Item MS-3-46, 2012-161 - Leviathan

Item consists of an audio recording by Airedale Monthly entitled "Leviathan". The liner note of the tape states: "A friend of mine, for so long, resisted getting an answering machine for use in her home. It was about retaining privacy and limtations on the reaches of the external world. when I called her one day I was startled by the ease with which I passed through the walls of her home. I rang and entered. She was not there. I felt myself looking about the spaces of her quiet rooms, moved about the stillness of the air. I left a trace for her. I left a print, a message, a calling, and hung up. I handed out my card and told them to give me a call sometime. I went home and started working. I thought about my own telephone answering machine and the code of behavior that prohibits the leaving of intense, personal message for each other. I thought about the mediation of devices that replace or assist oral language when words alone cannot communicate. I thought about the spaces between people and the interior and exterior performances of our lives. About closing these space when they exist within ones self. I held the memories of childhood sexual abuse far away from myself as an adult and let these devices of communication bring me together again. I sat in the stillness of my room and listened -- as the phone began to ring. Listening, as these phantom callers listened on a line that had taken years to get through."