The Interview
Back at the LEAD Agency office at 12:00pm to meet with Executive Director, Rebecca Jim. She gave us a full tour of the home-office, which felt like a combination library, history center, and art studio. We shared some stories and I handed her a copy of my decades old thesis work. (As a side note, was nice of her to ask about it, it’s rare that anyone has any interest in my old scientific research.)
My son and I worked together to set up the audio recording device (used an H1n Zoom portable recorder device) – just propped up on a tape dispenser. I’ve done a few interviews but this one was already going to be different than ones before. Through previous correspondence, both email and over the phone, I’d expressed that, if possible, I’d like to use her voice, her words, as the narration. I’d written a script – or at least pieces of one – as a guide but I didn’t necessarily want her to read from a script. I wanted this to be an interview. But an interview as if I was speaking with Tar Creek. In other words, I was essentially asking if she could be the voice of Tar Creek. A tall order in some sense, and something that might make someone uncomfortable, or even unsure about how to approach such a request. Was this acting or was this an interview?
Rebecca then asked me a question, “Do I have your permission to speak for her?” I wasn’t sure how to answer. Who was I to give permission? But then I supposed that the question was posed to put me in a similar position as she felt, that we were in agreement that this would be the arrangement, and so I answered that, yes, she had my permission.
Her voice softened, her mood changed, and she spoke from the creek’s perspective. The best I can describe it is that she was channeling what she felt the area and the creek would have felt – not just at one point in time but at different points in time along the way. We were time traveling through history and Tar Creek, as spoken through Rebecca, was guiding us. It was meaningful, and powerful, and heartfelt. And sometimes I felt like the questions I was asking were disjointed, and unclear, and messy. And I was wishing that I was doing a better job in asking the questions but still, we were moving forward and carried along, as if by the current of the Creek itself. At the conclusion she said that the whole experience was very touching for her, and that it was difficult. And I could tell that it difficult. And listening back over the audio the intensity comes through. In total the interview was about 38 minutes long.
To sidestep just a bit, in terms of the technical aspects of the recording I was worried. The room was not great for sound quality. There was loud truck traffic right outside, her voice was very quiet at times, and all the while I was worrying that the recording just wasn’t going to turn out.
After we left the interview and went back to filming the rest of scenes I expressed to my son that I was nervous about the sound quality. He insisted I take a moment and listen back to it, just to check, otherwise I would be worried about it the rest of the day. It was good advice because once I heard the recording I realized that, while there would be some editing, and filtering, it was going to be useable.