I was just chatting with a FB pal about our lives, and what may be remembered of us. He linked me a video of an artist that shot an image of himself everyday for decades.
I unintentionally did this by being on the air for 36 years. I can listen to myself from my late 20’s through my mid-60’s.
I have seven boxes of stored media holding some of this.
Some few may survive like old photos in the family. I wonder what my great grand Niece would make of distant Uncle Grampa riffing on what to make of iPods in 2002.
Or my live,…on tape walking the Hudson with radio comrades to NJ. This when the river froze from side to side in 1982.
We turned around 20 feet in as the ice was getting rather,…thin.
Above,…Behold!
Broadcast mumblings, and observations.’….or some of it.
1978~2014 more or less.
It could have gone back to 1969 if I could find the college radio stuff. I was listening to my 27 year old self doing station breaks announcements the damned weather, and interviews with assorted fanatics. How earnest BBC smarty pants, and utterly full of it I was. By my 40’s to 60’s I had advanced to my easy going fuck you, and the world attitude,…it was way more fun.
(To save I sublet the roof of the archive for toy car parking.)
I do this with my drawing pads. Some of them go back to adolescence, with one or two loose sheets going back to childhood.
ReplyDeleteRembrandt did it too. There are self-portraits of him as a cocky young whippersnapper in a fancy plumed velvet hat, and - forty years on - as a tired old guy gazing somewhat sadly into time's reflection.
What are those tapes made of - steel or plastic? Does the tech change significantly at some point in the chronology?
Just as well you didn't carry on across the river. Metaphorically speaking, it might have turned out to be the Jordan.
Z
It looked possible for the first 20 feet as I say. Then it got dicey. Thin spots that just held our weight. Further in it was clear we'd have problems...then there was the insurance liability thing with the station.
ReplyDeleteStill it was a good idea at the time.
As for the tapes in the 70's it was seven, and twelve inch reels of Broadcast quality tape. Which years later I transferred to CD.
80's to late 90's cassettes.
Mixed quality. The major brands have held up to this day...some 40 years. The knock off stuff died in just ten years. However being engineers we found ways of retrieving the materials...to us it was fun to do.
About 1997 to 2014 when I was booted out. I put everything on CD.
They will long out live me. Not that anyone will ever listen. On the other hand a great great grand nephew or niece might stumble on a hoard of my junk.
Depending they might treasure or destroy my drawings.
The radio stuff...I doubt they'd make any sense of it. Media platforms going in the direction they are.
They might think these were the voice tracks of live streams, and go looking for the video portion.
Listening to myself still in my twenties was a sobering moving experience. Hearing the voices of pasted on dear close friends was as well moving.
Seems there's a reason I never listened to these much. My mother was on one show which I found. I hadn't heard her voice since 1988 when she passed from cancer. We spoke of family the world our dreams...yeah that's where I got all that from. It was a life.
They were called "Air Checks" as in checking the quality of the sound from the transmitter. They were not meant to be kept...but many of us did.
This is where the Museum of Broadcast here in town gets so much of it's radio material. Stations used to routinely recycle these tapes. However many hosts kept theirs. If alive still they'd donate their material or if not the family would.
My stuff isn't there,...I wasn't famous enough...fuck'em
However both New York City College Columbia University as well as Pace College have selections of my programs. This part of their Public Broadcast collections. So I guess generations of media students may trip over my 1978 stations breaks.
The same with my early books of drawings. Several small University's here, and in Europe have my stuff.
The American Gay Achieves did have them for years. However when attitudes changed they destroyed them. This years ago.
I think I posted years ago about asking the Boston achieve if they could return my material if they no longer wanted them. I got a letter saying they had been destroyed several years before.
Empires fall darkness returns.