SCAM: A Siren Song
At 11 AM on November 21st, 2019 I received a call regarding an alleged assault, money laundering, and car theft under my social security number. By 12:40 PM, I had the money out of my account and into the position to compromise it.
Somber and separated only in simplicity, “Aude Lang Syne” is a song about the fragility of an anticipated emotion. It moves and curls with attention to the bellowing strokes of notes which compliment the singer, whether studio performer or bar patron, through to the resonant end. I feel a comparison to it can be made to waiting for someone to pick up your call.
My roommate was rehearsing it on upright bass when I got home. The feverish swings of his bow rising in crisp waves. It was beautiful to hear and welcoming to come home to. I had called him from the back porch, the second time after I hung up with the man claiming to be someone who was taking care of me.
The simple rolling of the song has filled the lungs of celebrators for years. An absolute testament to the strength of how small parts of our culture always live the longest.
I had spoken to my dad: It makes you feel violated.
I had spoken to myself: How could you allow such a violation?
I had spoken in an even egg-shelled tone with the man on the phone.
First, it was another voice:
“Please stay on the line as you are connected to the officer in charge of your social security is connected.
” 1-325-676-8202. Abilene, Texas.
Then, concisely and with a starched-out accent, a man asked if he was speaking to me.
Somber and clairvoyant an ancient trauma shifted in its sleep and whispered chimes of this melody in his voice: It is the voice of my grandmother over the phone at Christmas after the divorce. It is my brother’s blood in the water of a pond in Albuquerque New Mexico when I used the emergency phone at 10.
“Should old acquaintances be forgotten…and never..brought.to mind…”
I said yes. I asked him who he was. He answered. I asked him what his authority was, where he was, whom he represented, why he was calling:
“Your social security number has been compromised. There was a car found in Austin Texas with drugs and blood. Your name is connected to money laundering and other felonies.”
The anxiety wrings blood from my lungs. It is that winter I wasn’t able to pay my phone bill. I sold my blood for money to make it to school but showed up and the class was canceled so I cried instead of ate and walked back to my car with a parking ticket.
“We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet…”
At exactly 8:30 AM every morning, there is a soft release of air. Then, slowly as if pulling the curtains back to let in the first sunbeams, my roommate runs the bass bow through crystalline rosin. Then, in what I feel must also be timed, space lifts itself from its bed of mundane autonomy. In this space is pleasant temptations of a collapsing motivation to return to bed; to peel apart the floor-boards and bury into the foundations of the house like a crepuscular ghost.
I feel this weight of waiting hang while the words carve comfort from the spaces between my skin and the vibrations of this voice.
Words like:
“Linked to murder…
“…possession of drugs with blood…”
“…activity found under your social security number.”
“Mr. [BLANKED] we need to secure your accounts. Can you give me the balances in your checking account and any credit cards and we…”
There is an echo of the church bells when I was eight. When I got pneumonia and slept in the bed of an unpleasantly lit room alone. There was a magnanimous crucifixion bound to the ceiling above me peering down on the only phone in the house. My relatives would come in to answer it after it’s cavernous, fever-dream rings. And leave without speaking to me.
The echo finds my carefully curated phone-call anxiety here when I say:
“I… I need to tell you I feel very overwhelmed. Obviously, this has never happened…”
“Mr [BLANKED] I am just trying to help secure…”
It made me feel trapped when he said it. And he kept saying it. And he kept bringing up this money.
As I walked down the street.
As I reached the ATM with his voice listening on the phone in my pocket.
As I kept it on mute when a police officer conveniently drove past and I asked him what he thought.
He said this was uncalled for. We would not contact you via phone.
Never.
“And surely you will bring your cup. And surely I will bring mine.”
“Auld Lang Syne” is a piece about the recollection of the mundanity of who you were before that changed in some way. Before an everyday answering of a phone held such weight. This simple concept of self becomes warped as the influences of a past and the invocation of a phone call designed to put you under duress removes your occupancy as an individual. This panoptic divulgence into how who we are is predetermined by what we watch, who we see, what we do and how we spend is the contemporary string theory: it lines us in a trampolining spider web keeping us both awake and alert. The important image that comes from “Auld Lang Syne” is the carrion feeling of separation of self and that of humanity can be translated via a song carried word of mouth all the way from 1788.
“We too have run around the slopes. And picked the daisies fine.”
From over 200 years of building city infrastructures and creating a comfortable and, more importantly, immaculate and convenient communication system this voice of a social security scam is really a voice of violence. Vocalization of the treason hidden inside the unpacking metaphors of trauma. These sensations of response to duress; the inability to leave the phone; the constant coercion for me to fulfill their intentions (I even got a Lyft to the ATM instead of walking); and the absolute disregard for logic all strung me tighter in the coils of the media-infiltration web. The shock of which I will permanently feel as if I sat on the corduroy paisley couch watching the first broadcasts of the Vietnam War.
It is the simple things that live the longest. The small everlasting traditions like answering a phone that inform how you are held to annihilation in a web of violence.
After blessed soldiers return; when power lines fail, and a phone company sells your phone number to cover the costs of hiding tax information. Your scrapped apart agency will tug and bounce in the web of this War for Information. This buoyancy pattern becoming the new Matrix-Esque battery to power fear, coercion, and apathy. If the sways pump and build correctly, then the War will pulsate further.
“We've wondered many weary foot…Since auld lang syne”
I lay in the late evening after work and I am simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed that I was able to be compromised that way. Me; someone who still picks up penny’s and doesn’t trust the mirrors on ATM’s when I’m depositing my checks. Someone with decades of emotional dedication to every detail in every interaction I have. Emotional scaffolding dedicated to unpacking phone-call anxiety specifically.
I felt absolutely severed from myself; this self awareness.
I got up.
I blocked the number.
I decided that there were very few things that could do this to me; that my ability to draw a connection of its tension and ability to arrest me to the breathing release of our countries favorite background song to a new year means that it was something I had to react to.
It is a simple thing to hold on to.
“And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet.”
P.S: The National Agency of Social Security has officially released this statement on their website about the increasing number of phone calls about security breaches: “Our employees will never threaten you for information or promise a benefit in exchange for personal information or money.”
Please, if you are ever concerned, read it in full here: https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-10018
If nothing else, remember you can reach out and be heard.
