Process Piece

To Bathe A Hedgehog 

(Click link for audio)

I will begin by saying that this week's assignment was done solo, because of a series of boring events resulting in my not having a partner. With that aside, I did really enjoy this week's activity. I took a long time trying to figure out a process I could depict with sound that would be both interesting to hear, and a worthwhile exercise. I ended up deciding to record the process of my pet hedgehog Felicity being given an oatmeal bath.

When viewing this weeks "readings" (i.e. videos) I felt a similar thing throughout all of them: the connection to other human beings pursuing something that fulfills them. My favorite video, as I indicated in class, was the video by Commoner about Rohan building his smokehouse. Things that are very hard and labor intensive to do are frequently avoided by a lot of people, unless of course it is to accomplish a goal they have a stake in. If given the task of building a smokehouse or even just a tiny back porch smoker, you would be hard pressed to find someone willing to do such labor. The man in this video loved what he was doing, and that drove him to push himself through the arduous, even painful, process.

Many people would contend that everything that people don't set their mind to is a painful process, as I touched on. But what I noticed during this recording is that all people need is an open mind, not necessarily a predetermined desire to do the thing. My wife typically does not wash Felicity because she can be so wild and and can puff out her spikes, and even sometimes poop on your hands in protest. Despite this, she had an open mind and was willing to pursue this labor to wash, scrub, and handle the crazy wet hog. She enjoyed the process though it wasn't necessarily a labor of love, like building the smokehouse or taxidermy, because of her willingness to participate. While I didn't really set out to prove this, I think it worked out quite nicely in seeing her have a good time washing the hedgehog regardless of preconceived notions. Furthermore, the lighthearted and "cute" sounds created within the recording bring about a sense of joy rather than a sense of laborious action. The icing on the cake is the quiet, almost imperceptible sniffing of the microphone by Felicity toward the end - her naive curiosity unabated by what some would consider an annoying process.