As it goes nowadays, don’t ask where I saw what I’m going to tell you I saw because I don’t remember. All I remember is that I watched a video wherein there was a large glass phone booth placed in the city (likely NYC) and it had a cord running from it to a headset that was on a pedestal about 15 feet away.
There was a backdrop behind the pedestal and instructions that someone was supposed to enter the phone booth and speak into the phone and another person was supposed to listen 15 feet away. The point was to tell the other person how you really feel about them or thank them for something. What I heard people say to each other was touching and gave me goose bumps.
The group Improv Everywhere did something similar to this by placing a megaphone on a lectern that had a sign on it “SAY SOMETHING NICE.”
Then there is StoryCorps which combines the two, adds even more emotion to it by having the people right next to each other, and takes out the visual element of it. One particular story I listened to gave me even more goosebumps than when I watched the phone booth video.
The story of a kid, Brian Lindsay, who was struck by a van while riding his bike talked years later with the paramedic, Rowan Allen who was there at the scene.
The story was real, you can hear the voice, you can hear them say what was on their minds. Most stories that you read, they don’t tell you what they were thinking and if they do the emotion behind it is very narrow. With audio, it is more emotionally evocative and powerful because hearing the voices makes the story personal, human, and allows you to feel all the emotions – you can hear the laughter, you can hear the sarcasm, you can hear the passion in what they say.
Now think of reading a story or reading a text – you can’t register more than one emotion. “Is this person being sarcastic?” “Are they serious?” It leaves so much of the emotion to interpretation and if there’s one thing that’s difficult to put into words, it’s how people feel.
The main point on that is this: if you read a story wherein a person writes “I can’t put into words how I feel.” Then it’s a contradiction because they just did. But if you hear a story wherein a person says “I can’t put into words how I feel.” They really can’t, you get the emotion from it, you get the sincerity.
There’s a reason why it’s suggested that you write like you would speak. So people can hear you.
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