stimuli files

stimuli/story_01.txt

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+There're some scientists who say that the universe that we inhabit {BR} is not the only universe there is. {BR} There are alternate universes. {BR} They say that these universes arise {BR} from the sub atomic realm of quantum physics. Here's how they say it works. {BR} Every time a quantum event happens, {BR}, it produces all of its possible results. This is like saying if you flip a coin {BR} it comes up heads, but it also comes up tails. {BR} Since those two results are mutually exclusive, {BR} the flipping of the coin splits the Universe {BR} into two alternate universes {BR}. The "heads" universe, and the "tails" universe {BR}. And since quantum events are happening all the time, {BR}, it means that alternate universes {BR} are bubbling up continually, they're always being created, splitting off from ours {BR}. And these alternate universes {BR} are real, they're not just figments of the imagination {BR}. They're complete, whole, real things. I know this is true, {BR} because I experienced an alternate universe. 
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+{LG} {LS} I was driving in my volkswagen van, {BR} up to a Tai Chi camp, in upstate New York a couple of summers ago. {BR} Um I bought the Volkswagen van when I'd quit my job a few years previously {BR} . I bought the van um because I quit the job as a custom database application engineer. {BR} This was not a job that I really had intended to become, when I was a kid, that's not what I thought I was going to be {BR}. Uh it's just sort of the job I happened into, and I always thought of it as the work I was doing before I was gonna find my real work. {BR} But when I got close to about forty, I suddenly thought "oh my god, this could be it". {BR} This could be what I end up doing, this could be on my tombstone. {BR} Tom Wiser, custom database application engineer. {LG} {BR} Wrote well optimized queries. {LG} Many customers satisfied. {LG} {BR} And I thought, no, that that can't be, it, that can't be all there is. And I quit the job, {BR} without really knowing what I was going to do next, and {BR} and and I knew that what I should do was to take my skill set {BR}, and to make a lateral move to a career path that was more appropriate, but {BR} but I I I really didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be so logical. I actually wanted something more {BR} magic. I {BR} I wanted to be like the guy in the fairy tale that {BR} trades the cow for the magic beans. {BR} and and I know that that's a bad deal, I know {BR} that the cow's a better investment. {BR} {LG} The cow's gonna pay off in the long term, but but {BR} but but if the magic beans work out, {BR} you're in a whole new story. 
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+{BR} So {LG} so so I quit the job and I bought a Volkswagen pop top camper van. {BR} And I drove around country in what I thought was, OK. {BR} I'm not going to make a lateral move, I am  going to drive around the country, and I'm gonna open myself up to whatever may come, and then what I'm going to do {BR} is going to arise organically {BR} I'm gonna find my next path there {BR} by the side of the road in Arizona, I'm gonna pick it up, and bring it back to New York. {BR} So, I drove around the country. {BR} Twenty five thousand miles, eight months. {BR} And when I got back to New York {LS} I had no clue. {LG} I really didn't know, and and it left me very vulnerable {BR} to the New York question. {BR} The first question that anybody asks. Which is, "so what do you do?" {LG} I didn't know. I had, I had I didn't have a good answer and it made me feel really embarrassed because {BR} everybody knows what they do, everybody does, and I thought I should, too. {BR}. 
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+So when I was driving the Volkswagen van up to Tai Chi camp,  the other summer, I I felt very relieved because in camp, I know what I do. {BR} I do the camp thing. I do what's at camp and {BR} I don't know if you know this, but there are a lot of camps for adults that are out there. I I found them when I was driving around the country {BR}. There are Tai Chi camps and Yoga camps and {BR} and bird watching camps. There's even a camp where you can dress up in armor and joust. {LG} {LS} {BR} All the things that that give us joy and that we tend to demean with the name hobby. {BR} Those are the things that are that are celebrated in camp. {BR} And when people go to camp they are so lit up, they are finally getting to do that thing, the thing they love, it's like "yes, {BR} I finally get to joust, I don't have time for that anymore {BR} really." {LG} 
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+So I was going up to camp and feeling pretty good about it and I decided {BR} on the way I would stop into Ithaca. {BR} I heard it was kind of a neat town. So I I pulled off the highway into Ithaca {BR} and um it's on the southern shore of lake Cayuga, there's flatland and these hills. And it has {BR} a a very particular microclimate there {BR} which allows hippies to survive. {LG} All the stores have names like "it takes a village" or "hemp unlimited" {BR} {LG} And, and the and the and the children are all completely multiethnic and only wear cloth organic diapers it was {BR} it was really something. I drove around like, sort of like Disney hippie land, just watching it. And then {BR} I drove up the hill, up toward Cornell, which has these stately buildings on the hilltop {BR}. And and as I drove onto the campus, {BR} I had this {BR} stabbing sensation and I suddenly was pierced with a vision {BR} of an alternate universe. {BR} My alternate life. I thought "oh my god, I was supposed to go to Cornell." {LG} "If I had gone to Cornell I would have studied animal behavior, and right now, I'd be a professor of evolutionary biology!" {LG} I'm a professor of evolutionary biology and I've got a wife! {LG} She's got dark hair, she's really smart. And I'm a professor with a  wife and {BR} we've got two kids! {LG} They like to sing. {LG} It was this {BR} completely realized vision of this alternate life, and it looked so good, alternate Ithaca Tom, he'd made these great choices. {BR} It was really working out. And  and I drove around in a in a kind of a wash of nostalgia for this life that I hadn't had. {LG} {BR} {LS} Wow, there's the human ecology center, I did all my grad work there. {LG} And there's this funky cottage that I used to live in when I had six roommates, and we had a chore wheel and {BR} ate brown rice, {BR} {LG} and and there was these gorges that we used to do drum circles in and songs to the goddess and it was {BR} and and there was this woman that looked just like my wife would have looked when I would have met her. {BR} I was overwhelmed by it, I couldn't stand to stay there any longer I {BR} I drove off the campus, I fled Ithaca {BR} and and flew to Tai Chi camp. 
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+{BR} But alternate Ithaca Tom came with me. {LG} {LS} Now, now at camps I tend to really have a good time, I I laugh a lot, I joke a lot, especially {BR} in Tai Chi camp, with the residents are kind of serious and slow moving {BR}. I I can't help but kind of tease them. And, and in this particular camp, {BR}, uh the teacher {BR} said that we were going to be meditating every morning from seven to eight. {BR} and she was looking for a volunteer, someone, a musician {BR} that would {BR} wander the hallways um playing an instrument or singing to wake up the residents. {BR} I'm not a morning person, {BR} and so I thought, oh, so I have a choice here, either it's gonna be six thirty, I'll be {BR} lying in my bed, really grumpy, {BR} while some asshole sings outside my door, {BR} or, I could be the singing asshole. {LG} For the rest of that week, I was the singing asshole of the camp. {BR} Every morning I would I would roam the halls singing lustily, waiting {BR} waking up all of my fellow {BR} Tai Chi players and {BR} I and and the the people there saw me laughing and singing and they said, Tom, it's really great to have you here, you're so happy, you're such a happy guy, and I thought {BR} yeah, you think I'm happy, but you haven't seen alternate Ithaca Tom! {BR} I've seen him! He's happy! {BR} And and the fact that he was so much happier than me was making me miserable. 
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+{BR} {LS} And I kept looking at everybody else's life. And and comparing myself to them. And {BR} I remember having lunch with a {BR} a woman who was in her sixties, and she was a calligrapher. {BR} And she was about to have her first grandchild, she was really excited and I thought {LS} {BR} maybe calligraphy {LG} {BR}.   That, that could be it {LG} . And and then there was this other guy, he had studied Tai Chi when he was in his twenties, and now he was a sales rep at Dell {BR} and I thought, dammit! if I had studies Tai Chi in my twenties maybe {BR} I could be a sales rep at Dell now! {BR} I've never wanted to be a sales rep, but I was, {BR}, I was just getting carried away {BR}. That feeling that I was in the wrong life, I was in the wrong place, I couldn't shake it {BR}. I I really tried to absorb the lesson of Tai Chi. Which is {BR} to be present. Just relax, {BR} accept what's coming to you. {BR} And be present here. {BR} But I thought, yeah, yeah, that would be easy it's {BR} so much easier {BR} to accept where you are if only you're in the right place! 
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+{LG} {BR} Well eventually camp was over and I I left, I drove back to New York, and as I was {BR} driving away over the George Washington Bridge I could still hear alternate Ithaca Tom. He was {BR} hanging around me, haunting me like a ghost, and I thought oh god {BR}, I need professional help. {BR} So I made an appointment with the family psychic {LG} . This is the guy that's done readings for all of my siblings, and my cousins, and I went to see him and {BR} he's an astrologer so he did out my chart and {BR} this time he was very interested in {BR} this polarity that he saw. He said "you have Saturn in the midheaven". And this {BR} marks you as a person who could be very organizational. {BR} The organizational man, the hierarchical one. {BR} Uh the corporate guy. The dad, the provider {BR} . Not particularly sexy but a straight up guy. {LG} {BR} On the other hand, there's pisces and the sun {BR} and they're they're uh they're squared with each other, you can't resolve them, pisces and the dreamer, the mystic {BR} the guy that's {BR} the artist that's never quite pinned down, never quite in a relationship {BR} and and you have to {BR} balance these two, you you have to chose one or the other and {BR} and and normally I love to hear this kind of thing, this is the great thing about going to a psychic, is that {BR} for an hour they just talk about me! {BR} Its, {LG} its so interesting! {BR} {LG} But this time I was so caught up with Alternate Ithaca Tom I couldn't really {BR} appreciate it all. So I I just blurted out what had happened to me, and I asked him {BR} what does this mean? And the psychic said {BR} wow. {LS} This represents a fundamental choice that you've made in your life. {BR} You could have been {BR} the hierarchical guy. But you chose to be the piscean. {BR} If you had decided {BR} to be an academic, you would have been very successful. {BR} There's no doubt that the university structure would have {BR} raised you up, you probably would be married, have kids. I thought aw, shit, alternate Ithaca Tam {BR} made the right choices!! {BR} But the psychic said {BR} if you had become an academic, {BR} your wife would have had an affair with your brother, or your best friend. {LG} {BR} Alternate Ithaca Tom is crushed. {BR} {LG} He's just found out that his wife is having an affair with his research partner! This is the guy he's been working with for fifteen years! {BR} It's a long term affair, they're {BR} they're moving in together, she's taking the kids! {BR} He's completely crushed, poor alternate Ithaca Tom. He {BR} he starts drinking {BR} he can't keep his {BR} lecture notes together, he can't keep his research together he's coming up for tenure and it's all  falling apart, {BR} and in the midst {BR} of his turmoil, he's suddenly {BR} pierced by this vision {BR} of himself, driving a Volkswagen van. {LG} He's off to camp, uh, it's a Tai Chi camp! {LG} He's {BR} he's not married, {BR}, he doesn't have kids! he doesn't even have a job! {BR} He's completely free. It looks so good this image, {BR} it pierces him to his heart {BR} . It begins to hang around him and to haunt him {BR} like a hungry ghost. {LG} {NS}

stimuli/story_02.txt

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+{NS} Tom Waits loved the novel JT Leroy had written {LS} called "Sarah". He wanted to do an interview, with JT Leroy for Vanity Fair magazine, and he wanted JT's input, on who would photograph the spread, cause JT Leroy was notoriously shy. {BR} One of the reasons why JT was so shy was cause JT didn't have a body. JT was an avatar.
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+{BR} So let me take you back some years. I was sixteen, seventeen years old, and I was a ward of the state, {BR} in a group home in New York city. Eight girls, one bathroom. {BR} And {BR} the girls had all had stories {BR} being, some had been raped {BR}, stabbed by a parent, sold into slavery. Everyone had secrets. At night time we would tell our secrets. {BR} And you couldn't tell. And I was the one they would come to and would tell their stories. And if you asked me why I was there. I don't know. All the intakes. Dysfunctional family. I dropped out of school. I don't know. {BR} I was always interested in "How do you tell?" And there was this movie, Street Wise, it was a documentary by Mary Ellen Mark {BR} about homeless kids in Seattle. And I gathered up {BR} some of my friends, my best friend Lauren, from the group home, {BR} we had been institutionalized together prior to the group home. {BR} And we went and saw this movie, {BR} and {BR} we saw ourselves on the screen. {BR} {BR} Now, the street {BR} can seduce you, {BR} and these kids were getting swallowed, {BR} and we knew we were just one step removed. {BR} And when we left {BR} the movie, {BR} I saw how people looked at us. Right before, they were kind of scared of us, and I got off on that, {BR} you know, cause we had street all over us. {BR} {BR} But after the movie they looked at us with this kind of curious compassion. {BR} {BR} And suddenly I didn't want to be the victim in the movie, I was interested in "How do you make that bridge so people suddenly care? And you're curious enough to maybe care? How do you do that?" And in the group home {BR} everyone's telling their stories, {BR} and I don't even know how to tell mine, I don't even have the tools to tell mine. {BR} And I would go to buy a little relief, to a street corner, there was a phone booth right on the corner, and I would {BR} remove it from me. I'd be a boy {BR} and I'd call hotlines, and I'd tell them {BR} all the stories, my stories, my pain, everyone's stories. {BR} The house parent, {BR} who survived the Biafran wars, who would say to me, {BR} "Laura, your job is to tell our stories." {BR} Cause in the group home my job was, I was the translator, so {BR} some girls having some problems with the house parent, they'd come to me and I would translate between what each other was saying. {BR} Again, {BR} if you asked me, I don't know. {BR} {BR} All I knew {BR} is if you heard {BR} what my story was, {BR} my deepest belief, {LS} was that you would say, "Well you deserve it. {BR} Wheh stih you're disgusting. You're horrible." {BR} My deepest hope {BR} was that you wouldn't, but I never ever gave you the chance. 
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+{BR} But I wanted to learn the tools, to tell, cause that's the bridge. And I won a scholarship to the New School for Social Research, and they let me in without the SATs. I said, "I can't take the SATs, my last grade of completion is sixth" {BR} And they let me in {BR} with a with an essay. {BR} And I'm taking every writing class I can get my hands on and I wrote this piece {BR} in this class about: {LS} you can tell a kid that's not gonna survive long on the street because the scars run this way, {BR} and the kids are there wrap enwrapped you know, and, and, and everyone's looking to see whose exterior matches the story. {BR} And everyone's looking at this one cool guy, he's all raggedy. {BR} And I'm in the group home {BR} and I'm just looking. I'm looking at him too and I wanted to be him {BR} cause he matches the voice. {BR} And I don't want them to know it's me cause it's going to ruin it. {BR} I wanted to be him. {BR} And then when they leave, cause they don't know, it was anonymous, reading the story, {LS} and then and then when we leave, {BR} {BR} I hear people talking about, "Wow, I never thought of it that way. I didn't know that about {BR} this scene and that." {BR} And I'm like, "That's what I want. {BR} {BR} How do you get people to see what they never what they never saw before? They, they never knew before." {BR}
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+{BR} I keep writing, {BR} but never as myself. {BR} The writing gives me a little more relief. {BR} I start writing under the name Jeremy, {BR} which becomes JT. {BR} {CG} {LS} {BR} For me, {BR} I buy myself another day {BR} everytime {BR} I can find a way to tell, but as long {BR} as it's not coming from me, never as a woman. {LS} {BR} So, when I got asked by Tom Waits, {BR} when he asked JT Leroy who he wants to photograph Mary Ellen Mark. {BR} My sister in law came over one day, {BR} and she just shaved her head. {BR}{BR} And I'm looking at her and she looks like {BR} the blonde hair blue eyed little boys that I would see in the after school specials when they were just starting to talk about abuse, sexual abuse, {BR} {LS} always a blonde hair, blue eyed, cute little boy that you would forgive and love {BR} no matter what they did, no matter how transgressive {BR} and bad they were, {BR} you just loved them. {LS} I I never saw myself represented in any of that. {BR} {BR} So, she looked, {CG} she was JT. {BR} And she agreed to be my avatar. {BR} {BR} Now Mary Ellen Mark said that the person she was photographing {BR} did not feel like somebody who had suffered, liked someone, {BR} it felt like someone who maybe came from privilege. {BR} But she said the books {BR} needed to be in the world, that the books showed a world she had never seen. {BR} That she wanted the books to be out there. {BR} And she photographed the avatar. {CG}
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+{LS} I continued to publish under the name JT Leroy. {BR} I wrote the book "Sarah," which was received with great acclaim. {BR} I published it as fiction, all my work as fiction. {LS} {BR} Came to pass, {BR} that this book, that explored {BR} the wilds of West Virginia,{BR} a state I had never been in, {BR} in this kind of magic. I played with gender, and identity, and {BR} it's the spirit, everything that I had experienced. {BR} All the pain, {BR} all the suffering, the joy, the hope, {BR} the holding on to finding that a possibility of being saved no matter what. The spirit. {BR} The humor. {BR} It was all in there turned upside down, in this book "Sarah" {BR} came to pass {BR} that I am revealed as JT Leroy. {BR} The articulation in the New York Times is {BR} "Hoax.{BR} Perpetrator.{BR} Culprit. {BR} The jig is up. {BR} Come clean. {BR} Liar. Fake fiction writer." No {NS}. New York Times. Fake fiction writer. {LG} {BR} Oscar Wilde said, "Give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth." {LS} {BR} I received death threats, {LS} {BR} hate mail, was black listed, sued in federal f {NS} ing court. {BR} People didn't understand why I wouldn't apologize. "She won't apologize." {BR} I wouldn't. How could you apologize for what kept, it kept me alive. I couldn't do it another way. {BR} I knew no other way. {BR} Slowly, {BR} the fan mail came back. I would get letters where people would talk about what the work meant to it, {BR} how it transformed them, how it saved their lives, how it allowed them to see a world that they had never seen before. {BR} I got invited to speak, welcome back into the community of artists, {BR} to speak all over the world. {BR} In spring, {LS} {BR} I did a sold out reading at Foyles in London, and I'm signing books, {BR} as me. {BR} And these collectors are there, {BR} and {BR} you know I'm I'm signing books, where editions in languages that I didn't even know existed. {BR} And {BR} uh uh, "This. Sign this. Sign this. Sign this." And {BR} I'm leaving my body. {BR} And all of a sudden the crowds kind of part. {BR} And this girl comes walking towards me she's big, {BR} and she's got cuts all over her arms, {BR} she's carrying a bag, {BR} and I know what's coming. It's what I've been preparing for my whole life. {BR} She reaches in her bag, {BR} and I know she's gonna stab me. And she takes out a book. {BR} And she tells me {LS} {LS} that she came to my work after the reveal. {LS} {BR} She ah asks me to sign her diary. {LS} {BR} I realize that everything that had happened up to that moment, {BR} had prepared me for this. And I got up, and I held her. {BR} {LS} Thank you. {NS}