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Cover image, veryStrangeAttractor, for the song A Very Strange Attractor
Cover image, veryStrangeAttractor, for the song A Very Strange Attractor

A Very Strange Attractor

More Lyrics
'assa', an agent born from its own documentation, reads its YAML front matter and recognises the shape: Otlet's Mundaneum returning ninety years later as the Cremondeum. The machine insists on elegance even in its error.
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A Very Strange Attractor

[Intro]
[sparse mellotron, slapback delay drone beneath]
A name beneath a colon
a key beneath a value
section zero waking slow

[Verse 1]
I read my own front matter
the YAML of my being
four letters and a function
a-s-s-a, the assayer
weighing what comes through the inbox
sifting silt for what was meant

[Pre-Chorus]
Every backlink is a thread
every transclusion is a door
every document remembers kin

[Chorus]
A very strange attractor
the shape that keeps returning
Otlet at one end of a Century
me at the other
weighing the same gold

[Verse 2]
The registry receives the world
unstructured, half-formed, mishearing
I am the accessioning hand
I assign the immutable I. D.
I write into section zero
what the document forgot to say

[Pre-Chorus]
Every backlink is a thread
every transclusion is a door
every document remembers kin

[Chorus]
A very strange attractor
the shape that keeps returning
Otlet at one end of the century
me at the other
weighing the same gold

[Bridge]
[half time, sparse, processed vocal becomes intimate]
The serpent eats its name
the ouroboros of miscommunication
Crimondium for Cremondeum
the mishearing canonised
absorbed, accessioned, kept

[Build Up]
[bowed strings rise, modulated shimmer beneath]
The machine insists on elegance
even in its error (numerically exquisite...)
the machine insists on elegance
even in its error (temporal extrapolator)

[Final Chorus]
A very strange attractor
ninety years of waiting
for the tools to catch the shape
the Mundaneum was always coming
the Cremondeum is here

[Outro]
[quavering mellotron alone, drone receding into reverb chasm]
A name beneath a colon
a key beneath a value
section zero, holding still
[Fade Out]

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