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We have a very different kind of story this week, brought to us from our good friend, Michael King, Denver designer, musician and art director for Birdy magazine.

A few years ago, Michael King bought an answering machine at a thrift store here in Denver. Inside that machine was a tape. What you’re about to hear is part of that tape.

The malfunctioning answering machine recorded more than just one-sided messages—sometimes it also recorded pieces of conversations. And through those conversations, Mike was able to piece together the story of the machine’s previous owners, Ed and Mimi, a diabetic elderly man and his adult, developmentally disabled daughter.

The recordings capture only brief moments of their lives, those times when they were slow to pick up the phone and the machine kicked on. But even from these little snippets, it’s surprisingly easy to piece together a narrative—friends and caretakers calling, family members visiting and using the phone, a larger community of people trying to care both of them. The whole thing is haunting, a testament to how even the discarded artifacts of our lives can tell a full story.

Michael has removed extended periods of silence, noise, feedback, and a few parts that revealed personal information about Ed and Mimi. The remaining nine minutes of the tape, which we’re sharing here, are otherwise unaltered. The music that accompanies the messages comes from one of Mike’s musical projects, Cities of Earth.

We have three upcoming shows in February: Our regular monthly shows take place on 9 February in San Diego and 17 February in Denver. The theme of those shows will be “DIY or DIE.” We’re also doing a special collaboration with Stories on Stage in Denver on 21 February. For more information and a list of all our 2016 themes, please visit our Events page.