Internet Archaeology, Covert Communication, and Blog Posts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzWJbSmYsJ0

Hello, hello Are you out there? M.O.D. are you out there? I can't see your face, but you left a trace on a data back-road that I almost erased. Not even God takes this long to get back, so get back. 'Cause I hit a fork in the road, I lost my way home, I'm cut off from out main line like a disconnected modem. Hello. Tap in the code, I'll reach you below. No one should brave the underworld alone. Hello, hello, hello. How do I reach you? Word has it on the wire that you don't who you are. Well, if you could jack into my brain you'd know exactly what you mean here. Mothers are trails on stars in the night. Fathers are black holes that suck up the light. That's the memory I filed on the fringe, along with the memory of the pain you lived in. Hello. I don't have the password, but the path is chain-linked, so if you've got the time, set up the tone to sync. Tap in the code, I'll reach you below. Hello, hello. Are you out there?

Lately, I’ve revisited Poe’s “Hello,” a song that aptly captures the strange emotional atmosphere of early internet culture with its data back-roads, disconnected modems, hidden messages, and voices trying to reach each other through static and distance. All of it is still relevant today.

I’ve been working on new writing for the blog surrounding communication, technology, longing, states of in-betweenness, psychological suspensions, and the strange ways people leave impressions of themselves behind, intentionally or otherwise. In other words, more of the same. I've also been going through the other 279 blog posts currently sitting in draft mode and slowly editing and republishing them. I will probably preserve their original publication dates rather than reposting them in the present, like this one, and this one, to maintain the chronological integrity of the blog.

Draft folder. Posts are currently undergoing revision according to the “Last Updated” column, though many remain in various stages of completion. Hyperlinks, embedded media, metadata, tags, categories, and SEO-related elements still require review and functionality checks, while unfinished edits throughout the archive continue to undergo revision.

Communication, or the idea of it, fascinates me, especially how both the living and the dead seem endlessly drawn toward coded messages. Then there’s the instinctive urge of the recipient to crack whatever hidden language exists beneath the surreptitious signal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOpXt30kZCw

One of my favorite cinematic moments involving communication occurs at the end of Lost in Translation, when Bob (Bill Murray) whispers something inaudible into Charlotte’s (Scarlett Johansson) ear before they part ways. The audience is deliberately excluded from whatever was said. We are only left with the emotional exchange, the sense that something intimate and important passed between them beyond the reach of language itself. I love that choice because it mirrors the strange limitations surrounding communication itself, especially when it comes to longing, grief, technology, coded messages, and the hidden emotional lives people carry beneath the visible surface.

Not every transmission is meant to be fully decoded. Sometimes all we are left with is the trace. Sometimes the communication is one-sided, imagined, or so obscured by distance, secrecy, silence, and longing that certainty itself becomes impossible.