Background & What I Do

‍My name is Kalei Vasquez. I'm interested in humanity and in discovering the human core of every topic.
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Because everything around us emerged from within: from the simplest human habit to the most complex tradition, the most obvious feelings to indescribable experiences, we all share a source and an origin consciousness that has been with us for millennia. Humans have learned, built, failed, and advanced with fervor to arrive at everything that we have—and perhaps don’t have—today. [ transition needed ]
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I believe each aspect of our world is capable of inspiring wonder and curiosity. What does it mean to love? What exactly does it make us feel and why is so much media centered around it? Or what do cities do for us, those centers of absorption and production? Why do we flock to them, what do they satisfy within so many of us? Or what does it feel like to look at the stars? What dawns on you, and are those revelations applicable to our lives, or reserved for fleeting moments of awe? All this and more is what I am passionate about.
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‍I want to draw out the central humanity of any given idea, and I do this primarily by capturing voices. By interviewing people from a large range of backgrounds about a central theme, a unity inevitably reveals itself. In other words, despite all the different perspectives that exist, there are profound moments and thoughts we all have in common, doubts and joys, instincts and questions…

I work in the mediums of audio and video, and I use natural sounds to immerse viewers into the environment and subjects to allow for a focus on the ideas, not necessarily the specific people. I am constantly collecting sounds and video of the world around me, and I conduct interviews in the field and in organic meetings.

Through all of this, my goal is to create in listeners a feeling of reflection and self-recognition in every other human being who has ever lived, if only for a single moment—and ultimately a feeling of appreciation for the humanity we share with others.
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