November 2005
11 November 2005 | Service
I’ve been using this amazing new phone service. You may have heard about it. It’s called VoiceOver. It’s like a kind of answering service, but on a whole different level.
Unfortunately it takes several days to “train” the program. The process is handled over the phone, and it’s automated. All you do is answer questions, one after another. This sounds simple, but you wouldn’t believe how tedious it can be. If you don’t say enough in response to a particular question, the program probes for more information, like a real interviewer: “Why is that?” “Could you tell me more about that?” “What do you mean by that?” Mostly though the program simply repeats back the last thing you said, turning it into a question. I wanted to scream sometimes, and sometimes I did, but then the program would just ask me why that was, or what I meant by that, and so on.
As I understand it, the training serves two purposes: the program gets to record your voice and learn how you talk, while also gathering tons of information about you and about how your mind works. The questions get increasingly personal. I’d rather not mention what they are, but suffice it to say I remembered things I hadn’t thought about in thirty years, certain events from my childhood. This can be unpleasant, or at least it was in my case, but then it’s over and you don’t have to do it again. The cool part starts once the training is complete and you can activate the service. From this point on, the process is simple. Whenever a call comes in, the program automatically answers it and does all the talking for you, using a voice that sounds exactly like yours. The resemblance is uncanny. I tried it myself, calling my own number, and it was like listening to a recording of myself talking, except here the voice was actually talking to me and we were having this relatively normal-seeming conversation. Freaky. I kept saying, “Do I really sound like you?” and the voice would say things like, “Of course you do. How else am I supposed to sound?”
The service has lots of helpful features. For example, if you want, you can listen to the calls in real time on your regular phone. At any point you can hit the flash key, which allows you to jump in and take over for the program. The transition is seamless: no one can tell you just assumed the controls, as it were. Also, if you don’t feel like listening to the conversations while they’re happening, you can always play back recordings of them later on; or if you’d prefer, the company will email you a brief synopsis of each conversation—the key points—so you know what got said without having to go through the drudgery of listening to the actual conversation. This feature is rather expensive, so I didn’t get it, but I’ve been thinking about adding it. Still, even without it, the service is a big time-saver because most conversations, even those with friends, are rarely that interesting or personal, particularly in the beginning. Also I’ve been using a headset to listen to the calls, as this allows me to type emails, or do whatever I want, while the program does my talking for me.
The truly amazing thing is how the automated “Michael Barrish” sometimes says things I would say but haven’t actually said—nor even thought about, necessarily. It’s spooky, but more than spooky it’s helpful because it saves me from having to think of these things myself. Of course in a way it feels like cheating, like I’m paying for someone to come up with ideas for me, but at the same time the ideas really do seem like mine, like the sort things I would think of, and in a sense I have thought of them, because they’re based on my way of thinking.
I recently read on the company’s website that they’re working on a spin-off product that uses the same technology, but instead of handling your phone calls for you, it serves as a writing tool. It’s called PenPal, and I’ve already signed up as a beta tester. Actually to be honest, I used the program to write most of this piece. Well, all of it. Pretty remarkable, huh? It even threw in some of my characteristic typos.
10 November 2005 | Footsteps
Just now I heard a sound from the other room. It’s the middle of the day and K is at work, so it can’t be her. K’s cat? Possibly, but this sounded more like footsteps.
My office is off the bedroom, a good sixty feet from the living room, so it’s hard to hear what’s happening in the living room or kitchen. Often K comes home and I don’t realize she’s in the apartment until she approaches the office door.
While writing the previous paragraph, I heard the sound again and stopped typing to listen. Nothing. Silence. I wondered if I might be hearing someone in a neighboring apartment. Can sound travel through walls like that? I decided to type as softly as possible in case the sound returns.
But seriously, what do I do if someone, a burglar, is really out there? This is what I keep asking myself. Do I call out? Do I roll my chair back and forth so the burglar realizes I’m here? Do I stay quiet and hope for the best?
My other thought is a kind of fantasy, one line of possibility followed to its conclusion. In short, I put this piece on Oblivio and update it as the story unfolds. And then, naturally enough, I hear the sound again and it really is a burglar. As the footsteps move into the bedroom, I write something like, “I hear him out there. He’s walking around. I don’t know what to do. What if he has a weapon? Should I call the police? He’s going to hear me dialing the phone.” Then I write my address in the piece and note what time it is and ask my readers to call the police and tell them to read my website. And then after some more scary buildup, it ends with something like, “I think he hears me. I have to type quickly. Tell K I love her. I have to hit the publish key now.” And that’s how it ends, only no one calls the police or does anything because it’s just another one of my stories, and not even a very good one.
*
The real story resolved about halfway through the previous paragraph. The burglar was K. She was told to leave work early because her office walls are being covered in cork. It’s for sound-proofing, part of a company-wide effort to increase productivity. Less sound, more productivity. I’m not making this up. She was in the kitchen putting away groceries while I wrote about her footsteps.
09 November 2005 | Subtitles
Having come to the film archive to see a new Godard film, I find a note on the counter saying the distributor sent the wrong of version of the film, one without English subtitles. I turn to leave, but the woman behind the counter insists I stay and see the film anyway. She won’t charge me anything, she says. Also: People have loved the film, at least half of which is images. Reluctantly I agree to give it a try.
Entering the theater, which is empty but for a couple in the first row and an older man near the back, I take a seat in the middle. Soon the film begins. At first it’s fine; it’s just credits, which one can rarely understand in foreign films anyway. But then after only a few minutes of watching two people in a room talking to each other in French, I decide to leave.
As I pass the woman at the counter, she says she’s sorry I hated the film.
I didn’t hate it, I say. I just wanted to see it how Godard intended.
What I really meant is that I didn’t think there was much chance for me to understand what Godard was saying without Godard’s words (at least to the degree possible with subtitles). Of course if Godard made a film without words, or in a language of nonsense, I would happy to see that on its own terms. But that’s not the case with this film. Knowing Godard’s work, he doubtless had something to say and presumably said it, in part with words. Seeing the film without any hope of understanding those words seems akin to covering one’s ears, or more to point, running in and out of the cinema during the showing of the film. One imagines Godard’s displeasure. On the other hand, the French Surrealists would often do exactly this: see ten minutes of ten different films over the course of a single night. But those were the French Surrealists…
Such are my thoughts as I approach the archive door. Just as I reach it, I turn to wave goodbye to the woman at the counter, but she’s gone. I scan the room for a moment, and then there she is, standing outside the theater with her head turned sideways, watching the film through the crack in the theater doors.
08 November 2005 | Fame
Over the course of a single hour, as K and I strolled through Prospect Park, she pointed out three different famous people, none of whom I knew, not that I know many famous people. Evidently famous people are everywhere in Brooklyn, one need only open one’s eyes to see them.
Notably all three famous people were shorter than K had previously imagined. This made me wonder if fame makes one smaller. I mean this seriously. Could it be that one shrinks from all the attention? The mind, as we know, is immensely powerful and has a profound effect on the body. Thus it wouldn’t surprise me if the desire to walk one’s child’s in the park without being gawked at might result, after enough repetition at a high enough degree of intensity, in a measurable reduction in physical size.
Admittedly this isn’t a scientific sampling, but I recall seeing Curt Gowdy (a legendary sportscaster, for those who don’t know) in Rockefeller Center, and he was tiny. This would have been around 1977, at the height of Gowdy’s fame. He was walking down the street eating a pretzel he’d just purchased from a street vendor, and the pretzel looked bigger than his head, that’s how small he was—or had become.
Also I once had a conversation with David Byrne on the downtown A platform at 59th Street. This was in 1983, just after the Talking Heads released Little Creatures. Bryne was carrying an enormous black book. I gushed about how much I loved his music, and then added, out of nervousness, that I hadn’t imagined he took the subway. Bryne, doubtless noting my distress, smiled and said that in his experience the subway was the fastest way to get around. “Ah, yes, of course,” I replied, nodding a bit too vigorously.
It wasn’t until later, when I was on the train home, replaying what had happened, that I realized how small Bryne was. He couldn’t have been taller than a ten-year old child. And this explained why his book had seemed so huge: it was huge in proportion to his little bitty hands.
07 November 2005 | Fingers
I like watching my fingers as I type. They seem to move on their own. It happens faster than I can will it. For a time now they’ve been still. It’s as though they’re thinking. My fingers are thinking. They think and act, think and act. I sit in silence and watch. They seem to be waiting for something. Then comes a burst of activity. They have things to do, places to be, such busyness. This is followed by stillness. A long stillness this time. More considered. Drawn out. It’s a kind of brooding. I lift my fingers from the keys. For a single sentence, this sentence, they move without me.
06 November 2005 | Bridge
Whenever I walk across a bridge, particularly here in New York, I note the moment I’m halfway across. Often it’s the highest point of the walk. The grade can be subtle, so it’s easy to miss it. On some bridges the spot is marked to indicate the border between places. The Washington bridge, which connects Manhattan and the Bronx, is like this: a line in the center divides the territory of the two boroughs.
I started noticing this line, this moment (for it’s both a time and a place), a few years back, when I lived in Williamsburg and would walk home from the Lower East Side across the Williamsburg bridge. If I had time I would stop in the middle, here marked with a thick yellow line, and take in the view south, a view that includes two neighboring bridges, first the Manhattan, then the Brooklyn.
From a probabilistic perspective, I’m just over halfway across my life, middle-aged in the most literal sense. I believe I first realized this a few years ago, on the Williamsburg bridge. I knew it before but hadn’t really grasped what it meant. Perhaps I still haven’t.
For a time I wondered if the analogy was upside-down, if it would be better if the bridge, like a shallow bowl, sloped slightly downward to the middle, then up again, so as to better represent one’s approach to death, which from where I stand seems more like a slow climb than an easy descent.
But now I see it the other way. The approach to death is indeed a descent, one that occurs, in the ideal, when we are “over the hill.” And this hill, or rather its peak, sits in the middle of our lives, as far from the beginning as from the end, equidistant from cradle and grave.
05 November 2005 | Mirror
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in Brooklyn and I’m sitting on the bench outside Guerrilla Coffee, drinking tea. Across the street a mailbox is on fire.
For the last five minutes I’ve been looking at the clouds. I can never remember the names of clouds, but these are the high, wispy kind, the kind that resemble vapors. Yesterday B stood at my window and said that the clouds (the big fluffy kind) looked like the clouds on the Simpsons. I’ve been sitting on the bench, considering B’s remark. It seemed telling when she said it, but now I don’t think so. Like everything else, nature is a mirror for our minds, and B’s mind is immersed in popular culture. It would be silly to expect her to look at the clouds and see buffalos, or whatever people saw in the clouds ten thousand years ago.
Also, I was wrong to say the mailbox is on fire. What’s burning, rather, are its contents. I know this because smoke is spewing out of the mail slot. Just now a woman came out of the beauty parlor and poured a small jar of water through the slot. This didn’t appear to have any effect, most likely because the act of opening and closing the mail slot served to fan the flames inside. Now she’s run back into the beauty parlor, presumably to get more water.
Ah, and now a small crowd has gathered around the smoking mailbox. They’re talking animatedly and shaking their heads. One man just pointed down 5th Avenue. At the culprit? Did he see who did this? I’m tempted to go over and ask, but I’d rather not give up my seat on the bench, which is comfortable and sunny.
Several times a woman has come out of the coffee shop to remark on what’s happening. She’s terribly affected and keeps saying that this is a violation of our social contract, which is true enough but doesn’t become more true through repetition. It seems she needs an audience for her anguish. She stands in the middle of the sidewalk and looks at the sky, addressing no one in particular (is she talking to the clouds?) and saying what a sin this is, and how only a psychopath could, etc. Then she retreats into the coffee shop.
Myself, I don’t know what to think. Mostly I’ve been sitting here drinking my tea and imagining all the mail at the bottom of that mailbox, all those rent checks and love letters, burning.
04 November 2005 | Island
I’ve been sitting here for several hours, doing nothing. By “nothing” I mean that I ate a pear, went downstairs to check the mail (there was none), and ignored three emails and a phone call. Mostly I thought. The most interesting thought I had was about a desert island. I tried to imagine what I would do if stuck alone on a desert island with no media of any kind—no computer, phone, television, books, music, magazines… nothing; not even pencil and paper. I decided I would masturbate a lot, or a lot more than I do, but otherwise what? Wander around the island. Catch fish. Repair my hunt. I decided I would run each day and do some regular stretches and calisthenics, because these things help clear my head. I even thought about which exercises I would do.
I figured I would sleep a lot, but really, how much can you sleep? Ten hours a day? Twelve? Twelve hours a day still leaves another twelve hours to try to fill with wandering around, masturbating, catching fish, exercising, and repairing one’s hunt. It doesn’t add up.
I decided I wouldn’t kill myself, although I’d probably think about it a good deal.
Otherwise I believe the experience would probably be like certain days when I sit around doing nothing of consequence and feeling mildly lousy all day, until I finally go to sleep and wake up and it’s a new day, except in this case the new day would never come.
03 November 2005 | Vibrate
People say it’s different when the child is yours, but what if this is wrong? Certainly there must be cases in which it’s wrong. Lisa claimed I would love my cellphone when I finally got one, and then I finally got one, in no small part because of what Lisa said, and I hated it. I still hate it, two years later. What if I react this way to my child? Most times I leave my cellphone at home because I don’t want to put up with answering it. You cannot do this with a child. A child is yours forever and cannot be left at home, cannot be set to vibrate, cannot be upgraded to a better model with improved reception and a built-in camera.
People say everything changes in a way you can’t imagine, so I try to imagine this happening to me, but of course I can’t because you can’t imagine what’s unimaginable. You have to take it on faith. You have to trust that when you look into the eyes of your child, everything will change and you will change and nothing will ever be the same again. But what if it doesn’t happen this way? What if you look and all you see are your child’s eyes looking back at you and nothing changes except that here is your child and here are you and nothing is changing?
02 November 2005 | Notebook
For several months now I’ve been carrying around a little pocket-size spiral notebook in my jacket. It’s there in case I think of something to write down.
The notebook is produced by a company called Roaring Spring and is the plainest one I could find. The cover is black with a gray swooshy logo at the bottom. I don’t mind the logo so much—it’s simple and unobtrusive—but I’d still prefer it wasn’t there.
I keep the notebook in the right-front pocket of my jacket, along with my favorite kind of pen, a black uni-ball extra fine point, which I clip to the notebook’s front cover to prevent it from falling out of my pocket. So far this has worked well.
At my gym I carry the notebook everywhere I go, along with a towel and water bottle. Whenever I ride the recumbent exercise bike, I slip the notebook into a slot at the back of the bike. When I first started doing this, I was concerned about possibly forgetting the notebook and having to come back later to retrieve it. Twice I’ve done this with keys. Somehow though the notebook is different, and I’ve never forgotten it.
One time I thought of writing my name and phone number on the notebook’s inside front cover, just in case I lost it, but unfortunately the cover is made of plastic and can’t be written on, besides being black. If I wanted, I could write my name and phone number on a piece of paper and tape the paper to the inside cover, but this seems too much. I used to have sheets and sheets of mailing labels, which would be perfect for this job, but then a few months ago, during the process of moving, I threw them away, recognizing that I hadn’t used them in almost ten years and would likely never use them again.
The notebook came with 46 sheets. I didn’t count them at the time, but this is what it says on the back and I have no reason to imagine otherwise. I remember standing in the aisle where I found the notebook, thinking that 46 was a strange number. Why not 50? 50 sounds like a reasonable number, while 46 seems scant. This almost prevented me from buying the notebook, but then I told myself I was being ridiculous.
I’m glad I listened to myself that day, it really is a nice notebook, perfect for my purposes—small but not too small, and nearly as plain as possible—although so far I haven’t thought of anything to write down.
01 November 2005 | Memento
Last night K and I were discussing a story idea for Oblivio, a piece about a parallel apartment to our own, or rather a parallel world with a parallel apartment in it. In the story I’m the one who discovers the parallel world, stumbling on it through a hidden panel in our bathroom. The parallel apartment is identical to ours except for one detail: K. She’s there but she’s different. What she is, in a sense, is perfect—a version of K without any of the things that drive me crazy about her. Notably it was K who thought of this twist; I wouldn’t have dared.
In our original conception, time spent in one apartment is time absent from the other. So whenever I’m cavorting in the parallel apartment with the “perfect” K (let us call her K2), I’m absent from the real world apartment and from the life of K1. It’s a form of cheating, really, particularly since I’m obliged to conceal the truth of where I am when I’m in the bathroom—and not just from K1, but from K2. I’m betraying both women.
This didn’t seem so interesting, to write about cheating on K with a more “perfect” version of her, so I changed the story to include two Michaels, one in each apartment. In this conception, whenever I leave one apartment, the other Michael remains behind, and so neither K is ever betrayed, exactly. To say this another way, whenever I pass through the bathroom gateway, I switch bodies as it were, embodying the other Michael. My recent story Chickpeas uses a similar conceit. There I split myself into two Michaels, one of whom, the one I embody, observes the other from the outside, without having access to the other’s experience.
I hope this is clear now. There are two ongoing Michaels, and I switch between them.
I thought about this for a time, asking myself what I’d do in such a circumstance. Would I try out life with K2? Would I switch over to K2 permanently? Is K2, in other words, who I really want? My answer surprised me. I decided I wouldn’t try it and certainly wouldn’t switch over. Why? Because K2 seems so foreign. I tried to explain this to K (I mean the real life K), but all I could say is that the operation kills the patient. Now, though, I would change this to say that the operation obliterates the patient, replacing her with someone else entirely, a stranger.
I liked this, for it made me consider K’s “faults” in new light: K is not K without them.
Curious, I asked K what she’d do in the same circumstance. She didn’t hesitate. “I’d switch,” she said, smiling.
I roared with laughter. We both did.
Still laughing, I asked K if she might preserve any of my faults. At first she said no, but then she reconsidered. “Something small and harmless,” she said. “As a memento.”
