"I just want you to know," said worker A, his tone uncharacteristically formal, "that cameras with audio have been installed in the building." Lilith and I mouthed our thanks and hellos as we walked by. Out of recording range, I was told that the boss said cameras were there for the workers' "protection," that they wanted to work there. Up the hill, workers B and C tell us that cameras are being installed everywhere. "I don't care," said the one; "the guys who are bothered by them are the ones who don't want to work."
"You know," worker A had said, "I talk to a lot of people who are grieving. We have conversations--rather intimate ones--and I don't want them being recorded." He hesitated at the word "intimate," but there's no better word.
I, too, record these conversations. Is my intention different enough from that of the boss who so clearly distrusts his own employees? I'd like to think that I record them--and you read them--for better purposes. Is the archive for control or for preservation, and are they always separate? Do we write out of suspicion or trust? Out of fear or love? Is there any pure space, and if there were, could we write about it? At what point do I stop posting stories and photographs on the internet? Shall I write in the voices of the trees, the mongooses, the stray cats?
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