\t\t\t\tThis matter of listening to all my old cassette tapes has been…
\nenlightening? I don’t know. It’s interesting how many answering machine
\nmessages and corporate vcoiemails I saved, as if I thought I would need
\nthem 20 or 25 years later. Most people I know now, since the voicemail
\nera has prevailed for so long, are gone from this sort of realm.
\nVoicemails, for me at least, disappear. Cassette recorded messages do
\nnot.<\/p>\n
Here is a tape of myself talking as I returned to New York from Atlanta. I
\ndrove a U-Haul. For some reason my mother thought this was some sort of
\nhumiliation for me, as if only low lifes rent U-Hauls. God my voice sounds
\nstrange. Nasally and tight. Right or wrong I think of my voice, and have
\nalways thought of my voice, as deep and kind of mellow. The only trace of
\nthat sound I’ve heard from these older tapes was from the WOBC broadcasts
\nI recorded. <\/p>\n
A string of answering machine messages that completely escaped me came
\nwhen my mother broke her leg. That was a horrible episode. I went to
\nTampa for a couple of weeks to take care of her. I did not fully
\nappreciate what a sweet arrangement that ended up being. I was paid in
\nfull by Time Inc., for which I did no real work while I was in Tampa. And
\nmy mother even paid me back for the plane fare. She had a decent amount
\nof money back then. <\/p>\n
I forgot how often Phil used to call me. <\/p>\n
These tapes are in no meaningful sequence, so I’m hearing a tape from the
\nU-Haul now but the next tape or even the other side of this tape could be
\nfrom years later or years earlier. I thought I made extensive tapes on the
\ndrive from Atlanta. I found one tape from when I actually left Atlanta but
\nit seems I made fewer recordings from the road than I thought. I remember
\nrecording a Baptist preacher I heard on the radio somewhere in North or
\nSouth Carolina. I contacted that preacher weeks later, requesting tapes
\nof his sermons. He obliged. At least one of those tapes is in this
\npile.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was another epic stroll, from here to Adorama on 18th Street.
\nThat proved to be a waste of time. The dude at the counter just was having
\nnone of my nonsense. I needed a small wind guard for a lapel mic. He only
\nsearched one way, which was to look for a wind guard specifically designed
\nfor the exact microphone I had. No such specific wind guard exists. From
\nthat conclusion he would not even lift a finger — and that was
\nliterally all he had to do — to search the Adorama database for general
\nwind guards. <\/p>\n
So I left empty handed knowing full well that the wind guard I wanted was
\nthere. Boo hoo. It is comical how much trouble I’ve had finding suitable
\nwind guards for these mics.<\/p>\n
At home now, considering the big site merger of .MOBI, \/yo, and
\nflaneur.nyc, which has been stillborn for months. I also wanted to
\nintegrate some of the older stuff that no one ever read and that I
\nforgot I ever wrote.<\/p>\n
I recorded almost 2 hours of myself talking on Saturday, en route to and
\nfrom the GWB and Inwood. I only went up to 216th Street out of a feeling
\nof obligation. I have no fond memories of that apartment, the building, or
\nthe area. Even as I stood outside all I could think was that I did not
\neven care to see this place. The place on Cabrini had a little more appeal
\nto me on account of the fun memories I had sticking my head out the window
\nand interacting with people stuck in traffic down below. And it’s also
\nquite possible my roommate from back then still lives there. Oh jeez, I
\njust realized I still remember his phone number. What a strange thing to
\nkeep in the brain. I just looked it up, and THERE HE IS. Haha. I
\nremember calling that number a lot and using it as my own for a short
\nwhile. The answering machine was constantly clogged with angry calls
\nfrom student loan debt collectors. They were calling for that roommate,
\nnot me.<\/p>\n
I cancelled Fios television yesterday. With a few exceptions, such as
\ncollege and the periods of transience I don’t think I have been without
\ncable TV since 1993. Actually I don’t remember now if I had a TV in
\nAtlanta but I don’t think I did. So there was that 6 month period of
\nTVlessness. Cancelling was surprisingly painless once I found the right
\nnumber to call. I thought they would go the retention route, but it’s not
\nlike I was cancelling altogether. Now I have only Internet. I even
\ncancelled that stupid additional phone line that I did not want. For some
\nreason I did not think they would let me cancel that.<\/p>\n
Cancelling TV makes it feel like I am moving. I am not moving.<\/p>\n
October 11, 1997. Here I am announcing that it is ten ’til three in the
\nafternoon and I am LEAVING Atlanta. I don’t think I ever listened to this.
\nMan, leaving Atlanta for New York was probably the most excited I’ve been
\nabout anything ever. <\/p>\n
Looking for Interstate 85. I remember going into a 7-Eleven or some place
\nlike that and meeting someone who had lived in New York. I told him that
\nwas where I was headed. He told me where he had lived but it was lost on
\nme. He kept saying “You can have a good life there,” and seemed to regret
\nhaving moved away. I kept thinking of that comment, asking myself “Am I
\ngoing to have a good life in New York? Is that why I am moving back
\nthere?” <\/p>\n
Here I am talking about what a shitty job that was in Atlanta. Hah. OK,
\nI’m not listening to any more of this, just going to digitize away and do
\nsomething else. This is the 90th tape I’ve digitized. Quite surprising
\nthat among all those tapes only one is unplayable. I always thought of
\ncassettes as being flimsy as hell.<\/p>\n
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This matter of listening to all my old cassette tapes has been… enlightening? I don’t know. It’s interesting how many answering machine messages and corporate vcoiemails I saved, as if I thought I would need them 20 or 25 years later. Most people I know now, since the voicemail era has prevailed for so long, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-1XK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}