this morning at 7:30 i and hundreds of others in the area were awoken by the noise of what sounded like an air raid siren, followed by the gruff and rangy voice of a man yelling into a megaphone as he drove down the street, announcing for all to hear “ATTENTION! IF YOUR CAR IS PARKED ON THIS STREET YOU WILL BE TOWED.“ he repeated this announcement dozens of times, loudly, his voice never ceasing to fascinate me for its dark and dirty rasp. i climbed out of bed and attempted to record the gentleman‘s ungainly voice with a field recorder but i think i missed him. i might get another chance, though. the guy was with the DOT and he was announcing that the street was being re-paved, and for that reason all vehicles had to be moved. they must have gotten shit for this a couple of weeks ago when the re-paving began, because at that time they put up signs announcing that the street was going to be “milled“, but they only put the signs up the night before the work began. virtually no one whose cars were parked on the street saw the signs and the DOT hauled off about 50 vehicles to parts unknown. in that instance i think people had to pay fines, though i think those fines were erased after general outcries of wtf. this time the signs announcing the road work were posted a few days ahead of time, and with an extra note mentioning that you will not be fined for violating this temporary parking restriction. but a few days ahead of time is still not enough time, and there were about 20 cars still parked on the block today. alas, the street pavers did not make it to my block today, so they will have to do all this again on Monday, and on that day i hope to have the alertness and wherewithal to get my ass out of bed and to get my field recorder out and recording as the man with the voice returns with his megaphone. it sounded like the city was being put under martial law, and in the moment of half-awakedness in which i experienced most of this sound sensation i might have imagined i was in a country or town being invaded or occupied by military marauders. or city workers. it‘s just not every day you hear that dull drone of a siren, sounding like an air raid, followed by some voice‘s words hurtling into a megaphone and into the waking moments of a city‘s sleep.
i remember a morning whilst taking a shower and i somehow was able to hear not only that the phone was ringing but that a random, mis-directed message was being left on the answering machine. i could hear it but, with the water pouring over my head and the sensuous erotica i associate with showering i mostly heard garbled words, minced and lightly beaten, translated by the confluence of intermediate filters into a ghostly blubber of words, which sounded to me like “THIS IS AN INVASION“ and for weeks i had the inspiration to call random phone numbers and make that announcement, followed by instructions as to how to prevent your self from being occupied by the marauders and the thieves and the bandits. the project was a poetry thing, a living poetry thing, a thrillride of consciousness, and it never happened. i still think about it, though. back in the early 90s i used to write poetry and put it in envelopes, and i would mail it out to random addresses found in the Manhattan white pages. and when i first did radio interviews i would ask the producers to send the tapes to random Manhattan addresses i made up by stringing together arbitrary numbers which passed through my days. that is how an interview i did for new zealand radio ended up getting sent to a zillion dollar townhouse on the upper east side. i wonder who ever might have listened to that tape.
