i don't mean that in a magical and mystical sense, per se, but more so as a conceptual way of being, of interacting as people. we learn history, we dramatize current events, and we fantasize about the future through stories. stories are the proof that someone, somewhere, at some point in time has lived something, or, imagined living it. the most alluring aspects of stories are often found at the meeting point of uncertainty - what is fact and is fiction? with any good story, you cannot tell, and you feel one of two ways about this: you couldn't care less or you obsess over it.
as i was packing up and heading out of work today, a coworker came into the office and she seemed very excited about a podcast she had just binge listened to amidst completing her daily tasks at work. i overheard tidbits of her and another coworker sharing their experiences with and opinions of it. they recommended that i take a listen. i told them that i only caught some of what they were saying and that it sounded like a murder mystery to me and that wasn't my type of thing. they insisted. "will it keep me up at night? 'cause those types of things always keep me up at night," i asked. one coworker insisted that it wouldn't, "listen to it... it's like how to get away with murder." "interesting," i said. and it was legitimately interesting to me: from their brief descriptive synopsis, this was a journalist's delve into a real-life murder mystery and the first point of comparison was a newly popular fictitious crime show - real life murder and scripted murder. i paused on that in the moment, that i remember, but i wouldn't realize why until later on. nonetheless, i can't deny my escalating obsession with how to get away with murder, so, on my commute home, i looked up the podcast.
i realized it was my first time opening up the app on my iphone. i also realized that i never fully understood what a podcast was. i remembered some ways back when i mentioned that to my brother, or a friend, or someone who had suggested a podcast to me and i said, "you know, i hear that a lot, but i'm not really sure what a podcast is." and that person gave a painfully simplified definition and then ended with, "you know how you tell and write stories? yeah, well, a podcast is good for stuff like that, for telling stories." i typed in "serial" - or was it already advertised when i opened the app? - i can't quite remember, but i was excited to get started and see what all of the hype was about.
i listened on the bus ride home, feeling somewhat more sophisticated knowing that there was an intellectual voice blaring through my headphones instead of my usual case of eclectic music. within ten minutes of it, i was hooked into the story and intrigued in what was about to unfold in this eight plus hours of podcast. i stepped into the house and took my headphones out and turned up the volume, letting the podcast project through my phone speaker as i was walking through my just-home-and-getting-comfortable routine, carrying the phone with me from room to room, listening feverishly. i didn't want to miss a second: a second could be a new clue, a second could defy an old clue, a second could reveal the truth behind this story without me even knowing it. i sat at the dinner table and played it aloud as i ate. i scoffed with sarah koenig, i sighed with asia mcclain, i felt the sincerity of innocence in adnan's voice, then immediately scared myself with the thought that i could've just misjudged what could be the serenity of an insane voice, i laughed at high school dance scenario when adnan's friend described it, then i didn't when hae's friend did. when my mother joined me for dinner, she asked what i was listening to. i paused the podcast and gave her a dramatic retelling of what the story was and how it had unfolded up until the point i was at. then we listened intently together. another hour, almost two. i turned and said to my mother, "i want to stop listening, but i can't."
i didn't mean that out of a suspenseful excitement. well, at least not entirely. as most revelations and poignant subconscious unearthing are revealed, it came to me when i was in the shower. hae min lee is someone's daughter. she had a life. she was an average teenaged girl. and tonight, on this random night in my average twenty something year old life, i sat at my dinner table and listened to someone read me her diary up until the day she was killed. how to get away with murder. i lived for that show on thursday nights throughout the fall. i sat at the edge of the couch every night, wrecking my brain over the clues and the twists and the turns, trying to solve this mystery before the truth was given to me. i wanted to crack the case in some vain, egotistical effort to boast my astute attorney-like mind and also to put an end to the trivial, first-world-problems-type induced anxiety attacks i was having watching the show. tonight i felt that same way. but this was different. it didn't necessarily feel right to me to be craving the truth in that way. this was not scripted by shonda rhimes, this was a real life story. hae min lee is someone's daughter. when they said "the body" it was real. the people speaking were there. they lived this story, these events, these unfathomable emotions and actions. this shit was real. and it fucked me up. i couldn't listen anymore. i wanted to, in a sick and twisted way, i really wanted to. to be honest, i still might. it's the whole "you can't look away from a bad car-crash" mentality. but it made me think about why this felt so wrong to me.
a podcast is good for telling stories. listening to "serial," i couldn't help but think about hae min lee's family. what would it feel like for them to hear this? for them to watch the fandom and the international intrigue and the moves to take more legal action? how does the sensationalize of this criminal case help and hurt this story? how does it address the new-age ways in which we tell stories? in which we decide what to make a story? and what's to say about that comparison: "it's like how to get away with murder." it's not "like" how to get away with murder. it is how to get away with murder. there are no conditionals, this is not hypothetical. someone could be getting away with murder with the growing publicity of this podcast. say adnan is innocent - someone then has already gotten away with murder. say adnan is guilty - we would say then that no one has "gotten away with" murder, but in the resurfacing and the probing of this case, with the petitioning for a retrial, with this more earnest portrait that has been painted of him through "serial," a guilty man could be given the opportunity to walk free, to get away with a murder. on the other side of things, this pop-culture significance of this podcast can now bring more things to question, could open the case up for a proper combing of evidence and albis, could in fact, assure that no one gets away with murder.
there is so much to unload here. too much to unload. so much good or so much bad can come from this style of storytelling. now what else is there to do but to anxiously click through the "episodes" of these people's very present, very real life? what else is there for us to do but obsess?
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