Going north…

After several weeks of incredible conversations in the bay area, I finally started moving again last Thursday. Unlike my other long-format audio projects, The Conversation promises to be an endless series of freeways and cities, which is kind of a shame. When I first dreamed up this project, I had a notion that I would be wandering back roads and small towns on my motorcycle, kicking in saloon doors and growling: “point me to the most creative freak in town.” Naturally, I would have glued a cowboy hat on top of my motorcycle helmet.

Well, so much for that project.

The trouble is, a lot of our biggest ideas are coming out of our biggest cities. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I dislike suggesting this because it reeks of the elitism I associate with awful people–the kind who, without cracking a smile, proclaim themselves “bicoastal citizens.” But I spent several months researching potential interviewees for The Conversation and, time and again, I would find an interesting person and trace them back to a big city. Maybe this is the bias of researching through the internet, which makes it easier to find thinkers with a national presence than people working on amazing local projects. Or maybe it’s the classic phenomenon of idea-people migrating to cities. Either way, if you know of someone I should talk to in the middle of the country, click on the “feedback” menu above and send me and Micah a comment. Nobody wants this to be the San Francisco and New York Show.

But even with more interviews in the middle of the country, this is still a freeways-and-cities project, so I’ve sold the bike and switched to a truck. It’s less tiring, a bit drier, and has the potential of propelling The Conversation through the winter. Now the big question is: what the hell do I do with the motorcycle sound effects I was using to transition from scene to scene? The truck makes really insipid little noises… I can’t use it for a transition sound effect. TIE-Fighters? A horse whinny? A smooth synth sting?

The philosophical questions never end.