This is a story of sorts. I actually transcribed it to cassette and reenacted it for a video/performance piece in school. I’m new to this place, and thought I’d introduce myself with this.
October Writes
It’s October and I find myself talking into a microphone. It’s about 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’ve kind of done nothing today and I thought about writing and I thought about drawing and I just ended up sitting in front of the computer for a while, and I thought this would be different for a change and when I start off it always seems like I have stuff that I’d say that I’d put in here and then as soon as you hit the record button it seems like there’s nothing worthwhile and when you start talking, you’re talking to yourself into this microphone and it just seems a little weird. But I’m doing it anyways because, it’s good to be different sometimes, I guess
I’ve been thinking about school, and, I don’t know, it could be going better. My projects could be tighter, could be something… I could be doing something other than sitting home most nights thinking about how I should be doing homework or thinking about how I should be out doing something than laying on a bed talking into a microphone. I’m not sure what the answer is yet, what else to do. I don’t know what I’m trying to say here.
But it’s frustrating because I’ve got this tape going and every time I stop and pause I’m wasting tape. I waste an inch and seven eighths for every second, so I’ve got to make each second count I guess.
There’s a…not a whole lot else to do around here. I don’t know. I really feel like I should be doing or creating something worthwhile that other people could relate to, that would…mean something or convey something or…at least make me feel better about the way I spend my time. It was good when I was doing the Mr. Poppet zine. It wasn’t anything remarkable, but it was something I could send people and kept me occupied. It was just too expensive to print those things out and mail them out. The postage was really expensive. Postage really adds up after a while.
I’m kind of tired of school. I have been for a while. I don’t know what on Earth I’m going to do when I get out either. I feel like I should be learning all these great things and, you know, I’m not taking advantage of it and learning or I’m not learning what I thought I’d be learning or maybe I don’t have the resources I thought I’d have. But I think a lot of it is I’m either not wanting to learn, or I’m just not doing. I want the learning to be, I don’t know, done through osmosis or something. I just don’t feel like putting the work into it. I haven’t for a while now. I used to. I used to like just sitting down and looking at a book and figuring out how to do something, and I just don’t…I just don’t feel it now. I wonder if that means I’m studying or doing the wrong things or what it means. It must mean something. Stuff has to get done at some point.
I know I really…this seemed like a great idea to just start talking into this microphone and doing something with it. But now, I don’t know. It just seems…I don’t know.
I think I’m just disappointed with a lot of things. I don’t think I’m the only one though. If you asked a lot of people what they thought they’d be doing now, probably, whatever they’re doing isn’t what they hoped or wished they’d be doing. But then I think there are probably other people that think they’re really lucky to be where they’re at now and never thought they’d get to where they are and glad they are really there and stuff like that. I wonder if you just have to wait a while and wait for stuff to pan out or…or will some of us just always be waiting. It’s kind of a disturbing thought.
Then I also think about what would I change. Or what…I guess I don’t really know what I thought I’d be doing at this point. Maybe that’s the problem, that I didn’t have an idea for what I’d want to be doing. And I don’t know what I would want to be doing now that would be doing. But there has to be something better than laying on the bed talking into a microphone and sounding…crazy and…I don’t know. Seems like the biggest decision is whether I should keep my socks on or take them off. I kind of worry that my feet would get cold if I took them off. And I guess I could put them right back on, but I know I wouldn’t. That’s how lazy I’ve become. If my feet are cold and I’ve already taken my socks off, I’m not going to put them back on. That’s pretty lazy I have to say.
I don’t know why I’m making this tape. Am I going to listen to it later? Am I going to use it for something? I don’t know. Just seemed like a good idea at the time. All I can think about is how odd it is for me to be talking into a microphone when all I want to do is go to bed. My room is dirty and I wish it were cleaner. It was cleaner earlier today and I started cutting up paper and moving stuff around and not putting it back. And now…it’s not clean.
Sometimes I get this weird feeling that sometimes people think there is something weird or shocking about me. I wonder if people just sort of have their own suspicions about what’s up with John Morton. I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know of anything. Sometimes I wish there was something. Some weird thing that I could tell people and they’d say “Oh, that’s why ‘this or that or the other thing’†but I don’t think there is. I don’t have any repressed traumas and I don’t have any…I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. I have an unhealthy fascination with prime numbers maybe, but I don’t know if that means anything. That’s just more of a curiosity or something.
I feel like I’m wasting something. I should be able to do more with whatever talents I have or…should be working towards some ambition, some goal. Instead, I just think about what I could be doing. I don’t try…I don’t buckle down….I don’t do things any more. I just think about how I should or some wild and crazy thing, like I’d come up with some weird invention in my had, but never really write it down or ever discuss the possibility of it coming out. Or I’ll think of an idea for a book or for a short film or for an animation or for anything and instead of just thinking about, instead of putting steps in motion to work on it, to follow though with it, I just think about it. I should really write these things down on paper. Maybe writing them down would get them somewhere, but so many times I’ve written things down on, I read them over again and I can’t stand the look of them. Maybe that’s why I don’t write them down. I buy these journals and sketchbooks and things like that so I can compile these ideas and put them together, and more often than not, I write maybe six, seven, pages in one or a couple doodles here or there and I put it on the shelf with all these blank pages and I go out and buy a new sketchbook. And I don’t really need a new one, because there’s all these blank pages in all these sketchbooks, in a lot of them. There are some I’ve filled, and I know I do, but it seems I always buy a new one before I really need it, just so I have a brand new blank thing.
I’m always wanting to start over. Maybe I do too much starting over. Some things I haven’t started over much. I’ve followed through, I’ve stuck at this college, even though I switched majors, and, that’s not a bad thing, but I could have switched and gone somewhere else. And I’ve looked at other schools and I look at how much more their tuition is and I just think I’m fine where I’m at. Sometimes I think it would be good for a change, just…maybe it would help me, maybe it would get some things going. But sometimes I think I change too much, like when I buy a new sketchbook that I don’t need. And when I turn my thoughts to a tape recorder because…I don’t know why .
I feel like some days it’s just, things are hard. I think maybe I’m too tired now. I’m thinking about these things and it’s not helping I don’t think. I’m getting tired and I’m getting a headache, and I don’t need to be, but it’s just like I think about all these things that are going on, and maybe it’s more like I think about the things that aren’t going on….and I don’t know if things are different…if…I don’t even know what I’m saying now. I’m talking and the words don’t stop and I’m trying to say something and it won’t come out. There should be some sort of…you should be born with a sense of how to say things that seem important because I’m feeling this frustration with just the way life goes in general. And I don’t feel now that I can do much about it. It just feels like I’m laying here in my room and I’m looking at the walls and the ceiling and I think that tomorrow I’m going to repeat the same things I do everyday that make me…unhappy. And I don’t think unhappy is even the right word, because it’s not like I’m depressed all the time, although I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it contentment either, but certainly not happiness. I’m not sure what I’d call it. But when I do think about this state, it does make me unhappy. And I’m not happy now as I talk into this microphone. It’s just…if there was a point was a point when things turned this way, if it’s always been this way. I remember being really happy, or somewhat happy, and it’s not like I don’t have happy days now, but it seems like the moments of happiness are always too short and fleeting and too quick. And I can remember…
I just realized this hasn’t been recording for a while. The cord…the power cord on the cassette recorder came loose. And I lost whatever it was I was saying. And I don’t know how long that happened, but I’m looking at the tape and it shows that I haven’t recorded on it. Now I’m just angry because I was recording these things, I thought I had said some things….not important things, nothing any better than I’m doing now. But at least I got them out. At least they were there. And I don’t know what it was that didn’t get on there. And I don’t know that even if I could repeat it. And now…gosh…I almost want to stop and rewind and figure it out but I’ve just been rambling for so long that I don’t know if I could if I even wanted to. The biggest thing was I wondered if anyone else has a can of WD-40 on the top of the bookshelf in their room. And I also noticed that I have a can of lemon scented Pledge sitting on a Tupperware thing on a shelf in my closet.
And I need some new clothes. I need a few t-shirts maybe. I kind of wish I had a new coat; mines kind of big.
I really…I don’t know where I’m going with any of this. I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to…I want to change things. I don’t know if they will change themselves or not, but it doesn’t seem like things usually change themselves. They need things to change them. And I don’t think anyone else is going to change me. I think I have to do it. But I don’t know how. And I don’t know how to start. And I’m not even sure why it’s so important that I change. I’ll be okay if I do things this way. But I think things should be better than this I think. I don’t know what I want though. And I’m not sure how important it is to know. Do I have to do things because it’s what’s expected of me or because…sometimes I think I need to just go, to just get out of here for a little while…maybe just get on a plane and end up somewhere. But I don’t think that would accomplish anything. But sometimes I think maybe just some sort of irrational decision like that would do a lot for me. Maybe it would get me somewhere. Maybe it would do something for me. Maybe I think about things too much, maybe I’m too careful.
This isn’t the first time I’ve thought this. I think I’m just afraid to make the changes. I think I might even know what they are. It really shouldn’t be so hard, I think it just comes to other people naturally. And maybe naturally is the wrong way to put it, but I think they’ve just been doing it for several years now, and I think…I wonder if it’s too late sometimes…if I can’t be the person that I want to be. I don’t want that to be the case. I don’t know why these things are just sort of all spilling out.
END TAPE