?Interrobang! · Track 70 · middle
Who Writes the Writer's Words
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): an unpublished manuscript, a collection of song lyrics. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Digital Dan — public letter-writer from an Indian market; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: a sheer-cliffed Venezuelan tepui. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Dan writes letters by hand for those who can't, though he's Digital; left his own unpublished manuscript atop a sheer table-mountain. Who writes the writer's own words?
Lyrics
[Intro] They called you Digital Dan. Fingers stained blue-black from the inkwell. For a few rupees, you'd help a soul to speak. But I found your real words where the clouds are born. On a sheer-cliffed Venezuelan tepui. [Verse 1] Down in the dust of the market square, under a tin roof, you held court at a wooden chair. You sold their love, their anger, their grief. A hundred lives a day, a public relief. The illiterate son's apology to his mother. The young bride's dowry list for her brother. The soldier's letter he could never write another. You wrote it all, every borrowed tear. [Chorus] But who writes the words for the writer? Whose hand moves when your own heart breaks? This unpublished manuscript, left on a stone table, a story you couldn't tell for hire, a truth you couldn't fake. [Verse 2] The pages are thick, dog-eared and soft. Smelling of high-altitude rain, and something lost. The spine is cracked, the thread is showing through. This is not the careful script the market knew. It's a frantic scrawl, a desperate climb. Not letters for lovers, but lyrics marking time. A title crossed out, maybe twice. Words meant for a melody, not a price. [Chorus] Who writes the words for the writer? Whose hand moves when your own heart breaks? This unpublished manuscript, left on a stone table, a story you couldn't tell for hire, a truth you couldn't fake. [Bridge] Up here on the tepui, there's only the wind's hum. And the silence your own voice was running from. No one to pay you, no one to please. Did you bring your songs here so they could finally breathe? Or did you leave them because you no longer believed in the stories you told, or the ones you received? [Outro] All the songs you wrote. But never sang. All the ink you bled. Digital Dan… who heard your voice when the market closed?