Try All You Want, Buddy...

As I start out on this frigid day, I instantly regret having only put on 4 layers of clothing. Having only been gone for a short while, the 15 minute walk leaves me aching for my beloved radiator. Deciding to go forth with my drift, I hear a slight clicking noise in the distance, with a rather loud venting sound nearly muffling the clicks. As I approach the unmarked building I immediately notice the pipe sticking arbitrarily out of the wall, with a stream of heated steam coming out. Below it lies some electric equipment, the kind of thing a person trips over repeatedly as they walk by with their heads held too high. The whirring of the devices seem to imply that all is not right inside the building, but perhaps this insight is just envy of the occupants inside who are much warmer than I am.

The reverberations between this building and the flat wall across the street cause the overwhelming sounds of the distance (aka cars) to seem closer than they actually are. The radiance from the pipe is indeed a fresh burst of heat, but the comfort is short lived as the steam seems to dissapate well before the top of the devices. The bitter cold freezes my hands as I hold the microphones steady, just waiting for the time to return to my radiator.

Left to His Own Devices

Walking up the street, trying to warm my hands from the last recording, I hear the unmistakable sound of wood smacking against other wood. A dog in the distance is startled by something, beginning to bark endlessly, and the air wreaks of pumpkin pie. As I get closer to the noise, I see a rather tall warehouse like building with one wall removed. Either a lumber yard or perhaps just storage for a nearby company, a lone man works quietly with a cigarette as his only companion. The man looks at me and nods as I walk by, as he clearly is starting to be affected by the cold. His face is bright red from having been outside for so long, so I decide not to awkwardly hold the microphones in front of his face; Im sure his day has been hard enough. I round the corner and duck in an alley as I set up to record the sounds of the man working, walking to the ground not covered in snow to start up some vehicle to help move the piles of wood. The dog who was jostled before takes note of something else as the sound of metal clanks in the background.

A Cold Drink on a Cold Day

Walking the streets on a day that the high temperature lingers in the single digits tends to make everything freeze, chemically and figuratively. Outside a building, the last thing someone wants to see on this day is a vending machine full of quite possibly some of the coldest soda on earth. A single bench sits near by, frosted as the snow that had melted from the roof above left pools of now frozen water on the bench itself. Perhaps a rather inviting sight in the summer time, but not a welcome resting point on this of all days.

The machine it self seemed to be working over time, either trying to maintain a core temperature, or trying to prevent itself from dying due to lack of circulation. Thats a joke. The rumbling of the gears inside gave a perspective of the life of a bottle of soda, and it is a loud life.

One Man's Bridge...

One of the sadder things I had seen in a while, especially on the cold day I happened to be out. While walking down the path to the Milwaukee River, I turned around as I heard a dog heading in my direction. While giving the dog a pat and saying hello to the people walking him, I noticed a purple heap beneath the bridge. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that it was a sleeping bag, having been abandoned. As I climbed the treacherous but short hill to the area where the bridge connects to the land, I was overwhelmed by the rushing noise of cars passing above. The larger vehicles caused the earth to shake, and the rocks to shift ever so slightly, making it very hard to stand still. Despite the overhead bridge, there was no screen for to prevent the wind, and the bitter cold of the night before could not have made for ideal sleeping conditions. As I was walking through the path to return to civilization, a seemingly homeless man who couldn't have been nicer approached, and asked if I needed any help finding my way back. I told him I was good, shook his hand and went on my way, just hoping that this good person was not a man that had to sleep under a bridge during the brutal nights in Milwaukee.

A Shot at Redemption

A much more inviting place, the church on Cramer and Bradford was a sight for sore eyes in the distance, with its steeple peaking above the surrounding apartments. You can faintly hear some people inside as the overwhelming sound of the heat emitting from the crack in the door fills the cold day. I timed my visit to the church so that I would get there at 4, fully expecting the bells that annoy me every day, but they did not ring. A cruel joke to say the least. Maybe there is a sign of hope, as the heat from the door is a perfect welcome to a weary soul after a long day on the streets of a cold, harsh, brutal city.

Strategery.

The strategy I started to use was a simple Rectangular design around an area of the city I frequent, that also extended to parts that I had not been before. This quickly led to problems, due to a giant river that kept getting in my way. Who designed this place? Anyways, the rectangle-ish design held up slightly, but I had to make a few turns that deviated from intention. This did not lead to a pretty Drift Map, but it did lead to some very interesting sounds.