Collective Storytelling

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Still thinking about my mid-1990s Boston living situation (see my previous post), I decided to interview 3 people about their best or worst living situations. I edited down 20 minutes of audio to just over four minutes for the final piece (the interviews were about 4, 3 and 13 minutes). I added a little music for the intro and the cuts– “Our Way to Fall” by Yo La Tengo– as a way to keep some continuity through the piece… This assignment helped me understand how important it is to have lots and lots of source material! To really make this piece really engaging and cohesive, I think I’d need about a dozen interviews. Some themes were just beginning to emerge– in Eddie’s and Yamine’s stories the idea of imposition and obligation, of taking over someone’s space, of losing privacy were starting to surface. Jason’s piece is sort of the oddball of the set, though it’s funny and well-told. In terms of the music, the quiet instrumental intro works well, but the rest of the song has lyrics about love, and there’s not another instrumental break until the end. I had to recycle the sample, which is maybe a bit obvious. A song with more material to work with might have been a better choice. I decided to include each person saying their name in the beginning– I liked how the names sound, and I hope it gives the listener an idea of what/who to expect later in the piece.

Listen to the final piece here.

I interviewed my friend Liz about living at 109 Calumet Street, a big run-down apartment that we shared with 3 other people in the slightly sketchy Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston in the mid to late 1990s (both pictures above taken of us at home in our former apartment). Liz still lives in Boston so I interviewed her over the phone. I had to get an ITP Asterisk phone server account and configure it to record audio. I called Liz on a Sunday evening, and we talked for about 2o minutes– first we were just catching up and trading news and gossip, and then we talked a bit about this project and Calumet Street apartment– before I gave her the number to dial in for the server. I really wish I’d recorded that first conversation, because we talked about that time in our lives more generally, and our relationships to the people we were living with, and our sense of ourselves at that time. The call I recorded (about 9 minutes, before the sever cut out, possibly because of the file size) was less rambling and more pointed because Liz had had a little time to think about the stories she wanted to tell. But it’s a little less of a conversation. In what I recorded, Liz talked about the security situation at the apartment, the people that we lived with, her typical day while she was living there, how the apartment was furnished the landlords, the backyard, the parties we had, our housemate Tom’s strange behavior… I think we could have talked about each of these subjects for much much longer, but unfortunately the way I arranged the interview what I got was rapid-fire short stories.

The sound quality isn’t bad, and the Asterisk recording script splits the sound into separate files: “in” for the incoming call and “out” for the outgoing call. This makes it easier to cut out interruptions or unnecessary comments from one person or the other. In the future, I’ll remember to record everything: pre- and post- interview.

I’ve edited down two short clips of Liz and me talking. In the first one she talks about her typical evening/morning routine while we lived at Calumet, and in the other we exchange stories about weird behavior around the apartment.

Liz’s Schedule at 109
Strange Behavior on the 3rd Floor

Awkward Phase/Secret Past wants to be about *your* Awkward Phase or Secret Past. If you have a hidden history– ie, I used to be a biker chick/prom queen/class president/hippie/CIA agent/housewife/prizefighter etc etc… or an awkward phase in your life that you’ve been concealing… You can use this site to free yourself from your secret. Submit a photo and a short (up to 500 words) story or explanation of your photo. Anonymous submissions are welcome. Awkward Phase/Secret Past is here.

This project came out of my original final project idea, which was a collective story site about an apartment I lived in Boston, in the mid-1990s, with in with a group of friends. I wanted to set up a site where my former housemates could contribute stories and reconnect. What was compelling to me about this project idea was this “phase” in my life– a time that I see as special and particular, when my ideas about the world, my understanding of the future, and my sense of who I was were in flux and very different than they are now. It’s a time that I miss and think about often, but not one that I’d necessarily want to return to. When I was looking for materials for this “109 Calumet Street” project, I came across photos of myself other phases of my life. Marianne and I had a conversation about phases, and she showed me a photo of her “goth” phase… It occurred to me that I could make a project that would invite wider participation but still deal with the same general theme as the 109 Calumet Street idea– the idea of a distant but still meaningful or telling period in your life, something that you may keep hidden or secret. I wanted the site to feel very personal and friendly and even private, so I used notebook paper as the background, picked warm colors for the design, and made a handwritten bubble-letter-ish logo. It has a bit of a teenager feel, but I’ve gotten posts from people writing about themselves at age 8 through 25.

Right now the site is hosted on ITP servers, but I just bought the domain name yoursecretpast.com and hope to launch the site later this week, along with heartbreak haiku.

This was the second time I’d visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. At the end of our tour of the German seamstress’s rooms and the Italian family’s apartment, we saw the stripped-down, empty spaces that they’re in the process of renovating. When the rooms are restored to their era and painted and papered and filled with all the objects that might have been there at that time, that particular story becomes so powerful that you feel you have traveled back to that single moment in history. It’s just like walking into my own apartment (in Greenpoint, in a building that’s over 100 years old), my own bedroom now– it’s filled with my stuff and it’s as if I’m the only person that has ever lived there. Except for traces of the old paint job and the pegs nailed to the inside of the closet door, there’s no obvious trace of previous tenants, and I never consider them.

The torn-down rooms at the tenement museum, with the scrawling on the walls and the peeled back paper and the dozens of layers of sanded through paint were more intriguing to me than the finished rooms — they contain simultaneous references and clues to dozens of stories, all layered and mixed-up, they convey the force of a collection of stories over the single story, and allow the viewer to feel the passage of time. When I leave my current apartment (probably later in the summer) will I leave any traces? I did spill a bottle of glitter glue on the hardwood floor in one corner, and tiny shiny specks are ground into the floor in that spot. Other than that, and the coat of butter-colored paint on the walls, I will probably be forgotten as a walk-on character in the history of 115 Greenpoint Ave. The Tenement Museum made me wonder about this problem– the “all the stories at once” problem, the synthesizing and piecing together of a story collection so that no story is more powerful or absorbing than the others, and all the stories work to explain or trace a larger history outside of their own details and precise narrative. There’s another museum project that attempts to do this: the “Within These Walls” at the National Museum of American History in DC. The link ishere.

Just as the life of a building can be recorded, it would be fascinating (and probably challenging) to record the life of an object in this way. Not as much now, but in the past when resources were more scarce and fewer objects were mass-produced, a certain object might have a dozen lives– a button, a tin cup, a shirt– from brand new to junk and rags, objects were recycled and passed around, with multiple owners and many uses and meanings for each. Here’s a project that’s about an object that has a single powerful story, from the Holocaust Museums group of online exhibits.

I thoroughly enjoyed the visit to the tenement museum. It was really interesting to learn about a time period I’ve never really given much thought to, and to see from the inside what it may have been like. It really got me to start thinking about the unbelievable progression over the last fifty or sixty years- like sewage systems, electricity, plastic- all developed so recently and incorporated into our daily lives as modern day essentials. Also got me thinking a lot about the danger of such inventions- obviously people lacked foresight then just as we do now, and it’s caused a downward spiral for the health of the planet.
Apart from this depressing insight, it was fun to hear the family stories, sad though they may be, and to realize the strength of the people living through those tough times.
I thought some of the elements the museum recreated were a little strange… I don’t know, it felt a little bit like they tried too hard to capture the wear and tear of the ages, which didn’t resolve with the setting they were trying to create within the rooms. Do they want it to look like it did back then? or like it would today if it hadn’t been repainted and changed over the years?
In any case, it was a great experience, and one I probably wouldn’t have done on my own.

The Heartbreak Haiku site invites visitors to condense their tragic failed relationship stories into three line haiku:

“Your best pals are happy to listen to your rambling, romantic sob stories once, maybe twice. But don’t be tempted to go on and on… Channel your obsessive thoughts, weepiest self-pitying moments, and bouts of vengeful fury into the concise, elegant Japanese poem form HAIKU. Submit your haiku here, your comrades in frustration & devastation & misery & rage will read them… and you might even feel better.”

This idea came out of my 50 word story assignment from week 1. It occurred to me that this method of ultra-concise writing, which requires a kind of obsessive exactness in word choice, was ideal for writing about heartbreak. Heartbreak victims tend to dwell endlessly on details, mentally reenacting best and worst moments of a relationship, and boring their friends and (remaining) loved ones with re-tellings of the tragedy. Writing a short, razor sharp haiku could be a sort of therapy.

I chose a stripped-down wordpress theme and edited it with a pink and black color scheme. I found a neon-looking font for the “Heartbreak” text of the logo, because I was thinking of Heartbreak Haiku as a play on words of “Heartbreak Hotel” and I wanted a sort of strip-mall late-night neon sign feel for the logo.

I asked a few people to send in haiku and I wrote my own to seed the site, and then posted to the list and sent out an email to friends to visit the site and post. Users responded well– a few people who were in the midst of break-ups used the site several times. One user reported he approached writing the haiku in a tongue in cheek, slightly sarcastic manner, but that he actually became very emotional during the process. This user contributed several haiku, so I think if the site was more widely available, it would find a base of dedicated users.

I “curate” the site and categorize the submissions. I read each haiku and try to determine which feelings are being conveyed, which is a surprisingly emotional process for me– decoding bitterness, despair, venom, etc, etc. in each submission.

I parked heartbreakhaiku.com, and am planning to launch the site outside of ITP soon.

I visited the StoryCorps station at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan today. I got to take a look inside the booth. For such an intimate place inside, the outside wasn’t very inviting. Cube shaped structure wrapped in text-covered or frosted glass. Can’t really discern what’s inside even though it is glass-walled. Only real explanation can be found in brochure boxes or poster at the entrance door.

I guess I had my heart set on listening stations outside or inside as a cue. I guess I expected the booth itself to be more interactive with the general public. Something to tempt people to share a story themselves. Instead, a poster at the entrance advertises an 800 number to call to listen to archived stories and a brochure located in small Plexiglas boxes attached to the outside walls invites participation.

So I wonder who is offering stories. I didn’t ask the attendant if they get many walk ins. Online reservations are booked weeks in advance. Maybe people do take brochures from the little Plexiglas containers on the outside walls — including those who have business in the nearby courthouses — and call back for reservations. Maybe people who hear the stories retold on National Public Radio. Hum.

I wonder what demographic information is collected from StoryCorps participants. If I were visiting the Library of Congress 50 years from now to listen to the archives, I wonder if it will be as clear who didn’t share stories as who did.

I took a brochure and planned to give a call for stories once I got home. In the end, the brochure didn’t list the 800 number posted by the door to the StoryCorps station. I went online and listened there, instead. I learned a bit about the traveling booths and special initiatives, such as the Memory Loss and New York City partnerships.

This is a great project. Inspiring and heartfelt stories; easy to relate to or empathize with. Well produced. The StoryCorps publicity really emphasizes the story archive as a reflection of our nation. My only wish would be that the disenfranchised were more fully represented. Search the stories for homeless, four will appear. They are brief, tell little of the struggle and context behind the positive aspects reflected in the stories. I expect that eventually partnerships like the ones with many New York City community organizations could potentially generate stories that are not so edited to exclude these kinds of details. Reminders of where we as a nation still need to grow.

After taking in each and all the of last week’s comments, I had made an uniform format for the Earthquake stories from around the world. They can now be heard in each of the locations presented in the map. Please click here to see the map

However, the whole participatory issue continues to be tricky.

Even if the new blog is up and runningplease click here to access the blog and the participation is possible, it is not running as smoothly as I would have liked at this point.

work in progress- here is the link to my audio piece,www.ensemblepamplemousse.org/ppi/storytelling  combining four stories (although one is distorted beyond recognition.)  The stories I used are from my blog (http://itp.nyu.edu/~ndd207/wordpress/) (yes, it has the exact same layout as this blog, just noticed that last week, silly me) and are childhood memories, stories, or dreams.  I’m happy about some aspects, like how some of the stories came together, but I think it’s still a little disjointed, and I’m not that happy with the ’soundtrack’.  I used the reverb trick (a la Lucier) on another audio story to make it, but I’d like to maintain some aspect of voice in it in the future.  I experimented a little with that, but it was starting to turn into a whole other piece so in the interest of product I put it off for later.