“Imaginary Advice” Challenges You to Create Art
“Art is meant to be challenging, but you’re scared of it for all the wrong reasons,” says Ross Sutherland in episode three of Imaginary Advice. He’s speaking as a haunted abstract painting in this monologue, a tone-perfect taste of the weird, rich, intimate array of audio that makes up this podcast. Walking into Imaginary Advice blindly feels a lot like stepping into the creative part of someone’s mind without a map; appropriate, considering that Sutherland describes Imaginary Advice as “a sketchpad for new ideas and new ways of telling stories”.
If you have to ask “but is it fiction or nonfiction?”, the answer is “yes”. These episodes sit at the junction between an audio essay and poetic reimagining. Some episodes are based on real events in Sutherland’s life, and others are science-fiction creations, but they all speak to some part of ourselves or our interaction with the world that we hadn’t considered in that kind of detail before. For instance, in “Re: The Moon”, Sutherland guides listeners through an uplifting writing exercise, where he encourages everyone to write metaphors about the moon because the moon is an overused trope. and therefore one should feel liberated to write about it so that you can finally write something about the moon that has never been written before. It’s absolutely one of his best episodes:full of hope, passionate creativity, and guidance for the listener, where it feels like a genuine, personal interaction, even though it’s a recording.
Sutherland is a creative force not unlike a tornado, sweeping through familiar feelings and banal experiences to then lift them up into the air and twist them into new shapes, finally setting them down somewhere that in the hands of anyone else wouldn’t make sense. In “Six House Parties”, he describes one person’s journey through six fancy costume parties as they try to outdo their rival at each of them. As the parties become more and more obscure, the narrator spirals deeper into wild theories and explosive plans, a story that becomes much bigger than you expect. In “Me vs. The Spar (Parts 1 to 7)”, he rewrites the experience of being refused beer while heartbroken at a supermarket because he lacks ID in seven different genres, including grime-rap.
The technical aspects of Imaginary Advice are all exactly what they need to be: Sutherland has a calm, soothing voice and is consummate performer; the selective sound design and foley are immersive tools; and the music is not just a mood-setter, but an important part of the entire conceit. The music is its own character.Sutherland doesn’t just use music as a bed, but lets it stand on its own for several beats. It helps settle the listener into the space he’s building and the story he’s weaving. In Imaginary Advice, the music is part of the poetry, often foregrounded out from where it has been lingering in the background.
Listening to Imaginary Advice at first can be challenging. You can never really know what to expect, as Sutherland’s art is a fluid creature that reshapes itself in every episode. It’s this point about Imaginary Advice that makes it an incredible podcast to put at the top of your rotation. As a piece of art it challenges both its listener and its host to think and experience outside the box. Sutherland deals with difficult subjects, like grief, jealousy, and failure, but they’re paired up with beauty, honesty, and internal, emotional strength. In “The Sutherland Dunthorne Luck Index”, Sutherland discusses how failure is celebrated in his stories and how it can be difficult to engage with, but also how risks can lead to beautiful endings. Imaginary Advice encourages listeners to step into a space that may be unfamiliar to tell their story, and consider that every act of creation, while difficult, is not a monster to be defeated and killed.
Special thanks to Ella Watts for her input and editing skills.
Previous Story
7 Poetry Podcasts to Make You Better in 2019
Next Story
Podcast Spotlight: Profoundly Pointless
Comments
Comments are closed.