A New Orc State of Mind

To say orc is a bit dramatic but technology is moving so fast. I thought things were challenging when analog went digital. Or when Pro Tools went HD. USB would like a word with Firewire and ethernet is still in the cord/dongle/adaptor pile. My basement is an audio gear graveyard. I almost started a nonprofit to host a museum of gear—because I like gear, properties, preservation, and nonprofits; and this industry keeps chasing me out of comfort zones and into deliberating over new streams of revenue. 

Tools and Dependencies

Now I’m trying to update my own website, which is not something I’m motivated to do as the topic of myself is not brand news. Posting about what is done may or may not lead to new clients or streams of income. But I have the WordPress theme locked-in blues. I staged full site editing but am not yet seeing an elegant method of relinking the past. There are good methods, but it feels like something better is just around the corner in light of the astounding tools appearing daily.

Impression Management Coding

I got to review vibe coding apps and could feel my hair move from the whisper of the gods. I fear them too, of course, and approached it with trepidation. The very term vibe code is swappy indeed; so imagine my surprise when one of my big ideas became an overnight reality. Do I lock in this idea and monetize? Or is everything leading to a career shift that answers what I want to do with my life now that so many of the skills I have learned in media can be economically replaced with text prompts. 

I look back at my attempts to turn voiceover work into a model that could be supported outside a major city by adapting to long format narration. I practiced earnestly as my experience in pedagogy and vocal anatomy stepped forward: adapted appoggogio to drop-in breath, shifted mic technique to pocket breath, practiced pranayama to increase lung capacity at rest; listened to accents, tone, subtext, mannerisms, and got to the point where I could cold read on the fly, lock in characters once they spoke, and do this for hours without much need for edit. Then the narration model was essentially erased by AI. Here’s a quote I wrote before the reality hit me:

“The work is challenging, steady, and exciting. You are never in the same place twice and constantly challenged with maintaining hyper focus on the story, the characters, the breath, inflection, and emotions. There’s an internal reward I did not get from the short sale of commercials. I love this work.”

How naive. I regret nothing. But now too there seems little point in chasing composition, sound design, sonic restoration, or leveling up on video work. The tools that make that easy are everywhere now. Like many industries, mine has always been in constant flux. Small businesses and freelancers have operated in a constant state of diversification, adaptation, upskilling, reselling, new-skilling, cross-skilling, over-skilling, and general skilling. 

But I never thought I’d see everyone face their fears of obsolescence. They are usually safe in domain-specific systems, often mistaking vertical hierarchies therein as relevant to other systems. 

I get it. It took me years to get over these kind of systems that controlled my very sense of self and what to want from this gift of existence. The way through came from this: Now is the time to let art humanize us. This weekend I may record the city as a listening organism. Collect sounds as evidence of attention, labor, care, neglect, power, and memory. Score Billie Blake’s brothel bricks; the clatter of the pickax tracks—linear layers of crack and smite.

EXT. DAY – STONEHENGE – DAY ONE.  

VID: E.C.U. – STONE. SOUND: hear the truth bell ring of solid stone; or the false flat thud of quarry sap and inner crack. The rising pitch toward the finished edge, and the deep crunch shift before a split—

we interrupt this mix for a client call.

I should check my other email–oh look, 26 new emails: power struggle, power struggle—this one might be fun. Nope. This next one is talking from a kingdom far away that will soon fall from internal cracks; muffled dull noun says what? I’d comfort whatever anxiety is happening there but that often leads to people thinking you are the audience or work for them. Put enough of these folks in a room together and the resonance is an ambisonic, spatial god bark death knell.

AI and Machine-Learning Sound Design Tools

I lost my thread there and don’t have to get it back. I’ll likely harvest my own data here for a story; that’s usually what happens once a thing is thought out on (e)paper. I was getting back to the great disruptor with a guilty admission. I like the AI and machine-learning sound design tools. There, I said it. I do not want bots to just sound design the scene unless it means I can go work on my new City As A Living Organism idea or finish the next great American novel. But I like being able to change sonic materials without running down the hallway to fetch field gear. Choose thy stone material from the dropdown menu. Granite: ping; the vibrations travel up the anvil into my unyielding arm. That visual is crisp, metamorphic marble; tink tink, Michelangelo.

 

“Perception is not a science of the world; it is the background from which all acts stand out.” ~ Phenomenology of Perception 

 

When learning new things becomes uninteresting, I give it bursts of energy. This retains focused attention without lowering into a dulling frequency. Today, writing is a better use of my time than breaking out of this an old website theme. The tool will come to easily link and vamp old material without dwelling there. Instead, I direct energy into new branches, like selective pruning. I recently wrote a chapter where the character looked back; it was a struggle to avoid reminders of shared collective stories, such as looking back turning a person into a “pillar of salt.”

What’s it called? You know the story. The one where Ado’s husband and her daughters were in the lead and she was turned into a pillar of salt. I forget his name. A lot of it is confusing, as the collective myth is a hodgepodge lark, possibly from Eurydice remaining in hell because Orpheus looked back. I wish these stories that become go-to metaphors for getting past rumination didn’t have such paralyzing consequences. Still, I’m with Eurydice on this one. Roll out the hero’s gurney.