Why I secretly recorded my life

Why I secretly recorded my life

By David Weinberg Los Angeles

It's normal now for people to document their lives on social networks, but you can take this kind of thing too far - as I did when I secretly taped all my conversations for three years.

Let me explain why I was wearing a wire. It started when I was 23. I wanted to be a radio journalist. At that point in my life I had been kicked out of college, I was delivering pizzas for a living in a town in Colorado and I was unhappy. I heard a story on the radio by a writer named Scott Carrier, who had been travelling around Utah interviewing schizophrenics, and it had a profound effect on me. It was like the rest of the world melted away and there was this singular voice talking directly to me.

It seemed very simple at the time. All I had to do was buy a MiniDisc recorder, make some recordings, produce my first story, play it for some people who worked in radio and they would give me a job.

The problem, I quickly discovered, was that I was terrified of interviewing people. I was afraid that my story would suck and instead of radio being my salvation, it would just be one more thing in life I had failed at. Instead of overcoming my fear of talking to strangers and doing interviews, I decided to wear a wire - a hidden microphone under my shirt - and for the next three years I recorded my life in secret.

Whenever I wanted, I could just slip my finger in my pocket and press record.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04