Audio Story

Here is my example of an audio story. You can click the link below, and read along with the text printed below.

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Picking Up Sticks (July 2012)

By: Eric Shellhase

A script for an audio story.

I recently moved to Garrison, NY.

I lived in Brooklyn for three years.  I came to New York City to leave Philadelphia.  Great city but I needed something new.  I came to New York with no particular plan, no connections, and no job.  But I made it work, with the support of my girlfriend, who came to New York to start grad school.  

I handed out fliers no one wanted and learned Manhattan.

I took a temp job taking photos for a company I can’t mention, famous for its online maps.  Taking photos, I learned Brooklyn.

I got a teaching job, and returned to ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), and I learned Queens.  I could get anywhere I wanted on the train, I could walk in any direction from my apartment, and get just about anything I needed.  And I found the school to begin my professional career as an English teacher.

So, I could make it work for a summer in Garrison, New York.  It’s a beautiful place.  Quiet.  Surrounded by woods.  And every night I discover at least one new species of insect frantically beating against my window.

If I forget to check the mail during the daylight, I won’t make it to the main road without a flashlight.

I did find work.  Yard work jobs I can’t get to without my girlfriend’s car.

I do a lot of digging...

shoveling...

weeding...

moving sticks and rocks...

and sweating.  

Hard, physical work.  Getting muddy.  Getting sunburnt and bee stings.  Getting poison ivy twice.  I could spot poison ivy now in any line-up.

Mind-numbing labor.  On one property, I am cleaning up the woods.  Picking up sticks.  In the woods.  For eight hours.  I’m lucky to have found some work, so what right do I have to complain?  But it doesn’t make it any less boring.  

Last Friday, I was cleaning the cellar of a shed.  Raking terracotta pots, and shoveling the rotted bags of dry cement, getting acquainted with a family of cave crickets.  Hunched over in the kind of crawl space one might expect an abduction case to end.

So bored, and so grossed out.  But I was making such interesting sound, rich with texture, and accidental melody.  So I began recording sound with my iPhone.

I carted wheel-barrows brimming with rubbish, across a truly stunning landscape.  So I began recording video.

While picking up sticks, I unearthed whole colonies of ants, making homes from logs and roofing tiles and an ingenious fortress in a dirt filled bottle.  So I started taking pictures.

This iPhone is a little old, a hand-me-down, and I am grateful.  But the camera sucks or my skills are severely wanting.

This photo on my screen does not convey the magnitude of the stick pile I have assembled.  

This video bouncing and cloudy does not capture any sense of adventure.

But the sound is pretty good.  Even with a microphone caked in dirt.

And for the first time since i started this yard work, which occupies so many mindless hours, I was excited.  I was finding stories.  I just don’t know how to tell all of them yet.

And picking up sticks and rocks was a performance I had to try to capture.