Where are you right now? If you were asked to recall the details of the ground you just walked on - the way it felt beneath your feet…the smell… the sounds, the faces of the people you passed - could you do it? It’s possible you’re drawing a blank…and if that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place.
I’m Petra Barran – a gatherer of people and food on the kerbs of London. I began as a food truck owner, cruising the UK, selling chocolate to any and everyone - and grew a whole multi-pronged street food organisation from there. But as my business took off and gave way to more and more meetings in glass buildings, the energy and genuine, spontaneous human connection that I thrived on started to fade away.
I had this powerful urge to get…lower. To move down from my scrambled head and plant my feet back on the ground. So I stepped away from the business, packed up my stuff, bought a recorder and decided to let myself be pulled deep into magnetic places and meet those whose lives are shaped by them.
No planning, no agenda and no neat conclusions. Just me, following and sharing threads, that are lower and closer to the ground. I call them Lowlines.
What is Lowlines?
Lowlines is a sonic scrapbook and a passport to roam. Following one woman’s pull to tune into the pulse of place - befriending strangers along the way.
Feeling pranged out by the London business hustle, food entrepreneur Petra Barran brought an audio recorder and set off with no itinerary, guided simply by a hunger to get lower and closer to the ground.
The series is a holiday for the ears, taking us to the heartbeat of New Orleans, the low-slung wetlands of South Louisiana, the slow gyrations of the Amtrak to Tucson. Down to the brittle rasp of the Sonoran desert, the rich, volcanic soil of Mexico City’s Aztec allotments and further, to the soaring jungle chorus of the Peruvian Amazon.