'Please Hold' - Ciaran O'Driscoll

Title:

Please Hold has 2 meanings → wanting to hold on to the present, and the literal dictation of ‘please hold’ from the operator

“This is the future, my wife says”

tonally flat from the beinning

“We are already there, and it’s the same as the present”

parataxis → paratactic style creates a feeling of disjunction + time seems flat and repetitive

“Your future, here, she says. / And I’m talking to the robot on the phone”

Future = this marks the beginning of the semantic bleaching → words and fears of the future lose their meaning

“The robot is giving me countless options, / none of which answer to my needs”

“countless options” = material excess + abundance

abandon of empathy

repetition establishes a motonous tone

how many lines in the opening stanza of Please Hold?

49 → monotony and never-ending?

“Wonderful, says the robot / when I give him my telephone number. / And Great, says the robot / when I give him my account number”

syntactic parallelism of “And + adjective” → frustrating repetition

noting “him” → pronoun of masculinity?

word “number” appears three times back to back → epistrophe conveys the coldness + predictability of interaction

to the company, the people are just that → “number”s

“I have a wonderful telephone number / and a great account number”

ludicrousness of these adjectives = quickly becomes a satire of politeness and robotic interaction

“and into my account / (which is really the robot’s account)”

parenthetical aside mirrors the speaker’s attempt to separate himself from the robot

“goes money, my money, to pay for nothing”

epistrophe → “money” = financially motivated world => italicised “my” as the speaker tries to cling on

““I’m paying a robot for doing nothing. / This calls is free of charge, says the mind-reading robot”

no quotation marks - lack of separation between the speaker + the robot

“I shout, / out of my wonderful account / into my great telephone bill / Wonderful, says the robot”

complete collapse of boundary between the robot + humanity?

parodic use of “wonderful” = mocks human imitation

“And my wife says, This is the future”.

chiasmus of the first line → humanity creates variation, robots create monotony

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand, says the robot.” 💪

says v shouts, robot v man → emotionless robot

lack of true communication = sycophantic robot 💪

“Please say Yes or No. / Or you an say Repeat or Menu. / You can say Yes, No, Repeat, or Menu”

infuriatingly repetitive → even ‘repeat’ is ‘repeated’ → endlesss cycle

“or you can say Agent if you’d like to talk / to someone read, who is just as robotic. / I scream Agent!”

the robot only “says”, whereas the man “shouts” and “screams”

“I scream Agent! And am cut off / and my wife says, This is the future.”

constancy of change

“and am cut off” = human fallibility + inefficiency is not valued

“We are already there and it’s the same / as the present. Your future, here, she says”

“future, here” is oxymoronic

but the future is with his wife → blurring of past and present - all into one!!

polyptoton

“pay” / “paying” reinforces this regurgitation of the same info over and over

“Please hold. / Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Please hold. / Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Please hold. / Eine fucking Kleine Nachtmusik.”

not even variation in the lineation → over and over

parataxis + repetition

allusion to this famous song highlights how far humanity has come since the 1700s - and not necessarily in a good way! what was once intensely human - art - has been eradicated in a repetitive blur of robots

the piece is written as spirited + playful → a bit ironic…!

“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Please hold.”

abrupt transition from classical music to suddenly talking to a robot

“And the robot transfers me to himself”

humanity merges with automation

“And my translator says, This means / your call is not important to them”

translator = wife, the speaker themself?

“Please hold / means that, for all your accomplishments, / the only way you can now meet your needs / is by looting. Wonderful says the robot”

satirical → bathetic reminder of unheard reality

“looting” = stark break from monotonous language before, and the wartime lexis suggests that the speakers is even thinking of waging war against the robots

“Please hold. Please grow old. Please grow cold. / Please do what you’re told. Grow old. Grow cold. / This is the future. Please hold”

please hold on to the present!! and humanity!!

“Please hold. Please grow old. Please grow cold” → repetitive cycle - the speaker urges people to engage in this human cycle = the simple sentences are nearly identical, but the verb “grow” is essential = whereas the robot is static, the speaker wants readers to foster a cycle of growth, development and change.

this becomes more urgent with the removal of formalities = “please” no longer there.