In his other work titled Soliloquy, Goldsmith writes:
“And what’s radio? Radio is nothing but language you know? Yeah but that’s a fallacy that’s a fallacy. With my work, you never had to do that. But people never understood that, of course and it’s still, a 600 page book you cannot read this thing cover front to back. But that but that was that was my whole project forever has been to turn that convention on it’s ear you know it really has been. My work has been unlike any other text art it’s always been really accessible it’s always been easy to come and go because I agree with you on that level, I mean, this book man, I had to read this thing through twice start to finish to proofread it… it’s unreadable! It’s you know it’s the kind of book that you might leave your on the back of your toilet and when you’re taking a shit you pick it up, catch something so that you’ll never find that again because there’s so much goddamned language in there. It’s not meant to be read linearly… none of my work is.”
I’m hoping that he is referencing his work Traffic here (or something like it). Daily traffic reports on the radio broadcast by sending out radio signals that will circulate through the earth’s atmosphere and the universe for the rest of time, so that the words or language surround us forever despite our inability to re-access it. We are also surrounded by new versions of these “up to the minute” language reports as multiple stations from every city and town in the world continue to broadcast these oral constructions, perpetually bombarding us with language. This barrage of words we access in snippets by chance as we turn the dial, “Well, we could spend an hour talking about the Hudson River right now,” or by choice as we seek bits of data on traffic statuses as we navigate through rush hour, “Holland Tunnel can be up to a half an hour in either direction, it’s repairs and only one lane available.” As such, we do not listen to it from beginning to end like conventional oral or written traditions of literature. This is why this work is “unreadable [and …] not meant to be read linearly” as it will yield random nuggets of linguistic momentary meaning at odd moments (like on the john) that will be irretrievable and irreproducible. Just like the temporal irretrievability of the original traffic reports themselves when broadcast. We are constantly surrounded by the words of media through radio reports and ads in the car and mass transit between places, tvs on walls in stores and restaurants, the net at home and work; sneaking in a “And a happy holiday to you,” which translates as -conform to our calendars and buy more stuff – Orwell’s ever present telescreens and radio propaganda numb us via the logorrhea of state and corporate data and programming.
Worse still, we talk to one another about countless personally meaningful and publically meaningless topics just as the narrator in the diner of Soliloquy does, as do the other patrons we don’t hear. “Look at what we’re doing now, we’re talking. You know how much language is being slung around this room right now?” There is talking all around us at all times: in the house, at the stores, in the car, in the train, at the restaurant, on the streets, and so on ad nauseum. Like traffic itself or the ocean waves rhythmically washing over us audibly, steadily, stealthily, uninterruptedly, until we are no longer conscious of their presence, until we can no longer tolerate the silence without it, we swim in a sea of language from before birth until death, unaware of the fear of drowning in it, most of the time mindlessly treading it precariously, sometimes even surfing it with panache. It is so ingrained into our very being that thought is language and we cannot shut it out without extreme austerity, like someone trying to escape from gridlocked traffic on Broadway and Wall streets at 715 on a Friday night.
