This American Life

For the longest time I've obsessed over why I like this American Life. For a while, I thought it was the music (how it comes in at just the right point, emphasizing the perfect sentence). But now, I think I might like the show because of the way Ira breathes.

I was listening to an episode today, and for some reason it got really high-defy at this one point, and I could hear all the little in-breaths Ira took before and after almost every sentence he said. It was actually kind of a manic breathing, really shallow. His voice was clear, though. I mean, Ira sort of has a falsetto that falls out sometimes, but he's generally really concise and really clear. It was in this section before he was about to introduce a correspondent who would talk about the leader of this sect of mormons who excommunicated all these folks.

The correspondent breathed deeper, and you got the sense that she was even stepping away from the mic as she did it. Her voice was more NPR young reporter, all skeptical but grasping for compassion- sort of a faux-confessional, I'm talking to you, the listener, like you're my best friend and I've been on this crazy adventure. Maybe a style she picked up, or maybe what she thinks of as authentic. I'm not sure. But for a while, it was like the words didn't matter, and all I cared about was the sound they took- almost like I was listening to another language, intently, for intonation and emphasis to get the point of what someone was trying to say.

I listened to the rest of the show like that, just as sounds and breathing, and music. The interviewees, you could sometimes tell, were trying to take on that tone of someone who's just sharing an interesting story with a friend. But they were sometimes much more guarded. Almost like they were trying to adapt to the TAL story playbook, even though the way they talk to their friends and coworkers was in a non-emotive manner. That's when the music came in. The music gave the words an emotional resonance they didn't have on their own. They inscribed the story in a larger tale of good vs. evil or made certain sections spell doom and others hope. The words didn't make me think "oh that's really sad", but then, when I heard the music, I realized I should feel sad about what was just said. I was emotionally manipulated, but I didn't mind.

And the breathing. You didn't notice the breathing when regular folks were talking, but when reporters were talking, sometimes you could hear this very un-natural sounding in-breath. It reminded you that they were the storytellers, and they were investing all this energy into sounding very authoritative and naturally insightful and charismatic, but even for them, it was hard. It was still a chore, and there were the mechanics of it, right under the surface.