Soundscape collaboration with Freep AIR and CSUDH students from David Sherman's English Class. We asked each student to pick an important family event and interview each family member about it. We were inspired by Art Kunkin's famous saying, "Every reader is a reporter" and wanted the students to experience how perspective and memory differ person to person. Alan Nakagawa utilized the students' recorded interviews and composed a soundscape inspired by notorious pop music producer Phil Spector's iconic Wall of Sound recording style. The work is a robust sound experience while poetically documenting a candid post immigration and post pandemic experience.
Alan Nakagawa
Artist-in-Residence
Transcript
[00:00:42] Speaker 1: Lysol because I remember during the time of COVID. On the news they were showing like how all the Lysol was out in stock in stores.
[00:00:57] Speaker 2: I didn't know English so I spent a lot of time when we were in the apartments I spent a lot of time watching TV, uh, watching shows that I would watch in the Philippines like Power Rangers, Teletubbies. Um, but trying to learn English from there.
[00:01:15] Speaker 3: Since, uh, they opened U. S. for employment for nurses, I went ahead and, um, applied. And I found an agency that directly hires nurses, and it's here in California.
[00:01:36] Speaker 4: When he was in middle school, he told me that, um, don't send me. Um, food, Filipino food anymore because they're teasing me.
[00:01:43] Speaker 5: Um, I feel sometimes is when I go to like certain places, um, when there's like, I guess like white people, um, you feel more like an outsider because you know, there's not really, um, people of my race, Hispanics. So you kind of feel like. Um, an intruder, I guess you could say.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Like an outsider. Yeah.
[00:02:08] Speaker 6: Para poder tener papeles y la ley también de que no han cambiado para conseguir una ley que le den a uno papeles.
[00:02:20] Speaker 7: You know, having immigrant parents comes with like pros and cons, because as a little girl they would be like, “Oh, que es esto?” Like, they would want me to translate words, and then as a little girl you don't even know, like, to translate big words, you know? So I'm pretty glad, like, there's Google Translate now, because now my mom uses Google Translate. She doesn't really need my help, like, when it comes to translating.
[00:02:45] Speaker 8: I completely prefer the life here now as a opposed to back in China, because first of all, there's not as much mosquitoes here, which is a big plus and the humidity is low and it just feels comfy in this weather.
[00:03:02] Speaker 9: It's a tough situation though, when the clean car doesn't give you job or money, you have to be out there to get a job.
[00:03:13] Speaker 10: Because it's really difficult out there, even with a bachelor's degree. To get a job is a big challenge. You have to know somebody to know somebody to know somebody for you to get a job. And the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.
[00:03:31] Speaker 11: I'm not going to lie to you. I had like a little bit of depression because like I couldn't go anywhere. My parents, they were big on staying in the house, mask and stuff like that. So I couldn't go and go outside at all. So I was lucky, kind of depressed.
[00:03:47] Speaker 12: E recordo che. Para el dos mil once mi padre ya había pasado por varias recaídas y lo tuvimos que internar. Después salió y estuvo un poquito mejor, pero para su cumpleaños que era el quince de julio le festejamos haciéndole una comida porque a él le gustaban mucho los taquitos taquitos.
[00:04:14] Speaker 13: Creo que sí fue un cambio muy grande en nuestra familia y a todos nos tocó vivirlo de diferentes maneras porque algunos como para mi abuelita yo me recuerdo que ella iba mucho al hospital.
[00:04:32] Speaker 14: Since we were kinda like on lockdown I would create, like short achievable goals for myself, and then achieve those and… then yeah, so it was just, and then keeping myself reminded that even though it was like such a difficult time, there was gonna be, um, like we were gonna get out of it, um, and then there was like more to life.
[00:05:02] Speaker 15: School and home being separate and in person to all of it being remote and in the same place was very hard for me. So I didn't try to do school at all.
[00:05:15] Speaker 16: I remember one of the nurses saying, Were they letting the young adults be safe because they have more years. Because they're stronger, their lungs are, are stronger. And the, the adult already lived his life. So let the younger live, and the adult let him go. Play with Sam. Because we were playing God there.
[00:05:53] Speaker 17: Y yo sembraba maíz cuidaba las vacas, ordenaba, cuidaba los becerros y yo me vine de 19 años para Los Ángeles calipórneas y me traje nada más dos cambias de ropa para Los Ángeles.
[00:06:23] Speaker 18: When I think back to COVID, I think of the den in my house. Because I think of sitting there and drawing.
[00:06:33] Speaker 19: Back to China, our hometown, the people we know each other. Uh, who know who and related. So here we don't know each other.
[00:06:46] Speaker 20: 青 島 和 水 中 的 風 俗 美國 是 美國 的 風 俗 它 肯 定 不 一樣 哪 方面 不 一樣 哪 方面 不 一樣 青 島 吃 肉 的時候 美國 吃 肉 的話
Editor’s note: Chinese transcriptions were pulled from an auto-transcript software and errors could exist.