[{"id":"9595","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E4, Genuine Conversation, 6 February 2023, Fyfe"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/genuine-conversation/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Frances Grace Fyfe"],"creator_names_search":["Frances Grace Fyfe"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Frances Grace Fyfe\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/57d4aa97-aa60-4920-acb2-82fea5edbdc4/audio/1d809ebb-6e39-40ca-a736-16390cc90357/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e4-genuine-conversation.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:53:12\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"51,068,804 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e4-genuine-conversation\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/genuine-conversation/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-02-06\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Antin, David. “Talking at the Boundaries.” How Long is the Present: Selected Talk Poems of David Antin. Edited by Stephen Friedman, University of New Mexico Press, pp. 31-64. Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller, Farrar, Strauss &  Giroux, 1975.\\n\\nDiepeveen, Leonard. Modernist Fraud: Hoax, Parody, Deception. Oxford UP, 2019.\\n\\nGoffman, Erving. Behavior in Public Places. Simon and Schuster, 2008.\\n\\nKreillkamp, Ivan. “Speech on Paper: Charles Dickens, Victorian Phonography, and the Reform of Writing.” Voice and the Victorian Storyteller, Cambridge UP, 2005, pp. 69-88.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549530607617,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["What makes a genuine conversation? And why is it so difficult to have one? Frances Grace Fyfe is on a quest to find out. This madcap talk therapy session has the SpokenWeb RA consider the literary concept of the dialogue, the verbatim transcription of speech in writing (through an exploration of—what else?—Charles Dickens’s early forays in court stenography), especially “expressive” phonemes, and david antin’s experimental talk poems of the 1970s. An investigative journalist, a peer supporter, and one especially sincere friend weigh in to help FG orchestrate the most genuine conversation of all: one that’s scripted, recorded, and edited for distribution in podcast form.\n\n\n(00:04)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:35)\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [End music: SpokenWeb Podcast theme music]\nMy name is Katherine McLeod, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Conversation. When was the last time you thought about conversations, thought about what exactly makes them conversations? In this episode, SpokenWeb research assistant Francis Grace Fife thinks about the literary concept of the dialogue, about conversations by having conversations.\n\nFife has conversations with an investigative journalist who conducts interviews for a living, with a friend whose thoughts on the capabilities of speech over writing informs how their most genuine conversations take place, with a peer supporter at Concordia who intentionally makes use of non-speech responses to create connection in conversation and even with herself, in the style of talk therapy. But Fife goes a step further delving into what happens to conversations when they are transformed from speech into writing.\n\nTaking up Charles Dickens’s foray into court’s stenography and David Anton’s experimental talk poems of the 1970s, Fife thinks about those aspects of genuine conversation like those affirmative “mm-hmm’s” in conjunction with their written representations.\n\nDigging into expressive phonemes, the pathological urge to mirror your conversation partner’s speech style, and the discomfort of silences in speech conversations. Fife reflects on when and how speech might be inescapably performative and considers what happens when speech is literally performative, but also genuine, like in David Anton’s talk poems. We invite you to listen with us to what Fife calls the most genuine conversation of all, one that’s scripted, recorded, and edited for distribution in podcast form. [SpokenWeb theme music begins] Here is episode four of season four of the SpokenWeb podcast. Genuine Conversation. [SpokenWeb theme music ends]\n\n(02:58)\tPhone Voice 1\tHey, how are you? [clears throat] Hey, how are you? Yeah, good, thanks. Yeah, thanks, um, for agreeing to talk with me today. Hopefully this won’t take up too much of your time, but, yeah, as you know, the idea for the podcast is about genuine conversation.\nHey, [laughs], how are you? Yeah, good, good. Thanks. Thanks for agreeing to talk with me. Um, yeah. Hopefully this won’t take up too much of your time, but, yeah, as you know, the idea for the podcast is on the topic of genuine conversation, and I just thought I’d reach out cuz I thought you might have something to say about that. [Sound effect: phone rings] Oh, shhh Sorry. [Soundeffect: Answer phone] Hi, sorry. Can you hear me? [Music begins: calm jazz with high hat and piano] Um, sorry. This is kind of awkward.\n\n(04:10)\tNarrator\tIn Aldous Huxley’s short story “Over The Telephone”, a young poet mentally rehearses a whole conversation between him and the woman he hopes will accept his invitation to the opera. [Sound effect: phone  rings] But when the operator finally makes the connection, he stumbles hopelessly and she declines. Nothing, in other words, goes as planned over the telephone.\n[Music fades and ends]\n\n(04:33)\tPhone Voice 1\tSorry, I don’t really know where to start.\n(04:37)\tPhone Voice 2\tThat’s okay. Why don’t you start by telling me what it is you want to talk about?\n(04:44):\tPhone Voice 1\tYeah, I guess that’s partly what I came here to find out or, yeah. To talk about. I guess I’m seeking an occasion for the kind of conversations I wanna have or, yeah, I don’t know. I guess I could just use some practice.\n(05:01)\tPhone Voice 2\tPractice talking?\n(05:02)\tPhone Voice 1\t[overlapping] Talking [laughs]  Yeah.\n(05:06)\tPhone Voice 2\tOkay. Well, why don’t you start by telling me how long you’ve been feeling this way?\n(05:13)\tPhone Voice 1\tThere was, there was a period where it was hard to talk to people. You remember, I’m sure. A lot of people thought that would make it a good time for writing. I don’t know. I, I, I guess I just feel like being away from people writing began to feel so insincere and then, you know, since I’ve started this master’s degree in English, I’ve just been feeling like, I don’t know, I don’t wanna read books anymore. I wanna talk to people, actual people.\n(05:42)\tPhone Voice 2\tThat sounds difficult.\n05:44)\tPhone Voice 1\tYeah. I mean, it’s [laughs], it’s, it’s whatever. Yeah. I guess.\n(05:48)\tPhone Voice 2\tI think you might benefit from talking to a specialist. I have someone in mind. I’m gonna transfer you over. Okay? [Sound effect: phone dialing and then dial tone starts]\n(06:00)\tHannah\tI essentially had to learn how to interview people twice or maybe even three times as my working practices changed and learning how to construct conversations all over again, such that they were delivered in a human and interesting and relevant way was a really important part of what I had to learn how to do.\n(06:21)\tNarrator\t[Music begins: electronic with drum beat]\nThis is my friend Hannah talking. She’s a journalist working in current affairs and investigative reporting. As someone who has, according to her LinkedIn profile, a proven track record negotiating difficult access to people for print and television reporting, I thought she might be a good person to give me pointers on how to structure a conversation in the first place.\n\n(06:41):\tInterviewer\tI’m interested in the human aspect of it. Are there some strategies you can use to prod someone to speak in a sort of interesting or even humorous manner to get a good clip for your video?\n(06:53)\tHannah\tAbsolutely. There are ways of working that are very helpful. The first of which is most profoundly is like, just don’t be a jerk, right? Show up and be human and be present. And people like to act sometimes, like there is a way of gaming a conversation or short cutting it somehow. And there isn’t. The most important thing that you do is show up and engage with someone in the way that they expect to be engaged with. And you get very good in a slightly pathological way at mirroring people.\nYou become very good at matching somebody else’s conversation style. If they crack jokes, you crack jokes. If they take it more seriously, you take it more seriously and you catch yourself doing it in non-professional situations and you realize that it is really quite a creepy thing to do. But we’re responding to someone as they hope to work is a really important part of what I do.\n\n(07:55)\tInterviewer\tI have written in my notes, “don’t be a jerk”, which seems like a good maxim, generally speaking.\n(08:00)\tHannah\tIt’s a good rule in life.\n(08:02)\tInterviewer\t[laughs] Yeah, I’m interested in what, and maybe it’s not a good question, but maybe you can answer it to the best of your ability. What is it that makes a good question to ask?\n(08:19)\tHannah\t[Music begins: electronic and spare] So I have a couple of answers to that. The first and most obvious one right, is open-ended questions. We like open-ended questions. What you want, again, it’s that people are more comfortable expressing their experience, which is something that they know to be true rather than an opinion or even a fact that they just think to be true.\nAnd beyond that genuine engagement and that genuine sort of interface, there are a couple of things that are helpful. The first of which is being genuinely passionate and curious about people’s own personal experiences. People are uncomfortable talking in hypotheticals, talking about things that they may not be sure about, all those kinds of things, but people are always secure in their own experiences and their own perceptions. I think the other thing that you always want to do when you’re asking someone questions is, again, so where people are more comfortable expressing their own experience, make it clear that that is what you value and that is true for personal stuff as well as for professional stuff.  What you value is them as people and what they bring to this conversation and not what they think or what they know. They’re not quantities to be known to you.\n\n(09:36):\tInterviewer\t[Music ends] Well, I value your skill as a journalist, [laughs], just so you know. [Hannah laughs] And you know, and keeping with the kinda self-reflexive nature of question asking and the open-endedness. Maybe you could tell me like, how do you feel this interview has gone so far?\n(09:54)\tHannah\tI think it’s gone really well. I think, so what you’re trying to do here is something really difficult, right? Which is that you’re trying to record for academic content fundamentally and record the building blocks of something that will prove an academic point, but in a performative way. And that’s actually a very difficult thing to do.\nAnd I’ve said this before, but, you are doing now what I do professionally, and I am both paid money to do it and given a lot of time to do it in, and I still find it difficult. [Music begins: soft tones] So I think you should be proud of this interview and I think you’ve done a good job with those questions in as much as they’re reflective from me, they’re interesting for me, and it’s a selection of questions that I don’t think I remember being asked before, which makes this feel like a contribution that you value, which is good.\n\n(11:00)\tInterviewer\tI really was not fishing for anything. I just wanted a sound bite. But [Interviewer and Hannah laugh], I appreciate- [Soft tones music fades into jazzy piano music]\n(11:05)\tHannah\tHappy to provide.\n(11:15)\tNarrator\tNow that I had some formal training from Hannah, I figured it was time to test out some genuine conversation skills in real time. So I called up one of the best conversationalists I could think of, my friend Ben. Remembering Hannah’s advice I try to ask open-ended questions and show a genuine interest in the subject matter. Here’s me asking Ben about his own relationship to making conversation.\n(11:40)\tBen\t[Music ends] It used to be that it would happen on the fly. And then I was introduced to the phenomenologists and that really made a difference in the way that I speak. I can’t remember what made me stop and then start to hesitate before speaking, but there was some shift in second year university where all of a sudden the words that I was using, um, got caught.\nUh, and I started to have more trouble just speaking off the cuff. And then with Sarah Ahmed she writes about, and Alia Al-Saji both write about, uh, hesitating and stopping and how that might interrupt, uh, some unconscious sort of, well, racism that can, that can come out in speaking and just that has really, uh, that has really impacted the way that I have conversation with others. I think I hesitate, um, out of a fear of stepping into, out of a fear and also a care.\n\n(13:07)\tInterviewer\tI mean, that was a great answer. I really wasn’t expecting anything [laughs]. And because I, you know, the final form of this podcast is interested in the relation between speech and writing. It’s interesting to me that you’re kind of telling me you’re getting some of these ideas about how to speak from texts that you were encountering. Well, did you feel like it, this kind of fearful and careful speech is an imitation of text, or is that maybe not,\n(13:41)\tBen\tHuh. Huh.\n(13:43)\tInterviewer\tYeah.\n(13:44)\tBen\tI wonder, that’s a good question. I mean, as a, I mean, I think, I imagine that you are someone who, are you someone who is more comfortable with text then speech for that reason because of the hesitation? [Interviewer gasps]\n(13:59)\tInterviewer\tUm, I don’t know. I just, I also feel  similarly to you in that speech and speech patterns were molded so much from being in university and studying writing and, but, you know, there’s also, I think that the writing that happens in the classroom and also the kind of teaching in and outside also equally inform modes of speech. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know, but interesting too that you’re using this metaphor too, of like the words getting caught, this sort of, yeah. Yeah. Interesting image of-\n(14:37)\tBen\tYeah. And I think mm-hmm. I think that when I am too thoughtful about what I say, well, I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking more about speaking from the heart, as opposed to speaking from my head. I think a lot of times I’m speaking from my head, especially when I’m having a higher level theoretical conversation with someone. But also, when I’m having an uncomfortable conversation with someone or a conversation where there’s a, there’s a power asymmetry, or we’re talking about a power asymmetry. [Music begins: calm tones] But oftentimes if I can manage to surrender that and speak from the heart, then I surprise myself with what comes out of my mouth. And, sometimes that can be a good thing.\n(15:41)\tInterviewer\t[Music ends] So beautiful. [Interviewer and Ben burst out laughing] It’s so weird. It’s like, I’m, I’m, I’m conscious thatI’m trying to interview you and I’m thinking about how this is gonna sound on the podcast, and also thinking about Yeah. Syncing up this audio and not wanting to interject too much [laughs] Like, woah, it’s such a great conversation. I wish I was just jumping in a little more, but, well, yeah. Let’s see.\nWe can, that can be an interesting reflection, I guess, later.  But, um, I, I also wanted to ask part, the reason why I wanted to interview you as well was I know that you spend a lot of time by yourself or at least last year when I knew you, you were kind of spending maybe two weeks at a time in your kind of cabin in the countryside. And I’m just curious, like if you spent, well, if you consider that time alone and if you spent any of that time talking to yourself?\n\n(16:45)\tBen\tMm-hmm.  I did spend a lot of time alone last year, and I haven’t spent very much time alone this year. And I almost feel a little bit lesser for it. I think it’s because of the conversations that I’m not able to have, but I don’t talk with myself too much when I’m alone. [Music begins: soft tones] I have really appreciated speaking to the non-human environment around me. [Sound effect: birds singing]\nThat was something that I think I got into a little bit more. And it has brought me  a lot of joy to be in, like a conversational relationality with the birds and the squirrels and the trees. And yeah. So it’s not something that I do regularly, but when I do do it, it feels pretty good. [Music and sound effects end]\n\n(17:45)\tInterviewer\tI mean, are you also writing down the things that you’re speaking aloud?\n(17:49)\tBen\tNot very often. Yeah. Not very often because I get, um, sometimes the hesitation. I feel that stronger when I’m writing. And oftentimes, like, this has happened a couple times recently where I’ve had friends request significant conversations over text. So, you know,  there’s a difficulty in our dynamic, and I’d like to attend to this with you in this text messenger format. And I’ve had to set a boundary and say it like, let’s call on the phone or  speak verbally because  when it comes to expressing myself, I really have a block  textually. I can write an essay, but  if I want to, um, yeah. If I want to articulate how I feel  I really struggle. I, it’s like pulling teeth, to get that into a paragraph that, that I can then read back and think, yeah, that’s, that’s how I felt.\n(19:06)\tInterviewer\tHmm. I’m trying to think about what question to ask you then about the relationship between speech and writing. Is it because?\n(19:17)\tBen\tWell, I-\n(19:17)\tInterviewer\tSpeaking is- no, you go.\n(19:20)\tBen\tThere’s just so much that I, I mean, I say this with trepidation to an English student [laughs].\n(19:28)\tInterviewer\tI really don’t know anything, don’t worry about it.\n(19:29)\tBen\tBut, okay. Well, just that, there’s a lot that I haven’t, there’s a lot that I can’t capture in writing, like the medium of writing doesn’t deal well with silence, [Music begins: instrumental and electronic] with pauses, with those little ums and ahs. And yeah. And that means that I think I really depend on those to express myself. And without them, there’s sort of a certainty that I don’t think is genuine to where I’m coming from.\nAnd there’s also, I’m just realizing this now as I’m thinking while speaking, there’s also a tugging that happens when you are in conversation like a requirement to finish the sentence. Whereas you can take however long you want to finish a sentence on paper.\n\n(20:42)\tInterviewer\tYeah. Well, there’s, I guess it’s something riskier about, I mean, this is a bit basic, but about speech in that it can’t be edited. But maybe that also speaks to, I think, your desire for it to feel. Hmm. Yeah. The real possibility-\n(21:00)\tBen\tYeah-\n(21:02)\tInterviewer\tOh, no, go.\n(21:04)\tBen\tIt’s the question of like, when you’re thinking of the art of talk, is the talk or the conversation, is the conversation the medium of the art? Or is it the object of the art? And, you know, maybe it’s the object of the art if you are featuring a conversation, a powerful conversation. But if it’s the medium and it can’t exist in any other, like by putting it into a podcast takes away, that’s something that, yeah, that’s something that really interests me is what is possible within the medium of conversation that isn’t possible in text or in recordings or in an image?\nYeah. Which is why I love, which is why I love live radio as opposed to a podcast, [Sound effect: radio voice talking and ends] because live radio seems to me it’s slightly more conversational and, huh. I love silence and radio silence, and the awkwardness of radio silence. I hope that you include it at least somewhere in your piece.\n\n(22:20)\tInterviewer\tYeah. What do you mean by radio silence?\n(22:23)\tBen\tOh, just this idea of dead silence and in an audio format that is to be avoided at all costs. Like, you know, you’re just, at least with radio, you’re just supposed to talk, you know, it doesn’t matter what you say, just don’t let it get silent, because that silence is so discomforting to someone who’s listening. Um, but I really, I really love that discomfort. [laughs]\n(22:51)\tInterviewer\tYeah. Well, I’m curious about that because most people don’t. In real life do you also like that discomfort?\n(23:01):\tBen\tUm, if there’s, [long pause]  depends on how it ends. It depends on how it ends. Sometimes it ends in conversation with an inability to find the other person, to attune yourself to them again. And the conversation falters and then it ends awkwardly. And that’s a horrible feeling. [laughs] But on the flip side, some of those uncomfortable silences have opened a space for a really deepened, beautiful connection. [Music begins: soft tones] And so maybe you can’t have one without the other.\n(23:58)\tNarrator\tBen’s conversation left me thinking much about the differences between conversation and the written word. For Ben, the genuineness of the encounter, or in his words, a deep and beautiful connection is made possible only because of the failings of conversation. The fact that it can hesitate, stumble, or lag into silence. Writing feels disingenuous to speech then, in Ben’s terms, because we don’t have the notation to represent these hesitations in the first place.\nIt’s the same way Isaac Pittman, a British teacher felt when reading the London journals in the early 1900’s. Reporters at that time, he felt, didn’t accurately transcribe parliamentary speeches they were reporting on. Rather, they recorded them in the way they were accustomed to writing. That is to say, in grammatical English, but spoken English, as Ben gestured to, isn’t grammatical. People “um” and, “uh”, or more accurately to the Britain of the time,” irm” and, “uh”. In order to better capture these noises, Pitman invented phonography, a new system of shorthand that would allow for a more exact registration of speech than ordinary writing could claim.\n\nAs Ivan Kreilkamp writes, “shorthand promised not simply an efficient system of information storage, but a means by which writing might be infused with orality and the living breath of vocal articulation.” One photographic manual went so far as to claim that phonography would indeed render a greater service to mankind than the discovery of a new world.\n\n(25:23)\tNewspaper Boy\tExtra, extra! Read all about it!\n(25:26)\tNarrator\tPhonography was interestingly enough, essential to the writing career of one Charles Dickens, who learned the craft first as a court stenographer, and later as a newspaper reporter of public speeches. As Kreilkamp writes, “Dickens characteristic style, the vivid immediacy of his character’s voices owes a significant debt to the shorthand mastery that meant so much to him.” Indeed, Dickens’ experience with phonography was essential to pioneering a new type of Victorian realism. Where before a novelist like Jane Austen might present a highly stylized representation of conversation, as in some sense, speech itself, Dickens shorthand could more accurately represent conversation generally. All the speech patterns and mannerisms of the characters in his novels have a corresponding sign where every sign represents a real life sound.\n(26:12)\tScrooge\tBah humbug!\n(26:13)\tNarrator\tDickens’ mastery of phonographic shorthand led some people to consider him something of a writing machine. Here Dickens describes the mechanical movement of his writing hand when listening to a dull speech.\n(26:25)\tCharles Dickens\tI sometimes beguile the tedium of the moment by mentally following the speaker in the old way. And sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find my hand going on the tablecloth taking an imaginary note of it all.\n(26:37)\tNarrator\tDickens’ idea of a mimetic representation of speech in writing mirrors my own experience putting my conversation with Ben through my computer’s automatic transcription software. Going over the transcript I noticed the prevalence of one word over any other one my computer spells h-m-m.\n(26:55)\tBen\tHmm.\n(26:56)\tNarrator\tIf automatic transcription exists in Pitman’s words, to eliminate all ambiguity from language by creating a one-to-one correspondence between sound and sign, what exactly does this sound signify? Let’s replay the tape. [Sound effect: tape rewinds]\n(27:11)\tInterviewer\tI know that you spend a lot of time by yourself-\n(27:16)\tBen\tHmm. [Sound effect: tape fastforwarding]\n(27:16)\tInterviewer\t-or at least in the classroom, and also the kind of teaching in-\n(27:20)\tBen\tHmm. [Sound effect: tape fastforwarding]\n(27:20)\tInterviewer\tAnd it can’t be edited.\n(27:23)\tBen\tHmm.  [Sound effect: tape fastforwarding]\n(27:25)\tNarrator\t[Music begins: jazzy piano] On its own I find the “hmm” sound has a soothing quality unto itself. It seems I’m not the only one with this mysterious intuition. In his book, What Makes Speech Patterns Expressive, for example, the linguist Reuven Tsur looks at sound patterns in six “especially tender” poems by the Hungarian poet, Sándor Petőfi, and finds that what they have in common is an unusually high frequency of the “m” phoneme.\nThere’s this 1995 study by British linguist David Crystal that seems to confirm the poetic mode of speech perception Tsur writes about can’t be separated from the way we perceive speech more generally. What Crystal did was pull a whole bunch of writers alongside the general population, and found that they all agreed one of the prettiest and most relaxing consonant phonemes, at least in received British pronunciation, was the M Sound.\n\n[Music ends]\n\nAt the same time, I also read this M or “mm” sound in my conversation as a sign of responsiveness or attention to the conversation at hand. Here’s Irving Goffman on the discursive power of this word: [Music begins: electronic]\n\n“In conversation, there are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works, to attract the attention of the interlocutor, or to confirm his continued attention. Are you listening or in Shakespearean diction, lend me your ears. And on the other end of the wire mm-hmm.”\n\n(28:47):\tPhone Voice 2\tCan you hear me?\n(28:48)\tNarrator\tThis sound, in other words, is an expression of the state of a social relationship, one in which one participant consents to their continued participation therein. I noticed in my conversation with Ben that the sound also acts as a way of vocalizing or making legible what would be an otherwise silent listening practice. To learn more about this noise and its relationship to listening more generally I decided it was time to consult another expert.\n[Music ends] [Sound effect: phone number dialing]\n\n(29:15)\tMirdhula\tI’m Mirdhula and I am a peer supporter at the Concordia Gender Advocacy Center.\n(29:22)\tInterviewer\tPerfect. That’s great. And just for people who maybe don’t know, what does a peer supporter, what does that role look like?\n(29:29)\tMirdhula\tSo, as a peer supporter, you can actually come in and we can provide you with a space where you can feel validated and where you can experience any feelings that you’re feeling and maybe not feel so alone in those feelings. Because we’re not certified professionals, we don’t offer advice. But that’s kind of the concept of peer support.\nIt’s to offer validation and to remove that power struggle between a mental health professional and the person seeking support. So the way we even out that power struggle is by being  a person who doesn’t lead the conversation, doesn’t offer advice. We purely let the person navigate their feelings in however way they would like to. Whether it’s in silence, whether it’s just going on a rant, we don’t control the conversation in any way.\n\n(30:30)\tInterviewer\tYeah. I’m so interested in this really particular form of conversation because it’s a different form of conversation than we’re used to. What does it look like for you as a peer supporter to not lead a conversation? What actual kind of methods are you employing to signal to the other person that it’s their time to talk?\n(30:50)\tMirdhula\t[Music begins: quiet drum beat]\nBasically, as a peer supporter, we specifically received training, because it’s not something that comes very natural to everybody. We’re taught to constantly kind of riff off of what people are saying and to keep a conversation going. The importance of keeping a conversation going is really important in our society. But what I had learned personally, what really was like, so jarring to me in this training was how much I felt like I needed to quickly respond to things and not actually listen to what people were telling me. And to exist in the silence that is required to really think about what people are telling me, you know?\n\nBut some methods that we use, including [laughs] incorporating some silence to give people time to think is reflection. So we reflect what the people are telling us. And what that is, is like not assuming any emotions that somebody may be feeling unless they explicitly express that they’re feeling those feelings, and to kind of mirror what they are telling us in order to validate what they’re telling us. So that they don’t feel any pressure to feel a certain way or to even figure out how they’re feeling, but to really just live in that moment.\n\n(32:14)\tInterviewer\tAre you conscious about other kinds of gestures or things like nodding your head, like, I’m really interested in, in the technical aspect. What other kind of signals besides sitting in silence can you show to somebody that you’re paying attention to?\n(32:28)\tMirdhula\tSo, this has been my saving grace as for my impulsivity. Like, basically the replacement for every single interjection that I wanna insert, because I always wanna, I’m very expressive in the face, vocally. Anything you were just saying, every time I nod my head, it’s me preventing myself from being vocal about it. And that’s also a skill that we learned. We learned about different ways of expressing your validation, or sorry, expressing your validation by nodding your head. And for me, that’s a big one. And then the “mm-hmms”. And the “oh, yes, of course”. Like, I try not to use too many cop outs. So there are some, there’s some terminology that could be seen as surface level, like, oh, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about that. They really tell us to avoid terms like that just because it can come off as insincere.\nAnd sometimes we just say that. So sometimes when we apologize for somebody and offer them our pity, it could be seen as us trying to get through our discomfort with their feelings. So I try to stick to the “mm-hmm” and “yes”, like just very simple terms for validation. But the head nodding is big for me. It’s my, one of my biggest ways of validating what someone is saying to me. [laughs]\n\n(34:06)\tInterviewer\tIt’s interesting to me that you’re talking about how you’re such an expressive person. I mean, it’s coming through just in the interview. It seems to me like part of peer support isn’t getting rid of that personality. It’s about mobilizing expression in a way that feels really conscious and sincere. And yeah. This is something actually, I think a big part of the podcast is that I’m really interested in words like “mm-hmm” or sounds that we signal to someone that we’re paying attention, that aren’t necessarily words, but they do signify something. Do you feel like you’re using those more in your everyday speech now?\n(34:44)\tMirdhula\tDefinitely.I’ve noticed, like with this training, I’ve noticed more how much I was rushing through conversations in my day-to-day life. So these are my tools to stay more grounded and to be more present in those conversations. So I definitely, like, even my friends have actually noticed a difference. They’re like, I’ve really felt heard, and I thought that was so amazing. It’s really validating to feel like you can give someone, you can give someone a safe space with just a head nod and a few, like, sounds, you know, like validating sounds, and I think it’s really powerful. Um, but the “mm-hmm,” that’s like my big one, that’s my big validation sound. [laughs]\n(35:33)\tInterviewer\tAnd it also makes me think about, you know, the particular dynamics of talking on the phone with someone, like in peer support, it seems like body language is really important, but in a context like this, you know, especially if we couldn’t see each other, then those words become a lot more helpful.\n(35:53)\tMirdhula\tThey’re an anchor.\n(35:54)\tInterviewer\tHmm. Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it.\n(35:56)\tMirdhula\tLike that! There you go. Yeah. You got it. [Mirdhula and Interviewer laugh]\n(36:02)\tInterviewer\tOkay. Great. Thanks. Well, that was super helpful. I won’t take up any more of your time unless there’s one nugget of wisdom you wanna share us with me? [Music begins: soft tones]\n(36:09)\tMirdhula\t[laughs] Nugget of wisdom. That’s a lot of pressure. [laughs]. Um, honestly, this training alone, I’ve felt transformed. I know that’s so dramatic, but I’ve truly felt transformed. It was very difficult to face these things because they feel like failures at first. But when you can face them, and that’s what they teach you to do, to face these things that are so ingrained in your person, these dynamics of conversation that are so drilled into us, like from a young age, to face that and to realize that I can change, it’s like, it’s, it’s a different kind of education that I’ve received in my lifetime.\nIt’s a different type of learning. And I really had to accept that I wouldn’t be comfortable in it. I had to accept the discomfort of changing the way that I communicate and connect with people. And I think that is so powerful and so important for people to experience in life. So what they’re doing at the center is just amazing. I am so happy to be a part of something, something so groundbreaking.\n\n(37:22)\tNarrator\tMirdhula’s conversation helps me reframe this noise, not just as a signal of responsiveness, but of genuine responsiveness. Interestingly, it seems to me that the authenticity of this responsiveness comes from a failure to speak or find the appropriate words to say in the first place.\nIndeed, both Ben and Mirdhula talked about silence’s ability to create a sense of meaningful connection between speakers when faced with a difficult conversational situation. Maybe then, what we can say of this noise is that it’s a sonic representation similar to what Goffman writes about eye contact. It allows us to quote, “monitor one another’s mutual perceiving and develop a heightened sense of moral responsibility” for both participants’ speech acts.\n\n(38:03)\tPhone Voice 1\tI have a confession to make. I’ve noticed that ever since talking to Ben and Mirdhula, I’ve been making this hmm humming noise more often than I ever have. [Music Ends]\n(38:14)\tPhone Voice 2\tWell, that sounds like a good thing, right?\n(38:16)\tPhone Voice 1\tYeah. Although I have to wonder, how can I be sure it’s not just an imitation of responsiveness? Or like, I’m worried I’m modeling my own speech patterns on them because I wanna be read as someone who’s responsive. Didn’t Hannah say something like that? Hang on, let me find it. [Sound Effect: Tape rewinding]\n  (38:34):\tHannah\tAnd you get very good in a slightly pathological way at mirroring people. You become very good at matching somebody else’s conversation style. If they crack jokes, you crack jokes. If they take it more seriously, you take it more seriously, and you catch yourself doing it in non-professional situations and you realize that it is really quite a creepy thing to do. [Sound Effect: Tape fastforwarding]\n(39:02):\tPhone Voice 2\tIt still surprises me that you know how to do that.\n(39:05)\tPhone Voice 1\tOkay, but can we get back to this issue? How do I know if I’m being genuinely responsive and not just mirroring responsiveness in a performative or worse still, pathological way? I’m thinking of something Isaac Pitman said about phonographic shorthand, that it would eliminate all ambiguity from speech and writing by creating this kind of perfect correspondence between speech and science.\nBut doesn’t the hmm noise evade signification in some way? Or like, isn’t it a representation of the ambiguity of the silence generated by awkward or difficult conversation? I just worry I’m imitating Ben and Mirdhula becoming like Charles Dickens, but instead of a writing machine, I’ve become this speaking machine, a kind of automatic generator of conversational noise.\n\n(39:48):\tPhone Voice 2\tWell, let me ask you this. What is genuine anyway?\n(39:52):\tPhone Voice 1\tOkay, Socrates, take it easy.\n(39:54):\tPhone Voice 2\tNo, for real. That was a real question or object of scholarly inquiry. I was just reading about the invention of the typewriter and its relationship to the development of the aesthetics of modernist poetry. It made it so that language could be edited down to seem artificial, and it also at the same time made the mechanical reproduction of poetry easier. So it was this kind of generation of distance and proliferation that made poetry’s intent… Hmm… Unclear. It’s what led people to think of modernist poetry as insincere. They thought they were being duped somehow.\n(40:25):\tPhone Voice 1\tIt’s funny, the ambiguity surrounding the intent of modernist poetry reminds me of some conversations I’ve had about David Antin. Have you heard of him? [Phone Voice 2 affirms with a “mhmm”]\nHe was this conceptual artist who in the 1960s started performing these improvised talk poems at readings and exhibitions. What he would do is come up with a theme beforehand, or sometimes whoever was getting him to perform would give him the preassigned topic, and then he would talk off the cuff sometimes for an hour, hour and a half at a time.\n\nMeanwhile, he would use a tape recorder to record the whole thing, then go home and transcribe the work onto the page. But even before the transcription, Antin was really adamant that what he was doing wasn’t just talk or like a means to communicate something else through it. Rather, his talk was actually poetry. It had this distinct aesthetic quality.\n\n(41:09)\tPhone Voice 2\tLet me get this straight. The talk itself wasn’t necessarily adhering to a regular meter or rhyme? So what is it about the practice that makes talk poetry?\n(41:18)\tPhone Voice 1\tWell, that’s part of it, right? What enabled Antin to define his talk as poetry was that he had defined himself as a poet from the outset. You know, someone who gets contracted to perform poetry allowed at universities. And actually most of his poems are preoccupied with the institutional forces that make something like poetry happen or legible in the first place.\nLiterally, the opening lines from the written text of “Talking at the Boundaries” starts with him recounting getting contracted to perform the poem. Antin writes, “when I agreed to come here to Indiana, Barry Alpert didn’t have a title for what I was gonna talk about. I think maybe he forgot to ask me, which was I suppose just as well.” And on and on and on. [Sound Effect: Take being put in player and someone pressing start]\n\n(42:01)\tClip of David Antin  from “Talking at the Boundaries”\tWhen, uh, I agreed to come out here to talk, Barry didn’t have a title for what I was going to talk about. I think maybe he forgot to ask me, and I think it probably didn’t make a terrible great difference. Uh, it was probably six or one half dozen or the other, whatever you called it. But, uh, he did wind up with a title, which somehow reached me, some voucher form came back to me in the mail that I had to sign, and then I signed in the wrong place and I had to sign it again.\nBut on it, it said what I was gonna talk about. And I was very relieved because, uh, until then I thought I would have to find out myself. But it said, “talking at the boundaries.” And, uh, I think in a way it was kind of a great piece of good fortune to encounter my subject on a voucher and in a sense… [Audio fades] [Sound Effect: Tape stops]\n\n(42:55):\tPhone Voice 2\tHmm. That’s interesting. On one hand, I can see how Antin’s self-consciousness about the institution of poetry can be read as kind of maddening or self-indulgent. On the other hand, well, I don’t know, like, do you consider the talk poem a genuine work of poetry? Or-\n[overlapping]\n\n(43:10)\tPhone Voice 1\t-Well, I guess-\n(43:12):\tPhone Voice 2\t-I dunno. Oh, no, sorry. You Go ahead-\n(43:13)\tPhone Voice 1\tNo, I was just gonna say, well, yeah, I guess the proliferation of new recording technologies like the typewriter in the case of modernist poetry or the tape recorder Antin used to record as poems generate a kind of multiplicity of artworks in our society that don’t necessarily allow for the focus or time or one-on-one interactions required to establish sincerity.\nLeonard Diepeveen argues that because of this in the 20th century, people had to come to rely more and more on news signs of sincerity, like the professional certification to attest to a person or a work’s genuineness. I think Antin’s playing with this idea, his poems are sincere in so much as they’re insincere. He knows he needs to market himself as a professional poet or performing artist to get the university to pay him to perform in the first place. But then again…\n\n(44:01)\tPhone Voice 2\tThen again?\n(44:02):\tPhone Voice 1\tI don’t know, it seems to me like the talk poems portray so much an interest in conversation in the first place. Like, there’s this funny conversation, Antin recounts between him and his cab driver in “Talking at the Boundaries”. Here, I’ll play the clip. [Sound Effect: Tape being put in player and starting]\n(44:18):\tClip of David Antin from “Talking at the Boundaries”\tAnd he said things were like that then. He says, it’s not like that now. He says, now everybody’s got money. He says, I don’t have money. He says, everybody’s got money. My children now have money. He says, so much money. He told me they sent me to Israel for my vacation. I said, they sent you to Israel for your vacation. I said, was it dangerous? Uh, he said, um, he said, well, dangerous. He says, like, they said to me, what do you want? Do you want to go to the islands? What do you want? They’ll send you, they’ll send you anywhere. What do you want? And he said, I’ll go to Israel. So I went to Israel. I said, for long? Did you get a good look at it? What was it like? He said, well, he said, I really saw it. He said, I was there for five days. He said, one of those tours you got at Athens and Rome, and then you go to Israel. And I said, that’s great. I said, you know, like, uh, did you stay in one place for the five days? He said, no. He says, I went all around. He says it’s a very interesting place. [Audio fades] [Sound effect: Tape ends]\n(45:09):\tNarrator\tNotice how many times in this clip Antin repeats the word, said, his recollection of verbatim dialogue signals to me, this kind of sincere interest in the poetics of talk more generally, the way it generates this rich, sad, and often funny social life we co-create or yeah, I guess it returns to talk this kind of especially poetic quality.\nAnd for me, these rambling kind of elliptical accounts of other conversations that populate Antin’s work, they’re doing something like Erving Goffman’s idea about eye contact. They don’t mean anything but a desire to participate in social life in the first place. I see in Anton’s preoccupation with representing conversation in literature, my own preoccupation with the study of literature. I’m interested in books the way I’m interested in people.\n\n(45:57):\tPhone Voice 2\tThat’s nice. [laughs] A little cheesy, but nice.\n(46:02):\tPhone Voice 1\tDo you want me to open up to you or not? [laughs] No, that’s actually fair of you to make fun of me for that. I maybe wasn’t being totally sincere. And by that I mean I was actually quoting someone else. This book critic Parul Sehgal. I’m thinking about an interview where she’s asked about the initial process of marking up a book for review. Here, let me pull it up. [Sound effect: Old Dial Up sound effect]\n(46:25):\tParul Sehgal\tMy inclinations are so much, I think maybe a little eccentric in the sense that I’m interested in the way that texts can be like people, you know, they can falter, they can fumble, they can have secrets from themselves. They can be very flawed and very, very beautiful and very, very noble. All of these adjectives, I think, are more interesting to me than good or best even.\n(46:45):\tPodcast Host\tSo, you’re, you’re sort of like figuring out what you think as you write.\n(46:48)\tParul Sehgal\tYeah, I think that I only think when I’m writing, I think it just goes blank when I’m not writing. [laughs]\n(46:53)\tPodcast Host\tLike you’re not taking like, uh-\n(46:54):\tParul Sehgal\tNo, I take notes. I take notes and I’m like in the margins and it’s just like, you know, all my gormless checks and, you know, um, sad faces and all that’s happening there. But-\n(47:01):\tPodcast Host\tWait, you use sad faces.\n(47:03):\tParul Sehgal\t[laughs] All kinds of embarrassing marginalia.\n(47:07)\tPodcast Host\tBut tell me about it. No, but it’s, I want to know how you do your job!\n(47:08)\tParul Sehgal\tI mean, I, I talk a lot back to the book in the margins. You know, um, there’s definitely a lot of, I mean it’s stuff some, some of it, I’m flagging it for myself, but there is also a real way that, yeah, you’re reading this book and you’re reacting to it constantly, you know? I’m not gonna give you any more embarrassing stories about you. No [laughs]. I know, but yeah. But it’s, I mean like it’s-\n \n\n(47:32):\tPhone Voice 1\tI’m interested in the way Sehgal frames the initial critical impulse as a kind of conversation, what she refers to as “talking back to the book in the margins.” Funny too, that this marginalia, really the work of the book critic, should be seen as something embarrassing, maybe because it’s too sincere or impressionistic to be taken for a professional practice. Or maybe because talking back to the book in the margins too closely resembles talking to yourself, which at least in our society is kind of a faux pas.\n(48:02)\tPhone Voice 2\tIs it? I wouldn’t know.\n(48:05)\tPhone Voice 1\t[laughs] [And then sarcastically] Oh my God, so funny. Haha.\n[Seriously]\n\nNo, but I mean, speaking about things that are embarrassingly sincere, talking to Ben and Mirdhula reminded me of the way I sometimes markup favorite passages for my own text with this kind of shorthand,  m m m, which stands for hmm. But when I think about it, I only really do it for passages that really moved me, but I can’t quite articulate why.\n\n(48:34)\tPhone Voice 2\tHmm. This kind of initial sonic or onomatopoeic response to text you’re talking about is reminding me of a passage from Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text. I’ll pull it up. Although be warned, it’s kind of sexy, [laughs] Ahem, here it is:\n[Music Begins: soft electronic tones]\n\n“Writing aloud is not phonological, but phonetic, its aim is not the clarity of messages. What it searches for are the pulsional incidents, the language lined with flesh. A text where we can hear the grain of the throat, the patina of consonants, the voluptuousness of vowels, a whole carnal\n\nstereophony.”\n\n[Music ends]\n\nI guess I take Barthes’ idea of reading aloud as a kind of metaphor for the sonic aspect of the way text elicits a bodily response. I read into your own marginalia a kind of textual representation of the sonic expression of the way text moves you. That hmm, is articulated as a kind of expressivism incident, to use Barthe’s terms. It makes me think too of Wordsworth, you know, for him what sincerity was, was expression itself, which is interesting, right? Because that word means two things. There’s artistic expression and then expression as vocalization.\n\nThe romantic idea of expression is tied mostly to a sense of overwhelming emotion that needs to be expelled from the body somehow. And they developed conventions for this in writing that epitaph or the elegy were seen as more sincere because they were tied so strongly to this overwhelming emotion. But I guess from Barthes, we also get the sense that emotion is so overwhelming it can’t necessarily be bound by any form.\n\nThe response that elicits from you is totally bodily. I see a parallel to this idea in Ben’s sense that conversation is more sincere than writing because it’s less conventional. It can’t be edited in real time. Or maybe the lack of the edit is its own convention, which is symbolized for me, at least by this hmm noise. [Music Begins: jazzy piano] And to return to Barthes, there’s pleasure in that, I think.\n\n(50:31)\tPhone Voice 1\tWait, what do you mean “there’s pleasure in that”?\n(50:34)\tPhone Voice 2\tWell, for me it’s the pleasure of recognition. I see my own ability to hesitate in speech in someone else’s, and that suits me. You know, this version of me that’s always rehearsing what I’m gonna say and then inevitably fumbles when the time comes.\n(50:46)\tPhone Voice 1\tNow, I didn’t think you did so bad there.\n(50:49):\tPhone Voice 2\t[laughs] You mean that?\n(50:51)\tPhone Voice 1\tI do. I really, really do.\n(50:58)\tPhone Voice 2\tHmm. [laughs] Hmm.\n(51:01)\tNarrator\tOkay. Time to cut the tape. Enough of this genuine conversation. I talk about this too much. [Music ends]\nSpecial thanks to Hannah Cogan, Ben Heywood-MacLeod and  Mirdhula Kannapathapillai. Although their audio didn’t make the cut, my conversations with Alia Hazineh, Barbara Saldana, and Matt Fyfe informed a part of my thinking for this podcast. [Music Begins: Soft tones with the sound of wind rushing through trees]\n\nThe inimitable Matthew King performed the voice of Charles Dickens.\n\n(51:31)\tScrooge\tBa humbug! [Music ends]\n(51:47):\tKatherine McLeod\t[Music Begins: SpokenWeb outro music]\nThe SpokenWeb podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producer this month is Francis Grace Fife, an MA student at Concordia University, and a research assistant on the Concordia SpokenWeb team.\n\nOur supervising producer is Kate Moffatt, our sound designer and audio engineer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcriptionist is Zoe Mix. Special thanks to the interviewees and voice actors of the episode, Hannah Kogan, Ben Haywood, Mirdhula Kannapathapillai, and Matthew King. And thanks to Jason Camlot for providing early initial script and audio feedback.\n\n[Music fades into the SpokenWeb theme music]\n\nTo find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds. [Music fades and ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9596","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E5, The Affordances of Sound, 6 March 2023, Eastwood"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-affordances-of-sound/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Miranda Eastwood"],"creator_names_search":["Miranda Eastwood"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Miranda Eastwood\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/b3e0dc23-17dd-48c0-baf1-37efbe9e6ac2/audio/b69f4a17-24df-4ac2-b188-4b76a967ed1f/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e5.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:53:55\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"51,756,765 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e5\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-affordances-of-sound/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-03-06\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Bijker, W. E. and Law, J. 1992. ‘General Introduction’, in W. E. Bijker and J. Law (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.\\n\\nBrinkmann, M. (2018) The ‘audio walk’ as a format of experiential walking, Phenomenological research in education. Available at: https://paed.ophen.org/2018/06/25/gehen-spazieren-flanieren-das-format-audiowalk-als-erfahrungsgang/\\n\\nCardiff, J. and Miller, G.B. (no date) Walks, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. Available at: https://cardiffmiller.com/walks/\\n\\nGrint, K. and Woolgar, S. 1997. The Machine At Work. Cambridge: Polity.\\n\\nHutchby, Ian. “Technologies, Texts and Affordances.” Sociology, vol. 35, no. 2, 2001, pp. 441–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42856294. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.\\n\\nKellough, Kaie, et al. “‘Small Stones’: A Work in Poetry, Sound, Music and Typography.” “Small Stones”: a Work in Poetry, Sound, Music and Typography – SpokenWeb Archive of the Present, https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/small-stones-a-work-in-poetry-sound-music-and-typography/.\\n\\nLevine, Caroline. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton University Press, 2015.\\n\\nMcLeod, Katherine, host. “The Voice That Is The Poem, ft. Kaie Kellough.” The SpokenWeb Podcast, ShortCuts, Season 3, Episode 5.\\n\\nMills, Mara. Novak, David, and Matt Sakakeeny, editors. Keywords in Sound. Duke University Press, 2015. “deafness” p.45-54.\\n\\nRicci, Stephanie. The Making of “Small Stones” (2021) SpokenWeb Archive of the Present. SpokenWeb.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549535850496,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["What is sound design? This is the question Miranda Eastwood, current Sound Designer of The SpokenWeb Podcast, is looking to find out. Exploring soundscapes of all shapes and forms, Miranda draws from interviews with friends, colleagues, and academics, as well as Caroline Levine’s Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network to tackle this particularly tangled question. From sonic literature to audio walks, podcasting to music, this episode is a deep dive into what it means to “sound out” any and all audio texts, and the affective power afforded to sound as a medium of art and communication.\n\n(00:05)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:18)\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [Music ends]\n(00:34)\tKatherine McLeod\tMy name is Katherine McLeod, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Back in 2019, when the first episode of the SpokenWeb podcast was coming together, a big question for our team was, what do we want the podcast to sound like? We ended up deciding that we didn’t want to be prescriptive.\nWe wanted SpokenWeb researchers listening to the podcast and thinking about pitching an episode themselves to really know that the podcast welcomes all approaches when it comes to what your research about sound sounds like, and that we are there as an editorial team to collaboratively shape the sound design of each episode. But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about sound design? Fast forward to the fall of 2020 in Jason Camlot’s grad seminar at Concordia University on sonic approaches, where current spoken web podcast, sound designer Miranda Eastwood, was faced with the question, what is sound design?\n\nThe question of sound design sent Miranda Eastwood on an epic sonic journey, armed with their own experience, scholarly literature on the topic, and interviews with a wide ranging cast of individuals engaging in sound design in their own work. This episode, whens its way through both the theoretical and the practical.\n\nThe episode itself is exploring the affordances of sound, including how the medium is both a form to be used and a space in which to play. What does it sound like to ask the question, “what is sound design” on a podcast all about literary sound? Well, that’s what you are about to hear. Here’s episode five of season four of the SpokenWeb Podcast, The Affordances of Sound. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music plays and then fades]\n\n(2:36)\tMiranda Eastwood\t[deep breath] Yeah, okay. [Piano music begins]\n(02:45)\tElevator\tSixth floor.\n(02:47):\tMiranda Eastwood\tAlright, come on. Here we go. [sound effect: footsteps walking]\nWe’re in the English Department right now at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal. I’m Miranda, by the way. I’m also currently the sound designer for the SpokenWeb podcast, and right now I’m taking you to Professor Jason Camlot’s weekly seminar course, Sonic Approaches. [sound effect: door opens] [piano music ends]\n\n(03:12)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tSo I was doing my presentation on podcasting in Jason’s seminar.\n(03:16)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI just finished one of our assignments, a presentation.\n(03:20)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tAnd I kept throwing around the term sound design.\n(03:23)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI volunteered to go on the week in which we covered scholarly podcasting.\n(03:28)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tLike, remember to start thinking about sound design early on, or you might want to consider sound design before you start recording, you know, stuff like that.\n(03:38)\tMiranda Eastwood\tBig surprise.\n(03:39)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tThen Jason says something along the lines of we’re going to move on, but we’ll circle back to that term, Miranda, and we’ll get you to tell everyone what sound design is. And I just blanked, I just blanked for 30 seconds because I was sitting there like, I don’t know what sound design is.\n(04:01)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\t[Piano music begins] Oh boy. The sound designer doesn’t know what sound design is.\n(04:05)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tOr at least, I know what it is, but I don’t, I don’t know how to describe it. Not in a way that makes any sense.\n(04:13)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSo I did some research.\n(04:15)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tYou know, Google doesn’t count as research, right?\n(04:18)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAnd I got some definitions.\n(04:21)\tMultiple Voices\t[Piano music fades and ends] The art and practice of creating soundtracks for a variety of needs, creating the audio, the craft of creating an old term, which describes….\n(04:31)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tThese definitions. They don’t tell you anything. Some of them are too specific or too vague or they focus in on one aspect of the process. They describe one design choice rather than the series of choices as a whole or, or these definitions don’t even begin to cover the question. It’s too big. This…\n(04:52)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis could be a podcast episode.\n(05:02)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\t[Piano music begins and ends] Ah, okay.\n(05:03)\tJason Camlot\tSo where are you at with things?\n(05:05)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tWell, maybe I’ll just, I’ll do like a quick speed run of my outline. It’s no,t like this is really…\n(05:11)\tMiranda Eastwood\tReally fast forward a week or two or three. Let me get the syllabus.\n(05:16)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tThere’s gonna be a lot of back and forth. There’s a lot of overlap between…\n(05:20)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSee, part of the seminar course was the option to tackle a long form podcast.\n(05:26)\tJason Camlot\tAre you doing short form, longform?\n(05:27)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYes.\n(05:29)\tJason Camlot\tOkay.\n(05:29):\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tAbsolutely. Why on earth would I write an essay when I could make a podcast?\n(05:33)\tMiranda Eastwood\t[Laughs] So like, would any good student I pitched my idea to Jason.\n(05:37)\tJason Camlot\tOn air! [Laughs]. Hi, I’m Jason. I’m a professor in the department of English at Concordia University and a Concordia University research chair in Literature and Sound studies.\n(05:49)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tDo you have that, is that like a script in your head that you just like…\n(05:52)\tMiranda Eastwood\tLike I mentioned, this all started with his seminar.\n(05:55)\tJason Camlot\tPutting your key concepts front and centre…\n(05:58)\tMiranda Eastwood (05:58)\tSo I got some feedback and he gave me a book. Forms: Whole. Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network by Carolyn Levine. Good book. Great book. And I’m going to be using it to build a roadmap, so to speak, based off Levine’s concepts of forms and of affordances.\n(06:19)\tJason Camlot\tAnd reminding us of them, you know and sort of making it almost like a quest narrative for…\n(06:26)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tA quest narrative. I like that. I like that a lot.\n(06:33)\tMiranda Eastwood\tA quest! [Videogame music plays and ends] Here’s our game plan. [Soft electronic music begins]\nWe’re going to rely on Levine’s five main ideas about forms in order to navigate different genres of sound. What are the five ideas?\n\n(06:44)\tMultiple Voices\tForms. differ, forms do political work in particular historical context, forms travel, forms, constraints, various forms, overlap and intersect.\n(06:55)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWhat are the genres?\n(06:56)\tMultiple Voices\tVoice, podcasting, music, audio walks and sound effects.\n(07:01)\tMiranda Eastwood\tDid you get all that?\n(07:02):\tMultiple Voices\tUh no.\n(07:04):\tMiranda Eastwood\tWe’ll come back to them. Tackle them one by one. Our weapon of choice: affordances. Paraphrasing from Levine, who’s borrowing from design theory, “Affordances are the potential actions or uses of a material based on, well, the object itself, the teapot, for example, is very good at what it does because its form and material lend themselves to pouring tea and keeping hot liquids contained. This is due partially to the ceramic and partially to the fact that the teapot has a spout and a handle.”\nAnother example, this one’s from Levine, is the doorknob. A doorknob affords not only hardness and durability, but also turning, pushing and pulling. Outside of its design, certain materials and forms can also have unexpected affordances, like using a chair to get to that top shelf or substituting a mug for a flower pot. Likewise, forms also have limitations, but we’ll get to that later. For now, we’re going to use this idea of affordances as a blade.\n\n[Sound effect: Sword unsheathing]\n\nYes. A sword that will help us cut through the jungle of interconnected forms and navigate the landscape of genre, right up to the moment where we face the ultimate question. Our proverbial dragon. What is sound design? [Music fades and ends]\n\n(08:46):\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\t[People talking in the background] Excuse me. Pardon. Scusez. Merci. Sorry. Phew.\n(08:49):\tMiranda Eastwood\tHey, how’s it going? I’m not late, am I? Good? Good. We’re sitting in the crowd at the Casa del Popolo. It’s March, 2020. Kaie Kellough, Kevin Yuen Kit Lo, and Jason Sharp are performing their piece tonight, Small Stones. While they’re setting up, I thought we could talk a bit about forms. Yeah. I’ve been throwing the concept of form around like a hacky sack, so I figured I should explain beyond the main ideas. Going back to Levine… Forms are a sort of indication, an arrangement or pattern, a shape, something identifiable. Sounds vague? Yeah, it kind of is, but this inclusive definition allows us to break down Levine’s ideas and use them to our advantage. The first main idea we’ll look at is this:\n(09:51)\t(onstage) Miranda Eastwood\t[Sound effect of someone walking on stage] Forms differ.\n(09:53)\tMiranda Eastwood\tDistinct forms are different from each other. Easy enough, right? Right. [Sound effect of mic feedback] Oh, they’re just about ready to start. [background talking spots]\n(10:05)\tJason Sharp (off mic, barely audible)\tSo like we, we do what we were just doing…\n(10:05)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI thought it’d be nice to start here with Kellough, with voice, the voice as it’s featured in poetry, music, podcasting, everywhere and anywhere in audio texts. [Sound effect of mic feedback] [Calm electronic music begins]\nI think it’s a good way to explore this idea of forms differing from one another because this voice, this performance, we’re about to hear… this never happened. [Music ends]\n\n(10:37)\t(onstage) Miranda Eastwood\t[Sound effect of someone walking on stage]\nHi. Hey. Yeah. Does anyone remember March, 2020? COVID 19. “Small Stones” was originally planned as a live performance.\n\n(10:49)\tKaie Kellough\tThis work was supposed to be a performance, like a live in-person performance.\n(10:53)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis is Kaie Kellough, from an interview from “The Making of Small Stones”.\n(11:00)\tKaie Kellough\tBut because of COVID, that was no longer possible because this was originally scheduled, I think for 2020.\n(11:06)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis migration of form, from a physical space to a virtual space. I mean, it begs the question: how does this change the nature of the piece itself?\n(11:17)\tKaie Kellough\tIt was generally decided that an in-person performance wouldn’t work as well, and it would be very complex because we would need to rent a venue if we wanted to present a live performance.\n(11:31)\tMiranda Eastwood\tKatherine McLeod, current host of the podcast actually had a talk with Kellough about this exact topic, but from an alternate angle. In ShortCuts Season 3, “The Voice That Is The Poem”, Katherine and Kaie revisit a piece he performed as part of an online Words and Music show. In that interview, he talks about the difference between a live piece and a studio-produced piece, the exact opposite of what we were just discussing.\n(11:58)\tKaie Kellough\tThere’s a raw, rawer quality to it than… Like, if this were made in a studio, it would’ve been a different piece because it would’ve been created for audio, right? It would’ve been created exclusively as an audio piece, and there would’ve been really limited emphasis on the visual aspect of performance and that communication with an audience, it would’ve been a much more, it would’ve been elaborate in a different way as a sonic object.\n(12:23)\tMiranda Eastwood\t[Quiet string music begins]\nThe voice, manifested in these separate situations has its own set of affordances, even if as Levine tells us, no one has yet taken advantage of those possibilities and also to their limits, the restrictions intrinsic to particular materials and organizing principles.\n\n(12:41)\tKaie Kellough\tIn the studio, it’s a bit different. You wind up assembling the piece part by part.\n(12:46)\tMiranda Eastwood\tYou can manipulate the voice in different ways.\n(12:49)\tKaie Kellough\tAnd then if you can overlap them or layer them or have them speak across one another and sometimes sync up and sometimes diverge, then it becomes not just multiple voices, but it becomes an interplay among multiple voices, sort of directed movement. [String music ends]\n(13:09)\tJason Sharp\tDoing so in the studio gives us a really unique opportunity to use the studio as an instrument.\n(13:14)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis is Jason Sharp, the musician behind “Small Stones”.\n(13:19)\tJason Sharp\tIt allows us to kind of, to compose using a wider sonic palette while still being sourced with just a saxophone and voice.\n(13:30)\tMiranda Eastwood\tRestricting the performance to a studio, then, can open or widen the soundscape of a piece.\n(13:36)\tKaie Kellough\tAnd then what happens when you have multiple voices? What do you do with them?\n(13:39)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAn affordance, born of limitation.\n(13:42)\tKaie Kellough\tWe’re trying to take a very broad approach to sound. So everything from sharp high screams to low brassy pulses like you’re hearing now. [Low electronic music begins] We’re trying to explore sound. So sound, to me, also relates to exploration and listening.\n(14:04)\t[Beginning of\nSmall Stones plays]\t[Audio fades in] The chronicles of [inaudible] relate that in remote times… at the auction of a circus. [Audio fades out]\n(14:22)\tKatherine McLeod\tWelcome to shortcuts. [ShortCuts theme music plays briefly and fades]\n(14:27)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis concept of multiple voices is very interesting to me. Digitally we can layer voices. Similarly, with effect pedals, we can loop and layer vocals to, in Kellough’s words, “make the sonic field a little bit richer”. But what about your voice, the quality of a single voice working in different ways?\n(14:51)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn that summer I had the opportunity to work on the first episode, so…[Laughs] [Sound fades}\n(14:56)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis Is From a very lucky interview I had with Katherine Mcleod, current host of the podcast, longtime host of Shortcuts, and the producer of the SpokenWeb podcast’s very first episode.\n(15:10)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tWe’re, we’re here at the podcast studio at Concordia University.\n(15:14)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSomething I would hear a lot during Jason Camlot’s seminar on sound was the phrase, “I hate listening to myself. I hate the sound of my own voice.”\n(15:25)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tIt’s, everybody hates the sound of their own voice. It’s just you hear yourself and, and there’s that, it’s weird. It’s like, ooh, is that, is that what I sound like? [Laughs]\n(15:36)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIt’s a common expression, but the real statement here is: “I don’t sound the way I want to sound.” [Soft piano music begins to play]\nBut then… What would you like to sound like?\n\n(15:48)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tFilling slots for season one, you mentioned that there was a struggle for that, and I think you mentioned that part of that was that apprehension to working with sound and to going into what is perceived as a very technical field and then putting your work out there. And, and there’s that common question that comes up is like, I don’t, I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, and it’s like every idea is a good idea. [Laughs]\n(16:13)\tKatherine McLeod\tBut knowing that, that that idea is gonna be in public is it, is there’s, there’s apprehension about it. Also, something that often first time producers will comment on is that hearing themselves speak, hearing a recording of themselves speak… It will just be such a sort of process of just letting go of a lot of the ways that we hear ourselves and often really judge ourselves.\n(16:43)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tOh, yeah, I don’t know how many…[Piano music ends]\n(16:45):\tMiranda Eastwood\tThere seems to be an immaterial standard of voice. A voice towards which we all reach or compare ourselves to. It’s different for everyone, you know, based on ourselves. But that standard can get in the way of artistic creation.\n(17:02)\tKatherine McLeod\tThis is something that Hannah McGregor has talked about quite extensively around voice, is the idea of like, how does the voice have authority and what or what do we think of when we think of a voice that has authority? And I think that sometimes when we hear ourselves if we don’t think that we sound authoritative, we can think, oh, oh no, I don’t, I don’t want this to be in public.\nBut then realizing that, well, I think we, we just, we have a… [Laughs] When we evaluate our own voices, we often don’t think that they sound authoritative. Whereas we’d be very, you know, easily I could say, oh, you, you, you sound like you know what you’re talking about. [Laughs] But it could, it might, we might be much, again, harder on ourselves.\n\n(17:46)\tMiranda Eastwood\tNot just in relation to the voice, but in podcasting itself.\n(17:50)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah, I was gonna ask about that. Like doing the first podcast episode. Like to me, like, that sounds like a lot of pressure, [laughs] that sounds, that sounds very, like, did you have, going into that, did you have a notion, like a sort of standard that you set yourself for that episode? Did you have an idea in mind going into it, or was it sort of just like, I don’t know what I’m doing and we’ll see what happens? [SpokenWeb theme music plays]\n(18:17)\tHannah McGregor\tWelcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb theme music ends]\n(18:23)\tMiranda Eastwood\tYes. Podcasting! Finally, we get to take a look at podcasting, academic podcasting ,to be specific.\n(18:33)\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, for the, for the SpokenWeb podcast, I would say that the idea has always been there from the beginning, in the sense that when SpokenWeb became a Cross-Canada partnership in 2018, that there was really an interest in making literary criticism that was also exploring sonic possibilities. So there was discussion right away from the beginning about having a podcast as part of the research dissemination.\n(19:03)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWhich makes sense, right? I mean, SpokenWeb. Spoke, speak, sound. It seems obvious, but maybe it wouldn’t be as obvious just a few years ago. [Low string music begins]\n(19:18)\tKatherine McLeod\tI remember in 2019 when we had our first SpokenWeb institute at SFU, Hannah gave a presentation to try to show the SpokenWeb researchers in the room how podcasting was very accessible. We had to, you know, gather into groups and come up with a pitch for an idea for an episode. And it was really exciting to see everyone kind of thinking about this possibility, ’cause I think that it was, it was something at that point that nobody had really thought about.\n(19:51)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIn my interview with Katherine, we touch on and explore a second idea relating to forms. That is, forms do political work, in particular historical contexts.\n[Music swells and then fades]\n\n(20:09)\tKatherine McLeod\tYeah. And even the way that the podcast forum is rooted in more of like a DIY culture where you know, it’s not necessary, it’s not something that is supposed to be made sort of at the sort of top down. It’s supposed to be coming from a grassroots place of just being able to record a conversation or work with some sounds and make it yourself, basically. So that sense of it being accessible and something that, again, doesn’t have to sound perfect. [Laughs]\n(20:44)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIn Levine’s words, “forms […] shape what it is possible to think, say, and do, in a given context.” This idea provides somewhat of an answer to Grint and Woolgar’s question, “Does technology determine, or is it determined by the social?”\n(21:04)\tKatherine McLeod\tAs you know, as academics, there’s such a push for the finished product to be really polished, as polished as possible. And again, the podcast can still be rigorous places for thinking, but they don’t have to sound the same as an academic paper.\n(21:23)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSurprise! It’s both.\n(21:24)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tLike, that was a decision that you, you sat down and you were like, do we wanna set a structure for the podcast, or do we just invite anyone to come in and, and do what they wanna do?\n(21:36)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Quiet electronic music begins] The decision was to be as open as possible in terms of the kinds of sounds that people wanted to bring to the table and the kinds of approaches that they wanted to take with their episode.\n(21:45)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThe idea was to build a podcast that reflected the ideas of researchers, rather than suggesting a rigid structure for episodes to follow, producers can arrange each episode to reflect their research strategies. Audio essays, panel talks, and interviews, all make an appearance in the SpokenWeb podcast. Just recently, we’ve released an episode based on a dramatic script.\n(22:09)\tKatherine McLeod\tI think that we also kind of by chance in terms of which episodes we were pitched the first season, really does show that very well too, because we have an episode that Kate Mofatt made with very raw audio that was recorded at that SpokenWeb symposium and institute in 2019, not knowing that it would become part of a podcast, but it did. And she was able to edit the audio, but also then interview one of the panelists afterwards.\nAnd so there was both a sense of hearing the raw audio and then also adding an interview to it. But that episode is a great example of being able to work with what you have and make something really exciting out of it. [Music ends]\n\n(22:55)\tMiranda Eastwood\tBut these, these genres of podcasting, they’re still established forms. There is a right way to do an audio essay as well as an interview. There is a version of a podcast episode that works or does what it’s supposed to, what it’s designed to do.\n(23:15)\tKatherine McLeod\tThere’s a responsibility and a creativity to that process.\n(23:20)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIf your episode doesn’t end up doing what it’s supposed to do, is that a failure in sound design? A lack, maybe, of design? Or maybe even overly designed, overly produced? [Sound effect of someone walking on gravel] What would that even sound like?\n(23:44)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tThis.. is not an audio walk. I mean, depending on the definition. I’m walking. You might be walking too. If you are walking, does that not make this whole episode an audio walk?\n(24:00)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWe’re up to our third idea about forms.\n(24:04)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tI’m on Mount Royal, by the way.\n(24:09)\tMiranda Eastwood\tForms travel.\n(24:11):\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tLevine’s point with this one is that, that forms travel across time and space.\n(24:18)\tMiranda Eastwood\tCheesy. I know. Introducing this concept with an audio walk.\n(24:22)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tYou’ve gotta start somewhere.\n(24:24)\tJason Camlot\tI think that’s a great place to start.\n(24:26)\tMiranda Eastwood\tHopping on back to office hours with Professor Jason Camlot.\n(24:30)\tJason Camlot\tBut there are audio walks that don’t require technologies, right?\n(24:35)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tMhmm.\n(24:36)\tJason Camlot\tYou can just go walking and listening.\n(24:38)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah.\n(24:38)\tJason Camlot\tAnd that’s a sound walk, right? You might say, we don’t hear much more when we’re walking without headphones than we’re here with headphones.\n(24:46)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah.\n(24:46)\tJason Camlot\tIf we’re not actually trained or intentionally trying to listen, right?\n(24:49)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tMm-hmm.\n(24:50)\tJason Camlot\tSo that it might be, I think it’s important… No matter what you’re talking about in terms of sound design, remember that our hearing is already mediated, right?\n(25:04)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tMhmm.\n(25:04)\tJason Camlot\tEven without using technology extensions, right? You know…\n(25:08)\tMiranda Eastwood\t[Plucked strings music begins to play] But a unifying function of most audio walks, to paraphrase Malte Brinkmann, is an effort to reframe the individual, the walking subject, and to draw our attention to our own perception and observation of what surrounds us. That being said…\n(25:26)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tThose walks, you don’t, you don’t really want to be following a map when you listen. It’s overwhelming. For a reason. Of course, they’re meant to be immersive. Maybe that’s just the way this form of the audio walk is evolving.\n(25:45)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI’m quoting Bijker and Law here, “Technologies do not have a momentum of their own at the outset that allows them to pass through a neutral social medium. Rather, they are subject to contingency as they pass from figurative hand to hand, and so are shaped and reshaped. Sometimes they disappear altogether. No one felt moved or was obliged to pass them on. At other times. They take novel forms or are subverted by users to be employed in ways quite different from those for which they were originally intended.” [String music ends]\n(26:26)\tJason Camlot\tAnd what else do you see here that’s really weird?\n(26:27)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah.\n(26:28)\tJason Camlot\tOh, two headphone jacks. That’s a really great device. All metal casing. [Laughs]\n(26:34)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah. Nice, nice brick in your pocket.\n(26:35)\tJason Camlot\tYeah.\n(26:36)\tMiranda Eastwood\tJason showed me a button on the original Walkman.\n(26:39)\tJason Camlot\tI actually have one still. It doesn’t work anymore, but I may get it repaired one day.\n(26:43)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah. Well, what’s the big yellow button?\n(26:46)\tMiranda Eastwood\tOn his computer. Not in real life.\n(26:49)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tOh, that’s a mic.\n(26:49)\tMiranda Eastwood\tUnfortunately.\n(26:50)\tJason Camlot\tSee That? So there’s a mic on it.\n(26:53)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tOkay. Just for the podcast to know, I’m at an angle from Jason’s computer, [laughs], like, this isn’t me being-\n(26:57)\tJason Camlot\tAnd we’re zooming in on an image of the first Walkman TPS- L2 model.\n(27:05)\tMiranda Eastwood\tBut it is a button that allows you to switch from listening to your tape, to your surroundings. A sort of anti-isolation.\n(27:15)\tJason Camlot\tThere was a fear of one’s listening being blocked out from one’s actual environment. And if you press this button, it would pick up sound from the outside through this microphone. It could not record, but it was designed to hear the outside world.\n(27:32)\tMiranda Eastwood\tDespite this being “old” technology, we’ve recently seen a resurgence in demand for headphones that offer an ambient noise function. That is, they let you hear your surroundings with the push of a button.\n(27:47)\tJason Camlot\tBut it went away after-\n(27:47)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tI did come back-\n(27:48)\tJason Camlot\tWell- Did it come back?\n(27:49)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tIt has come back.\n(27:50)\tJason Camlot\tAnd why…?\n(27:50)\tMiranda Eastwood\tTechnologies travel. Sometimes they go in circles.\n(27:56)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\t[Sound effect of someone walking in gravel]\nOh, should’ve… Okay. I should have went left. I think I’m caught in a loop.\n\n(28:09)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tAll right, kiddos, we set?\n(28:10)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tYeah, I think so.\n(28:12)\tMiranda Eastwood\tOkay. So here’s one thing about those definitions from the beginning, those definitions on what sound design is. A lot of them, for me, only capture a part of the process, a moment.\n(28:25)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tAs opposed to having to go up. Because I, I like, I don’t know, it just feels like there’s more abilities here than there is…\n(28:32)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAnd it’s true. Sitting down with an arsenal of sounds and trying to make them into something cohesive can and usually is the most time consuming part of the process. But what about recording?\n(28:44)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tAre we set?\n(28:47)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tYeah, I think so.\n(28:48)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis is Kaitlyn.\n(28:50)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\t[Laughs] Do you wanna, do you wanna take a moment?\n(28:51)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tNo, I think I’m good.\n(28:53)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tOkay.\n(28:54)\tKaitlyn Staveley\t[Piano music begins to play]\nHi, my name is Kaitlyn and I am Miranda’s friend.\n\n(28:58)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tUh, No. [laughs]\n(28:59)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tWait, we’re not friends? This is news to me. [both laugh]\nHi, my name is Kaitlyn Staveley, and I’m a full-time cat servant. [both laugh]\n\nHi, my name is Kaitlyn Staveley and I’m gonna sing a song. [laughs]\n\n[Music fades and ends]\n\nHi, my name is Kaitlyn Staveley. I am a hobbyist musician, singer and artist.\n\n(29:26)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThis is us in my home studio working on some vocals for a Christmas collaboration.\n(29:31)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tAnd it was just giving me…\n(29:32)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIt took us about two hours for two minutes.\n(29:38)\tKaitlyn Staveley (singing)\tDecorations of red.\n(29:41)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tIt’s clipping.\n(29:42)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah, it’s definitely… Alright, we’re gonna tune it down.\n(29:44)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThe majority of those hours being spent on decisions.\n(29:48)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tCan we perhaps scoot this one over because I need to be able to see the lyrics? Can we lower this just a little?\n(29:55)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tOh yeah.\n(29:56)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tDo you have like a little, like a little seat? Because I feel more comfortable with my diaphragm down a bit as opposed to up, because… I was curious if maybe we could lower it all together and I can sit and sit maybe just a tiny bit lower? I’ll have a little sip of tea.\n(30:09)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tYeah, let’s have a sip of tea.\n(30:11)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tSorry.\n(30:12)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tNo, no, no. That’s why, that’s why this is…\n(30:13)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSound design begins long before you sit down at the computer.\n(30:18)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tExactly. If you’re gonna do it, just do it. [Piano music ends]\n(30:26)\tJames Healey\tSo it’s like the truest representation of the sound field at that time.\n(30:30)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tThat, that statement just corroborated, ugh, Corroborated…. I’m gonna cut that one out. [laughs]\n(30:36)\tJames Healey\tCrimina!\n(30:36)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\t[Laughs]. Just, I keep saying-\n(30:37)\tJames Healey\tSound criminal.\n(30:38)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSometimes it starts at the studio at Concordia University. Again.\n(30:46)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tAll right. That… Shouldn’t be humanly possible. [laughs] That’s the real mark of a musician. You can snap with all four fingers.\n(30:52)\tJames Healey\tThats. Yeah. Yeah. That’s how they know.\nMy name is James Healey. I work with sound and music. I specialize as a sound recordist in like, ambient music.\n\n(31:05)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThere’s no right way to set up a microphone. I mean, there are definitely wrong ways, but talking with James…\n(31:12)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tOkay. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since last week about your setup on that record we were listening to. Which was insane. There was a name for it…\n(31:23)\tJames Healey\tYeah. Yeah. So there were four microphones.\n(31:27)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI realized that sound design begins even before you set foot in the studio. Or wherever you happen to be recording.\n(31:35)\tJames Healey\tThree of the microphones were in an array known as a double mid-side. You can do an abbreviation M-S-M, so mid side mid. We’re gonna, as you say, unpack this a bit, and we’re gonna do a little bit of wave physics.\n(31:54)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tOh boy. My favorite. [laughs]\n(31:56)\tJames Healey\tHa, yes.\n(31:57)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSo, I realize this isn’t the podcast to air a 20-minute conversation about wave physics, so we’ll fast forward through this one.\n[Sound effect of conversation fastforwarding]\n\n(32:09)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tOkay. But like, like what… That sounds like so much work. What’s the advantage here?\n(32:15)\tJames Healey\tSome stuff suffers for the good stuff. I mean, whatever turns out good is the good stuff, but then some stuff suffers and then if you don’t do it justice, you’ll find that in post you’re fighting against it in the mix rather than working with it. It’s very risky.\n[Electronic drum music begins]\n\nAnd the advantages, I think, kind of outweigh that. Using one mic configuration to pick up several sound sources live off the floor, essentially causes a compression of the sound sources together, kind of like a glue to your mix that is natural to the acoustics and the spacing.\n\n(33:02)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tNatural to, like, our hearing?\n(33:05)\tJames Healey\tIt’s, it’s natural and true to the room. It’s natural and true to how the sound sources are placed. It’s natural to their amplitude according to each other.\n(33:14)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAnd although James works in music, these recording setups could be applied to the design of any sound-based text. Cardiff and Miller’s audio walks, for example, use binaural recording; a method that more accurately captures the way we perceive sound. [Music ends]\n(33:32)\tJames Healey\tLike. I’m just like, I’ll hear the music and I’ll think of the record as like a whole. And I’ll think of the vibe to say something very not technical.\n(33:40)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tAre there sound shenanigans that you’ve pulled off? Like similar, really interesting, I guess noteworthy?\n(33:47)\tJames Healey\tSo-\n(33:48)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tDo, do a rapid fire.\n(33:50)\tJames Healey\t[‘Soulless Days” by James Healy begins to play]\nOkay. The first record I ever made for a band would be a band called Dumpster Juice. And we just committed eight channels to four track cassette tape. I ended up doing some records in Dawson City Yukon, where I was running a recording studio over the winter up there doing some cool EPs in like, sort of this barn workshop in my friend’s loft of this like barn workshop in the woods there. And did some records in like negative 50 outside. It was, it was crazy. T\n\nhere was another one, the Wakefield session where I was studying the record, “The Trinity Session” by the Cowboy Junkies. So I did the same thing, but in a church in Wakefield, with the sound field microphone, and that’s the first record, I think, that was like really a professional piece of audio, but when I finally did it, I was like, wow. Like, it was not all in vain. It was very stressful. [Miranda laughs]\n\nYou know, I made a record. I have like some, an ambient project called Jupiter Machine where I made a record all to cassette tape.\n\n(34:52)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWe’re listening to it right now. This is “Soulless days”. You can check out the show notes for a link to the rest of the album. [“Soulless Days swells and fades]\nThe idea of an organic or natural sound… That’s not going to be the same across cultures, industries, or individuals. Sometimes you’ve just got to keep the context in mind.\n\n(35:26)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tI feel… maybe like one more take cuz it’s… I’m drying out.\n(35:31)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSo, in terms of what form is doing here.\n(35:38)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tOkay, I think we’re good. All right. Are we ready-Eddie-setti?\n(35:39)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tYeah.\n(35:40)\tMiranda Eastwood\tOr what idea the form of recording represents.\n(35:43)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\t3,2,1…\n(35:46)\tMiranda Eastwood\tForms constrain.\n(35:50)\tKaitlyn Staveley (singing)\tI’ll have a blue Christmas without you. I’ll be so blue just thinking about you. You’ll be doin’ all right, with your Christmas of white, but I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.\n(36:28)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\t[Miranda claps] Yay!\n(36:29)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tThank you. How was that? How does that sound? I didn’t hear it in the headphones.\n(36:35)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tWait, so what does that mean? Forms constrain? That doesn’t sound positive.\n(36:40)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWhen we designate something as a specific form, we also designate its limits. The teapot includes the lid, but not the mug next to it. The sonnet is made of 14 lines, no more, no less. Or it isn’t a sonnet.\n(36:58)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tRight. Right.\n(36:58)\tMiranda Eastwood\tLet’s go back to affordances. Remember? What a form can do and what it can’t do or what it does badly. [Piano begins to play]\nTo quote Ian Hutchby: “the reason is that different technologies possess different affordances and these affordances constrain the ways that they can possibly be written or read. While a tree offers an enormous range of affordances for a vast variety of species, there are things a river can afford, which the tree cannot and vice versa.”\n\n[Music ends]\n\nI mean, it seems obvious when you put it like that, right? The thing is, we don’t really decide what forms are. If I put a sonnet in front of you and you refused to acknowledge it as such, the form of the sonnet wouldn’t seize to exist. That poem wouldn’t stop being a sonnet.\n\n(37:53)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tNo. If only I were that powerful.\n(37:57)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIdentifying forms is the first step to understanding how they work and what their affordances are. This might seem straightforward. After all, is sound not a form? Could we not simply explore the affordances of sound?\n(38:14)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tThat’s a bit ambitious, isn’t it?\n(38:17)\tMiranda Eastwood\tImpossibly ambitious. Sound is made up of multiple, countless other forms, or rather multiple countless other forms are made up of sound. Which, by the way, leads us to our final idea about forms.\n(38:32)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tForms overlap.\n(38:34)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAnd intersect.\n(38:39)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\t…Because it’s not… Yeah, no, Like that’s a nice sound. Wait, wait, just do. Oh-oh-oh yeah.\n(38:47)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThat’s me.\n(38:49)\tGhislaine Comeau\tWe look like fools. [Laughs]\n(38:50)\tMiranda Eastwood\t[Laughs]. Oh yeah. And Ghislaine.\n(38:52)\tGhislaine Comeau\tThis is fun. Hello, my name is Ghislaine Comeau and I am a PhD student at Concordia University where I study early medieval English literature.\n(39:04)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWe spent a morning at Concordia University collecting sound effects for our short form podcast assignment.\n(39:10)\tGhislaine Comeau\t[String music begins]\nAnd secretly I am also an amateur artist.\n\n(39:16)\tMiranda Eastwood\tShe was also in Jason’s seminar.\n(39:19)\tGhislaine Comeau\tWith the clacking of the feets and the doors and an occasional plexiglass slider and keys.\n(39:28)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAnd she was after very specific sounds.\n(39:31)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tWe can take the zoom recorder and we can get footsteps like literally in the hallway.\n(39:34)\tGhislaine Comeau\tYeah, in the hallway.\n(39:35)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tIt’s Thursday morning-\n(39:36)\tGhislaine Comeau\tYeah. And it’s gonna, we’re gonna make it sound like a big fancy schmancy archive place in the hallway.\n(39:46)\tMiranda Eastwood\tYou could call what we were doing Foley art.\n(39:49)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tRemember it’s not about like how-\n(39:52)\tGhislaine Comeau\tIt’s about all of it.\n(39:55)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tIt’s not about how leather actually sounds. It’s about how you think, how we would think leather sounds, you know, decontextualized from its environment. [Music ends]\n(40:06)\tMiranda Eastwood\tFoley art brings an environment to life through sound. From big things like thunder… [Sound effect of thunder plays]\nTo small things, like brushing dust off a hardcover book…[Sound effect of someone brushing dust off a book]\n\nFoley started in radio, but has since evolved into a term used primarily in film.\n\n(40:26)\tJames Healey\tThe concept of Foley plays with sort of this perception of source bonding.\n(40:34)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI talked a bit about Foley with James.\n(40:37)\tJames Healey\tI’ve done some post for a handful of short films, as well as one feature where there was some Foley involved, sort of like informal, you know, using rubbing on a table if they’re rubbing on something else or you know….\n(40:56)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tMhmm.\n(40:56)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIn Foley, what you record is rarely the object you’re trying to imitate. The sound you capture will be more exaggerated, sharper, more focused. There’s a difference between sound as we experience it and sound effects.\n(41:13)\tJames Healey\t[Upbeat electronic music begins] So source bonding in electro acoustics is basically relating a sound to the context of its source, like attributing sonic characteristics to a certain sound source. And that is enforced by the visual on the screen and therefore sound also enforces the visual context as well. So they’re sort of acting in resonance.\n(41:40)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tI guess that’s why they call it Foley “art”. [Music ends]\n(41:42)\tMiranda Eastwood\tIt’s although I will say that thunder from before? [Sound effect of thunder plays]\nI did get that one right outside my apartment. So not that it’s my goal to cover everything, because as mentioned, that would be insanely ambitious. But we do need to talk about… [Spooky music plays and ends]\n\nThe dark side of affordances. Affordances, remember, are a double edged blade.\n\n(42:21)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\t[Sound effect of sword being unsheathed]\nBy the way, this sword sound is actually me dragging a spoon across an empty travel mug. Isn’t that cool?\n\n(42:29)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAffordances are useful in describing what a material does well, but also what it does not so well. It’s limitations, it’s failures, which brings us to a difficult question. How does sound fail? [Spooky music plays and ends]\n(42:49)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tThe only anecdote I can think of, like where, where sound, at least sound design has really failed personally for me is I… That workshop with Oana… Avasilichioaei?\n(43:00)\tJason Camlot\tYeah.\n43:01)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood (\tYeah. So we submitted a short piece and I thought I was doing something very nice and artistic by ending my piece with, you know, footsteps on gravel walking off into the sunset, she marked the, she timestamped that moment with a little comment, why is somebody chewing? [Jason laughs]\nAnd I was just like… where does that come from?\n\n(43:23)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tWould this sound like walking to you if you didn’t have any context? [Sound effect of someone walking]\n(43:34)\tMiranda Eastwood\t“In any given circumstance, no form operates in isolation.” That’s a quote pulled directly from Levine. When we immerse ourselves in sound, we’re not coming to the table empty handed. We all have our own personal and cultural experiences that can and will shape the way we hear. You could argue for the affordances of sound as… Immersive, transformative, but what happens… [Sound effect as though Miranda is speaking in an echoey hallway]…when sound can’t reach you?\nFrom Hutchby again, “it is important to see that affordances are not just functional, but also relational aspects of an object’s material presence in the world.” [Sound effect of someone walking] You could say sound offers us immersion, but who’s the us in this case? More importantly, who are we excluding here?\n\n(44:34)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\t[Breathes deeply] 51, almost at the top. You know, it’s, it’s funny when, when people ask for directions to the chalet, they don’t call it the chalet. They say ‘the view’. Which way’s the view? Oh, right. We were, we were talking about deafness, right?\n(44:56)\tMiranda Eastwood\tTwo technologies clashing.\n(45:04)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tIs it ironic to talk about deafness on a podcast?\n(45:10)\tMiranda Eastwood\t“The ear itself is a composite organ which hears by mechanical and electrical means.”\n(45:16)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tOr is it of the utmost necessity?\n(45:19)\tMiranda Eastwood\tThat was a quote from Mara Mill’s chapter from Keywords in Sound. And I believe it’s useful to think of our own hearing as a sort of technology, but one that’s unfixed, subjective. There are different degrees of deafness, paraphrasing Mills, which can be conceived as a pre-condition of hearing, or as the resistance to hearing.\nAs we age, we often lose our ability to hear. Exposure to loud environments over time will wear down our ability to hear sounds at certain frequencies. Acknowledging the inherent differences in an individual’s hearing can reshape the way we design sound. If I were to design a piece for a friend that could only hear low frequency rumbling, I’d likely come up with something that would be physically difficult to listen to for someone with a wider frequency range. But beyond that, acknowledging limitations can also invite quite literally, invention.\n\n[Electronic music begins]\n\nThomas Edison identified as deaf, once remarking, “I have not heard a bird since I was 12 years old.” Quite the anecdote from the guy who invented the phonograph. Mills mentions other audio-notable figures in her chapter who similarly identified as deaf or hard of hearing. To quote Mills, “deafness has afforded insights into etology, acoustics, and phonetics, and in turn given rise to new psychotechnical devices.” All this to say that the affordances of sound are not isolated to sound itself, but emerge from a relationship between the listener and the audio text. Sound design insinuates that the piece is being designed with a subject in mind. Considering the subject as an open position encourages us to reconsider the role, function, and form of sound.\n\n[electronic music ends]\n\n(47:28)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tAlright, um…\n(47:28)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWell, we’ve been all over the place.\n(47:34)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tThis is… this is a box [laughs], and it’s got a little latch.\n(47:41)\tMiranda Eastwood\tI hope this has been as much of a journey for you as it has been for me.\n(47:45)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tAnd inside the box is another box. A music box. It is, yeah, that’s, yeah. It’s a music box that is literally, [sighs] It’s a box that makes music. Um…\n(48:02)\tMiranda Eastwood\tBut what about our question?\n(48:04)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tAt the top. Can you hear that? Can you hear the, the flag?\n(48:10)\tMiranda Eastwood\tMy question, Really.\n(48:12)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tThe flag hitting the metal pole in the wind.\n(48:16)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\t…And you run the strip of paper through it, and the idea is that the paper, you can make little holes in the paper and the holes dictate where the notes go because it’s a music box. It makes music.\n(48:32)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAfter all this, all this talking.\n(48:36)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tAnd yelling and screaming! And stomping down hallways. [laughs]\n(48:41)\tGhislaine Comeau\tWhat do we think?\n(48:42)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tAnd there’s a little crank. You have to.. I’m gonna turn the, turn the crank. Like-\n(48:49)\tMiranda Eastwood\tWhat is sound design?\n(48:52)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tSo it’s this, it’s [laughs]. It’s a, it’s a neat little, little machine. I love it. The thing is about… So there are rules, you, well rules. You can’t play the same note twice. It’s just because…\n(49:09)\tMiranda Eastwood\tSomething, I think, that has summed up every step of the way, every mark on our map. It’s been this…reaching for something…\n(49:14)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\t…Fast Enough. There’s no way it can go fast enough reaching for something for the same note, hit twice, two beats in a row. Also. it’s got a weird scale.\n(49:26)\tMiranda Eastwood\tYou’re aiming for something when you begin that process of design. You’re practicing intention.\n(49:34)\t(audio walk) Miranda Eastwood\tI made it. There’s, there’s the view.\n(49:38)\tMiranda Eastwood\tAt the end of this podcast episode, I’m making the argument for sound as a means of transport and creation. Sound design is, well, design. Design is creation. Creation is storytelling. And stories take us places. [Music box music begins to play]\n(50:04)\t(singing) Miranda Eastwood\tI’d… Like you to meet my imaginary friend..\n(50:11)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tWhat does sound design mean to you?\n(50:17)\t(singing) Miranda Eastwood\tWe stay up late…\n(50:17)\tKatherine McLeod\tSoundscape.\n(50:18)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tSoundscape. Let’s narrow that down a bit.\n(50:21)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd thinking that when one, say, has a recording of something that one wants to work with…\n(50:28)\tJason Camlot\tIt’s about thinking through the affordances of, like, hearing and listening.\n(50:33)\tGhislaine Comeau\tSo how does the Hunched Wizard sound like when he walks? [Laughs]\n(50:40)\tJason Camlot\tAnd the media technologies through which one is actually manipulating sound.\n(50:46)\tMiranda Eastwood\tMarvelilicious!\n(50:47)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tYeah? Was that better than the last one?\n(50:48)\tJames Healey\tFor me, it’s like, almost sculpting.\n(50:53)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn an episode or in a, you know, a performance or what have you.\n(50:56)\tJames Healey\tYeah, you really are, you’re sculpting like a stereo field.\n(51:00)\tJason Camlot\tAnd coming up with a sonically formal configuration of those sounds…\n(51:05)\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat is gonna be the, the sort of the sound that holds that sound.\n(51:11)\t(singing) Miranda Eastwood\tSaid, you were mine, mine, mine. Gimme, gimme, never get. I know the going’s tough, but we can’t give up just yet. So breathe on 1, 2, 3.\n(51:22)\t(Interview) Miranda Eastwood\tThe sound that holds the sound.\n(51:23)\tJason Camlot\tA particular listening model in mind in order to achieve specific effects.\n(51:30)\tKaitlyn Staveley\tShould we listen to it with music?\n(51:32)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tSure.\n(51:33)\t(off-centre) Miranda Eastwood\tMusic to me is, you know, kind of the highest form of sound design you can say, because it’s so.. Difficult.\n(51:43)\tKaitlyn Staveley\t[laughs] Yeah, exactly. You’re right.\n(51:44)\tJames Healey\tRight. Becomes this glue to the work, which actually sort of makes the viewer or the listener feel like those elements have always belonged together.\n(51:55)\t(singing) Miranda Eastwood\tOh, I said that you were mine. You said that you were mine. I’d like to keep my imaginary friend. My imaginary friend. My imaginary friend. [Music box ends]\n(52:26)\t(off-mic) Miranda Eastwood\tUgh. Good. One more take? One more take.\n(52:32)\tMiranda Eastwood\tYeah, okay.\n(52:46)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Spoken Web] heme music begins] The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.\nOur producer this month is Miranda Eastwood, an MA student at Concordia University and our very own sound designer for the SpokenWeb podcast. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. And our transcriptionist is Zoe Mix. A special thanks to Professor Jason Camlot, professor Katherine McLeod, James Healy, Kaitlyn Staveley and Ghislaine Comeau for lending this episode their original voices.\n\nTo find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca. Subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media at SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds. [Theme music ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9597","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E6, Revisiting “Mountain Many Voices: The Archival Sounds of Fred Wah”, 3 April 2023, Shipton and Brock"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/revisiting-mountain-many-voices-the-archival-sounds-of-fred-wah/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Don Shipton","Teddie Brock"],"creator_names_search":["Don Shipton","Teddie Brock"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Don Shipton\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Teddie Brock\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/0bf2a7c7-ddac-40e7-8106-659d4438a7d5/audio/55dfa8f4-b0b8-4048-bc33-a1f90eed0fdb/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e6.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:39:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"38,194,826 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e6\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/revisiting-mountain-many-voices-the-archival-sounds-of-fred-wah/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-04-03\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Makarova, Liza. “The Night of the Living Archive.” Season 4, Episode 2, The SpokenWeb Podcast, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-night-of-the-living-archive/.\\n\\nArchival Audio:\\n\\n“Ed Dorn reading in Albuquerque on October 30, 1963 Side 1 #109b.” Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\n“Lionel Kearns, Mike Matthews, and Fred Wah reading poetry at UBC #258.” Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\n“UBC Poetry Festival: Charles Olson on August 14, 1963 #48.” Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\n“Louis Zukofsky reading at Library of Congress on November 3 and 4, 1960 Tape 1 of 2 #260a.” Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\n“UBC Poetry Festival: Avison, Creeley, Duncan, Ginsberg, and Levertov on August 7, 1963 #45.” Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\n“UBC Poetry Festival: Avison, Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Ginsberg, Whalen, and Levertov on August 9, 1963 #46b.” Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University.\\n\\n“Around New Sound Daily Means: Selected Poems by Larry Eigner and Gary Snyder, Tape 1 of 3 #500a.”\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549538996224,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["In the summer of 2022, research assistants Don Shipton and Teddie Brock took part in a roundtable discussion that explored the archival work of student researchers involved with the audio archives of Canadian poet, Fred Wah. Alongside his literary and academic work, Wah has had a longstanding practice of recording poetry readings, lectures, and conversations, documenting key moments in North American poetry.\n\nThis sonic-archival meditation highlights the impact of recording technology on the trajectory of poetic circulation and composition, as it brings together the ‘many voices’ that constituted Wah’s listening and recording practices as a young poet. The first part of this episode will revisit a recording of Wah’s conversation with Deanna Fong, co-director of the Fred Wah Digital Archive, in which Wah reflects on the significance of portable tape recording to literary community-building and the development of a poetic ‘voice.’ The episode will also present a selection of archival clips documenting the poets whose recorded voices Wah encountered throughout the 1960s, including Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, Denise Levertov, and Ed Dorn, among others.\n\nSpecial thanks to Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood for their production support in the making of this episode, and to Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections and Rare Books for hosting the “Mountain Many Voices” roundtable event.\n\n\n(00:04)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:18)\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds.\n[SpokenWeb Theme music ends]\n\nMy name is Katherine McLeod, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. For each episode of the SpokenWeb podcast, the producers and production team are always thinking about recording; the microphones, zoom recorders, sound quality, from voiceover to interview to archival audio clips. And this month’s episode is all about recording and how recording shapes the way we encounter sound, particularly poetry.\n\nThe poet at the center of it all, Fred Wah, is known for both his poetry and also for his recording. Did you know that the sound recordings of the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference were thanks to Fred Wah being the guy who carried the tape recorder around? And let’s remember that tape recorders were not easy to carry around back then. And because he had the tape recorder, he was able to have it running during so many of the sessions, and there ends up being an audio archive of that now famous event in Canadian poetry.\n\nSo keeping that in mind, let’s jump to another event in 2022, when Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections and Rare Books hosted an event called Mountain Many Voices: the archival sounds of Fred Wah. That event was a round table discussion with Fred Wah himself, student researchers working on Wah archival materials, both from SFU and from Concordia, and moderated by Dr. Deanna Fong.\n\nBy the way, Fong leads the Fred Wah Digital Archive Project, which you can hear more about by listening to the episode “Night of the Living Archive” produced by Liza Makarova and aired on the SpokenWeb Podcast in November, 2022. And yes, Liza is also part of this round table discussion Mountain Many Voices. In this month’s episode, Teddie Brock and Donald Shipton, two of SFU’s research assistants, who also contributed to that round table revisit the event and they revisit its many voices along with recordings of Wah speaking about what he calls “the materialism of the voice”.\n\nYou’ll also hear recordings of other poets referenced during the event, such as Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, Denise Levertov, and Ed Dorn. When making this episode, Teddie and Don were inspired by live radio, and this episode has our producers becoming hosts themselves, curating, introducing, and sharing a rich selection of archival audio. Here’s the sixth episode of season four, Revisiting Mountain Mini Voices, the archival sounds of Fred Wah.\n\n[SpokenWen Podcast theme music begins and fades]\n\n(03:28)\tTeddie\t[Sound effect of static swells and fades]\nIn June of 2022, Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections and Rare Books hosted a round table event titled Mountain Many Voices, which centered on the audio archive of Canadian poet Fred Wah.\n\n(03:42)\tDon\tIn the following recording an excerpted conversation between Fred Wah and post-doctoral researcher Deanna Fong, you’ll hear the story of Wah’s first encounter with portable tape recording and how the social and technical practices associated with emergent audio technologies in turn shaped his own relationship to the reading, writing, and listening of contemporary poetry.\n(04:03)\tTeddie\tNext, we will play a selection of archival recordings, bringing together the sounds of the many voices of Wah’s personal literary history.\n(04:24)\tTeddie, Don, Deanna Fong, and Fred Wah all talking as they set up for the interview:\t[Somber string music plays while indistinguishable voices talking to one another.]\n(04:56)\tDeanna Fong\tI think we’re just gonna go in alphabetical order… Fred and I will have a little quick introduction here first. So I think the reason for our gathering is that we’ve all sort of been encountering Fred’s many voices through the archive through these many years of recordings that are held at different institutions which are being collected digitally in Fred Wah’s Digital Archive. I’m here at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University. So given that you’re the voice and your voice is kind of the reason for us gathering for today in that we’ve all done some work with your archival voice in one way or another. I thought we could just start off by having a quick discussion about your recording practice and how there came to be so many tapes [all laugh].\nBut in terms of, you know, just having a quick discussion about recording, I just wanted to start by asking you, so when did recording come into your life and when was the first time you saw a portable recording device? [Don laughs] And when was the first experience of hearing your own recorded voice?\n\n(05:56)\tFred Wah\tUh, yes. Let me contextualize my interest in recording, which is back around 1962. The poetry that we were involved with then with the Tish Group in Vancouver was this whole movement in poetry towards working around Charles Olson’s project first for us. And, the whole notion of the head by way, the ear to the syllable, the heart by way of the line to the breast or the breast to the line. So the formality, the materialism of the voice was very much a new thing then. Most of us had grown up with poetry on the page, and  with a silent experience, kind of conversation with oneself silently. So this was new. So the whole notion of making something oral was exciting to me. And, I was primarily a musician or was interested in music, so sound was prominent. And Robert Creeley showed up at UBC as a new American poet, and he at one point brought out his tape recorder.\nWow, what’s that? You know, it’s a machine and it was a kind of stainless steel machine. It’s a Wollensak Reel-to-Reel. And he had tapes that he had made of radio interviews he had done for a radio station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he lived and worked. And so he had tapes there of Louis Zukovsky and Ritter Binner, Ed Dorn.\n\n[Low electronic string music begins to play]\n\nI was fascinated by Ed Dorn’s poetry and I heard Ed Dorn’s voice. In those days, that was really a surprise to be able to hear the voice of a poet who you had been reading on the, off the page. [Low electronic string music ends] So I traded in my Marimba vibes and my trumpet for a Wollensak tape recorder [All laugh]. The first time I heard my own voice, I think, was a reading I did with Lionel Kearns and Mike Matthews at UBC, a Noon Hour Reading.\n\nAnd I must have taped it cuz I have the tape.\n\n[All laugh] I can’t remember doing it. And then, so I heard my voice that way, but we weren’t interested in necessarily recording everything. Like I don’t, I have no tapes of the Tish Poets reading or George or Frank or any one of those people reading. And then in 1963 we had the Vancouver Poetry, so-called Vancouver Poetry Conference, which was in the summer of 1963 out at UBC. And Warren Tallman, his father-in-law, gave him this beautiful big console tape recorder. And so he wanted to record the whole conference and he was really interested in recordings.\n\nAnd he asked me, because I knew a little bit about, was learning about tape recordings. He said, could you learn to run this and do that? So I did. But one of the very first sessions we had in the 63 conference, the take up reel broke.\n\n[Sound effect of tape breaking and falling on the floor] It broke down. So I sat there through the whole meeting winding, [All laugh] taking up, taking up the tape, and then I ended up using my own recorder, the Wollensak, to record the rest of the conference.\n\nSo I got into recording and I really enjoyed the notion of not so much documenting, but having the voices of these poets who, you know, a lot of us were interested in, sort of around and available. And they became kind of, it’s a kind of a precious thing and it, and it kind of melded with the whole notion, the whole technology that was going on there. Cuz Reel-to-Reel tape recording was relatively new in the late fifties, early sixties in North America. And eventually it led to other tape recorders and other forms and, and it’s gone on ever since. And I’ve always used tape recording as a, or audio recording as a way of registering more accurately the oral nature of how poetry is being made. [Light piano music begins to play]\n\nAnd I studied linguistics. I was really interested in the kind of nitty gritty of how language is its rhythm and stress is, is there. [Piano music fades and ends]\n\n(10:16)\tDeanna Fong\tI find that such a fascinating response because I think like one of the follow up questions I had was this question of, you know, what this sort of impetus to record was and in the way that you speak of it, and not necessarily a documentary sense, like not as a kind of living proof that you were there or whatever, but more thinking about it as a sort of tool that aids or at least says something about, you know, the affective register of the voice and, and a sort of tool towards composition, it seems like. Is that what you’re talking about?\n(10:47)\tFred Wah\tYeah, I think that recording was a way to sustain the notion of poetry as oral. It just helped. I know I didn’t necessarily know what I was doing. I wasn’t doing it for any specific, other than to collect the ‘63 conference, was basically documenting that. And I remember when we finished, UBC said they owned the tapes, so we gave them a set of the tapes and within a few months they had lost them [Deanna laughs]. And, and I said, do you want another set? No, we’re not, no nevermind. Just don’t bother [Fred laughs]. So it was kind of, you know, it’s kind of a disregard for what we had done in terms of the poetry.\n(11:34)\tDeanna Fong\tHmm. And it also sounds like it becomes a means of circulating poetry that you might not otherwise have access to, or at least not like certainly in oral form. Right?\n(11:45)\tFred Wah\tThat too. And it became, as you know, a way of sharing poetry and voices all over. So you could, you know, like the notion of pen sound or spoken word, all these efforts to get the voices out there has changed, I think, the context for making poetry, because it’s so shared, if you want to. You know, to be able to hear Larry Eigner after reading him carefully was just [Fred laughs]. My mind was blown. [All laugh] [Soft piano music begins to play]\nThat was just so, it was so different and so new. So poetry was made new in us, at least for myself and, I think, made others because of the voice. [Piano music ends]\n\n(12:36)\tDeanna Fong\tAnd also I was, cuz I know that you found a home for the Reel- to-Reel recordings, which include the original 1960s poetry conference recordings at Karis Shearer’s UBCO AMP Lab. And she mentioned that in that collection there’s also a tape that’s like an audio letter, which is either to you or from you, [Deanna laughs]  from Gladys Hindmarch.\n(12:59)\tFred Wah\tI think it’s from her. Okay. I haven’t listened to it because my tape, I didn’t have the tape. I don’t have a tape recording, so I asked Terrace to transcribe it. You know, the technology shifted. So we were able to get portable tape recorders that we had this small tape recorder that did small, could do small three inch reels. Right? And so we shared some letters with our friend Gladys Hindmarch, and, and I don’t know how much we did that with others. Actually, Louis Cabri was with me in Calgary when his friend Aaron [inaudible] from Philadelphia came up. We, Aaron came up and sat and recorded or transferred those old seven inch reels, which by then were 45 years old into mini disks [All laugh]. Right?\nAnd he sat there for a week doing all these transcripts, not transcriptions, but transferring into, into digital format. And luckily the tapes, because they had just been put away in a basement, were still okay. And in fact, I listened to some before I gave them to Karis, that they still seemed to be okay.\n\n(14:14)\tDeanna Fong\tYeah. Because sometimes we really only get the one shot. Hey?\n(14:16)\tFred Wah\tYeah.\n(14:16)\tDeanna Fong\t[Deanna laughs] So when you, when you were recording these things, did you have a sense of a future audience in mind?\n(14:25)\tFred Wah\tNo, not particularly. I was interested in recording, I guess for academic reasons. All through my tenure as a teacher, I would record visiting poets as a way of replaying them for students in classes and that, and I found being able to play recordings of someone reading something that they had read in a book was a valuable experience for students.\nSo pedagogically, they were useful. I didn’t have any other sense of where they might, [Fred laughs] what might happen to them or I, there was a kind of, they were valuable, they were precious things, these tapes. And when I put together these boxes of cassettes to give to Tony that, you know, to deposit up here in the archives there’re just hundreds of, I don’t know how many of there are, but there are a lot of cassette tapes of readings of, you know, particularly Canadian poets that came to Selkirk College or the University of Calgary area, or at least 300, I think.\n\nAnd, you know, so a lot of them probably aren’t of great quality. Just sticking a, I remember the ‘63 conference, we had one microphone. So we have a panel of, you know, six people and this one little Wollensack microphone and the cord wouldn’t reach that long [ All laugh], so people like Robert Dun would grab the whole machine and bring it so he could speak. [All laugh] But distant people sitting at the table, you know, like Phil Win, sitting at the table, you can’t even quite hear him.Things like that.\n\n(16:11)\tDeanna Fong\tYeah. So, what does that mean as like, maybe as a final question, what does that mean as a reader slash listener slash amateur of poetry? That all of these things are all of a sudden just kind of right available at our, our fingertips, our eardrums?\n(16:27)\tFred Wah\t[Somber electronic music begins to play]\nI think it grounds them a little bit more. It makes them, the materiality of them, brings them sort of closer to a different understanding of the event of the poem.\n\n(16:46)\tDon\tDuring their conversation, Fred Wah mentions numerous authors whose voices were instrumental in the development of his own. First among these writers is Charles Olson. From memory, Wah quotes a line from Olson’s now famous essay “Projective Verse”.\n(17:01)\tFred Wah\t“The head, by way, the ear to the syllable of the heart. By way of the rest of the line.”\n(17:06)\tDon\tThis idea of breath, providing the foundation for one’s poetry was influential to many poets writing throughout the 1960s, including a young Fred Wah. [Electronic music ends]\nWe’re gonna play Charles Olson reading “Maximus from Dogtown 2,” recorded at the so-called 1963 poetry conference. But before we do that, let’s begin with that UBC noon hour reading that Fred Wah gave with Lionel Kearns and Mike Matthews. The recording he cited as the first time he heard his own voice.\n\n(17:44)\tTeddie\t[Electronic music begins, interspersed with the sound of radio waves]\nYou are listening to “Revisiting Mountain Many Voices”, the archival sounds of Fred Wah. [Sound effect of a tape being put into a tape player and beginning to play]\n\n(18:04)\tArchival Audio of Fred Wah\tNo particular poetics today, except that I think you’ll probably hear the voices of Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, and Robert Creedey and Robert Kelly. That whole Black Mountain group coming in as I don’t think I’ve found my voice yet.\nThe cold and brisk breeze whipped today the cold and brisk breeze whipped today. But no snow comes such ardor, pure and freeze the muddy water on the streets. Me and my love, seraphic pride walked windward, smiling faces. A quiet morning, early morning and fog my darling, you are sleeping warm with sleep. Cold floor stretches in the dark boulevard and headlights past the glass, the start of day, eggs, coffee, cigarette. I walked before you already in the tired morning, no beginning, but our sleep and love, deep rhythms in our breathings. [Electronic music plays and fades]\n\n  (19:30)\tArchival Audio of Charles Olson\t“Maximus from Dogtown number 2”, or December 5th, 1959. Which I will open with.\nThe sea. Turn your back on the sea, go inland to Dogtown, the harbor, the shore, the city, are now shitty as the nation is, the world tomorrow. Unless the princes of the husting, the sons who refuse to be denied the demon. If Madea kills herself, Madea is a Phoenician wench, also daughter of the terror as Jason Johnson Hines son, hindsight. Charles John Hines, whole son, the Atlantic Mediterranean Black Sea. Time is done in Dun for gone. Jack Hammond put a stop to surface underwater galaxy, time. There is no sky, space or sea left. Earth is interesting. Ice is interesting, stone is interesting. Flowers are carbon. Carbon is Carboniferous, Pennsylvania age under Dogtown, the stone, the watered rock, carbon flowers, rills Aquarium time after fish, fish was Christ. Oh Christ picked the seeds out of your teeth. How handsome the dead dog lies horror X the migma is where the seeds Christ was supposed to pick out.\n\nW sh wunk grapevine Hok, the Dutch and the Norse. And Algonquins. He with a house in his head. She who lusted after the snake in the pond, Dogtown berry smell as the grub beaten fish. Take the smell out of the air. A you’re the tar of Dogtown, the tar matas. Here is the angel matter not to come until R 3000. We will carry water up the hill, the water, the water to make the flower hot. Jack and Jill will up Dogtown Hill on top. One day the vertical American thing will show from heaven. The latter come down to the earth of us all the many who know there is one, one mother, one son, one daughter, and each the father of him self. The genetic is ma the morphic is pa, the city is Mother Polish. The child made man, woman is Mary’s son Elizabeth Mangen the mangen in collagen in collagen time leap onto the leap onto the lamb.\n\nThe aquarium time. The greater the water you add, the greater the decomposition. So long as the agent is protein, the carbon of four is the corners in stately motion to sing in high voice the fables of wood and stone and man and woman love and loving in the snow and sun. The weather on Dogtown is protonic, but the other side of heaven is ocean filled in the flower, the weather on Dogtown. The other side of heaven is ocean Dogtown. The under vault heaven is carbon ocean Quam Dogtown. The under vault, the mother rock, the diamond coal, the Pennsylvanian age, the soft coal love age, the soft coal love hung up burning under the city. Thet is heart to be turned. Black stone, the black cri is the throne of creation. Ocean is the black gold flower.\n\n(23:32)\tTeddie\tNext you’re going to hear poems by Larry Eigner, Louis Zukovski and Ed Dorn. As well as a short clip of Robert Creeley from a panel at the UBC Poetry Conference. Each of these poets, while a part of their own literary coterie were associated with schools and states, were included in the 1960 anthology, the New American poetry edited by Donald Allen. It was this work which Wah referenced earlier when he mentioned the new American poets.\n(24:01)\tFred Wah\t[Echoing sound effect is added to Fred’s voice]\nYou know, to be able to hear Larry Eigner after reading him carefully was just [Fred laughs]. My mind was blown. That was just so, it was so different and so and so new. So poetry was made new in that sense.\n\n(24:28)\tArchival Audio of Larry Eigner\tLanguage is temporary king poetry, the mask on everyday life. What time of the day is it land? What have you to do with or gotten done? Love to poems, the unexpected, the magnetic power. The speed, the ocean drop, dry drop. If there were time they go drawn after us. The city is music is human in the events. The seas drag light in the earth. The greatest thing is orchestra. With men, the wind and the waves are fixed. Open road. You look in hundreds in the night sky, any place the drone would this time enough new each day. Bruce is enough of the old, the dying of oppos to the present contact communication. Explanation. Enough not we keep on.\n(26:31)\tFred Wah\tAnd so he had tapes there of Louis Zukovsky.\n(26:38)\tArchival Audio of Louis Zukovsky reading\tSong Three from 55 poems, compute leaf points water with slight dropped sounds. Turn coat sheet facts say for the springs, blooms fall the trees trunk has set the circling horn branch to cipher each drop the eye shot and the rain around. So cheated well let the fallen bloom wet clutter down and into and the heart fact hold Nothing. Desire is no excess. The eye points each leaf. The brain desire the ray, she recites their brief song. 13 in that this happening is not unkind. It put to shame every kindness mind mouths their words. People put sorrow on its body before sorrow had came. And before every kindness happening, for every sorrow before every kindness song 18, the mirror oval sabers playing the chips in the room next door. The voices behind the wall will be lit by highlights in the morning, in bed. A wall between continuing voices, chips stacking instead of bales, the water sounds extending a harbor, one sleepless, one sleeper on the fourth floor. In that this happening is not unkind. It put to shame every kindness mind mouths their words. People put sorrow on its body before sorrow. It came. And before every kindness happening, for every sorrow before every kindness Song 18, the mirror oval sabers playing the chips in the room next door. The voices behind the wall will be lit by highlights in the morning, in bed, a wall between continuing voices, chips stacking instead of bales. The water sounds extending a harbor, one sleepless, one sleeper on the fourth floor.\n(29:39)\tArchival Audio 5\tHow can you be other than where you are?\n(29:45)\tFred Wah\tI was fascinated by Ed’s poetry and I heard Ed’s voice in those days. That was really a surprise to be able to hear the voice of a poet who you had been reading off the page.\n(30:02)\tArchival Audio of Ed Dorn\tI sure never tried to do this without smoking [audience laughs]. This one is called Hawthorne. End of March, 1962. That day was dark fog fell down our mountain. The snows were wet patches and around the legs laid as like and around the barn, dark red shadows the day he died. The slow quiet break. What an odd person to die beside. Franklin Pierce never go to the mountains. Near the end, the air is spoken for. I thought how just Americans still love morality. With many preliminary question, he was fierce for the slight connection back to what there was. This poem is, uh, completely abstract, as far as I know. It’s called an inauguration poem. And I wrote it during the last inauguration. Unasked, of Course, [Audience laughs] Out of the zone of interior armies, the Nebraska of our terror flies pro gating the statistical laws of our starvation, where on the spinning habitation men’s eyes see the regiments of vegetation. And one man is the mouth of all and a narrowing harrowing rib in Denmark that dope delivered country is not starker than the staple deprived herdsman of the African. Who’s it? Out of the zone of interior armies come the advocates of nations where none can breathe outside the given crush, forsaking even established ignorance. Promo gating desire born against the honed knife of one secretary or another. Out of the zone of interior armies. The trains of El Presidente shoot laden with food for no destination anyone has charted because in a storage bin in the Midwest was held the grand conference on the grammar of scarcity. And the farmer stands beside the senseless soil and mumbles that this far starvation is named parody. Out of the interior skulls of our rulers stepped slim hygienic elegance of patrons of painted walls and bushman’s haircut, gut full with the art of wishing rice upon the multitude to make marriage of new nations to be ridiculed by coronets of old jazz. Like, don’t have too many babies unless you have the viles.\n(32:53)\tDon\tThat was Larry Eigner, Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley, and Ed Dorn. Next you’re going to hear a conversation between Denise Labov and Margaret Avison taken from a panel at the 1963 Poetry conference before coming back to that first tape of Fred Wah.\n(33:15)\tDenise Labov\tWell, I I think that if you’re, if you’re worrying about whether you are communicating while you’re writing it’s absolutely undermining. Well, to whom are you communicating? Are you communicating to, to someone you know who who who has, who’s who, whom you know to be your peer? Are you communicating to your landlady who isn’t gonna read it anyway? Are communicating on what level are you communicating? So you can’t possibly think about Tom about communication while you’re writing forth. But if you think about precision, if you really try to be absolutely accurate to what you know then chances are that you will communicate. Cause there seems to be a level of of, of communication that that comes about through through precision to one’s own knowledge.\n(34:10)\tMargaret Avison\tI used the word conversation earlier about the early stage of writing when you imitate. And I think that is a real communication of poetry you’re reading and it possesses you in a sense and you murmur back at it. You don’t do it intentionally. You usually feel bad when you discover you’ve done it. But I think most writers, at least when they’re 12 and 15 and so are doing that, aren’t they? And then you get away from that kind of communicating as you begin to find, yes, I have a voice.\n(34:55)\tArchival Audio of Ed Dorn\tOne last poem I’m going to sing in this one. So laugh if you want to. My voice is very good. But this is with lots of voices. Pound and especially Duncan Olson coming in. I can’t get away from it. But here it is a poem appealing for a life of pla passion and a place on earth where poetry is wanted are variations on a voice from Duncan. And if I live, I live for love of you. All things come together. So they say, and the way which one will show us which time it is in place of memory. I live for love of you. My life becomes the pin through the nude. Kneeling and worship becomes my wall. My white PHUs becomes light, strikes the beat. Time takes up making up remembrances. I call out ahead into the dark. Who is it? Who would love me? On the mountain side, the snow still falls and her glowing cheeks hang low ahead of me. The tracks are filling. I follow unanswered with the snow falling in my dream of love. And stay this place a while. Press her hanging to my breast. The lovers test, fragments of music ripple in my head. Unsteady notes in the lake light fall themselves into my eyes. Vow glides of water. Sing. Sleep. Sleep. Peel of poem from my memory. Sleep. Sleep. And if I live hold, let me live. Which also calls this place of passion speaks as it is poetry to me. And make it new reader. Strike out new you become old. In remembering, recall, I reproached you two summers ago at your excretions. I could only look at you that way. I can only speak to you now with your pants down. Those first few words are still as costly to my passion. Who would make life new when love grows old? Oh, show me the way to the next listener’s ear. Oh, don’t ask why. Oh, don’t ask. Why for I must find the next listener’s ear for if I don’t find the next listener’s ear. I tell you, we must die. I tell you, we must die. I tell you, I tell you. I tell you we must die. And if I live, he’ll let me live and sing. My poems a spool of passion. Ill let me live. We’re loved ones, but I reach with the hand for the new moon. And if I live, they’ll let me live in love of you. The song still sings And further on, that’s time King, queen of the Summer, throne of love in the sand stained the pins in tired, she floats backside in the lake water ripples in smooth furs about her nipples, breaking the sleek moon surface that summer night. And if I live, I’ve lived for love in full time. The beat strikes on time dances the memory to the full tune. Thank you.\n(38:19)\tTeddie\tThis has been Revisiting Mountain Many voices, the archival sounds of Fred Wah. If you want to hear more from Fred Waugh’s audio archive, check out the episode “Night of the Living Archive by” Liza Makarova.\n(38:48)\tKatherine McLeod\tThe SpokenWeb podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are Teddie Brock and Donald Shipton, MA students at Simon Fraser University. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. Our sound designer and audio engineer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcriptionist is Zoe Mix. To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca. Subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media at SpokenWeb Canada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for Shortcuts, with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds."],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9598","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E7, Audiobooks in the Classroom, 1 May 2023, Levy and Schwartz"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audiobooks-in-the-classroom/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Michelle Levy","Maya Schwartz"],"creator_names_search":["Michelle Levy","Maya Schwartz"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20010042\",\"name\":\"Michelle Levy\",\"dates\":\"1968-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Maya Schwartz\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/58cbf262-da12-45e9-9dd7-822f98fa2de2/audio/819beef1-71ae-494f-8194-25b545bae90c/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s4e7.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:54:52\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"52,667,080 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s4e7\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/audiobooks-in-the-classroom/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-05-01\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6\",\"latitude\":\"49.276709600000004\",\"longitude\":\"-122.91780296438841\"}]"],"Address":["8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6"],"Venue":["Simon Fraser University Maggie Benston Centre"],"City":["Burnaby, British Columbia"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Baron, Naomi S. How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio. Oxford University Press, 2021, https://academic-oup-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/book/41098.\\n\\nCarrigan, Mark. “An audible university? The emerging role of podcasts, audiobooks and text to speech technology in research should be taken seriously.” The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/12/17/an-audible-university-the-emerging-role-of-podcasts-audiobooks-and-text-to-speech-technology-in-research-should-be-taken-seriously/.\\n\\nHarrison, K. C. “Talking books, Toni Morrison, and the Transformation of Narrative Authority.” Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies, edited by Matthew Rubery, Taylor and Francis Group, 2011, p. 143.\\n\\nSarah Kozloff, “Audio Books in a Visual Culture.” Journal of American Culture, vo. 18, no. 4, 1995, pp. 83–95, 92.\\n\\nMorrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.\\n\\nPergadia, Samantha. “Finding Your ‘Voice’: Author-Read Audiobooks.” Public Books, 2023, https://www.publicbooks.org/finding-your-voice-author-read-audiobooks/.\\n\\nRubery, Matthew. “Introduction: Talking Books.” Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies, edited by Matthew Rubery, Taylor and Francis Group, 2011.\\n\\n–––. The Untold Story of the Talking Book. Harvard University Press, 2016.\\n\\nTennyson, Alfred. “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” 1890, https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/kiosk/cabinet_kiosk_16_march_2021_rubery_matthew_audio_002.mp3.\\n\\n \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549542141952,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["What does it mean to “read” an audiobook? What happens when we teach literary audio in the university classroom? How can we prepare our students for success in reading and listening to audio literature?\n\nFeaturing a round-table conversation with graduate students Ghislaine Comeau, Andy Perluzzo, Ella Jando-Saul and Maia Harris at Concordia University and an interview with Dr. Jentery Sayers from the University of Victoria, this episode, hosted by Dr. Michelle Levy and SFU graduate student Maya Schwartz, thinks through the challenges and opportunities of inviting audiobooks into the literary classroom.\n\n\n(00:04)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:19)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Music fades] What does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the Spoken Web podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [Music ends]\nMy name is Katherine McLeod, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Imagine sitting down to read a book for your literature class. When I said that, you probably pictured yourself opening a book, maybe a Toni Morrison novel, or a poetry anthology. But what if reading a book for your class looked like putting on headphones and pressing play? What happens if we consider the audio book pedagogically? What does the medium of the audiobook allow for in the classroom? How do students respond to listening to books?\n\nIn this episode, styled like an audio essay, producers Dr. Michelle Levy and MA student Maya Schwartz ask these very questions, putting current scholarship and personal reflection in conversation with interviews with professors and students alike in order to think through how literature sounds when it comes to audiobooks. Put on those headphones and turn up those speakers. Here is episode 7 of season 4 of the SpokenWeb Podcast: Audiobooks in the Classroom. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music begins to play and quickly fades]\n\n(02:01)\tVoices Overlapping\tIt’s like, listen, ear skimming-\nYou kind of just like-\n\nBlank Out listening-\n\nIs attention by treating-\n\n-artifact myself-\n\n-Oh, this is like maybe a quarter of the way through the books, so it must be a quarter of—–\n\nThe way the author enters the room. And I often, uh, when I’m teaching…\n\n(02:17)\tAI Generated Voice\tYou’re listening to “Audiobooks in the Classroom” by Michelle Levy, narrated by Michelle Levy and Maya Schwartz.\n(02:28)\tMichelle\tThis podcast asks a seemingly simple question; how are we harnessing new audio forms to teach literature in the university classroom? According to Casey Harrison writing in 2011, “there is a dearth of scholarly literature on the medium of the audiobook.”\nFrom this, she concludes that this widely popular form is not being taken seriously by the academic establishment. With some important exceptions, the lack of research on the audiobook persists, even though as Harrison writes, “academics and avid readers happily avow their enjoyment and appreciation of recorded books.”\n\n[Light electronic music begins to play]\n\nAs you will hear throughout this episode, we are getting a lot of dishes washed with all of our listening. But are we taking advantage of the pedagogical potential of literary audio? This episode addresses the challenges both real and imagined that are shaping both the use of and the resistance to the incorporation of literary audio in teaching. [Electronic music ends]\n\nIt explores some of the ways in which college instructors are taking advantage of the wealth of literary audio now available to us.\n\nIt also offers reflections from students about how they are experiencing these experiments with literary audio. Ultimately, this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast seeks to offer some practical guidance to instructors and to elucidate how the use of literary audio can enhance connection, understanding, and enjoyment for our students. [Quiet string music begins to play]\n\nTo address these issues from the perspective of both the instructor and the student.\n\nThis podcast will interweave my own commentary with that of Professor Jentery Sayers of the University of Victoria, an expert in sound media and literary history, who Maya interviewed for this podcast. You will also hear an interview conducted with four graduate students from Concordia University who have recently taken a course with Professor Jason Camlot, that centered audio literature PhD students, Ghislaine Comeau and Andy Perluzzo, and MA students Ella Jando-Saul and Maia Harris were asked to set up questions similar to the ones I asked Jentery, and I’m delighted to include their responses to provide a range of student perspectives on the use of audio literature.\n\nI’m also joined by Maya Schwartz, an MA student at SFU, who helped to produce this podcast episode and who joins me in voicing some of the narrative commentary in this episode. [String music ends]\n\nAs an avid listener of literary audiobooks and podcasts for over a decade, it was the pandemic that finally prompted me to teach audiobooks. Jentery had decided to take the plunge before Covid.\n\n(05:07)\tJentery\tIf I recall correctly, I think I proposed it prior to the shift online for the pandemic. We shifted in March, 2020. But what I did as I was preparing it is I took advantage of some aspects of that dynamic. The fact that, I think, increasingly people were listening to podcasts, people were listening to literature, and, you know, a lot of people were inside for [Jentery laughs] doing a lot of their work.\nSo I taught, I ended up teaching the seminar online, and doing what I can or doing what I could to integrate audio into the teaching, into the dynamic that way. And I think on the whole, it worked out quite well. It was a joy to teach.\n\n(05:45)\tMichelle\t[Low string music begins to play]\nAs Jentery says, the shift to online teaching during the pandemic meant that students were receiving their instruction through audio and video, and apart from others in their home, which seemed to support the incorporation of literary audio into our courses. When teaching audiobooks and literary audio as instructors, we face a number of practical considerations.\n\nShould we require students to buy both the audiobook and a print copy of the book? Assuming the audiobook is not freely available, will they need a print copy of the book for their assignments? And if we require them to purchase both, can we justify the cost, particularly given that audible.ca unaccountably fails to offer a student membership? Could we assume that every student had a device from which they could access an audiobook or a podcast?\n\nThere were also questions about which audiobook or podcast to select and how much performance and accessibility should drive our selection. In some cases, such as canonical novels like those by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen, there may be dozens of audiobook versions to choose from, and much like the decision about which print edition to ask our students to purchase, selecting an audiobook requires thoughtful deliberation of the various options. Accessibility also plays a role. Most of our students have spent their academic careers silently reading. How do we prepare them to listen? [String music ends]\n\nOne of the audiobooks I have assigned, Anna Burns’ novel Milkman, is narrated by a character known only as “middle sister”. It is performed by Belfast actor Brid Brennan in a thick northern Irish accent. For me, the voicing brought the novel vividly to life. It also helped me to make sense of the stream of consciousness narration and the disorientation that comes from none of the characters being assigned proper names. [Quiet electronic music begins to play]\n\nBut some of my students struggled to hear the words and the story through the accent. Thus, a feature of the voicing that enhanced the story for me was a barrier to some. I begin, however, with one of the most fundamental questions that has vexed the use of audiobooks for teaching and research; whether listening is reading.\n\n(08:01)\tAI Generated Voice\tChapter One: Is listening reading? [Electronic music ends]\n(08:07)\tMichelle\tThere is an entrenched suspicion that listening to an audiobook or a podcast is a passive activity, and hence not really reading. Jentery describes how this issue arose in a contemporary American fiction class he taught about a decade ago. One of his students kept referencing, having listened to a novel assigned for the course.\n(08:28)\tJentery\tThere was one student in particular that talked about listening the whole time when answering questions and just having class discussion. And I was fascinated by this. So I just said, do you mean just to be honest, do you mean this literally? Are you, are you listening to the book? Are you using this as a way to talk about the novel as a living text, as language, as discourse? And he’s like, no, no, I’ve listened to audiobook versions. And then, and he is like, is that okay?\nAnd so it became this discussion around the popular student perception, I think, that listening was cheating, right? And so I was like, oh, this is, this is a fascinating topic, but also more important, like it is not, and I want to think through why, for a number of reasons, including accessibility, we might want to, for good reason, debunk the that listening is cheating or that books are not meant to be listened to.\n\n(09:19)\tMichelle\tIn our conversation, this question of whether listening is reading and more pointedly and judgmentally, whether listening is cheating, resonated with Jentery who began to think about how these ingrained biases impacted his scholarly approach to and valuation of literary audio.\n(09:38)\tJentery\tI’ve always been interested in the kind of cultural dimensions of listening, the cultural dimensions of sound, but only recently, like in the last eight years or so, started to think about that in literature. And I think partly because I too had inherited this idea that if I started to do that work in literary studies, I’d be cheating my discipline.\nSo it kind of brushed against the grain of how I had been taught literary studies, how to read text with a capital T as a methodological field, but also, yeah, just plainly the sensory work I was doing and why I was parsing it. Like why was it that when I was listening I was like, oh, this is my media studies work. And why when I was reading, I was like, oh, this is media studies and or literary studies depending on the content.\n\n(10:16)\tMichelle\t[Quiet string music begins to play]\nIn his introduction to the essay collection, Audiobooks, Literature and Sound Studies, Matthew Rubery, an historian of talking books, examines some of the assumptions that feed into assertions that listening as opposed to reading on the page, offers a compromised cognitive experience. According to Rubery, there is a belief that audiobooks do not require the same level of concentration as printed books, or that one can be inattentive while listening to an audiobook. He explains how the very features promoted by audiobook vendors as selling points; their convenience, portability, and supplementary status to other activities are the same ones used by critics to denigrate the format as a diluted version of the printed book.\n\nAudiobooks are chiefly marketed as or conceived to be entertainment, and this is another reason why they’re considered derivative of or subordinate to the printed book. What, however, other than marketing pitches underlies the belief that listening to audiobooks is not the same as reading, and why is it considered even more punitively a form of cheating?\n\nOne possibility relates to what is called, and this is a quotation from Rubery, “the reader’s vocalization of the printed page, which has been taken by many to be a fundamental part of the imaginative apprehension of literature. When we read on the page, it is thought that we voice what we are reading in our head, and thus are more actively involved in meaning making than when a text is read to us.” The implication again is one of listening being passive, that instead of voicing in our minds, we are merely receptors when we listen.\n\n[String music ends]\n\nA similar objection is often made to watching a film version of a book before reading the book. The belief, again, is that it robs us of our imaginative reconstruction of the world the author creates through words alone. Reading on the page, so the theory goes, demands one’s undivided attention and imaginative powers, whereas listening does not because it allows and even invites us to perform other activities. And the fact is that many of us do turn to audiobooks in the hopes that we can accomplish other tasks while listening, but what in fact happens when we listen in order to or because we think we can multitask?\n\n(12:43)\tAI Generated Voice\tChapter two: Listening As Overwork\n(12:49)\tMaya\tAs you will hear in the conversations throughout this podcast, many of us turn to audiobooks and podcasts as an attempt to maximize productivity, to fill intellectually the downtime of commuting or driving across the country, of doing chores or other forms of physical labor. Here is Jentery speaking about why he began to listen.\n(13:09)\tJentery\tAnd at first I took this as just basically a way of multitasking. Maybe it was like a form of overwork. If I’m being more reflective about it, I’m like, okay, so I might be going for a walk or I might be gardening or I might be doing the dishes, so I’m gonna put on a podcast that’s about, you know, literary criticism, literary culture or games culture, or I might listen to an audio book.\n(13:29)\tMaya\tMaia, an MA student from Concordia similarly explained that her desire to listen while doing other things was a coping mechanism meant to address overwork.\n(13:39)\tMaia\tI also have a similar experience. It was during my undergrad and I was really overworked, so I thought I’d get, I think it’s called scribd, an account on there. And I downloaded Milton’s Paradise Lost and I thought, this is great, I can do this while I work out. Two birds, one stone, and I, I think I missed about half the novel that way and it was a really unpleasant time.\n(14:00)\tMaya\tPhD students, Andy and Ghislaine also spoke about their experience with audiobooks before the course and how they attempted to listen while working and driving, cleaning and crafting. They also found that they could not concentrate on what they were listening to when doing these other activities and mostly gave up on audio books.\n(14:21)\tAndy\tI started listening to audio books. I got an audible membership to trial because I was working in a warehouse and so I had a lot of time moving my hands, but my brain was idle. So I remember I bought The Brothers Karamazov and I thought that that was gonna be the book and then honestly totally just distracted me. I never listened to audiobooks after that. I found it pretty unpleasant and I couldn’t focus. It was really hard for me to focus. Yeah, otherwise maybe driving. I drove cross country twice last year, so I definitely listened to some audio books, but, same thing, totally zoned out most of the time.\n(15:01)\tGhislaine\tYeah, I have kind of a similar audible trial experience where it’s like, yeah, I’ll try this out. And I downloaded the entire works of Poe and I’m like, yeah, I can listen to this at night or whatever. And after maybe 5, 10 minutes, I couldn’t focus on it, I just fell asleep. So I [Ghislaine laughs] since then, didn’t try to listen to other audiobooks cuz it just didn’t hold my attention.\n(15:29)\tMaya\t[Quite electronic music begins to play]\nEven after the course, the students reported that their ability to multitask while listening almost entirely depended on the content of the audiobook and the nature of the task at hand.\n\n(15:40)\tGhislaine\t[Electronic music ends]\nOn your note, Ella, of listening to non-serious books after the class ended, and it was like winter break and I still had this Audible subscription that I had to renew [laughs] because of the class and I forgot to cancel it. So I’m like, you have one credit. So I got this very unserious book called The Housemaid and all through the break, well not all through because it just took me a couple of days, I listened to it nonstop and I had a really good time listening to it, doing menial tasks, like dishes and, you know, little crafts.\n\nSo not for sleep and not for any serious work and not serious books, I could see myself maybe getting into audio books now, but yeah, I don’t know.\n\n(16:26)\tElla\tYeah, I mean I mostly listen to audio books if I’m walking or doing the dishes, like nothing that takes any more brain power than walking or doing the dishes. There’s a very fine line, like the harder the book, the more specific the task has to be to be like the right task to listen to an audiobook.\n(16:42)\tMaya\tThese conversations challenged the belief that listening is passive. Maia likewise spoke to her surprise at how much attention listening required and how this challenged her assumption about the primacy of the written.\n(16:55)\tMaia\tI wasn’t anticipating, as you’ve said as well, the amount of attention or even treating the audio as an artifact in and of itself. I didn’t realize coming into this class that I thought about it as a secondary modality to like a written form, especially from my past experience of really struggling with the audiobook and more complex wordplay that didn’t really amplify the porosity of what I was reading at all.\n(17:21)\tMaya\tAnd Jentery related that when he attempted to listen while doing chores, those chores often took a very long time.\n(17:28)\tJentery\tTo use one of my everyday examples, I often listen to a podcast while I’m doing the dishes in the evening and it’s always striking to me that there’s something said or something I heard that I will stop and go take a note. I’ll write that down on my phone or I’ll have a notebook next to me and I’ll make a note of it to return to later cuz I’m worried I might forget it, perhaps, just due to age at this point, but I go and I make a note and then I go back and then all of a sudden I’ve been doing dishes for two hours. It’s such a…it’s almost ritual at this point.\n(17:55)\tMaya\tFor Jentery, careful listening did not necessarily lend itself to multitasking, or at least to efficient multitasking. Ella described how even though she had been listening to readings in other courses and thought she was prepared, the reality was very different when confronted with the kind of listening she was asked to do in her Concordia class with Jason.\n(18:16)\tElla\tI was sort of primed for the class. I was like, great, now it’s just official, I’m going to be listening instead of reading. But I guess some of the things that we ended up having to listen to for the course required a lot more attention than I usually gave to my listening. And so I’d have to sit and listen rather than walk or do the dishes and listen, which I find a lot more difficult. I don’t know, I lose track, I lose focus if I’m just sitting and listening.\n(18:42)\tMaya\tAlthough we sometimes turn to an audio version of a book as a time-saving mechanism, thinking we can do chores when listening or as Maia says, “two birds, one stone”. It is not always possible. Often the listening or the chore or both are compromised. Further, we should bear in mind what Mark Kerrigan calls auditory fatigue; the analog to screen fatigue. Which he describes as experiencing a limit to listening, which is increasingly familiar, a sense of being oversaturated and unable to hear myself think.\n[Electronic music begins to play]\n\nIn the conversation with Jentery, he talked about the challenges of asking people to take listening seriously and understanding the obstacles to attentive listening are part of that conversation. But to bring listening more fully into the classroom, we also need a better understanding of the processes of reading on the page. If listening is relentlessly and usually negatively compared to reading, we should first make sure we know what we mean by reading in the first place.\n\n(19:46)\tAI Generated Voice\tChapter three, what is reading anyway?\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(19:52)\tMichelle\tI asked Jentery about how dismissals of listening are often informed by idealized notions of reading, particularly reading in print what you read.\n[Audio from interview with Jentery begins]\n\nBut I wanna go back to what you said earlier about often listening while multitasking, and I guess that just strikes me as so interesting and important and I think it is one of the reasons why lots of us do listen to a lot of different things, but I guess what I’m wondering is can we again maybe muddy that and say listening doesn’t just have to be deep or intense or close, that sometimes we don’t listen with that kind of intensity and that’s okay.\n\nSo one thing that has come up with my students and I’ve heard this in the interview with Jason Camlot’s students, is that they kind of go in and out of attention. Certain audio texts are much easier to listen to, some are harder, but I also think that’s what we do when we read.\n\nWe just have this fantasy that when we read, we’re just wrapped and we’re reading every word, and we’re taking it all in. I think that waning of attention is common to both acts.\n\n[Quiet string music begins to play]\n\n[Interview audio ends]\n\nEven though we often treat reading as if it is one thing, it is in fact a multitude of practices and cognitive experiences. Sometimes we read every word, but very often we scan or skim or surf when reading or simply fail to take in the words in front of us due to incomprehension or boredom or fatigue. And the same thing happens to us when we listen. Andy coined the phrase “ear skimming” to describe a similar experience that happens when listening.\n\n[String music ends]\n\n(21:22)\tAndy\tYeah. That makes me think of skimming. When you skim readings that you’re not interested in, it’s like, listen, ear skimming [laughs], you kind of just blank out or, you know, distract yourself and then tune in when something picks up your interest.\n(21:38)\tMichelle\tThe contemporary neuroscience of reading as popularized by writers, including Maryanne Wolf and Stanislas Dehaene has shown us the complexity and variety of the neural processes that we designate by the single term reading.\n[String music begins to play]\n\nAnd notwithstanding the strong opinions about listening as compared to reading, there is a surprising lack of empirical research that directly evaluates how modality of presentation impacts comprehension and what little research there is has yielded conflicting results.\n\nNaomi Baron’s 2021 book, How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen and Audio, surveys current research and reports that although some studies suggest that comprehension may be improved when texts are read on the page as opposed to heard, these studies are limited and other empirical evidence suggests no difference. Some research, for example, shows that with listening, multitasking and mind wandering may be more prevalent.\n\nHowever, these effects appear to be lessened when what is being listened to is a narrative as opposed to an expository text. Some of the experiments involve listening to textbooks where depending on the subject matter, mind wandering is perhaps not surprising. My takeaway from her book is that the difficulties that are detected with oral comprehension and retention in some of the studies are more likely to be learned rather than innate. This interpretation aligns with research that shows that younger children are more effective listeners and that they lose these skills over time, becoming better readers than listeners.\n\nPerhaps this is because younger children are rewarded for and taught to value listening and this capacity wanes as emphasis on reading written materials intensifies. At the college level, we need to ask whether students put the same mental investment and time into their listening as they do into their reading. Baron helpfully points out some of the specific ways in which audio texts, including podcast and audiobooks, can prove challenging in terms of comprehension and recall.\n\nShe notes that audiobooks often lack certain elements that appear in or are endemic to print and that have been proven to aid learning when reading written texts. Podcasts, she points out, usually present undifferentiated sound and emit what are called signalizing devices such as bold or metallics that emphasize what is particularly important, as well as other visual landmarks such as headings and page breaks that can help readers chunk material into more comprehensible pieces.\n\nAudio texts also do not provide visual aids such as charts or graphs or images, all of which can enhance learning. Finally, annotation of written materials is a practice that has been proven to help readers understand and retain material, but annotation of audio can be more challenging. One of the reasons why the physical book has been such an enduring medium is because it enables annotation, whether in the form of handwritten notes, underlining or highlighting or adding sticky notes.\n\nBut performing any of these tasks with audio is, if not impossible, then less familiar, as our students are usually asked to speak or write about what they have read or heard. And as that is our work as scholars, we need mechanisms for marking audio to help us emphasize and find those passages we wish to return to. When listening to an audiobook or a podcast, we are often compelled to keep notes in a separate medium as Jentery did while listening by taking notes on his phone or notebook. This is one of the challenges we discussed.\n\n[String music ends]\n\n(25:12)\tJentery\tYeah, so the only audiobook I taught in that particular class was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. I recommended getting it in print as well, and I gathered probably somewhere between two thirds and three quarters the students did. So I did not, however, I demonstrated the use of annotation in the online class, like by showing how I annotate my own audio, you know, sharing a screen essentially, but I did not, and I should have, but I did not teach annotating audiobooks or annotating sound more generally.\nIn hindsight, if I had done it again, I would probably do something like that or figure out a way to integrate some kind of software or a mechanism to make it more approachable to students. But it kind of sparks my imagination here and I’m wondering how it is that when students were listening, how it is that they took notes and how that might correspond with and differ from how helped students take notes, say in the print novels that I teach, that would be a fascinating question. I’m sure people have studied this, but it’s not in my wheelhouse.\n\n(26:06)\tMichelle\tFortunately, annotation tools for audio do exist. Audible has a bookmark function that saves your place with a timestamp and in the digital file and allows you to enter notes. Tanya Clement, a scholar from the University of Texas, Austin, who is part of the SpokenWeb network, has been working with her team to create Audi Annotate: a web-based open source tool that supports audio and video markup.\nThese tools are needed to enable us to engage with audio in ways that are analogous to how we mark up text and print and now digitally audio annotation tools therefore seek to provide us with a set of options to approximate what we do with a printed book, such as turning down the corner of a page or adding a handwritten note.\n\nAnnotation can also support our spatial sense of where we are in a digital audio file, an aspect of reading that is normalized when we read a physical book, even if we don’t mark it up as we read, we tend to have a sense of what comes where, but this recall can be harder to replicate in an audio file. [Light electronic music begins]\n\nElla similarly reported needing to reference a print edition in order to anchor herself when listening.\n\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(27:16)\tElla\tSo I ended up having to look at a print version just to anchor myself, you know, I’d look, oh, oh, this is like maybe a quarter of the way through the book, so it must be a quarter of the way through the audiobook. I mean, that was difficult, taking a long form audio piece and being like, somewhere in here I remember listening to a fun thing, now I gotta find where it is. So I would use the print for that, but then I was, again, just using like the free Gutenberg version of that.\n(27:39)\tMichelle\tThe printed book offers us navigational tools and opportunities for annotation that support the comprehension and retention of written texts, but they are not reading per se. As Ella points out, books can also provide images and other formatting and formal features that help us to make sense of the words on the page.\nAudio is in need of tools that help us to anchor ourselves for the reasons mentioned and also because listening almost always takes longer than reading. I noticed that on the syllabus Jentery quantified the length of time students were expected to listen to the material he had assigned. [Light string music begins]\n\nThat was one of the aspects of teaching audiobooks that I struggled with as the audiobook of the novel, Milkman comes in at 14 hours, 11 minutes, and the two other audiobooks I assigned, Cersi by Madeline Miller and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evarist clock in at just over 12 and 11 hours, respectfully.\n\nAs we do not want to encourage our students to listen at faster speeds, and as we must acknowledge that re-listening may be needed, we must factor in the time it takes to listen, which is almost certainly longer than it takes to read on the page. Jentery explained that he had been quantifying expectations for how much prep time students would need to listen since the pandemic. [Electronic music ends]\n\n(28:56)\tJentery\tSince the pandemic, issues related like when, you know, your sense of place and your sense of campus changes, and the campus is kind of in your house now or in your domestic space. I think time management is affected pretty deeply and I gather research supports that assumption. So that was part of it, just making clear and or transparent labor expectations, while noting that mileage may vary.\nBut it also comes actually out of doing a lot of work with digital media and just more generally in digital studies, where in my own training and in my own education, I had gleaned a pretty concrete sense of how long it would take me to read a 200 page novel and I could assign that accordingly and we could talk about that in terms of time.\n\n(29:38)\tMichelle\tWhat I hope these conversations have illuminated are the ways in which we as instructors can help our students. By recognizing that effectively reading written text encompasses a range of practices, we can think about how best to provide a set of comparable supports to enable our students to succeed in listening.\nIn the pedagogical audio we create, such as this very podcast episode, we can enact some of the signalizing devices that readers of printed material are accustomed to and rely on to make sense of what they’re reading, by adding section breaks, as I’ve endeavored to do in this podcast.\n\nAlthough a podcast is in oral media, we can enhance it with visual aids and transcriptions as again is attempted in the blog post that accompanies this podcast. [Electronic string music begins to play]\n\nOne of the other immediate demands of teaching literary audio is providing students with a framework for understanding what they are hearing.\n\n[Electronic music ends]\n\nWhat is an audio book or a podcast anyway? A genre? A medium? According to Jentery, the critical conceptual category is format, and a podcast or an audiobook are both formats within the medium of audio.\n\n(30:52)\tAI Generated Voice\t[Electronic music begins to play]\nChapter four: Format matters.\n\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(30:58)\tMaya\tOne of the most riveting exchanges with Jentery was about the conceptual categories he offered to his students to describe and distinguish between different forms of literary audio, from audiobooks to podcasts to radio dramas. Format occupies the zone between the more abstract category of media, on the one hand, and the more content specific category of genre, on the other. To break down the three conceptual categories, a familiar example may be useful.\n[Electronic music begins to play]\n\nLet’s take Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which was first published in London in 1813 in three volumes. We begin with the most abstract category, that of media, which is usually divided into text, audio, video, and image. The medium of the novel’s first public appearance was text, but before its publication it lived in audio form as Austen is said to have read the novel aloud to her family in advance of publication. After its publication, it would’ve continued to be read aloud in countless homes across Britain and abroad, especially after its publication in Philadelphia In 1832.\n\nIn 1833, an illustrated version of the novel was first published, bringing the novel into a visual medium in 1940, just over 100 years later, it entered another medium; video. As we can see, a work like Pride and Prejudice exists in multiple media at the same time, and simply because it was first presented to the public as a text does not mean that that medium should necessarily have primacy.\n\nThe next conceptual layer is that of format, for example, within video there are different formats such as feature length film adaptations and mini-series, as well as many, many others. With the concept of format referring to how our particular media is structured and delivered. We may also create a typology of audio formats in which the novel has been presented, from the handful of amateur readings on Librivox to audiobooks narrated by celebrities.\n\nThe final conceptual category is that of genre, which describes content. Pride and Prejudice is a work of fiction, a novel, and we could historize it further by calling it a domestic novel or a comedy of manners.\n\n[Electronic music ends]\n\nIn discussions with Jentery, he explained that with his students, he lent heavily into the concept of format, asking students to listen to a variety of audio formats, radio plays, serialized drama, voiceover narration, and first person video games. Using the concept of format to ground their understanding of what they were hearing, historically and technologically.\n\n(33:35)\tJentery\tI think one of the really useful aspects of that approach was that we could, in very kind of concrete ways and in palpable terms, talk about the ways in which audio achieves a context, if you will, and brings material together, brings together, for example, aspects of narrative and story with art and design. And since it’s so much about situation and context, you know, not taking for instance the kind of formalist approach to media where we kind of unmoor it from time and space and talk about it abstractly.\nI think one of the consequences of that was we were also able to look at moments when this work was made and this work was produced. Actually look at the specificity of context in each case and talk about how format, genre, and audio production, just writ large is always kind of grounded in particular situations.\n\n(34:28)\tMaya\tThroughout this podcast episode, we will return to one of Jentery’s key insights that thinking about literary audio through the lens of format helps us to situate it in place and time and allows, as he puts it, for audio to achieve a context.\n[Electronic string music begins to play]\n\nWith all of these efforts needed to support listeners, it might reasonably be asked whether listening is worth it? If we need to provide new media frameworks for students, if listening requires as much, if not more attention than reading on the page, if it takes longer than reading a physical book, if it can induce auditory fatigue, and if in order to write about it, you still need special tools to annotate or a print version anyway, why bother?\n\nAvid listeners of audio books, however, answer this question by noting that they often listen to books that they have already read in physical form, and yet always they hear something that they didn’t see. What are some of the ways in which listening enhances comprehension and enjoyment? What do we hear that we did not see and what questions or insights does listening give rise to that we would not otherwise have from reading the book in written form?\n\n(35:40)\tAI Generated Voice\tChapter five: Hearing What We Cannot See.\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(35:45)\tMichelle\tMatthew Rubery, author of the foundational history of audio literature, The Untold Story of the Talking Book speaks to the different perceptions that come from listening and reading on the page. [String music begins to play]\nNearly all readers, he writes, report understanding identical texts differently in spoken and silent formats as various elements stand out depending on the mode of reception. He notes that the narrator who performs the story can be especially useful in giving voice to unfamiliar accents, dialects or languages. The vocalization of such distinctively oral text would otherwise be impoverished for many readers poorly equipped to sound out the linguistic effects for themselves.\n\nAn audiobook is a performance, an interpretation of the original text, often accentuated with the narrator adopting different voices for different characters and enhanced with sound effects and music, all of which bring the audiobook closer to theater or film even when it offers absolute fidelity to the written text, as is the case with most unabridged audiobooks. Jentery and I explored the performative aspects of the audiobook he assigned, Toni Morrison’s reading of The Bluest Eye. I asked him whether he attempted with his students to disambiguate the text as written from the text as performed by Morrison.\n\n(37:07)\tJentery\tAnd that, so we tried just that and actually I think it was a bit of a setup because when we went through and listened to it, and in many cases read alongside what we were listening, we did our best to think about the various roles, if you will, that Toni Morrison is playing in that audiobook of The Bluest Eye. So Morrison as author, Morrison as narrator, as reader, as voice actress, even as character voices.\nAnd we went through and tried to mark how we would understand that differently. So I remember this exercise and yeah, and ultimately probably without a shock, we determined it was very obviously difficult to make a clean demarcation between one and the other when it would happen in a sentence and whatnot.\n\n(37:48)\tMichelle\tAs Jentery explains, there are many different rules that Morrison takes on in reading her novel aloud. Rubery distinguishes between different models of audiobook performances. The narration may be read by the author, by a professional voice actor, by a celebrity, or even by an amateur. Characters may be voiced by the narrator, sometimes in different voices or different actors may be cast to play different roles.\nAn extreme example of this is the audiobook version of George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo, which is performed by over 160 actors. Toni Morrison reads The Bluest Eye herself, performing the third person narration and also giving voice to different characters in the novel. Morrison also narrates another book that is embedded in the novel, one of the Dick and Jane Reading Primers, a series intended to help new readers first published in America in the 1930s.\n\nThese primers, with their idealized characters living seemingly problem-free lives, are white and middle class, setting up a potent contrast with the character’s Morrison depicts in her novel. Morrison’s novel begins with a Dick and Jane story of about 150 words. The Dick and Jane story is reprinted at the very beginning of the novel and it appears in its entirety three times, each time with different typographical features.\n\n[Electronic music begins to play]\n\nThe first time the story is printed, there are spaces between the lines and the words, and the story takes up most of a page. The second time the spacing between lines and words is reduced, shrinking the presentation of the story to half a page with all punctuation removed. The third time the story is printed, all spaces between the words have disappeared with each word bleeding into the next.\n\nTo help you visualize this, please refer to the blog post for this episode on the SpokenWeb website, which includes images taken from these two first pages of the novel. Morrison’s repetition of the story three times in printed form seems to mimic a young child becoming proficient in reading, from one who slowly sounds out each word to one who becomes so fluent that she can run each word into the next, but the blurring of words into one undifferentiated mass has other implications.\n\nAs Morrison reads the three versions of the story in the audiobook, she speeds up the pace of her reading as might be expected, but a more sinister element also presents itself. Here is Morrison reading the first part of the story at three different speeds.\n\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(40:22)\tToni Morrison reading from The Bluest Eye\t[Morrison reads the text slowly]\nHere’s the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family, mother, father, Dick and Jane, live in the green and white house. They’re very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress she wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat? It goes meow, meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane.\n\n[Morrison reads the text again, faster this time] Here is the house, it is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family, mother, father, Dick and Jane, live in the green and white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress she wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat? It goes meow, meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane.\n\n[Morrison reads the text even faster]\n\nHere’s the house. Green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family, mother, father, Dick and Jane, live in the green and white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress she wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat? It goes meow, meow. Come and play. Come and play with Jane.\n\n(41:46)\tMichelle\t[String music begins to play]\nWhat Morrison’s voicing brings to life is both how the child learns to read, but also how through the rote rehearsal of the story at a speed that renders it mostly unintelligible the white family living in the green and white House becomes internalized as the norm and the ideal.\n\nIn the forward to the printed version, which interestingly becomes an author’s note at the end of the audiobook, Morrison reports that the story originated in a conversation with a friend from elementary school who confided in Morrison that she wished for blue eyes. [Electronic music ends]\n\nWithin the first four minutes of the audiobook, Morrison’s pointed reading of the Dick and Jane story at three different tempos draws out the menace lurking within these stories for Black children; the Dick and Jane stories provide just one potential explanation for a central question the novel poses: How does Morrison’s childhood friend and the character in the novel who asks for the same thing, learn to wish for the bluest eye? What Morrison describes as racial self-loathing.\n\nFor me, the meaning of Morrison’s rendering of the Dick and Jane story in the print novel is enhanced by her performance of them. I might have had an inkling of her meaning by reading it on the page, but it is amplified by her reading as seeing and hearing her translation of the embedded story intensifies and crystallizes her meaning.\n\nAt the same time, any attempt to read authorial intention into the audiobook performance must be interrogated. To return to Jentery’s suggestion that by listening and situating the audio recording within the time and place of its production, audio achieves a context. We might want to ask students to reflect on the fact that Morrison is reading the novel in 2011, more than 40 years after its first publication in 1970. Morrison also makes changes to the presentation of her peratext, moving, as I said, the forward from its position prefacing the printed novel to the end when she reads the novel for the audiobook.\n\nThe reason for this shift seems likely to do with the difference in media and format. Readers can and often do skip preparatory material in print, but this action of skipping ahead is perhaps less natural with an audiobook. Beyond these changes, what does seem consistent over this 40 year period is Morrison’s belief that her books were meant to be heard.\n\nThus, she describes the language she uses in the novel as speakerly, oral, colloquial. And it is perhaps for this reason that her audiobooks are so powerful. Indeed, Morrison performed all of her books as audiobooks, demonstrating her investment in aurality. Sarah Kozloff has argued that audiobooks create a stronger bond than printed books between storyteller and listener by invoicing the narrator, and many listeners in particular enjoy hearing authors perform their own works.\n\nAudiobooks, particularly when read by the author, seem to bring us closer to the source of the words and the story, much in the same way a handwritten manuscript seems to bring us in proximity to the hand and body that inscribed it. Jentery related to me how he found it effective, as he put it, to bring the author into the room in assigning an audiobook read by the author like Morrison’s Bluest Eye and by playing interviews with or speeches by authors.\n\n(45:03)\tJentery\tWell in American fiction courses, I love including videos of James Baldwin’s speeches in a lot of material. I think that’s fascinating to bring the author into the room and I often when I’m teaching primary source, a novel for example, love to include and play in the class podcast interviews with those authors, in a way that allows students to think about the kind of context around the book, but also just kind of what went into the book and some of the motivations for it.\n(45:29)\tMichelle\tJentery and I discussed how changes in digital technology make it much easier too, as he put it, bring the author into our classrooms. We have a wealth of freely available audio and video such as the New Yorker Fiction podcast, which makes hundreds of stories from the magazine’s archive and current issues available to listen to, some enhanced by extended conversations about the stories.\nIn addition to improved access to primary source audio material, Jentery also points to how changes in accessibility to technology and equipment for playing and recording audio are transforming what is now pedagogically possible.\n\n[Electronic music begins to play]\n\nThe final section of this episode considers how technological developments have changed both what we and our students can do with audio.\n\n(46:22)\tAI Generated Voice\tChapter Six: Teaching with Audio Now.\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(46:28)\tMaya\tIn the conversation with Jentery, he reflected on how much has changed in just the past decade of teaching audio.\n(46:35)\tJentery\tWhen I was teaching sound studies at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria between like 2010 and 2012, the accessibility of material there, like what I could circulate and what I couldn’t, what I had just to play, say, on a desktop computer in the classroom, but also what students could record and what with, I’m always careful not to assume that students have access to technologies and computers.\nBut I can say just matter of factly, the degree to which they would need to, say, rent or go to the library to acquire an audio recorder has dramatically changed, just given the ubiquity of mobile phones at this point. So there’s that angle, which recording is, I think, on the whole, it’s not universally accessible, but it’s more accessible to students now than it was then. I think just being able to hit “record” is more ready to hand.\n\n(47:17)\tMaya\tRecording equipment and podcasting software also open new forms of assessments. As Jentery explains, when working with sound, it often makes sense to sample the sounds being analyzed and hence an audio essay is often the best way for a student to fully engage with the material.\n(47:35)\tJentery\tA thing that really struck me as compelling and did gain traction among students in the seminar was the idea of composing in such a way, composing an essay, an audio essay if you prefer a podcast, in such a way that makes room for your primary sources to speak and to be dialogic in that sense. So, the inclusion of samples of authors reading their work, of hearing the author’s voice in a way that I think, again, you don’t need to adhere to a metaphysics of presence to find this interesting.\nYou can just think of it in terms of honoring other people’s work and what it means for you to hear other people’s work in your writing and your composition in the production of space and time. And so I liked that too, the threading through other people’s work into your material in a way that might be a little different than reading a block quote or seeing an image on the page.\n\n(48:22)\tMaya\tJason Camlot’s student Ella explained that she chose the podcast format for her final assessment because it seemed more natural and easier than writing and attempting to describe her object of study, which were recordings of poetry readings.\n(48:37)\tElla\tI chose to do the long form. I mean, I simplified in my head the long form. I told myself I’m not gonna do interviews or anything, I’m just going to essentially record myself reading this essay and then insert the sounds I’m talking about because I think this might actually be easier than trying to transcribe those sounds in a way that I can then analyze them in writing.\nIn this case, I could just play the sound for you and you can hear it and then I can talk about my thoughts on it. That seemed like an easier process, actually, because I was going to be working with a bunch of different old recordings and newer recordings and poetry readings and stuff and, it just, I don’t even know how I would’ve approached describing some of this, especially cuz I was working, for instance, with experimental poetry from the eighties and I was working with really old recordings on wax cylinder of Tennyson and like, how do you describe those kinds of experimental or super old degraded sounds to people in order to then really get into a conversation about it? So it just made sense to have people hear them.\n\n(49:36)\tMaya\t[Soft electronic music begins to pla]\nElla’s observations about the need to incorporate the different sounds she was working with,once again return us to Jentery’s idea of audio achieving a context.\n\nIn order to describe and situate 19th century wax cylinder recordings within their particular historical and technological moment, it is necessary to hear them in the same way that we say a picture is worth a thousand words. A short audio clip, here, the Tennyson recording on wax cylinder that Ella refers to is likewise easier to understand when heard.\n\n[An audio clip of Tennyson reading poetry plays]\n\nIn addition, Ella explained her preference for the audio essay format by echoing Jentery’s sense that there might be something more dialogic and open about it.\n\n(50:32)\tElla\tI do think it was faster for me to write for this podcast than it was for me to write what could have been a conference paper because I don’t like the structure of the academic paper where you say your thesis statement in the beginning, prove your thesis statement, and then restate your thesis statement. I prefer a structure where you sort of go from a starting point, like essentially more of like a thought process, like, here’s my starting point and by the end of it you’re like, here’s where I got from that starting point.\nI had the option to do that with the podcast. Whereas usually when you’re writing an academic paper for a class, they don’t give you the option to just run with things. So it just went a lot faster cuz it was a form that made more sense to me.\n\n(51:11)\tMaya\tJentery also spoke about how crafting an audio essay is different than writing for the page and reading it aloud, or even reading a conference paper, which might be designed for oral delivery. An audio essay perhaps because it is modeled on the podcast may be more audience oriented. Maia reflected that having the opportunity to listen to each other’s podcast or audio essay assignment distinguished the course from others she had taken where a student’s writing is primarily directed towards the professor.\n(51:38)\tMaia (51:38)\tIt was also interesting to hear everyone else’s podcasts because in a normal normal class in, a more traditionally like written assignment based class, you don’t read everyone’s essays and get to interact with your classmates like that. And I think, for me, it was a really interesting atmosphere that I don’t know that I’ll ever have again. It was really, really special in the way that we all interacted and I don’t know to what part of that was the sharing in a medium that is more shared, listening of togetherness rather than kind of an individualized personalized reading.\n(52:13)\tMaya\tFor Andy and Ghislaine, the audio essay felt different than in-class presentations, which are to a great extent formalized. By contrast, the audio assignments were diverse, fresh, and engaging.\n(52:27)\tAndy\tEveryone took it in such a different direction. So it was like when you have a presentation, I feel often they follow a similar format and structure, but with this it was completely different in every kind of way. Genres across the board, like kind of there were no limits of what you could really do and I think that’s what for me made it different than just a typical class presentation. [String music begins to play]\n(52:51)\tGhislaine\tRight, that makes sense. So it’s like with regular normal class presentations, it would have been as if, you know, someone came in singing and dancing versus, you know, just with their PowerPoint. [laughs]\n(53:03)\tMaya\tWe will end with Ghislaine’s words, as her comments should inspire both instructors and students to turn to literary audio, both as a source of teaching material and as a form for student work. We believe she speaks to what we all could use in our classrooms. A little more singing and dancing and a little less PowerPoint.\nYou have been listening to “Audiobooks In the Classroom”, a SpokenWeb podcast episode by Michelle Levy and narrated by Michelle Levy and Maya Schwartz. Thanks for listening.\n\n[Electronic music ends]\n\n(53:54)\tKatherine McLeod\t[SpokenWeb theme music begins to play]\nThe SpokenWeb podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.\n\nOur producers this month are Dr. Michelle Levy and MA student Maya Schwartz, both based at Simon Fraser University. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. Our sound designer is Miranda Eastwood, and our transcription is done by Zoe Mix.\n\nTo find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca, subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds.\n\n[SpokenWeb theme music ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9599","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4E8, Ambient Connection: The Sounds of Public Library Spaces, 5 June 2023, Trotter"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/ambient-connection-the-sounds-of-public-library-spaces/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Maia Trotter"],"creator_names_search":["Maia Trotter"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Maia Trotter\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://the-spokenweb-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ambient-connection-the-sounds-of-public-library-spaces\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:48:40\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/ambient-connection-the-sounds-of-public-library-spaces/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-06-05\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of Alberta Humanities Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5\",\"latitude\":\"53.5269794\",\"longitude\":\"-113.51915593663469\"}]"],"Address":["11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5"],"Venue":["University of Alberta Humanities Centre"],"City":["Edmonton, Alberta"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"Listed on site as S4E7. Not downloadable, so some entries (file name, size) are left empty.\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"EPL Makerspace\\nhttps://www.epl.ca/makerspace/\\n\\nEPL Gamerspace\\nhttps://www.epl.ca/milner-library/gamerspace/\\n\\nShelley Milner Children’s Library\\nhttps://www.epl.ca/milner-library/childrens-library/\\n\\nKatherine McLeod, “Listening to the Library”\\nhttps://labs.library.concordia.ca/listening-to-the-library/\\n\\nValentine, P. M. (2012). A social history of books and libraries from cuneiform to bytes. The Scarecrow Press, Inc.\\n\\nPeesker, S. (2019). Sounds like hard work: How the right noise can help you focus and be more creative. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article-sounds-like-hard-work-how-the-right-noise-can-help-you-focus-and-be/\\n\\nBuxton, R. T., Pearson, A. L., Allou, C., Fristrup, K., & Wittemyer, G. (2021). A synthesis of health benefits of natural sounds and their distribution in national parks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(14). https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.1073/PNAS.2013097118\\n\\nHan, Z., Meng, Q., & Kang, J. (2022). The effect of foreground and background of soundscape sequence on emotion in urban open spaces. Applied Acoustics. https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.1016/j.apacoust.2022.109039\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549660631040,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this episode, Maia Trotter—SpokenWeb research assistant and recent graduate of the MLIS program at the University of Alberta—explores what libraries actually sound like. Featuring interviews with three staff members at the Edmonton Public Library Stanley A. Milner branch and her own personal reflections, this episode considers how the sounds of library spaces have changed over time, and the connection between those sounds and the ways that libraries can make us feel.\n\nDuring the COVID pandemic, before she had ever set foot in a classroom dedicated to learning about libraries, Maia Trotter discovered a YouTube video titled “Library Ambiance.” This video didn’t contain the typically fabricated sounds of a library that someone had layered over each other like book pages turning and a fireplace crackling in the background, but a live recording of the sounds of a public library out there in the world. These sounds are what helped her to get through the isolation she felt during those long months at home.\n\nHaving now been surrounded by ideas about libraries for the last two years, Maia decided to investigate the different sounds of libraries, how they have changed over time, and how they make people feel. For this episode, Maia interviews three staff members of the Edmonton Public Library Stanley A. Milner branch who work in unique spaces to get their perspectives on the way sound affects patrons and staff members alike. She interviews staff members who have worked in the Makerspace, Gamerspace, and the children’s library in order to explore the relationship between feeling and sound in libraries, and how the sounds of libraries have changed over time.\n\nSpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from (and created using) Canadian Literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit: spokenweb.ca . If you love us, let us know! Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada.\n\n(0:00)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:18)\tKatherine McLeod\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb theme music ends]\n[Katherine talks softly] In this episode we are in a library. [Katherine makes a shushing noise, “shh”]\n\nI’m talking quietly because I’m in a library. I’m in a library at the University of Toronto and I’m here in the stacks talking quietly because a library is a place where you are supposed to be quiet, a place of silent reading. But libraries are also full of sounds. Not just the sounds of the library, the entrance, the beep of the book checkout, hushed voices, pages turning, but also the sounds of audio materials held within the library.\n\nIn 2021, I was the researcher in residence at Concordia’s Library. And my project, Listening to the Library, linked in the show notes was all about exploring sound materials and sites of sound within the library. The library is full of sound and that’s why at the SpokenWeb Symposium last year when SpokenWeb research assistant Maia Trotter pitched an idea about a podcast episode about the sounds of public libraries, I was so keen to hear what you would come up with.\n\nMaia takes us into a public library in Edmonton and she takes time to really listen to its sounds and what sounds it makes. The library has never been noisier, but noisy in a positive sense. The library as a place of making, of listening and of community. Here’s this month’s episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, live from the Library and produced by Maia Trotter: Ambient Connection: The Sounds of Public Library Spaces. [SpokenWeb Theme music swells and then fades out]\n\n(02:18)\tAmbient Library Audio\t[Indiscernible voices talking over one another]\n(02:22)\tMaia Trotter\tWhat do you hear when you close your eyes and think of a library? Do you hear pages turning, books being reshelved, perhaps some hushed whispers or maybe even the infamous librarian “shush”? [Sound effect of a person shushing plays]\nHow much of that is real and how much of it is just an idea or an expectation of what a library is and sounds like?\n\nHi everyone, my name is Maia and I am a metadata assistant for the SpokenWeb University of Alberta team. I recently finished my Master of Library and Information studies at the University of Alberta, which was a two, two year program that introduced me to a world of libraries, so different from my original perceived notions of what libraries are and what they sound like.\n\nMy interest in the sounds of libraries originated during the Covid Pandemic when everyone was in lockdown and I was working from home. I was fortunate enough to still be living with my family at the time, so I wasn’t completely isolated, but I remember long stretches of silence with just the sound of my hands typing on my laptop. As many people did, I felt lonely, but even phone calls with my friends didn’t feel like enough sometimes.\n\nI tried to listen to music while I worked or shuffled around at home, but the music either distracted me or failed to help ease the loneliness I felt. One day as I was searching YouTube for some lo-fi beats to listen to, I came across a video titled Real Library Ambiance. I could hear books, people’s lowered voices, the dull thud footsteps, pens scratching across paper, chairs pushing in and out, and the low hum of the traffic outside. I listened to this video many, many times throughout the pandemic as I attempted to feel closer to the world outside our house.\n\nI found comfort in hearing the everyday sounds of people using these spaces, and there was something about libraries in particular that made me feel calm and connected. The sounds of that video hadn’t necessarily been what I was expecting when I clicked on it, but that difference was exactly what I needed to hear.\n\nIt was about a year and a half later after I’d already begun my master’s program that I discovered I wasn’t the only one to find comfort in the sounds of real libraries during the pandemic. I read an article in The Guardian that reported that many people had been accessing real library ambiance sounds during the pandemic and during periods of time when libraries were closed. And so I began to wonder about sounds and libraries and why we find comfort in them and why I had gravitated towards real library sounds during the pandemic, compared to the soft and edited sounds that I had originally expected to hear when I clicked on that video.\n\nAs I sifted through videos on YouTube, I found obvious differences in actual recordings of real world libraries compared to edited and created videos of library ambiance, which would typically consist of sounds of pages turning layered with sounds like a crackling fireplace or rain on a tin roof. The sounds in the actual recordings of libraries were full of life, of people talking, people moving, and not really the sounds we might expect when we think of a library.\n\nAnd so this is what we will be discussing today. What do libraries sound like now and how do they differ from our preconceived notions of what they sound like? How have their sounds changed over time? Does this make people feel differently?\n\n[Ambient sound of children and adults talking in a library]\n\nIn order to better understand sounds in a public library, I interviewed three staff members from the Edmonton Public Library, Stanley A. Milner branch, which is the downtown library and the largest branch in the EPL system. I interviewed Dan Hackborn, who works in the Makerspace, Charlie Crittendon, who frequently works in the gamer space, and Anna Wallace who works in the Children’s Library.\n\nMy first question to them was to take me through an average workday for each of them in these unique spaces.\n\n(06:14)\tDan Hackborn\tHi, my name is Dan Hackborn. I’m currently employed by the Edmonton Public Library Makerspace, and I’ve worked there for five years at that specific location or branch.\n(06:27)\tMaia Trotter\tSo maybe first if you could just take us through an average day working in the Makerspace.\n(06:32)\tDan Hackborn\tIt’s in quite a bit of flux right now. There is a real push to open up all the services that were promised with the downtown branch’s retrofit as quickly as possible after a couple of years of more slowly and carefully deploying services. So right now it can be any mixture of learning new services, giving certifications or guidance to members of the public on existing services and planning models for potential future services, and then performing maintenance on existing services as well.\n(07:17)\tMaia Trotter\tCould you give us some examples of what those services are?\n(07:21)\tDan Hackborn\tThe existing services we have right now are free printing which requires regular maintenance of the printers and fixes, the recording studios, which basically just requires minor tuning of guitars- [Sound effect of a guitar string being plucked]\n-and software updates and things like that. Creative computers, which are all managed centrally. So we don’t really have to do much IT on those aside from some minor admin stuff, and the vinyl cutting and key press service, which doesn’t require that much maintenance.\n\nAnd finally, the sewing machine and surging service, which is our newest service. [Sound effect of sewing machine whirring plays] And that mainly requires cleaning of the sewing machines. [Soft string music begins to play in arpeggios] And then all of them require certification and education for members of the public when they’re using them for the first time. So that happens between a mix of short kinds of orientations that last 15 minutes to full three hour courses. [Music swells and fades]\n\n(08:29)\tMaia Trotter\tHi Anna.\n(08:30)\tAnna Wallace\tHello!\n(08:31)\tMaia Trotter\tSo you work at the Children’s Library at EPL, correct?\n  (08:36)\tAnna Wallace\tI do. Technically it’s like a blended position. I work on the literacy vans out in the wilds of Edmonton, [Maia laughs] but I also work, yes, part-time in the Children’s Library downtown.\n(08:49)\tMaia Trotter\tThat’s awesome. Could you tell me a little bit about The Children’s Library and what your day-to-day looks like while you’re working there?\n(08:55)\tAnna Wallace\tThe Children’s Library downtown is huge. So it kind of has its own square footage inside Milner that is about the same as a regular size branch of the Edmonton Public Library. So it kind of turns into its own little world. The way that the shape is spaced, it ends up being kind of a corral in the corner of the first floor of Milner.\nSo we have quite a bit of space for our families to come and hang out in. So your day, just like working a desk can be, honestly day to day, it can look vastly different. It depends on how many people are in the space, how many programs are running that day, whether or not there’s tours in this space or just kind of like what needs your customers are looking for from you as a representative of the Edmonton Public Library.\n\nSo a lot of the time we’re just kind of hanging out, waiting for like, cause the library work is very responsive, right? Like you are, you’re there with library services and you’re waiting for what the customer needs from you or the patron needs from you. So a lot of days can be intensely hectic because our children’s library has turned into an attraction space because it has a lot of interactive elements for the kids to be learning and playing with.\n\nSo there’s a lot of space, for example, we have a little playhouse for three and under to be like climbing on. We have lots of interactive things on the walls to engage their brains obviously, but also just like lots of stuff to play with. So a lot of our families are coming in not only to borrow books and look at our services or our programming but to just be in the space and let their kids kind of interact with the space.\n\nSo sometimes you come in on a Saturday and it sounds like you’re walking into a play gym in a rec center or like Treehouse and you have to question yourself like, didn’t I get into library service?\n\n11:10\tMaia Trotter\t[Maia laughs] Aren’t libraries quiet?\n11:12\tAnna Wallace\tRight? Yeah. Because I mean, it’s a very, like, a very busy space. So within a shift you can be, you can be programming in the program room for a small number of people which is like noise and like, like especially if it’s an early literacy program, you’ve got shakers going. [Sound effect of music with shakers plays]\nYou’ve got music going, you’ve got children interacting with you, and then once that’s done, you could be on the floor helping people with, oh my goodness, like anything on the computer, 3D printing, getting video games set up, letting people into our children’s maker space, explaining things in the children’s maker space. Or you could be running a story stop, which we do every single day.\n\nOr just helping people with the provocations or crafts that we have on the floor. There’s just, it gets really, really intense in there sometimes, a lot of the time, actually, most of the time these days. It’s really, really, really intense. [Shake music ends]\n\n(12:11)\tMaia Trotter\tWe’ve got our next guest here, Charlie, who works in the EPL Gamer Space. Thanks so much for being here.\n(12:18)\tCharlie Crittenden\tYou’re very welcome. Thanks for having me.\n(12:20)\tMaia Trotter\tCharlie, could you tell us a little bit about the Gamer Space and what your day-to-day looks like while you’re working there?\n(12:26)\tCharlie Crittenden\tAbsolutely. Yeah. So the GamerSpace is a room in the Stanley Milner Library, which is dedicated to trying to make gaming more accessible for library customers, sort of creating and giving opportunities to access different kinds of gaming technologies. So we have each of the major consoles there, you know, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, we have a bunch of gaming PCs there as well.\nAnd then we have some sort of retro arcade cabinets there with a bunch of cool games on ’em. So my day-to-day work there is really just, you know, welcoming people into the space, [Electronic music begins to play]\n\nexplaining to them how it all works, helping them get on these various devices, and then sometimes troubleshooting or providing advice, helping out with any issues that might arise. [Music ends]\n\n(13:15)\tMaia Trotter\tYou don’t work exclusively in the Gamer Space though?\n(13:19)\tCharlie Crittenden\tThat’s right. So the Gamer Space is actually staffed by a rotating group of librarian employees drawn from different departments, the Maker Space, the children’s library, and the general library staff as well. People kind of cycle in and out of there throughout the day. [Ambient sounds of people talking plays]\n(13:34)\tMaia Trotter\tNow that I know what an average day looks like for these folks, I wanted to know how these spaces sound in comparison to the rest of the library. I could have chosen to interview staff members about the sounds of the library as a whole, but as we will discuss, libraries are no longer the kinds of institutions they used to be, even if our perceptions are still a little bit behind, and these specific areas we’re talking about are clear indicators of that evolution of space. So I wanted to focus on them and the ambiance they contribute to the library. [Ambient sound ends]\n(14:09)\tAnna Wallace\tIt’s been many a moon since libraries have been quiet spaces, to be completely honest. I mean, I’ve been working for EPL for like a decade now, and it’s never really been like, it’s not like don’t come in and scream your head off, but a certain level of humans being in a space together noise is kind of accepted now. We’ll definitely separate our quiet spaces.\n[Soft light music begins to play]\n\nLike if someone walks into the children’s library and is like, oh my God, we can be like, Hey, there’s quiet spaces on the third floor, or this study room is great, or whatever. But study spaces in the children library aren’t, they’re not copasetic.\n\n(14:53)\tCharlie Crittenden\tSo in terms of library policies, it is interesting to note that we do have a specific policy to not try to, we still don’t allow people to yell too loudly or something like that, you know, or something that’s really disruptive.\nBut like, we do have a higher, like we sort of welcome more noise in that space if people are just having a good time and like the more the level of, you know, cheering or yeah, just kind of calling out or getting excited that’s totally okay and sort of welcomed as part of the gaming experience of, you know having that kind of community of fun around it.\n\nOf course there’s some people who are just kind of quietly playing and doing their own thing, but yeah, that’s definitely something that we welcome in that space. And that’s a bit of a difference to the rest of the library where we would generally ask for people to keep their noise levels more at a conversational level. And yeah, so it’s definitely a special space in that regard for noise.\n\n(15:49)\tAnna Wallace\tYeah, Milner is a very popular branch for our downtown families and public. So it does, like, the Milner itself can get very, very loud and I find that the open space, when you walk into the library, you see the digital wall and you can kind of like see the ramps going up. Like you can hear pretty much everything when you’re in that space. The children’s library itself is a little bit off to the corner, so I feel like they did make a conscious choice to be like, okay, we’re not gonna put the children’s library with a giant open ceiling because then the noise of the children’s library is gonna end up everywhere in Milner.\nI mean, I’ve gotten used to now on my breaks that like, I go find a dark room and like I just, I don’t talk to anybody [Anna laughs] and I just eat my lunch in the dark room because sometimes the space can be so overwhelming that like I myself need a reset button before I can go back on the floor.\n\n(16:49)\tDan Hackborn\tThe design decisions for the Maker Space leaned into more of a bare bones industrial aesthetic. So there are concrete floors in the Maker Space and the ceiling ducting and wiring and stuff is all exposed, which in some ways looks good. I’m a fan of this aesthetic but it has extremely different acoustic properties than the rest of the library.\n[Soft electronic music begins to play]\n\nWhereas the rest of the library things like books actually act as essentially natural sound absorption barriers within the library or within the Maker Space specifically, there’s almost no soft surfaces. Like that we actually had to install some acoustic paneling on the ceiling because at the beginning it was so incredibly loud and impossible to hold a conversation, particularly when we were covering our faces in masks and had the plastic barriers up.\n\n[Music ends]\n\nSo any, basically any conversation anywhere in the space automatically becomes simultaneously magnified and fades into a gray noise where it’s hard to tell what words are actually being said. So that’s the main characteristics of the acoustics in the Maker Space.\n\n(18:16)\tMaia Trotter\tWhen we think of a library, I think we usually refer back to what we have seen in media, which is usually based on libraries of an older generation. I personally think back to that scene in the Music Man when Marian, the librarian, is stamping each book to be checked out, interspersed with s shushes and books being stacked or reshelved in an echoey and quiet environment.\n(18:46)\t[Scene from The Music Man] Hill\t[Arpeggiating brass plays in the background] No, it’s all right. I know everything and it doesn’t make any difference.\n(18:50)\t[Scene from The Music Man] Marian\tI don’t know what you’re talking about. You please make your selection and leave.\n(18:55)\t[Scene from The Music Man] Hill\tI have.\n(18:56)\t[Scene from The Music Man] Marian\tWhat do you wanna take out?\n(18:57)\t[Scene from The Music Man] Hill\tThe librarian.\n(19:00)\t[Scene from The Music Man] Marian\tShhhh. Quiet please.\n(19:03)\tMaia Trotter\t[Ambient sounds from a library begins to play] Throughout history, libraries have typically been indicators of wealth, class, and higher social status, and were thus exclusionary in nature. The materials required to create books were expensive, and the labor to create them was extensive, so they were only available to those with great means.\nThey were typically exclusive spaces reserved for academic spheres in the upper class. Public libraries as we understand them today, didn’t even really start to appear until the mid 1800’s. Silence is a common characteristic of how we generally think of library spaces and has typically been enforced throughout history. But there is an oppressive nature to enforced silence, and as libraries have evolved as public spaces, so too has their acceptance and even encouragement of sounds.\n\nBut this is a more recent approach, and it wasn’t until the 21st century that libraries began to incorporate more spaces like the Maker Space and evolve into spaces that could really be considered community hubs rather than book houses of the past.\n\nAs someone who has studied libraries for the past two years, I will be the first to say that libraries have their problems and they are still not wholly inclusive institutions, despite the vocational awe that permeates most of the general public perception. [Background noise ends]\n\nBut libraries have changed and over time have become increasingly community-led spaces unless their sounds have changed and the sounds themselves represent what a community wants, what it feels, where it struggles, and where it draws comfort. And so with that in mind, I asked my interviewees what were the most frequently heard sounds in each of these spaces.\n\n(20:41)\tCharlie Crittenden\tThe sounds you hear most often emanate from the various consoles. So each of the consoles has its sort of in a the switches up with the front of the room, sort of with the largest TV instead of speakers, which are sort of directionally positioned to try to keep the sound more located like around the couch. That’s couches that are facing it, but you can still hear it throughout the space.\nAnd then the PlayStation on the Xbox are in little sort of areas as well that have speakers sort of near where the people are seated. And so when you’re in the space, you’ll usually hear a variety of sounds from those three different sources. Most often you’ll hear the sounds of Mario kart, like getting started, you know, the engines rubbing and the sort of countdown of the race about to begin. [Sound bite of race starting in Mario Kart]\n\nYou hear Super Smash Bros as a very common one as well. With the sounds of the battle going on or the announcements of the different sessions going on there. You might also hear unexpected noises, like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the game Untitled Goose Game, but it features a goose, which is just basically walking around cracking constantly. [Soundbite of music from the Goose Game plays and ends] So that’s like a fairly common noise you might hear. But like on our other consoles, for example, very popular games are FIFA or NHL. So you’ll hear kind of like, you know, sports stadium noises that sort of thing. [Soundbite of crowd cheering plays and ends]\n\nYou know, like the sort of that side of gaming. In the space there is a restriction of no rated M games allowed sort of rated teen or under, so you don’t actually have as many like, shooting games, although you do have some. So you do hear some of that sort of like gunfire perhaps, but it’s like less often. And it’s more so these sorts of more either like, you know, family friendly Nintendo games like I was describing, or the sports games are the most common.\n\n(22:30)\tDan Hackborn\t[Sounds of people talking ambiently in the background begins to play and then fades]\nBecause there’s reporting studios and stuff like that, music is a lot more probable in the space versus other parts of the library. There is that grand piano down on the main floor which would be the other major space. But in the maker space, you either catch glimpses whenever someone opens a door to the recording studios, it kinda escapes momentarily or if they’re loud enough you can actually hear it, sometimes.\n\nThere’s one guy at the temporary branch before we actually moved into Milner, who was regular, came in every week and played bagpipes. [Soundbite of bagpipes playing begins] And it is my understanding that it’s impossible to play bagpipes quietly. I’m like, you could just hear him over the entire, throughout the entire branch. [Bagpipes fade and end]\n\n(23:25)\tCharlie Crittenden\tAnother notable noise you’ll hear comes from the arcade cabinets. And so on those, it’s like a lot of the kind of retro noises of say like original Mario or very commonly you’ll hear you know, a Pacman or something like that. And then the noises of, or like, you know, Mortal Kombat or something like that, and you’ll hear the noises of the kind of joysticks and buttons getting mashed, that sort of thing.\nSo I’d say those are the most common noises that you might hear in the space. Oh, and sorry, one more point is that you’ll also hear people talking to each other, right? So there’s a lot of times people playing games together. And so especially on the consoles you might hear people, you know, cheering when they score a goal in FIFA or kind of joking around with each other.\n\nMaybe they’re playing Fortnite together on some of the PCs and talking about, you know, what’s going on or something. So you will hear, you know, definitely a fair bit of conversation as well from people cheering or getting excited or talking to each other. [Calm soft electronic music begins to play]\n\n(24:33)\tDan Hackborn\tMachines that make, and equipment that make noises themselves, whether that’s actually the 3D printers which are noisy enough that they actually have what’s called a stealth mode, [Music ends] which makes them move more slowly, turns down the sound, makes the print take longer cause it’s moving more slowly in case you’re in an office that doesn’t want the noise to be that loud.\n(24:58)\tMaia Trotter\tCould you describe any of the sounds that the 3D printer makes?\n(25:04)\tDan Hackborn\tYeah. Like a [Dan imitates a low droning noise]  and like a, [Dan imitates a low churning noise] and those are probably the two main noises.\nThe fan turning on and off, which sounds like a fan. The filament coming off the spool has a very specific noise that’s probably impossible to replicate with the human mouth, like in a large less band being kind of stretched breaking.\n\n(25:31)\tMaia Trotter\tOh, okay. I’ve never used any of the 3D printers in the library or at the university, so I have no idea what they sound like.\n(25:39)\tDan Hackborn\tYeah.\n(25:42)\tAnna Wallace\t[Soft piano music with light percussion begins to play] The sound of children, of course. So either laughing, playing or screaming, crying, which is natural children are gonna communicate the way they’re gonna communicate. [Music ends] You get a lot of once an hour, the cuckoo clock will remind you of its existence, [Soundbite of a cuckoo clock plays] which is right beside the desk.\nYou’ll hear the sound of like sometimes pretty frequently the like floor cleaning machine from custodial will come through, you’ll hear teens or tweens playing Roblox, which you always question like, are they friends if they’re talking to each other like that when they’re playing this game? [Maia laughs] But I assume so cuz they’re back every single day doing the same thing. So it’s a lot of people sounds.\n\n(26:37)\tLibrary audio\tAmbient audio of people chatting in a library. No one person’s voice is audible.\n(26:38)\tMaia Trotter\tNow that we know what we can hear in these unique spaces, even if it may not be what we would’ve expected to hear, I wanted to know more about how sound affects people’s emotions or moods when they visit these spaces. I experience my own set of emotions when I use the downtown library, but I’m usually using the common spaces, the open areas. So I wanted to know what my interviewees thought about the emotions of patrons using the Maker Space, the Gamer Space, and the children’s library.\n(27:08)\tCharlie Crittenden\t[Soft electronic music begins to play] Hopefully I would say that it creates a welcoming sense of fun of it being the sense that it’s a different sort of space than the rest of the library. I think sometimes it can maybe draw in different audiences of people who enjoy games who come there specifically just to play the games and enjoy that environment and being around other people who are playing games, having fun talking to each other about it.\nYou know, I think you might have just maybe a sense of relaxation or of, you know, just having fun, you know, like watching, say like a family play together, you know, on the switch racing on Mario Kart or something and laughing or having fun.\n\nLike it’s, I think the more permissive sense of, you know, just there being volume allowed on these consoles. They’re having speakers where we’re allowing this, this, these sounds to be played. I think it just creates this kind of relaxed environment where I think at least for people who enjoy games, enjoy the noises of games, I think it creates quite a fun sense of play.\n\n(28:21)\tDan Hackborn\tIt’s got complicated equipment in it and it’s a non-traditional part of the library. I think people automatically come into it and don’t know what to do with it. And while the staff tries to be very welcoming and say hi and things like that, like it still, I think, can be an intimidating space, whereas people walk into the rest of the library and like, it looks like what you’d expect a library to be given a common sociocultural understanding.\nWhereas this, I think there needs to be work done on making it approachable. It doesn’t feel like a living space yet. Like it’s a very new built environment. And so I think very smart people are working on changing that. But I do think there’s some work to be done on making it less intimidating cuz there is a definite noticeable sense that when someone walks into it and they don’t know what they’re walking into, they’re not walking into it with a specific purpose.\n\nThey don’t know exactly, like, I’m going to use the 3D printer, I’m going to book a recording studio. They’re kind of like, their eyes go wide. They may just come back out the way they came. They get very quiet, which is ironic given the traditional view of libraries and how that’s changed over time. And then that combined with the acoustic properties of the space, like people tend to whisper a lot more.\n\n(29:50)\tMaia Trotter\tInteresting. That’s not what I would’ve expected with people walking into the maker space, but the way that you’ve described it, that makes sense that they would be more quiet if it doesn’t feel familiar.\n(30:01)\tDan Hackborn\tYeah, totally. I think it’s super fascinating and I look forward to how decision makers in the library work at making it more like a living space rather than kind of like a cold laboratory setting.\n(30:18)\tAnna Wallace\tWe do story stops every day at 2:15 in the children’s library, and convincing kids to go on a little story time adventure with you is so fun. And I love when their parents force them to sit down for a story time. They’re just like, leave me alone. I wanna go back to the train table. [Maia laughs] I’m not interested in this literary nonsense. And then you start reading a story and my favorite is when I get a story that allows me to do a lot of voice changes and then the look in their face when they’re like, that’s not what your voice sounds like. [Maia laughs] Like where is that coming from? Is so fun.\n(31:05)\tCharlie Crittenden\tWhen people kind of walk in sometimes I feel like there’s just a sort of sense of interest or even wonder or excitement. And I think sometimes it’s related to like, for some people maybe with memories they have of going into other environments, like going to the arcades when they were younger. Like if they were from that generation of just like these noises of like, wow, I haven’t seen an arcade cabinet like this in so long. Or, you know, something like that.\nLike it’s, or those noises I think they have quite a nostalgic pull to them when people access games that they played when they were a kid. And so I know for me how I feel in the space, like when I see people playing games that I’m very nostalgic about, like Mario Kart or what have you, definitely has associations for me that really create a sense of, I don’t know, just fun.\n\nYeah. And so I think that can be some of the effect of the space, having these noises be welcomed of these different nostalgic elements of noises that for a lot of people connect elements of their childhood, like whatever, whenever that childhood was, different generations of gaming. I think that can be one of the effects of the noises in the space. [Music ends]\n\n(32:16)\tMaia Trotter\t[Ambient background library audio begins]\nSpecific sounds can evoke varied and powerful emotions in people. Emotions and feelings and thoughts can become attached to specific sounds based on our experiences. Various studies have shown major links between sound and emotion. One study in particular published in 2022 demonstrated that when there is a positive noise in the background and a negative noise occurs in the foreground, like a loud horn honk, for example. The emotional recovery from the negative sounds occurs more quickly because of the positive background sounds, which vary depending on the person.\n\nStudies positive sound examples included mostly nature sounds, but at least in my experience, a positive background sound for me is people laughing, children playing, soft music or nostalgic sounds like video game sound effects, which might partially explain why I felt generally more relaxed and happier when I was listening to library sounds and working from home, even if I heard loud traffic outside or the constant stress-inducing text message ding from my work phone.\n\nThere have also been several studies that have linked ambient sounds and background noises with increased productivity and the masking of everyday stressful or intrusive thoughts, which lead to the feeling of familiarity and relaxation. An article in the Globe and Mail from 2019 looked at a study being done at the University of British Columbia, which made these claims and gave the example of spaces like coffee shops, which would have similar sounds to a library being ideal environments for focusing and thinking creatively based on their average decibel level.\n\nThese studies have their exceptions and obviously not everyone reacts to ambient sounds the same way. But it was fascinating for me to discover this link because I’d experienced it myself. I think it is worth noting that studies have found that the most calming sounds were found to be nature sounds such as wind, the rustling of grass or trees, running rivers and babbling streams.\n\nAnd the most anxiety-inducing sounds for those of outdoor cityscapes like engines revving, horns honking, people yelling and loud music. Dounds in a library seem to sit somewhere in the middle. The sounds of a library are not as harsh and there’s still a general reduced nature of the sound, but you can still hear people talking and walking around and sometimes distant music. And yet I still find these sounds just as comforting as the sounds of nature.\n\nI think when we listen to the sounds of the city, we hear chaos, we hear movement and liveliness, but it is loud and jarring and harsh. That is not to say that loud or unexpected sounds don’t exist in library settings because they absolutely do and they are a part of the library experience. But because it is a public space with a specific and dedicated purpose, there does seem to be a general cohesiveness to the sound that doesn’t translate outside the building.\n\nI think the combination of sounds of other people and the familiar sounds of books, laughter, music, new things to try, and maybe even the distant sound of familiar video games, makes people feel the connection of that public space. A library may not have the calming sounds of nature, but it does have the deeply connecting sounds of community. And even if there are unexpected sounds, I feel as though I recover faster because I can still hear the comforting sounds in the background.\n\n[Background ambient sounds ends]\n\nI think when we think of spaces like libraries, spaces we usually consider to be literary spaces. We have fairly strong preconceived notions about how they sound. We think library, we think books, we think reading, which is usually thought of as a fairly quiet and individualistic activity. But the way libraries are structured now with this emphasis on a community-led approach, we encounter a literary space that is not only increasingly evoking specific emotion through sound, but also one that asks us to engage sonically or verbally in order to learn.\n\nFor anyone who wants to dig deeper into this idea of the sounds of literary spaces, I just wanted to briefly mention that one of our own here at Spoken Web, Dr. Katherine McLeod, [Spoken Web podcast theme music plays very quietly] put together an amazing blog post series while a research fellow at Concordia University in Montreal where Spoken Web is based and the series is sensory based investigation into audiovisual materials housed in library collections. It is a wonderfully insightful examination of not only what we hear in libraries, but how we listen to them. [Spoken Web music swells and fades’\n\nSo getting back to the sounds of learning.\n\n  (36:53)\tAnna Wallace\t[Soft bell tone music begins to play]\nI don’t know if it has particularly changed. Working in children’s, specifically. I mean I feel like I came into library work kind of as libraries were moving into kind of what they’ve called a community led philosophy in that we see that people are buying more books on Amazon or like DVDs are going out of style and all of that stuff. So you have to reevaluate what is the library for the communities that they serve.\n\nAnd it has really moved into being a community space where we’re trying to offer access to information and as best we can. So a lot of these days that’s not just, you know, books and prints, like books aren’t going anywhere. Everybody wants to, like, I get this from a lot of older generations where like, oh, you know, are you worried your job’s going anywhere? I’m like, my friend. My pal.\n\n(37:57)\tMaia Trotter\tI get that a lot too. [Maia laughs]\n(37:59)\tAnna Wallace\tRight? Like, we are the last free public space. If libraries are gone, civilization is just crumbling. Do you know what I mean? Like-\n(38:08)\tMaia Trotter\tThat’s how I answer that question too. [Maia laughs]\n(38:10)\tAnna Wallace\tRight? We’re not, we’re not going anywhere, right? But we do have to be thinking about how we can best serve our communities. So having these spaces where kids can be kids and be learning at the same time, I think is just so important. And it, it, yeah, it’s funny to me because if you’re trying to create that space for children in like a branch where you have to balance, okay, but we have people working on the computers and we have people studying in among the stacks, you need to keep, you know, you have to keep the whole of the branch in mind.\nThe beauty of being in the children’s library is that we can focus that space on, you know, 12 and under or, you know, 17 and under. Cause we do wanna encourage teens to be in our space as well.\n\n(39:02)\tDan Hackborn\t[low droning piano music begins to play] To the vinyl cutters or the sewing machines, which also have their own noises. You can actually look up, I think people have straight up programmed 3D printers to make sound or make songs themselves because they come with such a weird variety of noises. Not only there’s like four different motors on each one and belts and yeah, all just all kind like the extruding 3D printer film, it makes it to a noise. Yeah. It’s all kinds of stuff.\n(39:35)\tCharlie Crittenden\tOn the whole I find it sort of like a pleasant array of noises and sounds generally playing out and overlapping with each other. And I think they’re doing a fairly good job of designing the space with how the speakers are directed and positioned so that it’s not, and we can control the volume as well, so it’s not too overwhelming or too much. We try to keep it more to that sort of pleasant level, I guess, of noise.\n  (39:58)\tAnna Wallace\tLike, you know what I mean? Like the squeals, right? Like we want to hear them. We want them to explore and we want them to play because play is learning and you can’t expect a child to play particularly quietly, like on average.\nLike we all know those one or two kids that can like sit with a book and be quiet and all that stuff and we see it. But if you’re looking at an early literacy space, which half of our library is dedicated to early literacy, you’re looking at five years old and under, and that developmental range is just loud and gets excited and expresses themselves. So we want to make sure that they feel like they can do that in their space. And unless they’re like, hurting themselves or getting dangerous, then we don’t often step in because it does, it just ends up sounding like, oh, they’re just having a good time, or they’re interacting with the things that we’ve put out. [Music ends]\n\n(40:55)\tMaia Trotter\t[Soft piano music begins]\nAs employees, these folks spent a lot of time in the library compared to the average patron. And so my final question for them was to ask what their favorite sounds were in these unique spaces that are huge contributors to the changes in the sonic environments of libraries, most of which produce sounds that are so different from our preconceived notions of what libraries sound like.\n\n(41:18)\tCharlie Crittenden\tWell, I’d say as someone who enjoys gaming and I have lots of positive memories of gaming growing up and that sort of thing, I find it’s sort of a multi-layered experience of almost like different eras of my life of different memories and connections I have with different noises.\nSo, you know, when I was fairly young, going and playing Super Smash Bros on a M64 with some friends or something like that. So when I hear people or I see like let’s say, some friends playing Super Smash Bros and I hear those, you know, like, “SMASH” or whatever you know, “KO” it gets like these kind of very like deeply nostalgic, almost overly memorable noises that you just heard so many times in different parts of your life.\n\n(42:11)\tAnna Wallace\tI mean, I don’t know if it’s cheesy, but I do love a delighted giggle. I love listening to kids discovering something new or the grateful thank you when you like find the book that they were looking for or find something they weren’t looking for, but they get really excited about.\n(42:34)\tDan Hackborn\tMy favorite sound of the space. My favorite sound of the space is like people talking and being excited about projects that they’re interested in or that they’re making, like that feeling when you can tell someone’s just really excited about the thing they’re making or the thing that someone else is making.\nAnd I hope that the space continues to encourage those things. Cuz I think between a number of the characteristics I’ve mentioned, those conversations and those outbursts and exclamations are a lot more rare than I’d like them to be. But when they happen, that’s the best. Like, that’s the whole point of the space really. And so I’d just like to see, yeah, that’s my favorite and I’d like to see more of that.\n\n(43:19)\tMaia Trotter\tThat’s great. Yeah. I remember walking into the Maker Space for the first time and I think it was you and I, we were using the recording studio. I think that was like the first time I explored the MakerSpace and I remember my wow, like look at all the stuff you have in this one room. It’s so cool. [Maia laughs] That’s great.\n(43:39)\tCharlie Crittenden\tThe Gamer Space is really unique in this regard because there’s not many, if any, really, spaces like it in other libraries that are so dedicated in this way to gaming. So I think it’s really quite a unique set of noises that you could stumble across when you’re exploring the library. And I think noise is a big part and sound is a big part of what draws people in and sort of helps them enjoy their time in the space I think is, is these sort of different sets of sounds that they’re experiencing.\n(44:12)\tMaia Trotter\t[Soft arpeggiated piano begins to play] Like I’ve said throughout this episode, how libraries sound is typically not how we expect them to sound. And although that may be jarring for some, the evolution of libraries as public spaces has also caused the evolution of an increasingly sonically rich environment, which might have a more positive effect than we are currently aware of.\nI had no idea that when I clicked on that YouTube link a few years ago, it would open a door to a world of sound that has changed the way I work and the way I listen in public spaces. Although I still find comfort in listening to library ambient sounds like book pages turning and the soft thud of books being shelved, what I really enjoy is listening to sounds of people using the library. It feels so much more real to me. I have been fortunate enough to have positive experiences with libraries, so I typically associate library sounds with positive emotions.\n\nAnd this may not be the case for everyone, but based on what I heard from my interviewees, their favorite sounds all had to do with people enjoying using these unique library spaces, or at least sounds that indicated the spaces were indeed being used, like the gaming sounds. Or like Dan’s wonderful impression of the 3D printer. I find myself feeling relieved that libraries have moved away from enforcing silence and towards a more accepting approach to sound, especially given all the new additions of unique spaces that produce their own unique sounds.\n\n[Music ends]\n\nA library is meant to be explored and used and sound is a wonderful and comforting indicator of the evolution of that usage. Libraries are a way to connect with our communities, which is probably why I found so much comfort in the sounds of people using the library during a time of loneliness and isolation.\n\nHow we think a library sounds probably would not have offered me the same kind of comfort during that time. I wanted to hear life in a way that wasn’t overwhelming and the real sounds of the library gave me just that.\n\nI want to thank Edmonton Public Library for allowing me to record sounds in their spaces, and I especially want to thank Dan Hackborn, Charlie Crittendon and Anna Wallace for taking the time to talk to me about Sounds in Libraries. I’ll leave you with this, A taste of the comfort I experienced the first time I clicked on that YouTube video. Thank you.\n\n[Ambient sound of library: people walking, books being moved, pages flipping, etc]\n\n(47:49)\tKatherine McLeod\t[SpokenWeb theme music begins to play] The SpokenWeb podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.\nOur supervising producer is Kate Mofaitt, our sound designer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcription is done by Zoe Mix. To find out more about spoken web, visit spokenweb.ca, subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen.\n\nIf you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media at @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb music swells and then ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9600","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S4 Bonus, The Serendipitous Headlight 24, 7 August 2023, Pitella, Elbanhawy, Affonso, Ruby, Andrews, and Eastwood"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-serendipitous-headlight-24/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 4"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Carlos A. Pittella","Sherine Elbanhawy","Alex Affonso","Ariella Ruby","Olive Andrews","Miranda Eastwood"],"creator_names_search":["Carlos A. Pittella","Sherine Elbanhawy","Alex Affonso","Ariella Ruby","Olive Andrews","Miranda Eastwood"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Carlos A. Pittella\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20169375254524282048\",\"name\":\"Sherine Elbanhawy\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Alex Affonso\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Ariella Ruby\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/59173484194347231513\",\"name\":\"Olive Andrews\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Miranda Eastwood\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/abc0784b-45ae-4014-8d4e-5fa1ba8e6d7b/audio/5ad0c7d9-d592-4a0c-80f5-8b2091a3b8b8/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"final-mix.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:39:35\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"37,998,385 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"final-mix\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/the-serendipitous-headlight-24/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-08-07\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["No transcript."],"contents":["“Though staff turnaround is a challenge for student-run publications, community support remains when people love it. Let’s revive the love for Headlight.”\n\nThis was the sign-off of an application for managing editor for Headlight, Concordia University’s graduate student-run literary journal. Carlos A. Pittella’s application was accepted shortly after—along with Sherine Elbanhawy’s application for co-managing editor—and the 24th edition of Headlight was put into motion.\n\nThis episode is a behind-the-scenes look at Headlight 24, and an exploration of what happens when print publication meets audio production. Diving into a host of recordings made along the way, the episode revisits readings from authors featured in Headlight 24, as well as recordings from the journal’s launch at the De Stiil bookstore in Montreal. Also featured is a roundtable conversation with the editorial team—Carlos A. Pittella, Sherine Elbanhawy, Alex Affonso, Ariella Ruby, Olive Andrews, and Miranda Eastwood—as they revisit the challenges faced in reviving the journal following pandemic restrictions, as well as the exciting new directions embraced by this year’s team.\n\nHeadlight 24 will host the second part of their launch at the 4th SPACE at Concordia University, August 31st, at 2pm. We hope to see you there!\n\n"],"Note":["[{\"note\":\"No transcript.\",\"type\":\"General\"}]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Bandukwala, Manahil. “Turning Twenty-Four on the Rise of the Sturgeon Moon”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nSolomon, Misha. “Tubes”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nMazur, Ari. “A&W”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nO’Farrell, Paz. “I don’t even know what to do about all this”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nPalmer, Jade. “Onyx and Rose Gold”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nTrudel, Nadia. “Goblin”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nCirignano, Sophia. “Giverny”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\nWayland, Tina. “The Tending of Small Gardens”. Headlight 24, 2023.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549666922496,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":2.6319342},{"id":"9632","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S5E1, As It Is or As It Was: Translating “The Ruin” Poem, 2 October 2023, Comeau"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/as-it-is-or-as-it-was-translating-the-ruin-poem/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 5"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Ghislaine Comeau"],"creator_names_search":["Ghislaine Comeau"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Ghislaine Comeau\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/b3eeed87-76b0-426d-8b43-f1015d7c6472/audio/2f7aa8f6-7124-4ab7-a8ea-2bcb81f7cec3/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sw-ep-1-master-v1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:49:31\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\" 47,542,347 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sw-ep-1-master-v1\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/as-it-is-or-as-it-was-translating-the-ruin-poem/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-10-02\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Creed, Robert Payson. “The Ruin (Modern English).” YouTube, uploaded by YouTube and provided by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 30 May 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CSWnfuyzyM .\\n\\nCronan, Dennis. “Cædmon’s Audience.” Studies in Philology, vol. 109, no. 4, 2012, p 336. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2012.0028.\\n\\nThe Fyrdsman. “Anglo-Saxon Poetry: The Ruin (Reading).” YouTube, uploaded by thefyrdsman9590, 9 Nov. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FRRny7oyLg&t=318s .\\n\\nHammill, Peter. “Imperial Walls (2006 Digital Remaster).” YouTube, uploaded by YouTube and provided by Universal Music Group, 24 Aug. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0KW9CMFC_E .\\n\\nMagennis, Hugh. “Chapter 1 Approaching Anglo-Saxon Literature.” The Cambridge Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature, Cambridge UP, 2011, pp. 1-35.\\n\\nRaffel, Burton. “The Ruin (Old English).” YouTube, uploaded by YouTube and provided by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 30 May 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-dtP_73WTs&t=110s .\\n\\nSmith, Mark M. “Echo.” Keywords in Sound, edited by David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, Duke UP, 2015, pp. 55-64.\\n\\nSilence is Leaden. “The Ruin: An Anglo-Saxon Poem.” YouTube, uploaded by silenceisleaden188, 20 Jan. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D68n9F8Yozc&t=25s .\\n\\nStaniforth, Daniel (aka Luna Trick). “The Ruin.” YouTube, uploaded by lunatrick7098, 28 Jun. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IIoZfOR5MQ .\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549731934208,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["How do we represent textually and perform orally the missing pieces from damaged medieval manuscripts?\n\nIn this episode, Ghislaine Comeau, Concordia PhD student studying early medieval literature, brings us along on her quest to translate the “The Ruin” – a famously ruined Old English poem from the 10th century manuscript known as the Exeter Book. In conversation with medievalists Dr. Stephen Yeager and Dr. Stephen Powell, she discusses sounds in Old English texts, exploring how these may have been read and/or performed and how they may now be translated, represented, and performed.\n\nQuest fulfilled! The episode concludes with Ghislaine’s reading of her own translation of “The Ruin.”\n\n(0:00)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Oh boy. Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(0:18)\tHannah McGregor\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Theme music ends] My name is Hannah McGregor–\n(0:36)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd my name is Katherine McLeod. And each month we’ll be bringing you different stories that explore the intersections of sound, poetry, literature, and history created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada.\n(0:50)\tHannah McGregor\tHow do we represent textually and perform orally the missing pieces from damaged medieval manuscripts? What is the role of the translator to create a historically accurate representation of how a poem sounded in its original contexts? Is such a thing even possible?\n(01:09)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn this episode, Ghislaine Comeau, Concordia PhD student studying early medieval literature brings us along on her quest to translate “The Ruin,” a famously ruined Old English poem from the 10th century manuscript known as the Exeter book.\n(01:09)\tKatherine McLeod\tIn conversation with Medievalists, Dr. Stephen Yeager and Dr. Stephen Powell, she discusses sounds in Old English texts, exploring how these may have been read or performed and how they may now be translated, represented, and performed again. Now here is Episode 1 of Season 5 of the SpokenWeb podcast: As It Is or As It Was: Translating “The Ruin” Poem.[SpokenWeb Podcast Theme music plays briefly and ends]\n(02:31)\tThe Competent Mouth\t[Sound effects of two people walking down a stone pathway. A door with rusted hinges opens. One set of footsteps continues, more muffled than before. The sound of keys jingling can be heard. Someone unlocks a cabinet and takes out a large book. The book’s spine cracks as it’s opened and the sound of pages turning can be heard]\n(02:31)\tThe Competent Mouth\tSo. Here is the Exeter book. I’ve opened it to the specific pages that you asked to see: “The Ruin Poem,” – famously ruined itself. As you probably already know, the manuscript dates from the 10th century, and the damage, though we can’t be sure, suggests that throughout its centuries the book might have been used as a cutting board, a glue stand, and a gold and silver leaf press. As you see here, fire, possibly caused by a fallen brand, has also significantly damaged these last pages rendering some lines unreadable and making it impossible for us to know what this poem says exactly.\nWhere the words are lost, all we readers and translators can do is speculate or be silent. Well, I’ll leave you to it. You have one hour. I’ll be right outside.[Sound effect of a person walking away, opening the same rusty door and closing it behind them]\n(03:32)\tGhislaine Comeau (inner monologue)\t[Soft electronic music plays and then ends] I wonder…[Soft plucked string music begins to play] Do we always need to speculate or be silent in the face of damage? Should we? To speculate, I suppose, if we are aiming to recreate the past… but it’s a past lost to us and virtually impossible to verify. To be silent then… but isn’t keeping silent contributing to a loss of a part of the text’s past? [Music ends] What about accepting, representing, and hearing the damaged text as it exists to us now – without the weight of the impossibility of the recreation of an ultimately opaque past.\n(4:18)\tGhislaine Comeau\t[Sound effect of someone turning the pages of a book] In the chapter Echo from Keywords and Sound, Mark Smith begins with “[a]n echo is nothing, if not historical to varying degrees. [Soft electronic music begins to play] It is a faded facsimile of an original sound, a reflection of time past.” The slightly alliterative and poetic air of this passage was immediately appealing to me, and it piqued my interest. I read on, sufficiently curious in wondering where this sound chapter would go. [Soft electronic music ends] And when I, Ghislaine Comeau, student of early medieval literature, read it, I couldn’t help but think of early medieval texts, [soft drumming music begins to play] their translations, and their performances as degrees of echoes growing fainter and fainter from their original. Smith continues: “To what extent the echo can, does, or should have fidelity to the original sound is a question preoccupying historians of any period.” Indeed. I, though not a historian, do find myself so preoccupied – this preoccupation fueled by my recent fixation with the old English poem, “The Ruin” housed in the Exeter Book, a damaged 10th century manuscript, with many of its lines burned. Thinking of “The Ruin” and its ruined state, I wondered then about this idea of fidelity to an original sound that Smith speaks of. I thought about the transcriptions and translations of “The Ruin” that use ellipses or dashes or other visible punctuation to represent the physical damage and lost words, lost sounds. I asked myself, how, then, are those ellipses and dashes translated when read? For that answer, I did what any other millennial graduate student would do: I checked on YouTube. [Drumming ends] [Sound effect of someone typing on a keyboard] There I found various amateur translators, readers, and performers. The translations and sounds varied from what one commenter called “quite an awful translation” accompanied by sci-fi sounds.\n(6:28)\tYouTube audio (Daniel Staniforth (aka Luna Trick), “The Ruin”)\t[Ominous electronic music plays in the background]…Snapped, roof trees, and towers fallen, the work of giants…. [Music fades]\n(6:40)\tGhislaine Comeau\tAnother chose a dramatic piano background for his translation.\n(6:45)\tYouTube audio (Silence is Leaden, “The Ruin: An Anglo-Saxon Poem”)\t[Piano music plays]…The beams are bereaved, the mortars… [Music ends]\n(6:47)\tGhislaine Comeau\t…which a commenter hailed as harrowing for the native tribes of Britain who are today ruled by foreigners. The video creator liked this comment. Both of them seemingly missing entirely that this poem laments the ruin of a Roman city. And a third chose a Gregorian type humming as the background to an aggressive reading of R.M. Liuzza’s translation, which according to the video creator “manages to capture the zeitgeist of the poem very well.”\n(7:17)\tYouTube audio (The Fyrdsman, “Anglo-Saxon Poetry: The Ruin (Reading)”)\t[Gregorian chant plays quietly]…Holds the builders, rotten, forgotten, the hard grip of the ground until a hundred generations of men are gone. This wall, rust stained and moss covered…[Gregorian chant ends]\n(7:29)\tGhislaine Comeau\tNone of these three addressed the manuscript’s damage specifically with their use of sounds. And the last two either agree with or themselves assert some type of privileged understanding of the poem’s context and meaning, which they then appear to attempt to express in their performance.\n(7:29)\tGhislaine Comeau\tA more scholarly example, The Smithsonian, also has recordings of “The Ruin” in both the original Old English and Modern English translation on YouTube. In the Old English version, the reader chooses a dramatic reading and represents the missing damaged text by an elongated silence.\n(8:10)\tYouTube audio, Burton Raffel, “The Ruin (Old English)”\t[Man recites text in Old English. He pauses to indicated a section of damaged text before starting again]\n(8:33)\tGhislaine Comeau\tIn the Modern English version, the reader does not indicate any silences in his reading and simply reads through the poem’s translation as if it were one whole piece.\n(8:43)\tYouTube audio, (Robert Payson Creed, “The Ruin (Modern English)”)\t…Sank to a heap of tumbled stones, where once cheerful strutting warriors flocked, golden armor, gleaming giddy with wine. Here was wealth, silver gems, cattle, land, in the crowning city of a far-flung kingdom. There were buildings of stone where steaming currents threw up surging heat, a wall encircled that brightness…\n(9:08)\tGhislaine Comeau\tComing back to Smith, he writes: “The lines of disagreement among historians are fairly well delimited. On one side, there is a very tenuous claim that we can recapture and re-experience the sounds of the past. […] The alternative argument maintains that efforts along these lines are deeply misleading and insists that without sufficient appreciation of the context in which the sounds occurred, we warp our understanding of echoes to the point of intellectual desiccation.”\n(9:08)\tGhislaine Comeau\tHe then goes on to say: “The line of inquiry also makes the case either explicitly or implicitly for the power of text to capture with fidelity and authenticity, the meaning of sounds to the people who were doing the listening at the time of their production.”\n[Drumming music begins to play]\nHow then can these translators and readers assume to know the “zeitgeist” of the ruin poem as one mentioned, or the tone with which we should read, or how the damage should be read, seeing that we have no way of knowing what was there before the damage? I needed, then, in my journey with “The Ruin” to first decide if I wanted to represent the poem as it is –  damaged, incomplete, ruined, or as it was – despite the impossibility of that.\n[Music ends of abruptly] [record scratch sound effect plays]\nBut I get ahead of myself. Before starting my translation journey, I needed to consult with the experts. I needed to know more about the place and role of sound in old English literature. So I sat down with Professors Yeager and Powell to ask them some questions.\n(10:49)\tStephen Yeager\tSteven Yeager, chair of the Department of English at Concordia University. My research specialization is Old and Middle English literature.\n(10:57)\tStephen Powell\tSteve Powell, associate professor of English at Concordia University, and I study Old and Middle English literature\n(11:05)\tGhislaine Comeau\tIn their studies, students of early medieval literature will often come across terms like “oral-formulaic theory,” and in his Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature, Hugh Magennis writes how it is thought that most surviving Old English poetic texts are literate compositions, but that they still make use of the same kind of oral derived poetic art. My question, then, is what do we mean when we talk about “oral derived poetic art”, “orality”, and “oral-formulaic theory”?\n(11:40)\tStephen Yeager\t[Soft choral music plays briefly and then ends] Oral formulaic theory goes back to the turn of the 20th century when there’s, a scholar named Milman Parry who’s looking at the question of Homer, and, you know, whether, as the joke goes, either Homer or the poet by the same name who wrote The Iliad or the Odyssey, and who this person was. Milman Parry noted the existence of many formulae that recur throughout the poem.\nStephen Yeager\tSo, for example, a rosy fingered dawn, or much enduring divine Odysseus. These kind of little phrases that appear to be the building blocks of the lines of the poem that are sort of used continuously throughout. Parry went to study Serbo-Croat oral poets and discovered that they too used these formulae and sort of posited therefore, that Homer was a poet who had essentially, extemporaneously, working out of this poetic tradition, composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were then sort of written down as more or less a transcription of what had been originally an oral performance.And that idea then really gets enshrined by his student, Albert Lorde, who wrote a book in 1960, that really kind of makes this idea mainstream. And then one of the main places actually where it really kind of gets spread is through the University of Toronto where scholars like Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan, and especially Walter Ong, he extrapolates from this a whole idea of oral man [soft harp music begins to play] and literate man where oral traditions and literate traditions create fundamentally different human experiences of cognition. And so that’s kind of the big version then of how oral-formulaic theory kind of really takes off and what’s kind of at stake in the study of it in literature.\nStephen Yeager\tIn old English, you have a scholar named F.P. Magoon. He essentially argued that old English poetry is similarly transcribed from oral performances. And what’s really at stake for him is that in the formulaic quality of old English verse, you have remnants of culture before the arrival of Christianity, brought with it the technology of writing and the book. So in these oral-formulae that’s how you sort of get back to the Pagan pre-Christian past.\n(13:47)\tGhislaine Comeau\tAnd what place then does oral formulaic theory have in Old English literary studies today?\n(13:56)\tStephen Yeager\tThe current consensus revolves around Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe, especially as in her book, Visible Song, and, uh, A.N. Doane also talks about this concept of scribal performance. One of the things that Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe points out is that we have very few manuscripts where there are more than one witnesses of the same old English poem. And every time we do, there are significant differences between the two texts.\nStephen Yeager\tSo it seems that the act of a scribe writing something down is kind of something like Milman Parry’s oral poet, insofar as it wasn’t about reproducing an exact text, it was about kind of reproducing a kind of feeling in accordance with a kind of set of rules which, you know, allow for some improvisation. So that is, I guess my own version of what I hear in Magennis’s point is that you know, to a certain extent that division of oral and literate isn’t an entirely useful one because really kinda what we’re talking about are the rules for how texts get created, how performances take place.\n(14:55)\tGhislaine Comeau\t[Soft electronic pensive music begins to play] Thinking about Professor Yeager’s comment – that the division of oral and literate is not entirely useful – [Music ends] I am reminded of Dennis Cronan’s article “Caedmon’s Audience” [Sound effect of someone flipping through pages in a book]- where he similarly explains the oral-formulaic nature of Old English poetry, noting that “surviving Old English poems are, to a greater or lesser extent, transitional texts, written compositions that utilize the meter, phraseology (including formulae and formulaic systems), and vocabulary of the native oral tradition.” Keeping this transitional nature in mind, I asked Professors Powell and Yeager “what more can we say or what more do we know about early English storytellers, oral storytelling, and performances?”\n(15:49)\tStephen Powell\t[Soft drumming music begins to play] Well, I think the literary evidence is probably the best evidence we have, or written down records or renditions of people telling stories. So that was something that was often recorded within literary texts and historical texts from the old English period. And you’ll see for example, in Beowulf repeated interpolations of other stories. And the circumstances of the telling of those stories is, highlighted so frequently in a social setting, often in a celebratory mode or at a feast or a big communal meal, you’ll have this tradition of what we call the scop who tell stories, of the past, of the culture.\n(16:41)\tGhislaine Comeau\tThe scop, in other words, poets and Bards who would perform poems and pales.\n(16:49)\tStephen Powell\tThe literary texts themselves encode this kind of performance, that, whether those are the stories that actually got written down. Then once it came to putting things into manuscripts, there’s really not much evidence of that directly.\n(17:04)\tStephen Powell\tAnother key one, as you know, is the legend of Caedmon’s Hymn. But as you also know, there’s a lot of reasons to doubt whether that’s a direct anthropological description of an event that actually happened. There’s two old English poems that are from the perspective of poets. There’s one called Widsith, where it’s basically like that Johnny Cash song, “I’ve Been Everywhere.” He describes everywhere that he’s been in all of the different courts that he’s served in. [“I’ve Been Everywhere” by Johnny Cash plays briefly and then fades]\nStephen Powell\tFar more extensive than any single human ever could have actually attended. There’s the old English poem, “Deor”, where a guy goes through a bunch of terrible things that have happened from folklore, and then he says, “another terrible thing that happened is I lost my job as a poet and I’m looking for a new one.” Again, you know, very, very scanty evidence. It’s a lot of work to reconstruct. I mean, there’s not much anthropological, or excuse me, archeological evidence that I’m aware of beyond like lyres that existed or what have you, [Sound effect of harp music begins] but who knows how those actually figure it in the context of a performance.\nStephen Powell\tThere’s a lot of conjecture there. I think there’s some information from the north sagas a bit more of these narrative sources. But you know, those are written hundreds of years later, quite a long distance away. And so who knows how useful they’re,\n(18:20)\tStephen Powell\tI think all the literary evidence actually does point pretty clearly to a tradition of oral storytelling. [Music ends] I don’t think that you have the story of Caedmon in which Caedmon famously leaves the banquet because he’s not gonna be able to participate. Whether or not that is a historically accurate story, it is beside the point for me. The point is that we have that record. It corresponds with records from other texts that show that there was this tradition. [Drumming music begins to play]\nStephen Powell\tAnd it stands to reason that this is a society where you had long, dark evenings and plenty of alcoholic beverages distributed to you. What else were you going to do except tell stories? And of course, with a relatively low level of literacy, most of those stories would’ve been told orally.\n(19:11)\tStephen Yeager\tThat’s absolutely true. I mean, I guess I was just saying that we don’t really know much of the details about how that actually went forward or who it was who got to tell the story or how professionalized it was. Another key moment is a famous statement by, it’s Alcuin, right? Uh, “what has Ingeld to do with Christ?” Where he’s complaining about the monks who are obviously spending all their time listening to stories about guys like Ingal, who’s a, a hero who’s mentioned in Beowulf and when they should be listening to stories about Christ. But, you know, there’s only so many of those, I guess [Stephen Yeager laughs]\n(19:48)\tGhislaine Comeau\t[Music ends] Early in his answer, professor Yeager made reference to the scanned archeological evidence beyond the lyre. And I thought this a great place to turn the conversation back to sound and ideas of sound in early English works. [In interview]\nGhislaine Comeau\tOn that note, you mentioned the lyre, despite much discussion about orality, oral storytelling, oral tradition, oral-formulaic theory, alliterative verse, and so on, all of which are notions based on sound. We seem to rarely talk about sound or sounds in early English works, except of course, the occasional reference to a harp or a lyre. So what do we know about sounds in these performances or sounds in Old English poetry more generally?\n(20:33)\tStephen Powell\t[Soft string music begins to play] We know precious little, really. I mean, I think that Stephen’s point about the archeological evidence being slim is absolutely on point. And even the literary evidence that I’m harping on, no pun intended, is pretty scant on what these intertext interpolations, say in Beowulf, sound like. I think that’s really hard for us to recreate here.\n(21:00)\tStephen Yeager\tOf the many tragic losses of early medieval culture, one of the most tragic is the loss of any music, and I think it’s with the 10th, 11th century, there’s the Gregorian reform, which includes among other things, a standardization of devotional music all across Europe. And there’s no musical notation that I’m aware of before the Gregorian reform. And so it seems like all of whatever kind of local musical traditions would’ve predated that, are eliminated by it. And so it’s extremely difficult to try to reconstruct what the structure of a song was or how music worked before for this period.\n(21:38)\tGhislaine Comeau\tSo given that, you know, the scant evidence, to what level can we speculate about the place that sounds music or other, not necessarily just the harp. What place might they have had within these oral storytellings or these performances? You know, how can we imagine, can meaning like in the term of being allowed to speculate so far, how can we imagine the sounds of and surrounding sounds of an Early English text?\n(22:10)\tStephen Powell\tI think sound was important in the Old English period, and I think there’s good evidence just from the way that poetry is constructed in this period, suggests that the culture cared deeply about how things sounded. You don’t have the kind of alliterative verse that characterizes Old English poetry, where rather than rhyme poetry is connected with repeated sounds, initial sounds without being interested in sound. So I think that we shouldn’t overlook that internal evidence in thinking about the centrality of sound.\n(22:49)\tGhislaine Comeau\tCan you explain a bit or talk about alliterative verse and what it is and how it works?\n(22:54)\tStephen Powell\t[Music ends] When we think about poetry and how poetry is structured today, we tend to think of rhyme as the central feature of poetry, that we expect that the end of each line will rhyme with the next one, for example, as in a rhyming couplet. In the Old English period, rhyming was not something that was particularly important.\nStephen Powell\tIt’s not that they didn’t know about rhyme, because there’s a poem that we call the rhyming poem, which is all about rhyme and there’s some internal rhymes and other uses of rhyme. But the primary way in which Old English verse in each Old English line was structured, was around alliteration. [Soft electronic music begins]\nStephen Powell\tSo that in each line there was a key sound that was repeated, the beginning of the line or near the beginning of the line, and again, near the end of the line, and I’m oversimplifying here, but the important point is that a line of poetry was distinguishable in part by this alliteration. And that that pattern was incredibly important because the words whose initial sounds repeated were the words that were also stressed. And thus in many ways, probably the most important words for those poetic lines. [Electronic music ends]\nStephen Powell\tSo if you think about the reception of Old English poetry and you posit, that perhaps these poems were read or recited out loud, then having those repeated words that are so important within each line suggests that they were also a cue to the audience of what to pay attention to and what to listen to maybe within a noisy audience. But again, now we’re starting to drift well away from concrete evidence and making speculations.\n(24:46)\tStephen Yeager\tEverything that we know about alliterative verse comes from secondary philological work. There is not, to my knowledge, much information at the time about how to write, but I’m not aware of anything in Old English that lays out the rules of Old English verse. And what made it especially difficult to reconstruct is that Old English poetry is not lineated on the page as poetry. There are the four major poetic codices  in the Junius 11 manuscript.\nStephen Yeager\tThere is what appears to be punctuation, which kind of marks the half lines. The beginning of reconstructing Old English verse came from that manuscript. So it’s been all this, this work to reconstruct it, but this is, I think, an important point for what you were asking about how much sound mattered and the fact that they aren’t making those distinctions graphically meant that they were meant to be heard.\nStephen Yeager\tAnd probably, you know, it’s another reason to think about it as being queued to music because like in a hymnal or something, right, where it’s all just sort of continuous because you hear where the verses end or what have you. [Choral music swells and then ends] I think that there’s every reason to believe that something like that might be the explanation for why Old English verse is written in this continuous script as opposed to other forms of verse.\nStephen Yeager\tI mean, among other things, it’s important to emphasize the centrality of memorization to medieval education. And of course, you know, why does poetic verse exist in the first place, right? Like, what is the purpose of patterning sounds in such and such way? It’s mnemonic. The cultural authority of poetry proceeds from that original mnemonic function, in my own view at least, you know, that if it rhymes, it sounds true effect, rhyme as reason that-\n(26:28)\tStephen Powell\tOr in Old English alliteration-\n(26:31)\tStephen Yeager\tAs a reason.\n(26:33)\tStephen Powell\tI don’t disagree with you, I’m just thinking that in terms of thinking about sound, that, yeah, there is this memory assistance that’s provided by rhyme for us, or probably alliteration for the Old English people. But those sounds also do things for us and have an emotive effect.\n(26:58)\tStephen Yeager\tWell, I mean, so you take something that’s important and you really wanna make sure that it’s preserved for yourself for future generations. You write it down, in a verse form to help it stick in people’s minds. And then that strategy that you do then acquires the cultural authority of the important information that you use it to record.\nStephen Yeager\tI’ll go with Walter Wrong this far. Once you have your literate institutions of authority that really kind of take over that cultural mnemonic function, then the function of poetry changes dramatically. And so that, you know, what you can see is kind of the rise of poetry in the sense that we know it in kind of the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance into modernity, those two things are related. I think as poetry loses that mnemonic function, as it stops to be so important, then what poetry is changes as a result. [Drumming music begins to play]\n(27:52)\tGhislaine Comeau\tFollowing Professor Yeager and Professor Powell’s insightful answers on oral-formulaic theory, oral storytelling, and the possible place and importance that sound may have had in old English texts, thinking specifically about the mnemonic function of alliteration and sound, I came come back ideas on translation, come back to Magennis and ask about a certain point that he makes in his Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Literature.\nGhislaine Comeau\tMagennis states that old English poetry is inherently difficult to date given its character. He notes how another scholar, Elizabeth Tyler, refers to the quote “timelessness” of Old English poetry in that, “rather than seeking to relate their work to a specific time or place, Old English poets cultivated a quality of timelessness, a quality that is reflected, for example, in an attachment to archaic diction”. Alongside archaic diction, Magennis also notes how a “stylistic stability” ultimately lends itself to the adaptability and reappropriation of Old English poetry for quote “ideological purposes relevant to the time”. So, with my own translation task ahead, I wanted to hear Professor Powell and Professor Yeager’s comments on this idea of “timelessness” in Old English poetry…\n(29:18)\tStephen Yeager\tSo the timelessness of Old English poetry is, you know, that comment is predicated on an assumption about a formal conservatism in Old English poetry over a long period of time, begging the question, who knows what the date was that any Old English poem was written, like the best we have are conjectures about when the manuscripts were copied. Almost all of them post-date the Benedictine reform of the 10th century, right?\nStephen Yeager\tAnd then the end of old English poetry is, the written record really dries up around 1066. Edward the Confessor dies, and there’s a poem called “The Death of Edward the Confessor,” and there’s not a lot of Old English poetry that’s written after that date. So in terms of, you know, the record of the manuscripts, we’re really talking 100-150 years. But there’s good reason to believe that many of these poems predate the Benedictine reform perhaps by centuries. And if that’s the case, then what we’re looking at is an extremely conservative verse form over hundreds of years, because it’s very difficult to look at Old English poetry and say, this is the early stuff and this is the late stuff.\n(30:21)\tStephen Powell\tAll we can really do is look at, these are the early manuscripts and these are the late manuscripts.\n(30:26)\tStephen Yeager\tYes. And like, maybe some of them are older, maybe most of them, maybe even all of them. But again, like if we’re thinking of it from the perspective of scribal performance, who knows how radically these texts were reinterpreted by the scribes who copied them down. [Light string music begins to play]\nStephen Yeager\tSo if you’re gonna posit conservatism, you know, the evidence isn’t there necessarily. The quote that you read to me is like a nice way of saying we really have no idea when any of this stuff  was actually composed. And it doesn’t give us any internal clues that help us figure it out, but I guess this is a good example of what I understood you to be kind of asking, which is what do you do in the face of all that you don’t know?\nStephen Yeager\tIt’s like, well, why don’t you just work from the example of what they did, right? They didn’t understand Latin and Roman stuff that well. They definitely didn’t read any Greek. But nonetheless, there’s this, you sort of, you take it, you assimilate it, you do what you want with it. Like the spirit of Old English literature is very, as conservative as the verse forms are, it is actually extremely experimental as well, and very open to taking something and then trying to make sense of it in your own context. So there is a sense in which developing your own performance of the text in conversation with it is, you know, in continuity with the practices of scribal performance that we see in the tradition itself.\n(31:46)\tGhislaine Comeau\tWith the certainty that we can never be quite certain of when old English texts were produced. In other words, we can never know the exact context of the cultural reception or the zeitgeist of the poems as one YouTuber had mentioned. I was reminded, again of Smith’s point, that without sufficient appreciation of the context in which the sounds occurred, we warp our understanding of echoes to the point of intellectual sophistication.\nGhislaine Comeau\tThinking then of old English texts as echoes, or rather their translations through the time as echoes. It then became clear to me that I wanted to shift the conversation to specifically address this issue of how we translate and how we perform these texts. [Music ends]\n(32:38)\tStephen Powell\tWhen we translate into Old English. We have at our command the entirety of the English vocabulary, which is the largest vocabulary of any language that’s ever been spoken on Earth. In contrast, when Anglo-Saxon or Old English writers were translating from Latin, they had at their disposal a very small vocabulary. And there’s nothing wrong with a small vocabulary. The size of a vocabulary doesn’t really matter for a language, because any language by definition has to serve the needs of its community.\nStephen Powell\tBut what that meant was that one of the things that old English writers were tasked with when they were translating from Latin into English was creating words, finding ways to describe concepts from Latin, which had a much larger vocabulary than English did at that point. And so we don’t have to do that. And so when, you know, Seamus Heaney famously translated Beowulf, he had at his disposal all of the vocabulary of English and got in some, I would say, trouble for including in his translation parts of the English vocabulary that were not sort of English. They were more Irish, and that was sort of controversial, but it was possible for him.\n(34:06)\tStephen Yeager\tOn the most pragmatic level, that’s what translation does, is it expands and develops some language. I mean, and think about also how, I wonder how old English verse transformed by trying to translate the Psalms into Old English, for example, which there’s both prose and poetic translations of the Psalms, which are already, you know, in the Vulgate, Jerome did these like word for word translations of the Psalms that are kind of terrible Latin, but that then become the basis of Latin education throughout the Middle Ages. The other sort of bigger example I was thinking of with this question was about how the translations of scenarios and events and from the Bible and you know, from other Latin sources, change to fit the values of the culture that they’re in.\nStephen Yeager\t​​But then from the perspective of a literary critic, you know, you see how that transformation reflects those values. And so the great example of that being of gender, and so for example, the Old English poem of Judith, which introduces this, this really interesting compound word elfscin, beautiful as an elf, it’s like, what the hell does that mean? You know, why is Judith an elfscin? Which then sort of leads to, which doesn’t beg the question this time, I think, leads to the question of, what is an elf? Like, what did that mean? What sorts of cultural contexts are coming to bear and why are they useful for describing this character who’s, you know, quite troubling as a character in the original context of the Hebrew scriptures? And, you know, remains a troubling one to, you know, her reception in Christian theology.\nStephen Yeager\tAnd then all of which then reflects in this sort of thing about like, well, if we’re going to adapt this figure into old English, does she sort of turn into a kind of Valkyrie figure? You know, are we sort of drawing from other mythological cultural contexts to try to assimilate and make sense of this character? Lots of fascinating things happen around this question, not just at the level of vocabulary, though, also at the level of vocabulary, but at the level of what gets created and then how that then goes on to influence the future evolution of the literary conventions.\n(36:13)\tStephen Powell\tRight. I mean, you think about the Old English renditions of the Exodus story, for example, where what seems like a biblical text without much an Old English poet normally values gets put into the mode of Old English heroic poetry. [Harp music begins to play]\nStephen Powell\tAnd even if it doesn’t, to come back to sound, because I know sound is the basic building block here. If you think about putting these biblical stories into the sounds that are also associated with non-biblical stories, Beowulf or the Battle of Malden or something like that, then what is that doing to the biblical story? It is putting it into the cultural context in some way. And of course, we always do that, whether it’s a biblical story or heroic story, when we translate, we’re carrying it from one culture to the other, whether that culture is early medieval England or the American Midwest of the 1970s.\nStephen Powell\tThe funny thing is, not the funny thing, the complicated thing is that when we do that kind of translation, we can become more familiar with the story in a certain way, but we also, in some ways, I think, can lose understanding of the story. Putting it too much into our own cultural idiom means that we lose the original cultural idiom and we lose the sort of the original emphasis. [Music ends]\n(37:47)\tStephen Yeager\tIt kind of comes down to, it’s one of these choices that you don’t wanna make, I think. Cause you know when you’re doing this translation, what you’re trying to do is make a text more immediate to an audience that would otherwise not be able to access it. But the question is, what is that text that you’re trying to make immediate? Is it the content and the ideas that’s in the poem, “The Ruin,” for example? Or is it the original context of reception? Like, do you want to sort of feel like you’re in the hall and listening to “The Ruin” as it would’ve been listened to? And so you’re there with like the… [Dr. Yeager’s voice fades out]\n(38:16)\tGhislaine Comeau\tHere, Professor Yeager has circled back to my original question and pointed out how translation is a series of choices and how we translate will depend on what we want to prioritize for our audience, meaning rhyme, emotion, an at best, speculated socio historical context?\n(38:37)\tStephen Yeager\t[Dr. Yeager’s voice fades back in]…Was walking around and whatever. And so the rhythmic choice is the one that’s like, I’m going to bring you into a more alien unusual world. And then the one that’s this is the more direct translation is the more here’s the information that’s in the poem, or here are the ideas or feelings or expressions. One of the things that distinguishes is, who is this audience? So like, if we’re writing for a bunch of Midwestern seventh graders, we’re not gonna bring ’em into the meat hall necessarily, right? We’re gonna really just try and make it so that they can sort of understand it and enjoy it. Whereas a more specialist audience, or especially if you’re an avant-garde or like a musician from the seventies or whatever, then you’ll choose something maybe that’s a bit more challenging, but again, it’s like, it’s back to your point about aesthetic decisions, which are often audience decisions.\nStephen Yeager\tAnd again, you know, at a certain point you never want to choose just one thing. Obviously there’s gonna be a compromise, but at a certain point, something has to prevail. You’re gonna run up against something where you’re gonna have two choices, one of which is the more difficult but interesting one, and one of which is the more accessible one, and there’s gonna be a pattern in the choices that you make.\nStephen Yeager\tBut that’s basically what translation is. [Quiet Gregorian chant style music begins] So “The Ruin” is this poem, which is famous in part for the way it, the sort of serendipitous, you know, thing where it’s a poem that’s damaged and is ruined and it’s describing a ruin within the poem, right? It’s a completely accidental, like, there was no sort of authorial intent behind that, but it works so nicely to kind of encapsulate the mood, not only of Old English poetry, but of its reception, really the mode of especially 20th century scholarship in the wake of Tolkien and “The Monsters and The Critics” and this kind of melancholic mood that characterizes the field.\nStephen Yeager\tBut you know, I mean, there’s no question you can ask about trying to connect with Old English, even though it’s impossible that you couldn’t ask about literally every other attempted communication you’ve ever done in your entire life, right? Like, when has there ever been like the true melding of minds and the intention of the original person is fully communicated so that the other person completely understood it? There are varying degrees of historical distance, of cultural distance and what have you, which complicate that further, but it’s not as if there is some kind of achievable thing that isn’t achieved, it’s just that the thing isn’t achieved in multiple ways. So in fact, part of the value of studying something like “The Ruin,” to my mind is the reminder that it gives you of that sort of basic fact about all communication, that for all you may rely on your stereotypes or your shared cultural knowledge or your sort of sense of this person from whoever long you’ve known them, in fact, there’s always this effort. There’s always this, this thing that remains, and so therefore this constant need for humility and for care, in the way that you recognize the limitations of your own understanding.\nStephen Yeager\tArguably, there is no such thing as a written text that is not also a ruin in this sense, right? Because the author is remote, the person who wrote it down, like by the time it gets to you, that person has changed themselves, right? And so the person who wrote it is gone. So “The Ruin” is this kind of perfect poem, distillation, as we said, for these serendipitous reasons of what writing is. And so I think that the representation of those gaps, to my mind, the best will be just the ones that call attention to it. Whatever that choice is to make the listener aware of the gap or what’s missing is to make them aware of what this work is, which is, you know, powerful as a work of writing and sort of translating that into the other medium.\nStephen Yeager\tTo go back to my earlier point about Milman Parry, I wanted to make one final point about that, which is, you know, that he was able to do all of that work because of recording, right? He relied on the recordings of the Serbo-Croat oral poets, which he then transcribed and then identified all of the things. So, you know, you can’t have oral formulaic theory and all of the nostalgia for the oral performance and the immediacy of it. And you know, like, this is what the show really sounded like when he was strumming on the lyre or whatever. [Soft string music begins to play]\nStephen Yeager\tYou know, that nostalgia and that wish is a product of the recording technology that then makes it feel like that is an experience you could actually have because you can have it about somebody today. And there is an extent to which that desire or transparency for immediacy is the product of communications technology that promises that transparency and immediacy, but which in fact has never actually delivered on it. Because, you know, the recording then removes from the context, and then there’s suddenly a ton of stuff that you don’t know about it. And I think it’s how you represent your own relationship to the text and not about how you represent the text itself. Like, is Peter Hamill saying like, I have a PhD in old English? [“Imperial Walls” by Peter Hamill plays briefly]\n(43:33)\tGhislaine Comeau\tPeter Hamill adapted part of “The Ruin” poem into a song called “Imperial Walls.”\n(43:42)\tStephen Yeager\tYou know, he’s not, he’s not that, that representation is like, I’m an artist and I’m going to take this work of art from the past and I’m gonna do my own thing with it. And so that’s completely responsible because it’s transparent about what’s happening. [Soft drumming music begins] The irresponsible is when you claim an authority that you don’t have.\n(44:04)\tGhislaine Comeau\tI, as the translator and scop, am essentially deciding to impose what I think the poem should sound like onto you, the reader or the listener. It is impossible for me to represent it as it was, as I’m not part of its context of reception. I can only translate, interpret, and present it as it is to me now. Who do I want it to make sense for and what sense do I want it to make? And even then, how do I want the poem to sound? Sad, nostalgic, wistful, a touch of hiraeth? The impossible…\n[Music ends]\n“The Ruin” poem.\nThis wall Stone is wondrous/fate and fortune have broken/and shattered the city/the works of giants/decay/roofs ruined/towers toppled/spoke gates smashed/frost on mortar/cut and cleaved/The storm shelter has fallen/eaten through by time/an earthly grasp/a hard grip of ground/imprisons the dead and decayed master makers/Until 100 generations of nations have passed/the city’s red stained gray wall stood under storms/one kingdom after another/high and steep/it fell/Still, the wall stone remains/[Sound effect of fire crackling begins]num geheapen felon/grimly ground/It shone/skilled work/ancient work/lamrindum beag/mod mo … yne swiftne/[Sound effect of fire ends]The stout minded/firmly wove with wire threads/foundations, bound wondrously together/The city dwellings were radiant/Many bathhouses/a tall pinnacle of treasure/great rejoicing/many mead halls/days full of joy/until fate/it changed all that/the slain fell widely/Days of pestilence came/death devoured all the sword brave men/their rampart foundations became waste/The citadel perished/restorers yielded sacred places to the earth/So these dwellings became dreary/and the Vermilion buildings/wood work roofs thus separated from their tiles/A perishable place fell/where once many a glad- hearted/and gold-bright man/shone with war gear/wine flushed and brilliant/splendor adorned/a bright city of this far reaching realm/seen in silver and gold/blessed in curious gems/precious stone and power/broken like a heap of stones/where the baths were/stone houses stood/A wall surrounded all/brightened breast/hot in heart/surging from far with heat/stream erupted/That was advantageous/when they let poor forth hot streams over gray stone/\n[Sound effect of fire crackling swells and dissipates]\nUn…until the ring pool hotly/where the baths were/Then this/Re,that is a kingly thing/\n[Sound effect of fire crackling swells and grows]\na house/a city/\n[Fire crackling ends]\n(48:15)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Low electronic music plays] The SpokenWeb podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.\n(48:28)\tHannah McGregor\tOur producer this month is Ghislaine Comeau, a PhD student in the English department at Concordia University. Our supervising producer is Maia Harris. Thanks to James Healey, our sound designer for the intro and outro, and Miranda Eastwood for the sound design on Ghislaine’s episode. And our transcriptionist is Zoe Mix. Special thanks to Dr. Steven Yeager and Dr. Steven Powell for lending their voices and expertise to this episode.\n(48:55)\tKatherine McLeod\t[SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music begins in background] To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, or say hi on our social media at SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music fades and ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9633","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S5E2, Listening in Uncertainty, 6 November 2023, Paquette"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-in-uncertainty/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 5"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Nadège Paquette"],"creator_names_search":["Nadège Paquette"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nadège Paquette\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/61a67aba-7902-445e-834a-7360ff36afd9/audio/886b9d5b-fe0b-439e-b083-1d8e46196a01/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"spokenweb-episode-2-full-master-oct-26-v12.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:45:22\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"43,557,106 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"spokenweb-episode-2-full-master-oct-26-v12\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/listening-in-uncertainty/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"6 November 2023\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Music:\\n\\nTom Bonheur https://www.instagram.com/dj.g3ntil/\\n\\nKovd, Kvelden, Tell What You Know, Ivory Pillow, and Fever Creep by Blue Dot Sessions https://app.sessions.blue/\\n\\nPodcast:\\n\\n“The Wordless Place” Lulu Miller https://radiolab.org/podcast/wordless-place\\n\\n“Why Podcast?” Hannah McGregor and Stacey Copeland https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/27.1/topoi/mcgregor-copeland/index.html\\n\\nShort Film:\\n\\nAnointed, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Dan Lin https://www.kathyjetnilkijiner.com/videos-featuring-kathy/\\n\\nFilm:\\n\\nPulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa\\n\\nAdditional sounds from:\\n\\n“Interview with Tanya Tagaq,” Alicia Atout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FupatQbcTeM\\n\\n“Open Dialogues: Daniel Heath Justice,” Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrBN8_IGuuw\\n\\n“Monster 怪物,” United for Peace Film Festival https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8OJulGi1Rg\\n\\n*\\n\\nWorks Cited\\n\\nBouich, Abdenour. 2021. “Coeval Worlds, Alter/Native Words.” Transmotion 7 (2). https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/tm.980.\\n\\nButler, Judith. 2003. “Violence, Mourning, Politics.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 4 (1): 9–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/15240650409349213.\\n\\nChion, Michel. 2017. L’audio-Vision : Son et Image Au Cinéma. 4th Edition. Armand Colin.\\n\\nCopeland, Stacey, and Hannah McGregor. 2022. Why Podcast?: Podcasting as Publishing, Sound-Based Scholarship, and Making Podcasts Count. Vol. 27, no. 1. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/27.1/topoi/mcgregor-copeland/index.html.\\n\\nEidsheim, Nina Sun. 2019. “Introduction: The Acousmatic Question: Who Is This?” In The Race of Sound, 1–38. Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11hpntq.4.\\n\\nGoodman, Steve. 2010. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Technologies of lived abstraction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=018751433&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.\\n\\nHaraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. North Carolina, United States: Duke University Press.\\n\\nHudson, Seán. 2018. “A Queer Aesthetic: Identity in Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Horror Films.” Film-Philosophy 22 (3): 448–64. https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2018.0089.\\n\\nJLiat. 1954. Bravo. Found Sounds. Bikini Atoll. http://jliat.com/.\\n\\nJustice, Daniel Heath. 2018. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.\\n\\nKurosawa, Kiyoshi, dir. 2001. Pulse. Toho Co., Ltd.\\n\\nLamb, David Michael. 2015. “Clyde River, Nunavut, Takes on Oil Indsutry over Seismic Testing.” CBC. March 30, 2015. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/clyde-river-nunavut-takes-on-oil-industry-over-seismic-testing-1.3014742.\\n\\nLin, Dan, and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, dirs. 2018. Anointed. Pacific Storytellers Cooperative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEVpExaY2Fs.\\n\\nMadwar, Samia. 2016. “Breaking The Silence.” Text/html. Up Here Publishing. uphere. Https://uphere.ca/articles/breaking-silence. 2016. https://uphere.ca/articles/breaking-silence.\\n\\nMiller, Lulu. 2022. “The Wordless Place.” Radiolab. https://radiolab.org/episodes/wordless-place.\\n\\nMorton, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Posthumanities 27. Minneapolis (Minn.): University of Minnesota Press.\\n\\nRaza Kolb, Anjuli Fatima. 2022. “Meta-Dracula: Contagion and the Colonial Gothic.” Journal of Victorian Culture 27 (2): 292–301. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac017.\\n\\nRobinson, Dylan. 2020. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. 1 online resource (319 pages) : illustrations vols. Indigenous Americas. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=6152353.\\n\\nSontag, Susan. 1966. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London: Penguin Classics.\\n\\nTagaq, Tanya. Split Tooth. Viking, Penguin Random House, 2018.\\n\\nTasker, John Paul. 2017. “Supreme Court Quashes Plans for Seismic Testing in Nunavut, but Gives Green Light to Enbridge Pipeline.” CBC. July 26, 2017. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-ruling-indigenous-rights-1.4221698.\\n\\nYamada, Marc. 2020. “Visualizing a post-bubble Japan in the films of Kurosawa Kiyoshi.” In Locating Heisei in Japanese Fiction and Film : The Historical Imagination of the Lost Decades, 60–81. Routledge contemporary Japan series. Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2279077.\\n\\nYusoff, Kathryn. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549734031360,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["In this audio essay, Nadège Paquette adopts a posture of not-knowing as an alternative to the Western drive toward knowledge accumulation. Nadège asks: can not-knowing help us learn to live and die more justly in compromised worlds?\n\nThis episode navigates this question using an associative method which links stories and sounds, forming a non-linear audio collage. Listeners are invited to tune in to their affective and embodied responses to end time stories including Lulu Miller’s podcast and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror film, and stories of endurance, with Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s poem and Tanya Tagaq’s audiobook.\n\n(0:00)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Oh boy. Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:18)\tHannah McGregor\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [Spokeweb Podcast music ends] My name is Hannah McGregor.\n(00:36)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd my name is Katherine McLeod and each month we’ll be bringing you different stories that explore the intersections of sound, poetry, literature, and history created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada.\n(00:50)\tHannah McGregor\tThis month our producer, Nadège Paquette sonically explores what not-knowing sounds like, and feels like, as an alternative to constantly accumulating knowledge. The episode enacts the possibilities of not-knowing, using an associative method that links stories and sounds, forming a non-linear audio collage.\n(01:13)\tKatherine McLeod\tListeners are invited to tune in to their affective and embodied responses to works that dwell in the unknown, including a story shared by Lulu Miller on the podcast Radio Lab, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s horror film Pulse, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s poem “Anointed,” and Tanya Tagaq’s audiobook Split Tooth. Collectively, these works of art give us a language for experiences that, in fact, exceed language, and invite us to pause in the space of uncertainty.\n(01:42)\tHannah McGregor\tHere is the second episode of season five of the SpokenWeb podcast, “Listening in Uncertainty.” [SpokenWeb theme music swells briefly and then fades]\n(02:04)\tNadège Paquette\t[Pensive music begins] Hi, I’m Nadège. I’m speaking from Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montreal. I’m a white settler and a seeker of ways to live and die with other humans and non-humans on a damaged planet. [Music fades out] I find this process of naming my partial speaking and listening positionalities important.\nNadège Paquette\t[Sound effect of crickets singing at night followed by the call of a crow] Naming is the way we’ve been taught to apprehend the world, but it might also have the effect of making us fear what we can’t name. This sound work is about the potential of not naming things to linger in uncertainty. It’s about listening through discomfort, tuning in to fear and surrendering to silence. [Cricket sounds stop]\nNadège Paquette\tAttempting not to name things with spoken words is, however, a contradictory project. I can’t escape language, so I try to let it exceed the meaning I expect of it. [Light percussion music fades in] The question I’m asking throughout this episode in exploring the limits of my understanding is: can not-knowing help us learn to live more justly in compromised worlds? Since in Western sciences, the paradigm of knowledge accumulation is coming to its limits when facing the conditions of global warming, can a posture recognizing the bounds of our understanding be more fruitful?\nNadège Paquette\tBecause while we know a lot about climate change, we’re still unable to act and slow down its processes. This podcast is a sort of collage where I make associations between ideas, sounds and stories. Associations are the glue making sometimes seemingly disparate elements stick together. My hope in calling my process associative is to avoid the expectation that this podcast as a form of narrative should be linear: that is, made of a series of observations where one ideologically evolves into another to reveal a single, coherent meaning. Associations might be more about not knowing where the next idea will take us. [Music fades out]\n(04:20)\tNadège Paquette\tThe episode will be divided into two parts. The first section follows two stories where characters are faced with the unknown and react with fear.  [Ominous music begins] These are stories where a certain version of the world ends, a world where things can be known and mastered through language. There’s the story of a child’s night terror told by Lulu Miller in a podcast episode, as well as the story of people disappearing through computer circuits, which takes the form of the film Pulse by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  [Music ends]\nNadège Paquette\tI’ve associated both stories because of the effect of fear they describe and produce. I’ll talk about how fear can be created by acousmatic sounds and uncomfortable intimacy, as well as how we might attempt to tame fear through naming and interpretation.  [Calm electronic music begins]\nWhile the first section is about narratives we could call apocalyptic, the stories of the second section are about surviving and healing after yet another apocalypse, the first being the decolonization of the Americas and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. [Music ends]\n(05:37)\tNadège Paquette\tKathy Jetñil-Kijiner recites a poem where the tale of a son playing with fire meets an account of living on the Marshall Islands, which have been used as sites for “testing” nuclear bombs. [Calm electronic music fades back in] Tanya Tagaq reads her novel where a daughter protects sea creatures from seismic testing. I want to think here about those things that Western science has called “tests” but which are in fact “the real thing” because they are actively destroying worlds. I want to reflect on the challenge that Indigenous knowledges pose to the notion of real versus fictional world and consider how certain worldviews which escape hegemonic frameworks have been deemed by colonial powers to be illegible and thus less real. [Music ends]\n(06:30)\tNadège Paquette\tBefore diving into stories of fear and stories offering healing, I want to talk about the form of podcasting, about sound’s particular ability to produce effective and embodied responses in listeners. [Dark pensive music begins] I also want to present my method in this episode, how I try to practice what Kaisa Kortekallio calls “becoming-instrument” in order to attend to different associations and what they mean. The medium of sound and the form of podcasting here allow me to invite you to experience effective engagement. [calm but ominous music begins] Sounds create moods and emotions; they can make us feel connected to each other or scared and wary. In both instances, the creative form of intimacy, the feeling of being close to someone or something, or the feeling of being too close. In their series…\n(07:25)\tStacey Copeland\t“Why Podcast? Podcasting as Publishing.”\n(07:28)\tHannah McGregor\t“Sound-based scholarship,” and…\n(07:30)\tStacey Copeland\t“Making Podcasts Count”\n(07:33)\tNadège Paquette\t…Academics and podcasters…\n(07:34)\tHannah McGregor\t“Hannah McGregor”\n(07:35)\tNadège Paquette\tand…\n(07:36)\tStacey Copeland\t“Stacy Copeland” [music ends]\n(07:37)\tNadège Paquette\tUnderstand podcasting to be a mode of affect transmission. That means that the affects produced by sound and voice through the quality of their pitch, timber volume and rhythm, stick to the listener and moves them in ways that written form might not accomplish. [Electronic pulsing evolving into soft ambient music] Sound and voice thus activate different ways of understanding and apprehending our academic research. While listening to this podcast, can you attend to your affective responses? Does the sound you hear interrupt your breathing? [Music fades, sinister sound from Pulse’s soundtrack rises and falls]\nDoes the voice you reach toward make you move your gaze? [Crickets singing and sound of footsteps] Does walking allow you to listen intently? Is music your favorite mood altering method? But also, how do you affect those sounds? How might your listening bring you to identify the sounds in a way that limits them? Dylan Robinson, xwélmexw writer of the Stó:lō people and author of the book, Hungry Listening, teaches me to be attentive to the ways in which I listen with hunger for meaning.\n(08:48)\tNadège Paquette\tThis hunger I inherit from my French settler ancestors, who arrived on this continent starving for food, but also for Indigenous lands, knowledges, cultures, and labor. Robinson explains that the drive to satisfy that hunger makes one lose contact with their sense of relationality and reflexivity.  [Eerie music fades in and out]\nRather than holding on to the Western imperative that, as Robinson writes, “all knowledge should be accessible at all times,” I attempt to sit with the limits of my understanding of Indigenous intelligence, voice, song, and stories. My limits can be heard in my imperfect pronunciation of the word xwélmexw, meaning “first nation person” in Halq’eméylem, but also in the fact that I access Indigenous knowledges, not through relations with Indigenous people, communities, lands, and waters, but through texts, and texts that I read in English, which is a colonial language.\n(09:58)\tNadège Paquette\t[Dark pensive music begins] I hope that my engagement here with Indigenous thinkers and stories is respectful and fruitful, but I recognize that it might not always be the case. To tune into influences I might not usually perceive because of my positionality and training, I attempt a form of reconfiguration that literary scholar Kaisa Kortekallio calls “becoming-instrument.” Becoming means that one’s own self, body, and mind is always in the process of being done and undone. [Music fades out. Brief chords and sounds from a printer play]\nInstrument means that mind and body like musical instruments and scientific instruments can be calibrated to perform a creative outcome or attend to certain phenomena. [Soft ominous music begins] Kortekallio writes, “the self instrument is tuned and tweaked in order to become more impressionable, that is, more receptable to the various effects of textural ecologies.” Or, in this case, to the effects of sonic ecologies, to the effects of sounds, beings, and environments relating to each other.\nTo become-instrument, I actively calibrate myself to become more resectable to the associations that might arise between sounds, stories, and concepts. [Music fades] While their association might become apparent to me, my understanding doesn’t exhaust the potential of these relations. [Eerie music begins] The association I make between the two first stories I will discuss in this episode is their interest in the affect of fear. Naming things can be a way to manage our fear of the unknown, to make it less threatening and more familiar. But, what if this fear of the unknown was indeed acquired because of language, because what we can’t name then becomes threatening? [Music ends]\n(12:01)\tNadège Paquette\tI came across this idea when listening to Radiolab’s episode, “The Wordless Place” where co-host…\n(12:08)\tLulu Miller\t“Lulu Miller”\n(12:08)\tNadège Paquette\t…Relates the first months of navigating the uncertainties of COVID-19 with her wife while their year and a half old son was still peacefully dwelling in the uncertainties of the wordless place. Naming, Miller explains, is…\n(12:25)\tLulu Miller\t“…This thing we do all the time, which is to group things together that don’t belong under one word, to preserve a sense of order, or comfort, or control.”\n(12:33)\tNadège Paquette\t[Tense light percussion music begins] This also happens with sound. Most people think about sound by reducing it through naming. It is one of the central premises of The Race of Sound by music scholar Nina Eidsheim. When we hear a sound but can’t identify its cause, we may ask the acousmatic question, “What is this?” The term acousmatic signals this perceived rupture between the sound and its source. Asking the acousmatic question reveals the assumption that there can be an answer to it. That the thick event of a sound and especially in Eidsheim’s research, of a voice, can be captured by a word encompassing its source. [Music ends] This belief that by naming we come to know what we name is reassuring. [Eerie music begins] Miller believes it is what reassured her son after he had a particularly intense night terror. Miller’s wife was able to appease him only by bringing him in front of a photograph of a Coptic tapestry and naming the things she thought she could see.\n(13:39)\tLulu Miller\t“‘Goat,’ she said tapping the glass, ‘flower, snail.'”\n(13:44)\tNadège Paquette\tMiller suspects that her son’s night terror was linked to his recent inquisition of words, which suddenly made him feel that the unknown was a threat. [Music ends]Neurologists say we’re wired to fear the unknown, but, what if, Miller asks…\n(14:02)\tLulu Miller\t“What if that fear only starts with the advent of words?”\n(14:06)\tNadège Paquette\tWe could say that causal listening, that is listening for the cause of the sound, and then naming the source is a process that attempts to remedy our fear of the unknown.\n[Strange sounds rapidly rise and fall]\nFilm theorist and composer Michel Chion explains that we’re engaged in causal listening when we ask: what is making a sound? What is the thing, object, being, or phenomenon, producing the sound, and where is its source located? [Dense eerie music begins] Causal listening or the ability to interpret sounds and identify their possible causes is both learned culturally and wired to our survival instinct. Instinctively we understand that loud noises almost always mean danger. But culturally we also learn to identify some loud noises as coming from unthreatening sources, and we’re thus able to respond to them accordingly. Music and drone fade out]\nIf I hear loud noise and it triggers fear in me, identifying its cause might bring my fear to dissolve. Naming, once again, is a way to regain a sense of control. [Pensive percussion with sirens begins] The horror film genre is one that attempts to elicit fear in its audience by using unnerving sound effects, but also by playing with the process of revealing a monstrous or threatening force which previously remained partially hidden. In the Western branch of the horror genre, film plots are generally built around this process of making known the unknown.\n(15:48)\tNadège Paquette\tMany Japanese horror films, however, reject this framework. J-Horror films produced in the 1990s and 2000’s participate in an aesthetic movement centering non-symbolic or non-representative frameworks. It is not the meaning behind the film or the source behind acousmatic sound that is horrific, but the lack thereof. [Music fades out] The lack of source and lack of meaning are frightening. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an important figure in J-Horror. [Ominous soundscapes from Pulse begin] In his movie Pulse, released in 2001, the sources of fear are many and remain partially unknown. Sonic drones, acousmatic voices, and the sound of computer circuits exchanging information are dislocated from their sources which evade understanding and create fear.\n(16:49)\tNadège Paquette\tPulse is set in the 1990s posed-bubble Japan at the beginning of the Internet. [Ominous soundscapes continue, with sirens] People are disappearing in Tokyo, leaving only a dark stain on the wall, like the ones left after the Hiroshima nuclear bombing which had burned human silhouettes on stone walls. It seems that there’s a computer virus infecting users and turning them into ghosts. Or it could be that the realm of the spirit has attained its capacity and is now overflowing, through internet circuits, into the realm of the living. Soundscapes fade out] Pulse’s ghosts have been interpreted as symbols of the hikikomori. Hikikomori are young adults, mostly men in their 20’s and 30’s, withdrawing from society by refusing to leave their room for months or years at a time.  [Eerie music begins] The phenomenon has been described as an epidemic that Japan faces since the 1990s. Some explained the situation as a backlash to the strict demands of the Japanese conformist society, which hikikomori are unable or refuse to fulfill.\n(18:02)\tNadège Paquette\tNaming the fearful apparition of a ghost by a known phenomenon, that of hikikomori allows for the reestablishment of the boundaries of the known. Yet the symbolic interpretation leaves out many other possibilities. By focusing on the meaning of the film, it’s affective power is left out. In other words, fear and everything unspeakable in the movie are overlooked. What I’m trying to explain here echoes Susan Sontag’s argument in her essay “Against Interpretation.” She explains that interpretation, too often, favors content over form and thus centers meaning and neglects the work of art’s affective quality. Sontag writes that “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.” But this nervousness is avoided when the work of art is reduced to its content, and its content to our interpretation.\n(19:01)\tNadège Paquette\tIn this sense, a non-symbolic reading would allow for the work of art to retain its capacity to make us nervous, to make us feel the effect of fear which uncertainty creates. To perform a non-symbolic reading of the film, I have to decenter abstract meaning to focus on the film’s materiality and my embodied experience of it. [Music fades out]\nWhen I listen to Pulse’s sounds, I hear layers of complexity. [Birdsongs and sawing sounds overlaid begin] I hear layers of human, machine, element, and animal entanglements. I feel confusion and fear. So why do I like it so much? [Abrupt silence]  I tune into those entanglements and those feelings of discomfort, and I feel the excitement of knowing that there is more to the movie than what I understand, that there is more to the world than what I can experience. [Birdsongs and ominous music fade in and out] In Pulse, what travels both through circuits and through sounds are unsettling presences that exceed human understanding.\n[Ominous soundscape from Pulse play]\n(20:14)\tNadège Paquette\tWhat I like so much about the film might be that it makes me feel what philosopher Timothy Morton calls “intimacy.” According to Morton, intimacy is what best explains ecological awareness. Ecological awareness cannot be reduced to the profoundly confirming feeling that we belong to something bigger. [Strings rise and fall] The feeling of belonging is accompanied by the sentiment of intimacy, which is the sense of being close, even too close to non-human presences like ghosts, nuclear radiations, or global warming.\nIntimacy is the sense of having other presences “under one skin,” explains Morton. [Eerie strings continue] Global warming gets under my skin and in my lungs when I breathe the summer air in Montreal. An air heavy with the small particles from the smoke caused by forest fires intensified by global warming. In Pulse, Ryosuke, a university student, experiences intimacy when gesturing to put his hands on the shoulders of a ghost in the hope that they will encounter no resistance, that they will traverse the ghost’s body, that it’s immateriality will convince him that the ghost doesn’t exist. But Ryosuke’s hands stop when they touch the spectre’s shoulders, which they can’t traverse. [Sound bite of object shattering]\n(21:55)\tNadège Paquette\tThe spectre is material and it is too close to Ryosuke, who becomes infected by the virus and himself eventually becomes a ghost. [String music returns] Perhaps dwelling in uncertainty and living through the effects of fear, nervousness, and uncomfortable intimacy allow me not only to intellectually challenge the Western paradigm of knowledge accumulation, but also to embody this challenge, to feel it. [Music fades out]\n[Soundscapes from Pulse are superimposed with sirens] Pulse ends on an apocalyptic vision of Tokyo burning. The city is deserted by the protagonists and a few other humans that are leaving on a ship to try to find a place on earth the virus hasn’t infected yet. While the end of the film is also the end of the world, the story remains open because the film resists a single overarching interpretation. The story remains open because of the non-human presences traversing its soundtrack.\n(23:07)\tNadège Paquette\t[Soundscapes fade out and soft music begins] The stories in this second section, they too are about the end of the world. But they go further than just opening to a new one. They teach me how to survive in the aftermath, and how to live with others in damaged worlds.\nI have associated the following stories because they all offer a representation of a weapon which Western powers have called a “test.” [Music fades out] We could define a test as an experiment which is carried out to establish the performance of something before it is taken into its intended use. The word “test” can be used to sustain a binary between the fictional world, where the test is performed, and the real world, where the tested thing will be used. Following Morton, I tune into the materiality of nuclear bombing by listening to a recording of the Caste Bravo nuclear weapon “test” that was launched on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1954 by the US Army. [Drone sound fades in and out] Timothy Morton writes, “Words fail to describe the horror with which I heard the first few seconds. I had to tear the headphones off my head.” [Sound effect of someone tearing their headphones off] [Silence] What is maybe even more horrific than the sound of the explosion itself is the seconds of silence preceding it.\n[Dense silence that lasts too long for comfort, from the recording of the Bravo “test” followed by the explosion]\n(25:41)\tNadège Paquette\tCan I tune into this silence to hear what is to be annihilated by the explosion? Can I hear the attempted silencing of the Marshallese people’s protests? Are the 26 seconds of relative silence before the detonation enough to remember the 72 hours the US army waited before gathering the islanders? Are the 26 seconds enough to remember the 236 Marshallese who were exposed to the atomic fallout and transported to the American military base where they were to be used as “test” subjects?\n[Eerie music fades in]\nInhuman geologist, Kathryn Yusoff writes, “The fallout coated Marshallese bodies, ground, trees, breadfruit, coconuts, crabs, fish, and water.” The islanders were returned to the islands to study them as what was called fallout “collectors.” Human and non-human islanders were taken to be instruments serving to record the effects of such “tests” on human life and Pacific Island ecologies. But Yusoff reminds me that there is no such thing as a nuclear “test.” [Music ends]\nThe Marshall Islands are not a laboratory and the islanders are not “test” subjects, but people still living in radioactive intimacies causing high rates of leukemia, neoplasm, and thyroid cancers. [Tense electronic music beings] When the US army describes the dropping of nuclear bombs on the Marshall Islands as a form of “test,” the islands are constituted as a sort of fictional world whose destruction is not real. “Test” is a way of naming a form of nuclear colonialism and warfare. It derealizes the life of Pacific Islanders and constructs this ecosystem as a fictional world. The military can get a practice before having to perform in the real world. [Music ends] In her poem anointed…\n(27:52)\tKathy Jetñil-Kijiner\t“Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner,”\n(27:54)\tNadège Paquette\t…Marshall Islander poet, performance artist, and educator returns to Runit Island in Enewetak Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands. She remembers it as a whole island with breadfruit trees and “women who could swim pregnant for miles.” [Sound of waves from  Anointed] She remembers the nuclear warfare waged against the island. She wonders if she will find an island with stories or a tomb.\n(28:24)\tKathy Jetñil-Kijiner\t[Tense orchestration begins] “I’m looking for more stories. I look and I look. There must be more to this than incinerated trees, a cracked dome, a rising sea, a leaking nuclear waste with no fence, there must be more to this than a concrete shell that houses death.”\n(28:46)\tNadège Paquette\t[Orchestration fades out] Jetñil-Kijiner is looking for stories that weave the relationships that matter to communities of humans and more than humans, but her story tells me that Morton’s account of the recording of the Bravo “test” and Yusoff’s account of “nuclear colonialism” don’t, is the story of ongoing life in cohabitation with disrupted landscapes. [Energized electronic music starts] Jetñil-Kijiner tells the story of a turtle goddess who gifted one of her sons, Letao, a piece of her shell anointed with power. Letao could use the shell to transform himself into anything he wanted and he became kindling to create the first fire that almost burned the islanders alive. [Energized music fades and soft music begins]\nThere’s another shell story. Made of concrete, this one is supposed to shield the islanders from the toxicity of nuclear waste collected and dumped in a crater two decades after the end of the “testing.” There’s another weapon that calls itself a “test” and needs stories to weave an alternative discourse to the one of warfare, conquest, and colonization.\n(29:59)\tTanya Tagaq\t“Wait, I need to talk to Sedna and tell her to keep her treasures. Humans have damned themselves and it has nothing to do with Satan. It has only to do with greed. What will Sedna do when she hears the seismic testing?\n(30:26)\tNadège Paquette\tThat was…\n(30:27)\tTanya Tagaq\t“Tanya Tagaq.”\n(30:28)\tNadège Paquette\tAn Inuit artist, improvisational singer, avante-garde composer, and author reading from her novel Split Tooth. [Tense percussion music begins mixed with the sound of ice melting]\nThe novel’s protagonist was telling Sedna’s story before being interrupted by the intrusive memory of seismic testing. “Sedna is the sea goddess that came before Christianity.” Seismic testing is the technique used by companies to survey the Arctic Ocean for oil. Airguns are fired into the water from a boat. How the sound waves bounce back up from the ocean floor is captured by the ship sensors to be analyzed for indications of possible oil layers. Airguns are blasted every 15 seconds every hour of the day for several months. [Eerie string music begins] They produce sounds that can reach 230 decibels at close range. That’s louder than a jumbo jet and sound travels faster and further on the water.\n[Dense electronic music starts] 150 decibels can rupture a human ear and anything over 80 decibels means reduced intellectual capacity, slow digestion, altered diction, accelerated breathing, and heartbeat, as well as symptoms of neurosis such as anxiety and depression. Music fades out]\nSo when those extremely loud sounds traverse the arctic ocean, they hit creatures living in the waters, including marine mammals that use sound to communicate such as narwhals, belugas, whales and seals. [Music with harsh percussion begins] Narwhals have been disoriented by disturbing sounds in an area where there was seismic testing going on. They changed their migration patterns and found themselves stuck under thick sea ice where they drowned. [Music ends]\n(32:24)\tNadège Paquette\tAround 2011, seismic testing companies approached Jerry Natanine, mayor of Clyde River, Nunavut. [Music with harsh percussion returns] When he told his father and uncles about the project, they were, like Tagaq’s protagonist, assailed by the intrusive memory of seismic testing. They remember when, in the 70’s, Panarctic Oils carried out similar tests without consulting the local Inuit communities. The next spring when they went hunting, they noticed the seals were displaying strange behaviors. They did not flee or even react when hunters would approach them. They had pus exuding out of their ears. They were deaf.  [Music and sounds fade out] [Silence]\nI couldn’t find sounds of seismic testing on the internet, so I tune into this silence and to what it means. Do narwhals belugas, whales and seals hear a deafening ringing in their ears after airgun shootings and before they can hear nothing else? Do the calves miss their parents’ voices? Are marine mammals deaf so that I can listen to silence induced by noise reduction on my oil soaked headphones connected to my oil soaked computer in a warm library, thanks to heating oil, rendered even more cozy by oil soaked noise absorbing carpets? [Silence]\n[Watery sounds and eerie ambient music begin] When Tagaq’s protagonist wants to tell Sedna to keep her treasures from greedy companies practicing seismic testing in the Arctic, the protagonist is not proposing a form of symbolic reading of Sedna’s story. Sedna is not a character in a fantasy world who would be valuable only if she symbolized a real person, event, or phenomenon in the real world. Sedna is an-other-than-human being living in the protagonist’s world. And the categories of real and fantasy here represent a Western rationalist reading that dismisses Indigenous ways of knowing. Tagaq’s protagonist interacts with Sedna’s story and other Inuit stories to remind us as writes…\n(34:57)\tDaniel Justice\t“Daniel Justice.”\n(34:58)\tNadège Paquette\tCitizen of the Cherokee nation and professor of Critical Indigenous Studies, “that there are other ways of being in the world and those we’ve been trained to accept as normal.” Split Tooth might be what Justice calls a “wonderwork,” a story that brings the past forward and integrates a possible future for Indigenous peoples. In Split Tooth’s possible future, Sedna might hear the seismic testing, and if she does, she might keep the sea creatures in her miles long hair to protect them from the sound, but then the human inhabitants of the Arctic would starve. [Music and sounds end] [silence]\nNatanine, Clyde River’s mayor, explains that the community needs seals, narwhals, whales, and fish. The community and its mayor took the seismic “testing” companies to court to oppose their activities on Inuit land. In 2017, they won their case in the Supreme Court of Canada, which forbade further testing underground that Inuit treaty rights were disregarded, Inuit people inadequately consulted, and their relationship to marine animals dismissed. [Pensive percussion music begins] When companies performing seismic “testing” fail to consider how it will affect seals and other marine animals, the colonial worldview where animals are subordinate forms of life, whose bodies are killable and available to human use is given priority.\n(36:39)\tNadège Paquette\tAn Inuit worldview where animals are essential partners in Inuit life, is positioned as a fictional world where “tests” can be performed for the benefit of the real world down south. For the human and animal inhabitants of Inuit lands and waters however, seismic testing is not a “test.” Seismic “testing” is already a form of violence that corporations owned by non-Indigenous interests perform. Tagaq’s novel refuses such binary separation between real and fictional world. I thus want to resist the urge to categorize Split Tooth by giving it the name of a particular genre like fiction, memoir, or poetry. Those categories of the Western literary tradition might not help me encounter the work on its own terms.\n[Eerie music fades in] Tagaq’s story is told through a web of Indigenous perspectives. It is a collaborative work that she weaves with her band, community, ancestors, animal and mineral neighbors, with Inuit songs and worldviews, and stories like Sedna’s story and that of Arqsarnic, the Northern Lights. It is what Justice would call “stories that heal.” They contrast those healing stories with the colonial story of “Indigenous deficiency,” which has been told too many times to mask settler’s guilt and shame. [Music ends] According to this colonial story, many Indigenous people are suffering from poverty, homelessness, and addiction, not because of intergenerational trauma caused by colonization and genocide, but because Indigenous individuals supposedly lack in “character or biology or intellect.”\n(38:33)\tNadège Paquette\t[Energetic electronic music begins]  Split Tooth is not a story of lack but of partial positions and fulfilling relationships. The protagonist is busy with collective reinvention and remembering. Her pain and fear come with pleasure, healing and cunning plans. I love how the novel brings dualities in uncomfortable proximity: humans are both hating and loving, harming and caring.\nHumans are also animals, animals take erotic forms and attract humans. Predators are also prey. Spirits leave and come back to their bodies; bodies are shapeshifters.  [Music fades] Listening to Tanya Tagaq’s amazing audiobook Split Tooth late at night, day after day, her soft rhythmic voice began to feel like a haunting. Her “S” sounds were encircling my limbs like tendrils and I started reading my own work with the cadence of her voice.[Dark pensive music begins] I’m even doing it now.\nTagaq reveals harsh realities and traumatic events with a soft voice and a juvenile tone. [Dark music ends followed by playful music] The voice that she shares with the protagonist seems to me at times childlike, and at times wise and old, and sometimes mischievous and even cruel. Her voice goes from one to the other with only the slightest variation in tone, rhythm, or pace. [Music stops]\nI can’t separate the hero from the villain in Tagaq’s story, and this brings me to reflect on my own position as a white settler. I too am neither simply innocent nor guilty in the ongoing colonial story. I am implicated in the conditions creating trauma and violence in Indigenous communities, and me and my ancestors have benefited from colonial systems. Attending to the discomfort I feel when faced with the ambiguity of Tagaq’s characters helps me sit with the discomfort I feel when reflecting on my own position. I hope that this emotional engagement can help me be more accountable.  [Pensive music fades out]\n(40:49)\tNadège Paquette\t[Soft energized  music begins] Letao’s story and Sedna’s story as told by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Tanya Tagaq are complex webs of situated Indigenous knowledges talking back to imperialists and colonial stories of man as maker and destroyer. Just as stories like Letao’s and Sedna’s have always been important to the Marshallese and Inuit people telling them, they will have to be important to non-Indigenous people like me who would like to cohabit with humans and non-humans within the conditions of global warming. Those stories make speculative leaps toward other worlds that have existed, exist now and might exist in the future. Rational knowledges and facts are not sufficient to live with others on a damaged planet, so the challenge Indigenous stories pose to Western understandings of what is real and what is fiction has to be taken seriously.\nStories might allow us to walk that thin line between knowing too much and knowing too little. While humans of the 21st century know a lot about global warming, we seem to be unable to act. If rational knowledges, facts don’t bring action, can I turn towards unknowing? [Music intensifies and ends] [Soundscape from Pulse fades in and out] Pulse’s strange sounds like Letao’s and Sedna’s story are not exhausted by any symbolic reading I might make of them. I manage, in the understanding I have of them, a space for feeling nervous, a space not to name things or to cultivate distrust in the names I give.  [Eerie music begins]\nThe sounds in Pulse like the stories in Anointed and Split Tooth are palimpsestic, layers sedimented one over the other, like the layers of soil saturated with plutonium on the Marshall Islands, like the strata of oil, gas, and sedimentary rock in the ocean bed, like the layers of bodies infiltrated by strontium90, like levels of memories, practices, and knowledges collected in stories. [ Nadège’s voice echoes] There must be more to this. [Music fades out]\n[Soft electronic music fades in] Thank you for listening. Voices are from Hannah McGregor, Stacey Copeland, Lulu Miller, Daniel Justice, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Tanya Tagaq. Music is from Tom Bonheur, merci Tom, and from Blue Dot Sessions. Soundscapes are from Pulse directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa with music by Takefumi Haketa. The recording of the Castle Bravo “test” is from JLiat’s website. Additional sounds from RadioLab, and Anointed, a film by Dan Lin and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. Thank you. [Electronic music fades out]\n(44:20)\tKatherine McLeod\t[SpokenWeb theme music begins to play quietly] The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.\n(44:34)\tHannah McGregor\tOur producer this month is Nadège Paquette, a master’s student in the English department at Concordia University. Our supervising producer is Maia Harris. Our sound designer is James Healy, and our transcription is done by Zoe Mix.\n(44:49)\tKatherine McLeod\tTo find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to Spokenweb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media at SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds.  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This audio is part of  literature professor Linda M. Morra‘s podcast, Getting Lit with Linda – The Canadian Literature Podcast, hosted and written by Linda, produced by Linda and Marco Timpano.\n\nIn Episode 7 from Season 2, Linda begins with the sound of her father’s old espresso machine, to explain how she sees — or hears — sound working in Magnetic Equator (published by McClelland & Stewart) by international poet, novelist, and sound performer Kaie Kellough. You can hear a sample of his sound poetry here. This episode includes a small excerpt read by Kellough himself (with permission by Kellough). In the “take-away” section, Linda talks about a biography she recently read by Sherrill Grace, about Canadian author Timothy Findley (published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press). If you’d like to know more about sound poetry, and about Kaie Kellough as a sound poet, check out Adam Sol’s blog post about Kellough on “How a Poem Moves.”\n\nGet this episode and more by following Getting Lit with Linda – The Canadian Literature Podcast on all major podcast platforms.\n\n(0:00)\tSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Oh boy. Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n(00:18)\tHannah McGregor\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast, stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb theme music fades]\nMy name is Hannah McGregor.\n(00:36)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd my name is Katherine McLeod, and each month we’ll be bringing you different stories that explore the intersections of sound, poetry, literature, and history created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada.\n(00:50)\tHannah McGregor\tWe have a very special episode for you this month. We’re doing a crossover with friend of the podcast, Linda Morra. I call her ‘friend of the podcast’ because she’s friend of ours, Katherine.\n(01:03)\tKatherine McLeod\tShe is. Linda Morra is a Canadian literature scholar. She does research on Can Lit and archives. And the episode that we’ve chosen for this crossover episode is an early episode from her podcast called Getting Lit with Linda, the Canadian Literature podcast. And it’s an episode that really does a deep dive into a new work of Canadian literature. She does a deep dive into the book, Magnetic Equator, a book of poetry by the Montreal based poet Kaie Kellough. And on this podcast more recently, she’s been speaking with the authors and doing interviews with them and Getting Lit with Linda has become more live.\nBut here we really see her and hear her diving into the work itself and really listening to it, listening to the book, and listening to the sound of the language. When I spoke to Linda about which episode we might choose for this podcast, she recommended we take a listen to this one and I’m really glad that she did because it really is an episode that’s immersed in sound, not only in the sounds of Kaie Kellough’s book, but also in Linda Morra’s sonic world. And the episode actually starts with some terrific sounds of Linda’s coffee maker.\n(02:24)\tHannah McGregor\t[Hannah laughs] It does, and also with the gorgeous sound of Linda’s voice I was really struck when you pointed out to me, Katherine, that this, that Getting Lit with Linda started as a pandemic project. So the podcast started in 2020. As you said, it has grown and developed into conversations with authors about their books. But I really think you hear in this episode that sense of the role that podcasts played for so many of us in the pandemic of creating these threads of connection from our spaces of isolation.\nYou can hear how embedded Linda is in the domestic space from which she’s speaking and she invites you into the sonic landscape of that space with this kind of intimacy and this closeness for, you know, down to everything from the sound of the coffee maker to the sound of her voice, her proximity to the microphone. It feels so intimate, almost cozy, and then sets you up so beautifully to really come with her into this collection of poetry and into the kinds of sonic landscapes that Kaie Kellough is also navigating.\n(03:43)\tKatherine McLeod\tYes, I think that Linda would be terrific on the radio.\n(03:47)\tHannah McGregor\t[Hannah laughs] Absolutely.\n(03:49)\tKatherine McLeod\tI’m saying it on record right here and now. So, yeah, let’s have a listen to this crossover episode, an episode of Linda Morra’s podcast, Getting Lit with Linda, the Canadian literature podcast.\n(04:05)\tHannah McGregor\tAnd this is season two, episode seven, “The Languages and Sounds That are Home; Kaie Kellough’s Magnetic Equator”. \n[SpokenWeb theme music swells and then fades quickly]\n(04:24)\tIntro to Getting Lit with Linda plays:\tLit! Canadian Lit, that is! Join Linda as she talks about authors in Canada and sometimes with them. Using her expertise to shed light on recent and not so recent writers. And now, get set for Getting Lit with Linda!\n(04:40)\tLinda Morra\tHi, this is Linda Mora, the host and writer of Getting Lit with Linda. I’m sipping an espresso this morning, one that was made from my father’s old espresso machine. It’s a fairly unwieldy, almost Victorian era piece of equipment that whistles and groans as it produces my morning coffee. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know what I’m talking about. There’s no reason to use or even to love this particular machine. I’m an espresso aficionado and therefore I have several contemporary machines from which I could choose, but I’m really partial to this one because it’s dialect and its rhythms, however clunky they may seem to others, remind me of when my Italian father was still alive and he loved this machine and he loved his espresso. So I do too. And by the way, in case you wanna know, I take my espresso with a teaspoon of raw sugar and a hint of cinnamon.\nThe machine used to take up a lot of space on his kitchen counter, the very house I also grew up in, although that house is gone now too. Still, the morning espresso wasn’t something we just shared. It provided us with a ritual, a context, meaning, a tacit understanding. So what I have now is the language of this machine, the memories it evokes as it grinds and moans and the comfort it offers me.\nThis story does actually have something to do with today’s poet Kaie Kellough, which I’ll return to by the end. I’m happy to let you know that I have an audio clip by Kellough too today. I’ve actually met him in person at a writer’s event in Montreal, Quebec. I had already heard about his work and I was sufficiently impressed by him as a person to invite him on the spot to come and speak to my students at Bishop’s University.\n(06:29)\tLinda Morra\tHe agreed. And so he came as part of this inaugural event for a Student Writing Weekend in the Eastern Townships, what we were calling SWEET, at which he would perform before about 60 students and faculty members.\nNow, I often have no idea what writers will be like when I invite them to the campus. I do love good writers, of course, but that doesn’t mean I know what to expect for events for the Morris House Reading Series, that’s a literary program that I’ve coordinated for over 14 years. I’ve even learned to be rather cautiously optimistic about which writers I invite because some past experiences were … well, to put it gently, underwhelming. Not all writers feel comfortable presenting their work in public venues – it simply requires a different skill set than, say, writing poetry or a novel in private.\nThe other thing is … well, Lennoxville has its own culture. It’s a fairly English speaking community in a French speaking city in a French-speaking province –Lennoxville is a borough of Sherbrooke – so I never know what I can expect on that side of things either. I just hope I’ve made the right choice and that everyone’s happy.\nSo: back to Kellough in Lennoxville. He apparently meandered about the town before the event and found himself near the train tracks just off campus. And so, at the event proper, he held up a discarded, misshapen steel peg that he found nearby the tracks – it was bent in such a way that it looked like the letter “J” – and then he riffed off that “J” in ways that were completely astounding. The students were mesmerized; the very instant Kellough completed his performance, the students were drawn up and out of their seats; they leapt up together as one and erupted into sustained applause.\n(08:20)\tLinda Morra\tKellough was the point toward which they were all magnetically drawn. I’ve never seen anything like it. Now anyone who has seen him perform the alphabet – yes you heard that right, the alphabet – will have a very good idea of what I’m talking about – if you’re out there wondering what I mean by that, I’ve included a link to one of his performances in the show notes. One of the comments on that page suggests that this particular video is “dope” – and it really IS pretty “lit.”\nThe moment documents the fact that Kellough is, among other things, a practitioner of sound poetry – an adaptation of the expression “word sound power” that comes from Jamaican dub poetry. Sound poetry relies upon the phonetic aspects of human speech, its acoustic properties, and it enjoys these lexical distortions and contortions that draw attention to the sounds of language rather than its meaning—it can, at times, take on singsong-like properties, sometimes sounding rather musical (think of nursery rhymes, but without the recognizable diction), and it certainly makes for a rather rhythmical and fascinating performance. In terms of the Canadian poets, the most famous of these include bp Nichol, Bill Bissett, and Steve McCaffery. Now I know I’m over-simplifying a rather vast body of work: I just want to allude to it briefly, because Kellough is one of its practitioners, although it’s not the focus of my discussion today.\nWhy? Because if we narrow our view to just this aspect of Kellough’s literary production, we’ll greatly limit our understanding of his accomplishments, and of his extraordinary talent and range. Kellough writes poetry and prose – and he’s already published three books of poetry, one novel, and one collection of short stories. Indeed, he sees these genres as informing each other. Even so, it’s not just the range of his output, but the real quality of it too – and  in all genres.\n(10:38)\tLinda Morra\tI’ve said it before in previous episodes that I don’t allow awards to determine what I think about works of literature, but I do think in this case the sheer number of awards that Kellough’s work has attracted are indeed merited. His novel, Accordéon, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and his short story collection Dominoes at the Crossroads won or was shortlisted for so many – include the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal and the Scotiabank Giller Prize – I just stopped counting.\nThe book I’m focusing on today, however, is Magnetic Equator (and in case you’re interested, It did actually win the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize, but that’s not why I chose it). You’ll see why in a moment. Magnetic Equator is divided into 10 parts, which draw upon elements of Kellough’s life—it is at least semi-autobiographical. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, moved to Calgary, where he spent his adolescence, and in adulthood relocated to Montreal, Quebec, where he’s lived since 1998. But the collection doesn’t begin with Vancouver –it reaches back to his ancestral roots, to Guyana, South America, the place from which his maternal grandparents emigrated.\nThis shifting of geographical contexts matters, generally of course, but also specifically when we look at this collection. The multiplicity and complexity of geographical contexts, their respective cultures, at turns, impress and oppress their subjects—how much we take on the colours of our context, that then intermingle when we relocate and migrate, creating new palettes, new hues and tones. It means, of course, that questions of belonging also become more complicated – less easily resolved – and sometimes rendering one’s sense of place in more precarious ways that highlights one’s vulnerability.\nAs one might expect, the cultural influences of Guyana mark Kellough’s upbringing, so that, as he says in an interview with CBC books, he remembers how much it affected so many facets of his life.\n(12:53)\tLinda Morra\thow his grandparents in Canada, for example, prepared Guyanese meals – how “there were pictures and maps of Guyana. There were books by Guyanese authors. Guyana was something that was discussed. It was real, it was an important presence.” Within the collection, he thus speaks about being “inside a narration contrived / to read like non-fiction,” how “one word emigrat[es] from another’s vowels” (11).\nHe draws attention to the connection and intersections between people and language, their lineages and migratory patterns, how we are birthed, not only through biology, but also through inherited narratives and stories.\nThe title is in part a reference to the equator, above which Guyana is only marginally north. If you’re thinking right about now that the title magnetic equator is therefore somehow related to Guayan’s proximity toward the equator, you’d be right. Most of you will know about the earth’s magnetic field lines, the North Magnetic Pole and the South Magnetic Pole, and how the north end of a compass will point downward in the northern hemisphere – that’s called positive dip; when it points upward in the southern hemisphere, that’s called negative dip. However, when the locus of points have zero dip, it is called the magnetic equator. Guyana.\nThe title is suggestive, therefore – that pull towards that equator, toward Guyana, but metaphorically–toward finding one’s cultural lineage or one’s sense of home where the gravitational pull is zero. You won’t be pulled in any direction, when you’re at home. But how do you find home, when you’ve been displaced, or when its physical counterparts and markers have moved or removed?\nIn part, Kellough is reimagining Guyana as one source of his identity – and more broadly speaking, to apprehend those matrices that offer a deeper, richer understanding of identities because, as he observes in interview, “you had all these different cultural groups that came to Guyana and then mixed there.”\n(15:16)\tLinda Morra\tIn an interview about this particular collection, Kellough has said that he sees the multifaceted, complex language of the text itself as offering a kind of context: “language as landscape.” He remarks on its playfulness, its vastness, “a language that holds a variety of different registers at the same time — from more formal English, to slang, to bits of patois and to French.” The collection is above all else about language that’s been marked by diaspora, occasioned by different contexts and experiences, by different cultural lineages and identities.\nHe charts family histories, personal and political, and geography to show how the “density of times past” acts on and produces who we are: “the assemblages of others who are you, a being made of beings.” In reading this part, I immediately thought of the episode on Madeleine Thien and the means by which our bodies are an accumulation of memory, familial, cultural, and political. The interweaving, however, goes beyond that – he even remarks on how “nocturnal insects” intertwine with “our breathing, continuous and shifting, supple, they never stiffen into strict metre, but always evolve.” Of course, this is a reflexive remark that has a bearing on the shape of poetry, that also never stiffens into strict metre, but rather is fluid, allusive, and in flux.\nThe first section is a clear and direct reference to the country: the opening section, in fact, is titled “kaieteur falls,” a direct reference to the tallest single drop waterfall, 226 metres or 741 feet high (that’s about four times higher than Niagara Falls, if you want a point of comparison in Canada and the US). Located in Kaieteur National Park, and a section of the Amazon rainforest, it is clearly also related to Kellough by virtue of his first name – there is a fascinating link to be made here, between person and place, between Kellough and Guyana proper.\nIn the first few poems of the second section, titled “mantra of no return,” Kellough explores the legacies of slavery and of the human cargo carried in ships across the Atlantic, using the holds of these ships as a starting point for larger considerations (as a kind of aside, it made me think of Zong!, that’s the work of another poet whose work I love, M. NourbeSe Philip, and I’ll probably dedicate an entire episode to her in the future): So he observes, “The world is itself a cargo carried in the hold of this verse.” End quote.\n(18:14)\tLinda Morra\tHe suggests here how his verse is both a means of conveyance, and a means of communication—and his subject, not just Guyana, but the globe. His poetry is both indictment and tribute, both memory and  record, both personal and collective.\nThe next section, titled, “high school fever,” is poignant, tracing his adolescence experienced in the Canadian prairies, and the misery of the boy who contemplated suicide in the back seat of a car, quote “breathing carbon monoxide as exodus” end quote; he reminds us that, however much we may be “in” a place, we are not necessarily “of it,” no matter how long we might live there. This is a period that involves Desert Storm, and the Oka crisis, and apartheid, and dance me outside, and Yasser Arafat. It is a time of confusion, anger, experimentation; a time that is interspersed with racial, social ,and  political injustices. But it’s also a time when the poet becomes attentive to racial inequities and injustices, keenly listening to, quote “their black mouths [that] opened over my ears.” End quote.\nIn a section after this, titled “Zero”—strategically located in the centre of the collection—the poet has clearly made his way to Montreal, with its “babel” of voices, the “languages spilling out the summer windows,” although the section really takes a wider view—and not just a perspective that is personal, embracing the totality of experience from BC, to Calgary, to Montreal. No, the view is much wider than that. Here is Kellough, reading a small part from this section:\n(20:06)\tAudio clip of Kaie Kellough reading:\t“The Athabasca Glacier recedes into prehistory, dinosaur ice trickling into time’s crystal and wink, reception weakening the further we from the city, clear static between stations.”\n(20:22)\tLinda Morra\tListening to the mellifluous voice of Kellough is part of the pleasure, I think. The Athabasca glacier is part of the Columbia Icefield, located in the Rockies; and this is therefore an invitation for us to consider a much wider perspective, one that’s expansive, that invites us to go back in time, so that we may assume a broader view. The fact that this section is titled “zero” is pertinent, in view of the title of the collection. Remember: when the locus of points have a zero dip, we are at the magnetic equator. But how do we arrive there? How do we produce the “unity of worlds,” to quote the title of the last section of this book? How does Kellough arrive there – when there are multiple story lines and histories and contexts, geographical and otherwise? In the case of this collection, through his own language—the magnetic centre point.\n  And more broadly, through a language that is textured, that resonates and nudges at the conscious and unconscious mind, that provides us with story, history, lineage, context, a sense of belonging even in physical displacement, our magnetic equator—even if it does just happen to be, in my case, an old, clunky old espresso machine that whispers about a life and a memory that remain a part of who I am.\n[Upbeat jazz music fades in and fades out when Morra begins to talk]\nThis is the takeaway section of the episode. I want to recommend to you today a biography I’ve been reading. It’s about novelist Timothy Finley, and it’s titled Tiff by Cheryl Grace. I’ve been reading several biographies of late because of my own research to write the biography of Jane Rule.\nSo the first thing that I can tell you is that this book is beautifully researched and written. A good biography needs to tell a well-researched story, and so the second part of that equation, the story also needs to be well-crafted as it is in this case. The story’s well told because Grace clearly cared about her subject, not just about Finley’s work and contributions as a writer, although those are also foregrounded. She weaves in these great details about Finley’s life, his real love for the environment, his engagement with human rights and his own personal struggles with depression, which consistently held my attention.\nHope Against Despair was one of his mottoes, and it’s one that I’ve personally been carrying around with me ever since I read it. Generally, Grace has created this evocative portrait of Timothy Finley, a writer who’s left a legacy in literature in Canada. [Theme music begins to play quietly in background]\nThat’s it for today’s episode. Please join me in two weeks time when I speak about Lorena Gale’s, Je me souviens. Thanks for joining me.\n(23:16)\tOutro to Getting Lit with Linda plays:\tThat was Getting Lit with Linda, hosted by Linda Morra. If you have a topic you would like to see covered, write to us at gettinglitwithlinda@gmail.com. Until next time, we hope you continue to get lit!\n(23:43)\tKatherine McLeod\t[SpokenWeb theme music begins to play and fades] The SpokenWeb Podcast is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada.\n(23:57)\tHannah McGregor\tThis month we’ve featured episode seven from season two of Getting Lit with Linda, written and hosted by Linda Morra and co-produced by Marco Timpano. Our supervising producer is Maia Harris. Our sound designer is James Healy, and our transcription is done by Zoe Mix.\n(24:12)\tKatherine McLeod\tTo find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media at SpokenWebCanada.\nStay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds out.\nSpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:\t[plays and fades out]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9649","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S5 Trailer, Welcome to Season 5!, 18 September 2023, Harris, Healy, McGregor, McLeod and Mix"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-5/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 5"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Maia Harris","James Healy","Hannah Mcgregor","Katherine McLeod","Zoe Mix"],"creator_names_search":["Maia Harris","James Healy","Hannah Mcgregor","Katherine McLeod","Zoe Mix"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Maia Harris\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"James Healy\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/20153713810358661443\",\"name\":\"Hannah Mcgregor\",\"dates\":\"1984-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Zoe Mix\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/6511fd80-29e0-41f2-8ad9-dda3420119fd/audio/a6369593-95d4-46c0-a56e-c005845f0179/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"trailer-v5-master.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:02:47\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"2,675,682 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"trailer-v5-master\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/welcome-to-season-5/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-09-18\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"contents":["The SpokenWeb Podcast is back for another season as we continue our quest to uncover “what literature sounds like.”\n\nWith a whole new line-up of episodes created by researchers across the SpokenWeb network, we’ll explore the sounds of translation, the act of uncertain listening, audio pedagogy, the intersection of computing, voice, and poetics, and much much more.\n\nOur fearless host Katherine McLeod is back and will be joined by Hannah McGregor, host of Seasons 1-3. Welcome back Hannah!\n\nWe have something for everyone curious about the affordances of literature, sound, history, and the amorphous “archive,” so join us for monthly episodes of innovative audio scholarship.\n\nSubscribe to The SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And don’t forget to rate us and send us a shout! Cheers to Season 5 ~\n\n(00:03)\tHannah McGregor\t[Soft strummed guitar music plays and ends]\nWhat does the SpokenWeb podcast sound like?\n\n(00:10)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Quiet percussion music begins to play] In the fourth season of the SpokenWeb podcast, we conversed with a living archive.\n(00:15)\tComputerized Voice\tHello, and welcome to the Fred Wah Digital Archive.\n(00:19)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe listened to firsthand perspectives on living with wildfires in the Okanagan Valley.\n(00:24)\tSharon Thesen\tBy the time, I think, they started trying to put it out, it was out of control.\n(00:29)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe dove deeper into the sounds of data.\n(00:32)\tAdegbola\tHow much more a role will language play in the information age?\n(00:36)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe asked, what is sound design?\n(00:40)\tMiranda\tText, forms, travel, forms constrained, various forms overlap and intersect.\n(00:46)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe explored the impact of recording technology on how poetry finds its audiences.\n(00:53)\tFred Wah\tIn those days, that was really a surprise to be able to hear the voice of a poet who you had been reading off the page.\n(01:01)\tKatherine McLeod\tWe considered the stakes of inviting audiobooks into the literary classroom.\n(01:06)\tJentery\tWe might want to, for good reason, debunk the idea that listening is cheating or that, you know, books are not meant to be listened to.\n(01:12)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd we heard what libraries actually sound like.\n(01:15)\tDan Hackborn\tLike [Dan makes a nasally “wah” sound with his mouth] and like a [Dan makes a continuous “thunk” sound with his mouth].\n(01:20)\tKatherine McLeod\tOh, and we also went to talk therapy. [Percussion music ends abruptly]\n(01:25)\tPhone Voice 2\tOkay, well, why don’t you start by telling me how long you’ve been feeling this way.\n(01:30)\tKatherine McLeod\t[Percussion music begins again] My name is Katherine McLeod and I’m the voice behind Shortcuts on the SpokenWeb podcast feed. And I’ve been the solo host of the SpokenWeb podcast for this past season. This season I’ll be joined by Hannah McGregor, who is back. Yes, you might recognize her voice as the host of seasons one through three. Welcome back, Hannah.\n(01:51)\tHannah McGregor\tThank you, Katherine. It’s great to be back. And I am so excited to co-host season five with you and to work with our new production team: supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer James Healey, and returning transcriber Zoe Mix.\n(02:10)\tHannah McGregor\tThis season we’ll continue exploring what literature sounds like with all news stories from researchers across the SpokenWeb Network. We’ll explore the sounds of translation, the act of uncertain listening, audio pedagogy, the intersection of computing voice and poetics, and much more. Subscribe to The SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And join us for season five. [Percussion music ends and guitar strumming music plays and then ends]\n"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[]"],"_version_":1853670549763391488,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","score":2.6319342},{"id":"9666","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 4.3, ShortCuts Live! Talking with Faith Paré about the Atwater Poetry Project Archives, 20 February 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-faith-pare-about-the-atwater-poetry-project-archives/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/f7991804-23c4-4608-8996-9b9b7fdce603/audio/7eb476a2-d59e-403b-bb78-019d065205d9/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-4-3.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:26:52\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"25,802,336 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-4-3\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-faith-pare-about-the-atwater-poetry-project-archives/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-02-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Draft transcript"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"The Atwater Poetry Project, https://www.atwaterlibrary.ca/events/atwater-poetry-project/\\n\\n“Performing the Atwater Poetry Project Archives, guest curated by Katherine McLeod and Klara du Plessis, featuring the sounds of poets from the APP archives,” 20 February 2023, https://spokenweb.ca/events/performing-the-atwater-poetry-project-archive/\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549787508736,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["ShortCuts presents another episode of ShortCuts Live! This month’s episode was recorded as a live conversation on Zoom with the current curator of the Atwater Poetry Project, Faith Paré. As a former SpokenWeb undergraduate RA, Faith’s SpokenWeb contributions have included editorial and curatorial work on Desire Lines; an interview with Kaie Kellough on SPOKENWEBLOG; performing as a spoken word poet in Black Writers Out Loud; leading a virtual listening practice on Black noise; and reading her poetry at SpokenWeb’s “Sounding Undernames” at Blue Metropolis. This is all to say that Faith had a wealth of experience to draw upon when, as a curator, she was handed a folder of poetry recordings.\n\nHow to reactivate the archival past of the Atwater Poetry Project? What is it like to curate the past and future of a reading series? Find out by listening to ShortCuts Live! A conversation with Katherine McLeod and Faith Paré about the Atwater Poetry Project archives.\n\n[Music begins]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Welcome to ShortCuts. This month on ShortCuts, we’re here – live – on Zoom with the Atwater Poetry Project curator Faith Paré. Faith joins me for this conversation to talk about the Atwater Poetry Project archives. These archives are community archives that are being integrated into SpokenWeb in order to preserve them and to make them more discoverable. As part of the Atwater Poetry Project’s programming, Faith reached out to me and Klara du Plessis to see if we’d be interested in curating an event for the Atwater Poetry Project that would activate play and remix the archives in ways that would be both performative and also exploratory. What could we make with these archives? What would it be like to re-listen to clips from this reading series in the very same place in which it has always taken place? Klara and I will be undertaking this performance of the Atwater Poetry Project Archives on the same night that this shortcuts is released. And with all of our conversations about this event with faith, it felt like a shortcuts conversation every time we talked about it. And so I had to get some of those conversations on tape. Hi, Faith, thanks for joining me here today on ShortCuts Live!\n\nFaith Paré: Thanks for having me again, Katherine. It’s really a pleasure.\n\n[Music ends]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Thank you so much. And it really is a ShortCuts Live! By the fact that my three month old daughter is also here with me, and she has already been making a few noises, and she’ll be making some noises throughout. And, for long time ShortCuts listeners, you’ll remember that back in season two, the voice of a poet’s young daughter has already been heard on ShortCuts, so we welcome sounds like that here.\n\nSo, just to give listeners a little bit of background, the Atwater Poetry Project was started by poet Oana Avasilichioaei in 2004. Since then, the series has hosted over 300 poetry readings by established and emerging Canadian poets. The curators of the series have been Avasilichioaei, then it was Katia Grubisic, followed by Darren Bifford, then Simon Jory Steven-Gillie, and Charlotte Harrison, followed by Deanna Radford, then Rachel McCrum. And now you, Faith Paré. What was it like to take on this role as curator of the Atwater Poetry Project? What was most exciting at the start?\n\nFaith Paré: That’s a great question of kind of trying to boil down what the role specifically is because I think by nature and also by the fact that arts administration is so all encompassing and often such a juggle of what you need to do, it changes so often. I think fundamentally it is about trying to listen to your surroundings, I think, and be perceptive to what’s happening,and the different strains of literary existence that are going on around you. And keeping in mind that I am not trying to make it sound too much like following trends but rather trying to kind of put together a larger story of what a poetry scene essentially is – and the different networks and interconnections and entanglements that make that and conflicts. So fundamentally, I think it is about listening, but it’s also about wanting to listen to not only to the kind of literary city around me but also to what people are, might be looking for in the audience as well. But I do have to say it’s a big act to follow coming after, particularly Rachel and the amazing way that she was able to engage, transition, first of all audiences online and then engage them so well. And really try and think about the expansiveness of the online reading form as its own phenomenon, not just as like just something to fill in until we’re back in-person.\n\nKatherine McLeod: You took on the role when it was still online on Crowdcast, which Rachel had started during her time as curator in the Pandemic. And that really was an opportunity to think about the way that the Atwater Poetry Project does always program two readers. So there is this conversation between the two readers, but it seemed that at least to me, that when during Rachel’s curation and then into your curation, there’s really this emphasis on the relationships between those two poets.\n\nFaith Paré: Yeah, totally. And I think it goes back again to the heart of poets are just people, often it’s two poets. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. It depends on the kind of event. Particularly I’m thinking about a great reading back in January, 2022. One of my first ones with Gillian Sze who, this was a very important reading for me because she, even though this gig was booked before my time, she’s been a long time mentor of mine in poetry as well as Rebecca Păpacaru. And both of them have wanted to read alongside each other for a long time, but hadn’t had the chance. And during that reading, they would actually they started to read work from their books based on what the previous person had done, because there was a line or an image or a theme that reminded them of something that made them go, oh, I’m actually going to change things up a bit, but I think this might actually fit together really well.\n\nAnd I love that quality of being able to kind of echo each other or answer to each other in this very particular environment for the one, one-night-only quality. Another early reading that I organized was with Tolu Oloruntoba, who’s based on the west coast and with Montreal spoken word artist Jason Blackbird, Salman. Both of them work in very different fields, but I thought about their particular kind of tender, quiet thundering, essentially of their voices together for a really long time. And even though they hadn’t met each other before, they checked out each other’s work and were even saying to each other that they felt like there was a really strong resonance there. So that’s, that’s the really exciting thing for me to also bring together strangers and be able to introduce them and be like, it’s kind of like a dinner party or something, <laugh> being able to be like, I know a lot about you two and I think you guys would actually get along. And it’s a really awesome opportunity when you’re right! <Laugh>.\n\nKatherine McLeod: So this takes us to the archives and I’m interested in, you know, what it’s been like as the, you know, the curator of this series to also be handed these archives. What are these archives?\n\nFaith Paré: The APP archives are interesting, I think, for me as a former or SpokenWeb RA, in that they’re all digital. <Laugh>, Which, you know, sounds kind of silly and mundane to say perhaps, but because so much of our work at the research network has been thinking through questions around, you know, how do we take analog materials, sometimes very fragile analog materials, and then transfer them into the digital, the ways that things can be gained, but also lost in that transformation that allows for for more distribution and disperse all those materials discoverability. But what does like the, the materiality of the object also do? Well? These these archives and recording from the beginning were digital. They were done on Zoom recorders. And they were, I think another thing that became a kind of inherited foundational part of the series by accident that somebody else was, when curators started, I’m not even sure exactly who from the timeline that I do have.\n\nI believe Katia Grubisic was the one who was starting to do it more regularly. Though I believe Oana may have also had some recordings as well. This is also part of the journey with this as I’m trying to fill in missing pieces. But basically from what I have, it seems like the series started to be regularly recorded in 2010. This was also really firmly embraced by the library too, in thinking about the Atwater Library and Computer Center’s mandate – their mission is widespread education on digital literacy particularly for working class and elderly communities who are often left behind when it comes to digital literacy education. And also in just the mandate of being a library for the public, making those materials available. And I think it was kind of forward thinking of them, particularly because so much of event culture and the inc excitement of event culture is the one-night-only quality.\n\nYes. But also  the availability of these archival recordings uploaded onto the website after the fact means greater accessibility. It means an archive for the poets or attendees to return to and revisit a means discoverability. It means bolstering a CV, potentially, because you have a recording. It means being able to find a piece that, you know, you were trying to track down. I’m a poet, but you can’t remember the name, and then you stumble across it again in an audio piece. It’s and it’s also being able to capture and preserve the, the interesting experiments of the one night only and be able to reverberate that through time. This collaboration with spoken w will finally allow its these MP3s to get a little bit out of the Montreal bubble and more into a, a national context, especially as we really pride ourselves from about bringing poets from all across the country\n\nKatherine McLeod: That makes me think of times when being at the Atwater readings and hearing, say, Deanna Radford say that, you know, the evening’s being recorded. And it made me think about the extent to which the audience and the poets are aware of the night being recorded, and whether that makes a difference or not. Often when they would say that you know, I’d sort of think to myself, oh, right, it’s being recorded, but I wasn’t very necessarily aware of the recording taking place. And so it’s still, it just felt like that information was there, but I soon forgot <laugh>. And I guess I wondered whether you have any sense, actually maybe the transition online and then back to in person whether there’s a… to what extent does the fact that it’s being recorded influence the event?\n\nFaith Paré: I really love that question. And it, it expands on some of my own thinking that I’ve done with Jason Camlot and Carlos Pittella about some of the new collections at Spoken Web like the Enough Said series which I was working on for a while, alongside Carlos, which is a video collection – one of the first video collections I believe, in the network. We were thinking particularly about the fact that, you know, what, what does this do to the poet’s performance and the way that people carry themselves in the space and also what does it do for I guess the, the person who’s perceiving the event afterward. So we were thinking along, along the lines of the wave Enough Said, for example, was a performance poetry series mostly was really embracing an ethos of spoken word and like a kind of first big wave of, you know, acknowledging different kinds of performed traditions of poetry under a kind of umbrella of spoken word in Montreal.\n\nAnd the fact that was video recorded allowed for people to not only to capture the dynamic choreography that can occur in different performances. You can also see how people are reacting to a work, which is huge. You can perceive what the environment was like in a way that it’s clearly laid out in front of you visually, or sometimes audio-wise, it could be more difficult to perceive, you know, what is that moving? Is that share, is that a desk? Is it getting in the way of something? Is it part of the, the main goings on of, or the stage goings on of the evening? Or is that to the side? It is a different level of information that is being communicated, and it means that people can sometimes be more complicated in what they’re portraying.\n\n: But what I really have loved about audio recording and I think spoken web is really ingrained this in me is the kind of fly on the wall quality that an audio recording has, that I think there is an element just somehow, maybe it’s because in some ways sound isn’t perceived as with the same kind of surveillance quality as the visual in our contemporary period. Sometimes it can, sometimes it’s not perceived in that way. There’s, there’s something about the audio recorder being its own listener too, or maybe the a signal of future listeners to come, it fades comfortably into the background. A of course, you know, there are poets where they may hate the sound of their voice, or maybe they wanna read something that particular night that feels like a risk for them. And they don’t wanna release it for, to the, to the public afterward because they, they wanna keep that private to the, the space that they were in.\n\nOr maybe they are sound practitioners and because sound is their main way of working, they might want to develop a piece and they’re actually like, well, I don’t want to release this audio yet because I might be releasing this piece on a, on a record soon. So those are also ways that audio can have stakes that makes it incompatible with some poet’s practice, and wanting to acknowledge that. But there’s, there’s something about the series where people seem kind of genuinely excited or just maybe just perfectly fine and relieved with having another ear in the room. I think this is also a testament to the way that previous curators have been really gentle and caring and genuine with poets of checking in with what they want to share, what they don’t want to share, like having that ability to go back and forth make that dynamic relationship between curator and poet. Something that doesn’t have to exist as like this permanent archival object forever, you know?\n\nAnd I think there is an interesting switch when the pandemic happened and Crowdcast became the main platform for the APP, which now was involved, you know a level of intimacy for a lot of people of you are not on the same kind of level of engagement, I guess, in that you can’t see the audience staring back at you, at least on the Crowdcast platform. You are kind of alone with your screen and the other poets and the curator who may also be on screen, and depending on person you are who might hate that, it cuts off, you know, your body from like, you know, your chest to your head. So if you are, or you’re someone who does a lot of choreography in your work, you might reasonably be frustrated.\n\nIf you play instrumentation enjoying your work, you might recently be frustrated, but you also might feel more confident in if you’re a quieter person, you worried about, if you worry about being perceived, if, like the idea of a, a full house freaks you out, being able to have your work listened to and appreciated, but without the pressure of having pairs of eyes look at you might also be a relief and a welcome kind of gesture. I think what I’ve been learning more and more about this down this curation journey is like, there is really no perfect way of being able to host an event, but also to document an event even in a live event because of the kinds of people you could be leaving out that there are so many people who want to be, be able to enjoy poetry, but we’re unable for different ways and different ways and means.\n\n: So there’s no perfect way of documenting these, but how do you contend with the particular stakes, challenges and materials that you have? But I do have to say, being able to be back in the auditorium, and particularly with the sound recorder is something that I’ve personally really enjoyed just because of the way that the, the sound recorder can be a little less intimidating than like, perhaps a big DSLR lens in your face that a videographer and big camera recording equipment in the space might do.\n\nKatherine McLeod: I think a video can sometimes almost give this illusion as if, as if this is what it looked like if you were there. And in fact, no, it only looked like that to that one field of vision going through that camera lens. And I love how audio we’re so, we’re just so aware that we’re getting, we’re getting sound, we’re getting a sense of the room, the voices, but there’s so much that we also are not hearing and we’re not seen, and we’re not sensing, we’re not feeling, and that because we’re so aware of those, the lack of that we also don’t trick ourselves into thinking that we have everything. And I think that’s something when listening to the recordings that I was certainly, I was drawn to recordings that really you could almost hear the room and you could almost hear the, whether it’s like kind of the, the, the voice echoing through the room or else moments of, of applause or laughter or the poets directly speaking to the audience. And even still in those moments when listening, we have to do a lot of work in order to really imagine what it would be like to be there listening. And here I’m thinking about, there’s a moment when Tawhida Tanya Evanson speaks directly to the audience from her reading in 2016…\n\nArchival audio of Tawhida Tanya Evanson, from the Atwater Poetry Project, 2016:\n\nApplause is this crazy habit we have, and it’s a beautiful thing, but maybe just a moment of silence with the eyes closed can also be beautiful. If you’ll indulge, if you’ll indulge me, please close your eyes for a moment and just take a deep breath on your own. [Deep breath.]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Suddenly we’re then imagining that room and we’re imagining that space and what it would’ve looked like and felt like to be there. A last question here is, what’s next? What’s next for the Atwater Poetry Project archives? What are some of the next steps?\n\nFaith Paré: So I think at this point, I’ve collated the best I can in a version one, essentially of the files that we have. And part of my personal next steps is to be able to knock on the doors digital doors, but also possibly literal doors of previous curators looking for missing digital files or things that were linked on the website, but broken. So I have currently <laugh>, you know, I, I have about all just around 200 readings just so far recordings from from 2010 to the present. And there are still a lot more that are to be, you know, found or collated or at least declared, never recorded or pote like lost and, you know, we’ll see if it ever comes up again. But I think, you know, next steps are really to allow the, the Montreal team to, to give the, the files more of a listen, you know, you and Clara have been the people to really take a most of a listen to ’em so far.\n\nBut to be able to have more fresh ears on it and think about our approaches of how do we want to make this discoverable and how do we want to continue animating these recordings? What is important to transcribe and document and these recordings? And even just thinking about like, the fact that previously these were there, there was a kind of mixture of how, like these recordings were categorized by both, by both pe like the people who are reigning, but also kind of by event. I think also one thing that is important to me as I, you know, I think about where we go next is the ways, or the ways that, how do we bring in poets who have animated our space and acknowledge the kind of work that they, they have done, and and the way that they have made the series into what it is today.\n\nThat’s why I feel really excited about this project, particularly and your performative performed curation digging back into the archives, I think one thing I said really early on is that I don’t want this to feel like just some kind of like, narrow celebration of the E p p, you know it’s really important to me that this is a kind of laboratory for, you know, ex exploring the ways that poetry can sound different presences, but also the ways that others are silenced or muted. And the ways that, you know, I think as a reading series, I, I wanna believe that my job is perhaps complimentary, but also different from the role of like the publishing industry, for example. The publishing industry particularly is interested in having a new kind of cohort of people who are brought to the table with new work every year.\n\nAnd that’s all great and fantastic. We all love new work, but also wanting to think about who has been at the table with us for a while. I think, you know, one of the most genuinely moving emails that we’ve, we’ve gone so far was a message from Gerry Shikatani, who is an amazing Japanese Canadian writer, sound performer, experimentalist – also food writer and critic – and that we’ve had different scholars at Spoken Web right on his work, and it was brought to my attention by you and Klara that you wanted to weave his work into this piece and writing him for permissions and seeing how genuinely touched he was to be involved in this work that he said, paraphrasing, that he was really honoured, that people were still thinking about the kind of work that he was doing, you know, over a decade ago was something that felt important to me, really struck at the heart of what I want a reading series to do, that it’s not just a, a space for people to pass through, but really a place of return, of being able to come back and think about work, think about community, think about previous writers who have impacted us.\n\nKatherine McLeod: What a generative approach to the archive and to the series. Thank you so much for, for talking about it in this short, short conversation – ShortCuts Live!\n\n[Music begins]\n\nFaith Paré: Thank you. And I’m, I’m really hoping that folks may be able, if they are in Montreal, to come out to your event debuting this engagement with the archive on Monday, February 20th 7:00 PM the Adair Auditorium at the Atwater Library and Computer Center. It will be in the show notes, I’m sure I will, I will send all the appropriate deeds. Hopefully we will also have it recorded in some kind of way for that preservation as well, and to also add this into its own kind of archival place too. So I really appreciate being here and I really appreciate your work so far on this. Thank you so much.\n\nKatherine McLeod: Thank you so much. Faith.\n\n[Music ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9667","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 4.4, ShortCuts Live! Talking with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya, 20 March 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-ariel-kroon-nick-beauchesne-and-chelsea-miya/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/f8ce0167-1805-4a05-8efd-481726b7058c/audio/c98427aa-fbf2-4d5e-aa26-9ccef9fd9cb9/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sc-4-4.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:17:44\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"17,031,044 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sc-4-4\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-ariel-kroon-nick-beauchesne-and-chelsea-miya/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-03-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"content_notes":["Draft transcript"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"“Academics on Air.” Produced by Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya. The SpokenWeb Podcast, 2 May 2022, https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/academics-on-air/.\\n\\n“‘A Voice of One’s Own’: Making (Air)Waves about Gendered Language in 1980s Campus Radio.” Presentation by Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya. SpokenWeb Symposium 2022: The Sound of Literature in Time, a Graduate Symposium. Concordia University, 16 May 2022.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549788557312,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! It is a conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya about their collaboration in producing “Academics on Air” (May 2022) for The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode became a paper that Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea co-presented at the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. After that presentation, ShortCuts producer Katherine McLeod sat down with Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea around a microphone in the SpokenWeb Amp Lab at Concordia University. They talked about processes of collaboration and archival listening that shaped their work. Starting with one audio clip as the short ‘cut’ that caught their attention in the archives, they talk about about context of that clip in the Voiceprint archives, the potential for podcasting to be a radical act of unarchiving, and what makes recordings of a radio show a unique task for cataloguers working with literary sounds recordings, and much more.\n\n[Music]\n\nKatherine McLeod: This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! It is a conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya about their collaboration in producing the episode “Academics on Air” for The SpokenWeb Podcast. That episode was released in May 2022. And that episode became a paper that they co-presented at the SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute also in May 2022. After that presentation, I sat down with Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea around a microphone in the SpokenWeb Amp Lab at Concordia University. We talked about the collaboration and archival listening that shaped their work. Starting with one audio clip as the short ‘cut’ that caught their attention in the archives, they talk about about context of that clip in the Voiceprint archives, the potential for podcasting to be a radical act of unarchiving, and what makes recordings of a radio show a unique task for cataloguers working with literary sounds recordings, and much more. Plus we hear three collaborators finally talking, and laughing, in the same room together. You can hear a bit of the room’s hum but hey that’s all part of ShortCuts Live!…\n\n \n\n[Music ends]\n\nKatherine McLeod: Just as you’re talking, I was like, oh this sounds great. I’m –.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne, Ariel Kroon, Chelsea Miya: <laugh> <laugh>.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Oh good!\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Check the –\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Just pull a Jars and just turn it on and just start interviewing before we know it\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Yeah, exactly….\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Right.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod:I’m going do the same thing that I have done for the other ones that I’ve done this week, which is actually go into “podcast voice” to do the opening <laugh>. I feel like somehow you need headphones to go into podcast voice…\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Yeah.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: You gotta put it on… as part of the suit.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Exactly. <laugh> <laugh> I’m going stay present with you, with the three of you here… So, we’ll start…\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Welcome to Shortcuts. On this ShortCuts, we’re recording live at the SpokenWeb Sound Institute. I’d like to thank Chelsea and Ariel and Nick for joining me on this Shortcuts Live! We’re recording this one in the AMP Lab on the sixth floor of the Library Building at Concordia University. We’re surrounded by audio equipment and silence… So thank you for joining me. Would you like to just say hello and introduce yourself on the mic? Go ahead, Nick.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Hello, I’m Nick Beauchesne. I teach at TRU in Kamloops and the University of Alberta in Edmonton.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Hi, I’m Ariel Kroon. I am an RA on the SpokenWeb U Alberta team.\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: I’m Chelsea Miya, and I’m a postdoc at U Alberta with SpokenWeb.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Thank you. So the three of you just presented a paper this week at the SpokenWeb Symposium and the audio clip that we’ll be listening to today and we’ll be using to inform and guide our conversation is a clip that you played in that presentation. So, to start our conversation, I’d like to play that clip and to listen to it together.\n\n \n\nArchival Audio: [Sound quality makes it audible that archival audio is playing.] A main issue that I’m concerned with, especially as it relates to language, is what kinds of assumptions do people have about sex rules that they don’t recognize? And language is a tremendous carrier of those assumptions, but we don’t know how to self-examine them. Yes, people are beginning to realize that there is a male culture, there’s a female culture, and culture and language are terribly intertwined. But the question is, where have we not even learned how to look and where is it that people are resisting looking? I mean, if you say to somebody, the pronouns you use say tremendous amounts about your beliefs and your culture, people will laugh at you.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Alright, so could you tell me and listeners what we’re listening to?\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: So, that was a clip from the Voiceprint episode, “A Room and a Voice of One’s Own.” Voice Print was a campus radio show that was produced between, I think, 1979 to 83, 84, so about four or five years. It was hosted and produced by a student, Jars Balan, who was in the English Department at that time and was really embedded in poetry culture and all the really cool scholarship and creative works that were happening at University of Alberta. There’s also a bit of background about the history of campus radio at that time, which is really cool, and which we talk about a lot in our podcast episode. But what we actually came to present on was this specific episode on women’s voices and on gendered language, which really stood out to us, all of us when we were listening to the archive and to that episode in particular.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Yeah, well, I was just going to add to that we are recording this in an English department – we’re recording a podcast in an English department – and that radio show was made through an English department. Yes, but, you were saying in the presentation, it wasn’t recorded in an English department?\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: No, it was actually Jars’s studio was in the basement of the biology building on the University of Alberta campus. And it was not just the basement – it was the basement below the basement. So they were down quite a ways and he talked about how guests found it very odd, and a little bit intimidating, to go visit him there, and so they would try to put them at ease, and that was just very, very cool for all of us to hear.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: That was a clip from Jo-Ann Kolmes, and she came on as a guest. She was working as an editor for academic papers. I think maybe an academic journal. And so she was really talking about her practice of feminist editing at the time, and we were so fascinated by what she had to say because it struck us as very resonant and relevant to discussions that are all around us today. And though, back in 1981, they were definitely still talking about gender firmly within the binary of he/she, and, and now we have recognized and there is a linguistic recognition of – that there’s much more out there than the binary, and so language is adapting to that. So we found that extremely fascinating, the way that it speaks to issues today.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod:Yeah. And especially how it came out of feminist editing, as you said. That seems to resonate. [as] even in this conference, we heard a paper by Sarah Cipes talking about feminist editing in audio. And so it’s really interesting that Joanne’s thinking about this was coming from the perspective of editing. You’ve now done a presentation on this audio clip and the Voiceprint recordings that it’s from – the Voiceprint Radio show, that it’s from – you have made a podcast episode for The SpokenWeb Podcast. You’ve attended a listening party for that episode. I’m wondering, for the three of you, what has really stood out in those experiences?\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: I think for me, like what really stood out was… the pleasures and joys and frustrations of working collaboratively with Nick and Ariel and how great it was to do something other than an academic paper, especially after two years of being in isolation, sequestered in my room doing, finishing my dissertation. I’m sure like a lot of people in various professions, but in academia especially it’s isolating being a grad student at any time but during COVID it was especially so. Being able to like have the three of us be brought together for this project was so much fun. And I got so much like energy and like inspiration from, from their different ideas and from learning how to work with people who have different ideas about audio and, and we, all of us brought different, I think, strengths and and perspectives to the experience.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: I think –\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Go ahead.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Yeah, no, I, I think it was very interesting because, as you mentioned, for grad students, especially of English literature, we’re not used to working with other people. And so it was very eye-opening to work on what is traditionally a solitary endeavour along with other people. But then have the added complicated factor of we were all in different provinces–\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: – while we were putting this together. And so we couldn’t, well, we could, we could meet on Zoom simultaneously, but we couldn’t be in the same space editing audio together. And we couldn’t just – I couldn’t just look over and say: Hey Nick, do you mind if I do this and this and this to this clip? Or Hey Chelsea, what do you think about my research into such and such? You know, it was very collaborative and yet at the same time not collaborative because it was so difficult to work with that space between us. And so I was really glad that we were all here together finally at the SpokenWeb conference.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Yeah, I’ve never presented a paper with like other co-authors before – and we split our paper so to read different sections, but also our different roles. Ariel did a lot of like the research and tracking down of documents and tracking down audio clips and that sort of stuff. Chelsea did a lot of like the main kind of composition for our script for like the podcast, and I did a lot of the technical stuff for the editing. I’ve never really been responsible for this. I’m just a useless singer. I’m used to – so for me to step back from, from the limelight and do more technical behind the scenes work as part of the podcast was fun, but also reading the paper, sharing that with other people. And then we all wrote the paper together. So that felt a little more kind of balanced in the sense that our roles maybe weren’t as specialized as they were for the podcast.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: So that was a really great experience.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Yeah, I was interested in that too. The way that often collaboration, um, might take the form of, um, of an article that you write together, but in this case, the first thing that you made together was a podcast episode… And then maybe the paper was closer to maybe a print based –\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: – publication. That’s interesting to hear sort of the roles shifting or how that work pans out and it’s shared.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Well, you know, Klara, Jason, if you’re making a book, call me, call us!\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Yes, it’s possible that you might be collaboratively writing an article <laugh> as the next step of this, which is exciting because it shows how these ideas started in a podcast episode of scholarly research and it will eventually take the form of a print article. Often the print article gets put on a hierarchy above the other, but if you hadn’t made one, you couldn’t get to that other stage. I think starting with the podcast too allowed you to really dive into the sound and think about multiple sound clips and also really reflect on what the podcast is doing as academic scholarship. Which I think you all did so brilliantly in the episode and also in the Listening Party too, really reflecting on what you are doing as academics in making this podcast alongside reflecting on what those who made Voiceprint were doing within an academic institution, which is really a fascinating parallel.\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Yeah. It’s interesting too, like podcasting as this sort of radical act of de-archiving, in that we talk a lot about close listening at SpokenWeb, but I mean – and you do that when you’re doing like time codes and timestamps – but to create something from that, you really listen to it and it becomes like part of you, you ingest it and create something out of it in a way that you don’t necessarily do when you’re doing the sort of laborious, tedious work of digitizing something and creating metadata for it. So, and which is good and valuable work, but it can sometimes be like monkey work in that the focus is more on like doing the sort of repetitive tedious tasks that are removed from actual thoughtful intellectual engagement with your materials. And doing this podcast was a way, I think, at least for me, it felt like so great to be engaging with the material in a different way.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Yeah. Those repetitive, tedious tasks definitely prepared us for doing all that we needed to do for this podcast in terms of close listening and honestly just in terms of discovering that it was there at all. When I first joined SpokenWeb, I started digitizing these radio shows, and at that time we didn’t really have any sort of schema for digitizing them because all of the sort of like accepted practices were for poetry readings. And so I was there as this new RA looking at what had been done before and saying: None of this fits, none of these categories work for this. Oh no, what, what do I do with it? And so it started as this problem. And only later was I, or were we, sort of able to get a little bit more deep into the sound of it and the content of that sound.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: Mm-hmm <affirmative>\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: It’s surprising and incredible in how generative the material is. So you start off, yeah. So I mean, I did a lot of time-stamping before I did anything intellectual and fun, like what we just did. And it’s like, you know, you listen to all, like, first of all, going to the archive to discover this stuff at the University of Albert Alberta archives, which is where we found this, not from the English department closet, like most of our other stuff, so it’s a different archive. We have to track it down. I have to make an acquisition list. Mike approves it. We get the material, it goes to digitization, we get it, we split it in three. So we all time-stamp different episodes of Voiceprint, and that’s when we all kind of fell in love with the show <laugh> and became fans.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: And then from there, yeah, then you go to making a podcast episode, doing ShortCuts, making, writing a paper, presenting that paper. And it just keeps growing and growing, growing. I mean, we interviewed Jars, we interviewed Terri Wynnyk – his production assistant and a female sound tech, which is very rare for radio shows in the eighties – we interviewed all Brian Fateaux, Stacey Copeland –\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Jennifer Waits\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Yeah. We interviewed all these people. We got hours of the interview footage and, and most of it wasn’t used, but it just expands and expands.\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: And the conversations with all those people that all came from the archival listening that you were doing. Also, I love the fact that Voiceprint brought you together, <laugh>. I think that’s – I was wondering how you had it first encountered these archival recordings. And so that’s really beautiful hearing that. And also, um, the way that Voiceprint as a radio show was also so embedded within literary communities and just really a show that had so many writers on – and that was something I was really struck by, in listening to the podcast episode, and I can only imagine how many more conversations could come out of the Voiceprint archive –.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,\n\n \n\nKatherine McLeod: – around the recordings of writers and conversations. It also sounded very much like interdisciplinary work too, like talking to people, you know, across disciplines and inviting them into that studio and having those conversations. So I’m excited to hear what else comes out of the Voiceprint archives. So I think that’s a good note to conclude our conversation for today. And also I’m so thrilled that, here, around this microphone, these three collaborators are finally together in person after all your work across distances. So, Chelsea, Ariel, Nick, thank you so much for joining me here on Shortcuts. Thank you all.\n\n \n\nAriel Kroon: Thank you.\n\n \n\nNick Beauchesne: Thank you.\n\n \n\nChelsea Miya: Thanks.\n\n \n\n[Music]\n\nKatherine McLeod: You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. This ShortCuts was a ShortCuts Live! A conversation with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya recorded on May 19 2022 on-site at the SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. Fun fact: we were wearing our SpokenWeb t-shirts that we had been given that day at the institute while recording. Check the Show Notes for photos to prove it! Also check the show notes for a link to their episode, “Academics on Air.” Plus, since talking with Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea, they have interviewed Jo-Anne Kolmes, and a few clips from that interview could be the start of another ShortCuts Live conversation recorded at this year’s symposium and institute. \n\nSpeaking of which, are you listening to this episode and getting excited about this year’s SpokenWeb Symposium? It is coming up in May at the University of Alberta. Check SpokenWeb’s upcoming events to find the link to the full program. And, who knows, there just may be ShortCuts Live recordings happening again this year, and so if you’re attending and interested in talking with the podcast team, let us know! Write to us at spokenwebpodcast at gmail dot com.\n\nShortCuts is a monthly deep dive into archival audio distributed monthly on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed. It is mixed and mastered by Miranda Eastwood, transcribed by Zoe Mix, and written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening.\n\n[Music ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9668","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 4.5, ShortCuts Live! Talking with Annie Murray, 17 April 2023, McLeod and Murray"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-annie-murray/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod","Annie Murray"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod","Annie Murray"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/31170924535890151440\",\"name\":\"Annie Murray\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/54d2865f-0a03-4493-b0f6-f541a9b2f8ea/audio/0e9e1180-9c79-4de3-923f-16827371bc77/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sc4-5.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:19:17\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"18,510,202 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sc4-5\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-annie-murray/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-04-17\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"EMI Music Canada fonds, https://asc.ucalgary.ca/emi-music-canada-fonds/\\n\\nVan Dyk, Leah and Murray Annie. “Audio Time Travel: An Interview with Annie Murray.” SPOKENWEBLOG, 15 December, 2022, https://spokenweb.ca/audio-time-travel-an-interview-with-annie-murray/\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549789605888,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This month, ShortCuts presents another ShortCuts Live! Producer Katherine McLeod talks with Annie Murray about the EMI Music Canada Archives at the University of Calgary, and their way into these archives begins with a cassette tape. And not just any cassette tape. Listen to find out which tape and how this tape tells stories of recording not only in relation to what’s on the tape but also to archival collections of Canadian music. Audio objects are sonic objects in the sounds they hold and the stories they tell – both on their own as materials and in our affective attachments to them – and this episode of ShortCuts dives into all of this, and more. Annie and Katherine’s conversation about archives is full of whimsy, suspense, and even the sounds of a power ballad – yes, archival research can sound like this.\n\n\n(00:03)\tAnnie Murray \tSo what do you wanna talk about? [Laughs] \n(00:05)\tKatherine McLeod\tWell, first I’ll say: Welcome to ShortCuts.\n(00:11)\tShortCuts Theme Music \t[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(00:12)\tKatherine McLeod \tWelcome to Shortcuts. This month, it’s another ShortCuts Live. In fact, it’s a final ShortCuts Live conversation that was recorded at the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. That’s because this year’s symposium and institute is coming up, starting May 1st. Check the full program by heading to the events link on the SpokenWeb website. And if you’re attending, do get in touch if you’d like to chat with us on ShortCuts Live in-person this year. \nBack to this episode, it’s a conversation that I had with Annie Murray from the University of Calgary. It was recorded after a packed day of sessions at the 2022 SpokenWeb Sound Institute. The sounds will take us into 4th SPACE at Concordia University. I quite love the background noise because it reminds me of being there with the May sunshine outside the window next to where we were recording and the vibrant conversations that we were having all week. \nSo there I was sitting at a microphone with Annie Murray and I pulled out a cassette tape to start things off. Usually on ShortCuts, it’s an audio clip that starts the conversation. This time it was not an audio clip, but rather an audio object, and not just any audio object. It was my first cassette tape, and this cassette tape that I’m holding right now, well, it’s not only the start of me loving music that’s just so full of emotion, music that is moving, moves you and makes you want to move, but it was also the start of my conversation with Annie Murray about EMI Music Canada Archives. Which tape is it? Well, listen to find out. Here is ShortCuts Live…\n[ShortCuts theme music fades and ends]\n[Transitions into interview recording]\nThank you so much, Annie, for joining me on Shortcuts Live.\n(02:04)\tAnnie Murray\tThank you. This is a great setup.\n(02:07)\tKatherine McLeod\tAnd I’m about to take a tape out of my bag, and Annie’s gonna see this for the first time, but she’s heard that this is the object that will inspire our conversation.\n(02:19)\tAnnie Murray\tWhoa, shall I describe what we’re seeing?\n(02:22)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes. Take a look. What is this tape?\n(02:25)\tAnnie Murray \tKatherine has just handed me a tape called “Over 60 Minutes with Luba”. Luba is on the front. It was issued by Capital Records and EMI Canada in 1987. We had an earlier conversation where I learned this was a seminal tape for young Dr. Katherine McLeod. And the reason I’m interested in her relationship with this tape is because I’ve been working on a project that will bring some Luba content out in the world.\n(03:03)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes, I told Annie that this Luba tape was in fact the first cassette tape that I ever owned. I think I was about seven or eight years old living in Queensboro, which is a neighborhood in New Westminster, British Columbia. And I don’t even know how I had heard of Luba, I think, because I never really watched TV very often when I was young. So somehow much music must have been on. And I was really drawn to the song, “Every time I see your picture, I cry”. And this tape does have it on there.  I think that says a lot about me as a seven year old, that I was really drawn to this very dramatic song, that continues. I feel like it just, I love very dramatic music and dance. So, you know, this was just an early sign of that.\nI could still probably recite the entire song. And I recently found this tape at my parents’ house, and it made me think about the way that this recording, with it being issued by EMI, would be part of the EMI collection. And when Annie was speaking about the EMI collection in a SpokenWeb meeting, she mentioned, you know, it even has Luba. And I was like, oh, Luba! Yes, someone’s talking about Luba! \nSo I thought this would be a perfect  audio object for us to chat about because it brings us into the EMI collection. It makes us think about audio objects and how just a tape that we’re not even playing right now can generate so much conversation. And it can also make us think about rights too. So maybe towards the end, I’ll ask you about, you know, can we even play this tape on the podcast? But, we’ll hold onto that question. \nFirst of all, you know, I see Annie looking at the tape cover, she’s got it out of the, out of the case. And I’m wondering, you know, you’ve been immersed in the EMI collection at the University of Calgary.  What do you, what are you noticing? How does this speak to you as an archival object?\n(05:11)\tAnnie Murray \tWell, what’s interesting about this tape is it’s not one of Luba’s studio albums. It’s a compilation album. So, Luba had already released some albums, and this is a compilation. The other thing I’m noticing is in what great physical condition it’s in. I know you loved it a lot, but you also took really good care of it. A lot of my old tapes from this era,  the writing is rubbed off the cassette, but the tape looks in good shape and the liner notes don’t have the lyrics, which a lot of studio albums did. And I don’t know about you, but did you used to open them up and follow along?\n(05:53)\tKatherine McLeod\tI sure did. [Laughs] Yeah.\n(05:54)\tAnnie Murray\tYes. That, I mean, especially when you first got tapes of your own and you bought them with your own money, you were so proud of them, and you would open up the liner notes and follow the lyrics. So what I’m seeing here, there’s some interesting things about this album. First of all, Daniel Lenoi plays as a percussionist on this album. There’s some really interesting musicians brought in on some of these. And guess who’s the sax player? Kenny G! [Both laugh]  And then there’s a list of tracks or songs, and there’s little symbols next to them that talk about the original recording, where it came from. \nSo this is like an anthology. And then some were mixed by Daniel Lenoi, then it shows how many songs Luba wrote and how many she didn’t. So this is, this is fascinating.\n(06:56)\tKatherine McLeod\tI love thinking about it as an anthology of Luba. Luba is a Canadian singer who was very popular in the eighties. And we really haven’t heard much from since. So, actually, it’s interesting how things, you know, like YouTube. I think like, partly just to go back to your point about how the tape is in such good condition, I think it’s because then when CDs came out, I didn’t listen to my tapes as much, and Luba sort of had faded into the background. \nSo, I’d almost forgotten about this amazing song. And then, recently, you know, searching it on YouTube and thinking, yeah, like, I can listen to this in a digital version without having to, you know, dig out my tape from so long ago. And just listening to it again, I thought, wow, this  almost like, power ballad song, really resonates with today’s moment too.\nSo I thought, yes, Lupa to come back, but then thinking, you know, this is like this anthology and this collection, a collection within a collection thinking of this tape itself is almost like a collection. And how it also speaks to, you know, this moment in Canadian music. And, you know, as you’re noticing all these artists that were part of this tape, that in many ways many people probably would know those names and not necessarily know Luba’s name too. So that’s really interesting thinking of what we can learn from the tape itself. I know you told me that you asked some of your colleagues in the archives about what you have in terms of Luba’s work in the collection.\n(08:26)\tAnnie Murray\tThat’s right. So, maybe just as I recorded my live reactions to the liner notes, I’ll read you some information that my colleagues David Jones and Rob Gilbert provided.  I explained what I was going to be up to and that you were a Luba fan from childhood and that we’d be looking at the tape and they immediately knew, oh, well that’s a compilation, you know, and I, cuz I didn’t know. \nAnd then David said, that’s awesome. So is Luba. And then Rob came along and said a few things that I’ll just read. So Luba was a direct signing. So the capital releases, the EP and the three big albums in the eighties are all extensively documented. So in the EMI Music Canada archive that’s at the University of Calgary, if that artist was signed to Capital or EMI, the archive will contain all of the original studio recordings and will have all the documentation about how that album was produced, how it was recorded, produced, disseminated, marketed and received.\nSo it’s like the whole story, but if the EMI artist was someone like Kate Bush or The Beatles or Pink Floyd, and they weren’t actually recorded in the, for Canadian, like on the Canadian label there would be less recordings and material associated with it. All of those originals would’ve been in England or in the United States. But for Luba, Rob says, I think Luba is one of the more significant artists in the collection. All of the audio is migrated or out with a vendor and/or Nathan. So Nathan Chandler is our audio audiovisual conservator who, in Calgary, we built these studios. So sometimes some types of formats, we’ve migrated them right there in Calgary. Other ones have been sent out in different places in North America, depending on like, would it be too expensive to buy the equipment or too difficult or maybe there aren’t enough recordings in that format because the EMI archive has 94 different media formats.\nSo some of them wouldn’t make sense. But guess how many individual Luba recordings will be available eventually? There will be 400 audio recordings [Katherine laughs] available to users eventually in an online system. So the system we’re using is called Cortex. It’s a digital asset management system. Rob goes on to say all of the quarter inch tapes are done. The half inch tapes were sent out to a vendor last summer and should be done soon. And many of the two inch tapes are on a cart with Nathan waiting to get to them. So even in the time Luba was recording, she first recorded on quarter inch, then half inch, and then on two inch multi-tracks. So even in her eighties, early nineties career, she recorded on these different formats. So. \n(11:58)\tKatherine McLeod\tThat’s incredible! [Laughs]\n(11:59)\tAnnie Murray \tThen all told there are 400 of them because like, say a two inch recording, it’s massive. You might have one to three songs on one reel. And so if you think of how many times you would record something to make an album, that’s why there are so many. So then, let’s see, also, any videos associated with Luba will also become available. So it’s audio, but it’s also video. And then, this won’t be put online or you won’t be able to access this, but there was also all the original artwork that they used to make all the album covers. So that has also been preserved for the Canadian artists such as Luba. \nSo, let’s see. There are whole sets of studio sessions, 24 track tapes and mixes on half inch tapes. The 60 Minutes with compilation is like a “best of” album with a couple extras on it. It was a branded series from Capital, maybe tapping into CD technology, having the ability to play over 60 minutes without switching sides of a tape or a record [laughs]. \nSo there’s gonna be a lot of Luba content that researchers can access. So you could explore the documentation around wow was that album produced there in your hand? How were the other studio albums? Her EP? I don’t know if they would’ve had a demo, but we would be able to find out if there was a demo. So it kind of goes to show the extensive documentation, both audio, video, and then there’s all the textual archives that would’ve been, so perhaps you’ll come to Calgary to do a deep Luba research trip? \n(13:50)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes. Yes. A deep listening in the Luba archives. I also love how it feels like Luba, you know, I was speaking to like maybe she could have a resurgence and maybe she could have a resurgence through the archives.\n(14:03)\tAnnie Murray \tThat would be great. Like, it will be interesting to see how people respond to an archive of this type being made available. Like, first of all, the fact that it’s being preserved, that it is in a public institution, and that we have created some secure and elaborate, but easily available ways to use audiovisual archives, which really isn’t always the case. \nThe traditional model is if there’s a recording in an archive, you travel to the archive and you listen to it in there. We knew that with the way systems have developed and the way digital asset management systems have developed, that you can still have users authenticate and use a recording and access it remotely. And in the time that we’ve been finishing up this project during Covid, there is actually more expectation of remote access now of archives and libraries. So these sort of systems coming online is just perfect timing for these kinds of researcher expectations.\n\n(15:17)\tKatherine McLeod \tMaybe one last question then, leading along those lines around access. On a podcast like this, if I were to play a clip of one of Luba’s songs,  am I allowed to do that?\n(15:34)\tAnnie Murray\tI think so. I think it’s a kind of quotation. We could ask a copyright person about how much is appropriate. But say for example, like broadcasters and news organizations, they generally work with clips of a certain length for reporting, and then scholars can use certain lengths of clips for their academic reporting, so to speak. I don’t know where a podcast is on the spectrum. Is it broadcasting? Is it news? Is it scholarship? Seems to be a blend of those things?\n(16:10)\tKatherine McLeod \tAnd often defined by the producer or the maker of the podcast, rather than the podcast itself being a medium that is defined in those ways. I feel like because we did, you know, we’ve been commenting on the tape and especially offering a bit of commentary around one particular song, that that song perhaps could, you know, appear at some point, audibly in this or- \n(16:37)\tAnnie Murray\tA clip.\n(16:37)\tKatherine McLeod \tA clip. Exactly. It would just a, just a-\n(16:39)\tAnnie Murray\tMaybe the most dramatic part.\n(16:40)\tKatherine McLeod \tExactly. [A clip from “Every time I see your picture, I cry” by Luba plays and ends] \nSo I think that’s, you know, a perfect note to end on. And I want to thank Annie Murray for joining me here on ShortCuts Live in 4th SPACE at Concordia University. Thank you so much, Annie.\n\n(17:12)\tAnnie Murray \t[ShortCuts theme music begins to play] \nThank you. And I just wanna extend an invitation. As a Luba fan, you could create, when you have an account in the University of Calgary’s digital collections, you could create something called a light box where you could keep track of your favorite Luba recordings, and then you could say, Hey, these are my favorite Luba tracks curated by Dr. Katherine McLeod.\nSo, then even if you return later and you’re like, oh, I’m going to think about Luba again. You could keep track of what you’re interested in. You could send it to another user, then they could sign it and say, oh, these are the three songs that most shaped your 1987 life. \n(17:57)\tKatherine McLeod \tYes! A curated listening and yeah. To be able to share that. Oh, yeah. That’s fantastic.\n(18:01)\tAnnie Murray\tSo, when it’s available, I’ll contact you and you can be our guest digital curator of the Luba Collection. [laughs]\n(18:11)\tKatherine McLeod\tThank you so much, Annie. I look forward to that. Thank you. Thank you.\n[ShortCuts theme music ends] \n[A clip from “Every time I see your picture, I cry” by Luba plays] \nYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. A special thanks to Annie Murray for joining me for this ShortCuts Live recorded on May 19th, 2022. \n[The Luba clip ends and ShortCuts theme music begins again] \nAnd for the invitation to head to Calgary for a curated listening in the archives. Do check the show notes for links to more about that archive, and for a few fun photos to accompany this episode. Yes, you’ll see Annie holding the tape itself, and what you won’t see is me listening to Luba on repeat in the weeks surrounding this conversation. But indeed that happened too. \nMy thanks to the SpokenWeb podcast team. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. Our sound designer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcription is done by Zoe Mix. ShortCuts is written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Stay tuned next month for a full episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast. And as always, thanks for listening.\n[ShortCuts theme music ends]"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9669","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 4.6, What’s that noise? Listening Queerly to the Ultimatum Festival Archives, 19 June 2023, Jando-Saul"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/whats-that-noise-listening-queerly-to-the-ultimatum-festival-archives/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Ella Jando-Saul"],"creator_names_search":["Ella Jando-Saul"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Ella Jando-Saul\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/c4891c8a-e6b8-4a15-b0b4-7ba2b7d4e22a/audio/4d8d4112-c9a7-490e-a3e5-4b973c419512/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"sc4-6.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:20:50\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"20,008,168 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"sc4-6\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/whats-that-noise-listening-queerly-to-the-ultimatum-festival-archives/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-06-19\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"bissett, bill, Christopher Dewdney, and Tom Konyves. U-2-2. 2 May 1985. Folder 2, Deliverables, Audio-Deliverables, The Alan Lord Collection. SpokenWeb Collections, Concordia University, Montreal.\\n\\nbissett, bill, Christopher Dewdney, and Tom Konyves. U-BNW-T5. 2 May 1985. Folder 2, Deliverables, Audio-Deliverables, The Alan Lord Collection. SpokenWeb Collections, Concordia University, Montreal.\\n\\nThose interested can find more information about these recordings in the following documents:\\n\\nbissett, bill. Participant acceptance form. AL-Folder2-img003-04, Folder 1, Alan Lord Archive, The Alan Lord Collection. SpokenWeb Collections, Concordia University, Montreal.\\n\\nbissett, bill. Letter to Alan Lord. AL-Folder2-img195, Folder 1, Alan Lord Archive, The Alan Lord Collection. SpokenWeb Collections, Concordia University, Montreal.\\n\\nKonyves, Tom. Sketch of stage setup. AL-Folder2-img186-187, Folder 1, Alan Lord Archive, The Alan Lord Collection. SpokenWeb Collections, Concordia University, Montreal.\\n\\nLescaut, Roxa. “Le Premier Festival de Poésie urbaine de Montréal.” interModule 2. AL-U85-img029-32 and 035-38, Folder 1, Alan Lord Archive, The Alan Lord Collection. SpokenWeb Collections, Concordia University, Montreal.\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549793800192,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Have you ever heard a sound on a recording and weren’t sure if it was intentional? That’s what happened to the Listening Queerly research team when they were listening to a recording of the Ultimatum Festival (Montreal, 1985). This team works under the direction of Dr. Mathieu Aubin as part of a SSHRC-funded Insight Development Grant. They’ve been working with a series of recordings of the Ultimatum Festival, which are part of the Alan Lord audio collection, a collection currently being digitized and catalogued by SpokenWeb (Concordia). The Listening Queerly research team – Mathieu Aubin, Ella Jando-Saul, Misha Solomon, Sophia Magliocca, and Rowan Nancarrow – first attempted to confirm who they are listening to in their selected audio file for this ShortCuts by cross-referencing with other recordings of Christopher Dewdney, Tom Konyves, and bill bissett, but then, as the team re-listened to this recording, they focused more and more on the rhythmic thumping sound throughout this clip. What is the cause of this sound and its effect on us as listeners?\n\nListen to this episode of ShortCuts to hear how, even if a sound is an unintentional sound caused by the recording equipment, it still affects our interpretation of the recording.\n\nThis special episode of ShortCuts is produced by Ella Jando-Saul, with contributions from Mathieu Aubin, Misha Solomon, Sophia Magliocca, Rowan Nancarrow, and James Healey. \n\n\n(00:00)\tShortCuts Theme Music \t[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n  (00:07)\tKatherine McLeod \tWelcome to Shortcuts.\nHave you ever heard a sound on a recording and weren’t sure if the sound was intentional? That’s what happened to the Listening Queerly research team when they were listening to a recording of the Ultimatum Festival in the Alan Lord Audio Collection. First of all, Listening Queerly is a team of student researchers based at Concordia University: Ella Jando-Saul, Misha Solomon, Sophia Magliocca, and Rowan Nancarrow. This team works under the direction of Dr. Mathieu Aubin as part of a SSHRC funded Insight Development grant. \nThey’ve been working with a series of recordings in the Alan Lord Audio Collection, a collection that’s part of SpokenWeb’s audio collections. In 1985, Alan Lord helped to organize the Ultimatum Festival in Montreal. And recordings from that festival are what the Listening Queerly team were listening to when they heard a sound. A sound that sounded almost like a heartbeat, or was it a technical glitch in the recording? Could they be sure? What were they hearing? What’s that noise? \nWhatever it was, the reality was that the sound, the noise, had an impact. They couldn’t stop thinking about it, and they talked about it together. What results from those conversations is this episode of ShortCuts. Here is a very special episode of ShortCuts produced by Ella Jando-Saul, taking you on a deep dive into the sound of one memorable recording. [ShortCuts music swells and then ends]\n(02:02)\tElla Jando-Saul \t[Sound effect of a heart beating begins] \nIn 1985, Alan Lord with help from a team of close friends organized Ultimatum, a literary festival that took place from May 1st to 5th at Les Foufounes Électriques, a punk bar that exists to this day in downtown Montreal. Ultimatum was advertised as an event presenting both a new generation of urban poets who utilize video, computers, electro pop music and performance art as an integral part of their mode of expression, and also traditional poets whose work reflects the urgency and electricity of living in a modern urban environment. \nLord invited both Anglophone and Francophone poets from Montreal, as well as poets from Vancouver, Toronto, Quebec City, and New York. The event was recorded on tapes, which have since been digitized at Concordia University. The tape we are listening to today is from the 2nd of May. \n[Heartbeat sound effect speeds up and then ends]\n(03:05)\tMathieu Aubin\tHi, my name is Mathieu Aubin and I’m the primary investigator for the Listening Queerly Cross-Generational Divides Project, and I’m also a research affiliate in the English department at Concordia University.\n(03:17)\tElla Jando-Saul\tMy name is Ella Jando-Saul and I am the project manager for the Listening Queerly Across Generational Divides project. I am also finishing my first year in the masters program at Concordia University in English Literature.\n(03:31)\tSophia Magliocca\tHi, my name is Sophia Magliocca. I’m a research assistant on the SpokenWeb affiliate project called Listening Queerly Across Generational Divides. I’m also finishing my second year in the masters program here at Concordia University in English Literature.\n(03:45)\tMisha Solomon\tHi, my name is Misha Solomon. I’m a queer listener on the Listening Queerly Across Generational Divides project. I’m also finishing my first year as a master student in the English literature program here at Concordia, with a creative poetry thesis.\n(03:59)\tElla Jando-Saul \tAs part of our research, we listened to the Ultimatum recordings and encountered a tape that included a mysterious heartbeat sound on some of the tracks. The poet speaking on those tracks was unannounced, so we were not sure who it might be. At the time, our team included Rowan Nancarrow, who has since left, but who did much of the listening and contributed to our initial discussions about these tapes.\n(04:29)\tArchival Audio from Alan Lord Archive- [Unknown Speaker] 1\t[Sound effect of a heartbeat begins to play] With real trees around us, why do we want painted trees? What does art give us that life does not?\n[Sound effect of heartbeat ends]\n(04:43)\tElla Jando-Saul \t…many months ago, Misha, you’re actually part of the team already, even though it’s the 8th of December, 2022. And we’re having a conversation as we do on a Monday morning about this tape. Yeah, the weird heartbeat noise is really interesting to me because I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, and it’s doing really interesting things with the poet’s voice.\nIt’s sort of, I feel like sometimes rhythmically it’s aligning with the rhythm of the poem, and sometimes it’s not, and I find that super interesting, but then we get this like four minutes of just heartbeat, and I find it hard to imagine that that was intentionally just sort of recorded, and there’s the fact that the sound is different. So I’m thinking maybe there’s something that happened to the tape itself, that when we play the tape to digitize it is making this noise.\n(05:41)\tSophia Magliocca \tWhen I found it, when I came across it, I was almost not going to present it at all. The only reason why I decided to present it was because I thought it was a broken tape, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about what a broken tape might look like in this collection. \nSo my initial impression of it was either it got damaged, you know, the tape itself was damaged and they recorded on something that was already damaged and that’s what happened. Or it was like you said, kind of some way affected when they were digitizing it. And then other ideas I have is that because the heartbeat sound was happening on other tapes too, whether it was related to someone tapping on a microphone or some kind of like something happening in the room, unrelated to the technology, but close enough that it was getting caught. And then, you know, because of that shift to the static background noise, it kind of made that whole committing to one version of this what the heartbeat was really difficult.\n(06:38)\tElla Jando-Saul \tMhmm.\n(06:39)\tMisha Solomon \tYou know, based on the pattern and the inconsistency of the noise, I think we can be relatively sure that the heartbeat sound isn’t actually a heartbeat, but it is difficult for me to separate the sound from being a heartbeat. That’s what it feels like somehow. If I try to think about it logically while listening, I suppose it could be a metronome, but it does lack the regular rhythm. Or as others have said, something accidental, microphone feedback or a mechanical issue with the recording device. \nBut I keep going back to the idea that there is something so corporeal about the sound. Something like akin to listening to a whale from inside of a whale’s belly.\n(07:24)\tMathieu Aubin\tHmm. I like that irregularity that you’re pointing to. I hear this, and to me also, I don’t know what it is that we’re thinking, like is it a stethoscope? There we go. You know, listening for someone’s heartbeat is, it’s what it sounds like to me. \nAnd it’s interesting that we have a similar experience of listening to that and identifying that as that kind of sound, but like Misha just said, it’s irregular. So if somebody’s heartbeat is indeed that, I don’t know that that’s probably the best thing for them. So for me, you know, I’m thinking about this and listening to this and it seems like it could be intentional, it could be not intentional. Sometimes because of the rhythm of like, I’m thinking of like tape moving around and maybe bumping that sort of irregularity also could be a technological sound that’s being emitted.\n(08:26)\tElla Jando-Saul \tI mean, Imeasure the intervals of the heartbeats and I do have to say like, I hope this is a whale and not a human, because if it’s a whale, I mean, I’d have to find out what a regular whale heart rhythm is, but for a human like this, this human’s in a coma or something, I don’t know, it’s way too slow for a human and it is a little bit irregular. There will be moments where it sort of slowly gets a bit faster and then it starts getting a lot faster right before it sort of cuts and then you have applause. \nSort of having done that, I’m rethinking my thought about it being just like the tape sort of spinning and that sort of circularity doesn’t really make sense with the way that it’s shifting around. Like, if it was just slight shifts, it would be like, okay, well tape can’t be at the perfectly same speed all the time. But I think especially that bit where it really speeds up, I’m thinking, okay, maybe it’s intentional if it’s doing this, but in that case, why are there all of these silent moments with just a heartbeat?\n[Sound effect of heartbeat begins to play]\nNone of us know much about how sound recording works. So in an attempt to find some answers, we consulted James Healy, the AMP lab coordinator at Concordia University.\n(09:42)\tJames Healy \tThe next one was like the metronome, or what I would describe as a metronome. It could have been like in one of those old school drum machines that were made to accompany an organ in church, because it was just like a simple “pum-pum pum-pum-”\n(09:59)\tElla Jando-Saul \t[Interjecting] -Yeah-\n(10:00)\tJames Healy \t-pattern, but like the timbre reminded me of like a Roland 808 a lot, which made me think that it’s maybe the same chip as the Roland 808, but a little earlier, because I don’t think that they’re using sort of like this staple hip hop drum machine in the background. I think they’d just be using a fairly rudimentary one, because they just need it for a fairly simple task.\n(10:27)\tElla Jando-Saul \tJames answered the question we had been laboring over pretty quickly, but he had more to say about these recordings.\n(10:34)\tJames Healy\tThere was a really high noise floor in one of them. And then the voice was also saturating sooner than it was in the others, which made me think that it was a different time altogether because they had basically set up a whole bunch of new equipment.\n(10:51)\tArchival Audio from Alan Lord Archive [Unknown Speaker] 2\tBecause it cruises hovering, long snouted crocodilian because it is primitive. \nThank you. [Audience claps]\n(11:24)\tArchival Audio from Alan Lord Archive  [Unknown Speaker] 3\t[Sound effect of heartbeat plays] What’s wrong with this?… governments have been lobbied more effectively by proponents of the arms race than the advocates of the peace movement? [Sound effect of heartbeat ends] \n(11:39)\tJames Healy\tAnd what I mean by new noise floors, there’s like a “chhhhhh” and it was closer to the level of the voice than it was in the other pieces of audio. Yeah, I think the next thing that interested me, like in audio to audio and knowing that maybe it was a different room was just literally like the reflection times of the room that I was hearing. Like, I can’t be like that’s a five millisecond reflection, but it’s just like, it sounds different. The room, the reverb, right? Like  you can tell when you’re just mostly getting a direct source.\n(12:21)\tArchival Audio from Alan Lord Archive [Unknown Speaker] 3\t[Sound effect of heartbeat plays]\nWhat’s wrong with this?… governments have been lobbied more effectively…[Sound effect of heartbeat ends]\n(12:25)\tJames Healy \tOr if you’re getting some room reflections bled into the direct source as well.\n(12:32)\tArchival Audio from Alan Lord Archive [Unknown Speaker] 2\tBecause it cruises hovering, long snouted crocodilian because it is primitive. \n(12:36)\tJames Healy \tAll living things with ears are really good at that. They listen for reflection times to know what type of space they’re in.\n(12:43)\tElla Jando-Saul\tThe digitized tape labeled U22  is split into multiple files labeled from T01 to T02. The recordings cut suddenly from one performance to the next, often starting and stopping in the middle of the performance. \nDuring our conversation, James and I started to piece these together chronologically thanks to recordings done by CBC’s Brave New Waves team, also held in Concordia’s ultimatum collection, which recorded the whole evening from start to finish with no cuts. This helped us figure out that the poet using the heartbeat sound was Tom Kenyvesh, an experimental performance and video poet who had recently moved from Montreal to Vancouver. \nOkay. So your guess would be that like what we have with the U22 recordings that sound really close up is that he’s recording these sort of offsite and then bringing them in to play them. \nIn that case, like, does it make sense that there are parts of the same event from that day before this? So it’s like Christopher Dudney live and then it cuts and then it’s Tom Kenyvesh sounding very not live. And then on T06 it’s just heartbeat sounds which are playing in the background, um, of T07, which is back to Tom Kenyvesh speaking, but now we hear like the audience, it sounds very live and then it cuts and it’s Bill Bisit, same event.\n(14:22)\tJames Healy \tYeah. Well that did confuse me, but then Jason mentioned in an email that they actually had like eight tracks on that tape, so that made me think that they possibly used two of the tracks just to record stuff for playback.\nAnd then they just use the other two tracks to record what was going on live in the room, you know? So, and then essentially what you could do is you could take the two tracks that are already recorded, so you want to go out to the PA with them and you could play them via like their own output to the PA while you record on another two tracks what they’re saying. \nSo it could have been a simultaneous thing and they could have just prepped the two recorded tracks, like beforehand.\n(15:48)\tMisha Solomon\t[Sound effect of heartbeat begins to play] \nWhat I find really interesting about the mystery of the sound is that it’s a reminder of the missing information on these tapes. That these tapes are representative of performances that involved some visual aspect and that that aspect is missing entirely. \nAnd so even when the sound changes or disappears, one could imagine someone in an outrageous outfit playing a percussion instrument in the corner and producing that sound. And we’d never know of that person’s existence unless we found photographic or video evidence. But it would significantly change the tenor of the performance were we to be able to see this producer of the sound if the sound is in fact being produced by someone on stage accompanying the performer, let’s say. \nAnd so it’s just interesting to think about the fact that Ultimatum was this full sense live event, one that even seemed to prioritize the visual in terms of screens being available for performers and all that. But here we’re experiencing it only as audio, which is a kind of mutation of the event into something that is only available to us using one sense. So the sound is an invitation to theorize and that invitation can either be fruitful or, you know, can lead the listener astray down paths to which answers might not be found.\n(17:17)\tSophia Magliocca\tYeah. I love when we think about our project in that way, like that distance that we have in a way retains the privacy of the event, but also invites us in and gives us that intimacy in a really different sensory experience or in a limited one. And when I think about the heartbeat in that way, and whether it’s intentional or not, it does force the listener to really turn or return interior, accept the sound for what it is. \nAnd for a moment it was really nice that we just got to sit and really think about what it could be without having any definitive answers. And think about how it was complimenting the poem and how it was complimenting our experience, you know, so many years down the line of taking that with the limited resources that we have. \nAnd it’s always interesting to have, you know, the real technical terms for what’s going on. But sitting in that mystery, I find, brought us closer and really gave us an opportunity to distinguish the voices and distinguish the settings in a way that, and in a depth that we didn’t always apply to all the other recordings. And this gave us a way into that.\n(18:20)\tElla Jando-Saul \tMm-hmm. And sitting with the mystery, but also just sitting with the sound, however fragmentary it is that we have left to us, is sort of itself an art piece so that whether the heartbeat is intentional or not, it creates this really great experience. Like it is wonderful to hear with the poem regardless of where it comes from.\n(18:44)\tMathieu Aubin\tAnd I love the way that it’s formatted and structured as an art piece, as a poem where these powerful, impactful lines are read and then they’re interspersed with [Sound effect of heartbeat begins to play] these like “bum bums” in the effect of that. And how we’re sitting with that sort of message while trying to figure out that mystery the whole time.\n(19:11)\tArchival Audio from Alan Lord Archive [Unknown Speaker] 4\tForgive everything, walk, don’t run, post no bills, leave no fingerprints. In case of emergency stand still, press return. Please don’t touch. [Long pause] Push. \n[Heartbeat fades slowly] \n(20:14)\tKatherine McLeod \t[ShortCuts Theme Music plays] You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. This episode of ShortCuts was produced by Ella Jando-Saul. You also heard the voices of Mathieu Aubin, Sophia Magliocca, Misha Solomon, and input from Rowan Nancarrow. Also a special thanks to James Healy. ShortCuts is a deep dive into archival audio distributed monthly on the SpokenWeb podcast feed. It is mixed and mastered by Miranda Eastwood, transcribed by Zoe Mix and written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening.\n[ShortCuts Theme music ends] "],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9991","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 5.1, Introducing ShortCuts, Live!, 16 October 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/introducing-shortcuts-live/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/cf9825d7-2330-4377-a62d-caa50ba79c7b/audio/33a2eb71-61fd-4394-a32d-9dfd116279a2/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-master-1.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:08:24\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"8,078,777 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-master-1\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/introducing-shortcuts-live/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-10-16\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Archival audio sampled in this episode is from these past episodes: \\n\\nShortCuts 4.2 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Sarah Cipes about Feminist Audio Editing,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n,\\n21 Nov 2022\\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-sarah-cipes-about-feminist-audio-editing/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.3 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Faith Paré about the Atwater Poetry Project Archives,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 20 February 2023\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-faith-pare-about-the-atwater-poetry-project-archives/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.4 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 20 March 2023\\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-ariel-kroon-nick-beauchesne-and-chelsea-miya/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.5 “ShortCuts Live! Talking with Annie Murray,” produced by Katherine McLeod,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\\n, 17 April 2023\\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-talking-with-annie-murray/\\n\\n \\n\\nShortCuts 4.6 “What’s that noise? Listening Queerly to the Ultimatum Festival Archives,” produced by Ella Jando-Saul,\\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast, \\n\\nhttps://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/whats-that-noise-listening-queerly-to-the-ultimatum-festival-archives/\\n\\n \"}]"],"_version_":1853670549818966016,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["Welcome to Season 5 of ShortCuts. \n\nShortCuts started out on the podcast feed as a ‘minisode’ during our first season and it soon took on a life of its own. ShortCuts host and producer Katherine McLeod would take you on a deep dive into the SpokenWeb archives through a short ‘cut’ of audio. What did it feel like to hear archival audio? And how could we carefully unarchive its sound? These questions evolved into conversations, and thus emerged ShortCuts, Live! Last season featured Katherine’s conversations with Sarah Cipes, Faith Paré, Chelsea Miya, Nick Beaschesne, Ariel Kroon, and Annie Murray, along with a special episode produced by Ella Jando-Saul. And, this season, ShortCuts Live continues. It will be even more ‘live’ and in-person season than ever before, but before we go there, we do what we always do to start a new season. We perform what\nShortCuts\nsounds like\nin sound.\nListen to this episode, listen to past episodes, and then stay tuned for our new season on\nThe SpokenWeb Podcast\nfeed. \n\n(0:00) \nShortCuts\nTheme Music\n[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(00:01)\nKatherine McLeod\nWelcome to\nShortCuts\n. On\nShortCuts\n. We listen closely and carefully to a short ‘cut’ [scissor sound] or ‘cuts’ [scissor sound] from the archives.\nShortCuts\nbegan in season one of the\nSpokenWeb\npodcast. It started out as what we called a minisode,  a short episode to engage with interesting clips from the audio archives that caught my attention as a producer and curator. \n\nBut this soon evolved. Episodes became a way to really dwell in the sound, to listen again – and again ­– to audio clips from the archives, as a place to practice a feminist listening in the archives and think about what we are listening to, how we are listening to it, and what it feels like to listen.\nShortCuts\nhas evolved onto the page. I’ve written about the first seasons of\nShortCuts\nas feminist placemaking through podcasting in a forthcoming chapter, co-written with Hannah McGregor and Stacey Copeland. Last year’s trailer ended up transforming into a short forum contribution to English Studies in Canada, published earlier this year. That piece is called “Archival Listening.”\n\nTalking about what it feels like to listen to audio from the archives evolved into wanting to talk with other people about what it feels like to hear these sounds. \n\n[\nShortCuts\ntheme music fades] Thus\nShortCuts\nevolved into what was last season, ShortCuts Live! Conversations with\nSpokenWeb\nresearchers about a short ‘cut’ of audio from the archives. This season, we continue\nShortCuts\nLive and aim to be even more live and on-site than\nShortCuts\nhas ever been before. But first, I want to do what we always do to start a new season of\nShortCuts\n, and that is to dive into its own archives of last season. \n\n[\nShortCuts\ntheme music swells]\n\nBecause me telling you the story of\nShortCuts\nevolving is one way of explaining what it does. But what if we ask, what does\nShortCuts\ndo in sound? In the following mix, you’ll hear the voices of Sarah Sipes, Faith Pare, Chelsea Mia, Nick Beauchesne, Ariel Kroon, and Annie Murray, along with Ella Jando-Saul from the special episode Ella made with Mathieu Aubin, Misha Solman, Sophia Magglioca, and Rowan Nancarrow. And of course, check the show notes after for the full story of all the archival sounds. [Theme music ends]\n(02:33)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\n…[fades in] do the same thing that I have done for the other ones that I did this week, which was – is – actually going to podcast voice to do the opening [Katherine laughs]. It feels like somehow you need headphones to go into podcast voice [Katherine laughs].\n(02:47)\nAriel Kroon, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\nYeah, put it on. It’s – part of the – part of the suit!\n(02:49)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\nExactly. [Katherine laughs]\n(02:51)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nSo what do you wanna talk about?\n(2:53)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nWell, [Katherine and Annie laugh] first, I’ll say, welcome to\nShortCuts\n.\n(03:00)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.3\n[\nShortCuts\ntheme music plays] Welcome to\nShortCuts\n. Welcome to\nShortCuts\n, this month on\nShortCuts\n, we’re here live on Zoom with the Atwater Poetry Project curator Faith Pare. Faith joins me for this conversation…[Theme music ends]\n(03:16)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \n…We’re recording this\nShortCuts\nLive in 4th Space at Concordia University during the\nSpokenWeb\nSound Institute. I’m here with Sarah Cipes. Thanks so much for joining me, Sarah.\n(03:26)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2\nThanks so much for having me.\n(03:30)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.3 \nThis really is a\nShortCuts\nLive by the fact that my three-month-old daughter is also here with me, and for long time\nShortCuts\nlisteners you’ll remember that back in season two, the voice of a poet’s young daughter has already been heard on\nShortCuts\n.\n(03:41)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nKatherine has just handed me a tape called “Over 60 Minutes with Luba.” Luba is on the front. It was issued by Capital Records and EMI Canada 1987.\n(03:56)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nYou’ve been immersed in the EMI Collection at University of Calgary. What are you, what are you noticing? How does this speak to you as an, as an archival object?\n(04:05)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nWell, what’s interesting about this tape…\n(04:07)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4 \nCould you tell me and listeners what we’re listening to?\n(04:12)\nChelsea Miya, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.4\nSo we’re, that was a clip from the Voiceprint episode, “Room and a Voice of One’s Own.”\n(04:17)\nFaith Paré, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.3 \nThe APP archives are interesting, I think for me as a former SpokenWeb RA, in that they’re all digital. The series started to be regularly recorded in 2010. This was also really firmly embraced by the library too, and thinking about the Atwater Library and Computer Center’s mandate…\n(04:38)\nElla Jando-Saul, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \n[Sound effect of heart beat plays and fades] In 1985, Allan Lorde with help from a team of close friends, organized ultimatum, a literary festival that took […]\n(04:46)\nSophia Magglioca, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nYeah, the weird heartbeat noise is really interesting to me because I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, and it’s doing really interesting things with the poet’s voice.\n(04:59)\nAriel Kroon, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5 \nThat was a clip from Joanne Coombs, and she came on as a guest. Uh, she was working as an editor for academic papers. I think maybe an academic journal at the time. And so she was really talking about her practice of feminist editing at the time, and we were so fascinated by what she had to say, because it struck us as very resonant and relevant to discussions that are all around us.\n(05:25)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \nAnd so bringing that into audio was a really interesting idea for me because redaction, restriction, and censorship and all of these things that have a lot of negative feelings around them for researchers can actually be turned into positive things, I think, particularly within audio, that actually allow users to listen to tapes that they might otherwise be totally barred from, and so my desire was to create sound edits that allow the listener to hear the vast majority of, of the tape…\n(06:05)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2\nMm-hmm.\n(06:06)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \n– while also protecting the privacy of those on the tape. Or even in this case, someone who’s mentioned who’s not there. \n(06:15)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \nMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.\n(06:16)\nSarah Cipes, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.2 \nBut really a feminist edit could also be about amplifying voices that are not usually central to the microphone –\n(06:30)\nMisha Solomon, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.6 \n[Sound effect of heartbeat plays and ends] What I find really interesting about the mystery of the sound is that it’s a reminder of the missing information on these tapes. That these tapes are representative of performances that involved some visual aspect, and that aspect is missing entirely. And so when the sound changes, or disappears, one could imagine someone in an outrageous outfit playing a percussion instrument in the corner and producing that sound…\n(07:00)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\n… and one particular song, that that song perhaps could, you know, appear at some point, or audibly in this –  \n(07:10)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nOr a clip.\n(07:11)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nA clip. Exactly. It would just a, just little-\n(07:13)\nAnnie Murray, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nMaybe the most dramatic part.\n(07:15)\n[Music builds to the chorus of “Everytime I See Your Picture I Cry”]\nSinger sings: \n\nEvery time I see your picture I cry \n\nAnd I learn to get over you\n\nOne more time because…\n(7:33)\nKatherine McLeod, archival audio from ShortCuts 4.5\nExactly. [Katherine laughs]. So, um, I think that’s, you know, a perfect note to, to end on. And I, I want to thank Annie Murray for joining me here on\nShortCuts\nLive in 4th SPACE at Concordia University. Thank you so much, Annie.\n(07:46)\nKatherine McLeod \n[ShortCuts\nmusic begins to play] You’ve been listening to\nShortCuts\n.\nShortCuts\nis released monthly as part of the\nSpokenWeb\npodcast. Feed. The\nSpokenWeb\nPodcast team is made up of supervising producer Maia Harris, sound designer, James Healy, transcriber Zoe Mix and co-host Hannah McGregor and me, Katherine McLeod. \nFind out more about the sounds that you heard on this month’s episode by checking the show notes or heading to spokenweb.ca and click on podcast. This episode of\nShortCuts\nwas produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Thanks for listening. [Theme music ends]\n \n\n"],"score":2.6319342},{"id":"9994","cataloger_name":["Gloriah,Onyango"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts 5.2, ShortCuts Live! A Magical Audio Tour with Jennifer Waits, 20 November 2023, McLeod"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-a-magical-audio-tour-with-jennifer-waits/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast ShortCuts"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Katherine McLeod"],"creator_names_search":["Katherine McLeod"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/44156495389117561605\",\"name\":\"Katherine McLeod\",\"dates\":\"1981-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2023],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/569ffe3e-7643-47e3-8dca-6e676f7bd9a3/audio/5ced2478-171e-40d6-b2b0-e59df3b49fba/default_tc.mp3?nocache\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"shortcuts-5-2-master.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:18:20\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"17,602,395 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"shortcuts-5-2-master\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/shortcuts-live-a-magical-audio-tour-with-jennifer-waits/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2023-11-20\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080572#map=16/45.49381/-73.58233\",\"venue\":\"Concordia University McConnell Building\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8\",\"latitude\":\"45.4968036\",\"longitude\":\"-73.57792785757887\"}]"],"Address":["1400 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8"],"Venue":["Concordia University McConnell Building"],"City":["Montreal, Quebec"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"ARCHIVAL AUDIO\\n\\nArchival audio excerpted from this episode of Radio Survivor:\\n\\nhttps://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/11/podcast-22-were-all-moving-to-the-fm-dial-now/\\n\\nBlog post with photographs from Jennifer Waits’s tour of Radio K:\\n\\nhttps://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/10/my-grand-tour-of-college-radio-station-radio-k/\\n\\nA past Radio Survivor episode featuring SpokenWeb:\\n\\nhttps://www.radiosurvivor.com/2021/02/podcast-284-spokenweb-and-literary-sound/\\n\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549820014592,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:54.290Z","contents":["This ShortCuts presents the first of many conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we begin with an audio clip from the archives, but this time the interviewees are the ones bringing an archival sound to the table. What will we hear? And where will these sounds take us? Join us for this ShortCuts Live in which a conversation with Jennifer Waits that takes us on a magical audio tour into the sounds of campus radio stations.\n\n(0:00)\tShortCuts Theme Music\t[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins]\n(0:04)\tKatherine McLeod\tWelcome to ShortCuts. This month we’re back with another ShortCuts Live! Talking with researchers in person and starting those conversations with a short ‘cut’ of audio. Many of these conversations were recorded on site at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium held at the University of Alberta. So, what will we hear and who will we talk with? Stay tuned for this season – and, to start us off, this episode is a conversation with Jennifer Waits. Yes, that is the Jennifer Waits of Radio Survivor, the podcast that explores the future of community radio and college radio, low-power FM and public access TV, along with podcasting and internet radio – and she often explores that future by diving into the past, and in fact the clip that Jennifer plays for us is from one of her tours of a college radio station.\nLet’s listen in as SpokenWeb Podcast’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood talk with Jennifer in a recording booth at the University of Alberta. Here is Shortcuts Live. [Theme music fades]\n(1:19)\tKate Moffat\tPerfect. And it’s recording. Okay. I’m just gonna move this a little closer so I’m not ….Alright, so, hello and welcome to Shortcuts Live, recorded at the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta. I am sitting here, my name is Kate Moffatt and I am the supervising producer for the SpokenWeb Podcast, stepping in for our usual intrepid host, Katherine McLeod, and I’m sitting here with Jennifer Waits, who we are so excited to talk to today. Jennifer, would you mind just introducing yourself for us?\n(1:50)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah, thanks so much for having me. I am Jennifer Waits and I’m one of the co-founders of Radio Survivor, which is a website and podcast and syndicated radio show about the culture of radio, audio, sound. Um, so I’ve written pieces there as well as these audio productions. And, um, I’m also a long time college radio DJ, write about radio culture and other spaces besides radio survivor and obsessively tour radio stations. [Kate laughs]\n(2:23)\tKate Moffat\tThat’s fantastic. We’re so excited to chat today, so we’re gonna listen to something together and I don’t know, would you like to say something about it before we start?\n(2:34)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. So, I decided to bring– it’s an excerpt of the Radio Survivor show. I think at this point it was just a podcast and not a syndicated radio show. It’s from October, 2015. And in part of this episode I shared one of my radio station tours where I had recorded some audio. So, um, I just thought that would be fun to share.\nAt this point I have written up tours to just over 170 radio stations. So, I mean, really an obsession. I started in 2008 and I don’t always make audio, but when we started doing the Radio Survivor podcast, I started recording some audio and occasionally use that on the show.\n[Sound effect of old tape player starting]\nWe’re gonna hear an excerpt from my tour of Radio K at University of Minnesota, KUOM. And this was recorded in October, 2015.\n[Sound effect of tape player stopping and starting]\n(3:40)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\t[fade in]…tour guide. He’s a junior named Paul Benson, and he had all the time in the world on a Friday afternoon to show me around the station. So, for me, that’s like my dream tour because I could stay at a radio station for hours on end and he didn’t have anywhere to go and he enjoyed exploring things at the station he’d never seen before with me. So it was an incredible tour, super fun. I saw every nook and cranny.\nI saw places that aren’t normally on tours when they tour people around. The station itself occupies pretty much a whole floor of this building on campus called the Rerig Center. And I was kind of blown away by how massive their space is. They’ve got lots of different studios. All the different spaces seem to be behind these closed doors, so you don’t really know what there is until you open the door. And then there’s something magical behind it. Either it’s a studio or a production room. They’ve got a large live studio where they have live bands play.\nIt’s pretty much like a professional recording studio. And it even had an area sectioned off to put drums, which I’ve never seen before at a radio station where, you know, they’re even thinking about putting drums in a separate space so you don’t have sounds spilling over. [Soft piano music fades in] Um, and that room also had a disco ball that was cool. And a piano too. [Piano music fades out] And then one of my favorites, they had all these hidden closets that were full of music. So.\n(5:20)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tSo what exactly is this room that we’re in?\n(5:23)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor \tThis is just –\nIt looks like just a dilapidated vinyl. Edgar Winter. I’m finding all of the vinyl of songs that we’re playing for our Halloween show and marching band.\n(5:37)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor \tSo do you come in here and, you know, poke around?\n(5:40)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor \tThis is one of the first times I’ve actually been in here just because I don’t, I can’t steal any of them or upload them to my computer. So I just like, I guess I just haven’t explored all the weird vinyl that we have.\n(5:55)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tAre you guys able to play 78’s? Do you have a 78 needle?\n(5:59)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor\tOh God. You know, I don’t, I don’t know.\n(6:03)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tBecause look, this is probably a 78, super fragile.\n(6:06)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor\tHow do we know? It’s just sound effects. Oh my God. This is airplanes, continuous airplanes.\n(6:15)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tThis is 13 army planes in formation.\n(6:19)\tArchival audio of Paul Benson from Radio Survivor \tThis is, we’re out of formation. It sounds different.\n(6:22)\tArchival audio of Jennifer Waits from Radio Survivor\tAnd then, in that same closet there were a bunch of 1970s, like very mainstream K Tel records. So these collections of mainstream hits from the seventies and a Jimmy Swaggart record and then like some really cool punk seven inches, like all in the same closet.\n[Sound effect of tape stopping]\n(6:40)\tKate Moffatt\tThank you so much. That was a very joyful thing to listen to, somehow. [Kate laughs] I feel like I was trying really hard not to laugh throughout it. That was, that was so great. Please. Yeah. What were we just listening to?\n(6:53)\tJennifer Waits\tIt is for me too. So, we’re touring Radio K at the University of Minnesota. And this student, Paul Benson, you know, like I mentioned at the beginning, I was in the station with him for about three hours on I think a Friday night, and you know, often I’m staying like longer than people want me [Kate and Jennifer laugh].\nBut he was so down, and I have such fond memories of this and I’m so glad I have this audio record of it because, yeah, every time… I was excited to play it again because it brings back that joyful feeling that I had and is also just, you know, it’s sort of an artistic representation of what these tours are like for me.\nLike the tours serve a lot of different purposes.  You know, I’m trying to document college radio culture. I feel like I’m preserving these stories and what stations are like at a particular point in time. And now this is essentially history, you know, ’cause this was 2015 and my mind is traveling to places. Like I wonder if —like, there were some really old—the records we were talking about, the sound effect records of planes in formation. There were a ton of ’em. And, and these were in these sort of, if I remember correctly, they were in green envelopes, you know, kind of like they were military. And, and so I, at the time I wondered where these came from and, you know, now I wonder if they’re still there. And Radio K has a very, or radio at University of Minnesota has a very long history going back to the twenties.\nSo, you know, they could have records that have just been in that library for a very long time. So I was pretty excited. I think it was the same tour where we also saw some vapor wave cassettes. So it was all over the map. And that was my tour guide playing the piano in that live room that we heard.\n(8:52)\tKate Moffatt\tOh wow. I thought it was cool that there was almost this parallel between the way that you guys were interacting with the boxes and the way that you described the shape of the radio station itself, where you were like, there’s all these doors sub in boxes. You’re like, every time you open it, you don’t know what’s gonna be in there, sub in boxes. Right? Like, you know, and then you open it and there’s something magical. Like it was cool that I, that there was like an echo there almost of the two.\n(9:19)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. And there were even cages in one part. It was for what sort of a storage room. So there were some of these metal cages that had things behind it and there was a Radio K costume, and he put it on. Yeah, and he put it on for me it was almost like it had matching gloves. It was sort of a stuffed [Jennifer laughs] like a, not a stuffy, but, yeah, I mean it’s a trip and in the room with the cages that there was some really historic material in that room too.\nI mean it’s, yeah, it’s like a fever dream actually this whole tour. And it’s in this sort of brutalist building and it’s unbelievable. I can’t believe how much space they have in the first place. And then the fact that they have all this interesting material there and that he was excited, you know, to go on this journey was, was pretty amazing.\n(10:17)\tKate Moffatt\tTo get to spend that much time in there and, and looking at it. I kind of have two questions here. And one is like, I’d love for you to tell us more about like if this audio kind of also, I don’t know, relates to or informs your research that you do kind of more generally. And also maybe in a connected sort of way, the role of listening in your research as well.\n(10:38)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. So I just started visiting stations again after, you know, the pandemic. So, you know, starting in fall 2022, I started visiting again, and I felt so rusty I’d kind of forgotten about all the things I’m trying to capture. And, and on this recording you can hear my camera snapping so-\n(10:58)\tKate Moffatt\tWhich I loved, by the way.\n(10:59)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah! So, it’s, you know, I take a ton of photos and then occasionally I’m recording audio. Sometimes I sit down and record a more formal interview. But sometimes like this time, you know, the microphone is kind of in the middle somewhere so you can hear me sort of in the distance at times because we’re not mic’d like we’re doing a, you know, professional recording. [Kate laughs]\nAnd so it’s a struggle for me because I’m trying to listen to and capture so much I’m trying to capture, you know, all the things I’m seeing visually. And then as you can tell from this, there was so much in the ambient, you know, environment of this place that was interesting. Like the spontaneous piano playing on the tour. And, I don’t think I captured this with audio, but at one point some other, I was at a college radio conference and there was an official tour of Radio K and at one point that official tour came into the record library where we were.\nAnd so it’s like we intersected for a moment. [Kate laughs] But I was on my own private, you know – magical tour. So, yeah, it’s a challenge actually for me to capture everything and, um, and I’m trying to figure out if there’s a better structure. So I think on these tours that I’ve been taking just in this past academic year, I’m trying to set aside like a space where, alright, why don’t we do an interview first where we’re seated and I’m not stressing about taking photos, and then, and then walk around a little bit.\n(12:37)\tKate Moffatt\tI’m so interested too. And you being like, kind of hyper aware of what you’re missing, even as you’re trying to capture it all. Like it’s, it’s really the impossibility of capturing everything, right? It’s kind of part of why the archives are still sitting there the way that they are. Right? That’s just the wealth of material.\n(12:55)\tJennifer Waits\tI’m missing so much. And then I’m, you know, I fear that when I get home and I’m sitting down to write my story that I haven’t taken the photo that I want to illustrate it, and I use a lot of photos, but, you know, sometimes I come back, I’m like, oh, I wish I’d taken this particular photo.\nOr more of this ’cause this one isn’t quite right. And I try to take photos of the people that I’m interviewing too. You know, ’cause a lot of, a lot of what college radio is about is the community and the people. And you know, I’ve started enjoying doing these portraits of people in the studio – like maybe grab your favorite record or a weird record or, you know, where do you wanna stand? And so I try to also compose some of these photos to capture the personalities.\n(13:47)\tKate Moffatt\tIt’s so, I feel like everything you’re saying is really making me think about the different ways, both literally and metaphorically that we listen to the archive.\nI think as like, a final question, but like, sort of like to kind of turn us in a bit of a, we’re obviously this is live, we’re at the conference and we just actually listened to the last, the last plenary panel of the symposium. I’d love to know what you’re listening to now. Either, you know, either in your research or just kind of like more generally, would love to hear, you know, what, what have you, what you’ve been listening to.\n(14:20)\tJennifer Waits\tOh, I mean, it’s interesting. My teenage my teenage child, you know, listens to music all the time and talks about how, you know, he doesn’t notice me listening to music, you know, and I think increasingly I’m listening to the world around me rather than musical sounds. Although I do college radio, so for me, like that’s the time when I’m actively doing my music listening is during my radio show every week. And it’s incredibly healing. [Jennifer laughs]\nYou know, I love that immersion. And so for me it’s that college radio space is when I’m immersing in those sounds. And, I’ve been doing college radio for a really long time and what I listen to changes from year to year and, you know, I’ve gotten increasingly into more experimental sounds. I guess, you know, also things like sound art and transmission arts. So, you know, there’ve been talks at the conference and also installations at the conference that touch on this, like the intersection between, you know, things that are intermedia that involve visual components as well as audio components. So, you know, things that are, maybe challenging and harder to understand that things like that are kind of capturing my ears  more so than maybe the familiar [Jennifer laughs] The familiar music that we hear.\n(15:54)\tKate Moffatt\tYeah, wonderful. Oh, that’s fantastic. I think this has been such a neat way to think about —I agree, I’ve been listening to this experimental stuff that we’ve been listening to this week has just been so interesting, especially in that I feel like I’m kind of physically, I keep describing it as bathing. I feel like I’m bathing in the sound and it’s because it feels very embodied somehow, which is just making me think back to that clip you played and how embodied that that sounded and the fact that I could, I could hear you moving through the space. I could hear him moving through the space. I could hear you opening boxes, taking pictures.\n(16:20)\tJennifer Waits\tYeah. I mean, it’s all about the space. And I think that’s what was challenging for a lot of people during the pandemic, you know, who work in college radio or community radio, that we weren’t in our spaces and a lot of us were, you know, trying to figure out how to do radio from home. And, I think this academic year, people are trying to get back to that sense of community and being back in our spaces and connecting on that level too, because that’s where a lot of the creativity happens is going through the stacks and, you know, finding the records that you don’t know about or –– or finding unexpected things, rather than, I mean, this is the thing about looking for music online. You kind of find what you’re looking for rather than being surprised a lot of the time.\n(17:09)\tKate Moffatt\tLike browsing the stacks in the library versus buying an ebook.\n(17:12)\tJennifer Waits\tExactly. Yeah.\nKate Moffatt\tI think that’s a beautiful place to stop if you’re, if you’re happy to, if you’re happy to stop there. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us.\n[ShortCuts Theme music fades in]\nThis has been so much fun. That just, I’m still thinking about that camera click and the piano music that was played in there. It’s just, that was just fantastic. Thank you so much for bringing that along.\n(17:32)\tJennifer Waits\tOh, thank you. I’m glad that you enjoyed it.\n(17:38)\tKatherine McLeod\tYou’ve been listening to ShortCuts. That was a ShortCuts Live conversation with Jennifer Waits recorded in May 2023 at the SpokenWeb Symposium at the University of Alberta. Thanks to Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood for making that interview happen. And thanks to our current supervising producer Maia Harris for the help in re-listening to that interview together. The SpokenWeb Podcast’s sound designer is James Healey and transcription is done by Zoe Mix. My name is Katherine McLeod and, as always, thanks for listening.\n[Theme music ends]\n \n"],"score":2.6319342}]