Because this is a much longer piece than I normally produce, and because in writing it, it naturally broke down into seven distinct parts, I wanted to give the listener the option of listening to the piece as a whole or to each section individually. So I created an enhanced podcast, which allows you to interact with it the same way you do a CD. You can jump forward to the next track or back to one you want to hear again. Also each track has it’s own chapter title and individual artwork. The only downside is that not every portable music player can handle an enhanced podcast (sorry) so I had to make two separate ones.

This project started because I was interested in the hundreds of towns around America that have been evacuated and then purposely flooded in order to make reservoirs. In many cases, the streets, the buildings, still exist underwater. When droughts happen, these town resurface and the people who lived in these towns often come back to see what’s left of their old homes. To me, this was a very powerful image. I saw it as such a perfect example of the idea that “you can never go home again.” As I started researching I kept finding all these different parallels between water and memory, between water and time, in mythology, psychology, physiology, in the great floods, and icebergs, in swimming pools, and ancient rivers. It began to feel like maybe the reason water kept appearing as a metaphor for these things, was because it spoke to a basic human connection between the two. That maybe somewhere in the nature of water itself, we could find the nature of the human mind. (((NOTE: This piece is a slight departure from my earlier work. The piece is written less as a monologue and more like a transom of ideas set to music that I've written for it. It’s separated into 7 different sections, like tracks on a record, each with a different perspective on the relationship between water and memory. So to that extent it should be listened to more like a music album with narration instead of lyrics.)))

THE VOICES YOU HEARD IN BENEATH THE SURFACE INCLUDE: Nell Haynes (Voice 1 & 7), Elaine Kanak (Voice 2) Lauren Fath (Voice 3), Abe Ingle (Voice 5), Joanne Colonna (Voice 6), and others. SPECIAL THANKS TO: Charlie Scammell, Joshua Zavin, Sam Neuman, Dave Riemenschneider, Sean Gannet, Kolter Campbell for calling and contributing their thoughts on memory. Also Ryan Good, Cara Francis, Jessica Solce, Renee Erikson-Farr for performing a section of the piece that I ultimately and heartlessly cut.

I mean, seriously... The piece is 3 1/2 minutes. With a title like that, do I really have to write a description to convince you to listen to it? (Non-fiction?)

Ryan Scammell finds some pages from a young girls' diary (?) in the closet in his apartment building. He reads us something she had written about the deaf man who lived across the street from her and what happened when she finally tried to talk to him. (Fiction)