Snowball’s Chance revisited

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Go here if you want to read along, though I don’t think you’ll need to. There are no clever special effects on this one, just my normal speaking voice at an average tempo.

This is a thoroughly re-written prose poem or lyrical essay that I first posted here over a year ago. I hope long-time readers don’t mind these recycled posts. After three years of blogging, one begins to feel a need to start rescuing some of the better near-misses and making something a bit more durable out of them. And in any case, it’s always fun to revisit earlier pieces and reimagine the things they describe. Editing isn’t merely a matter of changing and erasing, it seems to me. By fully reinhabiting a piece, one can add the sort of depth and richness that come from mixing multiple tracks in a musical recording. Sounding it out loud, of course, can be a real help in the editing process whether or not one chooses to interpret this analogy literally.

8 Replies to “Snowball’s Chance revisited”

  1. This is wonderful, Dave! The post is new to me, and so is your reading (instead of singing) voice. How interesting and pleasurable an experience to hear you, compared to reading your “voice” on the page. You are really enjoying working with sound these days, Dave, aren’t you?! And we benefit. Do you find that it gives some new excitement to your blogging after so many years? Sometimes I feel as if I’m starting to repeat myself and to sound boring after almost three years of blogging, but I don’t see myself getting into sound, like you.

  2. Hi Marja-Leena – I’m glad you’re enjoying this! Yes, I definitely feel the need to keep trying new things in order to stave off boredom. Like everyone, I only really have a few original ideas; everything else is just elaboration. But now I can switch between words, photos and audio whenever I find my attention flagging. And soon or later, I suppose, I’ll figure out how to shoot and upload videos…

  3. This is one of your poems that’s really stuck with me, and what a treat to hear you reading it aloud! What did you change?

    Gotcha on the boredom… I’m thinking of trying some experiments with other media myself. Thanks for the inspiration.

  4. This gives me an odd sense of deja vu. I think I read the original post, but I’m not certain of it. Either your edits are enough to disorient me from what I remember as a striking piece, or you wrote something else this reminds me of. Regardless, I like it now.

  5. I liked the imagery and the snowball/memory comparison. You read it well.

    I too have been thinking of digging back into my blog archives. The posts just scroll away into the past… it’d be nice to revisit or revive a few.

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