Third Week of August- PRIVATE

8/17 AM Sunday Faithful
Every bone and muscle creaked to life this morning as I went out to visit the sunrise. It’s still lovely and warm even at this early hour. Noisy, too (audio). Subways crossing in both directions, faithful to their schedule even though they are almost completely empty this Sunday morning.

8/18 AM Hanging Out (the Window)
Even though there was not much human activity yesterday morning, the subways are usually so noisy that human presence isn’t much of a factor when it comes to density of the sound environment. This morning, I thought I would see what was happening out front for a change. While there’s still not much in the way of human life, there is also not much in the way of noise, either. What caught most of my attention was the building across the street. I remember ringing and filming out this window sometime this past winter. It was cold and the building was dreary looked abandoned and burned out. Big change. Not only has the old building been fixed up, but an additional 2 floors and an elevator shaft have been added. Pretty fast work. I wonder how long it will be before people start coming and going and moving about inside.

8/19 AM Can You See the Sunrise From Any Of Your Windows?
Because the windows in my apartment face north and south, it’s not possible to see the sunrise from either place. Even when I go outside, I can only point in the general direction of the sunrise. As long as you can’t see the actual place where the sun rises, it doesn’t matter very much whether I ring in the back or the front. So instead of choosing one arbitrary place over the other, I sampled both.

8/20 AM Surrogate Ears
Instead of leaning out the window and looking up and down the street while ringing my little bells, I thought I’d literally follow my gaze for a change. Walking around, crossing the street, wandering back and forth in front of the window, I rang the bells (audio) for my ears waiting on the windowsill.

8/21 AM Surrogate Self
Alone in the morning, one morning after another, I am witness to the sunrise, bell ringer and documentation committee. Also, I am not awake. In fact, I try not to fully wake up so that I can go back to sleep for another hour or two before really starting the day. In light of the number of things I am trying to accomplish while trying to remain asleep, and the fact that I have already passed the 200 day mark, it’s no wonder I have run out of ideas of “things to do” in the mornings. Yesterday, I put the microphone on the windowsill and carefully walked down a flight of stairs out onto the street to ring the bells with the rising sun. By the end of the day, however, I had forgotten exactly what I had done in the morning. When I went to download the media from the morning’s activity into my computer, I rewound the camera and was dismayed to see that I had recorded over yesterday morning. Then I looked at the still images in the camera and saw a photo of the microphone on the windowsill and remembered that I had only made an audio recording. The reason for the longwinded and detailed retelling of a basically boring story of no consequence is that when I woke up this morning, I thought about the movie I thought I had made yesterday. So I set the camera on the ledge below the window and did the same thing as I did yesterday- wander around out front. Only this morning, I walked in front of a bus on my way back across the street. That’s the end of the story. No point, No punch line.


8/22 AM MISSED AGAIN!
I missed this morning’s sunrise. My alarm is my cellphone, and the ringer was set to silent. It felt really good to sleep a full, uninterrupted 8 hours. It felt so good, in fact, that I am not really sorry about missing the sunrise today.