?Interrobang! · Track 89 · middle

Do the Stories We Consume Become Us

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a laptop layered in stickers of every life-phase. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Book Reader Bob — streaming content-viewer from a screening room; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: a dense, trackless reach of the central Amazon. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Bob watches screens all day to write synopses though he's a Book Reader; left his sticker-covered laptop — a map of every phase — in the deep Amazon. Do the stories we consume become who we are?

Lyrics

[Intro]
Under the ceiba canopy, where the light comes down in pieces.
Cool aluminum, sweating in the humidity.
I found you.
A silver rectangle in the green.

[Verse 1]
Your whole skin is a story.
Not one story, but a thousand, layered like bark.
A peeling sticker for a band from 1996.
A pixelated sword from a game I think I played in 2005.
The red handmaid's bonnet from 2018.
Each one a season, a chapter you didn't write, but watched.
Each one pressed down hard over the last.
A map of every world you fell into.

[Chorus]
They called you Book Reader Bob.
But your book was a screen, wasn't it?
A blue-white glow in a dark room.
Ten thousand hours of other people's lives.
Do the stories we consume become our bones?
Does the fiction we breathe become our blood?

[Verse 2]
I can see the room.
The smell of stale coffee and recycled air.
You write the synopsis, the tag.
Tragic, hopeful, bittersweet.
You sort their feelings into folders.
While your own life is this shell.
This archaeology of obsessions.
A sci-fi quote next to a political slogan.
A cartoon cat next to a symbol for a grief you never earned.

[Chorus]
They called you Book Reader Bob.
But your book was a screen, wasn't it?
A blue-white glow in a dark room.
Ten thousand hours of other people's lives.
Do the stories we consume become our bones?
Does the fiction we breathe become our blood?

[Bridge]
So you carried your archive here.
To the one place with no signal.
Where the only story is the jaguar's path, the orchid's bloom.
Did you want the jungle to peel you back to the metal?
To wash you clean of every episode?
Or did you just leave the costume behind?

[Outro]
I'm closing the lid now.
The screen goes dark.
The leaf mold is already claiming the edges.
Who are you, Bob, when the credits roll?