Oh No. We're back.

and we wrote a manifesto. oops.

Hi - It’s Adriene writing the newsletter this time. But Olivia is still here, she told me what parts were bad and I left them in anyway. My personal update is that, like everyone else, I feel like I may never work again and also just, like, not good in general. On the bright side - [REDACTED]. So, I guess that’s nice even in the face of maybe never seeing a doctor again? Hard to say.

Anyway, I started writing an email to [REDACTED] in response to [REDACTED] and it turned into a kind of manifesto, or a dream or a rant or something. Mostly about podcasts, and in particular this little niche of quasi-commercial art production podcasts. Did we ever come up with a term for that? “Experimental podcast” was always annoying, “storytelling” is a marketing scam, “sound works” is too vague and “spoken word” doesn’t feel right either. Maybe like … sonicalogue? talksound? aesthetic-rambling? idk … I’m not really sure. But after reading this, and remembering back to Christopher DeLaurenti’s sentiments in an earlid program an eternity ago, I (we - Olivia, still part of this) decide to edit and not trash what I’d started writing.

So here’s our manifesto, of sorts.

Or, what I/we want to hear and make more of in the podcast/radio/audio art space.

(A) Variety.

I want to hear what I don’t know I want to hear. Confuse me, be unserious, annoy me. I love an inexplicable, unfathomable choice. What is “craft” and who really cares? But also I mean variety in everything - perspective, tone, genre, loudness, performance, everything. Give me cartoons and feelings and poetics and laughing and also, the news. I don’t want the Sp*tify recommendations equivalent of audio curation - I don’t want all the sounds to blend seamlessly into the next. I don’t want the same, recycled sounds, narration and performance styles. I don’t want ambient noise. I’d rather hear something that’s kind of bad but breaking convention, than a story that was made with an eye on awards or sponsorship, I’m very tired of safe and sleek. Maybe that’s too negative but I’m sad and bored, please help.

(2) Stop Making Sense

Down with the thesis and qualifiers, I don’t care about the plot. There was a time in my life when the plot mattered, probably because it sells, but at this point I do not give a shit. Down with story structure and hooks and hero’s journeys. Up with poetics and sensations and contrapuntal narratives and people screaming.

(D) Duration.

I think some of the best listening experiences happen when you stop paying attention. Like, I’m not looking to be bored but also stop trying to keep my attention. Anti-clickbait, anti-hook, anti-quick, punchy dialogue. I want the fumbles that come with patience - meandering sentences, hard cuts, slow fades. I want to be allowed to let my attention drift and fade and float around a bit.

On a more practical level, I also enjoy listening while doing things like jogging, driving long distances, cooking. These things take time and I can’t be making choices, just let me turn into dust while I’m doing my laundry.

(5) Do a VOICE

Give me weird narrators, give me the kind of deranged accents. Let me hear the labored breathing and the ambitious poems you’ve written but are afraid to perform. Down with authenticity, down with self-referential qualifications, up with distortion and a mouth full of hay.

(x) Mystery.

What are you doing? Trust me to trust you through whatever spaghetti you’re pushing around. Like, maybe I won’t listen to the end but probably I’m doing the dishes and my hands are wet so I can’t actually change the channel anyway (and cause I don’t use voice commands).

I like sound and dialogue that don’t overly explain. Something that makes me feel part of their world. I need to remember this when I’m making stuff too, when I have the urge to overly explain – Will they get what I’m going for? Will they understand me? I forget that sometimes the unknowing or semi knowing is the best part, how finding easter eggs and making up various meanings are the all part of my favorite parts of the journey of engaging with a work. And even if they get it wrong - isn’t that also part of the fun, too? How many times have I been saying the same wrong lyrics to my favorite songs, justifying my misunderstanding and praising the songwriter’s intelligence for a turn of phrase that my own ears made up for me? Just let me feel something without fucking telling me about it first.

final note on that:

This ‘manifesto’ is (in part) a reaction to how the big influx of corporate money (and now retraction) into podcasting has shifted our priorities as producers, artists, people making sound, listeners. I've been grappling with how this has affected what I end up listening to and the way I work creatively — what was once a very process and improvisational practice for me morphed into something more pitch and “product” focused, which never felt natural and never really worked for me anyway (I’ve never did actually managed to “sell” my stories or my work). All industries are at the whim of the money and the politic that shape them, and the last decade of "audio" (because, again - we never landed on a good term) has been a wild time of beloved and problematic stations and institutions crumbling, of weird optimism and defeat, of a flood of endless new works and vested interests. I don’t want to say if that was/is good, bad or otherwise — because I don’t think it was really any of it — but I do think it’s hard to rebel when the possibilities seem profitable. I’m glad some of us got paid for a time, I hope we all get paid again. But I’d like us to get paid for making things that feel alive, and chaotic and varied. This isn't a critique to any one individual, but to the audio industry as a whole. Listening to the radio got me through adolescence, I don't want to abandon it now.

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Other, non-manifesto stuff we’ve been up to:

The latest installment of our call-in show Ravioli Tourism airs APRIL 16th! 9pm-Midnight!

The topic of the month is home. What home means to you, homes you've lived in, homes you dream of, homes falling apart, home away from home, homeland(?!), wandering homes, and whatever else you think about when you think about home. Join the mix - Call in live during the show at 201-209-9368, or send a voice memo in advance to tourism@wfmu.org.