Radiolab - David and the Wire

Episode Date: July 12, 2016

David Weinberg was stuck. He had been kicked out of college, was cleaning toilets by day, delivering pizzas by night and spending his weekends in jail. Then one night he heard a story on the radio and got it in his head that maybe he too could make a great radio story. He’d cast himself as the main character in a great documentary and he’d travel and live and steer his way out of his rut. So he bought a recorder and began to secretly record every last meaningful and mundane minute of his life and he found his great idea transformed into a troubling obsession. The very thing that gave him hope and purpose was also distancing him from those he loved the most. What if he’d created an archive of his life that had become his life? Produced by Andy Mills. David Weinberg is an award winning reporter and producer for KCRW. His most recent project is Below The Ten (www.belowtheten.com) The iTunes page for the series: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kcrws-below-ten-life-in-south/id1030625802 He has taken lots of those old recordings (and lots of new ones too) and put them together in a collection called Random Tape http://randomtape.com/ David explored some of this story on the late, great CBC show Wiretap: https://beta.prx.org/stories/82541 David isn't alone in being inspired by Scott Carrier. You can listen to his This American Life stories here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/search?keys=scott%20carrier And we highly recommend his podcast Home of the Brave: http://homebrave.com/ Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. I'm Robert Krollwich. I'm Molly Webster. This is Radio Lab. And today, we've got a guy asking a pretty common question. Yeah, but the way he tries to solve this question is at first a thrill to him, then a crutch, then a curse. and then it ends up in an extraordinarily deep puzzle. It comes to us from producer Andy Mills.

A story is about David Weinberg, a buddy of mine, and it starts off right around the time he gets out of high school. Yeah, I graduated from high school in 2000, and then went directly to university, and then I got kicked out somewhere in the beginning of the second semester, and then left that town that I was living in and moved to the town where all my friends were going to college. He moves into a group house.

It was a party house. Him and a bunch of his friends. There was a giant cross in the front yard. My friends had found while tripping on acid and put in a shopping cart and they put in the front yard. Our fact checker actually found out that they were tripping on mushrooms, not acid, but anyway. A lot of drinking, a lot of partying. And for David, like, for a while, it was good. I'm hanging out with, like, the people that I care about most in the world.

I feel incredibly free because I don't live at home anymore. And then it just started to get old. old. For one, every day when his friends would go off to class, David would have to go to work. Yeah. During the day, I was working as a janitor at the university where my friends went, and during the evenings, I would deliver pizzas. And it went on like this for years. You know, day after day, they would party, but then in the morning when his friends would go to class, he would go and clean toilets and then deliver pizzas. All through sophomore year, they would go to class, and then deliver pizzas. Junior year, class, toilets, pizzas. Junior year, class, toilets, pizzas.

And like I think looking back on it now, I think there was this rage that started to build up inside inside me because I mean, I was really sick of cleaning the toilets of kids in the dorms who I resent but are also, but I also recognize are able to do something that I wasn't able to do. And, you know, all my friends were at that university and they were about to graduate. And so I think I was also worried that like, well, they're all going to go off and live these lives and I'm going to be stuck here cleaning toilets. And on top of that, by the time most of David's friends were seniors, he was spending his weekends in jail for driving on a suspended license. So my life at that point was like cleaning toilets in the morning, delivering pizzas in the evening, and then every weekend I was in jail. And there was kind of this breaking point. Like one thing that we did a lot of, like, we listened to a lot of punk music. My friends were in punk bands.

and we would just like get really drunk and like yell into the speakers probably like three or four nights a week, you know. And one night we were doing that, it was me, my friend Danny, and my friend Mark, and something just snapped inside me. I just kind of lost it. Just started like grabbing chairs and hurling them through windows and just like smashed out all the windows in our house. You couldn't see the floor because there was just like wreckage everywhere

and I was all bloody. And it was just like, It was intense. It was... I don't think it hit me until the next morning when I saw what it looked like. Like a hurricane,

it'd, like, rip through the house. Yeah. And all of his friends... Everyone was just sort of stunned. They were sort of like, what's going on? And then, you know, when you confront a reality like that,

everything just sort of gets stripped away and you're just left with this question that's like, who am I, like, and what am I doing with my life? And around that time, David was driving around delivering pizzas, listening to the radio, and... From WBBZ, Chicago, it's This American Life? I'm Mara Glass. Heard this story.

The Scott Carrier story called The Test. I was hired to interview men and women in the state of Utah who received Medicaid support for treatment of mental illnesses. And it just, like, stop me in my tracks. All right, so the story's by a guy named Scott Carrier. He's a frequent contributor at This American Life, and it's basically about how he gets this new job. He gets this job driving around the state of Utah, interviewing schizophrenic people, giving them this test. I took the job because I had no other. I took the job because I just quit my steady job, my professional job.

And this is happening at a point where Scott's life is falling apart. What I wanted more than anything was to put my boss on the floor and stand on his throat and watch him gag. He talks about how he hates his boss. Then my wife moved out, took the kids and everything. His wife had just left him. So I took the job and did the job, and my life will never be the same. And David says, as soon as he heard that story. I remember thinking, like, I need to figure out how to become a radio producer.

That's what I need to do. Why? Why does he want to become a radio producer? Well, I think first off, Scott Carrier is really good at what he does. Yes. There's something about him that is magnetic, right? It gets people thinking, I want to do that. but maybe more importantly

in the story Scott is stuck not too dissimilar from where David finds himself and what Scott does is he turns his stuckness into a story and in doing so kind of

gives it meaning so yeah it's getting it's rising above your situation sort of yeah and when David hears it he thinks like well maybe I can do that too makes sense yeah it was like okay this is my ticket

So that summer, he lined up a job at this camp. This summer camp in upstate New York. And I bought this minidisc recorder. Got himself a mic. A little mic that you could clip onto your shirt. And... He and his buddy Mark, who had just graduated. They left Colorado and headed to upstate New York.

My idea was like, okay, I'll just go around and get all these recordings and then I'll write these stories about what it all means. Day one. Sort of like on the road, but with recordings. He recorded the kids at the camp. This bar fight one night when he was out with the other counselors. What's going on of it? Is there a keyboard or something? Yeah, we brought the keyboard.

You and Mark flirting with girls. What do you got these on for, buddy? Listen, this is the coolest thing in the world. Put these on. Isn't that cool? It's a live recording of what's happening right now. Right now? Yeah. I distinctly remember just being in complete awe of hearing recordings that I had made where nothing was happening.

The idea that I could make a recording and listen to it, it was like... Like early man sees a mirror, you know, and just can't stop staring at it. Yeah. He actually wasn't interviewing people or anything like that. He sort of decided that he wanted to record moments as they happened. like to him. And he figured the best way to do that was to record secretly.

I had cut a small hole in all of the pants and shorts that I had in the pocket. So like I'd get up in the morning, put the minidist recorder in my pocket, and then I'd run the cord down my shirt, and any time something interesting was happening, I would slip my finger in my pocket

and just press the record. At first, just some moments here and there. It's really scary. these possible little scenes for a story, maybe. Then, he and his buddy Mark go to New York City. And now everything sounds interesting. The system must be overthrown.

So he's recording more and more. Come on me, upper metal. Then every day. After New York, he and Mark hitchhiked across Europe together. My name's Mark. And I'm David. And at this point, David is recording people that pick him up. He and Mark and their other buddy Dom on the side of the road.

When the rhythm of the cars on the highway is even, it sounds almost like waves. Like on the ocean. You know, every street performer I would run up to. Stand next to and record. Just everything. And you're still thinking to yourself like, man, I am just getting gold. Yeah, I was like, you know, this is the raw material for my first great story, you know, and I think I tried, like, I separated myself from, it's like, it's kind of cliche, like,

oh yeah, you graduate from college and you backpack around Europe. And it's like, no, no, no, I'm not one of those people. Like, I'm actually making a grand documentary. Like, I'm a, I'm a somebody, you know, I'm not just like everybody else. Yeah. Meanwhile, David is accumulating hundreds and hundreds of hours of tape, and one thing that you'll hear if you manage to listen through all of it, or most of it, as I did, is just him hanging out with his buddy Mark.

He was one of those people who, like, we became instant friends the moment we met. Mark was year older than David. He was really into music, sound engineering. That's Mark saying. We had this, like, perfect dynamic where Mark, had like enough talent, like he could actually play music and like riff these funny songs on the spot. And I sort of like brought the raw enthusiasm to it. And the two of them together, we would just end up in these crazy places.

Oh, yeah. Do you remember this recording? Yeah, I remember that. We were in Croatia. And then we ended up at this huge, amazing party. It was like in this old abandoned cavernous building, which is hundreds of beautiful Croatian people. That was such a great day. But then?

Did you want French fries, veggies, or applesauce? David and Mark came back to the States. Mark went out to Seattle to record an album with his band, and David... I got a job waiting tables at an Applebee's. You guys want any dinner salads or soup before the meal? Back in his hometown, living in his parents' basement. And if you guys aren't taking two seconds to try to upsell, you're taking money out of your pocket. You're taking money out of your pocket.

You're taking money out of mine. This kid that I hung out with the most that I worked with was this meth addict. I would go over to his place after work and drink beer and play video games and he would get high and it was just like really depressing. It was a hard time. This is shitty. And David has all of this tape, like tons and tons and tons of tape from Times with Mark in New York, in Europe. But he has no idea what to do with it.

So he just keeps hitting record. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I just. I just needed that more. I think I needed the recording and the wire more than any time in my life. Like that was the period when I needed the wire the most

because it was like... Raspberry eliminate, sure. Sure. This sucks, but like, I'm gonna get through this. I'm gonna, and this will be a chapter in the story. I spent a lot of my time with my finger gently resting on the minidist player. I could feel the disc spinning

when it was recording. It was just very satisfying and comfortable. You know, like a pulse in a way. Yeah, yeah. Like still going. Yeah. Excuse me? You know we should get one of those bells right here?

It's so tight. He's made this printer make it speak, you know, like, ding. And then he just kept getting louder and louder until you make the change. Oh, not at all. You're good. Some bartenders. Does he have a story? I'm not so sure he's got one to tell.

Well, hang on. Okay. After the break, I think you'll hear an answer. Okay. This is Neva Bartram from Incenitis, California. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. Get more information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. I'm Robert Krollwich.

I'm Molly Webster. And we're back. And today we're in the middle of a story about David Weinberg, who is recording almost every day of his life. And last we left him, he was in Applebee's working as a waiter and living in his parents' basement. Right. But he did eventually save up enough money to travel again, went to Alaska, things like that. And he says that, well, when times were bad like at Applebee's, he needed these recordings to make his life feel like it had meaning. when times were good, he couldn't stop recording because he was weird that he was going to miss something.

Yeah. Occasionally, like, something would go wrong. Like, I lost three or four recorders. They broke down over the course of the years that I was recording. And whenever a recorder broke, there would be a period where I'd have to wait for the new recorder to come. And I just felt, like, on edge all the time.

You know, like, I need to be... I'm missing out, you know? And, like, in this weird, twisted way, like, I felt like I was missing out on life because I wasn't recording it. So when you would get the recorder, it would be like a relief? Oh, yeah, I was like, oh, thank God I can, you know, like this pressure would be released and I could go back to recording.

And I would just feel like myself again, you know. But then... Hey, hey, is Brian ahead of you or behind? David ended up down to Seattle where he met back up with Mark. Yeah. And Mark and I got in some big arguments in Seattle before I left. Something that you said was private, like, besides it?

What is it? What is it? What is it is that you feel I'm coming about? He just told me when I had the bar. He was like, I hate the fact that you record me all the time. And, you know, I was recording that conversation, too. I don't want to get to the heart of this. Why?

And he just laid it all out for me. You know, like, he was someone who spent his day, all day, in a recording studio, meticulously laying down perfect tracks. You know, that was his life. And so to him, this idea that you would just sort of, like, record everything, it was wrong for a lot. lot of reasons, one of which was just, he just didn't think that experiences warranted that. And then he had, like, philosophical objections to it.

I'm comfortable just due to the fact that when I live my life, I live in, like, a... That, like, what makes life great and worth living is that it is this fleeting thing, and it's temporary, you know? Posterity is only good in, like, certain doses. It's a beer, too. And when you are trying to constantly record it and capture it, you're just taking away from that aspect of life. It's like don't keep trying to capture like the essence of this thing. Just be in the essence of the thing. Right.

So here you've got David saying that, you know, he's recording all the time as to not miss anything. And Mark is saying that no, by recording all the time, you're missing everything. Yeah. You're missing the important things. And it got to the point where he said he didn't want to be recorded anymore. And it was like really getting the way of our friendship. Because it was like, it like puts a ceiling on where your relationship can go when someone feels like they can't open up to you in that way. It just puts this wedge between you in a way that's just like awful.

Did you stop recording at this point? Well, I couldn't stop. Like at that point I just like, I don't know whether it's OCD or whatever it was. like I was just like I couldn't stop recording and so I was always recording and the recording was like almost like a uniform for this person that I wanted to be it was like it's like you're in a play and you think you're living this life and then when the disc stops suddenly like the lights go up and you realize it's all fake just like face it dude like you're just drifting at this point David has around 2,000 hours of tape

because he keeps on recording, he's not really hanging out with Mark anymore, and he ends up just drifting down to New Orleans. This is not very long after Hurricane Katrina. And it's like, you know, like, you know, everyone had a story by the flood, and it was like, you know, so I would like listen to these people's, like,

harrowing journeys, and then, like, all these injustices that they'd faced. So he decided to do something that he never really done before and started interviewing people. Yeah, I've been in a sense of storm, but I've been living in New Orleans East. telling their stories.

How was it changed since... I've changed not much since Katrina. With their permission, not recording them secretly. This story opening up, you know. So where did you do your grocery shopping before? I was doing it down in Gentile. And then he started getting those stories onto New Orleans public radio stations. You're listening to WWOZ Street Talk, stories of New Orleans cultural rebuilding.

I'm telling you, man, I appreciate that discipline. Because I was growing up, man, I was growing up just terrible, man. And then at night, he'd go home and he would listen to audio from the wire. Tape of, like, me in some bar and... I think I'm afraid everyone in that bar. Did I hear you? Yeah, you didn't make very many friends there. Like, super drunk, and it's like...

I called them all asses, I said. What? Like, why did I think this matter? You know, like, why? You know? And then also this, like, dynamic started to change in my mind. where like it's one thing to record your own life and and yes to be fair I was also recording other people but it was always framed around me and everyone else was

just sort of like supporting characters but then when I started doing stories in New Orleans it was like this is not about me this is about other people and like suddenly it did start to feel dirty to record people it was like all of that sort came to head and I just felt worse and worse about recording and and then I just stopped I was like I don't want to I don't want to do this anymore. What about that feeling you were talking about just moments ago where without the recorder recording what's happening, you felt as if you were missing out that an experience was kind of wasted because you hadn't got a chance to record it? I mean, that didn't go away. That definitely didn't go

away. I mean, I feel like that still, to this day, I sometimes feel like, man, I wish I was recording this, you know? But it just forced me to really think hard about what moments in the life were worth capturing and what weren't. You know, so like, if you do try to capture a moment, then you're kind of out of that moment. But if you don't, then

it's gone. It's not recorded. It has the potential to be lost. Right. I think that, yeah, we all can relate to this idea. But for David, the crux of that... Tension. To do it or not to do it. Like, that became really difficult for him

in part because of what happened next. a few months after he had quit recording. He was talking to Mark, who was still back up in Seattle, is very happy to hear that David wasn't recording anymore. And so Mark decided to go down to New Orleans and visit David and their buddy Danny who was down there too.

And, man, this is hard because I haven't really told the real story about what happened with Mark. And I'm trying to think, I'll tell you the real story. And... Yeah, just shoot. So Danny and Mark

I were really close, the three of us. And one thing we would do a couple times a year, we would all go out to the mountains together and just have this great trip together as friends. And so we were going to do that in New Orleans. And so we got on our bikes and we rode down to the river. And sat along the river for a while. And then we took the ferry over to the West Bank,

the other side of the river. You know, like New Orleans is like glittering across the water. Got stoned. And it was just magical. Like, we were just sitting there for a long time, just talking, like having those sort of deep philosophical conversations. David, for the first time, in a long time,

was not recording, wasn't worried about capturing the moment. My mind was free to not think about the recording, you know. And then I was actually more present in some way, you know. And it just felt like it always did when we were close back in the mountains in Colorado. You know, it was just like a great moment. And I wanted to keep hanging out. there and Mark was like getting kind of antsy he wanted to go explore the city you know he wanted to go exploring and I was just like they didn't really feel like I was just sort of like

didn't want to be around other people I was happy to be there with them and then Mark just jumped up and took off like just sprinted away and we were like well that was weird you know it was very strange David says that Mark said something in that moment but he can't like remember exactly what And so we, like, got on our bikes, and we were only like, maybe, I don't know, maybe 100 yards, 200 yards from the ferry that was parked there. And by the time we got to the bridge that connects the land to the ferry, I saw that Mark's bike was laying on its side on the ramp. I was just like, well, that's weird. You know, in my mind, when I think back about it, I feel like things happen very slowly. Why is Mark's bike laying down?

Why are all those people shouting? They're looking into the river. Why are they looking at the river? And then they look into the river. And there's Mark. And he's swimming in the Mississippi. And he's shouting something. And I can't figure out what he's saying.

And I was just like, holy shit. Like, this is really bad. And then I got really, really scared. And I looked Danny. And Danny looked totally terrified. And he started to, you know, he was going down river. obviously it's the river. And so there was a point I could see off in the distance

that there was a boat, like a rescue boat or something, had gotten into the water. And Mark started to drift around the bend. And he disappeared out of view. David and Danny, they kind of walk up and down the river looking for Mark. They couldn't find him. Then it gets dark.

And Danny Mark, they just head home and wait for news there. The next morning, still no news. A few days later, the authorities, they gave up their official search for Mark and assumed that he was dead. And a week or so later, they found his body. He had drowned.

And I should just add that there is no reason to suspect that this was a suicide. Yeah. I'm sorry that Mark passed, man. That's a tough story to hear. Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Thinking about this through the lens of, like, you being of someone who has a compulsion and obsession that is now under control,

but still lives in you. Is there still, is there a part of you that wishes that you had been recording that day? Um, uh,

the thing is, David says, uh, you know, not long after Mark had died, he started going through a lot of his old recordings. And sometimes he would hear on them these great moments between the two of them.

But a lot of times he says that almost like he could hear that ceiling that those recordings had put on his friendship with Mark. Man, I want to fucking take a boat down the coast, man. So bad. I was acting different than I would have if I hadn't been recording. You know, like I was conscious

that I was on tape all the time. Demi was saying he was willing to... And I also hear myself in his recordings often like stepping over him. Like, he'll say something and then I'll jump in And just like, clearly I'm just like, I'm on my own, like, train of thought, and I'm not really listening to him. And that bothers me a lot.

I'm glad I don't have, I think I'm glad that I don't know. It's just a hard, because on one hand, I'm very glad that I don't have to live with that tape and that it doesn't exist. But at the same time, David says, I feel like maybe I miss something and maybe there's some part of what happened the night that I can't, that I missed. all I know is that he just said let's get out of here

and jumped up and like I don't even remember exactly how he put it I just remember all of a sudden he was gone if I had that recording maybe I could make sense of it and maybe something would be more clear about it I think about that a lot but then I also think of what would Mark have wanted

and you know what that probably trumps whatever clarity I don't know yeah but I still think about it a lot. I still think about what I would get from those recordings if I had them.

And yeah, and I don't. A big thank you to David Weinberg for opening up his audio archive and sharing it all with us and sharing the story. And thank you and you also produced the whole thing. And listen to all of those hours. Yay!

Oh, Dave! I should add here a little update on David. He's actually a producer at KCRW. He's got this series that you should all check out called Below the Ten. And if you want to know more about that, or maybe you listen to Below the Ten, what?

It's a series about people like very one-of-a-kind, interesting people who live in L.A. It's called Below the Ten. If you want to hear it, find links to it, or hear little snippets from the archive. You can find all that on our website.

That's the thing you can do. I don't know if that's we should say? Which is radio lab.org. That's it. That's it. Still it. Start of message. Radio Lab is produced by Jan Alba Mard. Philan Keith is our director of sound design.

Soren Wheeler is senior editor. Jamie York is our senior producer. Our staff include Simon Adler, Brenda Farrell, David Gebel, Mac Kilpley, Robert Crowlwich, Annie McCune, Andy Mills,

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