Episode 09 - Keeps Me Up At Night

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play.

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays! We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists. 

Take care of yourself, call a friend, paint a painting, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

1:40 - 3am tape loop by Yael Haskel 

3:45 - A Storm is Coming by Julia Melfi featuring Yael Haskel, Hilary Asare, Mike Puckett, T Thompson, Anooj Bhandari, and Jeewon Wright-Kim

6:02 - alphabet sleep (part i) by Rob Neill

Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean

Léah Miller is our associate producer 

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean and Julia Melfi 

Take Care!

Transcript 

Episode 09: Keeps Me Up At Night

Show Intro

Dreamy electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: 9. Keeps Me Up At Night. I’m Julia Melfi—a New York Neo-Futurist. While our on-going, ever-changing, late-night show, The Infinite Wrench, is on hold for the foreseeable future, we wanted a place to keep making art for you. And thus, Hit Play was born!  

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, greetings! I'm constantly thinking about seeing you in person. If this is totally new to you—welcome to it!

We play by four rules: We are who we are, we’re doing what we’re doing, we are where we are, and the time is now. Simply put: we tell stories, and those stories are our own. Everything that you hear is actually happening. So if we tell you we’re recording while we sip our morning coffee, we’re really recording while we sip our morning coffee. 

Julia sips and swallows coffee. 

Julia: And now, Rob will Run the Numbers!

Rob: Hi I’m Rob Neill, a New York Neo-Futurist. In this episode we’re bringing you 3 plays. By Yael Haskel, another by Julia Melfi featuring Yael Haskel, Hilary Asare, Mike Puckett, T Thompson, Anooj Bhandari, and Jeewon Wright-Kim. And the final one by me, Rob Neill. 

That brings us to 39 audio experiments on Hit Play. Go ahead, enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: 3am tape loop (1:40)

Yael: 3am tape loop. GO!

Audio quality sounds distant, like a recording on a cassette tape. Electronic chords underscore. 

Yael: Dark outside, wow. Really dark outside. What happened to white sky, what happened to red sky, what happened to the sky is blue because God is a boy, when am I gonna be a kid again? You get worried at 3 in the morning. Not you, I mean me, not me, I mean fine, I mean, me, but not the me that you know, you with the earbuds, you listening, you in your home, it sounds like this. Pitter patter all night when the lights go off and the movie ends and the spinning starts, here we go.

Sometimes I worry that I’m so worried that my brain is gonna melt out of my ears and I’ll drown in the juice and it’ll be so disgusting no one can bear to even wipe me off the carpet. I’m worried history repeats itself. I’m worried that my parents told me I was special as a kid and it was true then but it isn’t anymore. I’m worried about my nail beds. I’m worried everyone I’ve ever hurt is gonna find each other on some sick vacation and form a home-grown militia dedicated to my elimination. I worry that even when I’m doing the right things I’m doing them wrong. I’m worried someone will jump out a window the moment I look away and I’ll think about it the rest of my life. I’m worried that I’m a bad person and nobody believes me.

I worry who’s gonna write my obituary and if they’ve been born yet. I fantasize about them, I imagine them poring through my notebooks and going ‘mmm, yeah,’ describing my depression in romantics when in actuality I spent my life on the fucking floor wearing the same underwear as yesterday, yeah. I’m tapping into something but something’s tapping back. I see the future stretched out before me like a dusty rug, I feel my mouth open close open close open close like a goldfish, disposable. Where is that place where I go when I go there, that something-nothing-something-nothing-middle-of-the-night-toilet-bowl-dreamscape where God and all his sexy friends go for tea? They won’t have me back, but it’s too dark to go outside anyway. I worry that I’ll never be fully, truly, actually awake again. I worry I can’t fall asleep.

Sound cuts out. 

Play 2: A Storm is Coming (3:45)

Julia: A Storm is Coming. GO! 

Words underscored with stormy sounds, using found sound: tubes, popcorn, phone recordings of rain, rice, closet doors, etc. The sound gets louder and almost overtakes the words by the end of the play.

Julia: A storm is coming. We don’t know when. It’s already here. It’s always been on the way. The Big One. The Very Big One. I’m talkin Biblical, and then some. San Andreas fault line. We’re pushing it real hard—pushing our luck. And it’s comin for me and it’s comin for you. 

Yael: My stomach hurt all the time but the tests said there was nothing wrong.They poked and prodded me in different ways. They fed me pills and I got better for it. It isn’t over, but now I stand in its eye. 

T: I hope I’m inland when it hits. I hope my family is on high ground. I hope all of my friends are safe. Which reminds me–we should have a contingency plan. Head to the desert. Don’t really trust the desert. Backroom deals, redlining, lies, racism, religion disguised as morality. That’s the kinda storm that will wipe shit out so you have no option but to start again.

Hilary: The car is swimming, the car is swimming! We didn’t have power for a few days but we did have tuna fish sandwiches and made shadow puppets on the wall. The car is swimming, the car is swimming, the car is swimming the car is swimming, the car is swimming…

Mike: (Overlapping the end of Hilary's line) Puddles on either side of the road reflected the sky and for miles it seemed like the road was suspended over thin air. 

Julia: There’s a storm in me and it’s rumbling all the time. The plate of Juan de Fuca. Heating up and melting everything above it. Tectonic, shifting and gurgling. The Cascadia Subduction Zone. It’s here today, not gone tomorrow. Stuck in my head wondering if I’m being mean to you or if I’m just standing up for myself cause what if I'm wrong, what if I'm wrong, what if I'm wrong, what if I'm wrong...

Anooj: (Overlapping the end of Julia's line) Driving down the highway with my brother, cloud chasing. Looking at each other and going faster and faster and faster and faster trying to beat this huge dark cloud to our destination before it started to pour. 

Jeewon: I can see myself in their storm. Caustic, defensive, sarcastic, unwilling to hear reason or compromise in the moment. Because it's storm time, didn't you get the memo, didn't you get the memo, didn't you get the memo, didn't you get the memo…

Rob: (Overlapping the end of Jeewon's line) It’s predicted. But it will be pandemonium. Big big storm. Like how I imagine it was when all the dinosaurs were wiped out, or at Pompeii, no Hiroshima. There’s chaos. So much will be wiped out. Super scary. Dark times. Bigbigstorm. And sad–many people won’t see it coming or comprehend what's truly coming–what it, what the Big Storm truly is and how devastating and destructive it will be. 

Julia: What storm’s been chasing you your whole life? Your whole ancestral life? And what will you do when it’s here? The eye of the storm sees. It’ll take about as long as this play for more than 10 million of us to lose water. What’s it lookin at? What’s it tryna get a closer look at? What can it see that we can’t see? What’s it tryna show us? 

Sound cuts out. 

Play 3: alphabet sleep part i (6:02)

Rob: (exhales) Alphabet sleep. Part one. GO!

Atmospheric electronic music underneath phone recording text. 

Rob: a. you listen to the starbucks truck idling outside and know that soon you will sleep

b. you read the chapter again on how little difference there is between success and failure and soon you will sleep

c. you remember to call someone who you love but not right now, sleep

d. you leave the folding of most of laundry for later at the foot of the bed

e. you make a list of things that were said that made you happy

f. you think of something your uncle told you about sandwiches without chips and you smile, you smile and soon you will sleep 

g. you smile and soon you will sleep

h. you will smile when you wake up too, you try to do this every morning 

i. you know that where you are you can’t really see everything, you recall that you didn't see the meteor shower last time, thankfully it wasn't more dangerous than predicted

Background noise of letters and text add to underscore. 

j. letters tumble in front of you and soon you will sleep

k. you stream something at this point and sleep is, dreams are

l.  you think about the big boat race dream with astronauts and dogs driving boats across an ocean, there is a fog

m. you sleep

Sound washes over and crescendos. Rob breathes audibly. Sound fades out. 

Show Outro (8:51)

Dreamy electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show and tell a friend! If you want to support the New York Neo-Futurists in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon–Patreon.com/NYNF. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays and livestreams. And if this episode gets over 1,000 downloads, we'll order one of our Patreon supporters a pizza on us. We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists. 

Take care of yourself, sing a song, share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode featured work by: Rob Neill, me–Julia Melfi, featuring Yael Haskel, Hilary Asare, Mike Puckett, T Thompson, Anooj Bhandari, and Jeewon Wright-Kim, and Yael Haskel. Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay. And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. Léah Miller is our associate producer. Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean and me, Julia Melfi. Take Care!

Music fades out!