Field Work.... On Wheels

After 3 months and nearly 60 plus hours documenting roller-skating rinks, my photography collaborator, Anna, is finally convinced to give skating a whirl! It made us all very happy. She's back on her feet with a camera in her hand, but with an added perspective to her already-excellent documentary photography. Stay tuned everyone, our final show is just around the corner and there's a buzz in the air here at Salt.

Katie Fuller

Writing Student

what work is

click here and noodle around. def check out the videos. i found them great to the point of anxiety-inducement.

forest field work...magic can be laborous.

You say pot-ay-toh, I say poh-tah-toh

I know you might think that the only time we talk documentaries (or "doc talk" as I like to call it) is while we're in class. But we actually talk about documentaries a lot around here. I live with two other Salt students right now, and I'm not gonna lie; sometimes we come home after a full day of Salt and we talk about...Salt.

We just can't help ourselves. I mean, most of us have spent our lives thinking about how much we want to do this as a profession or as a way of life, and for the first time in our lives we're with other people who feel the same way. People who aren't just interested, but really invested in the idea. And so we go out to the bar, or out to eat, or for a run and the topic of stories just sorta sneaks in and the next thing you know we're debating ethics or discussing angles. Yeah, it sounds dorky. But I've actually learned a lot about what I'm doing here through doc talk outside of class. We teach each other just as much as the professors do.

But too much doc talk and field work can make your brain go completely numb. I mean, here you are running around day after day talking to everyone in hopes that you make a connection, and at the end of the day your mind is reeling. After the high of the interview has worn off, you're left to analyze what you said and what they said and what it meant and what's the "why now?" angle and the "what's at stake?" question, and it really makes your head explode. It's like the worst parts of dating all rolled into one encounter.

So how do you wind down after a long day? Recently, it seems our best therapy has been YouTube. Ariel will be embarrassed that I'm making this public, but she has the most extensive YouTube knowledge of anyone I know. When I'm all burnt out on documentaries, sometimes I just go down to the second floor and she starts showing me the best stuff I've ever seen. I'll just give you an example of today's bill of fare:



Hooray for YouTube. Without it, I think my brain would have already melted.

post divorce and unrequited love

he's a stranger so when he picks up the phone i tell him i'm the girl from salt and then i say "so, tell me about..." and i trail off and then he says "--my failed marriage?" he tells me about his failed marriage. and he tells me how much he still loves his ex wife. he tells me about quitting drinking on the same day she left him. he tells me it was too late. then he tells me about his ex wife's new boyfriend who, as it turns out, was accused not long ago of sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl. so he tells the boyfriend to stay away from his daughter or he'd (something) (he didn't say) and then the boyfriend gets a restraining order so that if this man ran into the boyfriend (or the ex wife) at the supermarket he would have 90 seconds to flee the premises. a breakdown of his nine year old daughter followed in which she asked, "why can't you come to my field hockey games when mom can?" and then more meetings with lawyers. and then (and this is where i come in) a desperate, yet endearing posting on craig's list titled: post divorce and unrequited love.

i don't know what to tell you. i was story hunting. i was scared and afraid that a piece about an alpaca pageant would be silly and without depth. i wanted yearning in my stories. sadness, pain, struggle, turmoil, then hope, reflection, a peace. i went to craig's list. i went to the missed connections section of craig's list. and there beneath the notes written to the girl who works the hotdog cart, the other girl with the nice ass on brackett street ("was i on brackett street earlier today?" asked ariel) was this letter about unrequited love from a man desperate to get what he once had back. i thought it might be a story about a man trying to transfrom, about second chances, about forgiveness, about what it must be like to love someone, really love someone, you are not even allowed to stand in the same supermarket with.

so i emailed him. i told him about salt and stories on the radio. and he wrote me back within the hour: "Thank you for your interest in my posting on Craig's List." as if i had inquired about renting a venue. on the phone he was more or less back to his missed connections self: heartbroken, alone, in pain. yet sober and a little proud. i asked him if he thought his ex wife might have seen the letter he wrote her. he said no, that i was the only one who replied to the ad. and at this point it became almost overwhelming clear: what, no really--what am i doing on the phone with this person right now?

we did not stay on the phone for very long. at some point i registered that i was not the right person to reply to the missed connections posting. i was not in fact the right person to be hearing this story. i went with him to a dark desperate place and then i hung up and i went all alone to the salt building to pay the rest of my tuition and transcribe tape from the alpaca farm. it felt awkward and all wrong and the only thing i could think to do was send him a thank you email with only more radio, in this case a link to an episode of this american life, in which a nine year old girl writes letters to the mayor of new york city asking for help in getting her parents to stop divorcing and stay together.

Story hunting

When prospective students or interested listeners check out the Salt Institute's Web site, they get to hear well-thought out audio documentaries and see a lot of great black and white photos and tightly written narratives about life in Maine. It's exciting to see such amazing work, and to know there's a school out there pushing to make students do their best to tell honest stories about people whose voices rarely get heard in the media.

But what you don't hear or see on the site is the tremendous amount of struggle the students here go through to put these pieces together (and I can say "we", because I hear about these challenges every day from other Salties). I mean, it's one thing to have a compelling idea, a social issue, or an amazing person that you want to talk about. It's quite another to get that story. Sometimes, an idea turns out to be completely unfeasible because of how we're telling our stories here—we all have limited time and resources, and that means focusing our ideas a little more than we might if we were, say, writing a book on the subject. Other times, a person is less than receptive about sharing his or her life with you. It's understandable, sure, but it can derail an otherwise successful piece just as it's building good velocity. Other times, you can't find your subject at all and you have to abandon a good idea because the main character of your story is M.I.A. Then toss in legal issues, ethical dilemmas, uncomfortable social situations...you name it, it's probably happened during a student's story.

The storytelling we do here at Salt requires a delicate process. You can never take anything you're doing here for granted, because as soon as you think you have a strong grip on a story, it can slip out of your hands and your control. So one of the big ideas you learn here is how to be incredibly flexible. That can mean being prepared at any minute to tell the story in a different way, or it can even mean giving up on a failing project and running full throttle toward something else.

It's a humbling lesson. I can't say that it's an easy lesson, though, or one that doesn't really hack me off sometimes (You try running around the state of Maine for eight hours trying to find a lead on a subject, only to come back empty-handed, and see how you feel. It's not as fun as it sounds, trust me). But what keeps me going during this whole escapade of driving around the state, cold calling, researching, and tearing out my hair is the idea that somehow, every semester, every student manages to find a great story. These are the stories that hit the Web site and hang in the gallery. This is the stuff that draws you to attend this school or at least follow its progress in the world of journalism. Just knowing those stories are around means there are stories everywhere, and that people eventually tell them. Because, really, (and I know this will sound obvious) these aren't our stories. They are someone else's. And when a subject tells his or her story, he or she is giving a gift to us. And once the end of the semester hits, and we've shared our subject's story with others in the best way we know how...well...that's our gift to our subject. And that's what we're here to learn about.

We all just have to remember at this stage of the process not to lose heart. If we just keep working hard, it will come. It has to. At least, that's what I have to keep hoping.