Start Stop

Most of the field recordings that I post are almost exactly as I receive them at the end of the recording process: I hit record, I hit stop, and most of what happens in between is what I share. Which isn’t to say the audio is “pure” by any means. The device I elect to use for the recording, the time and circumstances when I choose to record, the (usually) continuous clip of 30 seconds I select from within the longer recording — all of these elements, among others, are beyond the bounds of anything that might be self-described as purism. The editing process in particular lends an aspect of self-reflection (even, at times, of what George Eliot taught me to term self-rebuke). When recording the sound emitted inside my refrigerator, for example, I immediately chopped off both ends of the process: first, when I closed the door after placing my phone inside the fridge, and second, when I opened the door to extract my phone. In between those mirror-image poles was a minute or so of sound, from which I then extracted what seemed, to me, like prime climate-controlled droning. Later, however, I kept thinking about the recording process, and I returned to what hadn’t made the initial cut. I combined the two ends into one half-minute whole. The clunky percussion of the fridge drawer and door being shut and, then, opened has a industrial-grade vibrancy. While its jittery, stuttering aspect places it in stark contrast to the monotone of the internal hum of the fridge, these two sets of sounds share a welcome practical simplicity, the beauty of an everyday mechanism at various stages of its utilization.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 7:57am on Friday, December 19, 2026, in San Francisco’s Richmond District.