At the coffee shop, using a new bluetooth keyboard for the first time since getting it a couple of weeks ago. This Logitech K380 replaces a previous K380, which developed an annoying habit of switching some keys around. So if I want to put something within quotation marks it would come up as being with ampersands. The indignity!
The progress on the radio stuff is turning out to be a mixed bag. Some of it sounds very unprofessional in terms of production (if I can even call it that), but I’ll be OK with that since I’ve come to accept it as just part of the territory. You can’t really walk and talk into a microphone without wind noise, an infernal and loathsome noise I had come to revile but which I can learn to live with. Some might find the wind to be atmospheric, unless it happens to be loud enough that you cannot hear my precious words being spoken.
But wind isn’t the only annoyance. The ore recent recordings feature a lot of spit noise, some of which I edited out but to do so across the board would take far more time than I could reasonably expect to lay out. I don’t have enough efficiencies for editing sound, I guess.
I was adding audio yesterday that I had not listened to since recording it back in January or February. For part of it I was talking about L., who for some reason was fresh in my mind again. I guess it’s because I fell into a travel routine that just happened to send me past her house almost every single day. I accused myself of behaving badly in that episode with her, but I think I could have used the word “poorly” instead. Hell, maybe I did, I only played it back once and might have reflexively done a little search-and-replace in my head. But “badly” sounds like I did something inappropriate, which was never true. It’s just that I behaved like a teenager in some ways, convincing myself I wanted this, even needed this; but when it abruptly shut off I did not even care, and put away the lessons learned from her to inform my awareness of early warning signs from possible romances going forward. I guess that makes me all growed up and stuff?
On the other hand I’m 50 years old, and running out of time for anything but more mistakes. I joked the other night that I thought I might have just met me “Next Big Mistake”. I was kidding, of course, although in that moment I was still under the spell not so much of her kindness and personality but the possibility that I might have something going with this woman who is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. She drinks but I don’t know if I could be with a woman who did not. Despite her pouring-out-of-her-soul to me and her comments about what decent seeming guy she thinks I am I just don’t think I’m her type. I am nice, as she repeatedly said, but nice just doesn’t float in some waters. That’s my logical, buttoned-up defense for things at this moment of potentiality.
Despite my own scruples about that particular recording I thought it sounded pretty good as a little production. I did some research into controlling wind noise but there really are not a lot of options short of, you know, not recording when there is a lot of wind or else walking around with the fuzzy thing (whatever it’s called), a piece of fabric that would make me feel even more conspicuous than I already do.
…
At the bar last night, with absolutely no other customers present, the bartender and I did something I almost never do. We watched one of the kiosks to check reactions of passers by to the sound of Mr. Softee blasting out, the jungle now accompanied by the sound of a tornado warning siren. I added that sound by request, if you will, from someone who commented on on of the Gothamist stories. Someone else had requested Steely Dan but I find that music, for the most part, does not really work. Softee doesn’t really count as “music” in this context. It is noise, which is why I chose it. Unwanted sound blasting from unwanted kiosk structures is key to the aesthetic of this little pursuit. The siren sound is, to use the word of someone else who commented on that story, “demented”.
Social media mentions have quieted down over the last week or so, which is par for the ebb and flow of things. Gothamist is not going to write about this every single week… are they? I have been doing this pretty much since the first kiosks appeared in 2016, then did it here or there over the months (I probably did it more than I think). I started doing this in earnest around February, if not earlier, and it was not until May that the first higher-profile connection was made between a twitter posting and a media outlet. Before Gothamist there had been as many as a dozen postings to various forums of videos showing weird sounds coming from the kiosks. So a week of no meaningful references on social media is no evidence that this has gone away.
Last week I saw a dude on 1st Avenue making video of one of the kiosks I had just turned on. He was really into it, I could tell, and after getting te video he stood nearby typing in a message before sending the video somewhere, to where I cannot say. There must be a ratio of how many (or rather how few) people will do something like post a weird video to social media compared to the overwhelming majority of people who would never do that. So for something like this, which will never rise to the level of legend (although someone on Facebook said “Whoever is doing this is legend”), it is safe to say that a lot more people are talking about this than it would appear through the warped prism of social media mentions.
OK, I’ve been here too long, must get back to the desk.
