1 post tagged “vobes”
Recently I've been keeping an almost daily audioblog. It's something I've been doing off and on for quite a long time but since interviewing 'The Naked Englishman' (Richard Vobes) for a regular podcast I produce called 'Citizen Scoop' I've been producing them in a far more consistent fashion. I have now set-up a specific blogger site to host them.
It's strange the way in which communicating your private thoughts in a raw and uncensored way to an audience unburdens you of them. It also helps to enforce a certain personal accountability. Of course I'm not actually accountable to anyone, simply because they happen to hear my private thoughts. Yet in some mysterious way, it helps me to feel I that have publicly shared certain thoughts and feelings with my (mostly anonymous) audience. It's a good feeling to 'let go' in a stream of conciousness way, without feeling worried or burdened by whether or not the other person is actually listening, or wondering if even they care about what I'm saying. I'm simply able to assume that 'somebody' is, and get on with whatever it is I feel I'd like to say.
Of course written blogs are equally useful for getting something off your chest, although perhaps not as portable and they can't be interacted with whilst doing something else. They require a larger measure of attention and a different kind of concentration to ensure that we get a clear sense of what the other person is really communicating.
Audio is more spacious, it's 'fuzzier' if you will, because the bandwidth of the vocal tone and the surrounding environmental sound field communicate a high volume of both subjective and specific information. When I'm listening to someone speaking, rather than reading their thoughts, I pick up a lot of this fuzzy background. Their accent, the pace of their speech, their energy level, what kind of mood they appear to be in, even their apparent level of sincerity all appear apparent from information contained in their voice and speaking pattern.
These things help to contribute to and colour my understanding and judgement when I form an opinion of what I believe they're talking about. I don't feel I am making an enormous effort to get at this information. Listening is after all a fairly easy thing to do. Although try telling that to some people who never seem to pay any attention to the things that people say to them!
Personally I enjoy the sense of mundanity, lack of pretension, personableness and the everyday reality that pervades audioblogs. Hearing people talking about their lives in an unvarnished way is somehow rewarding. I feel invested in that person and engaged in their daily life. In a certain sense I come to feel that I know them as I some of my friends and family.
The style associated with audioblogs is generally one that is unpolished and unedited. They are unscripted and therfore seem 'real' in a way that that the contrived reality shows sarurating our televsions rarely seem to be. In a media culture that bombards us with proffessional polish and fake reality it's a refreshing change to be able to listen in on the ordinary and extraordinary workings of the minds and hearts of the people who share the world with us.
