In 2014, my grandma (established 1919) and I started recording conversations about life, love, death, lunch. We called it "High Anxiety" because she was 95 and I was 25 and we both knew what it was to worry — and because we were recording in California, and the recording studio (her bedroom) had one mic and two pipes. (No one said you had to be sober to be on Spotify.)
But: anxieties about doing it "right" got in the way of doing it at all. So, ten years late: a few snippets from children's book author Felice Holman and her daughter's son. Should there be more?
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Tel: 6ten7335162
About a month before she turned 103, this is the last one I'll upload here. I wish I could've done so much of a better job.
I'll post the rest from this 10 year trajectory on soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/adamvalenlevinson) — it's wild hearing her change, knowing the lady inside is hardly different at all, the soul the heart the real brain. But things start to come out differently — and the person recognizes the differences between the self and this other thing, this deteriorating thing, this clumsy thing.
And for all the same reasons we started recording — I'm here at 35 feeling so much of those same beats. I'm aware enough to know this isn't working, still aware enough to know this ain't it. Of course there are differences, of course of course. But I can't shake that pain, of the dissonance between selves, of the gaps between so many things. Me and me and us and all of us. I miss her. As I write this, I miss you, but there's nothing to regret. I hope this can just exist here like a little water fountain at a park, tap on, running gently if you push the button hard, not bothering everyone else who brought enough to drink. Bleep bloop.
Love,
AVL
11 Jul 2024
call: i adore you, i'm in a very low place
The feeling over here is "wrap stuff up!" Will upload the collection of phone calls over deteriorating time on soundcloud. This is one of them from when Grandma was about 101.
https://soundcloud.com/adamvalenlevinson
5 Jul 2024
episode something: BTS and a story about an orange
ok, this is going to take far more than I've got left to make this not worse than nothing. huge apologies.
i'll upload all the files to soundcloud because you can just upload a bunch of things at once and then... yknow... they'll be there, hopefully in chronological order just if you want to spend any more time with grams — sorry for not editing more of my bs out better. comic timing
https://soundcloud.com/adamvalenlevinson
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Spotify
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