Grenada Soundwalk

All the bougainvilleas everywhere on this island…

renada! I’ve been here for a few days with my mom, who has this lovely gig where she guest-lectures at the university here for a week, and in exchange she’s flown out here with one companion and put up in a nice hotel. In previous years, it was my dad or my sister who went, but this year it’s my turn (as a post-dissertation reward). Yay! It’s wonderful, but I’ll admit that my blog-productivity has taken a hit this week. I’ll be back next week and hopefully back to blogging (if selling off/packing my whole apartment doesn’t kill me first), but here’s a little something to tide you over until then. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grenada Nighttime Soundwalk:

This was a recording a took of an 8-minute walk I took around the grounds of the hotel, accompanied by the sounds of chirping frogs, chattering diners, breaking waves, amorous cicadas, and the sound of my feet shuffling along a variety of surfaces and textures. In light of the arguments I made about haptic aurality and the sonic evocation of touch in Chapter 2, it might be useful to listen to the sounds of my footsteps and guess the textures and materials I was walking over. There are definitely parts of this recording that I listen to through my skin and through my sense of touch.