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Won’t you please let me go?
These words lie inside, they hurt me so
And I’m not the kind that likes to tell you
Just what I want to do
I’m not the kind that needs to tell you
Just what you want me to

I saw you this morning
I thought that you might like to know
I received your message in full a few days ago
I understood every word that it said
And now that I’ve actually heard it
You’re going to regret
And I’m not the kind that likes to tell you
Just what you want me to
You’re not the kind that needs to tell me
About the birds and the bees

Do you find this happens all the time?
Crucial point one day becomes a crime
And I’m not the kind that likes to tell you
Just what I want to do
I’m not the kind that needs to tell you, ooh

Lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you
Lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you
Lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you

Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh
Ooh!

I am living by a new rule where I stop giving a shit about people who don’t give a shit about me to combat the creeping exhaustion I feel (emotionally, physically). I invest too much in other people’s shit: fix your own problems! leave me be! I am in the midst of a great uprooting: my 30-day notice signaling the end of my rental agreement at the end of this month, my two-week notice marks my exit from my job with my last day being tomorrow, I have way too many projects going on right now: an essay/collection of related essays/book I wanna start researching/outlining/writing, two short-form videos both started but not finished, a public art experiment, my short movie, an impromptu feature-length movie of sorts that needs to be stitched together, and I have no phone—it’s at a new friend’s house (I have been spending a considerable amount of time with her because I enjoy her company and conversation, it’s hard for me to find people I actually find funny and charming and worthy of respect) and I don’t have transportation or time to go get it (not that I particularly need it; wait, yes I kinda do, I gotta call my grandma to tell her I plan on taking her up on her offer to live at her house for the remainder of the summer), so day three without a phone begins tomorrow. No matter.

I was reminded of someone who was at the foreground of my mind some months ago (go back and see for yourself) today. I had been sticking to my new rule, but today was such a good day, although I can think of absolutely no particularly discernible reason why, so after I walked home from the bus stop in the rain, I decided to perform a dreaded check-in—a 21st-century digital phenomena wherein a rejected party masochistically, and therefore, often routinely, keeps tabs on the person(s) who have turned them away. It has been about two months probably since I told myself to finally cut that shit out, and in my stubborn resolve, I stuck to it rigidly and absolutely. It was this person too that came to mind when I listened to the first song off my first playthrough of New Order’s Power, Corruption and Lies (May 26th). As I kept returning to the song in the following days and weeks, the two intonations of the vocals struck a chord within me. Now, the more I mull it over, the more I think this is such an obtuse observation, but I see the two timbres—one high and strained, one low and tired—as a man and a woman, the complementing objects of the song. But, they are not having a conversation. Each of their respective verses like a telegraph through time to the other, not even certain if the other will hear it, let alone respond—sent out into the ether to be picked up, only if they happen to stumble on the right digital crater, that is, if the breadcrumbs were followed correctly. It’s a game, simple sign exchange, word=play, and the best part, you don’t even know if they’re even playing at all.

Yet, what I am also just now realizing is the vocalizations at the end of the song are sung in the higher-pitched voice. Across space-time, the response of his lover is lost, made blurred and indistinct by the distance, “further all the time.” Curtis’s choice of further instead of farther denotes the distance as a metaphorical one, bridged by a technological (in)capability that compresses physical space into modulated waves, a relationship of re-/delayed mediation.¹ Stretched too thin. Are they cries? shouts? elation? guilt? anger? or symbolic of everything left unsaid? An understanding, yes.

Oh, and so what did I find on this walk through the museum gallery of the digital Other? Words that I take as written only for me. They found me and plucked all the same chords, so they are only for me. And once more, their words inspired me to action, stirred an idea that had been brewing internally, now poured out into the ether. Read my thoughts. Who knows if I’ll get back to you—when? Two months later, my bad idea got its proper conclusion after only two weeks, as it turned out, unbeknownst to me. You see, it was after my message was received in full that I made my rule to get my shit together. I knew it wasn’t a bad idea: it was absolutely necessary.

The beauty of the excruciating situation of the song and the events recalled to me tonight? None of it was meant for me. It means absolutely nothing. The song can be interpreted according to any number of readings, as one voice or two or entirely otherwise, all at once. The message I found carefully framed on the wall could be about me or anyone else. How brilliant! You write poetry, I write nonsense. I feel so much better. It’s not even a question.

You sly dog, you do think about me! Did you check in?! I’m calling it there, that’s what I’m telling myself. Look how much fun this is. It is beautiful.

Hello?

Do you read me?

Huh, guess no one’s home.

Note

1. The alternative meaning of further as adjective (i.e., moreover, furthermore) not shared by farther manifests that the “touching” is happening “all the time” precisely because of the “distance”—the constant contiguity of techno-mediation. It’s just digital screens instead of analog radios.