Dr. Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen (story)

Dr. Murke was sound engineer at a German radio station. He recorded a speech by a vicar. In this speech the word 'God' was used a lot. Afterwards for some religious reason the radio station wanted the words 'God' to be replaced by 'The Higher Being Which We Praise'. Engineer Murke asked the vicar to say these words several times. Then he started his editing job.

The words 'God' had to be cut out (herauszuschneiden) and 'The Higher Being Which We Praise' had to be inserted (hineinzukleben).
He started with seperating the takes of "The Higher Being Which We Praise" and he put those peaces of tape in a bowl.

Then he cut each 'God' out of the original recording and inserted the new words. He saved the cutted 'Gods' in a second bowl.

When he was finished, the speech was much longer than the original. To reduce the duration to the scheduled length, Dr. Murke cut out all thinking breaks and collected them in a third bowl.

At last he put the collected silences (Gesammeltes Schweigen) together and took them home. And sometimes, after a hard day, when he did not want to hear any sound, he played this tape.