It was, of course, a wrong number. But it renewed a desire of mine to play the unwitting host to a disembodied psychodrama inside my answering machine (as long as I have nothing to do with the drama).

I was hoping that Hope Perkins would call and leave a message for Ms. Thunderstone, or that someone else would call looking for Hope, and that the calls would get more and more urgent until someone threatened drastic action unless they heard back from Hope. All these messages left in response to my innocuous out-going message which simply says to "Leave a message, I'll call you back."

I just wish that wrong numbers could somehow amount to something.

For some time I was buying up Panasonic answering machines off an auction site. I intended to use them as part of my "Answering Machine Event."

I would set up an answering machine on the phone in my kitchen. Then I would go outside and call that phone from a public telephone. I would somehow disguise my voice, using a piece of cloth over the mouthpiece or something beef-detective like that. I would leave a message which said something like "THIS IS AN INVASION. THERE WILL BE MESSAGES FOR YOU BY NIGHTFALL. YOUR REFRIGERATOR IS IMPORTANT."

I would come home and take the tape out of the answering machine, put it into a portable tape player/recorder, set up another Panasonic answering machine, then go outside to another public telephone and call the number again. This time instead of speaking into the phone I would play back the tape of my previous message. Then I would come home, take the tape out of the answering machine, replace that answering machine with another one, and do this all again. Each answering machine and each public telephone would bring their own unique quality of sound to the recording, and the effect would be that of an aural Xerox machine where the quality of the sound tatters after repeated copies but, if handled well, becomes more interesting than when it was new.

After an unspecified number of recordings I would take the final tape and rip a page out of the Manhattan white pages. I would take the tape, my tape player, and the page from the phone book to a public telephone in some neighborhood I never visit, and I would call numbers from that page of the phone book until I had played my tape back into at least 10 answering machines throughout Manhattan.

And that would be it. Answering Machine Event.

I still intend to do it, but what holds me back is that I can not think of anything suitably innocuous yet portentous to say into this relay of answering machines.

The last time I felt suitably inspired was right after 2 shots of Maker's Mark at which time it felt like I would burst into flames (who the hell drinks that shit, anyway?). When I came to my senses I played back the tapes I'd made and almost threw the tape recorder out the window it sounded so stupid.

I thought of the Hope Perkins message at a bookstore today. There was a book in which someone recorded hours and hours of intercepted cell-phone conversations and transcribed what I guess were highlights.

I used to spend a lot of time at work calling random telephone numbers in Manhattan, leaving messages on answering machines hoping to spread confused hopefulness among hundreds of households with no connection except for the fact that I had called and entered their lives like this.

I have not done this for some time. I guess my life has a little more focus these days. These days. A little.