In High School Musical 2 a group of high school friends get together to sing about the summer and of freedom and friendship. They announce to each other that “all the hard work [...] is done!”
This is 2007, the summer that the iPhone appears. The movie was released three months later, that September, when the summer they are singing about is over for everyone but them. But for them, the funeral is a banquet. They sing about “the time we get to share” and that this time of togetherness will last “forever”. We are outside of time. Outside of this eternal summer. We are a new kind of creature, built on Zoom. We are part bird, part human, part many other things: Kara Chin, Gentle Stranger, Felix Rose Kawitzky, Plastique Fantastique, John Powell-Jones, Frankie Roberts, Maggie Roberts and Thomson & Craighead.
We sing through July into December. This is a Not-Me. There are many timelines and we don’t know yet when things are going to happen or what they are going to be. They will come out now and then over the next few months: performances, screenings, links to websites. Back in 2007, as the old friends sing, Facebook adjusts its status update to remove the word “is”.
Here in 2020 we start to declare our individual updates over the top of one another as each appears in the story, different worlds, different timelines existing side-by-side, singing to the tune of Sumer is icumen in: “Frustrate the content delivery system!” – “Dissolve the subject and cease to exist!” – “Fantasise memorials!” – “Become octopus!” – “Create characters; make enclaves; build worlds!” – “Haunt Google Maps!” – “Log unearthly transmissions!” – “Beam into devices!” What do we do now? Come out, playmate! We need to get together.