Stone Tape Theory: Can Anyone In This Room Hear My Thoughts?

Hi, welcome to my website. I'm making this to escape from everywhere else online. Frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I was inspired to do this by my boyfriend, who runs a really incredible website. He tells me, "oh, I'm going to do some coding tonight", and produces a link that leads me to a magical world of adventure, etc. Have you ever had someone code a page on their website just for you? This may be a specific T4T experience, and if you don't know what that means, you probably won't get anything out of visiting this website, but I also think it's the purest expression of love. There's a dear friend of mine, too, who built a simple and resolutely functional website to share his work. I check both of these daily. It's a little window into the people I love the most.

In theory, I'm a sound designer with a fair amount of credits (I specialize in doing my own foley in my closet...there is a funny little joke in there, but I'm not out of ANY closet fully enough to articulate it with any sort of confidence) who works on the fly after hours. I also draw quite a bit, write quite a bit, make some games, and work on video and sculpture projects. But really, most of my time is spent at my boring-yet-stressful retail job, or on the bus to my boring-yet-stressful retail job. Such is life.

Aha, but that's why I'm HERE now! Did I mention I went to film school? Yes, and it fucking ruled. Well, mostly. Avid is a beam of light in the wet, molding sewers of Adobe that we are forced to wade through for that sweet, sweet Bachelor's of Fine Arts. While I find it hard to make any personal films living as a person with exactly the kind of income you'd expect from a boring-yet-stressful retail job, I do find it easy to watch and engage with a whoooole lot of art. Movies, of course, and TV, but books, essays, fine art, music, sound art, and more. It's what life is all about! To be honest, I think all art is worth experiencing, including art that sucks. It's like cooking and eating: you should incorporate all sensations, not just sweet or savory. You should try bitter, try sour, try rotten and spoiled. And you should figure out why it's like that. It's good for you! It makes you a better cook and a better diner. And it teaches you what you really, really love.

To cut this short: I think a lot about these things. I have a lot of opinions, and I do have the academic and experiential background to back these ideas up. I love to discuss endlessly with people, I love to read articles, essays, etc. on these topics, and I love to sit in the dark in my room and think think think. And I love to write down what I think. Otherwise...it could leave me forever. So I'm making this website to store these words, and, if you're interested, to share them with you. If I have any guidelines, it's this: keep it real, get transgender about it, know that the poor image, the ugly work, and the messy art are the pillars of life, and leave all things better, kinder, and weirder than how you found them.

So...that's it. I'm going to also use this as a learning experience with coding a website, so it may look and feel like absolute dogshit at first, but hey, that's alright. It's my fucking website.

I love you, goodbye!

Before You Go Further...Why Stone Tape Theory?

Stone Tape is quasi-scientific, paranormal faux-terminology for the theory that hauntings are analogous to tape or film recordings. Basically, it insinuates that intense or traumatic emotional events or mental impressions become "recorded" onto the physical world (objects and materials in particular) and are therefore "playable" like a tape or film. These recordings are the basis of all hauntings. So, those ghosts you're seeing are not interactive or sentient. Rather, they're the past being played back, reel-style. It's related to other..."scientific" parapsychological fields such as psychometry and place memory.

Why did I choose it? In a word or two, because it fascinates me. I've always been enamored with and interested in paranormal investigation. Stone Tape Theory, to me, is a perfect example of how bizarre, how absurd, how inventive, and how human this "field" is. So much of modern spiritualism is derived from technological failure and superstition, that as an artist dealing in technological failure and superstition, it is impossible to ignore. Besides...I've always wished, deep down, that all of this were true. I love the idea of recording the images and sounds of our lives everywhere we go. It's romantic. I like to think that I am leaving some beautiful scenes for whoever touches what I touch next. Don't we all want to be remembered? And don't we all want to explain those weird feelings we get?

It's a wonderful pipe dream that memories may be recorded like sounds and visuals. Think of it like a utopian future where emotions can be lovingly rendered in celluloid, or brick, or polyester. Or think of it as a dystopian nightmare where nothing is ever forgotten and to touch and to experience is to bear the weight of all other experiences before you. Whatever floats your boat.