AudioBook - Carolyn Durkalski VO
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
back in February, I decided to listen to and review every single record in my husband's massive collection. I've been living with this collection for about nine years, and it probably had listened to only about 30 all the way through of the 1500 or so. I always love that I'd married into this record collection. The idea of exploring all of this music had always been at the back of my mind, but I guess it was just something about that cold February evening that gave me the idea. Maybe it was the cabin fever oven, especially long winter or the isolation of having just moved to a New Jersey suburb from Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Whatever it was, there was enough propulsive creative force for me to create a tumbler the following day called my Husband Stupid Record Collection. I started this project as a way to share what I was doing with friends on Facebook. I didn't think anyone would read it, but that doesn't mean I didn't hope people would read it. There was always a part of me that hoped that more than a handful of people will read something that I wrote. But after a lot of experience putting stuff out there and not having anyone notice it. I had low expectations. Welcome to the Nexus. Hi fi test record in real story. As a woman, you learned to keep your expectations low. There are some things that your brain will anticipate and analyze whether you like it or not. Like, um, I up for dealing with cat calling. If I wear this skirt or will I be safe walking home from somewhere after a certain hour? I'll admit that I've changed out of short shorts worn around the house when I have to run to the store for some milk because it's just easier. And that still doesn't guarantee a harassment free trip to the store. Low expectations inoculate you from disappointment. Doing a blogged that I expected no one to read. I did not over analyse or try to anticipate a reaction When I started my project. I never wondered if I write about music, will it be considered sexist if I write about my husband's record collection instead of my own and my reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes? I did not ask myself those questions before starting my block and in retrospect, not only do I think that I shouldn't have needed to, but I'm Platt that I didn't. Those questions feel Justus bad is thinking. Is it safe to wear this outside of my house? I didn't anticipate these questions, but a group of women writers used my blawg to pose them. Now let's see how your new hi fi system performs. For reasons I still can't discern the block I started as a writing exercise, quickly went some pale shade of viral. People told me that they enjoyed the way I wrote about music unfamiliar with any rules about how to write about music. I wrote in an unfiltered stream of consciousness style about what I was listening to. If it made me think of a memory or a different time or place or feel a strong emotion, I'd write about it. I discovered the albums as I wrote about them. People who were familiar with the bands I was writing about told me it was a refreshing way to think about music they loved. People like me who were not familiar with a band would tell me that one of my reviews made them go out and buy an album they discovered the new music right along with me. Soon after the popularity grew, those same low expectations that govern my behavior were suddenly applied to my blawg. And to me. Some women assumed that the only reason men read my blawg was because they thought it was cute that a woman was writing about music as an outsider. They thought it was playing a character, pretending to be naive instead of just being honest that it was really unfair that female writers on the inside of the music industry were not taken seriously. But when an outsider came along and claimed she didn't know what she was doing, men loved her. What I heard wasn't the criticism about what I was doing but assumptions about who I was as a person and what kind of scheme I had up my sleeve to get a book deal. Didn't she think about the gender politics behind starting a project like this? No, I hadn't. Not for a minute. I was cushioned by low expectations. I thought no one would even notice this blawg. Much less question The whole premise question my ideas. Question might work in a way that no one would question a man's. I hadn't anticipated this happening, but I understood it right away. This is why it's so hard for women to take chances and put ideas out there with confidence. This is why women are statistically less likely to raise their hand in classes and statistically more likely to be interrupted. It was a familiar feeling. Once I got past the assumptions people made about me, I started to hear the bigger conversation, the root of the assumptions made by women. It had to do with their personal experiences as writers and musicians and record collectors and DJs. They were all of these things, and they were also women, which meant it hadn't been easy for them. When I thought about it that way, it made me mad for them, not at them. This next bile surge will reveal the lower range. Even when you spend 32 years, is a woman even anticipating the worst? You can still be unaware of certain privileges. I've never been a part of the world that was dipping my toes into. I never thought about how joining it as a woman would feel if men really like my project on Lee because it reinforces their notions of women as outsiders in music. The Nets sucks, but that doesn't mean I should stop what I'm doing. There is space to say this woman is trying in this way and it's great. We're doing it this way. And these air the ****** problems we have There's a space for a formal critical analysis of the work of Black Sabbath, and for me to say it sounds like a trip through space to the **** Planet. I started to look at this controversy with two points of view. Firstly, it's important to remember that women should be free to try whatever they want to try. It sounds simple, but just as women shouldn't be excluded from typically male dominated pursuits, they also should not feel guilty for liking musicals or ballet or Danielle Steel. I'm not going to pretend that I like Speed metal because I'm worried about perpetuating a stereotype. It took me until my early twenties to stop pretending to like things for someone's usually male approval. The second perspective focused on the unfair treatment of female writers on the inside of the music industry. The bar women have to clear to be taken seriously. Writing about anything, especially music, is so much higher than for men. My blood got people talking about this problem. Because women are so used to those pesky low expectations of men and even other women, It was easy for them to assume that we weren't on the same side. If I was getting male attention, I was probably doing something sexist or intellectually stupid. Can your stylist track this kind of challenging tonal range? I knew I wasn't, but some female readers thought I waas because it confirmed the narrative they had lived. I was getting **** on by women for not getting **** on by men. I didn't have to spend years earning the music critic bona fie days like they did, because the appeal of my work was that I didn't have them. My critics have learned to expect the worst. It's part of being a woman, and when I didn't receive the worst, they saw the worst and me. But since I'm a woman, I've learned to do that, too. I've also learned to stop caring about what others might assume about me, so now it's June and I'm doing the same thing I was doing back in February, trying to keep my unfiltered, genuine voice in my writing. But I'm also not shying away from talking about gender if it comes up in the music I'm listening to. In fact, it always feels pretty exciting to talk about gender. There's a part of me that wonders what the people who called my blog's sexist would think if they read my post before and after the controversy. I can admit that it was in the back of my head when I was writing about how the Raymond Pettibone Cover Oven SST compilation reinforces the fact that we live in a rape culture. I took my time in that post not only to think about how that cover was making me feel, but also reach out to an expert, a women's studies professor who wrote her dissertation on women and punk. I'm hoping to take this higher and use it to make myself a better writer. In a way, it's been a blessing. And how cool is that to say to a group of people who wanted to silence me that I'm not doing anything wrong and then I'm not going away? I dreamed that one day the folks who decided I was a trader toe all womanhood will sit down one day and read. My block is a complete body of work without cherry picking it for sentences that confirmed their biases about me. I hope they understand that I sound like a novice because I have a tenuous relationship with music G. Koury. To be honest to my experience, I have to expose myself in a way that still makes me a little uncomfortable. I hope that maybe taking all of that into consideration they will come around on what I'm doing, but I'm keeping my expectations low.