A general question

[evil_whimsey]

Thanks to a recent wave of pernicious and wide-ranging curiosities, I find myself needing to ask if anyone on my flists are into podfics at all?

Comments

[ophelietta]

Okay, so. Obviously I am too wired up to go to bed now because I'm thinking about my initial reaction to listening to the podfic "I Wake to Sleep", sooo. Yes. This is happening now. I'm going to throw thoughts at you and if you're still stuck in a writing block/rut/box thing, hopefully these will jiggle something? Yes?

All right.

So, I did not re-read "I Wake to Sleep" before I listened to the podfic, and I was very excited to listen to you, but I waited until my boyfriend came over because I, of course, was vibrating with excitement to share this with someone.

And it was extremely, extremely powerful. I usually hate it when that word is tossed around, but it was. I wish I had my journal here with my notes in it while I was listening to it, but that journal is somewhere in transit between Ontario and Manitoba right now (gods willing), but I can still remember some of what it was like to listen to it: there was some quality in your voice that gave it such gravitas, such a cool and pure weight, and that charged those words with - well, it felt almost otherworldly. Dead flesh, dead words, made animate, crackling with light.

You gave me a very great gift: you made a story I had written appear new to me as a foreign and fantastic thing, and I was able to connect with it on such a different level, from the outside in instead of the inside out. The thing was, it was very powerful in an unexpected way for my boyfriend, whose mother passed away not too long ago, and so entering those stories and those feelings took some precedence over responding to your podfic in the heat of that moment.

But I always did want to tell you how really honoured I felt by your making that podfic, and just to thank you. Thank you.

[evil_whimsey]

Y'know, it's both incredibly gratifying and slightly peculiar to read your thoughts on this, now. The peculiar part is mostly just having that feeling you get when you take a long nap in the afternoon, and wake up from some vivid complicated dream, and it's dark out, and you're all discombobulated, not sure what day it is or where you are, exactly. And then usually I make some tea and gradually pull my head together, over an hour or so. Crikey, it seems like a million years ago that I did all that. But no, I was just having an over-long nap.

I love learning about how you encountered the podfic; I've wondered so much what happens when these things go out into the world, what do listeners do with them, in what fashion do they experience them? I always kept a certain mental image during the recording process, of reading to someone in a quiet, out of the way room, trying to disappear myself as much as possible, so the listener can just become immersed in the story. The amusing reality, is that I was sitting in my bedroom, in a mini-fort constructed of packing blankets and PVC pipe, sweating copiously because it was 112F outside and I had to turn the air conditioner off due to the noise, and if the attic fan decided to come on, or shut off, or my ex/housemate came home, the whole session was blown for the day.

And then there was the editing process, and sometimes I would listen to a track at 11 at night and decide the reading was ridiculously rushed. So I'd re-record a day or so later, only to decide it was horribly dull and slow; audio is so subjective, it's incredible. But then after hours of tinkering, and letting the project sit so as to clear out one's ears and get some objectivity back, and tinkering some more, one eventually reaches the point where there's no more progress to be achieved, given one's current skillset and tools.

So then the thing is sent forth into the great unknown, very much like a message in a bottle, and one may never know how the message--which happens to contain a peculiarly intimate part of oneself--is received, or what it's like to experience. It's a lingering mystery that sort of follows you around forever. Quite curious, really.

It's partly for this reason that I'm tremendously pleased at your comment. But of course also, recording another person's story is very much attempting to do some kind of homage to that story, to give something back to the creator, in thanks for this remarkable thing they brought into the world. To help perpetuate it, by fitting it as gently and respectfully as possible into an alternate form, and hoping that for someone, somewhere, maybe it will help make the universe a little less dark and empty.

And to know that you've received your story in this form, and found power in it, it's beautifully humbling, really. And encouraging; I attempted an experiment, did the best I knew to do with it, and apparently the experiment didn't fail. And that's so awesome, one of my favorite things in the whole world.

Ah, and I shouldn't forget to mention that I've also had recordings of This Shaking Keeps Me Steady, and Phantom Limb/Safe As Houses in the works for some time. Unfortunately,the whole podficcing enterprise had to go on the back burner awhile ago, due to having a noisy fuckwit around the house all the time for months, and also having to dismantle the recording setup to make way for home repairs, and oh christ, my life, bloody hell you wouldn't even believe.

But I've been thinking, I'd really like to spend time reading stories again, and during this month and next, it would be nice to set up the blanket fort studio once more. It's quite a nice little refuge. So you may soon enough see those podfics showing up too.