Pejk – Okay. Ummm. Sure. Let’s talk cows. Rob – So, I listened to your story “A Cow a Day,” I listened to it twice. And each time I came with very different responses to it. And so I just want to talk you through my two responses. And, I’ll just start with the first one… I had this question at the end of it: (laughs) Why the hell did you think that would make for a good radio story?! Pejk – Right. (pause) Okay. (laughs. Deep breath) Wellll…. Theme Music This is Sound School. From PRX and Transom. I’m Rob Rosenthal with the backstory great audio storytelling. Just the other day, I went to the movies and watched a collection of short documentaries nominated for Oscars this year. Most of them were emotionally brutal. Like “Armed Only with a Camera” the story of documentary filmmaker Brent Renaud who was killed while filming in the Ukraine. Even more haunting was “All the Empty Rooms.” A kind-of documentary photo essay looking at the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. It was devasting. The first film of the day was perplexing.. Perplexing in a good way. “Perfectly a Strangeness” it was called. Sound – Donkey hooves on tar. The film runs for 15 minutes. There’s no dialogue. And I’m going to say for the first eight minutes the cameras follow three donkeys climbing a hill. To where? For what? We don’t know. Sound – Donkey hooves on tar. Music I found the film fascinating. And I don’t want to give away what happens. But, it’s one of those films that prompts you wonder about your place in the universe. Sound – Music As I sat there watching the slow movement of these donkeys I couldn’t help but remember a radio documentary from a few years ago called “A Cow A Day.” Pejk Melinovsky produced it for the BBC. The film inspired me to unearth my intriguing conversation with Pejk from the Sound School archive. Intriguing because I couldn’t make head nor tails about what he was doing when I first listened to the story. As I said a moment ago, I actually listened to it twice in order to divine what Pejk was up to. Pejk is a radio producer, a poet, a translator, a publisher… Pejk – And I also recently made a virtual reality installation. So, I guess I’m a kind of artist as well. What made me ask why Pejk thought “a cow a day” would make for a good radio story is this: there’s no story. It’s just Pejk. Following a cow. For a day. Literally. Clip 1 – Opening starts fades under. Pejk followed the cow in Varanasi, India. He recorded his descriptions of the cow. What the cow did. What happened around the cow. His own musings… for 11 hours. Of course, the piece is shorter than that. Just a half hour. But really, that’s it. Like I said nothing happens. And when i say nothing happens I mean yeah a people talk to Pejk. The cow eats. The cow walks up a flight of stairs. But, in terms of story, that’s pretty much nothing. Clip 1 – Opening fades up. Pejk introduces the concept of the piece on location. Cow chews rice. Walks off. Fades under. Rob – I was trying to picture you. What were you wearing? And was it obvious you were recording? Pejk – I wasn’t super obvious. I had my little handheld recorder and, um, I was just wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, I think. There are quite a few tourists on the Ganges there, I didn’t look suspicious. Clip 1b – Guy comes up and asks what Pejk’s doing. Fades under. Pejk - And, it’s, ya know, Varanasi is the holiest city in Hinduism and so there’s a lot of people praying in all sorts of interesting ways. And, going down and swimming in this highly polluted river. So, there’s a lot of stuff going on. I didn’t stick out at anyway. Clip 2- fades up – Describes what the cow is doing. Quotes Cage about doing something boring. Rob – A few minutes into the piece, you reference John Cage and you approximate a quote of his. “If you’re bored with something for two minutes, do it for four. If you’re bored with it for four minutes, do it for eight. (laughs) If you’re still bored, try following a cow for a day.” Are you in that moment, by including that in the piece, are you suggesting… “You know what? This could be boring. But stick with it.” Pejk – Yeah that’s exactly it. Maybe it is boring. And it is. And it was boring for me, too. (laughs) But, I’m giving an instruction in how to listen to the piece but also in a general exercise for anybody to do at any time with themselves in whichever place that they are, you know. Rob – So, still thinking about my first response and my first listen, when I got to the end I thought, I didn’t know what I had just listened to because nothing really happened. I was just like “Okay. What was Pejk thinking?!” Pejk – I mean I don’t know, Rob. I don’t know. I feel like… I don’t really think about that so much. When I make radio. Or when I write poetry. I want to do something that I’m excited about and that entertains me and then I’m hoping that if I’m really entertained that other people will be too. But I think, I do think it is an unusual radio piece because there is no “story” in quotation marks. But, there is a frame work, right? There is a person. Me. Who is in Varanasi. And I have an idea. I have a concept. I have decided to follow a cow from sunrise to sunset. I’m going to spend the whole day with this cow and just observe what happens to the cow and also, in the process, observe myself observing the cow. Clip 3 – Pejk says he doesn’t know anything about cows. “I have no authority.” Fades under. Rob – You also say “Usually, voices on the radio are an authority in something. I’m going to have no authority.” Pejk – Right. That’s something I’ve always struggled with radio…with the authority that comes with editing. And narrating. With my controlling the listener’s experience. You know, I was raised in a very anti-authoritarian way. I was raised to question authorities. And I think I have that, kind-of on my backbone. So, I struggle with the authority that’s inherent in having a microphone and speaking to somebody else. And, I would love to figure out a way to avoid that. Yeah, how do you do that? It’s impossible. It’s not possible I think. Rob – Total random thought. Do you know a punk band by the name of Crass? Pejk – No. But they sound great! Rob – Ah, they are. For some people they’re an acquired taste. (laughs) I think one of the slogans they would often hang from a poster or would be stated in their album jackets and such would be “There is no authority but yourself.” Pejk – Right. Yes. Totally yeah. We should put this under our conversation. It should come up right now. (Laughs). Music – Song by Crass comes up and ends. Rob – But back to the cows! (Laughs). So, here’s how I felt at the end of my second listen. I was thinking “Oh, this isn’t about narrative and story. There’s a whole other thing happening here. You’re trying to provide us with a sonic experience that might prompt us to listen in new ways. Or, maybe not new ways but in a different way… (Clip 4 fades in) …Especially with all the references to “listening” and “being” that you make throughout the piece…. And suddenly I thought, Ah, that’s interesting. When I stopped trying to look for narrative, I experienced it for what it was. I listened better. Clip 4 – fades up. Pejk talks about listening as a statement. (fades down and under) Pejk – The ideal way to listen to this piece is to not listen to it but to go to Varanasi and spend a day with a cow. And I think in a way that’s my mission here. To kind of, if I can get people interested in that idea, that would be great. Not that I want to preach anything but, I think that’s the ideal way to listen to the piece – is to not listen to it but do it yourself. And you could do it wherever you are. Clip 4 – fades up. Pejk talks about people coming up to “his cow” and petting it. (fades down and under) Pejk – It’s an experiment. But, I was very insecure about how it was going to work as radio. I knew I would have to do a lot of talking which is kind of a paradox. It’s kind of contrary to what I actually wanted to do which was listen… Clip 4 – pause of ambiance. Pejk – You can’t just put silence or street sounds on the radio. Can you? Yeah, it’s hard to put those kind-of experiments on the radio. Clip 4 – short pause of ambiance. Fades under. Then out. Pejk – When I edited the 11 hours, I kept… cutting down to where I was saying something I thought was interesting to kind-of guide the listener through the experience. Which is the opposite of what I’m doing. So, in that sense I feel like it’s kind of a failed piece. It’s doing the opposite of what I’m actually hoping to do. Clip 5 – The cow is going up stairs. Pejk says it’s exciting. Fades under. Pejk – I think it was born also out of general frustration with the radio world and what it had turned into or what podcasting had turned into. A lot of people just sitting in a studio speaking into a microphone and not really, really listening. And not… go out into the world and press record on their device and just listen to the world and try to be somewhere and see what the story. Just go out somewhere… and letting it, inviting it to change you and your own point of views I find interesting. There’s not a lot of that on the radio. Clip 5 – Bollywood filming in public square starts. Filming ends. Pejk says “And cut.” I hard cut the clip. Pejk – After I’d been in India following the cow, it became basically a practice for me to follow people. Yeah, I’ve started following people more and more. I do this often when I come to a new city. I check into a hotel and then I walk out into the street and I pick a random person and I follow them for ten minutes of fifteen minutes…. I pitched this project recently to somebody, to a place and the editorial staff, they were conflicted. Some people thought it was great and some people were like “Yuck. Who is this guy? What’s he doing?” It seemed too voyeuristic or something. But, it’s not so much about the people you’re following. It’s more about what happens inside you, inside your own head when you relinquish control like that and give yourself, give your own destiny for just 15 minutes to following somebody else, something random. That’s a wonderful thing to do. Clip 6 – Fades up. Pejk loses track of the cow while recording someone singing. Signs off. “Click” of recorder shutting of at end. A cow a day, people. It keeps the boredom away. Pejk was commissioned to produce that story for the BBC and Falling tree productions. It first aired in 2018. This episode of Sound School first aired in 2020. I’m going to continue this theme of “deliberate listening” on the next episode Sound School with my conversation with Noam Hassenfeld. Last year, Noam and the team at Unexplainable, a science podcast from Vox, produced an episode on “silence.” It includes an incredibly long piece of silence. Probably the longest I’ve ever heard in an audio piece. Here’s a brief clip. Clip – Silence from “The Sound Barrier” All that silence and much more on the next episode of Sound School. Theme music Want to make radio this summer at a Transom Workshop? Of course you do. I shouldn’t even have to ask. Applications are currently open for a workshop in Amherst, Massachusetts in late July. It’s a week of intense story making under the guidance of David Weinberg and your fellow students. These “bootcamps” are geared toward newbies and producers early in their careers looking to up their game. Later this summer there will be another workshop in Interlochen, Michigan. All the deets are at Transom dot org. Also at Transom, a new article about reporting on immigrant communities, ICE, and all that’s happening in immigration the U.S. The piece was written by the folks at Feet in Two Worlds, a long-running education project that teaches audio reporting to immigrant journalists. They do fantastic work and I’m sure you’ll find their perspective on immigration reporting to be enlightening. Read it at Transom dot org. Sound School is a production of PRX and Transom. I’m Rob Rosenthal. Thanks for listening. ## He had been there some years before. Spent time with a photographer who took pictures of a cow for a day. Made a photobook that didn’t get published. Commissioned by the BBC. 11 hours of tape Pike follows a cow. Why the hell did he think this would make for a radio story? Early on he references John cage. He says apparently if you’re bored with something for two minutes do it for four. If you’re bored with it for four minutes do it for eight. If you’re still bored follow a cow. Pike is that you suggesting how we should listen to the story? You talk about listening as a statement.  What do you mean? You record the engine of a boat on the Ganges. You ask something to the effect are you stealing it’s fact? Add 10 minutes and 30 seconds Pike says something about the cow giving him a sense of purpose. He then says the cow doesn’t have a choice that Pheak is following the cow but it seems as though the cow supported. How the hell does he know that? Maybe the cow actually is giving him permission? Maybe the cow has made a choice? Just wondering. Smiling face Where did you record your narration and observations? Was it in the studio afterward? On site? Where are you hiding the microphone in someway? Did anyone ever ask you what you were doing? Did you ever wonder yourself what am I doing!? At 12:30 pack says the cow brings out a tenderness and me. It’s after he observes that the cow looks melancholy. At around 13 minutes the cow apparently returns back to the place where Pike first encountered the cow three hours ago. At around 14 1/2 minutes the cow goes up a flight of stairs. Pheak says that’s exciting. Then he observes people setting up for some sort of event. Festival maybe. It’s a film  shoot actually. 17 minutes in he meet somebody they ask him what he is doing. At 22 1/2 a cow finally moved. & Pat wonders if the cow recognize him. At around 2430 or so pike starts talking to the cow. He started at 6 AM with the cow. It’s now 4:20 in the afternoon. He notes that the cow hasn’t said much to him. Toward the end of the piece a man comes up to him and sing him a song. As the man singing apparently the cow went away. Pike decides to end the story. Pike tries to offer some kind of meaning at the end. He offers that maybe this is just an exercise and being present. She’s a host and senior producer at Code Switch, NPR’s podcast about race, identity, and culture. She went to the ragdale artist residency to work on a project that, in the end, she didn’t do anything with. But, she hung out with artists there and one of them was Lamar Wilson. He’s one of the main interviewees in this non-narrated piece. He’s a poet.