the phone as weather, not as a call — "It buzzed and buzzed. They discussed…"

The Substance dissolves the apparatus of contact into pure environment: a ringing phone and a buzzing intercom stop being signals that mean someone is trying to reach you and become just weather, facts of the air to be wished away like rain. The horror underneath the comedy is that these are the calls Fackelmann's life depends on — help trying to get through — and answering has become not refused but metaphysically impossible, the channel still physically ringing while its whole meaning has drained out. [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery annularity]