[Al] Art and Taxes

When the challenged was announced I thought about trying to get some flashy people to interview. I know a few, and some friends were going to help me get an interview with rapper/actor Common, who’s new cd “Finding Forever” just dropped. (If you even casually like hip-hop pick it up, it’s excellent!) Anywhoo, I thought he’d make a great interview, but then I started thinking about what really mattered to me. I might never have this type of stage to say something, and did I want to do a profile given that space? I decided I wanted to tackle something. When I first thought about the tax issue, I thought to myself, how unsexy can you get? But then it’s meat and potatoes issue, it’s important, and not just to my community but to the entire country. We’ve been engaged in this idea of cutting taxes for a long time, but what’s the cost of the cuts? How does it affect us as a society?

Instead of talking to a tax expert about the subject, I decided to look at it from a different point of view and went to the head of the Cultural Council Robert Arliegh White. From hearing him in the past I knew he’d give me a good engaging interview. He could read from the phone book and enthrall an audience, and with a subject like tax cuts, I knew that’s what I needed.

Because I knew very little about the tax situation, I had to do a lot of preparation. I read everything I could find, which lead me to call some local journalists who have been writing about the cuts, to get a better understanding. After a week of doing that type of research I felt pretty comfortable in my understanding. I was a little nervous; because this is the first “formal” interview I’ve conducted. Now I interview people all the time when I’m researching a play or something along those lines, but that’s always sitting at someone’s kitchen table, or at lunch, very casual. The formality of the studio was a little intimidating, but Mr. White, and Tom Patton (director of the station) where so at ease it made me relax. When the interview started it went pretty smooth.

The hardest part of this challenge was choosing the five-minute excerpt. There were places in the interview that got really technical, and I decided I wanted to stay away from that, but squeezed between those numbers and milage rates Mr. White dropped some gems, and it was hard to let go of them. Additionally, there were places where we engaged well with each other, and some of that got cut as well. My work as a playwright really prepared me for that part of the challenge. I’ve learned to not fall in love with anything. You have to be willing to cut and kill your babies if it makes the story stronger. Once I was able to shift into that mode it was easy to see, which 5 mins to use.

The best thing about this experience is that it spurred me on to start working on the podcast I’ve been envisioning for awhile. Since I submitted the entry, I’ve been working on my own podcast, and doing more interviews, and creating something I’m really excited about. Should be done in a week or so, and I’ll announce it here in case anyone is interested.

As far as this entry is concerned there are somethings I wish I’d done differently, as far as structure. We didn’t get to talk about how much people would save with the proposed cuts (averaging a whopping two hundred dollars a year), but on a whole I’m happy with it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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