Aaron Edwards
**We’re interviewing creators from Audio Flux’s first two circuits—you can listen to them now. They have opened up submissions for circuit three to the public! Click here to learn more.**
Before you read, quickly listen to Aaron Edwards’ Fluxwork Grams here. It takes three minutes!
Interview by Devin Andrade of Podstack.
Aaron Edwards (he/him) is a writer, story editor, and director working across audio, print, and stage. He’s directed live storytelling shows at BAM and Lincoln Center for Pop-Up Magazine, edited special projects as a founding editor of The Outline, and has written for places like The New York Times and The Atlantic. He was a 2023 MacDowell Fellow and was named a 30 Under 30 honoree in Forbes. Follow him @aaronmedwards on Instagram and Twitter or learn more about him here.
You have some very fun and immersive sounds (Whoopi made me chuckle every time) in your episode. Do you have a favorite sound or moment?
Ha! The Whoopi audio was 1) me being dumb and 2) a way to say “this is very personal, but you can relax your shoulders.” I love how humor works that way. Also, my friend Jazmine Hughes (whose voice is in the piece) won an ASME for her profile of Whoopi a few months before. So she was very much on the brain. It created clear bookends for every act, too.
But the voice memos from Jazmine and my friends around the 0:46 mark are my real babies in this piece.
I’m not an audio producer by trade. I hosted a tiny (but mighty) show at The Outline back in 2018 (produced by fellow Fluxer Jazmine “JT” Green!) but my more formal entry point into the medium came after a layoff in 2020 when I started getting freelance work as a writer and story editor on shows. So when Audio Flux invited me to participate, I had to get creative about what kind of “original tape” I’d use because frankly, I didn’t have much. Voice memos mean a lot to me, and the piece was meant to feel diaristic, so it was a natural choice. My friends’ voices are like little symphonies to me. It’s kind of fitting that I ended up choosing ones that all sound melodic.
What previous media/creations of your own or by others helped inspire you for this?
When I started making GRAMS, I’d just finished a video game called Season: A Letter to the Future, where you play a character who’s trying to document the world through audio, visuals, and writing before a flood sweeps everything away. You’re essentially this interdisciplinary artist collecting materials to craft the world’s final diary entries. It’s incredibly meditative and put me in the best headspace to make a story like this.
Three minutes can fly by when you’re trying to tell a story. How did you decide what to include? Which locations and moments to take the listener to?
Once I decided to use my psychedelic journals as the bedrock for the scripting, a three-act structure emerged naturally. And as much as I kick and scream about always wanting to break from “conventional” structure, there’s something satisfying about it.
I had three robust journal entries that stood out to me, each from a different location. And I had three minutes to tell the story I wanted to tell. So I stopped kicking and screaming and just tried to let the materials and sandbox guide me. It felt apace with the ethos of Audio Flux in general, too: to lean into the ways prompts and organizing principles can be interpreted.
That back-and-forth negotiation between convention and experimentation often gets me closer to my instincts. I trust those instincts a lot, but activating them can be a challenge. And I got the closest to creating from that place than I have in a long time with this little 3-minute piece. I’m incredibly grateful I was asked to be part of the project. It couldn’t have found me at a better time.
The pacing and rhythm of your writing stands out in this piece. How would you describe your style of writing for audio?
That really means a great deal to me! It’s something I take a lot of care with. With this piece in particular, the writing and delivery starts off a bit stilted, kind of tentative. Short bursts. Small thoughts. Little observations. But as you move through it, you get sprinkles of longer sentences that unfurl more. And by the end, the writing gets more loose. It sounds less like recitation and more like how I actually speak. I tried to mirror the feeling of a shrooms trip from start to finish in those 3 narrated minutes — the initial undulations, the cosmic self-awareness, and the comedown that gives way to clarity.
Writing for audio can be so romantic. And if anything, I’d describe my style in the form as a steady seesaw between flourish and succinctness.
There’s a strong build up and moment of vulnerability when you reveal why you started taking mushrooms. Was this the driving force all along? Something you found along the way? How did you decide the purpose of this piece?
I actually didn’t expect to talk about my OCD until I got to that part of the story on the page. I think my very first draft of the written script ended with another moment at the Renaissance tour in Houston. But it didn’t feel totally finished. And in the spirit of what I’d done in the piece up to that point, I just decided to be honest. So I guess in a way, the driving force was honesty — and all the humor, sincerity, and corniness that comes along with that for me.
Thanks, Aaron and Devin!