Where Art Thou?

 

Oh, sister, where art thou?

In the phone signals speeding up and down the wire?

In the radio waves dispersing themselves for eternity?

In the crackle of the stylus along the vinyl’s narrow ridges?

In the hiss of the magnetized tape as it relays its memories?

In the cold translated binary fed to us through copper strings?

Aren’t we all just memories in each others’ minds?

Collected in each others’ neuron patterns, to be replayed and altered?

Warped and distorted through every passing moment?

To be recalled from storage, cracked, degraded, and made into something else?

Something so far from its inspiration as to be an entirely different thing?

A thing that sometimes the equipment has a hard time reading?

Doomed Fated to be lost in the static.