My first response to Kenneth Goldsmith’s the traffic jam was to look at the date, and then I realized that his is always the case with BQE Manhattan GW Bridge, etc. This made me wonder as to the reasons of why he would be interested in the recording of this type of documentation. There is a sense of accuracy as it is recorded on the specific day, or I should say it is announced but not really recorded until he records it. Is this some evidence of how much spoken language and or activity goes unrecorded in every day life? Is more important in its mundane occurrence than we give it. Is this activity that it is now communal and it is shared by so many in their own cars in isolation form the rest of the drivers, etc? We share the roads and we do not speak of it, not simultaneously, but if we were to share a drink or a couch or a home our relationships to each other would be measured differently.

Then I think of the poetic search in this piece. Is it poetic? What would define it as such here? Soliloquy changes in conversation. It is not recorded from the radio but it is as if we, the readers, are overhearing people speak quietly at a gallery. I like this piece. The movement of the conversation is making some sense, even though we don’t know if it is a inner thought pattern or just an actual recording of people’s voices. When I did go to other days on the list, I wonder why I did that. I almost feel as if I was a voyeur listening in on a phone line or listening to people pass by in the street by my open window. Is this where language lies, lost in the mingle of big cities?

In Fidget Goldsmith writes every bodily movement for 24 hours in order to record the difficulties of accurate reporting. The impossibility of keeping track of the many functions our bodies go through the instant is very real as we read part of. The voluntary and automatic responses to the outside world and inside thoughts that function simultaneously are almost impossible to capture.

Fidget’s premise was to record every move my body made on June 16, 1997 (Bloomsday). I attached a microphone to my body and spoke every movement from 10:00 AM, when I woke up, to 11:00 PM, when I went to sleep. I was alone all day in my apartment and didn’t answer the phone, go on errands, etc. I just observed my body and spoke. From the outset the piece was a total work of fiction. As I sit here writing this letter, my body is making thousands of movements; I am only able to observe one at a time. It’s impossible to describe every move my body made on a given day.

The issue of functionality becomes an issue here. How do distinguish a thing past as a fiction or reality? The fact is that as soon as the activity is completed we no longer have any way of commenting unless we rely on memory and therefore change the event.

The interesting part is that he is speaking to a microphone instead of writing. Is there any difference between the way he records the events of his body through the day and the way he writes about them later? He admits the activity becomes more difficult as he has to talk through his actions. “The exercise becomes harder and harder, the verbal equivalents to physical motion more and more abbreviated.” The warning comes early on in the text as the preparation for recording happens. This activity might be an orchestrated mal function of our existence. Does it also prove that as an experiment it is impossible to be vocal, thoughtful, creative and spontaneous at the same time? Is fiction really not meant to be experiential or perhaps, it could be experienced post experience and shared post writing?