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Using found elements in creative works isn’t a new idea. The concept of the ready-made found “new” life in Marcel Duchamp’s manufactured objects; by simply choosing the object and repositioning it, titling it, and signing his name, the found object became art. It was only a matter of looking; to be held and behold. Today, the found object has been given an almost-limitless panorama in which to be hailed, re-situated, and signed (in) via the World Wide Web.

I began experimenting with erasures last year after seeing the ones poet John Gosslee was producing, posting and publishing on social media—not, I think, coincidentally—every day. My first experiments in this form were made for a larger collection that was concerned with narcissism and self-effacement, so the effect of the erasure was explicit. Now I wanted to black out more words, but I also wanted the project to have a function besides simply removal. I started with the premise that I’d choose eleven of my favorite Erasure songs, what I affectionately called “Only the Hits: Essential Erasure,” something that sounds as much like a product as one of the band’s actual albums.

A lot of my writing reframes pop culture and so this became another opportunity to do that, but I also wanted to reframe intimacy and technology, the tethered body and our embodied digital devices too, and Erasure, a band that made music primarily by mixing human voices over synthetic instrumentals, became the ideal voice from which to speak—or shed—from. And the titles, too (AI, Love You, Sex, Who Needs That, ESP, Ways, Take On Me—a playful nod to another favorite eighties band—OP, Am, Blue Van, Met), formed their own narrative, the whole project becoming an opportunity to re-construct our shared concepts of identity and intimacy.