Went on the Janet Cardiff’s Woman with the Long Black Hair, audio walk on Saturday morning, 9.10.05 at Central Park and couldn’t have hoped for a sunnier day to do it. The sound quality (3 channel?) was so distinct, directional and believable that I kept looking around myself to determine what was recorded and what was live. I was a little concerned that having waited for so long to get my headset it might be difficult to jump into the piece but from the first breath there was an intimacy of conversation that I didn’t want to lose track of. Having created walks and maps at public parks and gardens in the past, it is refreshing to hear a piece that taps into land use/personal/seasonal histories, narratives and calls upon the participant to reflect on time passage and mortality among other topics. I only found it strange when the Nick Cave song went on for a while—it just made me think about teenagers and melodrama and loneliness compounded by isolation—or maybe that was just me. After the walk it felt like it had not ended, the dialogue continued. Could this be a moment of common culture? Unfortunately, I noticed a lack of cultural diversity among the group waiting to go on the walk.

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