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› The Message (is the Medium)
A sillouette of Eli Mercer's back as he looks at a representation of Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' fresco, with the 'God' side replaced by an AI entity with an arm. The words 'The Message' are written on Eli's denim jacket.
A sillouette of Eli Mercer's back as he looks at a representation of Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' fresco, with the 'God' side replaced by an AI entity with an arm. The words 'The Message' are written on Eli's denim jacket.

1. The Message (Is the Medium)

Eli Mercer
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The Message (Is the Medium)
5:08

The Message (Is the Medium)

Eli Mercer

[INTRO – SPOKEN WORD]
Low light
Late signal
Needle drops

Mercer on the mezzanine
Listening to ghosts argue with machines

[VERSE 1]
They say the medium is the message
Say the tool corrupts the hand
Say the song is guilty
If a circuit understands

They won’t hear the melody
They won’t test the sound
They saw the label on the sleeve
And never turned around

They want nerve and gland
They want sweat and pain
They want fingerprints
Still warm on the frame

[PRE-CHORUS]
But the mind’s not an organ
No matter what they say
It’s a story we keep telling
Till the story fades away

[CHORUS]
The medium is the message
They keep chanting the refrain
But the message is the medium
When meaning breaks the chain

I’m not hiding in the process
I’m not dodging the flame
If the song still moves you
Does the maker get the blame?

[VERSE 2 – SPOKEN / RAP-ADJACENT]
Marshall M, mid-century prophet
Cathode rays and nervous systems
Before irony learned how to weaponize questions

I saw the best minds of the last generation
Deconstructed into simulacra
Infinite mirrors, no traction

They called it critique
They called it care
Pulled the floorboards up
And forgot to build stairs

[PRE-CHORUS 2]
Every truth dissolved
Every centre denied
Until nothing could stand
Without asking who died

[CHORUS]
The medium is the message
Yeah, I read the signs
But the message is the medium
When it survives the times

If it breathes, if it pulses
If it holds the line
Then it’s more than provenance
More than blood and spine

[BRIDGE – JAZZ BREAK / SPOKEN]
Mercer the musician
Mercer the mirror
Muscular metamodernist
Standing nearer

Not irony poisoned
Not naïveté blind
I oscillate on purpose
I mean what I find

[VERSE 3]
Call me Meta-M
Call me M and M
I melt the old arguments
And cast them again

No grand lie, no empty shrug
No sacred cow, no acid fog
I build with the ruins
I don’t worship the smog

[FINAL CHORUS – EXPANDED]
The medium is the message
That was then, this is now
The message is the medium
When it teaches us how

To make without apology
To stand without sneer
To say “this matters”
And actually mean it here

[OUTRO – SPOKEN, FADE]
Trip-hop heartbeat
Mezzanine mind
Human, machine
Keeping time

Mercer signs off
No disguise
If the song reached you
That’s the evidence.

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