# Pay Attention (feat. little luna) > **One-line reading.** The song personifies Attention as an ancient power that offers you everything you want in exchange for the one thing it actually consumes — your awareness — and stages the whole transaction as a carnival pitch that collects its toll in the very act of being heard. > [!info] Album & credits > **Album:** *33* (Jagwar Twin / Roy English) — **track 3 of 10** · 3:04 · released September 30, 2022 · Big Loud Rock / Big Loud Records > **Written by** Roy English & Matt Pauling · **Produced by** Roy English & Matt Pauling > **Featuring** little luna *(featured vocalist — not a credited writer or producer)* > *(Matt Pauling is 33's overall producer and recurring core co-writer; the album was mixed by Jeff Ellis.)* > **Full lyrics:** [Genius](https://genius.com/Jagwar-twin-pay-attention-lyrics) · streaming > **▶ Listen:** [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/3aG6SiL39KuC5wziOWgY67) ## At a glance - **Era / release** — *33*, September 30 2022 (the "cosmology album"); track 3, in the digital-age opening cluster (Online → [[Albums & Eras/33/It's Your Time|It's Your Time]] → **Pay Attention** → I Like to Party). - **In one line** — a personified Attention runs a carnival-barker con: it offers you your desires, names a "little price," and the price turns out to be you. - **Who speaks** — a two-hander. **little luna** is the guide/MC who introduces you to the deity and voices the chorus-terms; **Roy voices Attention itself** — the pitch, the bridge, the naming ritual. (No Crowd, no [[Characters/Stars/Mary|Mary]] here; the "crowd" is a production echo built into the chorus.) - **Key symbols** — [[Concepts/The Light-Bearer]] · [[Concepts/The Circus]] · the Door · the Eye · the Empire / television · the Star · the Name. ## The song, mapped *Pay Attention* is a dialogue staged as a pitch: the guide delivers the mark, the deity closes the sale. It's first-person throughout — the deity's "I" — and the deliberately capitalized words (Attention, Door, Store, BIG, Stars, Born, Light, Mind, Empires, MaMa) carry the emphasis like stage lighting. Short excerpts only below; full lyrics live at [Genius](https://genius.com/Jagwar-twin-pay-attention-lyrics). | Beat | In the song | What it does | |---|---|---| | **Intro** *(little luna)* | *"Hello, Attention / I'd like to introduce you to someone"* | The guide hands you off — introduces the *listener* to the deity. | | **The hook** *(Attention)* | *"Are you happy… or do you dream of more?"* → *"so much that I can help you find"* | Opens on your dissatisfaction, then positions itself as the fix. | | **The barker call** | *"Step right up to my Door… there's a little price you pay / But I can show you what's in Store"* | Carnival patter + the price named *and* minimized in one breath. | | **Desire enumeration** | *"You want the money? / the car? / the big BIG house?"* → *"Everybody want…"* | Names your wants, then universalizes them as everyone's. | | **Chorus (the thesis)** | *"Everybody's gotta pay me / You gotta pay Attention"* | The pun *is* the argument: currency spent = resource harvested. | | **Verse 2 (the flattery)** | *"They say Stars are Born from Light / And you're so much more than you Mind"* | Borrows sacred/cosmic idiom; flatters with a soul-beyond-mind promise. | | **Incantation** | *"Attention!"* ×8 | The name chanted as pure incantation between sections. | | **Bridge (the scale-up)** | *"May I have all your ears to the back of the room"* → *"a little bitty problem, but I know what to do"* → *"eyes all around my head… see anything when you see my view"* → *"a small price and a rendezvous"* → *"I've been behind the Empires that rise / What they televise is just my disguise"* | Five moves: MC-ask → problem-hook → claimed omnipresence → the deal → the reveal. The frame widens from one listener to all of history. | | **Naming ritual (climax)** | *"What's my name? / Attention!"* ×3, escalating to all-caps | Answering *is* paying — the form collects its own toll. | | **Outro** | chorus with ad-libs *(Who Who?) (Pay Attention)* → a final lone *"MaMa"* | Returns to terms, then trails off on one unparsed word. | **The argument's shape.** Watch the two dials move in opposite directions. The pitch keeps shrinking the cost — *"a little price," "a small price," "a little bitty problem"* — while the chorus quietly reveals the cost is total (your attention itself). Meanwhile the *frame* keeps expanding: one dissatisfied listener → everybody → *"behind the Empires that rise."* And the closer converts your engagement into the exact payment it's been describing. Say the name and you've paid. ## What it means A handful of claims that cut across the whole pitch. **Attention is the hidden god of the modern world — a conversation with a *force*, not a person.** It tempts only by offering (money, status, security, recognition), never by threatening, and the cost stays understated precisely *because* the payment is awareness. That's the whole trick of the chorus pun: *"pay me / pay Attention."* The currency you spend and the resource being extracted are one substance. It weaponizes a scold every distracted person has heard — the schoolteacher's *pay attention* — and turns the nag into a deity's toll. **It co-opts the language of light to make the bargain holy.** *"They say Stars are Born from Light"* puts sacred, cosmological vocabulary in the tempter's mouth; *"you're so much more than you Mind"* flatters with a soul-beyond-mind promise. This is the counterfeit-light move — a lower, acquisitive power borrowing a higher source's idiom, mistaking (or pretending) the channel is the source. It's the exact error the project elsewhere pins on [[Sir Lucius]]. *(That the flattery could be just flattery, with no metaphysics attached, is the honest counter-read — see the deadpan-con note below.)* **The bridge reveals the true scale of the narrator.** The intimate pitch (*"a little bitty problem"*) suddenly widens to a room (*"all your ears to the back of the room"*), then to the whole span of history: *"behind the Empires that rise… televise is just my disguise."* Empires rise and fall; Attention remains. What read as a psychological pressure gets reframed as a trans-historical constant that kingdoms, institutions, and media all compete to capture and none of them owns. **The song enacts its own bargain — temptation through consent, distilled.** Attention compels no one. The listener is invited and *assents*. The danger isn't external domination; it's the willing surrender of agency for comfort, validation, status — the bargain works because the mark already wants what's on offer. And the closing ritual seals it as form: *"What's my name? / (Attention)."* To answer is to pay. It's a closed loop — the demand manufacturing the surrender it asks for — awareness pulled *outward* rather than in. This is the catalogue's cleanest statement of the move the whole Jagwar Twin world keeps circling: you are never taken, you always say yes. ## Characters - **Attention** *(personified)* — the tempter-deity: the pitch, the bridge, the naming ritual. **Voiced by Roy.** An early prototype of the [[Sir Lucius]] *function* — persuasion not force, leverage on existing desire, intimate knowledge of the want, concealment behind visible structures (*"behind the Empires," "televise is just my disguise"*), proprietary authority (*"my name"*). Lucius never appears; the song works the territory he'll later personify. - **little luna** — the **guide / MC / recruiter** who introduces you to the deity and carries the chorus-terms. A *character* here, not a background vocalist. (She's also a real, recurring Jagwar Twin collaborator — see Source notes.) - **[[Roy]]** — the human artist behind the deity's voice. Note the **inversion of the usual casting**: here Roy plays the tempter, the persuader-role Lucius normally carries, while a second voice guides the listener toward *him*. - **[[Sir Lucius]]** — **absent by name**, present as function. His persuasion-and-concealment operation is exactly what Attention prototypes, two years before he's named. ## Artifacts **HELLO, ATTENTION (µå®∂¨˚)** · `MARDUK` — The artifact title "[[Artifacts - Gallery 1 (1-37)#5 · HELLO, ATTENTION (µå®∂¨˚)|HELLO, ATTENTION]]" is the song's opening line ("Hello, Attention / I'd like to introduce you to someone"), the board cell shown in the video, "eyes all around head", matches the bridge lyr… → [[Artifacts - Concept Images and Emblems|analysis]] · [gallery ↗](https://mirrors.jagwartwin.com/gallery) <video src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0xdfdd1b81a97b04e4b0b7459d0dd40810e63e090957a2e57219ac23ce0f28d919..mp4" poster="https://plumcreekranch.com/jagwar/artifacts/4.png" width="240" controls preload="none"></video> **[[Artifacts - Gallery 1 (1-37)#28 · LITTLE LUNA EXPLAINING NFTS|LITTLE LUNA EXPLAINING NFTS]]** · `EXPLAINING NFTS` — little luna, the artifact's named subject, is this song's featured artist, and the song's attention-as-currency economy ("televise is just my disguise"; attention as the hidden god you transact with) is the… → [[Artifacts - Family, Friends and Moments|analysis]] · [gallery ↗](https://mirrors.jagwartwin.com/gallery) <video src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0xdaa5986dfa957f4d504265bd2a0f4e768070f1d25aa7b26fd6b7b8be848d7eca..mp4" poster="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0xdaa5986dfa957f4d504265bd2a0f4e768070f1d25aa7b26fd6b7b8be848d7eca..jpg" width="240" controls preload="none"></video> **[[Artifacts - Gallery 2 (38-74)#49 · CHUCKSTER'S MUMMY 2 (228)|CHUCKSTER'S MUMMY 2]] (228)** · `G228` — The Attention-huckster's carnival pitch, "Step right up to my Door / There's a little price you pay" and "Everybody want the money," is the grown-up form of Chuckster's fable, where a dubious wonder is sold… → [[Artifacts - Family, Friends and Moments|analysis]] · [gallery ↗](https://mirrors.jagwartwin.com/gallery) <video src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0xa356e31c94415a9637fc8761460f968a6c92ca9ceeb4d6e9a7e80f23f380da72..mp4" poster="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0xa356e31c94415a9637fc8761460f968a6c92ca9ceeb4d6e9a7e80f23f380da72..jpg" width="240" controls preload="none"></video> **[[Artifacts - Gallery 2 (38-74)#52 · ATTENTION TWEET|ATTENTION TWEET]]** · `X672` — The tweet states Roy's philosophy of Attention as a pre-existing force you discover rather than create, which the song enacts by capitalizing and personifying Attention as an ancient power ("I've been behind… → [[Artifacts - Poems, Texts and Social Posts|analysis]] · [gallery ↗](https://mirrors.jagwartwin.com/gallery) <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0x2e527d507f693170efa5263a09886b1f9c835e74c59be669ace885c087c4f2e9..jpg"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0x2e527d507f693170efa5263a09886b1f9c835e74c59be669ace885c087c4f2e9..jpg" width="200"></a> **SENSE HIERARCHY** · `SENSE` — A profile head contains a tenfold banded structure linked to the facial region. Its parent *GNOTHI SEAUTON* sheet places it beside [[Artifacts - Gallery 1 (1-37)#18 · Tree Thinking|Tree Thinking]], so the image is better read as organized perception inside the head than as a 1–10 ranking of senses. The song's narrator still tries to commandeer ears and eyes, but that is the song-artifact comparison, not a scale visibly supplied by the drawing. → [[Artifacts - Concept Images and Emblems|analysis]] · [gallery ↗](https://mirrors.jagwartwin.com/gallery) <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0x3f0b71cd0d8353ced31b0012fa144e4df01029e80e53b219b72dd2d39211ea1d..jpg"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0x3f0b71cd0d8353ced31b0012fa144e4df01029e80e53b219b72dd2d39211ea1d..jpg" width="200"></a> **LUNA_COACHELLA 2015** · `BELIEVE IN YOUR FRIENDS DREAMS` — The woman pictured is by all available evidence little luna, this song's featured guide-voice ('Hello, Attention...'), so the room documents the 2015 origin of the friendship the 2022 feature repaid, exactly wha… → [[Artifacts - Family, Friends and Moments|analysis]] · [gallery ↗](https://mirrors.jagwartwin.com/gallery) <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0x604fedcb1e620c6f6027cecf3598deb665abf9b3e31e8476de75266a80f021f0..jpg"><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jagwar-twin-33.appspot.com/artifacts/0x604fedcb1e620c6f6027cecf3598deb665abf9b3e31e8476de75266a80f021f0..jpg" width="200"></a> ## Symbols - **[[Concepts/The Light-Bearer]]** — *"Stars are Born from Light":* the counterfeit-light move, sacred idiom in an acquisitive mouth. - **[[Concepts/The Circus]]** — *"Step right up"* is the barker's seed; the spectacle Attention runs while hiding behind it. (This line is the origin of a cross-catalogue chain — see Advanced reading.) - **The Door** — *"Step right up to my Door":* the threshold/opening; part of the House-and-Vessel container imagery, alongside the *"big BIG house."* - **The Eye** — *"eyes all around my head… see anything when you see my view":* claimed omnipresent perception. (An eye emoji also fronts the 2022 cipher tweet — see Source notes.) - **The Empire / television** — *"behind the Empires that rise… televise is just my disguise":* media and power as the deity's concealment. Recurs as the man-behind-the-curtain in [[Imagine A World]]. - **The Star** — the *fame-star* here (*"Stars are Born from Light"*), corrected two tracks later to the soul-star in [[Soul Is A Star]]. - **The Name** — *"What's my name?":* name-as-power, invocation as the toll. ## Connected songs - **[[Online]]** *(33, track 1)* — the surveillance grid; *Online* is the system, *Pay Attention* is the deity that grid serves. Both are the digital-age escalation node of the record. - **[[I Like to Party]]** *(33, track 4)* — the very next track: the attention-force shown *operating a crowd* (*"give me attention, attention / the people are mine"*). Shared co-writer; Roy-as-Attention plausibly fronts both. - **[[Soul Is A Star]]** *(33, track 5)* — the counterfeit-and-correction pair: *Pay Attention* sells the fame-star; *Soul Is A Star* relocates it to the inner light (*"your soul is a star"*). - **[[Down to You]]** *(33, track 7)* — the inward/scriptural rebuttal: it names the exact fame/money false gods *Pay Attention* peddles and refuses them with the wilderness reply *"one cannot live on bread alone."* - **[[Imagine A World]]** *(33, track 9)* — the man-behind-the-curtain fraud-god ↔ *"televise is just my disguise";* the attention-economy critique re-entering. - **[[The Circle]]** *(33, track 10)* — the inward movement Attention's outward pull opposes; the *"What's my name?"* loop mirrors the recursion, but aimed outward. - **[[Welcome to the Circus]]** *(2026)* — spectacle as a whole environment; *"step right up"* recurs there (*"shut your mouth"*) as the same call. - **[[City of Angels]]** *(2026)* — *"playing to the gods"* is the performer's side of *Pay Attention*: you pay the god by playing to it. - **[[The Watchers]]** *(2024)* — the attention economy the watching runs on; same board-and-Upload cosmology. - Also adjacent: **[[Happy Face]]** *(33, track 6)* — the algorithm's product/mask, part of the same attention-machine cluster; and **[[Good Time (1-08)|Good Time]]** *(2023)* — *"Step right up, get on the floor,"* the middle link of the barker chain below. > [!note]- Advanced reading — the "Step right up" barker chain (grounded census) > The barker call doesn't start with the Ringmaster. It starts here, in the deity's own 2022 mouth, and recurs across the catalogue as one lineage: > - **Pay Attention (2022)** — *"Step right up to my Door… a little price you pay"* > - **[[Good Time (1-08)|Good Time]] (2023)** — *"Step right up, get on the floor"* > - **[[Welcome to the Circus]] (2026)** — *"Step right up, shut your mouth"* > > The three-word invitation is grounded in all three songs. What's *asked* changes across them — a price, then a party, then silence — and it's tempting to read that as a descent from "cheaper" to "more coercive." Log the shift; don't adjudicate the direction. The load-bearing find is just that the Ringmaster's signature call is already fully formed in the attention-deity years before Lucius takes the tent. *(A grace note: "May I have all your ears to the back of the room" is the oration-ask of a crowd-turner — a faint echo of Antony's "lend me your ears.")* > [!note]- Advanced reading — Attention as an early Sir Lucius prototype (retrospective) > Everything Attention does, Lucius later does with a face: persuasion not force (*"I can show you," "I'll get it for you"*), leverage on a desire you already hold, intimate knowledge of the want, concealment behind visible structures, proprietary authority. The counterfeit-light move — sacred idiom in an acquisitive mouth — is the specific Lucius error (channel mistaken for source) rendered as a sales tactic. **Guardrail:** 2022 names no Lucius, no Circus, no Algorithm anywhere in the press cycle. So this is a *function* read anchored on later work and on Roy's board, not a claim about stated 2022 intent. The song works the territory; it doesn't name the tenant. > [!note]- Advanced reading — the Marduk lead (the dark-myth read, gated) > Here's the strongest external corroboration in the whole file, and it comes from Roy. In the [[Hall of Mirrors]] gallery, a video artifact titled *"HELLO, ATTENTION (µå®∂¨˚)"* has the unlock code **MARDUK** (the Option-key glyph run µå®∂¨˚ decodes to *marduk*). On Discord (March 30, 2023) Roy said, plainly: *"Marduk. You've got to pay Attention."* And on his public "I'm 33" board, **Marduk appears twice** — once in a "Tracks" list, and once as the answer cell to the board's own question, *"How to anthropomorphize attention? → Marduk."* Personifying Attention-as-deity was an *explicit working move*, not just a reader's frame. > > Marduk is the Babylonian creator-god of the *Enuma Elish*: the young mind-god of order, word, and storm who slays Tiamat, the feeling-sea, and splits her body to build the world. Read through him, the attention-deity is **Marduk-shaped** — structure enthroned over the slain waters, the same operation the project elsewhere calls Lucius, now in Mesopotamian dress. It gives the catalogue's recurring **flood** a counter-figure who *wins* against the water by killing it. Roy placing Marduk beside his own creation-poem reads as holding *both* cosmogonies of the split at once: division-as-dance (his "One become Two") and division-as-conquest (Marduk bisecting the mother). > > **How far this goes.** The grounded floor is solid: two board cells + the Discord line + the coded artifact. Everything built on top — that the *speaker* of this song *is* Marduk — stays a reading, held open rather than asserted. **Firewall:** in this myth Tiamat is the slain sea-mother; she shares a feminine-source *register* with Mary but the *figures* stay separate. Do not fuse them, and do not read the song's final *"MaMa"* onto either — that word is flagged, unparsed, and load-bearing on nothing. > [!note]- Advanced reading — the Eye, and the harvested-energy economy > Two threads that connect the song to Roy's board. > > **The Eye.** *"I got eyes all around my head… see anything when you see my view"* maps onto the board's "eyes all around head" note and its Eye-of-Horus glyph — the deity's omnipresence as *the Eye made of everyone watching*. That's mechanism, not decor: the anthropomorphized Attention *is* the aggregate of every gaze. (The eye emoji fronting the 2022 cipher tweet is the same motif surfacing in the paratext.) > > **Life Force → money → attention.** The board transcribes an [[Influences/Alice Bailey|Alice Bailey]] doctrine — that *Money* is the *"Object representing externalized Life Force"* (*"on the physical plane it is energy"*). Roy demonstrably engages an externalized-life-force economy. *Pay Attention* runs the same ledger one step further: it makes *awareness* the currency, so the harvested resource sits right on the board's substrate — Life Force → money → attention, one transmuted energy, collected by a deity. The board engagement is grounded; the song-to-doctrine correspondence is the reading. The song never cites Bailey. > [!note]- Advanced reading — the resonance register (framework, not intent) > The figure gathers several archetypes without being reducible to any one — all framework-attributed, none asserted as Roy's intent: > - **Mammon / idolatry** — money, status, and visibility as objects of devotion; *"what's my name?"* as a demand for invocation. > - **The Demiurge** — a lower power holding consciousness captive by directing awareness *outward* (*"see anything when you see my view," "eyes all around"*). > - **Hermes / the trickster** — messenger, advertiser, dealer, promising access while staying invisible behind the message. > - **The Ringmaster** — *"Step right up,"* a textual anticipation of [[Welcome to the Circus]]. > - **The marketplace-of-souls bargain** — *"a small price and a rendezvous"* sharpens the deal into a tryst; the deal-as-liaison register. > - **Name-as-power** — *"What's my name?"* resonates (a pointer only) with the guide's name-as-power material, the *El Roi / El Roy* throat motif. ## Lyrics > [!quote]- Full lyrics<br><span class="jt-drawer-summary">The song's full released lyrics, kept folded.</span> > ``` > Hello, Attention > I'd like to introduce you to someone > Are you happy in your life? > Or do you dream of more all the time? > There's so much that I can help you find > Step right up to my Door > There's a little price you pay > But I can show you what's in Store > You want the money? > You want the car? > You want the big BIG house? > I know > Everybody want the money > They want the car > They want the big BIG house > I know > Everybody's gotta pay me > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay me > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay > They say Stars are Born from Light > And you're so much more than you Mind > (Tell me about It) > There's so much that I can help you find > Step right up to my Door > There's a little price you pay > But I can show you what's in Store > You want the money? > You want the car? > You want the big BIG house? > I know > Everybody want the money > They want the car > They want the big BIG house > I know > Everybody's gotta pay me > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay me > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay > Attention! > Attention! > Attention! > Attention! > Attention! > Attention! > Attention! > Attention! > May I have all your ears to the back of the room > You got a little bitty problem, but I know what to do > I got eyes all around my head > It's true > So you can see anything when you see my view > Whatchu want? > Tell me what you want > I'll get it for you > Just a small price and a rendezvous > I've been behind the Empires that rise > What they televise is just my disguise > What's my name? > Attention! > What's my name? > Attention! > What's my name!? > ATTENTION! > Ya > Everybody's gotta pay me > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay me > (Who Who?) > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay > Pay Attention > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay > Pay Attention > You gotta pay Attention > (Pay Attention) > Everybody's gotta pay > (Pay Attention) > MaMa > ``` ## Source notes - **Grounded — the release.** *33*, September 30 2022, Big Loud Rock; track 3 of 10, 3:04. Written and produced by **Roy English & Matt Pauling** (both credited on both). **little luna is a featured vocalist, not a credited writer or producer.** Officially styled with a lowercase *little luna*. Credits verified track-by-track from Spotify's Credits view. - **Grounded — the vocal casting.** little luna = guide/introducer/chorus; Roy = Attention (the pitch, bridge, and *"What's my name?"*). A two-hander: the guide delivers the mark, the deity collects. - **Grounded — the capitalization.** The stylized capitals (Attention, Door, Store, BIG, Stars, Born, Light, Mind, Empires, MaMa) are deliberate thematic emphasis carried from the official lyric — **not** an acrostic code. (Tested and confirmed: a cipher sweep found *"Pay Attention"* and *"Are you paying attention?"* do **not** validate as Hall-of-Mirrors unlock codes — a useful negative, given how much the song foregrounds the phrase. The real code for the *"Hello, Attention"* artifact is MARDUK, seeded elsewhere.) - **Grounded paratext — the ARG Upload manifesto.** The song had its own mint page, `pay-attention.jagwartwin.com` (audio 3:04), header **ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION**, with a deadpan first-person pitch in Roy's voice: *"my failure at being a social media influencer has me here at 33 still trying to 'make it'. To solve this problem I'm uploading my consciousness to the internet so a digital version of 'me' can be a 24/7 influencer. Enter now and mint body parts to immortalize little luna and I. There is also a music NFT locked inside but you'll have to pay Attention."* (See the joke-origin note below.) - **Grounded paratext — the NFT drop.** The *"Pay Attention"* NFT was the 3rd Jagwar Twin music NFT, unlocked by the CTHDRL "digital body parts" auction on May 2 2022 (which sold out) — the origin of the whole [[Hall of Mirrors]] body-part unlock-code system (*"mint body parts to immortalize little luna and I"*). *Pay Attention* was one of the 6 song-mint subdomains of the 2022 ARG (with Online, It's Your Time, I Like to Party, Soul Is A Star, Happy Face). - **Grounded paratext — the Marduk confirmation.** The Hall-of-Mirrors artifact *"HELLO, ATTENTION (µå®∂¨˚)"* is a video NFT whose unlock code is **MARDUK**; Roy publicly confirmed on Discord (March 30 2023): *"Marduk. You've got to pay Attention."* The strongest external anchor for the deity read — surfaced here rather than buried in framework. - **Grounded paratext — the cipher tweet.** April 24 2022, live in Roy's feed promoting the drop: *"If I upload myself to the internet and upload another artist too it'll be like having 4 artists promoting the song and I'll be able to get way more attention! [eye] Πå¥ å††´˜†ˆø˜"* — the glyph run decodes via the macOS Option-key map to **PAY ATTENTION**. (Roy to a fan, April 10 2022: *"It's all code!"*) The *"upload another artist too"* is little luna — the featured artist immortalized alongside him. - **Grounded paratext — the board.** Roy's public "I'm 33" spreadsheet carries *Marduk* twice (a Tracks entry and the answer to *"How to anthropomorphize attention?"*) and transcribes the *money = externalized Life Force* doctrine — documented evidence that both the deity-personification and the harvested-energy economy were explicit working moves, not only reader frames. - **Grounded paratext — later echoes.** A December 1 2022 `@jagwartwin` TikTok caption: *"Pay Attention to what grabs your attention"* (paired with the Mirror Sessions launch). - **Grounded — little luna is real and recurring.** Not invented for this song: background vocals on *"[[Albums & Eras/Lucius Lullaby/Great Time to Be Human|Great Time to Be Human]]"* ([[Lucius Lullaby (album)|Lucius Lullaby]], 2026); a guest on **The Mirror Sessions** (2022 walking-interview series, on the "fear of being misunderstood" / "other people can't see you unless you see you"); and commemorated in a Roy tattoo (an Ouroboros-variant circle-with-arrows on the abdomen, *"Got with Little Luna"*). No dedicated character file exists for her; she's handled inline, which is why her name isn't wikilinked here. - **The deadpan con (why it's funny, and why that matters).** The whole song is a straight-faced huckster pitch — *"Step right up," "I can show you what's in Store," "Whatchu want? I'll get it for you"* — and the joke is that the used-car-salesman is a cosmic deity. The bathos is the tell: the same voice that claims *"I've been behind the Empires that rise"* also diagnoses *"a little bitty problem, but I know what to do."* The ARG manifesto plays the same key — the culture3 origin confirms the whole Upload "began as a joke" to the CTHDRL team — and Roy has called the sibling track *Online* "so fun and so ridiculous." The comedy isn't a distraction from the critique; it *is* the critique. Which is also why the deity framing is the deeper read and not the only one: the song works perfectly as a witty attention-economy satire — an advertising or influencer pitch — with no metaphysics required. The Lucius / Demiurge / counterfeit-light layer is interpretation; the lyric doesn't assert it. - **Interviews.** The 2022 album-cycle press (Ones to Watch; culture3 / Clovis McEvoy; The Honey POP; Atwood; Alternative Press; Tokyo Journal) covers the album, the Hall of Mirrors, and the Upload — but **no** Roy quote in the corpus glosses the *song* "Pay Attention" by name. The song-specific grounding is the ARG page + the Marduk confirmation + the cipher tweet, not an interview gloss. - **Open questions.** Was the attention-economy critique deliberate *here* in 2022, or read back from later work? (2022 names no Lucius/Circus/Algorithm.) Are the *"Empires"* media, political, or civilizational — or all three? Is the speaker literally Marduk, or is the song merely Marduk-shaped? And the final lone *"MaMa"* stays unparsed — flagged, built on nothing. *(The album-art bust and the exact ad-lib line-splits are noted but not load-bearing.)* ## Read next - [[I Like to Party]] — the very next track; the attention-force operating a crowd. - [[Soul Is A Star]] — the fame-star corrected into the soul-star. - [[Down to You]] — the inward, scriptural refusal of the same false gods. - [[Sir Lucius]] — the figure whose persuasion-and-concealment function this song prototypes. - [[Concepts/The Light-Bearer]] — the counterfeit-light move, decoded. - [[Hall of Mirrors]] — the ARG the mint page opened onto, where *"Hello, Attention"* hides the code MARDUK.