On the waves

All my life,

I've been fascinated by waves. Waves in the water, waves that make up light, and the waves that make up sound. I don't know when or why it first started, but it's always been something that truly fascinated me.

From my early life growing up on the shores of Lake Erie, through my early career as a musician, and then as a photographer, observing and manipulating waves has dominated my life.

I think some of my fascination with waves comes from the fact that my autism came with a side of sensitivity to light and sound.

Everything feels very bright and very loud and very chaotic to me.

So, being the curious boy I am, I wanted to understand it, to make sense of it, to see if there was a way that it could be molded to create space, both visual and auditory, that I could feel comfortable in. And that led to music, and photography, and, interestingly, to my love of writing and fiction.

I still do photography and music as a hobby, but my love of sound and storytelling has overtaken them.

Now you may be asking, NJ, you're an audio guy. You love audio. This whole blog is about audio. Why are you writing it? The truth is, dear reader of this tome, I am not writing it. I am speaking it into a dictaphone. This blog could easily be a podcast if I had any interest in running another podcast.

I don't actually write very much anymore, for a lot of reasons. Usually. What you read that I've written, I actually spoke and what you're reading is a transcription. Over the years, I’ve developed some hand issues that make typing for any kind of extended period painful. Also, I’ve found that I’m more productive and can think more clearly when I’m moving.

Beyond even all that, I’ve found that thoughts flow more evenly when I speak, and I can write much faster than I ever could by typing.

So what am I talking about here? Well, this is the first installment of this blog, and I wanted to explain some of how I work and where my passion for storytelling and audio comes from. A little background about me, as it were.

So why Echoes? It comes back to my fascination with and love of waves. How they move, how they change. How they can be manipulated to create a unique, visceral, human experience from such a simple natural phenomena.

Waves effect every aspect of not just my life, but everyone’s life.

And every wave has an echo.