More from Susan Barrett Price
The Auntie Song
(00:01:09)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Folk song based on "Hush, Little Baby" without the hushing.
Kathleen's Machine: Home Audio Recording in the Days Before Tape
(00:06:00)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Short documentary collage of voices recorded in St. Louis during World War II on a Wilcox-Gay Recordio. The Greatest Generation carries on, as remembered and recorded by ...
How Crap Becomes Real (Or, How I Got Started On Ebay)
(00:05:00)
From: Susan Barrett Price
We learned from the Velveteen Rabbit how toys become real. But all things become real and emerge daily from the secret source at the back of my closet.
Respectacle: A Mockumentary
(00:02:30)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Voices of innocence against the institutional clangor. Third Coast sound art.
War Rugs: What Little Girls Make
(00:02:30)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Contemplating a war rug made during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Ellen Gibbons: Going vs Staying
(00:03:00)
From: Susan Barrett Price
An immigrant story: longing for permanence but restless in pursuing it. My great-grandmother.
Write of Passage
(00:02:56)
From: Susan Barrett Price
I wrote a novel in grade school. Then I threw it away. Childhood gives way to adolescence.
Foul Hook: My Fishing Lesson
(00:03:10)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Short fishing tale from my stream behind the strip mall, a lesson not so much about fish
Wrong Moment for Silence
(00:02:27)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Not being able to speak up to say the right thing at the right moment: a scene from high school
Remembering Charlotte, In The Rain
(00:02:40)
From: Susan Barrett Price
Gender issues are one of childhood's mysteries. We look back and go hmm...
Piece Description
A traveler's tale: 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. This might have been a one-chuckle anecdote if I hadn't been a social reformer who had just run away from a jungle of politics at home. 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. My trip was not just about getting stuck in the canopy but about the nightmares that come to someone who just can't relax and leave well enough alone. This piece was originally streamed by Transom in the 2003 "Three about Me." As of 2/5/04, no national broadcast.
2 Comments
|
Review of Dangling WomanNice story-telling, rather poetic, made all the richer by avoiding a chronological structure, the parallel between the jungle experience and the rest of life insightful, yet not pedantic or overplayed. I can just see her, dangling there... |
Broadcast History
Broadcast rights were given to Atlantic Public Media and to KABF in Little Rock, AR.
Transcript
I dangle in mid-air. Am I 50 feet high? A hundred? No matter - I'm still helpless in the Costa Rican jungle.
Five minutes ago, I was climbing up the hollow insides of a strangler fig tree - buckled into a harness, attached to a safety line and wearing thick leather gloves to protect my hands. A tricky little twist gets me out on the platform, high in the rainforest canopy. I watch the man in front of me latch a gizmo to the overhead cable, sit back into his harness, push himself off the platform and - swoosh - in three seconds his feet touch down on Platform 2 about a hundred feet away. Nothing to it.
My turn. The platform guy detaches me from the safety rope and shows me how to attach my gizmo to the cable. "Keep one hand on it for balance," he says, "and the other hand lightly on the cable to brake yourself."
"?Listo?" the Platform 2 guy calls. Ready?
"Listo," my guy responds...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Segment 1 (00:05:17)
Musical Works
(Background music and effects were composed from royalty-free loops.)





linda tarr
Posted on December 31, 2006 at 09:02 PM | Permalink
Review of Dangling Woman
I like this piece. It invites us into the writer/thinker's world, musing on internalities without becoming narcissistic. A writerly piece. The voice is nicely braided with sounds that place the musings in a very real physical place, where the singular problem to be solved happens to mirror the labyrinth that the writer brought to the jungle. The degree of complexity in the voice/sound mix is just right.
The grown up, though muddled attitude is perversely refreshing.
I think this producer should quit her job and figure out a way to live on mangos and make interesting sound.
Oh if it were as simple as pulling oneself along a cable.
Hmmm. Life is complicated, no?