Mi Llamo Craig

Craig has been one of my best friends (whether or not he realized it) since we shared the misery of winter quarter 8 a.m. Friday discussion sections. We detoxed by flopping down on the couches at KDVS promptly at 9 a.m., listening to “Cool As Folk” and sleepily greeting Michael Leahy’s in-studio guests.

He’s a cassette collector like me, so when I last saw him he revealed a tape he found of himself practicing conversational Spanish with a classmate at age 15. In honor of Craig’s birthday today, here’s a little time/language warp:

Answering Machine Answers

What can you tell about a person from the people who call him?

Today I paid $5 for this old Panasonic micro-cassette answering machine at Berda Paradise Thrift Store in Silver Lake to find out.

Paul Gray is a man who tunes pianos, lives in Echo Park with a 666 home phone number, stands up two women on a date, and supports his local credit union over a major international bank. Not a bad aural portrait painted.

Upon further investigation online, I also found out that Paul is a Registered Piano Technician and is USC and LACC’s official piano tuner. Ha!

Sidenote: I had ended up at the thrift store on a mission to find some silly sounds. I considered recording the shopkeeper and a customer who were chatting away, especially after the latter mentioned doing a photo shoot in a hot tub. Turns out it was Anna Maria Horsford from Friday and Friday After Next.

A Mother’s Day Message

When I record people’s voices, it’s usually for the pure novelty and silliness of it. I’ve always enjoyed eavesdropping, and the pocket-sized ability to document little snippets of other people’s lives and replay them for my own amusement opened up a whole new world of audio voyeurism.

It’s more daunting to think about audio recording as a real preservation of voices. When my grandma was recovering from a stroke, my cousin and I decided we better take the opportunity to interview her while we still could. We set up a recorder and asked her about growing up in the Philippines, moving to America, and if she really thought Obama could win the 2008 election just because he’s handsome. She turned out to be fine.

When my mom was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer not long after, I knew I should do an audio interview with her, too. I knew I should ask her about growing up in Okinawa, crying when she first rode a boat across the Pacific Ocean and saw that the Golden Gate Bridge was not actually gold, and raising my brother and me — all stories I know but wish I could hear again and again.

For two years while my mom was fighting sickness, undergoing chemotherapy and altering her diet, I knew I needed to record her, but I couldn’t. It meant it would be my last chance to ask her questions I always wanted to ask. It meant admitting to myself that, soon, she wouldn’t be around to tell me stories.

The last time I talked to my mom, it was a Gmail video chat while I was in Okinawa and she was home in Sacramento. It was a short conversation — the sun had just come out after days of rain, so I showed off my new Japanese haircut and told her I better go to take a walk. I couldn’t have known that was it.

That was three years ago. I’ve searched Google in hopes that they secretly archive video chats (they don’t). I’ve gone through old cassette tapes in case of some long-lost home recordings (none, yet).

Each Mother’s Day, I try to find something to put on this blog in memory of my mom, but the only audio I’ve dug up is this from our home answering machine:

So here’s the real Mother’s Day message: Don’t wait. Don’t wait until your mom is sick or it’s your last chance. Document her voice now, frequently, whenever she wants to tell you tales about her life. Get a voice recorder, download a phone app, or unearth your Walkman, because these are stories worth preserving.

It’s nice to think you can rely on your memory of a person and everything they’ve ever told you, but, even if you can, it would be comforting to have some audio memories backed up.

Found Sounds + Shit Riffs

I was about to record over this cassette tape, most likely rummaged from a giveaway box at Records on Broadway years ago, to make a mix. Before hitting record, I checked if there was already something on it. Lo and behold, it’s someone’s shitty demo tape.

But the introduction is worthy of sharing:

The halfhearted noodling continues for 15 minutes, eventually fading into some noodley spacey slide guitar and them talking about their homework.

Okinawa on Wax

Today marks the beginning of the Uchinanchu Festival in Okinawa, Japan, when thousands of people from all over the world return to the tiny southern island. The four-day festival happens every five years as a celebration of Okinawan roots, either hereditary or cultural, welcoming home the “Okinawan diaspora.”

There’s a big parade where everyone marches in groups of the countries they moved to or from. My aunt Jane will be marching with Kubasaki High School, a school in Camp Foster, one of the American military bases on the island.

It’s pretty amazing, I think, that the native Okinawans wholeheartedly welcome these groups that were there as a direct result of the island getting destroyed in World War II. I felt welcomed when I was there, when I would try to say in broken Japanese that I’m not Okinawan blood, but Okinawan heart.

And that’s just how Okinawans live, showing acceptance and generosity toward everyone. There’s an Okinawan proverb, ichariba chode: Once we meet, we are brothers and sisters. I wish I could be there, with my real and my island family.

Instead, I’ll share something off this Okinawan folk 10-inch I found at the Hollywood Amoeba, Kuroshio no Uta “Minyoo Okinawa” from King Record Co. in Japan. The song is called “Kana Yoo,” but it’s in the Okinawan dialect so I can’t figure out what it means!