Speaker 1: It's July and we've never done this before, but since
Speaker 1: it's the last episode of the first season, we wanted
Speaker 1: to say thank you, thank you for listening. When you
Speaker 1: start something like this, you don't know if anyone will
Speaker 1: ever hear it. We're already working on a second season
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Speaker 1: episode from Nathaniel Kraus k r a U s E
Speaker 1: here more at Nathaniel Krause dot bandcamp dot com. A
Speaker 1: femeral is a protection of my heart Radio Roly. There
Speaker 1: may be one in your family. The ethnographer, the documentarian,
Speaker 1: the person whose self imposed mission it is to take
Speaker 1: the picture, start the recording, point the camera in your
Speaker 1: face and hit the little red button. Maybe it's you.
Speaker 1: These are some of the family documentarians I've been fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to meet. First, our producer Matt Frederick getting ready
Speaker 1: to move to sell the house. This is an old
Speaker 1: tan tape cassette that my mother found and cleaning on
Speaker 1: a closet. We found the cardboard box ahead some old
Speaker 1: dick to belt and it I know him as Papa.
Speaker 1: His name is James Phillips. He was recording this after
Speaker 1: he found some old tapes dick to belt. They had
Speaker 1: been creased and badly neglected that he wanted to find
Speaker 1: a way to transfer over onto cassette tape. And I've
Speaker 1: tried to rig up the machine to the cassette recorder
Speaker 1: to see if we could pick up some of it.
Speaker 1: As near as your mother and I can tell, his
Speaker 1: first bit was probably recorded in nineteen fifty one. I
Speaker 1: had brought the machine home. I remember to try to
Speaker 1: record joyce first words. Here are the facts. My mother
Speaker 1: was born Christmas nineteen. Every year Papa and Granny would
Speaker 1: call to the minute that my mother was born and
Speaker 1: wish her a happy birthday. I have a three year
Speaker 1: old son, and I know early on when he was
Speaker 1: beginning to vocalize, my wife and I had our phones
Speaker 1: out all the time, attempting to capture this magical moment.
Speaker 1: The first word, and that's exactly what my grandfather was
Speaker 1: attempting to do. Just with this older technology, so he
Speaker 1: can't just sit there and roll tape for hours and
Speaker 1: hours or days or days the way we can with
Speaker 1: our digital technology now. He had to very purposefully go
Speaker 1: to attempt to get those first words out of her,
Speaker 1: almost like this interrogation, and it doesn't go well, No,
Speaker 1: it does not go well, Oh, go ahead, daddy, you
Speaker 1: you know, kind of baby talk and tricks to get
Speaker 1: her too do something, and resulted only in making her
Speaker 1: take the following first recording protest that was about all
Speaker 1: the crying from Joy as a little tiny baby that
Speaker 1: we could talk, all right, So the frustration that he
Speaker 1: has and thinking about it, in the disbelief that anyone
Speaker 1: ever would be interested in listening to this. We are
Speaker 1: cutting over that part. Even now, forty years, forty one
Speaker 1: years later, I can't understand why I recorded so much
Speaker 1: of it. That is a baby sound. As a father,
Speaker 1: I know exactly how old of a child that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is between zero and six seven months,
Speaker 1: so it must be in nights in fifty one when
Speaker 1: you're moving. Think about how hectic that situation is, trying
Speaker 1: to get all of your worldly possessions. It's boxes, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you that while they were planning to move. My
Speaker 1: grandfather stumbled upon this, and then late one night, he
Speaker 1: got out of his cassette player, he got out some
Speaker 1: old hardware that he haddling around somewhere and just began listening.
Speaker 1: And as soon as he stumbled upon it, he felt
Speaker 1: like he needed to have it. We have advanced forward
Speaker 1: on the tape and we could hear efforts to play
Speaker 1: on a little music box Brahms lullaby, and Mama was
Speaker 1: able to get her to concentrate on that, and later
Speaker 1: she and her mother started quite a conversation. I think
Speaker 1: maybe that would be worth saving. So let's see how
Speaker 1: it sounds. The sounds you are hearing now are the
Speaker 1: ones set we're precious stand and are still precious now.
Speaker 1: I went over to my grandparents in search of a
Speaker 1: cassette tape. That's Michael, a specific cassette tape that was
Speaker 1: recorded of my great grandparents along with my grandparents eating
Speaker 1: dinner and my mother and my uncle singing songs when
Speaker 1: they were kids. It's an odd tape. It's odd they
Speaker 1: would record themselves eating dinner. My guess is that my
Speaker 1: mom and my uncle got ahold of the tape. Recorder
Speaker 1: and they were just running around with it. At some point,
Speaker 1: maybe they set it down to eat their dinner and
Speaker 1: caught everybody on tape. I had never met my great grandmother,
Speaker 1: who was recorded in the audio talking right. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure I did not digitize the whole tape. They're just
Speaker 1: a section of it, so who knows what else is
Speaker 1: on there. At some point my grandmother wanted it back,
Speaker 1: so I gave it back to her and I got
Speaker 1: lost in a big pile of stuff. I went over
Speaker 1: there looking for it and I asked them about it,
Speaker 1: and they have no idea where it is. And my
Speaker 1: grandfather said, oh, I can get you more tapes, and
Speaker 1: he's he's hard of hearing. I don't think he understood.
Speaker 1: I was looking for cassette tapes and specific and he
Speaker 1: came back with two v Jess tapes. When as eight
Speaker 1: millimeter home recordings Bob and Sherry in Avondale, you can
Speaker 1: hear the projector running, okay, we've got t ball here
Speaker 1: back in nineteen Bob playned t ball that we're going
Speaker 1: to go to some kind of party that must do
Speaker 1: a districute party, and some scenes of our home there
Speaker 1: in in and Dale n so he's recording from eight
Speaker 1: millimeter to VHS tape. These are about five different tapes
Speaker 1: and are twice together here different occasions. I think it's
Speaker 1: got bob seventh birthday and I wanted also that's the
Speaker 1: introduction and it's pretty much quiet, no narration, nothing. At
Speaker 1: some point he coughs, which I like. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he actually shows the whole film or or I mean,
Speaker 1: at some point this VHS tape got recorded over thank
Speaker 1: you from all Eastern employees in Atlanta. So my guess
Speaker 1: is my grandfather recorded over the tape to record a
Speaker 1: football game. The Bears have lost a leader on the field.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if he started his recording at the
Speaker 1: end of the eight millimeter tape, or if he just
Speaker 1: cut off the in portion of it or didn't realize
Speaker 1: what the tape was, or if he just didn't give
Speaker 1: a I just didn't care. Papa is notorious for taping
Speaker 1: over things. He would always go out on the back
Speaker 1: porch to rehearse his Kingdom Hall talks. And he used
Speaker 1: one particular cassette tape and go to heaven after death
Speaker 1: where everything is perfect. That Pickwick, that black pickwicked in
Speaker 1: many different ways. He would record himself rehearsing in and
Speaker 1: he would go and listen to it in the living room.
Speaker 1: If he thought something needed to be changed, he would
Speaker 1: go and record himself over the old recording where everything
Speaker 1: is perfect. And pretty much every time he gave a talk,
Speaker 1: he would use the same tape, just record over what
Speaker 1: was previously recorded and be onto the regions of Idris
Speaker 1: space with their stellar bodies. That's how he practiced for
Speaker 1: his Sunday school talks. How many times do you think
Speaker 1: you recorded over that? It's hard to say. He's given
Speaker 1: a lot of talks, like years of recording over the
Speaker 1: same tape. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was
Speaker 1: a kid he was using that tape. The other one
Speaker 1: was two thousand two trip to Colorado, so I had
Speaker 1: to have been thirteen. Can I go, pet Hey? I
Speaker 1: was usually the trip videographer. We used to have an
Speaker 1: old VHS cam quarter at first, but I took that
Speaker 1: into a hot tub when we were in Florida and
Speaker 1: it never worked after that. So did it? Was it submerged? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this one was documented on a VHSC tape that
Speaker 1: was actually later transferred to VHS. I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: did that, and I thought it'd be easier for them
Speaker 1: to watch on VHS to figure that out versus putting
Speaker 1: the tape in the little VHS converter tape device at
Speaker 1: the Alamo. Momem it's me doing a lot of recording
Speaker 1: in the car on our way to Colorado. Kristen was there,
Speaker 1: Jeremy was there, and take Jeremy always set in the
Speaker 1: front seat. Kristen was in the back with me and Granny. Okay.
Speaker 1: She would periodically point out the wind at different things
Speaker 1: that she wanted me to point the camera at. I
Speaker 1: was always kind of reluctant to do it. For some reason.
Speaker 1: I was more interested in recording the family in the car.
Speaker 1: I didn't really care about the surroundings in Arizona, the
Speaker 1: beautiful desert and everything. I just wanted to record the family,
Speaker 1: tourist accordination, they the tastes, not just riding in the
Speaker 1: car across all these states. I also you know, record
Speaker 1: some when we stop it the different resorts or motels
Speaker 1: or wherever we stayed at. To progress the film, you
Speaker 1: have the you have the car ride, you have the
Speaker 1: place we're staying at, you're walking into it. One For me,
Speaker 1: how do we meet. We met in film school, we
Speaker 1: met in experimental media with Nick Volmer. What was the
Speaker 1: project that you were working on? The final project to
Speaker 1: that semester? That class. Goodness, it's been almost a decade
Speaker 1: since I watched it. That's not it's been eight years
Speaker 1: since we've been had nine years since we've been out
Speaker 1: of college. Oh my god, Yeah, we're old now getting there.
Speaker 1: This is my wife, Victoria. So it's experimental media, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the films that we had watched up
Speaker 1: until that point had obvious visual signs of decay. Works
Speaker 1: like Ken Jacob's Perfect Film and Arianna Gerstein's lay At,
Speaker 1: in which the noise and degradation of the film stock
Speaker 1: is foregrounded in the aesthetic. That inspired me to look
Speaker 1: at my home movies that my grandfather shot and just
Speaker 1: see what I had to play with to work with.
Speaker 1: Actually noticed it's some of the video tapes already had
Speaker 1: some signs of decay. The images were jumping, the sound
Speaker 1: got worked, the color went from color and then black
Speaker 1: and white. With the actual visual skips and jumps of
Speaker 1: the film, I realized it was actually already a little
Speaker 1: bit experimental. It sounds like he's gonna get a heavy
Speaker 1: on the music. Grandpa was born September nineteenth, nineteen. I
Speaker 1: think he was born in Ohio. I know he's buried
Speaker 1: in Lebanon, but I can't remember where he was born.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you just knew his birthday off the top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Grandpa Bob was born in September nineteenth. Grandma Betty was
Speaker 1: born February eight and she was three years younger than him,
Speaker 1: So he was born in twenty five. She was born
Speaker 1: in I think he died June one, So he just
Speaker 1: it's just been some wow, eighteen years since he's passed.
Speaker 1: It's a long time. Do you guys would here? Let's
Speaker 1: see Ky Belasia, Jonathan up Bid, Jarna Bay. He went
Speaker 1: to Texas A and M, and he graduated in three years,
Speaker 1: comes back to Ohio and he's working in television. He's
Speaker 1: a broadcast engineer. Grandpa Bob worked at w c M
Speaker 1: a c MHTV Columbus, Ohio, an NBC affiliate that is
Speaker 1: still Channel four in Columbus from the days of Dumont
Speaker 1: to the days that were twenty four hour news. You're
Speaker 1: watching news. Watched four Columbus h television for as long
Speaker 1: as he was alive, and he was working. He was
Speaker 1: in television. He must have really loved it because he
Speaker 1: worked and was around cameras all day at work and
Speaker 1: then came home and then had a camera in his
Speaker 1: hand to record his children and then eventually his grandchildren,
Speaker 1: and he would just record anything. I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: special it was, but he recorded one us all the
Speaker 1: time outside, you know, playing hop scotch, or playing with
Speaker 1: her dolls, or picking raspberries from the bushes that mimial
Speaker 1: Betty grew. Nothing eventful happening, but he always had the
Speaker 1: camera on, always shooting the video. Ok folks, And he
Speaker 1: did that with his children too. We're now back in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven summer folk Stone Road and day nor
Speaker 1: have because there's tons and tons of video and snapshots
Speaker 1: of my mom and her brothers tookaren do. My dad
Speaker 1: was in the military. My mom was a nurse, and
Speaker 1: so we moved like seven times when we were growing up.
Speaker 1: More on washing the footage of Becky as a baby.
Speaker 1: My grandfather definitely shot because my parents didn't have or
Speaker 1: couldn't afford a video camera. Then like us over to Berkeley. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: where are you going? But when Grandpa did get us
Speaker 1: a video camera, my mother, you swing in, would film
Speaker 1: everything for him. If it was Easter, or if it's
Speaker 1: like a random Tuesday in April, hey put she Mima
Speaker 1: And people used to send us goodie boxes all the time,
Speaker 1: just randomly because they found something that we might like
Speaker 1: at Meyers. So it could be May when there's no
Speaker 1: massive celebration and we'd get a goodie box. My mother
Speaker 1: would record this and then send it back to Grandma
Speaker 1: and Grandpa. When we were cleaning out their house after
Speaker 1: Grandpa was gone and after Grandma was moved into it
Speaker 1: and living, we had the videos that my parents shipped
Speaker 1: back to them, and then we had Grandpa Baba's version
Speaker 1: of my mother's version. We grew up having a camera
Speaker 1: in our face. We thought it was really normal. Oh
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I got older, and I think when
Speaker 1: I met you that I realized that not every child
Speaker 1: had a treasure trove of her movies. I suppose I
Speaker 1: didn't know anyone had this much family history documented on tape.
Speaker 1: There's just one video of Andrea sleeping on the kitchen table.
Speaker 1: She's really little, she's like two or three, and so
Speaker 1: she's on the very edge of the chair and her
Speaker 1: little head is on top of the table and she
Speaker 1: wakes up, looks at them and just starts bawling, bawling
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. I guess that's that's a sleepy, tired,
Speaker 1: cranky baby. There's a video of me standing in front
Speaker 1: of a Christmas tree as little two year old with
Speaker 1: a raspy voice. Yea my only ation. Yeah you make
Speaker 1: magen yeah singing you are My Sunshine. That was my song,
Speaker 1: still my jam magain, Yes, thank me. Yes. Becky, my
Speaker 1: oldest sister is behind me and trying to sing it too,
Speaker 1: and I get so irate. I'm push sure, I think,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh, seeing it because as a way
Speaker 1: made it okay, Candy that way with me, You're gone.
Speaker 1: There's one music park. I wanted hot chocolate, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that anyone really cared. No, what are you
Speaker 1: seen there? They're still filming the sights and the rides
Speaker 1: around me, And then there's me, a little graded seven
Speaker 1: year old, jumping up into the lens of the camera,
Speaker 1: popping up. I want to chocolate. I want to talk it.
Speaker 1: I don't think you understand me. I want to chocolate
Speaker 1: her Victoria and he loved his cats. Bore you're okay?
Speaker 1: Or another one over there? Asha? Where are you? Hasha? Okay, Sasha,
Speaker 1: my Dasha, Gosha, look in here. We have so much
Speaker 1: of Grandpa's gear. We have a Yeshika, a fin Tas,
Speaker 1: a nineteen Coda autographic, a Brownie Hawkeye. We have a
Speaker 1: Super eight handheld stick camera. We had this gigantic Crosby
Speaker 1: box that I think came from the studio that he
Speaker 1: was working out, and eventually they retired it. I think
Speaker 1: we still have the tube. I don't think we have
Speaker 1: this big VHS camera. I don't know what happened to
Speaker 1: that video, okay. And we have a treasure trove of
Speaker 1: HS tapes and we only have like a fraction of them.
Speaker 1: There's more at my parents house, hundreds upon hundreds of tapes.
Speaker 1: My dad started digitizing them many many years ago, and
Speaker 1: I think he took a little break. Kind of made
Speaker 1: him sad to see his little babies all grown up
Speaker 1: in real life and his little babies there and film.
Speaker 1: So you've undertaken the mammoth task of digitizing them. I've
Speaker 1: sort of only done it in so far that I've
Speaker 1: said that I'm doing it you've done m hmm, We've
Speaker 1: probably done like ten twenty tapes' two slow task. My
Speaker 1: dad once told me I was the family documentarian. And
Speaker 1: while I have rolled a lot of tape, it's mostly
Speaker 1: people doing bits, playing characters. Best are of Hotel A
Speaker 1: very little could be considered nonfiction. And I can't help
Speaker 1: but feel guilty like I haven't been a good steward
Speaker 1: of William's history. Turns out, the feeling runs in the family. See.
Speaker 1: I feel like I didn't do a good job of that,
Speaker 1: and it makes me cringe a little bit even to
Speaker 1: talk about it, because it's not like I have a
Speaker 1: great historical record of sound of our family. My parents
Speaker 1: had eight millimeter, not super eight, eight millimeter movie camera
Speaker 1: and it had no sound. Everything is a silent movie.
Speaker 1: A lot of that footage that we have was recorded
Speaker 1: by Grahama Williams. She would spend hours shooting eight millimeter
Speaker 1: out the car window as they were driving around with
Speaker 1: their airstream. There's stretches of farm land and countryside that
Speaker 1: you have no idea where it really is, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudd there's relatives appearing in a yard
Speaker 1: running around. It's like, where are we and who are
Speaker 1: these people. One of the reasons that we never bought
Speaker 1: a camp orders is just expensive. Spending the money on
Speaker 1: it would have been hard. Instead, got the VCR and
Speaker 1: time shifted all your shows, which seems so salient now
Speaker 1: that we all watch our shows whenever we want. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I know we have a video of some play Max
Speaker 1: was in when he was in kindergarten. Here, yes, I
Speaker 1: think we have a video of a baby shower, one
Speaker 1: of your guys. Baby showers Bay is the only one
Speaker 1: that everybody was hope it in double over. It not
Speaker 1: that baby showers are so great. There's a video from
Speaker 1: the wedding. This is footage from our wedding shot on
Speaker 1: my brethre in law cell phone. The video of my
Speaker 1: parents wedding is silent. This is all stuff that I
Speaker 1: guess other people shot because we didn't have game for it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, the problem is thirty one years of
Speaker 1: magnetic degradation. I have no idea what it's gonna look like.
Speaker 1: But as VHS, I have a working VHS deck. Last
Speaker 1: time I checked, like four years ago. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any audio really, so I don't think there's much.
Speaker 1: It's sad, is it. I don't know what would we
Speaker 1: do with it anyway, right, I have no idea what
Speaker 1: can one do with old tape? To keep things straight?
Speaker 1: So you've got it filmed. That's Bob and Sherry. You've
Speaker 1: got a tape that's Bob, Sharon, Larry's your role. A
Speaker 1: five different tapes are s twice together. Here they're on
Speaker 1: a gape. And then you've got a tape that you
Speaker 1: made that's Bob, Jerry and Larry. But then you're in
Speaker 1: there even though it's not you're just through your voice,
Speaker 1: like there's an element of you. Oh yeah, re recording
Speaker 1: of the recordings. Yeah, we were exactly in a room
Speaker 1: full of analog tape machines. Michael live mixes, reels, transcription tapes.
Speaker 1: First First of the World sets, all kinds of things
Speaker 1: recorded live in stereo on reel to real tape. The
Speaker 1: first collection of this work, titled Home Movies, was composed
Speaker 1: from the tapes described at the top. Everything I had
Speaker 1: kind of planned out and like, okay, I don't want
Speaker 1: to press play on this first, Wait a little bit,
Speaker 1: press play on this one the next. See what happens.
Speaker 1: Let's play on this one. Pretty simple struck. Everyone has
Speaker 1: a good Boys, and the cassette was looking for in
Speaker 1: the first place was used on the album third Bouquet
Speaker 1: for Elizabeth Warriors. Why do you choose the family recorded
Speaker 1: tapes for creative projects? Because they were handed to me.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do with them? Now? Probably hold
Speaker 1: onto them, just sit on them, I mean, put them
Speaker 1: with the other tapes? What else can you do? Ready?
Speaker 1: Where were we? Spring semester of film concluded with the
Speaker 1: assignment of an autobiography. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I'm coming down to a deadline. Okay, I'll do video
Speaker 1: tapes and then I think during that process in making
Speaker 1: that film, for a couple of weeks, I remembered that
Speaker 1: I had that camera and codak autographic. When you look
Speaker 1: at it and it's closed, it's like the height of
Speaker 1: a VHS tape and probably two or three inches across.
Speaker 1: You push a button on the top and the lid
Speaker 1: opens just slightly. You pull that down and you can
Speaker 1: see the lens. You clamped two pieces in the side
Speaker 1: and you pull out the billows. The billows unfold and
Speaker 1: you're able to look down into the viewfinder and see
Speaker 1: a very fuzzy image. And then ever so slightly take
Speaker 1: the trigger. Grandpa Bob took really good care of his gear.
Speaker 1: This is one of his mics, an electro voice run
Speaker 1: through an old brown XLR that was his. As far
Speaker 1: as we know, this Kodak autographic has worked beautifully since,
Speaker 1: but it takes an outmoded film stock A one six,
Speaker 1: but you just can't find anymore. I wanted to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get this coldek autographic working, so I
Speaker 1: go over to the camera doctor. We missed your camera doctor.
Speaker 1: He taught me how to build up the spindles in
Speaker 1: size so that they could fit one twenty film, which
Speaker 1: is what we have available today, and what he developed
Speaker 1: in his shop, just cutting off rounded pieces of black
Speaker 1: cardboard and fixing them with epoxy, stack stack, stack, stack,
Speaker 1: until we had the height that would fit one film
Speaker 1: onto that spindle. So in the film, I'm mixing together
Speaker 1: the videos and there's a little footage of me continuing
Speaker 1: on with this process of building up the spindles. I
Speaker 1: think I started to restore it, not thinking it would
Speaker 1: be part of the film, just feeling sentimental watching Grandpa Bob,
Speaker 1: watching us all of her family, and then taking into
Speaker 1: that shop and learning that it's not just a piece
Speaker 1: of art. It could be restored and used. Victoria, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's go. I never met Grandpa Bob, but I have
Speaker 1: to imagine that given a beautiful camera that he couldn't use,
Speaker 1: he would have done the same thing. As you can tell.
Speaker 1: The recording session ended on a very very happy note.
Speaker 1: God Da, oh, you're gonna go baby again. Why don't
Speaker 1: you just playing yourself this time? You know, just be Joyanne.
Speaker 1: Say this is Joyanne. I'm talking to you from goggle Ball.
Speaker 1: Say anything on, take me get you dot the mat
Speaker 1: of the clock, the clock Brandon Rass and day Gray dot.
Speaker 1: Thank you all anyway, so you say conde yees are you?
Speaker 1: You don't have to push anything. Don't push. This is
Speaker 1: a historical recording. We're not sure about this next series
Speaker 1: of sounds from the tapes all they're out of synchronization
Speaker 1: certainly as far as chronology is concerned. It is being
Speaker 1: recorded by Joyce and Jim itself. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: get it all down and then we'll try to do
Speaker 1: something with it later. So here goes now all the
Speaker 1: um I don't to say. My mother is making us practice.
Speaker 1: Now I have a broad back and we are having
Speaker 1: some sorts, sweet roles and again, okay, take up hello thanky,
Speaker 1: duncy hard now shaw girl, I gotta think say okay,
Speaker 1: man and do And the next time you will hear
Speaker 1: will be joint and snapping her fingers. Joe will now
Speaker 1: whistle whistle while you work. Thank you whipple, Oh movie,
Speaker 1: Jimmy humming a song, Holly song Mester. How the chronologically
Speaker 1: they got so screwed up? I don't know. Restaum me up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's warming up. One. Can I take some of the
Speaker 1: eleven he took? Do talk Lena so interesting, kicks in
Speaker 1: tin Hi Canny say Tenny for skin. He stay five
Speaker 1: twenty six, twenty celty at kink Nike Tenny nine ten
Speaker 1: goady and we got Dick Jenny machine. And he says,
Speaker 1: maybe we're gonna cut in on this last part of
Speaker 1: this tape to explain that danks my father Mr Till somehow,
Speaker 1: some way, this is Joyce be class today in doing
Speaker 1: these dicta belts. A girl told me that she stole cars.
Speaker 1: They got all all messed up. I got it down today.
Speaker 1: I love my mother. How nice it is for us
Speaker 1: to be in here playing with this machine and my
Speaker 1: father's sitting on the catch reading the paper. Mama's out
Speaker 1: in the kitchen doing the dishes, and I'm up. You
Speaker 1: don't eat your spaghetti and meatballs all gone exposure to sista.
Speaker 1: And remember this is scare Jimmy Phillips, good night. You
Speaker 1: have to just take up that big skip um. Just
Speaker 1: being recorded on Saturday, March thirty, nineteen hundred and sixty three.
Speaker 1: I'm five years old and I'm in kindergarten. I cleaned
Speaker 1: the upstairs and Daddy enjoyed getting here. That's fair. I
Speaker 1: painted the sand box. Then Jimmy and Joy were all
Speaker 1: buddy duddy. So in a few years of anybody ever
Speaker 1: listening to us for setimental reasons there it is unco
Speaker 1: thanking to do it. We have jim at a much
Speaker 1: earlier age with Joy finishing off the tape not to stay.
Speaker 1: They must have been doing some of them in the office.
Speaker 1: And I'm in and out office in which we are recording,
Speaker 1: recording while they're playing with the dick and dictating chen.
Speaker 1: He says, maybe we're going to cut in on this
Speaker 1: last part of this tape over or Tony, have shiny
Speaker 1: notice moda gord to show my bitch it I made
Speaker 1: that the Johnny Jump. I said it best. The thing
Speaker 1: we are like to hear you think up your so
Speaker 1: users user pleaserable of born on AMASAF thing bank in
Speaker 1: the free and like so we new every tree I
Speaker 1: made him a bar twenty was only alright, Michael, Yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on, felm a little bit more. Do you think
Speaker 1: your grandfather was the documentarian before you? I'd say so.
Speaker 1: He used to make most of the trip videos at
Speaker 1: some point. I guess when he got this new cam
Speaker 1: quarter you let me start doing it. I kind of
Speaker 1: took over. I think I did a crappy job. I
Speaker 1: think are right when when you started recording? Did your
Speaker 1: grandfather stopped recording? You know? I don't know if he continued.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he still records things. I know he goes
Speaker 1: around taking pictures more than anything. As far as film,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they've made any recent films done
Speaker 1: anything like that in a long time. I've never known
Speaker 1: them to document anything on the set. That's why that
Speaker 1: one family cassette so interesting. Do you feel like you've
Speaker 1: followed in some way in your grandfather's footsteps? Certainly that
Speaker 1: motivation was placed on me a lot, and I think
Speaker 1: I took it to heart. Papa always would call me
Speaker 1: his one and only, so my one and only because
Speaker 1: I was his only grandson. I'm going to inherit his
Speaker 1: earth and his family and all these people he's influenced
Speaker 1: and affected where I was going to be the next
Speaker 1: I feel that now heavily great Grandpa Bob was definitely
Speaker 1: the family documentarian and his family, and then my mother
Speaker 1: was in our family. And when he was in the
Speaker 1: convalescence inert at the end of his life, that really
Speaker 1: had an impact on me. When he was there, he
Speaker 1: said something to either me or my mother, saying keep
Speaker 1: shooting the video, and I didn't realize that was like
Speaker 1: a mantra of his, but my mother says it all
Speaker 1: the time, and so it's a mantra of mine now too.
Speaker 1: The document I think this is my favorite spot in
Speaker 1: Quebec thus far. So where are we right now? The
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon? Where do you call it back? So they're going, yes,
Speaker 1: say Louis, I get this feeling, Oh, that thing just
Speaker 1: passed me by. I wish I had that, And then
Speaker 1: I get this other feeling like I've got my phone
Speaker 1: out and I'm recording my cat. Well, that's never a
Speaker 1: bad idea. But I've got my phone out and I'm
Speaker 1: recording something, and I wish I was just interacting with
Speaker 1: this moment and living in it. But I turned my
Speaker 1: phone off, and I'm worried that I'm missing it. How
Speaker 1: do you use when to hit record? As soon as
Speaker 1: I got my video degree, I felt this pressure from
Speaker 1: my family is like, well, you're gonna be the one.
Speaker 1: He was like taking movie quality images of everything we're
Speaker 1: going to be doing. I have not been doing that.
Speaker 1: I want to be there with those people in those moments.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, if we don't record it
Speaker 1: in any way, then it is gone. And those two
Speaker 1: ideas exists always together at the same time. When I
Speaker 1: went to Maui with your mom on our honeymoon, we
Speaker 1: ended up at a hotel which was very, very swanky,
Speaker 1: that had a nice breakfast and they had black swans
Speaker 1: swimming in a pod on the Lennai. We got really
Speaker 1: lost trying to get to the restaurant, and we ended
Speaker 1: up windering through the hotel pool, not literally through the water. Now,
Speaker 1: mind you, we're in Maui. There are beautiful beaches in
Speaker 1: every direction, but there were all of these rich people
Speaker 1: on lounge chairs, and it was packed, and there were
Speaker 1: no less than five guys standing around the pool with
Speaker 1: camcorders videoing all of the rich people in their chairs.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, Hey, there is nothing going on here,
Speaker 1: why are you filming this? And b I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a guy who spends all of his time
Speaker 1: videoing what's going on instead of being part of what's
Speaker 1: going on. And that is the way I've always lived
Speaker 1: my life. And I always feel guilty about it because
Speaker 1: I feel like there needs to be a record. I
Speaker 1: don't want to begin O Santi Vick and necks one.
Speaker 1: They're your loved ones. And when their children, everything they
Speaker 1: do is fantastic, Every new thing that they learn or
Speaker 1: that they show you is awesome. I mean, it's all inspiring.
Speaker 1: So why wouldn't you record it? Why wouldn't you record
Speaker 1: it so that you can watch it when they're a
Speaker 1: couple of years older, or you get older, when they're
Speaker 1: out of your house, so that their children can see
Speaker 1: what they were like when they were little. Because it's fleeting,
Speaker 1: especially when it's someone's childhood that goes back quickly. You
Speaker 1: say thank you again. Okay, I think we're gonna turn
Speaker 1: it off now now that it's still going. I don't, Joe,
Speaker 1: I can't. I think about it this way. If I
Speaker 1: know my wife is they're enjoying a moment with my son,
Speaker 1: that she's so present with him that the thought of
Speaker 1: getting her camera out or any kind of recording device
Speaker 1: and hitting record is nowhere near where her mind is.
Speaker 1: But I'm, you know, a bit of a third party
Speaker 1: to what's occurring. That's when I will record and things
Speaker 1: like that. It's registering that you're talking and showing you
Speaker 1: sound wave, but to what sound way you see when
Speaker 1: you talk? It makes it go up and down? Watch this,
Speaker 1: Watch this, watch the sound like you all? Is it
Speaker 1: a little back. My sister and her husband live in
Speaker 1: Phoenix with their six children. My parents are in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: You and I are here, so is Andy. And so
Speaker 1: when we're all together, I want to film as much
Speaker 1: as possible. I want to take snapshots as much as possible,
Speaker 1: because we're so far apart from each other, and those
Speaker 1: more much that we're together are so important and so
Speaker 1: happy and so joyous. Wow. I can enjoy it and
Speaker 1: be in the moment. I also want to preserve and
Speaker 1: no one and her family thinks twice about taking a
Speaker 1: photo when we're all together, but are you doing or video?
Speaker 1: And when we're all together eggs, one green egg and
Speaker 1: help everyone experiences family time together like that too, because
Speaker 1: well it may put some people on the spot to
Speaker 1: like be in a video recording. I think I'll be
Speaker 1: so grateful that someone took the time to preserve that
Speaker 1: in ten years time. There have been lots of family
Speaker 1: occasions where I wish I had taken a couple of photos,
Speaker 1: because that's not the same thing. Videoing something live is
Speaker 1: almost all considered. It requires almost all of your attention,
Speaker 1: and you can't talk because you're gonna be the loudest
Speaker 1: voice in the video if you talk, and you can't
Speaker 1: put the camera down because you're gonna miss something. I
Speaker 1: guess it is a delicate balance of when to record
Speaker 1: and when to quote unquote be in the moment, But
Speaker 1: I don't think that those things are mutually exclusive. You're
Speaker 1: in the moment and recognizing that it's a very special
Speaker 1: time and you want to preserve it. It seems to
Speaker 1: me my parents used to take a snapshot like every
Speaker 1: time we opened a present. This is the days of
Speaker 1: the instematic camera, so not good snapshots is what you
Speaker 1: should read into that. It was exciting for them that
Speaker 1: we were opening the presents as little children, but the
Speaker 1: photo wasn't necessarily worth anything after that. Maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they thought it was important to
Speaker 1: spend the money to buy the film and take the
Speaker 1: photo in the moment and then get it developed. And
Speaker 1: then they look at it and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Christmas December nineteen two footage. Oh Alex Williams.
Speaker 1: This Christmas party for Uma is pretty school. This is
Speaker 1: young man. It's preparing the documentation for this tape. He
Speaker 1: is ready to go to the party, a party which
Speaker 1: he may never remember, but in which he will enjoy himself. Nonetheless, Victoria, Matt,
Speaker 1: Michael and I all came of age as digital recording
Speaker 1: technology overtook the old ways of doing things. Nostalgia's side,
Speaker 1: is there something special about analog media, some intrinsic property
Speaker 1: that does not translate into binary I think it all
Speaker 1: has to do with having a physical interaction. Imagine that
Speaker 1: moment where you're going to the closet, like my grandfather,
Speaker 1: did you open the closet, you smell the clothes that
Speaker 1: have been there for a while. The boxes that are
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit dusty. You reach up and you
Speaker 1: pull out an old shoe box or some thing that
Speaker 1: has cassettes lined up in it, and you open that
Speaker 1: box and you pull out a cassette tape. You hit
Speaker 1: the eject button on your cassette player, You slide that
Speaker 1: cassette and you make sure it's perfectly in there. You're closing,
Speaker 1: you hit that play butt, and then this voice comes
Speaker 1: through of someone that you love. I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: magical thing. I don't know if it's just because of
Speaker 1: when we grew up and what we experienced and living
Speaker 1: through that, but it's not the same as moving your
Speaker 1: mouths over your track pad over and clicking on a
Speaker 1: file or just hitting spacebar that kind of connects you
Speaker 1: more with the past. I feel like that hard plastic
Speaker 1: VHS tape and you know, you could pop the top
Speaker 1: off and look at the magnetic tape and run your
Speaker 1: finger across it, and I hope that your VCR is
Speaker 1: not going to eat it up. Do you feel that
Speaker 1: way about Real too? Real? Yeah? I think it's great
Speaker 1: the sound of its spinning, especially when it real ends
Speaker 1: and it's just hitting the tape against the machine. It
Speaker 1: almost seems like it has this warm quality to it,
Speaker 1: but that could all be in my head completely. There's
Speaker 1: a reason we still print out family photos and put
Speaker 1: them on our walls, so that we can be reminded
Speaker 1: of this beautiful, tangible moment. We are attracted to a
Speaker 1: VHS tape or a DVD or a real to real
Speaker 1: this quote unquote archaic technology or this this out of
Speaker 1: date medium. But it's also so romantic that you're holding
Speaker 1: something that they held for our grandfather's, grandmother's This was
Speaker 1: the everyday, commonplace thing that they had when they were
Speaker 1: young or when they were, you know, raising their children.
Speaker 1: You could watch it tonight when you have prints. It's
Speaker 1: so tangible. And when you guys were young, all of
Speaker 1: our photography was on princes and we have all of
Speaker 1: that soul. Whether we should or not, you know, because
Speaker 1: some of them are terrible photos. But I worry about
Speaker 1: digital photography a lot. I have this bad feeling that
Speaker 1: people are losing parts of their family history all around
Speaker 1: the world because people are crappy at managing computers and
Speaker 1: they just die out of the blue on you. It's like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: all of my personal files were on that hard drive,
Speaker 1: and I think pushing it all online, like into the
Speaker 1: cloud or into Facebook or any photo service possibly more perilous,
Speaker 1: just because how much are you exposing your family to
Speaker 1: the world. We're all giving our data away without even
Speaker 1: realizing it. The things that we count on from our
Speaker 1: childhood's like my grandma's horrible eight millimeter films shot out
Speaker 1: the window of the Lincoln. Those are kind of special,
Speaker 1: the bad eight millimeter of me jumping off a stump.
Speaker 1: When I was two. My stepmother, her daughter died, and
Speaker 1: one of the things she regretted the most about it
Speaker 1: she never had a recording of her voice, no audio,
Speaker 1: and she was afraid she would forget what it sounded like.
Speaker 1: That's such a big part of the identity of a person,
Speaker 1: their voice and how they sound. And I told you
Speaker 1: about that when that when I heard that, and that
Speaker 1: had a big impact on me. I feel like, maybe
Speaker 1: that's why I've been so focused on these family recordings,
Speaker 1: some just trying to document voices. When you you asked
Speaker 1: me to come down and talk, I started thinking about
Speaker 1: do I have any sound of my dad because he's
Speaker 1: the one who's so absent from my family of origin,
Speaker 1: because he died so young. It's it makes really uncomfortable
Speaker 1: sometimes to think about the fact that I've outlived him
Speaker 1: by more than ten years now, And so I think
Speaker 1: back to my dad because he was so alive and
Speaker 1: so present whenever we were together as a family, which
Speaker 1: was a lot. And whether I actually have any of
Speaker 1: his voice recorded, because I bet you've never heard it, folks.
Speaker 1: Judy and I have a few things we wanted to
Speaker 1: say to you before the children come down, and they'll
Speaker 1: be a part of this tape later on or on
Speaker 1: the other side, depending up put how long it goes.
Speaker 1: We just found this aunt Jennifer and Uncle Day have
Speaker 1: spent their Saturday tracking down this cassette and the hardware
Speaker 1: to digitize it. Well, what was the first thing we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to him about, dear, Well, we were
Speaker 1: going to tell him about the heavy snowfall we've had
Speaker 1: within the last couple of days. I mean, you were
Speaker 1: already the family documentary because some for some reason, you're
Speaker 1: a thirteen year old kid and you like feel like
Speaker 1: compulsed and to turn the camera on and document things
Speaker 1: as mundane as like you know, sitting in the car
Speaker 1: and checking out the new hotel room. With the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Looks like that complusion is already there, but maybe they
Speaker 1: put a finer point on it. Yeah, yeah, no, it
Speaker 1: it affected me in a way. I kind of started
Speaker 1: thinking about who's going to die next, and how I'm
Speaker 1: going to possibly get their voys their voice any time
Speaker 1: for anything in any medium. That's tens of thousands easily.
Speaker 1: How many tapes do you think we've made together? Oh? Man? Uh,
Speaker 1: tapes of any time? Tapes where it's audio tape, videotape,
Speaker 1: digital tape. Over a hundred, maybe hundreds. It's all right,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll do it again later. We were kind of
Speaker 1: obsessively recording on tape cassette for a while. First, how
Speaker 1: many times do you think that we've been together and
Speaker 1: hit record? H O? Could I could go into the
Speaker 1: thousands maybe, And most of the times we kept the
Speaker 1: first thing, even though it would have been better if
Speaker 1: we've just done it one more time. Yeah. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: then you know there's something to that as well. I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, you get to hear all these
Speaker 1: mistakes and how it just how it sounded when it
Speaker 1: first was born, hearing the birth of something. How many
Speaker 1: times we recorded something? Oh, it's uncountable. There's how many
Speaker 1: photos of cats do you and I trade on a
Speaker 1: daily basis? I would say, on a on a low day,
Speaker 1: two or three on a good day, ten snapshots that
Speaker 1: you're going to see in a couple of hours. But
Speaker 1: you think that they really have two cats, But they're
Speaker 1: being so precious and so sweet and so like evil
Speaker 1: that day, and you just have to take a snapshot,
Speaker 1: even though you're gonna come home to it in a
Speaker 1: couple of hours. But it's that important right then. I
Speaker 1: think it's so amazing that that could touch someone so instantaneously.
Speaker 1: Someone's had any really crap day at work and you
Speaker 1: send them a cat photo day made like you feel
Speaker 1: much later? Where are you some vicious today? How? I
Speaker 1: think it's amazing that cost doesn't weigh into whether someone
Speaker 1: can be the documentary and their family now, not to
Speaker 1: do any extent that it was in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties and even in the nineties when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: A camera is expensive. Just get the shot, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it. Why do you think we recorded so
Speaker 1: many things just kind of being obsessive about it? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I I guess we both came
Speaker 1: from backgrounds where we had the tools to record and
Speaker 1: do all of this stuff. Mari. When we first got together,
Speaker 1: it was on a film project. We have watched that recently.
Speaker 1: I bet it was horrible. It's not great, it's rough.
Speaker 1: We're editing on a VHS tape. Thanks for that, Dad.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of stories about dobbing. I try
Speaker 1: to be very cognizant of what should be easily disposable
Speaker 1: in case I should pass on, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot about what happened to my mom when my dad died.
Speaker 1: But I have my weakness is I have a lot
Speaker 1: of VHS tapes, a lot of which are probably not
Speaker 1: very watchable anymore, and haven't figured out a good way
Speaker 1: to recycle him. You know, they won't take him in
Speaker 1: the big blue bin. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: collecting media or I have at least at various junctures,
Speaker 1: like with my DVR and video tapes. We are all
Speaker 1: interested in the future of all that is where you
Speaker 1: and I are going to spend the rest of all eyes.
Speaker 1: I like to think that other people have enjoyed the
Speaker 1: things that I've recorded, but it's mostly for me. I
Speaker 1: know that such a the will affect you in the future.
Speaker 1: But the stuff you don't get rid of by chance
Speaker 1: or by choice, the good they're not so good. What
Speaker 1: happens to all of it? Thick and I have been
Speaker 1: fixing up our old house, which inevitably means sorting ephemera.
Speaker 1: What goes to a thrift store, what goes to a friend,
Speaker 1: what you try to sell, what you need to recycle,
Speaker 1: what you have to throw out, and what you keep.
Speaker 1: We have a historical box that has you and Max's
Speaker 1: stuff in it, and I have a history box that
Speaker 1: has stuff from my childhood in it. There are some
Speaker 1: amazing things in there that, like I would not be
Speaker 1: able to not cry if I pulled out and explain
Speaker 1: to you what they were. People who have been important
Speaker 1: in my life, who have been dead for decades. More
Speaker 1: than likely they're just gonna get boxed up and left
Speaker 1: in the attic someone's attic, maybe my kids or my grandkids.
Speaker 1: I would hope something like that would happen versus them
Speaker 1: getting tossed out. Really, what's the difference? I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess if they're stored somewhere, then there's the possibility that
Speaker 1: someone could find it later, in versus if they get
Speaker 1: thrown out, give me something to think about this. They
Speaker 1: will just fall apart on their own too. Yeah, that'll
Speaker 1: take a while. I don't know what the shelf life
Speaker 1: for a cassette tape is, but some of those reels
Speaker 1: I have are recorded back in the fifties and they
Speaker 1: still have audio on them. I'm also we wasted a trips.
Speaker 1: Now we've gotta go. Now, goodbye, We've gotta see mommy
Speaker 1: by Daddy, Bye Jimmy, by everybody. Let's listening to this
Speaker 1: take someday with this, it's a very talk of woman,
Speaker 1: and I'm so sorry to wold from your first joint.
Speaker 1: And there lest farewell, cruel world. Goodbye, we gotta go
Speaker 1: a home and see you later. M Ephemeral Season one
Speaker 1: was written and assembled by Millions and produced by Annie Reese,
Speaker 1: Not Frederick and Tristan McNeil, with technical assistance from Sherry Larson,
Speaker 1: Matt Michael Victoria. Thank you for sharing your families with me.
Speaker 1: Albums to stream and handmade reels to buy at Michael
Speaker 1: Weaver dot bandcamp dot com, and a podcast to stay
Speaker 1: in touch with at Ephemeral dot Show.