I used to garden a lot with my dad when I was a little girl. Mostly vegetables, but I had this one pink button rose bush in a mid-size terra cotta pot that sat under my favorite peach tree. I loved watering it and pruning it occasionally so new little rosebuds would form. It made me feel pretty to have this little rose bush in my care.
For years it blossomed and thrived. Until one spring when its leaves started yellowing and cracking at the edges, and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew few interventions, so I stuck some rusty nails in it and kept watering it. Apparently far too much because pretty soon it began to smell. At first I didn’t know where the stench was coming from. I would walk by and it would waft up my nose. I sniffed around, like I do around my nephew’s butt sometimes, and I realized it was my rose bush!
I called over my dad who was always working in the far edge of the garden. “Root rot!” — he yelled before he even got to me. He quietly examined the thing, jiggled it around by the base, and swiftly struck the clay pot with his trowel, WHACK, and it broke into a few large clean pieces. Thick slimy brown water oozed out of the rootball and it was exposed. It stank and I was horrified. I think I cried a little from the shock of it all because it felt like such a rough way to handle a tender rose bush, especially when it was suffering. My dad said to just leave it, let the thing air out, and to trust him — and nature. Life is resilient, he said. It finds a way to keep going. He still says that and he’s usually right about everything, so I listened.
Thanks to everyone who listened to my finished radio piece, Dave Day is Love in Action last night and wrote in. I’m touched! The music at the end was something Weinberg, our instructor extraordinaire, suggested and helped me a great deal with. It didn’t make sense to me at first. I had heard the piece so many times while producing it, I didn’t “feel” or process the entire arc of the story until the very end. So the idea to add a song to bring it all home eluded me. What should it be? How do you even start to think about that? It overwhelmed me, both the artistry and technical skills needed. But once I heard it, I wept. And then I got it.
I think that’s why this workshop was so important for me. I mean, could I read about all of these aspects of storymaking and try them on my own? Sure. But it’s just so much more fun and generative to learn in community, and have some experts show you on your laptop how to do things, and talk you through the artistic choices and decisions you can make. While Weinberg was putting some final touches on my piece in Hindenburg, I just stuck my face as close to my laptop screen as possible, watching his key strokes and trackpad changes, trusting that my eyeballs would deliver the information to some memory center in my brain. And that if I continue to practice through small projects I give myself, I too can learn these details and get better. A couple of things I learned at the end as I fiddled with levels of my various tracks was to isolate a track if maybe the tape isn’t great and I need to crank it up. And crossfades with ambi and music, lining tracks up right so everything flows and transitions aren’t abrupt. JHC, this is all going to take some practice, but I can’t wait.
Wait. Let me share another picture right away, because this one led to that one. Or vice versa. You know what, it doesn’t matter.
(Me)
Today was much easier and more fun. Because today I realized I love murdering cutting tape, and I love this program we’re using called Hindenburg, which was made for editing radio. My favorite feature is being able to cut tape from the freakishly good auto-generated transcripts. One of my housemates brought up a really good point though — Why is it called Hindenburg? That seems rather foreboding. I’m sure there’s some kind of fun backstory. But also, I don’t want to think about my final piece blowing up in some kind of hydrogen explosion dealio right now, so I’ll inquire about that later. Either way, I love Hindenburg.
Where do I start? Yesterday was by far the most intense day of the workshop. I think…I think…the hardest part is behind us. I think. What was hard about it was that we had to hold so many voices in our heads at once. All of the tape we recorded in interviews now with the added layer of narration. Also, writing for radio is hard. I’ve had some practice so I wasn’t freaking out about that part as much as using Hindenburg, but still…when you know your story is getting aired at a community event, you don’t want to sound like your brain is one of those potato batteries. You also just want to do your subject and their story justice, complement their energy or whatever…it’s just a lot.
What overwhelmed me the most about yesterday was that I didn’t get to start the hardcore independent work of scripting and clipping my massive amount of tape until after dinner. All I wanted to do was hang out and/or watch the final episode of The Night Manager. (I’m just going to save it for when I get home.)
So last night I switched things up by locking myself up in my room instead of sitting at the communal work table. I gave myself an 11 pm deadline and started creating clips in Hindenburg based on a loose story structure I had in my head. Mr. WeInBeRg shared some great stuff with us to help us think about crafting a tale for radio. This article about The ‘e’ really helped me. I think my story kinda follows this arc.
I’m getting this out early because have absolutely no time to have fun or be interesting tonight!!!! I have to read my tape logs, playback the tape until I want to take a flying leap into the Salton Sea (I already do), and script a rough draft of my entire story including transcript of the clips for workshopping by 10 am tomorrow morning.
I am not a night owl, but I have to be one tonight. Hoo. 🦉
I told my friend Joe I still had to get the newsletter out and he said, “Just promise everyone handjobs and you’ll be off the hook!” So in the spirit of that, I’m doing a halfway giveaway! But think more stickers and other wood pulp ephemera as opposed to sexual favors.
Today was the longest day of the workshop so far. I woke up early to review notes from yesterday to craft and finalize my questions for Dave Day, the “man about town.” I felt a lot of pressure going into this interview because this man has a sprawling personality and footprint on the town. When I was trying to lock down an interview before I even got here and people suggested Dave Day, they also said he was an important man. “He does a lot for the town. Dave’s important.” I met him the first night we arrived because his organization, the Bombay Beach Arts and Culture Center, hosts regular community feasts and one was happening that night.
During a short spontaneous pre-interview I did of him on that night, he seemed more “media trained” than anybody I might find around town. He’s owned several businesses and has lived in Orange County for decades. He’s clearly had some press coverage and interacted with media people. He knows all the buzz words, how to sum up his activities in pithy lines, so I was worried that was all I was going to get today. I also noticed a man who really hides behind his work. He’s always moving around and doing something. So my goal today wasn’t to crack him necessarily, but I just wanted to know more about his interior life. Where he comes from, what does he think about when he’s still, and the why behind all of his building and creating in this town. Why here. Why this. Why here. All the whys.
I won’t reveal too much about the conversation because I have to log the tape early tomorrow morning and I want to save morsels for the final story, which I’ll share here, but it was good. I arrived at the center around 9:30 am this morning and recorded ambient sounds. Crunching gravel as I walked up to his door. Doves cooing in the palm trees. I walked around the BBAC compound and described each structure and workshop space, like the tool shed and art barn, to set the scene. Most of this tape won’t even get used, but I wanted to practice Weinberg’s suggestions and gather as much tape as I could.
When I shared the subscribe link to this newsletter, Kevin M. asked, “Will there be an audio component?” Good idea, Kevin. Good point. I’m at an audio storytelling workshop, so why not let voices do the work. Preferably not my own voice. Good thing you can barely hear me because I’m terrible at moving the mic around. It’s because I don’t use a shotgun mic when I’m interviewing kids. They would stop talking if I shoved one in their faces. With them, I just place the recorder on the table and eventually they forget it’s there. But now I’m talking to adults and it’s a conversation where I’m allowed to interject at times to dig for more. So I’m noticing patterns, learning, adjusting.
Here is a snippet I recorded today with a local as part of our morning “go out and get VOX” exercise.
I left home around 10 am right on schedule. The drive was as boring and serene as I hoped it would be. I barely listened to anything. I wanted to let the desert do it’s magic and shear away the awful noise that had filled my brain these past few months. So once I got onto the open road around Beaumont and civilization started to clear away for long stretches, I daydreamed, staring at windmills, some of which were turning, some not, and they reminded me of kids in a classroom each doing their own thing. One picking his nose, another sitting completely still, another waving her arms around and doing a little dance.
Google Maps said 2 hrs 5 mins and it would have been exactly that had I not stopped at In-N-Out to hoover a grilled cheese, extremely oversalted fries, and a small iced tea, which they need to rename “mini” because it was the size of a mouthwash rinse cup.
I sailed through fields upon fields of date palms from Mecca onward. They mirrored each other in shadowy lines and angles and I’d catch occasional glimpses of the shimmering sea beyond, looming like a mirage, except it wasn’t one. The desert and sea are neighbors here. This lasted for a while, until finally everything cut away and all that remained were train tracks to my left and the Salton Sea to the right.
I know I’m forgetting something. The stove on. My entire bag of undies. A small blonde-haired kid in the attic. (RIP Catherine O’Hara). I’m not a forgetful person, but road trips don’t force the same kind of economy as air travel when it comes to packing, so I’ve been slacking, chucking random things into my suitcase in between popping cookies into my mouth, checking stupid work emails, and overwatering my houseplants (and sniffing my potatoes!) because it’s going to climb into the 80s next week. IYKYK.
We luxuriate in our cars, us Californians, overconfident that a Costco will just appear on the horizon even if we take the Mojave route. I got the oil changed in the Subaru this morning, and while Brody at Valvoline was topping off my fluids I gripped the wheel and thought about how I’ve always wanted to start a high speed chase. I feel safe, righteous, and in control when I’m driving, even with a filthy cabin air filter. And I need that feeling right now because I have no idea where I’m going or what to expect. I need to know that I can toss a bunch of papers in the air, hop back in, and leave.
The thing with this trip is that I can’t be too economical. My final destination isn’t a hotel with fresh towels available at the push of a button, or even a suburb teeming with Walgreenses where I can load up on maxi pads and Corn Nuts in a pinch. I’m headed to a rental property called Pirate’s Alley in Niland, California. AKA Buttcrack Middleahnowhere about 20 minutes away from Bombay Beach, a place mostly known for its swinging resort town past and perhaps soon for its post-apocalyptic future as ground zero of the lithium boom. I’m hesitant to describe a place I’ve never been to so I’ve relied on the accounts of others.
