Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

Audio changes writing. Changes my writing. Working through the final draft of my project I have found that in recording and listening back to my piece, I have achieved my most effective and productive editing, in comparison to any other process I have attempted at this stage in a project. This is a process that I will take with me as a step to editing everything I work on in the future, regardless of if it is meant to remain in print or not. Listening back with distance, where the voice is excised from the body, moved further from the ears than just the time it takes for the spoken sound waves to travel to the ear, gives more opportunity to hear where parts miss their intention or lines sound awkward. I have found tremendous power and advantage in this and am grateful to have be forced to record a piece to find this hack. I look forward to seeing if using audio and recording as an editing strategy will improve other projects I am currently working on.

I have also noticed the subconscious presence of the consideration of location throughout my piece. When originally drafting the poem, I was less focused on contemplating location and more curious about language, specifically the loss of language that someone may experience when being half White. Nonetheless, when recording the project I have found that I was also constantly thinking about location. My notes were on location. The consideration of physical movement is scattered throughout the piece, like rocks on the shore of a lake, it is evidently one of the major the thematic explorations, I just needed to take my shoes off to feel it there.

Finally, I just want to linger on a brief reflection on my gratitude towards this project. The writing for it forced me to explore parts of myself that I did not like to look in the face, I am, therefore, grateful that it got me to appreciate this rawness and empowered me enough to explore these personal themes.