Transcript

Show Intro

electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Mike: Episode 66. How Do YOU Sleep At Night? Hi, I’m Mike Puckett. I’m one of the New York Neo-Futurist. We started this podcast last year when we paused our on-going, ever-changing, late-night show, The Infinite Wrench. We’ve finally been able to resume our in person performances but since the theater is operating at half capacity and not everyone is quite ready to head out to the east village yet, we wanted to keep making art for you. 

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hello! We can’t wait to look you in the eyes and silently agree to pick each other's noses. That’s a lie we can wait on that one- we don’t have to do that. 

We make art 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 listening to our upstairs neighbor’s dog running up and down the hallway, we’re actually one ceiling away from a real live puppy. 

Some of the work in this episode may contain sensitive topics and explicit language. For more specific content warnings, check the timecodes in the show notes.

Mike: And now, Brock will Run the Numbers!

Brock: Hi there, I’m Brock, a New York Neo-Futurist. 

In this episode we’re bringing you 4 new plays. This week’s cast is Rob Neil, Kyra Sims, Anooj Bhandari, and Greg Lakhan.

That brings us to 288 audio experiments so far on Hit Play. Enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: Little Song in 3 parts w/bell part 1(1:48)

Rob: Little Song in 3 parts w/bell. GO!

Bells chime underneath Rob singing.

One: 

Little flies little flies little flies little flies

Little bugs little bugs little other bugs

Little flies and other bugs when I open my eyes

I hope other bugs and little flies that you die... that you die

Play 2: Nocturnal Transmissions (2:20)

Kyra: Nocturnal Transmissions. GO!

Morse code tones underscore the text

Voice 1: So this is Mike, uh recording a message from Northern Georgian Mountains.

Voice 2: Kyra, Good morning it is 3:44am on Monday. I am recording this from the nurses station in the Neurosurgical ICU at Medical University of South Carolina in Charlston 

Voice 3: Hi Kyra, this is Jesse Wayburn, I’m  going to record this on my computer because I can

Voice 4: Hi Kyra, umm just gonna answer these questions for you real quick. My friend Ethan helped me get the levels set up here. 

Voice 3: First question, why are you awake in the middle of the night?

Voice 4: First question, why are you awake in the middle of the night? Feel free to go into detail. Ummmm, Usually when I’m up in the middle of the night there's not a particular reason.  It's never a thing that I planned to do. 

Voice 2: I am currently responsible for the medical management of a brain dead organ donor in the ICU.

Voice 1: Uh, I am wide awake around one to four o'clock every day. I have sleep apnea. My insurance does not cover a machine and all the treatments that I've looked into, I can't afford a, so I have to try alternative methods and I've tried them all. 

Voice 2: I'm about 18 and a half hours into a 24 hour shift. I am pretty exhausted. I just want to go to sleep. 

Voice 3: I wake up in the middle of the night because my body goes through cycles. Like most people with uteruses go through cycles and I tend to feel the effects of my hormones in the night.

Voice 4: Sometimes anxiety keeps me up. Sometimes procrastination keeps me up. 

Voice 1: I'm like, okay, time to myself and I'm going to use it. And before I know it It's like 3:00 AM- 4:00 AM now. And they like to say- 

Voice 2: it's a 24 hour shift, which, um, unfortunately in my opinion, is, is industry standard in organ donation world. Um, because each organ donation agency is typically responsible for a very large geographic area. Um, anytime we're switching out coordinators from one shift to the next and that sometimes requires use of a jet, um, it sometimes requires three to four hour drives on the front end, which sort of makes 12 hour shifts hard to manage. So, uh, people who work in organ donation world have been working 24s for the almost 10 years I've been in the industry and definitely beyond. 

Voice 3: The Insomnia is-

Voice 4: I like to do pushups every day. And if I haven't gotten them in yet by the time I want to go to bed- 

Voice 3: manifested in a sense of extreme discomfort 

Voice 4: Sometimes I’ll lie on the couch

Voice 3: Just really unable to get comfortable or rest

Voice 4: Or I’ll just lie on the floor because I don't quite have the energy to do them but I don't want to get into bed without doing them. 

Voice 3: Never finding the right position to lay in.

Voice 1: I do like that, it's, you know, that I'm kind of just the only one that I have to agitate during those times. That I know this time is truly my own. I'm not taking time away from work. I’m not- I'm not supposed to be working on something for them or responding to calls. I'm not taking, I'm not in the same way, other relationships in my life because I'm not calling them back or-

Voice 3: I love the time when it seems like no one else is awake

Voice 1: Seem distracted by something else. I really like time that I get to my, I get to myself where I, without these kinds of 

Voice 3: When time loses its meaning 

Voice 1: worries in the back of my head, in my head because, and I think that that is kind of why I stay up so much later a lot, because I know that once I do inevitably we go to sleep, it just puts me right back in that next day, feeling all that stress again. Where I know my focus and attention is going to be split in different ways. 

Voice 4: There aren't any distractions. Um, other than the ones we give ourselves, um, nobody else is asking for your time, unless they know you very well, at 3:00 AM. 

Voice 2: There's a lot of research that shows that staying awake for 24 hours. Um, more- as frequently as we do it is, has some pretty significant health impacts. Um, definitely. Studies looking at Alzheimer's dementia, things of that nature, but I mean, you know, you can feel it just doing it as frequently as I do. You get to about hour 16 and you hit a wall short-term memory goes, you're really a lot less able to function at the, at the higher kind of mental capacity that you want to, I know you probably hear all these nurses like cracking up behind me having a good time. Um, they're on twelves. So most of them slept today. I feel like I want to die right now. 

Voice 4: Um, if anything, I just generally wished that more, that more things that I kind of rely on or working on my schedule. 

Voice 1: I work early in the morning. 

Voice 3: So much more than my body will let me 

Voice 1: That’s why I usually wake up and talk to them turn or, 

Voice 5: and there's something I really like about the morning too. You know, I really like 5:00 AM, no matter how I get there, if I stay up all night to get there, or if I go to bed early and wake up at five, there are a lot of trees on my street in Brooklyn. And if I stay up till five, I’ll start seeing the sunlight, hitting the street again, as the sun comes up. And hear the dawn chorus- all the bird from those trees singing to each other as they wake up. 

Voice 2: It's a lot quieter. When you step out of the hospital to take a break, it's dark, it's just quieter. I am realizing, as I've said, quiet, 15 times in this recording, how much that, uh, is meaningful to me. I like when things are just a little slowed down, I suppose. 

Voice 3: And the solitude is for late night and early morning. Really, I just like solitude. 

Voice 4: Yeah. I don't think I want to be a morning person, but I kind of do wish the rest of that the rest of the world was a night world

Play 3: Little Song in 3 parts w/bell part 2 (9:10)

Rob: Little Song in 3 parts w/bell part 2. GO!

Bells chime underneath Rob singing.

Two:

Little spiders little spiders who eat all bugs & flies 

Little spiders little spiders call the big spiders too 

And when I'm on my knees cleaning up

Or sleeping don't you bite me

Just do what you lovely little  & big spiders do

Play 4: If the next 80 seconds represents the hours of midnight to 8am, consider this an audio map of our behaviors, some assumptions included. (9:47)

Anooj: If the next 80 seconds represents the hours of midnight to 8am, consider this an audio map of our behaviors, some assumptions included. GO!

Animal Crossing speak, running water and dishes, snores and other late night sounds \ unscore

Rob: Midnight

Greg: 12:25

Anooj: double check. If my alarm is correct that I said, Obsessively checking my sleep hours equal around

Rob: Maybe I should have some burbonyour stand up late tonight and next for our standard plate. The world would be fine. That'd be fine. You'll go back to sleep. 

Anooj: I remember my dreams less than less each day on the days that I meditate and the lights are, always, more vivid. 

Rob: and you can check Edelman.  told me, and then dream go back to sleep and then you'll take your sheet. And we look at the sun.

Anooj: I hug my pillow and listening to the child. Next door run up and down 

Greg: 3 38. 

Rob: Did you get it? 

Greg: Bedtime

Play 5: Little Song in 3 parts w/bell part 3 (11:23)

Rob: Little Song in 3 parts w/bell part 3. GO!

Bells chime underneath Rob singing.

Three. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease. Please. 

Play 6: Pigeon Tale (11:45)

Greg: Pigeon Tale. GO!

GREG: When I was 16 my friends and I did acid after school and tripped in this huge tunnel on the west side highway. (Sound of trains screeching fades in) It was right next to an active train yard, and the graffiti in the tunnels was absolutely divine. (Sounds of train begin to distort) While we were coming up on the acid, we smoked a joint to pass the time and eventually decided to leave the tunnels because my friend I** had an art exhibition after school to attend, and I had to be home before a certain time. (Sound of wings flapping, pigeon cooing) On our way out of the tunnels, our drug dealer T***** spots a pigeon trapped in barb wire, struggling to free itself. So he climbs the gate and frees it. He brings it down, holding it in his hand and we all notice that it's wing was completely clipped and one of its feet was broken, so we set it down on a nearby stump. Being in such a heightened state, we were all insanely confused as to how we could help this pigeon, or if we should even bother trying to save it all. While my friends are having this discussion, I couldn’t help but notice that the pigeon was putting out some pretty intense vibrations. (Intense psychedelic music flares) The pigeon looked insanely calm, but it had this look in its eye, as if it had already accepted it's fate. I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of pity for this poor creature. We (save for my friend G******) felt insanely guilty about leaving the pigeon there to die. We wanted to find a police officer to help but at the same time we were four 16 year olds on acid and talking to any form of authority seemed like a terrible idea. G****** suggested putting it out of its misery, and going about our business, which T****** actually cosigned, but I** and I passionately debated that prospect and suggested taking it to a vet. (Music fades) In the end, a random stranger ended up passing by and questioning why we were all huddled around an injured pigeon. (Cue Angelic choir) He had a strange glow to him, but he seemed trustworthy. We all explained the situation (to the best of our ability because we were so far gone at this point), and the stranger offered to call animal control. (Phone dialing) He made a phone call, took the pigeon (cooing), and walked away (footsteps). We had spent 2 hours trying to decide the best course of action for this pigeon. To this day, I still think about what became of the unfortunate bird. Is it alive and well, living its best life? Or was that guy just some weirdo who didn’t actually call animal control? I guess I’ll never know for sure. But part of me likes to think that the Pigeon is still flying around the city somewhere. I really hope I’m right. 

Show Outro

electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Hilary: Hi I'm Hilary, a New York Neo-Futurist. We love to invite the audience on stage to talk to us after our in person show The Infinite Wrench- but that's hard to do in the podcast medium. That said, we really want to hear from you so we set up a voicemail box- 646-820-4733. Tell us what Hit Play means to you. What do you like about it? What do you wish we did more? We’re cooking up something for the end of year episode and if you'd like to be a part of it leave us a voicemail at 646-820-4733- that number is in the show notes as well. Keep it short and sweet and let us know if we can use your first name and message in a future episode of Hit Play. Keep listening and you just might hear your voice! Hope to hear from you soon.

Mike: Thanks you so much for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show and tell a friend and leave a review on your listening app of choice! 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. 

This episode featured work by: Rob Neil, Kyra Sims and Special Guests Mike, Ben, Jesse, Sarah and Garret, Anooj Bhandari, and Greg Lakhan and Hilary Asare and me, Micheal Puckett.

.

Our logo was designed by Gabriel Drozdov. And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Julia Melfi, and me, Mike. Thanks for listening!

Music fades out!