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Hākārā Journal, Edition 21.2: Silence 0.2, Dec 2024
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“ …Of course it all started at Team Drinks, with the four other Associate high-performance alphas at McMPrime’s– the epicentre of Wall St.– where you speak in exaggerated whispers because you must show that your words are too important to be heard by others. It was here that her tongue jammed for the first time, and she could no longer get her mouth to produce words on demand. It must have gotten stuck because the Partner, who knew exactly how to reply to her words with her own words, had walked in. Usually, when a Partner walks into that cocktail bar of black polished wood counters, faux-gilded edges made to resemble up-slanting arrows, and mirrors on its ceiling, Associates and their bosses– the Engagement guys– sense a shift in the air. The tops of their eyeballs were rolling antennae forever in scan-mode reading the room and its reflections. It was a moment of silent communion for the most efficient team at the Company. They all saw what they would become. They all knew what they had to do. It all boiled down to whose elbows moved first moved sharp; whose optically-driven tongue worked most optimally. No crime, no mercy, all’s fair in flatland. Because it was a flat org structure driven by meritocracy, you see. They took pride in this egalitarian hyper-geometry of a 2-D pyramid.pptx projected on eyeballs. They all had the opportunity to get to the Partner first for they were all equal. And here she was, locked and loaded, with the trigger jammed.

And silent replies that swirl invitation

Flow dark and troubled to an oily sea

And there’s dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight

And silence that speaks so much louder than words

Of promises broken

What had stopped her that other morning from seeing the subtle malfunction of her vocal machinery, its gear going slightly out of synch with the ocular processing centre? She had dressed immaculately that day, worn regulation pumps, flattened her micro-expressions, projected her brightest smile, chirped her best small talk recounting the exact temperature, weekend activities and vacation plans. Why then couldn’t she produce the right noises when faced by a graph that went one way while the Partners wanted it to go the other? All she had to do was access her vast ankle-deep pool of the prestigious Icy Leak brand lubricant to grease her cords so she’d be able to produce the perfect tone-shapes of ear candy the Partners salivated for. Why was that pool now a deep salty ocean?

A distant ship smoke on the horizon

You are only coming through in waves

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying

Or was it that other day at the Annual One Hour of Serving the Community in 2008 where she had instinctively bent down to pick up the scattered contents of the Company Care Package that had slipped from the frost-bitten hands of the elderly man who had generously sacrificed his home and retirement savings for the noble higher mission of Keeping Sight of the Company’s Long-Term Vision? Her female boss, the pink-suited brown-skinned future DEI Champion Girlboss Engagement guy had scanned the room in aggressive overdrive for her, “Where was she, she was required to be present in the photographer’s frame with me, the only other female on this high-performance Team I’ve formed to pump results into trickling up the glass in the ceilings of that building? We are gathered here to deflect the press with visuals and words of inclusion. How could she make the Team look even more deficient in projected wins by not offering her body for view like a good soldier? What was she even being paid for, if not to display on LinkedIn the Company’s care for the Community? Oh, she’s in for some Performance Improvement…”

On the day the wall came down

The ship of fools had finally run aground

Promises lit up the night like paper doves in flight…”