MoodyTunes

I’m about to make another trip from Tennessee to South Carolina, and I’ve assigned myself a random project: I must listen to audio books along the way. Maybe not the whole way, but I want to make it through at least one recording of someone reading a story to me without tuning out after 4 minutes. Every time I have an audiobook or podcast I go through two stages: 1) Excitement, because I pick something that is supposed to be both entertaining and an indication of my smartness, and 2) …what were we talking about again?

I don’t think this is simply the result of a short attention span. I think it’s a form of imagination at work, and I’m sure it happens to some of you, too. I start imagining things based on what is being read to me, but instead of imagining along with the story, I take several detours here and there, and before I know it I’ve missed a few minutes of the recording and have no idea what the reader-person is talking about. Then it becomes annoying. There’s a voice in the car prattling along about characters and events I don’t recognize, and I feel left out, and I start to sulk. Who are you talking about? Why does it sound like everyone is having so much fun? Who is Jimmy, and how did he end up with seventy-two tons of something in his basement? What is the “something?” Is it lard? Because he’s making the world’s largest mincemeat pie? Did he choose mincemeat because he likes saying the word “mincemeat?” Mincemeat mincemeat mincemeat. Is there meat in mincemeat pie? What kind of meat? All kinds of meat? Who chooses? Pork, beef, and ostrich, all minced together? Is it sweet or is it just plain meaty? And so on…

What’s interesting is that I can play a music CD — say a three-hour live concert — and become totally engrossed in that, singing along with almost every lyric, not noticing the progress I’m making on the highway. Somehow I stay connected to music, and fiction-read-aloud sends me off into the ether.

This is what I’m bringing along. It’s all podcasts, as a matter of fact, and no 34-hour Stephen King epics. I’ll start small.

From The New Yorker’s fiction podcasts:

Marisa Silver reading Peter Taylor’s “Porte-Cochere”
Tobias Wolff reading Denis Johnson’s “Emergency”
Louise Erdrich reading Lorrie Moore’s “Dance in America”
TC Boyle reading Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain”
Donald Antrim reading Donald Barthelme’s “I Bought a Little City”

Three episodes of “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me”

One episode of “This American Life”

I’m scared of this project, especially with “This American Life” in there. Ira Glass and the other NPR reporters who speak to me in their hushed, confident, conspiratorial, ironic-yet-not-ironic-enough-to-make-fun-of-their-”ironic”-voice lullabies…well, they put me to sleep.

I need some “Focus” VitaminWater and a bucket of Sour Patch Kids. I feel like I’m getting ready to study for a standardized test (and I was never very good at that).

EDIT: I added Car Talk to the podcast list. I like Car Talk, and I like how they say podcast. “Pawd-cast.” Should be lots of fun.