Recordings For Someone (Not for Me, Not for Anyone I Know)

Some time ago the producers of the radio show "This American Life" had a neat idea. Ira Glass and his crew presented four stories of people that they had recorded a message for someone they loved. These messages are meant to be private and therefore not for public. However, in the era of Twitter, Facebook nothing is private enough to remain hidden from public forever.

The show as usual was divided in acts. This specific one had four. The first is about a son and his mother, the second about a guy that can't even speak, the third about a soldier in Iraq and final one about two long distance lovers. This is an attempt to write down what I really remember from this show, I actually heard it before 11 or more months and it was my first "This American Life" podcast.

Ok, the setting for the first story. New York 1995 around the time that the spring finals are approaching. The son, a Columbia undergraduate, was seeking everywhere for a book. He couldn't find it in his dorm so he thought to ask his mother if the book is in her place. The mother searched thoroughly but she didn't find it either. She called him to inform him about the missing book but he wasn't there. The son -let's call him Bobby for now- wasn't reading at home but instead was hanging out with a new girl he met. Bobby was a sensitive guy and one of his favorite movies was "The little mermaid" thus his greeting in his voicemail was inspired from the movie. The mother called several times. She was feeling stressed because Bobby won't be able to study for the exams. She was anxious because Bobby wasn't in his dorm studying but for the whole night. Every time she was calling the only thing she could listen was the "little mermaid"-inspired message. Mother got upset, she called for one final time. The result was the same but this time she decided to leave a message which was..

"F@ck you and your little mermaid". When Bobby came back sent this message to Neil, another fellow undergraduate. Neil couldn't resist he sent the message to someone else and then by a huge gossip-chain reaction in one night the whole university knew about the little-mermaid message.

That's one of the four stories. Now doesn't sound like a funny story. However, if you think the conditions under which the mother left this message to Bobby you might laugh. Stupid story, I remember though that I was laughing the first time I heard it.

I don't have to say much about the second story. It is a guy that cannot speak, you can barely understand him and it's about messages that this guy records for his local pizza place in order not to delay to give his order. I don't really remember anything else but the guy was in the terrible need of a specialist.

The third story was quite interesting actually. A GI was recording messages for his spouse while he was at the first Golf war. As he stated his incentive was his beloved persons to know how he died. In the beginning I thought that he would talk to his wife through the recording messages but it seems that it was too hard for him to do that while he was trying to remain alive. Therefore, the majority of these messages were recordings from battles rather than recordings for someone; quite intense. The important part of the story is in one of these recordings. Some Iraqis had let themselves

in and they didn't have guns. However, soldiers didn't communicate very well with each other and accidentally they killed them. The good thing for the star of this story was that he had rationalized the event of killing unarmed people and he could move on with his life. Moreover, he referred to some of his colleagues that believed that had killed people that they shouldn't had killed and they were feeling so much guilt that the post traumatic stress was so intense that they still don't have regular lives. There is not right and wrong. War is wrong anyway. Killing people is wrong. Crucifying people is wrong. Rationalize things to continue our life it's an indication of a clever person that wanted to survive. I won't say anything about this strategy. However, it needs special attention how you use "rationalization" because it seems that sometimes you can find excuses even for killing. Oops!

The forth story was kind of sweet. A guy went to Italy and stayed for a week. There he met one girl. They had a marvelous week. The guy came back to New York and he started recording messages and sent them to her. He was recording his thoughts, his hopes, his passion about her despite they knew each other only for a week. It seems that after the killing the producer needed a successful romantic story because the distance between US and Italy worked out well for this couple. Now after three years they are still together and they have a little girl. The story is interesting but very badly placed. I will elaborate on both of my thoughts.
It was badly placed because after the rationalization of killing we needed (the audience) some surrealistic romance. I wonder why we needed the romance? In order to understand what? That people are so cynical that can rationalize death of people that they shouldn't had died but are not able to do that for a crazy love? That's who are we? Ok Ok, I know it wasn't the same guy that did both but I bet that the guy from the War story should have been irrational for smaller reasons in his life. Anyway, I don't want to judge him more because at least he did something clever and he managed to escape from his personal hell.

It is was an interesting story because the most of us have experienced a surrealistic love like the one in the fourth story. When it happens we don't actually know if it is something real since we didn't have enough time to figure out that. Someone would think that when you introduce the factor of distance in the aforementioned setting rationalization will kick in pretty quickly. However, I doubt that this is the truth. Seems that distance acts as a buffer to introduce more of ourselves, more of our feelings, to something that it might even not be there. Many artists have captured this irrational feeling that is created from love, distance (of any kind). Hemingway captured the most perfect one I think in his "for whom the bell tolls" despite that in this case the distance was actually infinite between Maria and Robert Jordan.

Back to the story.. these two were lucky and strong enough and they are together. However, I do believe that they are the exception and probably that's why they have a wonderful story.