?Interrobang! · Track 35 · middle
Can You Label a Love
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a photo timeline of a relationship's ups and downs. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Plot Twist Pete — content tagger from the streaming vaults; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: a tepui on the Guiana Shield. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Pete tags every scene's emotion to train the algorithm; left his own relationship-timeline atop a tabletop mountain. Can you sort a love into a category?
Lyrics
[Intro] Found this on the tabletop of the world. Plot Twist Pete. Your timeline, left to the mist on the Guiana Shield. [Verse 1] Your job is to watch the world through a screen. Click. Tag. Sentimental. Click. Tag. Bittersweet. You feed the machine keywords for feeling. 'Slow Burn.' 'Forced Proximity.' 'Tragic Ending.' Your fingers know the neat little boxes for every human story. But this one... this one is yours. A stack of photographs, dog-eared, water-stained. From the first smile in 2015 to the empty doorway in 2022. [Chorus] So what's the tag for this, Pete? What's the genre for the silence between two people in a car? Is it 'Hopeful' or 'Ominous'? Does the algorithm have a category for the way her hand rests on your arm just before the argument? Can you sort a love into a category? Can you label a love? [Verse 2] Here's the one from the trip to Lisbon. Keyword: Golden Hour. Uplifting. And here's the next one. A hospital waiting room. Keyword: Anxiety. Medical Drama. Here's you, asleep on the couch, her book on your chest. What's the sentiment analysis on that? Is it love, or just exhaustion? You drew a map of the emotional arc, and left it here, on the wet sandstone, where the rivers run underground. [Chorus] So what's the tag for this, Pete? What's the genre for the silence between two people in a car? Is it 'Hopeful' or 'Ominous'? Does the algorithm have a category for the way her hand rests on your arm just before the argument? Can you sort a love into a category? Can you label a love? [Bridge] This mountain is 1.7 billion years old. It doesn't have a tag. The Brocchinia plants that grow only here don't fit a tidy description. The mist comes and erases the cliff edge. It asks for no label. It just is. [Outro] The last photo has no date. Just a view from a window, rain on the glass. The tag is blank. You left the last box empty. What are we, Pete?