Sound Walk Failure
I couldn’t do it guys.
I decided to do the Williamsburg walk, based largely on proximity, just a half hour walk from my house. But also because, in class I asked what relation the soundwalker has to the environment, how it might possibly affect the community around it to have a couple people with white earphones walking the same path every week. This one seemed like the best way to test that out. And man, was I a total failure at it.
Working hard against my natural shyness I arrived white earphones firmly in place, the comforting voice of Pearl Gluck a friendly ghost beside me. Our fearless leader has described in her book Destination Culture, a concept called the museum effect:
''Museum exhibitions transform how people look at their own immediate environs. The museum effect works both ways. Not only do ordinary things become special when placed in museum settings but the museum experience itself becomes a model for experiencing life outside of its walls’’ (destination culture pg. 51)
So what happens when you turn that inside out? When the “museum” of sorts becomes somebody’s neighborhood. (Well in a way. Pearl grew up in Boro Park. It is not explicitly geographic personal history that she is narrating.) I think. But in the museum of sorts, the museum effect has become my head, in my headphones. Honestly, it was a very confusing experience. And I’m not sure how I feel about it or why I might feel this way, but while I was doing it, I felt…weird. Bad. I felt bad. Pearl, my charming hostess, makes the point pretty explicitly that ‘we are not monkeys in a zoo’, and ‘Don’t be disrespectful.’ (Which is certainly not the intent of the soundwalk company. The program is to explore the city in an unobtrusive manner guided by someone who knows and cares about the area, and. I am totally behind it.) But I made me feel like I was on a Star Trek away team. I felt so awkward with my headphones. I wear them everyday on the train, but now they make me feel so obtrusive. Maybe if Pearl’s route had just been a straight line from the Marcy JMZ straight down Bedford or something. But taking the first door you were supposed to walk was where I had to quit. I didn’t do the eating part either. Most of the woman on the street where about my age or younger and maybe it was the closeness of our age…. but I wondered what they would have thought of what I was doing.
in my mind they said:
1) It’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it.
2) Its kind of annoying that you are looking at us like this.
So I quit, hit pause and walked up to Café Naico down the street from my house. I’m familiar with the area. And cup of coffee in hand Pearl Gluck and I sat down wand finished out sound walk together. It’s interesting for me how the production is better (says me) when you aren’t actually doing it. It becomes a radio play of places that I have been and seen. .And places that I will now look at with eyes slightly more like Pearl's. Or at least it’s an experience that is not a little bit scary. The experience for me raised more questions about the soundwalk company than it answered.
I’ll do Times Square maybe and tell you if that one goes better.