Lyrics for the Table: Random Access Memory

Sharing songs written in-game by my OC rockerboy K2 for the campaign Cyberpunk Red: Never Fade Away.

Album: DemoGraphic

DemoGraphic is the first album/ep released by K2 after their debut performance at Hammer. The album is an eclectic mix of musical styles, from instrumental jazz to an industrial-metal ballad on the same album. The title comes from the fact that most of the songs were on K2’s demo, combined with the fact that the lyrics are mostly autobiographical.

On another level, the title refers to the fact that, like K2 themself, music doesn’t fit into a box but is wild, free, and authentic to itself.

Track Five

Random Access Memory

This was a poem I wrote in 2016; I’ve updated it a little to reflect changes in my own life, cyberpunk society, and the associated terminology.

Reading my contacts is a Reading of the Dead:

the accident a year ago,

the unreported overdose - 

so many people come to mind:

those who went before their time,

to cancer, self-harm, homicide . . .

 

My agent’s filled with ghosts:

a picture of the five of us

eating six scoops of ice cream,

last voicemails and texts screaming 

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday!

Love You! Miss You!

Can’t wait for you to meet my fur baby!

OK!

Thanks!

 

My devices are now haunted places;

I wish the dead would just pick up,

or at least answer those messages I left a while ago.

Calling voicemail just to pretend to talk to you

and imagine you’re checking your messages . . .

until the line was disconnected

and my texts comes back undeliverable.

 

I have an old box of phones with messages saved on them.

I’ve moved this box with me twice,

and will probably move them forever.


There’s a sense you can call beyond death.

I keep accidentally calling, but I just can’t hit delete,

marking you “deceased,” or changing my number –

because then they’re really, truly gone.

 

Calling at our usual time,

I think of all the things I would say

and the problems I would share;

long distance means something different now.

 

In cyberspace there’s no such thing as goodbye.

I still check all the media feeds;

you told me things I needed to hear.

I get reminders every year

for birthdays, anniversaries, and invitations

suggesting I reconnect with the dead;

hoping for an RSVP from beyond the grave.

Reminders of the gifts I bought

and the songs I played for you;

Our contacts are like tattoos

– the story of our lives.

 

Some people you aren’t meant to get over,

so I write them letters and burn them,

hoping they get them.

I keep the number on speed dial until it’s reassigned.

Same number, different face:

technological reincarnation
 

Rabbit holes stuffed with memory,

Digital immortality,

Deleting feels too much like forgetting.