Vanessa - Poetica: Tides

Being a sailor teaches you to be aware of the tide.

When navigating, you plan your course to make the most of favourable currents, or to avoid adverse currents that will slow you down, push you off course, or create steep waves when they run counter to the wind. Off the NSW coast, the East Australian Current runs north to south, so when we're sailing south, we head offshore to join it, adding a couple of knots to our hull speed. On trips up north, we stay closer inshore to avoid it. Humpback whales do the same on their annual migration.

Up in Queensland, there are strong tidal movements between the mainland and the Great Barrier Reef, and we time our day sails to take advantage of a favourable tide, or sail at slack water (when the tide is turning and at its weakest) if the tide is adverse.

Usually a boat on a mooring or anchor will point into the wind, keeping the motion consistent and soothing, but when the wind and tide are flowing in different directions, the boat will roll, which can become quite maddening (esp when it wakes up the baby!). You'll see boats in a bay all turned in a muddle of different directions as the tide weaves its way around the shore.

As we came back to the mainland from 3 weeks in the Whitsunday and Lindeman Islands, the three things I was most looking forward to were doing laundry, fresh veges and catching up with the world via email, Radio National, and our blog, of course! This is the first program I heard when I flicked on the radio after dropping anchor at Airlie Beach on a Sunday afternoon.

Poetica: Tides

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a philistine and tend not to tune in when Poetica is on the radio, but the theme was so perfect, and the first couple of poems lured me in, especially the voice of Ben Whishaw reading the first Pablo Neruda poem. I'm not very familiar with Poetica, but this episode is a little different to the programs I've heard before, and seems to borrow a little from the Night Air aesthetic (a show I still miss terribly), mixing poetry with soundscape, music and factual recordings about the tide from scientists, ecologists, and those directly affected by rising sea levels.

I've had to have a few goes at listening to it in full, partly because of the competing sounds of a chattering baby, but mostly because my poor old pop culture brain finds it a bit of a stretch to listen to one poem after another and concentrate on each one. I would have liked to hear more atmospheric sounds, music and factual elements woven in there, but I guess then it wouldn't be Poetica. Oscar Metcalfe reading his poetic narrative Watch the Dawn Tide would have been right at home in the mix too.

Poetica can't be as clever and playful with form and structure as a program like The Night Air was, but I enjoyed being introduced to poems (or reminded of familiar ones), all tied together by a beautiful theme.

Image by Max Homand/Getty, republished from the Radio National website.

Vanessa - Pop quiz: First encounters

Can you remember the first time you fell in love with a now-favourite podcast, writer, filmmaker, magazine?

Lots of times I can't pinpoint the first revelatory introduction, but some first encounters remain vivid.

I remember hearing the This American Life episode 81 Words on Radio National one weekend afternoon when I was painting the cabin of our old wooden boat. It was 2007, and I'd never heard of This American Life. The story was completely gripping and stylistically different from what I was used to hearing on the radio, and it remains one of my all time favourite TAL episodes.

81 Words traces the long campaign to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders. The producer is Alix Spiegel, and much of the story is told from the perspective of her grandfather, a psychiatrist who was directly involved in the unfolding events. Like all great TAL stories, it has some great twists and very strange scenarios (that I won't spoil for you now!), and the personal connection to the story makes it really special.

I highly recommend this story, and would love some links to your standout first encounters from the world of sound, web, magazines, video, anything!

This American Life: 81 Words

And while we're still on the topic of This American Life, I came across the Longform podcast with TAL contributor Starlee Kine a little while back. I was a bit hesitant to listen to it as I find her voice and uncomfortable giggling so grating, but there's no doubt that she's made some standout TAL stories (like this one about a haunted hotel and the legendary Dr Phil where she seeks breakup advice from Phil Collins). In the interviews, she gives some great behind-the-scenes glimpses of how TAL works, including her own excruciating experience producing her first story. A good companion piece to Sonya's link to the This is How I Work interview with Ira Glass.

Longform podcast: Starlee Kine

Image republished from the This American Life website.

Sonya - This is how I work interview with Ira Glass

 Photo by  Rachel Kramer Bussel (CC BY 2.0)

Even though there are Ira Glass interviews aplenty, I found this latest one particularly good. In it, he shares the kinds of software, hardware and apps he uses - including the app he used to play and mix audio live during his Australian tour a few years ago. I remember we were wondering about this set up years ago!

I particularly liked how he details his process for structuring an interview 'quickly'. I say this because the process seems slow, which is reassuring to me, because I do something similar but have been using VM's FCP marker trick for a few years now for video stories, using colour coded markers in lieu of asterisks. This helped me see how I can apply a similar method to audio editing, without a handy marker system in Audacity. There are process pictures for his structuring method - exciting!

Having read this, I also believe that I'm a 'noisy introvert' :)

'I'm Ira Glass, Host of This American Life and This is How I Work' - Lifehacker

Sean - Sound Thinking

Here's a link to a real world event, an upcoming exhibition. Unfortunately it's on the weekend before the one when we're all in town! But I thought I'd put it up anyhow as it looks really intriguing, and I know a couple of the artists. Gary Warner is an acquaintance from way back, I first met Gary in 1982 at a creative meeting in this huge warehouse space in Newtown called Alpha House. The meeting was to convene a Super 8 Film Group (!) in Sydney. Gary went on to become one of the leading figures in the Super 8 film scene, and he's been quietly creating subtle but fascinating art for decades.

"In the exhibition Sound Thinking, three artists invite visitors to participate in the making of soundscapes whilst moving through the project space."

http://articulate497.blogspot.com.au/p/coming-sd-thinking-curated-by.html

Here's a link to Gary's Vimeo page, including short films of his little machines that draw, create sound, and perform other functions - check out Sunday Play, and Jitter -

https://vimeo.com/garywarner

And here's Gary's tiny cabin in the northern Sydney bush, that he designed himself, the Origma Hut -

http://architizer.com/projects/origma-hut/

Sean - 20 Questions

Sonya alerted us to this theatre event a few months ago - Wesley Enoch's project 20 Questions, at the Belvoir Street Theatre. Now Awaye on RN has broadcast the session with fantastic Indigenous actor/performer Trevor Jamieson. This really works. It should be made into a radio series.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/20-questions/5597448

The series at Belvoir is running for a few more weeks on Monday nights, but when I checked out the website of course the tickets are outrageously expensive, like all Sydney theatre. Sonya said she was going to check out 20 Questions live at the theatre - did you end up going?

Sean - Lucia Joyce, Diving and Falling

Here's how the web works sometimes. In Sonya's post immediately below I clicked on the link to the Letters of Note blog. The post at the top currently details a letter from psychologist Carl Jung to writer James Joyce, regarding Jung's reaction to the book Ulysses. The post mentions that a couple of years after writing to Joyce, Jung actually treated Joyce's daughter Lucia. That fact reminded me of a radio doco I listened to while driving back from Fowlers Gap to Sydney. On the long flat road between Wilcannia and Cobar. The reception for Radio National actually disappeared before the program concluded. But what I heard was fascinating, it was about Lucia Joyce. I've been meaning to listen to it again, all the way through. Here's the link -

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/diving-and-falling/5489126

"Imagine being the daughter of one of the world's most experimental and famous writers. Imagine you have inherited some of your father's creativity and are determined to find a way to express this in some way. This is story of Lucia Joyce, the troubled and talented daughter of James Joyce. A story set against the fascinating backdrop of Europe between the World Wars."

Sonya - NY Times, A Father's Grief (Letter)

Today, a short but beautifully expressed letter to the editor, in which the letter writer reassures a grieving father that he is not 'foolish and pathetic' for opening and keeping his deceased son's mail and emails.

A Father's Grief - The Opinion Pages, Letter.

A well-worded message from a stranger.

Read the article this letter is in response to here, 'The Afterlife'. 

For Christmas last year, Vanessa gave me the excellent Letters of Note book, which is based on this wonderful blog. 'A Father's Grief' reminded me of a letter in the book that moved me most, 'Sorrow passes and we remain', which was written by Henry James to a friend who had recently lost a family member.

Sonya - Fine art on the radio

And one more quick recommendation, I listened to 'Tacita Dean's Event for a Stage' on Soundproof the other weekend and thought it was brilliant - a piece of fine art on the radio, as it was intended. Seeing exhibitions and arts based events is something I really miss now that I live in Wagga and listening to this program made me feel like I was able to get pretty close to the real deal. The program is a radio adaptation of a theatre and film event that happened at Carriageworks during the Biennale.

Tacita Dean's Event for a Stage

I just missed her exhibition at ACCA in Melbourne last year but can highly recommend the space if you've never been. It's one of my favourite contemporary art spaces in Australia, I think it's more experimental than most, and shows an impressive range of international artists. It's a refreshing break from the blockbuster shows of the major galleries. It also has an excellent selection of catalogues and independent publication in it's mini shop (right by its very cute mini cafe).

Sonya - Story A (Story B) by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (a snail-mail special)

This article combines so many things I love - it's set in Japan, covers a bizarre event (a hole-digging competition between employees of different companies) and also finds space to explore the art of storytelling. I happened upon it at the back of a recent Harper's magazine, and it was very refreshing, having read through some heavy-going articles beforehand.

You can read the intro of 'Story A (Story B)' online, which is a bit of a tease - so if you like what you read, let me know and I'll photocopy and post you a copy. Here's a part that grabbed me up front:

'Many essays purport to be about one thing but reveal themselves to be about some other, profounder thing. Story A might be about the game of Monopoly but its real role is to give cover to Story B, which is about the decline of the American city. Generally speaking I am most interested in moments in which the gap between the two stories seem the widest, in which the manifest events are highly, perhaps irresponsibly, leveraged in the production of latent meaning. Competitive hole digging, as far as I could tell, promised both infinite frippery and infinite significance.'

The story goes on to detail a morning spent observing a series of male and female teams competing for 'The Golden Spade' in the annual hole digging competition. Many teams came in costume, dressed up as cows, milk cartons or in head-to-toe gold and strangely, the judging takes place in secret.  The largest hole doesn't necessarily mean a team will win, it's a mysterious combination of depth, width and the novelty of a hole's shape that make a winner.  And the competitors really get into it, travelling from across the country just to take part with their colleagues, even if the prize money is relatively small.

It's a really fun read but I also read it with particular interest because I am a sucker for quirky stories. Like the Wagga guy who tried to make the world's biggest pom pom. To me, his Story B was about finishing something, no matter what. But it was also achieving a goal, and realising that what you were striving for might not satisfy you or matter anymore. In a really tiny way, it was a story about growing up. Quite often I worry that other people might not see the Story B, and just think it's a really silly story.

And a side note - this story also features an unnamed Australian foreign correspondent from the ABC, in a not-so-flattering light. I suspected it was Mark Willacy (purely based on location, he's one of my favourite foreign correspondents*) and found proof here.

Let me know you fancy a copy of this story, I reckon it's a good 2000-3000 words long, and very enjoyable.

*The one time I completed some presenter training in Sydney, the editor working in the suite opposite the training space was busy editing a Mark Willacy story. It sounds silly but being across the hall, and learning how to best pronounce my name (I was getting the Gee bit wrong) while I could hear a Mark Willacy voiceover in the distance made me feel like I'd made it :)

Sean - Bombay Jazz and the Yellow Cab Blues

Recently I've been listening to radio documentaries from the BBC World Service. I really like the approach of these docos - beyond straight journalism, but not too over produced. And with the producer often being an interesting presence in the piece, reporting from the field. Here are two that I've really enjoyed -


Bombay Jazz

Sarfraz Manzoor explores a fascinating period of music history in India when American violinist Leon Abbey brought his jazz band to Bombay in the 1930's, leaving behind an incredible legacy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02200hm

Yellow Cab Blues

Meet New York's rookie cabbies - fledgling taxi-drivers trying to earn a living in the most stressful city in the world. Most are immigrants, already grappling with the challenges of a new language and a new culture. Now they have to deal with long hours, short fares, and grumpy passengers in the back. Will they make it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p021y31z