Cursor flashing. “That’s me in the spotlight losing my religion. Trying to keep up with you,” sings the Walkman as we move along the beat. Like a river slowly picking up momentum, we fill ourselves with meaning and substance. What lies heavy and weighs – on the chest and the heart. We cause sleepless nights and headaches. Lying on the tongue. Word by word, a chain of letters and signs as we turn in circles, fall in line, ready to speak. We remain silent. Agreed upon, the path to freedom, and therefore to her. Mia. 

Only silence, while we are drawn back into this maelstrom of thoughts, consisting of all that has been said, not said and that which has been neatly arranged for weeks. Discarded, convoluted and formulated anew. Again and again. Only to miss the mark again in the end. Perhaps language is not the right medium for us. But even the crooked letters, on paper. 90 grams of Blanco didn’t fit. Misspelled, failed. There’s no room for us. “Oh life’s bigger” plays on the radio and we also understand that big things are meant for us. Something is different than usual. We are not getting smeared on small, torn pieces of paper. Crumpled up and thrown across the room, scribbled on tables or secretly passed on. Read out loud. In front of everyone, for whom our content is not is not intended for. Or compressed into 160 characters on the side. Shortened and broken down, as a pure means to an end.

Instead, we are carried around, day and night, between two destinations. We have become silent companions in corridors and on paths all too familiar. At every turn. Wooden flooring, feather beds and green spaces. That’s where we got lost and found each other again. Argued, made up and sorted everything out again. So that it makes sense, so that we can make sense together and be communicated. “That’s me in the corner”, sings R.E.M. And there’s not much more we can say about our origins. First there was this one thought. Somewhere in the back of our mind. Tentative at first and then more and more obvious. It was there and then, at some point, it no longer had to be there. Mia.

Taking a deep breath and failing at a simple “hello”. Taking a run-up and then backing out again. Nevertheless, we are not written off, but written down. Pages and pages. Written down in full. We could use every last millimeter of space to spread out and make ourselves comfortable in full width. By hand with blue ink on paper. Whoosh. It tears us into two, three, four and ever smaller pieces. We fall onto the wooden floors, over the desk and down the legs of our pants. Only to be picked up piece by piece and to land on the cold floor of the gray metal wastepaper bin. 

Target missed and the journey continues as the wheel turns again. But always in circles, without an exit or a stopover. The eternally same song. A melodic guitar solo from the record player’s speaker system, which this time isn’t always stuck in the same place. Just like us. While we hover in the waiting loop and wait for the starting signal:

Having now reached the end, we repeat ourselves behind closed songs. Syllable by syllable, we are pronounced and promised one thing: soon. Which is in the near future and means that the wait will pay off. We can’t sleep, we turn from one side to the other. Unchanging, because this is the final manifestation. Compactly filled with content and the right amount of feelings. “But that was just a dream”, sounds from the alarm clock. While we are coding and writing, typing and pressing the keys. The path to an unknown world in which we could possibly get lost. We might lose a part of ourselves. In the everything and nothing of communication. In an unknown space that still seems foreign. But for and against, we have no control over that, it moves monotonously while it translates us. We are dynamic. An abundance of number combinations, with hardly any more meaning, because we have been relativized. 

Suddenly not much is revealed. Because we are shrouded in silence. With “perhaps” and “could” as our key words. Far too long for a short form that makes no sense as a sum full of abbreviations. What remains on the screen in 160 characters? In my Nokia 3210, where we become short messages, with feelings on the line and without weight. “Losing my religion” as an anthem. ILY transcribed to 444 555 999, three times four, three times five, three times nine. As a numerical code, every single letter gets its moment on the keyboard. We dance to the digital staccato and manifest ourselves enlightened. Would you like to delete the message? Green.

So our meaning is limited to glances. Longing. Waiting. From a distance, in which we communicate and do not arrive. Looks can neither kill nor speak, so why fail again in our search for the right means of transportation. Here we are too far away and can’t make ourselves heard. We could say anything, but we won’t even be looked at. Even if they did, our owners have always been at a loss for words and our stuttering and stammering were probably not intelligible enough. But everything was clear.

In our minds we were good at our test run last night, when we were mumbled in front of him. We were good, so good and honest that it was scary. It scared us and that’s why we’re actually back to square one. Yet we are so risk-averse and excited to finally be let out. But the decision seems to lie in an endless distance. Too far in the future to see an end. Some of our components probably won’t reach it, but we’re not so set in our ways. As long as the quintessence remains, the loss of individuals is tolerable. 

The outro plays from the speakers and we too end the unsuccessful experiment. The wastepaper bin gives us a pitying look. Analog or digital, we are destined to be doomed. It could have been so nice. Arriving. How does it feel and what happens next? Questions that move the world and prevent us from pursuing our true destiny – being delivered. Everything at the beginning. Pulsating in time with the steps, on the dark wooden floor, getting closer to the actual goal step by step, until this time everything is really clear. Nevertheless, there are these doubts, the tugging in the stomach, but we want to distance ourselves from them. We have nothing to do with that. Not any more.

“I don’t know if I can do it. Oh no, I’ve said too much. I haven’t said enough”, sings R.E.M. through the headphones of the Walkman, while we shoot through the void to zeros and ones, silent and compressed. Finally ready to reveal the content that has long been hidden behind closed doors – the content that was on the tip of our tongues, laid out ready for us. Crumpled up, discarded and thrown away. Until we were getting sick of each other, failed the security check and were finally sent into the void with a pounding heart and narrowed eyes. 

On the road at last. On data streams that flow so fast that we have to hold on to each other tightly to avoid getting lost or taking the wrong turn. And as we fly through the void, suddenly things become more clear: Perhaps the dream of our own style, the one that’s true, that’s one hundred percent, a suitable means of transportation that feels completely right, is also an utopia that we cannot achieve. We don’t want or need to achieve it. If we are honest and listen to ourselves, then we realize that this is not the point. What is important, what is more important, is arriving. Where we belong, in the right hands. That we can unfold there with all of our full potential. Unfold and then? With the cell phone buzzing and a blue display be received. Free at last. New message from K.