor, snacks, and the fading college experience. But it is morning, and you have not stepped off here in some time except in frustration or to buy expensive beer and artisanal sandwiches. The morning commute is no time for such things. There are many more memories to visit along this line.

Next stop, Harvard Avenue, doors will open on the right…next stop, Harvard Avenue…

The Harvard Avenue McDonald’s serves as the peddling, begging, riddling center of Allston-Brighton. Here toothless Revere boys grovel in their middle age and Newport cigarettes. Yet here you’re 16, and 19, and 21, packed into concerts of bands that you don’t listen to anymore. Today it’s just another stop along the way to work, a way to catch the 66 to Jamaica Plain, a landmark to meet a friend. To the city at large it is the 2nd busiest– above ground– of them all. The gateway to Allston, a hub within “The Hub”, teeming with everyone you have ever been. Over and over you return here, to comfort, to Blanchard’s, to rock shows, to Sunday breakfast and to thrift stores. An inevitable stop for any passenger on this train.

Next stop, Packards Corner…

To your left you will see yet another Friday night college destination, where B line trains squeal painfully up the avenue to unload its packed unfortunate masses of buzzed underage teenagers. This is not your memory of this place this morning, though you too were once left here in a vodka daze, in the rain, waiting to enter a wild fraternity party, one man too many.
You found yourself here once, too young and not yet pursuing a bachelor’s degree, biting the heels of the young woman from two stops up that could have been more. She’ll stay in your Facebook and pop up at bars, with “How are you?” and “My how we’ve grown…” but nothing more. You’re a taken man now, after all and of course. No, the house three blocks down Gardner street where madness and PBR reigned just wasn’t your place, you were a year too old and that’s just a bit too late. The deepest memories are perhaps always the first, where you cried and doted in the 6th floor apartment above the car dealership but to no avail– your train is leaving, and it’s only Packard’s Corner anyways. You saw a bird’s-eye view the other day, August 2005, and wonder now if everything looks so shiny new in hindsight.

This train is running express to Kenmore, attention all passengers, this train will be running express…

Other distant memories pass by, reflected in the faces of pissed off people waiting as yet another train passes them. You revel in this new feeling, an express train to your next destination, no one stop laden with memories more than the others. Heading faster away from the beginning, which was once an end, and now made new again with “fiance” and “ours” in lexicon. Some mornings, you are quite uncertain how you have even arrived in the Seaport– you, twenty-five, surrounded by busy-ness executives and administrative assistants, down by the commodification of the American Revolution, of history. Your own history may as well be down there in the rank harbor water. You’ve boarded the train, and here you have arrived. To toil in half-pleasure, happy to be employed, sad to be bored, and back again to the train, to dive into memory at the end of the line. By the time you have disembarked, the Rules of the Commute no longer apply, you are no longer passenger but pedestrian, disillusioned but free to walk about the streets as you please. Your memories are like any strange old photograph of Packard’s Corner, in 2005 or black and white 1962: painfully nostalgic yet unfamiliar, full of longing yet unwanted. You must learn over time that it is just the train, that we all end up at our destination, and our own little Boston histories live on.

Once you have arrived, there is little time to consider the petty frustrations of the commute. Perfectly occupied with your work, job, daily menial tasks, you are unable to consider any history at all, let alone your own. That’s the trouble of it all, of arriving, perhaps even leaving in the first place: you are never allowed to dwell for too long on any one stop.