That was an interesting afternoon spent re-listening to the sound of my own damn voice. I remember now what I had in mind for that project, and why I mostly gave up on it. I was going to post audio updates from around town, and at times I have done that at the .MOBI. But it’s just a whole lot of extra work with no obvious ways to implement efficiencies, and any pursuit that relies on the public telephone system is in peril right from the get go. Too many calls just did not work and when they did my comments about current events and what was happening around me were just pedantic as hell. In one memorably listless sequence I complain about encounters with an ex girlfriend. Those memories would have been completely erased from my mind without listening to that. That would have been fine, to have purged the pillow in my skull of those encounters.
Some of the recordings would have worked better as written pieces.
So now I am down to 35 tracks, from about 100. Most of them are a minute or two but I should bring it down to 25 or so tracks. That should total about 45-50 minutes. I remember now how important sequence is when building a program like this. Sequence itself is part of the program. That is hardly a pathbreaking insight but it’s the kind of problem you don’t encounter until you have enough material to build a program. It’s an end run scenario.
I like the ones that start with me talking to a mystery person, starting out with “Hey, listen…”
And my favorite might be the one where an old friend Tiffany makes a guest appearance. That was cute. That should be the midpoint/turning point sound where I go from paranoid schizo to more or less insightful and coherent. And I should mine the voicemails from my PC, which contain far too many hours of sound.
Having said I am down to 35 tracks I remember that I could fill in more time with stuff from the other formats that I used. I remember making an epic-length call from the payphone by the cemetery. It was misprogrammed to allow for calls of unlimited length, but at the time I only knew how to record up to 15 minutes. And that is fine. I don’t really need hours upon hours of shit to wade through. But that recording was meant to be an incantation of sorts for this project, explaining how I wanted to capture the rugged, monochrome sound of the landline before it is gone. It’s the only recording I read from a script. The payphone by the cemetery is also known to me as the Othmar payphone. I excised all reference to Othmar from these recordings today, including the fictional account of me finding a newspaper from 1974 on the Honeywell Street Bridge. That newspaper contained a story about Othmar.
But to get to the inspiration element… listening to this stuff… I hear things that sound like they would FUCK PEOPLE UP. Because I am, at core, a fucked up and unusual individual. Or so I’ve been told.
…
At a millennial bar. Drinking an ALTBIER, whatever that is. Going to play FISHDOM, it’s getting too dark to type.
Oh, and I took a really good dump today. That’s been a problem the last 4 or 5 days as I have consumed barely any solid food. No problems this time! Whooosh…