I found Pablo Neruda’s poem to be amusing, and wanted to convey a lighthearted feel. As a person who has known many cats, his words ring true. I can picture the poet late at night, paper and pencil scratching away, as his cat watches with a look that is 1/3 bored indifference, 1/3 condescending judgement, and 1/3 wishing Pablo would just pet him already.

The first challenge was recording. Getting consistent audio feel, pacing and volume while trying to give emphasis to the poetry reading took lots of practicing and re-recording. I still question if my voice has the right feel to it.

The next challenge was picking a background music track. I wanted to find some acoustic Spanish guitar to accompany it. However, all the tracks I tried were too distracting for the background. I finally decided to try audio of a cat purring. I feel it gives it a warm feel, like somebody is contemplating the cat’s existence while petting a cat on their lap. That’s how I will now imagine Pablo spending his quiet moments when he wasn’t writing or wooing women.

Learning to use Audacity was pretty intuitive. It seems like a really effective program for a variety of audio needs, and I’ll be using it for future projects.