Adrianne Kraft
Individual Project
Reflection Paper
A Day in the Life of Us All
Student-Chosen Model: Homecoming by Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz
Link: https://www.gimletmedia.com/homecoming/
For my project A Day in the Life of Us All I chose to record a standard day for myself. In these recordings I wanted to convey that my day-to-day life may not be the most exciting, but it is my life none the less. I also wanted to convey that similarities in my daily life to the listeners daily lives do exist. Although it’s impossible for any of our lives to be identical I wanted to show listeners that they aren’t alone in their mundane and often redundant day to day lives.
Upon first listen it may come off as boring but I feel the daily lives of us all hold small meaningful sounds and those meaningful sounds, if captured and shared with others, can create an understanding between listeners. Perhaps the song I changed in the car wasn’t exactly your favorite song. Perhaps the one I lingered on was. This can create a connection between my daily life and yours by solely using sounds. I believe this is such a powerful thing to convey, that all of us in some way are connected sonically, especially when dealing with the sounds of our day to day.
In reference to my inspiration, I chose to base my project off of the Homecoming podcast by Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz. I was very drawn to the simplistic way they were able to convey each and every scene. I was able to tell that the main character was walking into her office or waiting tables at a restaurant. It was very clear and there was not much use for explanation. I drew from that and tried to create scenes that would be easily recognizable as well. I wanted my listeners to know that I was waking up in the morning or that I was walking to my car. I didn’t want there to be any confusion as to what sounds my audience was listening to so I tried to keep it simple and recognizable just as the writers of Homecoming did. Because of my desire to have the sounds do the talking, so to say, I opted for a very simple narration. I wanted the listeners to take what they will from my sounds and not only hear what I tell them they should be hearing.
I began with me waking up in the morning speaking briefly with my boyfriend and then hopping in the shower to get ready for my day. My next scene was me driving to work switching between radio stations followed by me walking into the office. My concluding scene was me walking out of the office at the end of my day and driving off. These scenes are recognizable to almost everyone to a certain extent. We all wake up to begin our day, we all drive to and from work/school/etc, we all know what being inside of an office building sounds like. These are scenes that hold some relevance for people because of their commonality.
Despite the simplicity and commonality of the scenes it is naïve to think that everyone hears the same sounds as I do daily. While they may be common and can be used to create a connection between the listeners they can also create a divide. As we have learned in our texts the sounds of one person’s daily life can differ tremendously from another’s for reasons such as race. The sonic color line spans from music all the way to the day to day sounds of individuals. What I hear daily could be completely different from a person of a different race. Therefore, my scenes could also be insightful because it could show that although these sounds are common to me they may not be common to everyone.
Overall, my main goal was to create sounds that brought an understanding of daily life whether the individual could relate or not. Either my audience found scenes they recognized and could relate to or they learned how the sounds of someone’s life could differ tremendously from their own. Either way, I truly believe that while they may seem unimportant, daily sounds are anything but because they make up who we are, who/what we’re surrounded by, and can even dictate how we think and feel. I wanted to convey that to my audience in the simplest way possible.