With the prompt ‘body’, I decided to explore breath. We use breath a lot in dramatic arts to both ground ourselves and ground the work. I find that because of the pandemic, breath has taken on an anxious stance. Society is so worried about breathing on each other. It’s so weird to think about breath because it’s a function that happens without too much thought about it. I find when I think about breathing, I overthink it and start to wonder whether or not I’m doing it right. It takes me a really long time to find it relaxing. Which I noticed while I was recording this journal. I shifted a lot and found myself to be uncomfortable with the notion of intentionally breathing. In a way that’s really interesting to me and I’m wondering if maybe I should explore why it made me uncomfortable.

Sound Journal #1 Body

I live in the city of St Catharines, for those who don’t live here during the summer, it’s relatively quiet. Especially in my little neighborhood. Now when I think of the city, I think of cars and conversation and sirens. I didn’t want to record a road because honestly it’d be two minutes of tires. However, I went for dinner with my mum and my siblings and I thought about how when talking happens simultaneously in a big room, none of it sounds like English. Even though at least 70% of the room was probably speaking English. Why is it that a cacophony of voices is suddenly no longer language, but noise? Voices happening simultaneously in one room feels like a city to me. It’s something you hear in Union Station, or a crowded mall. It’s interesting to me that even though a lot of people talking in one room has nothing to do with a city, but yet that’s what it invokes for me. I imagine that it has something to do with growing up in Mississauga/Toronto and feeling most at home and in a city when I can’t pick out any singular conversation that’s happening.

Sound Journal #2 City

Poetry’s a form of art that we regard as something to be lovely. The poet is the person whose heart bleeds and they express all sorts of emotions in imagery and beautiful language. I’m also in a renaissance literature class currently. I noticed how different reading 16th century literature out loud is compared to 21st century literature. I think that 16th century literature just sounds more performative and epic, whereas 21st century literature sounds normal. I think it’s because we’re accustomed to 21st century English that ‘old’ English sounds like an entirely different language. It’s similar to saying ‘woah you can speak (fill in ‘foreign’ language here)’, it’s not something we hear everyday. Therefore it’s just ‘cool’, when to others it’s ordinary because that’s just what they’re surrounded by.

Sound Journal #3 Poetry

I recorded this soundscape on a rainy day a couple of weeks ago in my backyard. I live in quiet neighbourhood that backs onto a hiking trail so there's so many birds around all of the time. I find that this soundscape really affects my body like we talked about how sounds effect the body in lecture. Birds and rain are things that I listen to when I fall asleep and they calm me down. I feel like I could sit outside in the rain for hours. It was nice to make a sound recording that was so different from the previous ones in terms of the ways it affects me. Nature's so beautiful and I find that I don't pay attention to it enough.

Sound Journal #4 Nature

For this sound assignment, I wanted to create extreme discomfort. I played around with my violin, slamming doors, and walking on concrete, most notably. Paulstretching the sounds of walking in Audacity created the coolest effect that is reminiscent of one breathing machine. The overall concept was to make a horror movie feeling, but as if you were listening to the backtrack of a haunted house. After awhile of editing it I started to feel overwhelmed, so I think it was relatively effective.

JulianValentin