Episode transcript: season one, episode 5: Story Saturday // the noise inside // Saturday, March 21, 2020

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Welcome to Shelter in Place, a podcast about finding daily sanity in a world that feels increasingly insane. Coming to you from Oakland, California, I’m Laura Joyce Davis.

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It’s Saturday today, our first one since the San Francisco Bay Area started sheltering in place. Since all of our regular activities have been cancelled and we’ll just be staying at home for yet another day, it doesn’t feel different than any other day this week. But then nothing feels normal right now.

I want to do something a little different today, something to mark the change in days even if we haven’t yet figured out how to give this new way of life a rhythm. I’m calling it Story Saturdays. Like everything in this podcast, it’s an idea that evolved quickly, so I’m still figuring it out. Every Saturday I’m going to break from the usual form of this podcast and offer you a story.

Sometimes it’ll be me reading a piece of fiction I’ve written, a story to get us all through the day. But I’d like to also feature the stories of how others are using their art to make sense of this time. Maybe even have other authors read their work. If you have a story you’d like me to consider for Story Saturdays, please sent me a message through my website, laurajoycedavis.com.

Today I’m going to read to you a short story I wrote years ago. It was inspired by my grandparents. They’ve been gone a long time, but I still miss them. I wrote this at a time when I was trying to process losing them. Sometimes I think we need fiction, a made up story, to help us access the realest, most raw parts of ourself that are too painful to bring out into daylight. This story is called “The Noise Inside.” I hope you enjoy it.

Note: the full script for The Noise Inside is not included so that it is not “published,” which would eliminate the possibility of it being placed in a magazine in the future.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and subscribe to the show. The story I read today was called “The Noise Inside,” and it was originally published in Building Bridges, a San Francisco Writers Conference Anthology. You can find a printed version of it on my website, laurajoycedavis.com. The Shelter in Place music was composed by Chase Horsman at Reaktor Productions, and the Shelter in Place artwork was created by Sarah Edgell.

I’ll keep putting out episodes of Shelter in Place every weekday and Saturday, but I’ll be taking Sundays off, because we can all use a Sabbath. Until Monday, this is Shelter in Place. I’m Laura Joyce Davis.