We would not give a page of Artaud for all of Carroll. Artaud is alone in having been an absolute depth in literature... But Carroll remains the master and the surveyor of surfaces--surfaces which were taken to be so well-known that nobody was exploring them anymore. On these surfaces, nonetheless, the entire logic of sense is located.

Gilles Deleuze, "The Schizophrenic and the Little Girl"

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in right now. I dial the telephone. The phone rings, and then connects. The background music dumps into my ear. My shoulders drop. A year ago, it was great music, calypso style bop shouting, "Glad you could make it! Have a frosty drink and relax!" Now the music is faster, whiter, something Michael Bolton might call his next easy listening smash. I don't like it, but I do like this phone service, mostly because "Every night is Ladies Night." Women call free.

"Welcome to the Night Exchange," the digitized female voice coos, in a manner I now emulate whenever I want faster, nicer or smarter service in my day to day. The automated voice asks me for my first name, which the system records, and plays back for me. To "accept my name" and continue, I press "1." The electronic lady asks me to record a brief description of myself. "Remember, this is your first impression," she reminds me, "so be honest and have fun!" I consider telling the nice lady that I am exhausted from a night of teaching a computer to speak. I wonder if she will care that it has now been one year and 2 weeks since my mother has died, that I am feeling bloated and premenstrual, that my throat hurts and I just want to come, already, but decide that this type of information does not fit the injunction to, "have fun!"

"Hi," I breathe into the phone, trying sound at least as desirable as the background music that continues to play, providing my phone sex mise en scene. "I am looking for a dominant man." It is pretty common knowledge among users of automated phone sex services that the hardest working people on the chat lines are the dominants. In real-life domination, the top barks out order once in a while, and the sub runs around doing things. On the phone, however, the dom does all the work, all the imagining, all the speweathes, "Oh, yes..." Tonight, I just want to oh yes my way to an orgasm, and then get some sleep.

After I record my message, there is the Pause. The pause means that somewhere, a computer is listening, assessing and processing the sound of my voice. I have a theory that everywhere, all pauses are related: the pause between punching my PIN into the bank machine, and hearing the cash rustle. The electronic silence between songs on the radio. The emotional space that hangs in the air after the words "I love you" come out. I hear the faintest bleeds from the old calypso music in my mind, scoring this telephone pause, and I remember why my mother hated to hear music play during her last weeks in the hospital. It's wrong to pollute the Pause with sound.

Finally the Lady returns. "If you are looking to meet in person, press 1, " she breathes. "If you are looking for conversation, press 2. If you are looking for intimate conversation, press 3." I press 3. The Michael Bolton music plays for less than 15 seconds. "You have a message," I am told. The nice lady moderates all incoming phone messages. There is no way to get rid of her voice.

"Heeeeey-ah" some person with a Long Island diphthong problem breathes, "You want a dominant guy, you got him, baby. I am not into head games, so press '1' and lets tawk, LIVE."

Wondering just what would constitute "no head games" during phone sex, I decide to skip this caller. I don't really like "going live", for the same reason I don't like real-time computer bulletin boards, or leaving my answering machine off. I like to stay on the surface and surf the phone systems, hearing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, pressing and rubbing and pressing and rubbing. The men, who pay for this service, hate the women who surf. Time is money for the men, but time for ladies is not even cheap, its free. As if we shouldn't all live, breathe, come, pay, and die the same way. I will never press '1' for this guy, and later, I know, I will skip his messages entirely. He is not my type. But for now, I want to keep him calling back, so I press the button to respond, only to be interrupted by the nice lady's voice: "You have made an improper selection. Please try again."

I press the number 2, and breathe back into the phone, "How would you handle me?" and then send the message. I like to think of myself as something to be handled, tied up, tortured. Why not? I make pictures in my mind of women I would like to fuck, and then play them on the telephone. The nice lady tells me that I now have ten phone messages, from ten different men. I listen and press, listen and respond and press, listen and press.

And always, the lady moderates. She listens to vocal tone. Sometimes women use the men's line (for which they are billed) to search for other women. I always respond to female phone ads. I respect the ability to pay for what one desires. But not everyone gets to use the lines creatively. The transgendered women I talk to tell me that when trannies call on the Ladies Line, they get thrown off line by the electronic lady, who tells them that they are being removed from the system for being "unclear." Likewise, if I say anything obscene the lady hangs up my connection. She tells me that my voice cannot be heard, but one user of the system has told me the Night Exchange hates prostitutes (for the obvious competition) and obscene women, the feeling seems to go at the Night Exchange, are probably prostitutes. I suspect that the nice lady does not cut off the paying customers, as quickly as she does the trannies and the whores on the Ladies Line.

Because I know my continued calling privileges are being monitored, I try to straddle a space between naughtiness and vulgarity on the phone, feeling the answers of my male callers back for obscene intent, which is really what I want, after all. I listen, and reply, and punch a number, and hear a new message, and reply. It feels more like shopping than anything else. This man sounds okay, he wants to hang me from a hook and whip me in front of the neighbors, but there may be a better one, a faster one, a slower, one. When I am exhausted enough, I agree to go live, or as alive as one is during phone sex. The lady helps me through it, by letting me know that from here on in, I will only hear a bell, a bing bong bell that lets me know when other men are trying to reach me with messages. I am excited every time I leave the eavesdropping lady. I can finally be as filthy as I want to be. But strangely, in that moment I leave her, I want to hear her again, pacing my phone messages, narrating my sexuality for me to the bad rock n roll background.. "Hi..." says some 'live' mystery guy. "Hi," I breathe and we begin. Its fun, but I know the rest will be predictable in a way the automated Law of the Lady never really is.

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in right now, holding my mother as she weeps. She can no longer write her own name. Visual symbols don't make sense to her. After my mother's second brain surgery, the doctors stopped talking about whether or not she would ever read again. Living through the pain, learning to walk, avoiding blood clots--these were the more pressing concerns of the Roswell Cancer Institute staff, which of course made sense. Because she can no longer read, people bring my mother audio tapes to play on her Walkman. One day, someone gives her a Bernie Siegal Cancer Care audio tape. After one hearing, she asks me to buy her the entire collection.

Bernie Siegal is an oncology surgeon who now specializes in self-help literature. His audio tapes have titles like, "Strengthening your Immune System," "Preparing for Surgery," and "Time for Meditation". I don't understand these tapes so much. For one thing, Bernie Siegal sounds uncannily like George Bush, and my mother has always hated Republicans. My mother believes in what the Republicans call Big Government, and now she is being taken care of in a Big Government Cancer Ward, and in her opinion, she made the right voiting choice. My politics are to the left of Cuba (an inheritance from Momma) but still, I want my mother would have more fight to her, and I want her to be a little more suspicious of Roswell Cancer Institute. I hate the tedium of her 12 step complacency. I hate her stupid Bernie Siegal tapes. I don't exactly know what it is I expect her to do about her situation, at the mercy of a series of doctors who cut and re-stitch her brain on five different occasions. Sometimes I want her to demand her medical charts, although I have no idea why I wish this--I saw the chart a few times, and could make no sense out of the information written down there. No, just give me the Walkman, she says, and when the nurses change her IVs and bore me with their attempts at small talk, when the smug doctors usher themselves in to draw spinal fluid, when the helpful orderlies turn on the never-ending television news, my mother smiles at them wanly and says, "I can't hear you. I am listening to my tapes." Theresa, she says to me, people have different ways of fighting. Then she falls asleep. Even her children know it after a while. The headset and the walkman out means, "Don't Disturb."

After my mother's death, I use Dr. Siegal's tapes to keep me company. Lots of the advice on the tapes is practical. "Ask for a room with a window, where you can see the sky," Dr. Siegal counsels. "And if they say none is available, calmly tell them you will wait to check in until one is available." Actually, this is good advice. Many times, patients check in to cancer wards, and they never leave. Out the window is the last chance they will see the sky. It happened to my mother that way. The tapes, as Dr. Siegal intones over and over, are not meant to be substitutes for adequate medical care, but rather they should be used to strengthen and aid the patient. In one of the tapes, Preparing for Surgery, Dr. Siegal tells patients (with a synthesized Pachabel's Canon backround) that in order to help the patients prevent dangerous post-surgical blood clots they must "Feel the blood getting thinner, and concentrate on that feeling throughout and after the surgery." After my mothers second surgery, she began to hemorrhage, and my aunt Penny blamed it on "that damn blood thinning tape."

I am sitting in my room, different from the one you are in right now, and I am listening to my mother's cancer care tapes. I do not even pretend to understand these tapes meant to her. When she was alive, I fantasized that while the doctors irradiated and cut up my mother's body, she resisted through a place that medicine couldn't reach. I would look at her, drifiting in an out of sleep, and pray that something good and powerful was going on inside her body. I listen to these tapes continuously, waiting to hear The Pause. For a long time, I fantasize that if I stay in her room long enough, I can absorb all the sounds of pain in this place, and that my Momma's tapes will take care of her insides. I can feel her illness through my ears.. I listen to the tinny sounds of a hundred televisions blaring down the halls. I listen to the IV machine beeping, to empty bag after bag of antibiotic into dying bodies. I listen to the retching noises of chemo patients. Between the interior and the surface, between my mother and I, surely we can take on her illness, her madness, and her death. I am wrong.

I'm sitting in a room, different from the one you are in right now. I am in my friend Dana's apartment in the East Village, where Dana, a male to female transsexual and a Certified Voice Recognition operator, has offered to show me how I can get computers to respond to my voice. The wall to my right is thumping. Salsa music, I realize. The computer suddenly boots up, out of nowhere. I look at Dana, perplexed. "Oh its the damn vibration from the music." she tells me, and walks over to the terminal, picks up a microphone and says, "Go to sleep!" The machine shuts off, and we eat our dinner.

"Computer, wake up!" Dana tells the computer, and it begins to boot up. "Console on!" Dana yells, and the screen flashes on to an empty page. "Start WordPerfect! Good. Start letter! Insert date! Address book! Find Senft! That's it! Insert that! Dear Terri. Colon. New paragraph. Insert thank you paragraph. Insert no money paragraph. Insert get in touch paragraph. Love, comma, Dana. Save! Print!"

Dana is demonstrating a program called Law Talk, a voice recognition system that she sells to law firms. To run law talk, you need a 486 computer with a sound card installed in the back. On the sound card are 1200 pre-recorded and coded phonemes.

"Do you want to try?" she asks me, and hands me the microphone device. "Uh, computer, wake up!" I say, trying to mimic Dana's intonation. Nothing. "Computer, wake up!" Nothing again.

"Hah. It is resisting you. It doesn't know your voice. You have to train it to understand you. You sound like a weather lady, not a tranny, and this is my baby!" Dana coos to her machine, and starts up the tutorial program for me. I speak into a microphone, and teach the computer to recognize my voice as it combines phonemes into words. The Law Talk initialization software consists of 200,000 pre-existing words. My job is to speak into a microphone, pronouncing each word that appears on the screen, until the computer recognizes my voice, and spells out the words I speak without error. To do this, the Law Talk tutorial makes me recite passages from Alice and Wonderland for about three and a half hours. I also recite extraneous words like "plus" and the Arabic numbers three times each. There are 400 extraneous words that must be recited into the computer, before I can even begin to address this system. It is like teaching a child to speak, I imagine. Only I can't imagine having a child.

I begin to dictate to the machine, and the sounds I make then appear on screen as a word. I visually register each word printed, and then correct the computer when it is wrong, by saying the word, "oops". At the oops prompt, a bar comes up on the computer screen describe the bar of choices--visual arrangements of my spoken words all in a row, complete with "default choices", and I say, move left, choose three, okay. And then the computer replaces the word it thought I said with the one I tell it that I really did say. I spend the rest of the evening this way, marking the computer up with the sound of my voice, demanding that it yield text for me, and not just any text but rather, the right text. I am reading Alice in Wonderland out loud to this machine, and watching it get my words right, gloating like some stupid parent or doctor or phone dom when I realize that the machine has got it! It's with me! It is telling me exactly what I always already commanded it to hear.

"I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."

This is the complete text to Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room." The piece, which is a dreadful technical exercise in 1980's sound art, consists of 40 minutes of the paragraph above, spoken at least 300 times. That's it. As promised, the sound of Lucier's voice grows more and more distorted, until a huge acoustical flood of noise fill the room blurring anything that might have given this piece meaning. I am sitting in a room, a classroom, being instructed that Lucier is a genius, and frankly, I just don't Get It. I hear nothing in this piece that could ever move, or interest me. The last twenty minutes of the piece consists of nothing but audio feedback. The stereo blares into my face. I look at my classmates. One student is doodling. Another is sleeping. I am getting angry, really angry, I don't know why.

"I used to go to every new show Alvin Lucier did," my friend Phil James writes to me from his computer terminal, silently speaking to me in "live" n-talk. " He was like a cross between Mr. Wizard and the Wizard of Oz, demonstrating with each new work some magical principle of the physics of sound. But it eventually left me cold. As you can see from the score, the meaning of the spoken words is close to irrelevant; it's very frustrating if something human is hinted at and then you're only left with an exercise in science-art. For me, anyway, being pretty much a wordaholic."

A fat housefly lumbers across the chalkboard.There is no air circulating in this classroom. I feel sweat pooling in my bra. I am sitting in a room. Bah bah BAH bah ba ba bahm. Lucier is right; nothing in this piece matters, save the rhythms of his voice. As the repetition builds into extended feedback and then a white roar, discerning rhythm becomes an act of blind faith on my part. . I don't know how you ever endured it all without the rhythym of The Pause. Perhaps it all seemed like one long pause, washed with sound?

I am sitting in this room, different from the one you are in right now, and I while you sleep, I take your hand in mine. Your arms are blue as fresh plums. Your chest rises. The bags beep when they are done. Every night is Ladies Night. You are too proud to ring, and I don't blame you. If the nurse won't come then I will change your needles. Everyone has their own way of fighting. Remember, this is your first impression, so relax and have fun.I will not leave.Faith is not a substitute for medicine, but an addition to it.

My classmate looks up from her doodle to watch me sobbing over the sound art. As I type my response to my friend Phil, I hear my voice silently raise itself in my head, in anger. When did we decide that "psychological" art is the kind that "means" something, versus "science-art" which is supposedly about nothing but technique and surface? Why would the art critics not trade a page of Artaud for all of Carroll? I am sitting in a room, different from the performance spaces in which people ordinarily exclaim "so brave" at the finish of my psychological, text-driven monologues. I am at my computer, arguing in silence with my friend, remembering Lucier, and I am shocked to realize I have lost all interest in performance work based on words. Except, perhaps, science-art based on words. I wonder if the Law Talk program could be trained to recognize my voice in anger. I don't want to do another monologue without a computer. I don't want to do art that "means" something. I can tell you precisely what about Karen Finlay's work "means", what moves me, what does not, where her mythologies overlap mine, where they don't. I still cannot explain what happened to me the day I listened to Lucier.

I was sitting in a room, different from the one we are in now, when the line noise on my computer cued me into the fact that someone was tying to reach me over the phone. The call was from my brother. My mother had finally died, after hanging on in the hospice with a pulse rate that baffled the doctors. The end of the Lucier piece sounds like bells, just highly pitched bells, over and over. And then it ends. There is nothing rich and wordy about certain types of art, sex, or death. Which is not to say there is no sound. My brother told me that he only believed my mother was truly gone when he stopped hearing the chugging of the machines keeping her alive.