3:06:43 pm
Saturday, December 6, 1997
I used to call random telephone numbers in Manhattan and listen to the messages people made on their answering machines.

I found it interesting to think that there might be an answering machine culture, or an aesthetic. Perhaps anthropologists will find it useful in 30,000 years to know that use of the term "beep" in outgoing answering machine messages was slowly usurped by the word "tone" among residents of Manhattan's 212-734 Yorkville exchange during the summer of 1992.

I compiled no statistics of this sort.

I listened with interest because for most people an outgoing answering machine message is the only public performance they ever give in life. It is the one statement they make which will be listened to, or even heard. And this sliver of instruction, while often as short as 3 seconds, opens a narrow crack into someone's life, and is sometimes rehearsed and re-recorded dozens of times before being sent live.

I found the stilted, nervous nature of these messages to be endearing, unnerving, amusing. After a few weeks of randomly dialing numbers in certain neighborhoods I settled on a few answering machines which I called regularly. The greetings on them rarely changed, but when they did it seemed special.

On those machines which I called regularly I never left any messages. I did not want to ruin it by letting those people know that I secretly entered their lives every day.

But I did leave messages on the ones I called once or maybe only twice. The messages were usually inane. One message I left on dozens of answering machines was "People who demand honesty of their companions are usually compulsive liars." Another was "I left my leather gloves at the Wine & Apples on 57th Street. If you're there, could you pick them up, please? Thanks." And one morning I told someone "You really hurt me last night, and I hope we can talk about it this afternoon."

If I called a number where someone answered I hung up, feeling a certain illicit thrill at having made contact with a person in Manhattan whose life was vastly different from mine, who was not sitting at a desk or sitting in an office listening to co-workers rehearse and re-rehearse their voicemail greetings, who was perhaps a Woman of Leisure, or a Woman of Means who had not worked for decades and spent her days consuming books about linguistics theory and developing an aesthetic for Automatic Journalism.

Or maybe they, like myself only weeks earlier, were unemployed and waiting for The Call.

At my first real job in New York ("real" defined as paying more than $5 an hour) I sat outside the offices of a bunch of big-shot marketing managers. One day I sat at my desk and listened to the lead marketer sit down to record and re-record her voicemail greeting at least 25 times.

"Hi. This is Molly. I'm either away from my desk or outside. Please... shit..."

Start over. I remember laughing at the idea of telling your business colleagues that you might be "outside" at the moment.

"Hi. This is Molly. Please leave a message detailed for me while I'm away from the office... FUCK..."

"Hi. I'm Molly. I'm outside or away from my desk..."

She slammed her forehead into her palm and breathed deep.

I don't remember how long this went on, or what her final message was, but it was certainly very well rehearsed. And I wondered if home answering machine messages are even more meticulously and thoroughly done over, especially among people who rarely deal with or expose themselves to the public, or who find the intrusion of the telephone and the mechanical indifference of the answering machine to be a cultural relic beyond reparation.

I wish I had tapes of some of those rehearsals, though I am sure they do not exist.

Somewhere in every person's closets or attics or dresser drawers are cassette tapes of things which were not intentionally recorded. Or which were secretly recorded. Telephone conversations, face-to-face conversations, things recorded for no earthly reason except for the thought that someday someone might be interested in reviewing a record of what conversation occurred between 2 neighbors on July 18, 1961, at 3:12 p.m. on the 4th floor of an apartment building on Fordham Road in the Beautiful Bronx.

Recorded sound has always interested me. And when I was a piano performance major at Oberlin the history of recorded sound and the earliest cylinder recordings of Johannes Brahms, though completely unlistenable, had a mystique unlike any other recordings I have since found.

In certain cases the sounds recorded on those old 78s and cylinders came tantalizingly close to the sounds you might have heard farther back into the mid 1800s; the traditions of piano playing and the traditions of music in those times were linear and clearly traceable to one great teacher or another, usually Franz Liszt.

Back when I knew people who were both knowledgeable and excited about these doctrinaire matters, a friend said he found it interesting that when I talked about the great performances I've seen or experienced they were all recorded performances, whereas his most memorable experiences were from live events.

And it is true for me that while some live performances have inspired me intellectually or driven me to pursue some previously unexplored strand of scholarship I can not think of a single live performance of classical music which I attended which thrilled me or moved me or did anything to me on something besides an intellectual level.

Those eye-opening, gut-cleansing experiences in which my accumulated indifference and cynicism toward all things cultural was wiped out by the glory of Horowitz or the triumph of Beethoven's genius have always involved recordings and never live events.

Music is a social phenomenon. Rarely is it the quality of music or performance which I remember but instead it is where I was when I heard it, or who I was with, or who was impressed by the fact that I was listening to it, or where the event fit in to the rest of my days or what it MEANT.

I remember Horowitz's CBS Scriabin CD for the way it filled my nights while living at the transient hotel at 166 West 75th Street, Room 317, in 1990 and 1991.

I remember my first exposure to Sacred Harp music while listening to NPR on the stereo in my mother's car in the summer of 1987; it was one of the most cleansing and sobering experiences I can remember, and probably the only time I ever had to stop the car for lack of ability to concentrate or even see through the water that filled my eyes.

But most of what I remember about classical concert halls and symphony concerts and opera houses is quite different. The terror of having to sneeze or cough during a quiet part of an endless Brahms Concerto. The constant critical analysis of every note played, of every note missed, of every note that should have been, and then the follow-up critical analysis of everyone else's critical analysis.

And there is always the nastiness and vulgarity that follows or occurs during performances of 20th century and avant-garde music.

"I'm sorry, but this is Molly, and I can't... DAMMIT!"

"Hi. This is Molly. Please take a minute to leave me a message while I'm out away from... SHIT!"

During the summer of 1994 I began receiving messages on my answering machine from numerous individuals who never identified themselves or explained why they were calling except to say "I'm calling in reference to Nicole Smith. Please give us a call back at..."

I received dozens of these messages during a 4-week period, none of them sounding particularly urgent and all of them left unanswered.

I have no idea who Nicole Smith is, or was, or why anyone would call me in reference to her. I suspect that someone by that name listed me as a reference on a resumé, or rather listed someone by my name, or at my phone number on a resumé, and that it was just an honest mistake.

It occurred to me at the time that I had no references to speak of, but that if they were demanded of me I would make up names and use the numbers of those answering machines I called during the months of accumulating oblivion in 1992. Then answering machines throughout New York would be filled with messages from people "calling in reference to Mark Thomas."

And hopefully those messages would go unanswered.