After the beep: A Seattle couple’s curious anthropology
Philosophers and cultural anthropologists have been at it for years: Pressing their noses against the windows of our lives and peering in, looking for the ordinary moments - the daily struggles, the mundane to-do lists - that, taken all together, describe who we are and how we live.
One Seattle couple, Amber Kai Morgan and Garrett Kelly, are following that same pursuit but going at it in an unusual way: For the past two years, they’ve been collecting answering-machine cassettes and used audiotapes from thrift stores. Most of the tapes are 20 or 30 years old, their outsides scabby and cracked, but the recordings buried within are anthropological treasure: • A conversation between a caller and a video-store clerk, caught on tape sometime in the early-’90s, tells a story of loneliness, patience and the awkward little kindnesses exchanged between strangers.
• A church meeting from the mid-’80s, during which congregants are discussing the pastor’s daughter’s less-than-godly behavior, tells of self-righteousness and how hard it is to forgive.
• A mixed tape someone made for his crush a long time ago, probably in the early-’80s, tells of vulnerability and hope. That universal feeling of yearning.
“The whole process seems kind of voyeuristic, but that’s not the point,” says Kelly, 27, who works as a computer analyst in Bellevue. “Who the people are as individuals isn’t really important. It’s more about looking at how they’re acting when they’re not masking themselves. They’re showing us the bare-bones reality of living.”
Recently, Morgan and Kelly found an answering-machine tape that captured a week from one woman’s life, probably 20 years ago. There are five messages saved:
One from a boyfriend, asking to be called back. He sounds drunk. Another from a man - “Probably an ex-husband,” Morgan whispers - asking if she remembered to pick the kids up from school. And another from a school secretary, informing her that her son is failing his classes. He’s been ditching school again.
The fourth message - and this is when it gets good - is from the boyfriend again. The message is cut off when the woman picks up the phone. He asks why she didn’t call him back. There’s a little silence, and then she tells him that she never got his message.
She’s lying. We know.
The last message is from Hollywood Video. A rental tape is incurring late fees, the automated voice says, then clicks off. Silence.
Archetypal relationships
Morgan and Kelly sit side by side on a brown couch in their wood-paneled sound studio. It’s in the basement of their rented home in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood. Their necks are craned toward the speakers. They’ve been whispering between messages, conjecturing about who this woman is, who the other characters are and - more obliquely - about the roles we play in each other’s lives.
Her life makes you sad, they say. Your heart goes out to her. But it also reveals “a little bit of the human condition,” says Morgan, 28, who works part time as a nanny. “Who hasn’t been in that situation?” Who hasn’t told a white lie? Who hasn’t felt as if their lives are unraveling, one overdue movie at a time?
“None of those messages are extraordinary or spectacular in any way,” she says. “But when you listen to them all together, it becomes something we all can relate to. You can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I know that. I’ve been there.’ ”
In a different recording from an answering machine minicassette, a younger woman calls an elderly lady. The elderly lady’s answering machine turns on seconds before she picks up. “It won’t shut off … ” she says, her voice wavering. “I just walked in, I had been out, walkin’ around … ” She sounds distraught.
The younger woman - “We think she’s either a social worker or this lady’s daughter,” Morgan whispers - launches into conversation: “I was just taking care of that patient, from Discovery View, you know? And … ”
The elderly lady: “Hold a sec. Let me try a couple more times to shut my machine off … ” More beeping. “Won’t shut off, no, nope, won’t shut off. Anyways, go ahead, hon.”
The younger lady begins her story again - something about moving into an old people’s home and reading scripture - but the elderly lady isn’t paying attention. We hear beeping, scuffling. A long sustained moan from the answering machine.
The elderly lady again: “My machine’s not workin’ right … I’m pushin’ everything … ”
The younger woman sighs and tells her she’ll call her back later. She’s annoyed but resigned. Her voice drips with that same practiced patience, that exaggerated serenity, you hear when a parent reasons with a child. The older woman sounds overwhelmed, frustrated with herself.
They snap goodbyes at one another and hang up.
It’s a two-minute conversation, total, and nothing is ever really said. It’s a nonevent. But still, it feels strangely familiar.
“It’s an archetypal relationship,” says Morgan. “The familiarity, the mundane problems, the vague impatience with one another.”
And then, with a laugh: “That could be my mom and me one day.”
Valuable,
in a weird way
The counter space around Morgan and Kelly is crammed with piles of cassettes, 8-tracks, vinyl and a jar of minicassettes. They’ve collected, cataloged and digitized boxes of these tapes, and they still have boxes more to go.
All of it begs the same question: Why?
“Because someone has to keep track of all this stuff, or else it’s going to be lost forever,” says Kelly, always the “group historian” growing up. “They’re really valuable, in a weird sort of way.”
“We want to be the Smithsonian of found sound,” says Morgan. “We want to make sure it’s accessible to people in the future. Who knows, 200 years from now, how will a mother and daughter relate? How did they relate 100 years ago? It’s a really cool way to track who we are, how our relationships change or, probably, how they really don’t change at all.”
“There are a lot of people around the country doing what we’re doing, too,” says Kelly. “There has to be a center where people can keep and access all that stuff.”
In the future, the couple hopes to develop a collective online library of these “found sounds,” a la Wikipedia. People will be able to both contribute their own findings and browse through the existing files.
In the meantime, they’ve been broadcasting the sounds on their do-it-yourself online radio station, Hollow Earth Radio (www.hollowearthradio.com), since January, streaming 24 hours a day from that same wood-paneled basement. They play local music, experimental noise and the offbeat messages - dreams, stories, songs - that strangers are invited to leave on the station’s hotline (206-905-1250).
“Everyone
has a story”
Morgan and Kelly met in 2005 when a mutual friend invited both of them to join an acoustic basement band. At the time, Morgan was a social worker. Kelly was a cashier at Ken’s Market in Queen Anne, where he was developing a reputation for asking strange questions of the people who passed through his line.
“I’d ask, ‘What do you think about living on Earth?’ or ‘Have you had any paranormal experiences?’ I got all kids of answers. You’d be surprised. Everyone has a story,” he says.
The couple giggles and exchanges a look. A story left untold.
Kelly reaches for the mouse and clicks on a recording he has recently digitized. It’s something he found on a cassette in the Ballard Goodwill.
The tape hisses on: There are sounds of distant conversation and chairs scraping against linoleum.
Then, a middle-age man begins to speak: “… these people in the manufacturing plant are not doctors or lawyers who live in the Broadview district. Most of ‘em are, well, two people in the family have to work, just to make ends meet … ”
The tape cuts off. It’s been recorded over by a woman with a gossamer voice practicing for an ordination in the order of the Eastern Star: “Sisters and brothers, such is the nature of all associations … ”
The tape cuts off again, and the man from before resumes: “A lot of you people have money. These people don’t!”
A second man: “What does that have to do with it?”
The original man again: “If any of you people want to go out behind the bar, I’d be glad to oblige you.”
The second man: “Oh come on … I know a Seattle policeman who’ll go with me!”
Then: More indecipherable yelling. Chairs scraping.
A woman’s voice, raised over the cacophony: “I’d just like to say that we should at least respect … ”
The tape sputters off. Silence.
Morgan and Kelly giggle.
“If you listen to the whole thing, you can piece together clues of what’s going on,” says Morgan. “We think it’s from Ballard in the early ’80s.”
” ‘Such is the nature of all associations,’ ” says Kelly, imitating the woman from the tape. They both laugh.
“Exactly,” says Morgan. “Exactly.”
Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com