North by Northwestern

Every night before going to bed, Medill senior Laura Mayer checks her inbox at IMDOINGGREAT@gmail.com. People’s voices stream into the empty space of her sparse, white room — voices that talk about the stories and places and people of the day.

“I’m doing okay, I guess. I mean, it’s nearing the end of the year so I have to start thinking about the future and about life after school. And I’m trying not to…actually I’m trying not to at all.”

“I’m doing really good because I’m listening to the Flaming Lips.”

“Hi, um, I’m a bit of a mess tonight. I feel suffocated, like something’s sitting on my chest and I can’t get it off.”

These little voice mails are all channeled into audio clips, born out of Mayer’s MacBook in a 3 by 3 foot area consisting of a foldaway TV dinner table and the left end of a silver chest holding her audio equipment. Curled up on her chair in her little workspace, Mayer puts together audio vignettes of everyday people and their day.

Mayer is the creator of The How Are You Doing Project , an audio art project that pulls together different stories from a hotline that asks people the question “How are you doing today?” — a question, says Mayer, often glossed over.

“There’s just so much that people are, or at least you anticipate that, they’re trying to get across,” Mayer says. “And I think in a lot of the conversation fillers, like the ‘Oh how are you’ or ‘what’s ups’ of the days, people have gotten themselves into these expectations – that you’re not going to get a full answer from that.”

“It’s been really effective, because I think people really do want to say how they’re doing, you know?” Mayer says. But people never really ask that question with the intention of listening.

The How Are You Doing hotline is a way for people to reach out and answer that question as in-depth — or shallow — as they want. Mayer conceptualized and created this project in the span of three days, coming up with the initial idea while brushing her teeth and being particularly unhappy on February 11, 2009. The Web site, following a WordPress template, went up a day later, the hotline after two.

Only four calls trickled in the first few days, while Mayer stuck publicity stickers onto bathroom walls, telephone poles, and other public spaces, as well as plugging the site onto a WNUR show. But the major turning point came on February 18, when her friend put it up on StumbleUpon. That day, the site got about 14,000 hits, and Mayer spent hours listening to voicemails at night. The calls ranged from short little “I’m doing great”s to long-winded stories of people’s days and ultimately, their lives.

“The big genesis of this idea was this idea of personal connection, from people to people,” says Mayer, who has a fascination with personal yet anonymous connections through the seemingly emotionless Internet. She ultimately wants to work with audio in an online context to help create these interpersonal relationships.

“[People] just have busy lives, and the way that we are online all the time, and always all bustling around. We don’t get an opportunity to connect with other people as much as I think we should,” she says.

Now, Mayer receives some five calls a day, 20 calls during times of more publicity (which is no longer stickers, but online ads on StumbleUpon and the like). Callers’ stories tell of a parent’s visit, which eventually leads to a poignant recognition of their disconnection with their recently deceased brother. Or the nervousness in performing a lead role in a play for the first time. The frustration of finding a job to make ends meet. The excitement or problems of falling in love. Regular occurrences that lead to something more, something simultaneously relatable yet unique.

“People are just really natural in saying these little mini narratives that could just be about something really simple, like where they got lunch today, but that kind of reveals something larger about their lives,” Mayer says. “I think that that’s sort of the purpose of these conversation fillers, to try and open up to tell more about our lives.”

There are also some rather incredible stories that aren’t as regular — a story of a woman who spontaneously decided to join the Navy, for one. But Mayer’s favorites are those that talk about everyday activities. The point of it all is to find meaning in the everyday rituals and habits. So there’s the “Navy story,” and then there’s “The purpose one,” another voicemail where a woman talks about trying to find meaning in everyday life.

“The everyday does have this really strong banal grasp on us, whether or not we want to admit it,” Mayer says, and she wants The How Are You Doing Project to make both callers and listeners recognize that grasp and rethink those daily routines. “It’s as if [people are] just throwing away these boring dregs of our lives. It is so much a part of what we do every day. So I think we should consider it as being meaningful.”

But in the bustling lives that many lead these days, it’s not often that people stop and talk about their days or even listen to others. Mayer listens to them all. She is PostSecret’s Frank Warren of How Are You Doing, and the amount of knowledge that that gives her can occasionally be disconcerting.

“Often when I’m listening to these, it’s right after I’m done doing a bunch of stuff and I’m getting ready to go to sleep,” Mayer says. “I’m like alone in my room, sitting down and listening to all these calls from strangers.”

“So that’s kind of strange for me, because sometimes I feel like I’m kind of overstepping my boundaries. I feel kind of weird. It’s like listening to a voicemail that someone has left, like, didn’t mean to leave for you. Kind of. Sometimes.”

The feeling, Mayer says, is especially acute when the messages are deeply emotional. “It can be really sad to hear people who are really upset and calling,” Mayer says. “You know I can relate to that — we all have our down moments. … I kind of wonder, like, maybe they should be talking to other people, rather than calling the line.”

It’s a little ironic: Although Mayer’s hotline was established to create connections between people, occasionally callers turn to the hotline instead of another person. Perhaps it’s the fact that the hotline is completely anonymous. Or the fact that the message machine listens and doesn’t judge. One caller said “I didn’t want to complain to my loved ones.”

“I think the truth of it is, people add it to their phones and are kind of at a loss of wanting to call to talk to someone,” Mayer says. “They don’t necessarily want to call the person that they want to call, or like they don’t have someone to call at that moment. So they call [the hotline] and, like, call the universe.”

Disclosure: Laura Mayer is a former North by Northwestern contributor.