Foreword A like returned for a like is not a gift. It is a payment, and a payment has one peculiar property: when it is exact, it closes the account. David Graeber, drawing on Laura Bohannan's fieldwork among the Tiv, described women who walked miles to hand back a handful of okra or a little change, never quite what they had been given, because an exact return would say the relationship was over. Follow-for-follow is exact change, paid in nine seconds. Every account settles on contact, and a thousand mutuals can stand in a row without one of them owing anybody anything. What is left between two people once they are even is the question here. Lyrics [Verse 1] Two o'clock, the freezer hums, send a song, the phone does sums, four whole minutes, heart at nine, nine whole seconds, not a line. Stranger's face inside a square drops a coin, but isn't there, never stopped and never slowed, now he's waiting down the road. [Chorus] Keep the change, stranger, keep it all, I won't follow back when the red hearts fall. Keep the change, I don't settle the score, I owe you one, and I'll owe you more. [Verse 2] Up at five for morning shift, heart for heart, a same-size gift, numbers stitched on every sleeve, give a day and then they leave. Thousand mutuals, never met, all accounts and not one debt, once I followed, beat the drum, laid it down, my loaded thumb. [Chorus] Keep the change, stranger, keep it all, I won't follow back when the red hearts fall. Keep the change, I don't settle the score, I owe you one, and I'll owe you more. [Bridge] Where the signal dies, where the red roads run, a woman walks three miles in the sun with a handful of okra, a coin or two, a little bit less than the gift was due, and the grass never grows on the road to her door, she owes them a little, they owe her some more. [Final Chorus] Keep the change, stranger, keep it all, I won't follow back when the red hearts fall. Keep the change, I don't settle the score, I owe you one, and I'll owe you more. Never even, never square, keep the change and meet me there. I owe you a walk, and you owe me a song, and the road to your door is four minutes long. [Outro] I walk his song to the end of the track. Nine seconds later, he pays me back.
