last week i was on a zoom call, and someone sang a little snippet of the song All You Need Is Love by the Beatles. i went to spotify to look up the song so i could listen to it later, and a computer SNAFU unfolded ! “All You Need Is Love” lingered on the screen even when I navigated away from the spotify app, it hovered over my picture, other people’s pictures, even in a document i was working on. LOOK:
the Beatles sing ‘Nothing you can say……But you can learn how to play the game…..It’s easy….Nothing you can do…But you can learn how to be you in time…It’s easy….All you need is love….Love is all you need’
i love the brass instruments on the track. and in the malfunction the messages come through, and in the glitch — the reminder you didn’t know you needed, repeated minute by minute. digital whispers, or maybe commands.
and sometimes you need more than love. but for today. and side note: SNAFU is a military acronym: Situation Normal All Fucked UP. yes, yes it is,“so i tilt.”1
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub, 228 ↩