She holds up a matchbook. The Starlite Lounge, Kaml Street. The camera shakes. Outside, a train horn wails. is not a word. It's a code May and her three friends—Rina, Jules, and the ghost-eyed girl they call "Moth"—carved into the wooden desk of their high school's AV club. MTRJM : Meet The Real Juliet, Motherfucker.
The camera—a bulky Sony Handycam, the kind that eats batteries like candy—rests on a stack of Seventeen magazines. The red record light blinks. Grainy, over-saturated light fills the frame: a bedroom in suburban Ohio, walls plastered with Polaroids and torn-out pages of Liv Tyler.
All I Wanna Do (1998) Logline: A VHS tape labeled only "SYMA 1" holds the final, fragmented recording of a teenager named May, who tried to digitize her soul before the millennium turned. May 14, 1998. 11:47 PM.
May doesn't answer. She points the camera at her own wrist, where she has drawn a symbol in blue ballpoint pen: a circle bisected by a jagged line. "Syma is the frequency between radio stations. The static you hear right before a storm takes out the power. It's the sound Juliet was listening to when she jumped." fylm All I Wanna Do 1998 mtrjm kaml may syma - may syma 1
May Syma (17, eyeliner sharp enough to cut, hair dyed the black of a wet crow) leans into the lens. She is not smiling.
A girl's voice, possibly May's, says: "All I really wanna do is turn the static back into a signal. But maybe that's the same as dying."
Then, a single clear image: the Kaml Street overpass at 3 AM, shot from the ground looking up. A silhouette leans against the railing. It could be May. It could be Juliet's ghost. The camera zooms in, but the image breaks into static. She holds up a matchbook
"What's a syma?" Moth asks in the video, off-camera, sharpening a pair of scissors.
She pauses. The red light flickers.
The tape contains only one song: a demo recording of May's own voice, slowed down to half-speed, singing a cover of "All I Wanna Do" by a forgotten 90s band called The Make-Up. But the lyrics have changed. Outside, a train horn wails
"If you're watching this, I finally learned how to fly. Rewind me if you miss me."
"Or maybe syma is just a word we made up so we wouldn't have to say goodbye ." The second half of the tape— SYMA 1, side B —is mostly darkness. Voices whisper. A car engine idles. Someone is crying, or laughing, or both.