Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Analog Time

Episode Date: May 29, 2016

Your host explores the transition from UFO to Drone on stage as part of Radiotopia Live! and pinpoints the date he crossed his own personal digital divide (Feb 21st 1997). Also filmmaker Alix Lambert tells us about a group of people who are still on Analog time. A version of the prison tape piece ran on 99% invisible. Thanks always to Roman Mars and Katie Mingle. Special thanks to Elyse Blennerhassett who not only introduced us to both Efren and Adolfo but she is also continuing to work with them on a longer term audio diary project that follows their daily life / experiences, and inner worlds. From their fight for innocence to their interactions, dreams, textures, smells, and memories.          

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Analog Time. On Friday, February 21st, 1997, I saw David Lynch's Lost Highway at the Nickelodeon in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Exiting the movie theater, I left one world and entered another. Well, it wasn't until recently that I came to understand exactly what had transpired. That night, it was all I could do to keep myself from panicking. I remember wandering around Harvard Square, crashing into people and careening into walls. I was convinced that I was having a breakdown, a psychotic breakdown, one not unlike the breakdown Fred Madison, the main character in Lost Highway, has after he murders his wife.

I remember my walk home. It was the strangest experience because I had a destination, my basement hovel in Brookline. But as I marched through the swirling sleet and snow, I also knew that I was totally and completely lost. A couple of weeks ago, I re-watched Lost Highway. 18 years has transpired. And like I said, I think I understand now what happened. There's a very strange scene in Lost Highway. If you know the film, you probably already know the one I'm going to talk about. It takes place at a party.

In fact, this is the very music playing in the background. Fred Madison, our protagonist, has just showed up to this party with his wife. He leaves her and goes to the bar and orders to drink. He downs them both. Then he notices a mysterious looking man across the room. In fact, this guy is listed in the credits as Mystery Man. Then, the music fades out, and the Mystery Man approaches. I don't think so. Where was it you think we met? At your house, don't you remember?

No, no, I don't. Are you sure? Of course. As a matter of fact, I'm there right now. What do you mean, you're where right now? At your house. That's fucking crazy, man. This is where the mystery man pulls out a Motorola Microtac DPC-550 Elite cellular telephone and hands it to Fred. Call me.

Dial your number. Go ahead. I told you I was here. How'd you do that? Ask me. How'd you get inside my house? You invited me. It is not my custom to go where I'm not wanted.

Who are you? Hmm. Hmm. Give me back my phone. It's been a pleasure talking to you. And then the mystery man turns and walks away, and the music comes back up. Now, as creepy as this scene is, I assure you it was even creepier in 1997. Because in 1997, almost all of the people who watched this scene did not own a cell phone. In fact, they weren't even called cell phones then.

In 1997, they were cellular telephones. This is what the author David Foster Wallace called them in the September 1996 piece he wrote about his visit to the set of Lost Highway for Premiere magazine. I certainly didn't own one. In 1997, I didn't even own a landline. This was a very special time for me. I didn't have a telephone. I didn't have a computer. I spent most of my days at the library and my nights drawing and reading and listening to records. I came of age in the 80s and the 90s, so I am of a generation that straddles two modes

of being. And as much as I love the convenience of Google Maps and the ease in which I can put my voice into your headphones, lately I've found myself nostalgic for that time before. I didn't get a cell phone until January of 2002. But I realize now that it was that night, February 21, 1997, when I made the transition. It's that laugh that the mystery man makes. That demonic laugh that comes out of both his mouth and the cellular telephone. It communicates all of the horror of what is to come and what has been lost.

That laugh is my own personal digital divide. what is to come and what has been lost. That laugh is my own personal digital divide. Thank you. A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a live Radiotopia show in Los Angeles. It took place at the theater next to the Ace Hotel. Perhaps you were there. Well, unlike some of my smarter fellow Radiotopians, I performed a piece that only works in a live setting. In other words, even though I have a giant gaping hole in this episode, I can't use the piece I spent weeks on because it just doesn't work without a video screen. I started off my live performance with a bit about the visionary artist Janel Talpasan,

who, one night, after a terrible beating from his foster mother, climbed out of his bedroom window and wandered out into the Romanian countryside. There, he encountered an otherworldly craft. It filled the night sky and bathed him in a blue light and energy. He spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of that encounter through his art. Jan Othalfusen made hundreds of UFO-themed paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Like I said, I performed this piece in front of a giant video screen.

So at this point in the story, I showed the audience a number of these amazing images. If you're unfamiliar with his work, you should look him up. It's I-O-N-E-L-T-A-L-P-A-Z-A-N. I've been told that the correct pronunciation is Yonel, but I've also heard a lot of folks call him Ionel. Perhaps this is why, just before he died, he changed his name to Adrian da Vinci. Janl Talbazen was an outsider artist. He made a few inroads into the New York art scene, but he was more comfortable selling his paintings on the street.

I would often see him outside of the outsider art fairs. Janol Talpasen passed away in 2015. Sadly, I never got to ask him what he made of our now overcrowded skies. When I say that line, the one about the overcrowded skies, a drone comes onto the video screen. This is why the piece doesn't really work without visuals. I never say the word drone. The audience only sees them. About four and a half minutes of drone footage I culled from YouTube.

Drones that spy and surveil. Drones that ferry cruise missiles and burritos. I even showed the famous clip of the drone that fires live rounds from a pistol. You see, for Yanul Talbazan, the UFO was a promise. A promise of inner healing and universal peace. For Yanul Talbazan, the UFO was a spiritual technology. Sometimes even visionary artists are wrong about the future. For me, this transition from UFO to drone is another way to talk about the transition

from analog to digital. It's another way to talk about the transition from analog to digital. It's another way to talk about the transition from looking up to looking down, from looking out to looking in. It is, and I use this line in the piece, a transition from sci-fi to selfie. you know it really moves me to see so many people getting excited or nostalgic now for decommissioned media formats. But the move towards tape cassettes has kind of thrown me for a loss. Record labels and musicians are tripping over themselves now to jump on this bandwagon. But my friend Alex Lambert explained to me one morning over breakfast that the real story is the American prison system, because they never stopped listening to cassettes. I asked Alex to do a piece on this for my show,

and then my friend Roman Mars told me that we should do it for his show, 99% Invisible. He just ran a version of this story. This one is a little more wistful and a lot more sad. These machines are basically 1970s and 80s machines, so they're old enough to have personalities. That's Steve Stepp, owner of National Audio Company in Springfield, Missouri, America's preeminent manufacturer of cassette tapes. They're magnificent machines. They were built to run forever, and they have run and run and run,

and we have restored them all to their original condition. As Steve walks the floor, his machines are running off the new M&M tapes. But music wasn't always the mainstay of his business. This is why, when the music industry turned to the CD, National Audio was able to stay open. We didn't lose any business because we didn't have any business back in those days of recording music. For decades, Steve focused on the spoken word market. Instructional material, religious organizations, textbooks. He even made tapes for experimental sound artists. If you can record it, we have recorded it and put it on tape

for people. We did a tape once. It was the sound of grass growing. Steve believes the reason the music industry has returned to the cassette format is because of a desire for the analog sound. The world is analog. Your ears are analog. There's something about your ears that say, you know, this is an actual recording of an actual musical performance. I think that's really one of the reasons why analog music appeals now to the under 35 age group.

A love of analog sound may be what brought about the retro revolution and this mania for vinyl and tapes, but there is one community that never stopped listening to cassettes. The United States prison system is the largest prison population in the world, and cassette tapes provide most of these prisoners with their only means of listening to music. That's the only way I think I've made it so far, because I have a good imagination, and I just close my eyes, put my earbuds in, and I'll just be gone. At age 14, Adolfo Davis was involved in a gang-related shooting. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to life.

Now 38 years old, he is serving his sentence at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois. Listening to cassettes is one of his only means of escape. Every night I put my earbuds in and just go to sleep. I go through so many galleries, it's crazy. In 1990, the year Adolfo was incarcerated, everybody was listening to music on cassette tapes. In fact, Adolfo had some with him when he went to prison. Yeah, I got locked up with a woke man and I think like seven tapes. Yeah, when I was looking to sell drugs, I have a fanny pack and I have my woke man and

my fanny pack with my tapes. And I be listening to the woke man while I'm watching out for security for the police. A fanny pack. Yeah. We usually call it a couch, but it's a fanny pack. Let's be real. It has to be clear.

Not just any old cassette tape is allowed in prisons. It has to be clear. Not just any old cassette tape is allowed in prisons. It has to be sonically welded so it can't be taken apart and put back together. And the box it goes in has to also be perfectly clear. At National Audio, Steve Stepp makes a lot of these specially modified tapes. Obviously the tape will never be clear. It's going to be a little brown or black roll of tape in there, but that's pretty obvious what you're looking at. Prison inspectors need to be able to see through to the spools. The reason you can't have a five screw cassette or maybe a colored cassette that's

opaque is they don't want a razor blade or narcotics or something else to be enclosed in a cassette. And that's the reason for the limitations that are placed on the medium that is allowed in the prison. Some of these specially modified cassette tapes will be ordered by small labels, some by individuals. Most are likely to find their way into the United States prison system. But it's not so easy for an inmate to receive one. Someone has to send it to them. on a CD, then dub it on a cassette tape, and then send the cassette tape to us. Some industries sell tapes, but they will sell you, I swear to you,

they will sell you a tape for $70. At Statesville, prisoners used to be able to buy Walkmans at the commissary, but that's no longer possible, making the Walkman one of the most cared-for and coveted items. I play my Walkman like three days, then I let it rest like two days. Because if it breaks, it's like I start crying. Can you hold on for a minute? The police are asking me something. Attrition is not the only threat.

When it's like a major shakedown and they bring other officers from other institutions, they will just break your TV, break your radio, take your TV, take your radio, take your cassette tapes. And once the guards take those stuff, it's hard to get it back. And once you destroy my Walkman, I cannot get another Walkman. I asked Adolfo what was on his list of the most important things to hang on to in prison. My legal papers and some bottled water. Yeah, they can have everything they want. It's probably one of the most prized items for theft. People try to hold onto them as much as they can,

keep an eye on them and protect them as much as possible. Efren Paradis Jr. was a 15-year-old honor student when he was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole. He maintains his innocence as he serves his sentence at the Muskegon Correctional Facility in Michigan. In Michigan, inmates are allowed to own MP3 players. But it's not better. It's not even the same. In Michigan, there's a policy that they try to restrict as much music

that would be labeled as parental advisory. In other words, the state of Michigan will try a 15-year-old as an adult and sentence him to life without parole, but when he becomes an actual adult, will not allow him to purchase mp3 songs that have a parental advisory on them. This is why Efrain and so many others prefer cassettes? Well, I have a pretty large rap music collection. I also have some rock and roll. I have some R&B, soul music, some jazz,

but it's predominantly rap. Some of my favorites would probably be Kendrick Lamar. I like Young Cheesy, Rick Ross. I like Lil Wayne. Even if there were no restrictions on lyrics, replacing a cassette collection like Ephraim's would be impossible. MP3 songs have to be purchased through a company called Access Corrections, and they cost $1.50 per song.

A prison job, if you're lucky enough to have one, pays around $20 to $30 a month. We still have a lot of cassette tapes that are floating around for, you know, over two decades, close to three decades, I've listened to a lot of cassette tapes while I've been here. While theft and damage are real concerns that demand vigilance, prisoners do also share music. Sharing music with each other is a way to connect with and support each other. The tapes and Walkmans are a means to an end.

Both Adolfo and Efrain understand this well, the importance of the kind gesture in such an unrelentingly bleak place. Some people don't have money. Some people don't have family, but we are like, make sure that the brother, if he got need for tapes, listen to him. We got it.

We are like trade tapes, listen to each other tapes. We're just, we there for each other as best as we can be there for each other. In the days I rest my Walkman, I'll borrow Walkman from somebody else to listen to their Walkman. Man, I can't do it without my music. The wing that I lock on, the unit is set up into two different wings.

There's an upstairs and a downstairs on both wings. And the wing that I lock on is the upper wing, and underneath us is the solitary confinement wing. And, you know, we hear guys all the time yelling up to us saying, hey, turn the music on, turn some music on, you know, turn on Rick Ross on, or turn on Meek Mill, you know, something, so that they can hear down there something that's, you know, music. That comfort, you know, of listening to music is one of the things that they'll ask for. It's a request. It doesn't cost them a penny to ask for.

It doesn't cost the other person a penny to share with them. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Analog Time. This episode was produced by myself, Benjamin Walker, and I worked with filmmaker Alex Lambert on the cassette tape segment. A slightly different version of that piece ran on 99% invisible. Thanks to Roman Mars and Katie Mingle for all of their help. And special thanks to Elise Blennerhassett,

who not only introduced us to both Ifran and Adolfo, but she's also continuing to work with them on a longer term audio diary project that follows their daily life experiences and inner worlds from their fight for innocence to their interactions dreams textures smells and memories visit her site comfort of constellations.space for more information radiotopia from prx