Rec | 🎙️ VOICE NOTES 🎙️

⭐

A few thoughts on what makes a good voice note from brendonholder.substack.com… Every good voice note has a hook. For me, close friends will know that my hook is one introductory note in which I say two words: “Okay, so.” Record. Send. This is a warning for the receiver of the voice note. Take a bio break, go to a private area, grab some popcorn, and put in your headphones. You’re about to go on a ride. Pauses and cliffhangers. I have been known to end a voice note on a cliffhanger and leave for a couple of hours before I do another voice note. I promise this isn’t entirely for suspense. It gives the receiver(s) a chance to catch up and respond. I enjoy when a voice note can act as a substitute for an actual phone call rather than be a voicemail dump that you listen to at the end of the day. As a result, I prefer to voice note when I know a captive audience is waiting. I genuinely love it when I drop the voice note and can see the bubbles of who is responding and to what part. Get creative. Recently, I have been experimenting with a multitude of imagery to supplement voice notes like here when I was explaining the connection between a dream I had to someone’s business I had no reason to be in. Sometimes a jury just needs an exhibit to lean the verdict in your favour. The voice. I mean, duh. The message’s timbre is guided by our tone, odd turn-of-phrases, stutters and laughter, bloopers and cut-offs. A capsule of your humanity flashes and then is no longer there, evaporating from your phone as soon as you’re finished listening. The ephemeral nature of a voice note feels as intimate as a cupped whisper from your friend. It’s precisely yours until it’s no one’s.

@brendeezyy

Jan 22, 2024

see likes

Comments (0)

Make an account to reply.

No comments yet

Related Recs

📖

Reading at open mics

Read a ten minute prose I wrote at an open mic of my own curation, and that I hosted through my org (black girl fight club) on Wednesday night, in Chinatown… to like 50-60ish people. It was in amidst a quite wonderful art exhibit I co-curated with a friend (if I do say so myself). It was awesome. probably got 15 rounds of laughter during my piece. & a lot of praise. surreal. partly because it’s always surreal to produce an event, partly because when you read fast and real and long you black out, and during public speaking; especially off of an all nighter and a tad of hypomania. It’s the second time I’ve read at an open mic. again for lack of a better word: awesome. Then thursday night, last night– I did another reading. Bikini themed- on a roof in bedstuy (with notably no black people this time. Which for some reason I noted in my preamble). I knew no one there. except my best friend, who came with me. Another long ass prose. Cause that’s who I am. I went last. People laughed a lot and then listened to the serious parts then laughed again. One of favorite compliments is being told I’m funny. I used to never be able to really receive a compliment, I’d put a very fake voice on and give a very fake thank you. This year I’m truly proud of myself for the first time ever. It feels good to digest things you deserve genuinely; my mom doesn’t do it; I grew up not doing it; why not? I should. I’m growing up perhaps. Several people came up to me after and gave me kind genuine ass comments and praise. I chatted a lot with very nice individuals. they asked where they could read my writing they got my number and asked to send or followed me to see when is release, I don’t have anything released. And I felt on top of the world on that rooftop, and very real. Not hypomanic any longer, at least for all of yesterday. This summer has been consistently abundant and divine. I’ve felt abundantly full and swallowing gratitude. not for just what’s coming next or graduating or my accomplishments but for the love of my friends and traveling and the love of loves sake and sweet treats and the sun. I like to laugh loud. I want to go all the way with this writing stuff nowadays. Well I’m a renaissance woman and want to be a giant rose garden that is every color and grows everywear and then an 100 year old pine tree. And then a single rose that wilts on a first love’s or final love’s dresser and never forgotten. And be funny and real raw and relatable. A storyteller and all the things. And real artists writers and real listeners and peers of blackness and whiteness east coast and otherwise transplants and otherwise from my Alma mater and otherwise my friends my mutuals and complete strangers alike are looking and listening intently and think my words are worthwhile. I’m a professional yapper, I know, hence the long ass pieces. And the nights spent talking to my friends for hours on end. But a professional writer? I never thought I could go all the way- regardless of format… only when a few professors and teachers of my past really told me from their hearts at times, a few times… but peers feels so enlightening a lot more a lot of the time. They have a distinguished pulse, the respectable ones. So I guess it’s time to launch (or relaunch) the Substack and do more open mics and less close friends stories. And to just let it be how it should. You should hop on the mic if you feel like the timing is divine too And the spirit compels you. I ate carvel and a Cinnabon (it was combined in one establishment) leaving the reading last night). carvel is my favorite soft serve and they barely have any in New York. And I love Cinnabon so dearly. My best friend never had carvel she said it’s “actually pretty good” but it’s my favorite. I had vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. When I got to her house, I ate the Cinnabon after microwaving it. I was supposed to save it for tomorrow. But why save something deliciously sweet and divine and blessed for the next day when you can chew it and swallow it when you want it right now in the presence of someone you love and wants the best for you. who you held hands with in the car all the way home. I massaged myself with this special healing cream I have, then massaged her feet and calves. My friend on the other side of the country called me and she is coming here next week we are going to heal ourselves, body spirit and mind together. be little girls and big girls and be artists and date each other abd cuddle up - just like our 3-headed deer tattoo we all got together on my friend’s birthday. in the grand scheme of things we haven’t even known each other long, one of them less than a year. Who cares. Love isn’t about that. love is about being a deer, prey and pretty and sweet, hunted and prancing in the forest and front lawns, survivors and spotted, fairy tales Bambi movies children’s books filled with gunshots overpopulated — & on 3 heads, one body, resting on the shoulders of three girls who found home in each other and fell in love And will share that til their skin rots and they become poems and memoirs, rose gardens and star dust.

@gabz

Aug 2, 2024

📰

This baffler essay on streaming services, taste, and algorithmic recommendations

lots of gems it’s hard to isolate one!!! But it made me think of why I like this place and getting real recs and discovering things Some include “The problem is that subscribing to niche film services and hunting down bird-centric romances on YouTube are the acts of a self-selecting group—it takes money or effort or both. This ghettoizes lovers of the strange into a “fandom,” that most pejorative of internet taxonomies. Classifying love as fandom damns the most affecting and holy of reactions to art—recognizing yourself in others—into just another mode of material consumption. It turns lovers into shoppers and then sells them Funko Pop figurines of John Cassavetes. It turns connection into loneliness.” “He describes how sailors used to navigate by looking at Venus, clearly visible even by day. This planet is still there. It hasn’t exploded. It’s still in the same relative position in the sky at the same time. But according to Davis, with the advents of the astrolabe, more accurate sea charting, and satellite GPS systems, humans can no longer see it. As far as collective perception goes, if we don’t use something, it doesn’t exist.”