Drift Assessment

Two situations that aggravated me on my Drift One Walk were the constant sounds of cars driving by, and the lack of what I perceived to be "good" or "interesting" sounds, and the boredom that resulted because of both. I feel I was lulled into some kind of evil trance by the constant sounds of cars driving by. It brought me into a kind of depressed state which was hard to shake off. I don't really even mind these sounds too much, but I don't like intensely listening to them, and certainly not trying to record them. So that was the most frustrating thing for me. The constant cars driving by mixed with the lack of interesting sounds.

When I got to the start of my drift walk and got everything together and working I felt a sort of peace, listening to the sounds through my headphones and getting "in the moment." This kind of peace also resulted later from being in Washington park, where I was surrounded by flocks of geese. I got "in the zone" then, knowing that great sounds were in front of me waiting to be captured.

I got to this place of peace by an unexpected event of finding a trail that worked with my drift strategy. The trail led down into Washington park, where I was surprisingly greeted with hundreds of geese. This was a pleasant surprise. But as I was walking down the trail at the park I ran into another surprise. I had clipped my microphones onto my sweatshirt as I was walking through the park recording sounds, and as a result my left microphone fell off and started dragging along the ground. The contrast between the two sounds of the dragging mic and the one still clipped to my sweatshirt really interested me. I ended up playing around with this for a while, and got some interesting sounds from it.

The third surprise of mine that wasn't so pleasant was the sense of boredom that came over me in my walk. I felt the place I picked to start my drift was not very interesting, and the sounds I gathered I felt were also not very interesting. Basically, my overall experience with my drift walk was sub-par (something I am going to try to fix in my second drift walk).

My favorite experience was, again, recording the geese in the park. I realized then that this is what I really love to record, and not the sounds of the city. Quite frankly, I hate the sounds of the city. The constant "hum" seems to get into my ears and fill my brain, hypnotizing me into a senseless state of mind. The sounds of nature, however, I love. Recording the sounds of the geese and manipulating how they sounded by running at them and making them all take off at once was very exhilarating to me. I love how interesting animals can sound, and how presenting them to an audience can be even more interesting. I hope my next drift walk will carry me farther away from the city and closer to nature.