Listen to the first 10 minutes of Glenn Gould’s radio documentary, “The Idea of North”.  The idea of North 10min.wav or Files are here (experimenting with different sizes and file types) If possible, use headphones.  Record your impressions in a paragraph or two.

I didn’t warm to Glenn Gould’s 1967 radio documentary “The Idea of North”.  Of course, with little background knowledge about the creation of the piece, I found it hard to follow, and despite further research, the documentary still did not resonate with me.  I found the first three minutes of the documentary to contian little purpose, beginning with seemingly all of the interviewees edited together in an almost senseless cacophony, and found it particularly hard to focus on any particular voice.  Despite this profound effect, which may have been of outstanding use for a documentary of another subject, I found its use here completely nonsensical, irrelevant and confusing.

I found that even when the piece was formally introduced by the narrator (I think), the subject, or at least the piece’s motive, was still unclear, as well as who the people talking were and why they were being interviewed.  Perhaps I’ve overlooked some important defining details, or possibly the piece’s style is sufficiently dated, but I really didn’t connect to ‘The Idea of North’, or at least, its first ten minutes.