matthew

.."charm is a way of getting the answer 'yes' without asking a clear question." [camus]
it was at that precise moment that i had to get out, to leave, to be anywhere else except for where i was standing. i found myself in a complete stranger's empty house, taking care of their cats and trying hopelessly to tune their piano. i found myself wanting to cut off my hair, pull the rings from my ears, buy a barely operational car and drive, drive without stopping until I reach New Mexico. i would be sure to regret three of these four courses of action. i found myself wondering how i've become this person who spends every night alone with piles of European films and writes long-winded self-descriptions on the internet with no regard to the basic rules of capitalization or sentence structure. hell, i've never even thought about visiting New Mexico until just now.
the truth is, i spend ten hours a day with my headphones on. you see, i transcribe things for a living. i sit in a dark room with a complicated array of foot pedals, and i listen to audio files on the most random of topics, from artificial intelligence to advertising to suicide to the oil industry, all the while typing precisely what i hear. it's especially odd when the interviewer in these files makes a reference to the transcriptionist; it's like when a character in a movie faces the camera directly and speaks a line. it never ceases to make me feel uncomfortable. sometimes when i'm on the train, i keep my headphones on, even when my music isn't playing, so that the conversations of the people around me become as disembodied and alien as the ones on the cassette tapes piled on my desk. ten hours with headphones on every day changes your perception of things, and also makes you aware of just how much people use the phrase "you know."
aside from all that, i write a lot of music, and am only slightly as scattered as i seem.
[PROVOCATEUR] .
im: sayingitsofter