Witness… The Third Season

WELL! At long last. After a whole effing year. Infinite delays (well, personal delays, because I don’t like to commit to a premiere without everything being at least close to in the can… but fuck, it felt like infinite to me). Re-listen after re-listen after re-listen in an effort to appease my unnecessary perfectionism. It’s finally here. Season 3 of Witness if You Will… If you’re reading this blog, I presume you’ve listened to the first episode, and hopefully it whet your appetite for, um, I don’t know, whatever sub-genre of podcast this fits into. Narrative-comedy-surreal-parody-homage-existential-improvised-scripted thing-a-ma-boo? It certainly feels good for the thing to finally start rolling out (although, truth be told, I’m writing this entry way in advance, so I’m just imagining what it feels like for the thing to finally start rolling out, and… ahhhh, feels good, man, feels good).

SO! Why did this season take so goddamn long to get out?

No idea.

Well, some idea, but nothing definitive. The original, idealistic plan was for this thing to be out in May or June. Recording started in late February, and I figured since I was going to be working on all six episodes simultaneously, that should shorten the amount of post-production time. But then June became early July. Then late July. Then early- to mid-August. Then late-Aug— YOU GET IT. And the thing that kept pushing my optimistic release dates back was that pesky little fucker we have all come to know as life.

Something I never considered (and really should have) was that once the world began to open up again, there would be less time to spend on personal, try-not-to-go-insane-from-quarantine projects. I may not have a day job, but improv classes have started up again, as have shows that I both perform in and produce. Not to mention all the social activities that were severely lacking for two plus years; I’m sure we can all attest and it’s repetitive to say at this point, but it makes a helluva difference talking to someone when you can actually see their pores and smell their body odor/aroma, two things in which Zoom hangs are severely lacking (and honestly should continue to lack, as I don’t think the world is ready for Smell-O-Vision internet). And seeing as though most of these things take place in San Francisco and I live in Marin, a lot of my time has been spent on the road, going south and north and south and north, something the FastTrak folks are supremely happy with, I’m sure (as if thousands of other people who live in Marin don’t already make that commute even more often than me, duh, Andy…). And all of this doesn’t even factor in how everyone else is now busier, now that they’re not stuck at home all day; spending two hours recording a podcast after spending eight hours already in front of a computer screen might not be someone’s first choice when presented with that and, oh, I don’t know, anything else.

It also goes without saying that working on six episodes all at once is not a time-saver. In fact, it probably didn’t save any time at all. For one, my ability to focus on multiple projects at once, while not in the realm of ADHD, was not up to snuff with my expectations. Even as I tried to bounce from one thing to another, I found myself putting all my attention onto one project at a time in big lumps, which is to say, it wasn’t like every episode got an equal amount of work done each day. Then there’s the fear of filling my MacBook’s memory to the brim with too many audio files all at once, which would obviously make it difficult to add even more audio files, as the amount of SFX needed for the season grew and grew the more I progressed through the episodes (is it possible to write a silent episode for S4?).

The long and short of it is, more things were suddenly on my plate, like they used to be before this podcast came into being. So although this has always been a high priority for me, it sometimes had to take a back seat for things that were equally prioritized. Burning the candle at both ends is tough business, let me tell ya.

But WHATEVER! Season 3 has begun! I didn’t want it to premiere over a year after S2, but this is the situation we find ourselves in, so deal.

What about the episode? you may be asking.

Well, in the tradition of cliffhangers, I’m gonna save all of that for next week, when I’ll talk about how and why a simple story about getting your driver’s license became a two-part epic. Well, semi-epic, anyway. Epic for this series. Whatever, if I wanna think of it as epic, I will! Until next time…

—Andy

Way back on March 1, I recorded the first intro for, I believe, Episode 6.

And yes, that is a Moonrise Kingdom tee, and yes, it is my pajama top, because I was in my pajamas.