My Audio Essay

I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning of this assignment. I believe passionately that people should write and tell their stories. Or just tell their stories. I draw heavily on my past and on my cultural heritage to make meaning of my life and experiences. So it was very important for me to try to pull in someone from my hometown.

I have some video of my grandmother, who passed away in 2005. She was our next door neighbor, and was consequently very important in my life. She often talked about her past, but of course, she never considered herself to be a writer, and she never wrote. Rarely did she even write letters, as the telephone was so much more immediate. My video, however, would not import (after about eight hours of trying), so I did not get to use my grandmother's voice.

Something that I did have, though, was an interview that my daughter did for her history day project with Mrs. Marshall, a friend of my mother's. Mrs. Marshall and my mother ended up talking about the stories they knew from childhood, and how telling stories made it easier to cope with the death of loved ones. So after 14 hours of attempting, I finally re-imported Mrs. Marshall's interview into Adobe Premiere Elements, which allowed me to extract the audio.

My audio essay was originally a lecture that I gave to our Honors College freshmen class about writing memoir. It was based heavily on a piece by Patricia Hampl that we all read. So I removed most of what came from the reading, except one little piece that I quoted.

I also went looking to see if I could find Donald Murray talking about writing. He has been the most influential theorist on my teaching. And I love the way he approaches writing, especially if I trying to encourage someone to write. And I did find an audio interview with him by Chip Scanlon.

I used Mediaevel Baebes' Veni Veni as a background track.

I am really pleased with how this turned out, except for the fact that I was not able to edit the track with Mrs. Marshall as carefully as I would have liked as I was only finally able to pull it in just before class.

I was really surprised by how many problems that I had with the technology. I usually have way more problems with the concepts than with the tools, but this time the concept came pretty easily and the tools nearly killed me.

Edited to add: I was able to edit the file the way I wanted. I am afraid that the volume is not even throughout. That was hard to get right because the Murray clip was posted online, and he was on a telephone. The interview footage with Mrs. Marshall was from a video camera without a separate microphone. The difference in inputs makes it hard to get the volume right. If I only had a mixing board.

Audio Essay: Writing Your Self