The audio field yawns towards a precipice. 

In the last ten years we witnessed the expansion: the “stupid money,”the awards shows, the onslaught of narrative series splashed on the Apple Podcasts Best Of page. And then contraction: the shuttering of shops, mass layoffs, shows canceled and a scramble for what low-paying temp gigs are left. Before this, “a reckoning” with the structures of power within audio institutions, an overdue interrogation of the ways that social and political hierarchies bleed into the dynamics of these workplaces and into the work itself. And then more recently amidst “belt tightening” austerity, a resurgence of the same unsubtle reminders of who’s still in charge, this time in questions of fealty to “objectivity” and its sterile language amidst the genocide in Palestine. We are left staring down the long cold horizon with a hefty burden of doubts. It is a destination that many of us saw approaching. Now in relief the view is just as devastating, if not moreso, than many of us could have imagined.

Is it any wonder that so many of the conversations I have with fellow practitioners these days hinge on a brutal, stark question: “Will you keep going?” For some, the answer has been, “Maybe.” Others have pivoted or retired into other professions, redistributed what energy they have left to causes or vocations with a modicum of stability. More are surveying quick exits. And who can blame them? When companies can now get away with paying so little for so much, when boilerplate DEI statements have been tossed in the trash along with the glossy onboarding and benefits packets for those post-2020 hires meant to “diversify” perspectives, when making “something innovative” has been forgone for the graham-cracker sensibilities of executives and funders, what confidence is to be had in this so-called golden age of audio built on credit? 

For those of us who choose to stay, the future is still that muddled horizon. And so anyone creating audio documentary in this moment might read the prompt for this first issue of Sound Fields—What is audio documentary— and be assaulted by an immediate more cynical question: “Who cares?” I do. We all should. The fate of our field depends on it. 

We are stepping over that cliff’s edge. We are in freefall. Together we will have to construct our wings, choose what material and shape they take, whether they catch the wind, to send us soaring, or disintegrate mid-flight, sending us plummeting into the pavement. A retainer will not save us. Summer Fridays will not save us. Biting our tongues into stumps will not save us. An overall deal and no IP with one of the four or five remaining potentially soluble companies will not save us. If we know how we wish to fly, where we want to go, we might stand a chance. But first we have to know what we’re made of. We must surrender to the blinding backwinds whipping our faces to take inventory of what we have—what has worked and what has failed—and then make the courageous step to take our lessons and learn from them. As you will see across these contributions in this issue, the question of what constitutes an audio documentary has everything to do with how we make our work, but also with who that work makes us. 

Self-interrogation has become something of an extracurricular for me recently. In the fall of 2023 I was invited to give a talk at Resonate Podcast Festival. I decided to take the opportunity to look back on my career in audio documentary and journalism, to pause and consider what I have done, what I think I am doing, and why I’m still doing it. I would find the tools that proved most useful for sifting through the murk of my past and share them with others who might need them in this moment. My manifesto would be a toolbox. The tools arrived not as platitudes or principles but as questions. 

I completed Orexis: A Manifesto in 21 Questions as I approached nearly 15 years in the audio field. Some of the questions appeared effortlessly. Am I alone? That was a family heirloom. Where is the poetry? Easy as breath. But other tools were jagged and more intricate than I expected. Do I want to remember this? This was a question that I had never articulated to myself in such clear terms. It was one I wish I had years before. It called to mind the ways I had lent my mind, ears and eyes frivolously as bulwarks to so many unnecessary violences as a younger documentarian as a way to prove myself. How will I take care of others when I ask my question? I have no specific answers, only attempts. By putting these questions to paper, I learned that as tools they are faithful and fickle all at once. Sometimes they reveal full objects. Other times only the suggestion of something more. But my attempts to answer these questions have given me useful information—about who I am, about the work I make, about how I can keep going. 

These questions are imprecise tools, but I would rather have an imprecise tool than no tool at all. And after all, questions are central to the documentary profession. They are the core of our labor, from the seedling of an idea to the interviews we conduct, to the feedback we give and receive, to the editing and production of the stories we tell. In this profession the question operates on many registers: how it is framed, how it’s spoken, who asks it and to whom, when and why. A question can be instigation or interrogation. A question can be deflection. A question can be a political tool, forcing into relief all the bonds and divisions between us. A mirror or a canvas.

I can’t be an expert on your experience or how to make the best use of it in your work. But you can be. I can let you in on the questions that guide my life and my work and let you answer them for yourself. Maybe by answering these questions you’ll come to understand your own internal landscape, your principles, your contradictions, your allegiances. These questions, as follow, are written as they appeared to me across my life and creative process. I have tried my hardest to put them succinctly into words, but of course the most essential things are also the most elusive. So perhaps you will find questions between my questions. Perhaps you’ll find answers between your answers. I invite you to take these tools. Find your place here at the cliff's edge. 

Call out your answers, so that we might find each other. 

• Am I alone?

• What question does my aloneness reveal?

• What am I willing to risk in asking my question? 

• What am I willing to ask others to risk in answering?

• Who else's question is this?

• What burden do they carry? 

• Do I lighten their burden or add to it by asking the question? 

• How will I take care of myself and others when I ask the question?

• Do I want to remember this? 

• Can I surrender to the expectant silence?

• How is this medium generous?

• What mistakes do I still have time to learn from?

• When was I last moved?

• What is the most obvious way into the work and how do I avoid it?

• Do I invite sympathy and how do I avoid it?

• Where is the poetry?

• Does it breathe?

• What have I left out? 

• Have I honored life in this work?

• Who is honest with me?

• Do I want their guidance or applause?

• Is the work true?

• What is true in the world?

• Whose truth takes precedent, holds more weight, is given more airtime in the society that I inhabit?

• If it is the same in this work, how can I change that? 

• Can I live with this?

• Am I alone?