Payphones

August 16, 2026

A little while back I discovered a public art experiment called The Goodbye Line, that makes use of abandoned payphones by inviting passersby and interested participants to use them and leave a message, one last time.  To say goodbye to anyone or anything, “before it’s too late”.  

Some people leave messages for deceased friends or family members, some for ex lovers who have moved on, some for despicable bosses.  These anonymous recordings are then shared publicly on various platforms.  But before what is “too late”?  In a literal sense, this means: before the payphones get ripped out, paved over, and are finally left for history to claim; in the interpretive sense, it can be defined by whatever our memory, our breath and our will have left in them.  

Imperfect Strangers

This Avant/Apres project is a beautiful concept on so many levels:  For one, it’s an exercise in letting go.  As the overarching, “therapeutic” component to the Goodbye Line suggests, participants are able to vocalize their frustrations or angst, their glee or their compromises; to get something off of their chest- and it renders a notable weight lifted.  Putting these old machines back to use also buys up just a little extra pre-landfill time, while still acknowledging the inevitable fate of this payphone, as a symbol for the demise that everyone and everything on this planet will eventually face.  

The “speaker” in this case is exposing their vulnerability to a janky old pay phone.  Whereas we’ve seen this as a jumping off point in many horror movies, they’re still taking the chance that some psychopath is not hiding around the corner, waiting to play a game of “I’m gonna jump out and stab you soon”.  The “receiver” on the other hand, will presumably (and intentionally) never hear the message that is being left for them, which seems to have everything to do with the speaker’s willingness to participate.  A sort of “dance like nobody’s watching” approach to catharsis.

Through the Goodbye Line creator’s website and social media platforms (and now a 24/7 hotline that can be called from any type of phone), anyone can participate.  Although the vast majority of people engaging are those who want to listen to a stranger’s apologies, regrets, gratitude or relief, directed toward another person whom we’ve also never met.  Having zero knowledge of who these people are, or even what had transpired between them to warrant such an emotionally charged message, us third party listeners can somehow be unexpectedly moved to tears in an instant.  

Similar to the way we react to characters in a movie, perhaps we are more likely to be affected by this because we don’t know anything about them; because we’re removed from all contextual pretenses, leaving only that of pure human emotion and compassion.  Their voice does not fall upon deaf ears, just a lot of random ones for which their message was not originally, or necessarily intended.    

Upon picking up these phones, a person hears a prompt, ending with something like, ”This is a project based on payphones because, like us, they’re here now, but won’t be tomorrow.”  In heart wrenching fashion, these “callers” are essentially pretending to contact another person with whom they’ve shared enough gravity to justify a deeply personal and improvised monologue, using an antiquated and obsolete device.  If this sounds familiar, we may think back to the little fake plastic rotary phones we chatted away on as small children, sans (hopefully) the drama.  

Maybe that child-like spirit is what’s inadvertently being tapped here-  when things were less complicated and we could just say what we wanted or needed to say.  These love-rigged payphones themselves represent impermanence and the freedom to accept one’s fate.  For the adult individual using them, they function as a literal mechanism for tapping both vulnerability and courage, not in some arbitrary point in the future, but in the present moment.

Sad Songs, They Say

There is a tinge of regret in nearly all of the messages people leave; the longing in their voices, often mixed with a sense of relief; the idea that they’re only strong enough to say “I’m sorry” into a vacuum and not directly to whom they’re apologizing; these are tragic, yes- but so very human.  Some of the most beautiful music ever composed is also some of the saddest we’ve ever heard.  

It’s as if artists and philosophers were designated with the task of weaving together the bliss and the sorrows of life, creating just the right amount of one, so that the other feels that much more powerful, and they swell back and forth together in this way, like a squall on the high seas of our innermost sentiments.  It is in this vein where the line between darkness and light can become quite beautifully, or grotesquely, distorted. 

The fact that payphones are becoming an all but extinct form of communication, points a grim finger towards other ‘once useful’ technologies, many of which have had a powerful influence over the way that various forms of art have been created and have died.  The payphone project acknowledges itself as a dying artform, “so why not say something before it’s too late?”.  Historical forms or styles or genres can often be reimagined or revived in the modern way we see them and interpret them, but they’ll never fully exist as the vanguard or pioneering forces, fueled by the limelight in which they were once held.

People who view life as a tragedy, tend to do so because their focus rests within the fact that it ends.  Some of us see really old people and we’re just sad for them, because, like the payphone, we can objectively see that their time appears to soon be up.  As harsh as this sounds, we spend a great portion of our lives in “old age”.  As elders, because we’ll all eventually look back at our past selves as having occupied that once brilliant light, it will simply be once upon a time, leaving us with what’s left of our memories, our breath and our will, until the end. 

The Goodbye Line may offer us an opportunity to let go.  But we never truly let go of our emotions.  They may fade over time, but just like forms, styles or technology, they remain within the bedrock of information and experience that continues to shape the way we think and feel.  Whether we’re making the call or receiving it, we must understand that life is not a tragedy any more than a comedy- it fluctuates through all sorts of  shapes and magnitudes of every awful and beautiful thing we manage to create.  To capture that is a true work of art.