Transom Shows: 3 About ME

Three About Me
Approaches to Self

Dangling Woman
Produced by Susan B. Price

Listen to Dangling Woman - 5:17
MP3: Streaming (64 kbps) | Download (3 mb)
REAL AUDIO: SureStream (28.8 - 64 kbps)

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From Susan B. Price

I wanted to write a traveler's tale -- short and well-focused. The story was simple: I was an eco-tourist in Costa Rica. I bought a ticket to slide on a cable between treetops in the rainforest. Everyone else did it fine, but I got stuck in the middle. A one-chuckle anecdote. But if I was going to write a jungle story, I wanted it to have grand dark meaning. I didn't want to be a silly middle-aged tourist. I didn't want to be Erma Bombeck. I wanted to be Joseph Conrad. If I've had a single insight in my travels, it is that the places we visit are neutral and largely indifferent to us. The mood and the meaning is inside the visitor. I was fixated on my little anecdote about getting stuck in the canopy but I needed to find some symbolism, some larger truth, so I pulled out my trip journal and remembered the nightmares. The result reveals a bit about my psychology. I'm not a very good in-the-moment person. I think too much and the world is really more accommodating to people who just go along. If you think about the mechanics of walking down stairs, you stumble.

Technical Info

Being a lover of complexity, I've gone from writing and computer graphics to video production. Along the way, I discovered sound design. For this project I used my new Marantz minidisc recorder with a Sony ECM-MS907 condenser mic -- I like the intimate sound it gets for first-person narrations. My bedroom -- carpeted, lined with books, and wall hangings -- is my sound studio.

I edited the narration with Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge. I like putting the narration and music bits together in Acid Pro, where I can fool around with loops and pretend I'm a composer.

Bio

I have to confess that -- like the canopy cable -- the jungle of social reform has finally defeated me. In December, after 24 years in youth and family services, I am calling it quits. Maria Cristalli (one of my fellow reformers) and I have started Cosmopolitan Productions, on the belief that good storytelling has a better shot at changing the world. We have begun to produce short videos that express the dilemmas and longings of children and adolescents. "Dangling Woman" is our first production for radio.