Katie Davis: Audio Anatomy

Katie Davis: Audio Anatomy Laura C. Tisdel While reviewing my notes for this interview, I was struck by how much was lost in the transcription ofKatie's words. Her language lends itselfeasily to the ear, and its power—her audiority, humor, and compassion —doesn't transfer perfectly to the page. As a radio essayist, Katie Davis has a unique sense of how to manipulate voice and the sounds she chooses make her stories compelling and human: like picking up a telephone receiver and hearing a private conversation, the listener feels an intimacy widi her characters that depends on die cadence ofa sigh, the release of laughter. Katie's work, her Neighborhood Stories, revolve around Adams Morgan, ° 2004 Murray Bogovitz Washington D.C. where Katie grew up. Her pieces document the struggles and successes of everyday people through their own eyes; as author Katie is the mediator and translator ofvoice in her stories. In an age when computer and television are dominant mediums, the definition of "text" seems constandy in flux. Radio essays have benefited from new technology—better recording and editing equipment—but have not lost their unique audio impact. On Saturdays as I am running etrands or baking or flipping through the thick stack ofNew York Times that accumulate during A special thanks to Vinay Prasadfor accompanying me during the interview and with his help brainstorming questions. 37 38LAURA C. TISDEL the week, shows like This American Life, which often feature work by Katie Davis, ttansport me into the life ofJulio, the teenager who is learning to read, to Katie's alleywhere her "World Banker" neighbor lets the garbage get carried offby fat rats, or to Jesse's high school where he is figuring out what it means to be a leader. My imagination weaves in and out of Katie's voices until her neighborhood is as clear to me as my hands on the steering wheel. rcr: In your story Trash you seem to use the garbage as kind ofa metaphor, to express social conscience. When you go into setting up a radio essay, do you find the subject first? It seems like all ofyour stories have avehicle, a thematic vehicle. You don't say garbage is bad, it's ruining your sense of community , but that really comes across. How do you set that up? kd: That's a really good question. When I finish all ofthis I'll have this kind of audio map of my neighborhood and the things that go on in my neighborhood —issues, the important things in the neighborhood. And I actually have diis black notebook, it's one ofthose sketch notebooks, and I have long list ofissues that I really feel are important for me to touch on at some point. And to be able to create this anatomy of the neighborhood, a map of the neighborhood. And I do look for the right vehicle. The garbage is one attempt and a very small attempt to begin to touch on the idea ofgentrification and what it means. And I had written in big letters: gentrification. I'd been thinking about it for four years, and actually wrote one story and I killed it, it wasn't working, itwas too big. So I thought, let me just chip away at it in small pieces. rcr: What was the idea for that story? kd: The ideawas just to write an essay about how disturbed I am about gentrification , not that people shouldn't come and go in a neighborhood, but it was meaning on this one particular street, it's actually on the street behind me. The street used to have about two dozen African American families and they'd been there for about three generations, and they were losing their homes because they couldn't keep up with taxes in some cases, but then some people were being tempted into selling their houses. It wasn't a clear picture but I was just writing it and it was coming across kind ofpreachy. Even so I ended up submitting it to somebody. I did. I sent it to the Christian Science Monitor for their essay page and they rejected it. And I just...