I dreamt last night that I made a big squash soup for an even bigger party, a party full of people from the past– people I hadn’t seen in years and didn’t care about when I did see them. I was nervous; it was a recipe I hadn’t tried before and I’d decided after a torturous dreamlike decisionmaking process to add a dash of some sort of smuggled mutant super-habanero sauce to the stuff.
If I could read your mind (and how do you know I can’t???), after the first few seconds listening to this podcast I’ll bet your mind would say something like this: “I know she said she was sick, but a strepped throat doesn’t do that to a voice!”
Well, I didn’t think I’d pull this off. A particularly invidious houseguest in the form of streptococcal has left my coccyx surprisingly unscatched, but the pharynx, well, I don’t recall gargling with rusted staples after my razorblade dinner, but gosh it hurts in there. And so here I sit, throatily challenged to forego my Saturday podcast, but, compulsive as I am, couldn’t stand the thought.
A confession: I’ve been loath to podcast Kafka, only because I wouldn’t know which one would be podcastable, which is to say Kafkaesque enough to be delivered storyhour-style, but not so Kafkaesque as to leave listeners beating themselves with the oars used to row the macabre waters of their own tears. You know, that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love that sort of thing.
Last night, I did something I thought I’d never do. I went dancing. And not seated dive-barstool dancing when your picks come up on the jukebox, or late-night loftparty dancing, but proper dancing, at a Dance Club.
Okay, for those who found the new audio setup too sophisticated (and I agree, to an extent; this is proudly a lowest-of-the-no fi podcast experience, but everyone needs to be heard, you know), a compromise: I adjusted the sound software, I -think- to pick up more room noise, to let it breathe. Breathing, in podcasts, is important.
Remember the early days, when this was entirely scrappy, when you sometimes heard the dog or the bus passing by or the pins drop (for pins do drop in my house of chaos) more than you heard the reading? Those were the days, eh? Then, a couple of months ago, we upgraded the microphone and suddenly, you heard the voice. Clearer. At that was it, I’d promised myself.
There are times when even the most prepared podcasting events turn to podcatastrophe, when even the most professional podcastress forgets to turn off the phone for a reading, when the most sedulous podcaster leaves pages stuck together entirely underestimates the length of time spent podcasting, when the most meticulous discovers halfway through that the hard drive is filled up with newly downloaded Restoration Comedy with no room for the podcast file, or that Suddenly Traffic Has Taken Off and Who’s Going To Pay For This?!
It’s been a long week Au Pays De Miette, signified, I suppose, by the fact that we’ve gone quite a few days without a new podcast. And to complicate things, I’ve just posted a new one which, like the Fante or the Murdoch or the Dostoevsky, is close to my cuffs.