|
Q:
|
What was it like to turn your writerly attention to your family, to something so personal?
|
|
A:
|
Ultimately, it bolstered much of what I believe about the profound responsibility of journalism and the value of exploring the complicated fact that it's your take on the story that you're trying to tell.
Doing this piece brought me back to this sense of responsibility—with more wisdom. The process was extremely narratively challenging and emotionally difficult—disruptive, in fact. I can't say I experienced the impact of what I'd done until Sarah Kramer, the producer, began to wrangle with the tapes a year after my father's death. After she'd made substantive rounds of cuts, I listened, and that's when it hit—that I'd taped my father's last months and that I was facing a choice about making it public. If I did produce and air it, it was going to have an effect on my living family.
|
|
Q:
|
In the end, of course, you went ahead, and the result is a powerful, affecting piece. What were some of the challenges you found in telling a good story?
|
|
A:
|
First of all, because I hadn't set out to do an audio story, I hadn't taped with an ear to any coherent narrative. Dave Isay at StoryCorps had given me a recorder to simply get down the facts of my dad's biography in order to preserve them. I knew that I'd write about my father someday. I've learned the hard way that no matter how many times I've been told a story, without careful documentation, some of the crucial details—names of folks, locations—get lost. So Sarah and I were left to piece together scenes and build from there.
Once we began to work to make it into a radio documentary/essay, one challenge was letting go of those sections that were meaningful personally or revealing of the complexity of my father's character. Some were too complicated to use for radio. Some required too much context (e.g., introductions to identify a voice, where the speakers were physically, family referents that were clear to us but would only distract or confuse a listener). Radio is different from print work in so many interesting ways, but the main thing I learned was how clean and clear radio narrative has to be—e.g., no names or images that aren't followed up on. It's helped me with my writing a great deal.
I'd given Sarah about 40 hours' worth of raw recordings. We had to assess the sections of "good tape," by which I mean usable tape, in terms of sound quality, voice clarity, etc. And we had to decide the length—6 minutes, 12 or 22. Initially, I wanted 22. But we decided that keeping the listener up close and able to bear what was happening for that long didn't seem possible given the amount of good tape we had.
|
|
Q:
|
There are several moments in which listeners get a picture of the setting or of your father through the dialogue captured on tape—the sights out the window, the sight of his legs, how much weight he has lost. Were you seeking to get this on tape, or did you select these sections later because those details happened to be there?
|
|
A:
|
I didn't think that way much at all. I did try, in one of the earliest tapings (not included in the final document) to get biographical information, but our spontaneous conversation trumped the half-hearted attempt at a formal interview. I rarely do such interviews when I am officially reporting anyway.
The only other time that I remember trying consciously to capture something (again not included) was a car drive we took through his childhood neighborhood on the way back from radiation treatment; he was still mobile then. A portion of that ride is on the Sound Portraits Web site. It was one of the hardest days of his illness. He was in a state of utter despair; he was so weary. He wasn't sure he could get himself to fight to get well. As I helped him to dress, he said he simply couldn't go on with it. I encouraged him. He asked, clearly and quietly, for help. It may have been the first time he'd ever done that so directly. I was frightened, exhausted, and in retrospect, I think, stunned. I called my best friend from high school because I needed help, and she drove us to the treatment.
My old friend is a bubbly, infectious person. Her spiritedness saved us both. He was inspired to take a ride afterwards. It was something my father and I did whenever I visited—drive around his old neighborhood. He did what he always did—narrate on what had been there, on what could no longer be seen—who lived where, what the empty factories had produced, where he'd stood at speeches during the strikes. I was very conscious of the recorder being on then.
More often, I resisted taping entirely. The task—getting minidiscs, checking batteries, taping—made me not only aware of what I was doing, but of his impending death, that time was running out. I wanted to stop time. The technical aspects of it also distracted me from attending to him. Time was so precious. I let the technical stuff go, which resulted in, again, unusable tape.
|
|
Q:
|
Could you talk some more about how this project furthered your thinking about the responsibilities of journalists as they tell stories?
|
|
A:
|
It depends on the story, of course. On the amount of time and resources and support journalists are given to do their work, which is almost never enough. With the subjects I tackle, the potential consequences for the people about whom I'm writing can be devastating—criminal charges, suspension of welfare benefits, eviction, to name a few. Such consequences have rightly always been a worry and concern of mine. In the case of this project, with my intricate knowledge of the personalities in my family—my awareness of their possible range of responses—became more anxiety-producing the closer I got to the project's completion, then release. I had grown up with people who were now my "subjects." The experience made me feel better about the concern I feel about the pieces I do, made me glad that I handle the process with close care and scrutiny.
Of course people react in their individual ways, and they are often utterly surprising. The reactions can be baffling or humbling, and sometimes bemusing—and my fears and predictions are often entirely wrong! A good chunk of my worry is ego: my own fear of being disliked, mistaken, etc.
I also thought more about the value of talking with your subjects—when possible—about the final piece, helping to prepare them as much as possible without compromising your position and what you've done.
And I thought about how crucial it is to listen to people's responses to the finished work—with as much attention as you gave while you listened to them during the reporting stage, while you are trying to get information from and time with them. It's as much a part of the process as the front end, as uncomfortable as it can be. Listening in this way is professional, respectful. The unintended benefit of the introspection, criticism and self-scrutiny that results—including a specific appreciation of what was of value to people, and what felt especially meaningful or true to them—helps the next piece of work. Helps to ground us in the serious, serious work we do.
|