Audio Essays

Audio Essays

"To Be A Mountain"

Listen time: 9:37

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Between 2007 and 2009, as part of my graduate school fieldwork, I spent time in Cusco, Peru, studying the concept of yanantin or complementary opposites as the philosophical principle underlying the Andean worldview. I wanted to know what it was like to live in a world in which the polarities of existence—inner-outer, male-female, dark-light—are seen as interdependent parts of a harmonious whole, rather than the insidious philosophy of antagonism that underlies so much of Western-world thinking.

During this time, my friend and guide Puma Quispe Singona brought me to meet with Doña Irena, a respected local healer. When I asked her about her early training in the medicine work, she told me a remarkable story …

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Production Details

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• Performed by Hillary S. Webb

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• Narration, sound, and music composed and arranged by Hillary S. Webb

• Special thanks to Peter Scoma for his assistance with this piece

Lauren's Dream 

Listen time: 3:56

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In the fall of 2017, nearly a year into the Trump presidency, I traveled to Berlin, Germany, for a week’s vacation. I was feeling low. I had begun to fear that the better angels of our nature had deserted us entirely—if they had ever existed at all—and that the world was, at its core, a hostile place.

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While in Berlin, I signed up for a bike tour led by Lauren Van Vuuren, a South African ex-pat writer who had made a home for herself there in the Grey City. It was platonic love at first sight.  Over the next several years, Lauren and I traded dozens of WhatsApp messages, detailing the events of our daily lives, from the mundane to the sublime. With her permission, I extracted excerpts from her side of the conversation in order to create the audio essay — “Lauren’s Dream.”

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Production Details

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• Narration, sound, and music composed and arranged by Hillary S. Webb

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• Special thanks to Peter Scoma and Nick Phaneuf for their assistance with this piece.

Think Back from the End (Wind Series)

Listen time: 3:45

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"Think Back from the End" brings together diverse voices in a sonically driven narrative piece that explores how we view the climate crisis differently according to our individual and cultural understanding of the nature of time.

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Production Details

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• Narration, sound, and base music arranged by Hillary S. Webb 

• Additional music composed, arranged, and produced by Nick Phaneuf 

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Voices featured within this audio piece include:

• Erick Gonzalez (excerpted from a 2001 interview)

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• Margarita Tsomou and Maximillian Haas (excerpted from the "Burning Futures" discussion series held at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany, November 4, 2019) 

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• "Maddi" (excerpted from public remarks at the November 28, 2015 “Turn the Tide Climate Rally,” Portland, Maine. Rally organized by 350 Maine and Maine College of Art) 

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Photo by Aron Van de Pol on Unsplash

Currents (Wind Series)

Listen time: 2:30

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Imagine you're standing on the porch of a small house with chipping paint. A wind arises, grows stronger, briefly ripping a hole in time and space. Voices from different eras and different geographical locations flood in, creating a call and response between disparate individuals who are, in their own ways, dealing with the complexities of navigating the thrown world.

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"Currents" is a meditation on the distinction (or lack thereof) between life and death, and the ways in which we humans must decide in each moment whether to swim against the current or to let the sea change carry us along. It features a clip of an interview I did in the early 2000s with Peruvian shaman Oscar Miro Quesada and a recording my father created of my sister in the 1970s.

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Production Details

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• Narration and sound arranged by Hillary S. Webb

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• Music composed and produced by Nick Phaneuf

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Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash