Juan Nieto

“The difficult thing is always to find the center of the spiral: the narrative anchor that is strong enough to hang all the wondering and meandering and pondering on to” (von Baldegg). When deciding what the main point of any story is going to be, could be hard to decide at times. Doubts of the “anchor” of the story not being the right fit for what you’re trying to say can easily trespass your mind constantly. The “thing” that brings your story as a whole together, not only has to make sense for someone who doesn’t really know you personally, but has to be creative too. The author in this case made it clear that sometimes the spiral of the story does not have to be something so big or fancy as much as what it really means to you. Paying attention and appreciating the little things can be often powerful.

The relationship of footage and audio in “The Voyagers” by Penny Lane, was very abstract at times. For example, in many occasions where the narrator was talking about a scientific discovery, footage of nature, such as the sky, trees and ocean were shown. Almost as telling us that what a discovery it is to be able to experience our very own planet. Something that is really small in the universe but yet really big for humans. And in for some people, underestimated. On the video essay, by minute 04:37, with the engagement excitement from talking on the phone, I thought that showing the public phone hanging off was clever. Very powerful in image which can be open to interpretation for many but for me, I could picture the person running away because she had just been proposed to.

Also, the timing of the footage and audio, in sections, helped ease transitions from one scene to the other. Reflecting on the little park by the water, where the narrator was from, made me think of my childhood too. Going back to little parks I may have played and start to realize that even though those parks were not so popular, they made me and other kids happy. Many times one would find themselves not appreciating what actually makes us happy, no matter how big or fancy it may or may not be.

Funny how certain settings around the world can lure you to think about something different than what the plot displays. The feelings one gets when chills of unfamiliar situations are present in front of us that set the barrier of known and unknown. Even the most experienced of people may have moments in which everything is new to them, like in Autopsy Report by Lia Purpura. The author does not only show and tell the new experiences she was faced by, but also what the whole situation felt like from her point of view. “When the assistants opened the first body up, what stepped forth, unbidden, was calm” (Purpura 4). The visuals I get from reading this quote reminds of situations I’m faced with, during an unknown situation. Perfect example, this current semester I was faced with a Computer Science course for the first time in my life. I might as well have been taking a Chinese class or something because coding is really another language.

The relationship between words and images during Dust Off, by Eula Biss and John Bresland, was kind of contradictory but in a way that helped display what the narrator was saying, just in an unexpected way. At about 1:20 into the video, while mentioning a frozen heart after breathing in some toxic air or substance, instead of actually showing what exactly the words were saying, a leafless tree during winter time, in the dark, was shown. Features of Textual vs. Video essay form make possible different forms of expression and discovery because it makes the reader think of other ways what it’s being said can be expressed. Accelerated footage at about 2:22 into the video, gave the feeling of time going by really fast in a way I was not expecting. Personally, with text I begin to look for images that I am familiar with when reading anything, and with video, my brain tries to anticipate what I am going to see while I’m listening to the audio.

On the form of the video essay, key characteristics of such explanation of what a video essay is, derive from the essayist point of view. As explained by freeman “… the video essay is playful, irrational, and fragmented”. Video essays have form, like written essays, if you want them to have one. Expectations are messed by the video essay’s nature. Because of the multi-channel form of video essay the “Reflexive interferes with cinematic illusion in all kinds of ways” gives the written words a more vivid sense. I think that a deeper illustration of what the essay’s words are saying is what makes a video “essayistic”.

While listening to “Grandpa” by Steven Chen, I was intrigued by the way in which the author used a dinning table to begin with, in order to transition us through the entire story. Food, I thought was a big factor in the story as he used it to say that the only way he felt connected to his father’s family side, was through Chinese food. And that’s because that’s all his father taught him. Chen steps out of his family picture, at the diner table, to show us about his connection to his main family members. However, with the absence of many of his family members, Chen says, “I’ve had deeper conversations with strangers on the bus” (1:40).

Culture engagement/confusion was what I thought of as soon as I saw that he, the narrator, was the only one wearing blue paint on his face and blue clothing. While the other four family members were similarly dressed but with red. I was able to relate to this video essay in part because I have grown up between two different cultures as well. Born in Venezuela but spent my teenage years in the U.S. makes able to relate to the confusion of where he really belongs to. I don’t have a doubt of where I belong to, since both of my parents are Venezuelan, but Steven’s mixed culture may be a little more complicated for some people. Funny how when I once worked at Subway, this Asian grandfather and grandson walked in to get lunch and so on. The kid was white, very American-born looking while the grandfather was Chinese. The kid then tells me that the person he was with is Yeye. And since I did not know what “Yeye” meant, they grandpa told me.

Music has it’s very own ways of helping people recall certain events they relate to a song or type of music. I personally have songs that remind me of past experiences and even people that were involved in those experiences. Interestingly I find myself recalling events from my youth that are brought back to my memory thanks to new music. Old songs however, also do the trick for me and I think it’s more understandable if the event I’m remembering is from the same time frame as when the song came out. While listening to Rachel’s Yoder’s “I’m white and I’m Mennonite” I was able to feel the connection as of why she chose the music she did, to go with her story.

The way Rachel uses the instrumental music to go with her story, rather than songs, help her story sort of become of the lyrics itself. As Jonathan Mitchell from Using Music states, “The music is the driver of the scene, and the story becomes the lyrics of the song”. It does seem to me that the hippie kind of song, implemented in this audio essay, was perhaps spreading the story out for Rachel. Interesting move if you’re looking to fill in the time frame of how long the recording has to be. Even though sometimes there are lyrics at the same time as Rachel is talking, the music never competes with the story. Which is what you do not want according to Mitchell.

The type of music Rachel used when referring to the community she lived in, during 2:30 or so, went really well. It seems to me that she may have focused on the word ‘community’ in order to find a song that would fit the scene smoothly. On the other hand, while considering moves and appliances for my very own audio essay recording, I think that choosing music and songs that remind me of going out on the weekends after getting a haircut and washing my car, would really help express my experience and words.

While reading “Sound Reporting – The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production” by Jonathan Kern, and “Be Quiet: In Praise of the Pause” by John Biewen there were many listening elements I came across with. The most important one, I thought, was the importance of feeling the words as you say them, in order to emphasize their meaning. In Wheeler’s audio essay, Joshua’s vocal performance approach throughout the recording changes from time to time, also I thought the background music helped his pauses last a little longer. From 2:18 to 2:30 the pauses he makes in each of the descriptions he’s mentioning give it a clear emphasis in what he is saying. The technique I liked the most used in the audio essay was the Fade to black, explained in detailed by John Biewen. Right after the clear emphasis pauses, from 2:31 to 2:40 his use of fade to black makes a transition from one scene to the other. It’s like getting a faded haircut, your barber will start cutting your hair really short at the bottom, but as he transitions to the top of your head, your hair will be much longer. Short of how my hair looks like, a faded Mohawk. Moreover, from the time frame of 5:26 to 6:02, Joshua not only talks abut what happened to his sister, and how him and his mother are going through with it, but also gives us a real feeling of the meaning of the words he is saying. Then follows a pause. Highlighting everything he had previously said in big letters! From 6:44 to 6:48 the dramatic pause makes the essay sound conversational. What I take away from all the essays we have read and heard, as I start planning how bring my essay into audio form, will be to really listen to myself read my essay aloud. Maybe even have a friend be with me to tell me whether or not I sound as the same as if I was casually talking to them.

After reading “From ‘The Essay’ by Walter Murdoch and “Writing for Broadcast” by Jonathan Kern, then using their respective concepts to understand David Antin’s essay, I was able to see the simplicity of what writing to the ear means. In Antin’s “The Theory of Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto” he casually displayed a story of his into a fine essay that gives you the clear sense as if he was talking to you one on one. Antin’s essay reflects Murdoch’s ideas of “good talk” because of his sense of humor, good manners, and the fact that Antin talks to the reader, rather than instructing us. “he tells eleanor he knows nothing about what could separate a poor mattress from a good mattress and he suggests we call nikolai he should know more about it he lives in del mar” (Antin 116). In this quote Antin is telling us what the little Irishman that works at the Mattress store was instructing him about the mattresses. When reading the quote aloud is clear that he talks just as if anyone was talking to a friend of theirs in real life. Regarding the other essay, Murdoch’s, Antin shows good manners while adding some sense of humor without disrespecting anyone. “ellie i said if you want a mattress today and you won’t come back into the house without a new mattress we’re going here and i point to an ad in the yellow pages that says MATTRESS WAREHOUSE” (Antin 116). In this situation Antin shows the familiarity he has with his wife eleanor and the unfamiliarity he has when it comes to knowing about mattresses. My experience when reading this essay was something I have never felt before. Everything he writes is just so simply and calm which show exactly how a person would actually talk to someone else face to face. I did not think that such style would be so essay and smooth to read.

The art of an essay is something that should never follow some sorts of rules or any kind of particular structure. As expressed by Dillard throughout her ‘Total Eclipse’ short story, the so-called ‘art’ of an essayist may not always make sense to some readers. However, that is because many people will try to analyze what they read only to what they have experienced or firmly believe in. On top of that, the human mind also manipulates ideas and thoughts that may or may not come across one another.

From the “The Art of the Essayist” by Arthur Christopher Benson, he makes it clear how readers would not always take in, from reading a certain excerpt, the same meaning as was intended by the author. In other words, the author may have written something, however, the reader could have interpreted it differently according to their own points of view and beliefs. As Benson says, an essayist is “… an interpreter of life, a critic of life”(43 Benson). Therefore, an essayist writes what they write because that is the way in which they see something in particular. the human mind, however, has it’s own ways into making us think differently than reality at times, opening up people’s horizons about life.

Annie Dillard, in addition to what Benson explained to be the “art” of the essay, adds that, “The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return it’s love, or it’s awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, and God”(107 Dillard). In this quote the author implies that the human mind possesses the ability to manipulate what people may want to believe or not. That the human mind is powerful enough to think a certain way in order for the mind to think that the world has returned it’s love to the mind.

Ever since my days of high school, when writing an essay, my very first thing to do was look at the prompt. From that point on I knew that, as we were always told by our teachers, to start looking for close evidence related to one’s argument. That’s why writing was not really fun at all me because it seemed as if we never had freedom when it came down to structuring any paper. I’m sure school districts and the English department have their reasons for teaching in such way at first, but it was just really boring. The movie ‘Freedom Writers’ came up to me while reading “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion, because of the struggle those students were able to open up to through their own writing.

Some of the key points Carl H. Klaus mentions, that I was really interested in, were how an essay, for example, should never be something that follows some sort of rules or anything like that. Instead, it should always be about trying out ideas, exploring, and reflecting our own thoughts into which ever format we want it to be in. “Mood and form”, as Klaus mentions, should usually come from within the writers’ heart, depending on what an author is writing about and feeling like at the moment, and that’s because, “Such a wide-open conception of the genre tacitly implies a freedom from any kind of form, which suggests that strictly speaking the essay is an anti genre, a heretical form of writing in the universe of discourse” (xviii Carl H. Klaus). as suggested in this quote, essays do not necessarily need to follow any kind of structure base.

Moreover, Joan Didion mentioned that when writing, remembering events is crucial when identifying important moments in one’s life. “But of course that is exactly it: not that I should ever use the line, but that I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it” (5 Joan Didion). Coming back to some of the things Klaus mentions, is that the meaning of a certain moment, signifies it’s importance. In other words, it’s more important to remember people involved in lifetime events with one another, than the actual event.

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