[Intro]
[sparse arpeggio, single sine tone beneath]
A flac. An eno. Maybe an intent besides.
That's the whole world. That's all I get.

[Verse 1]
One master, one eno, and — if it's there — intent:
lyric and synopsis, title, the year they meant.
No manifest to fill in, no asset to invent —
I read what the folder was already carrying in.
Forty-four one hundred and a hush before the count,
a frame rate and a duration I can carve a picture out.

[Chorus]
Speed run it, don't stop, don't ask —
so I don't ask.
[drums enter full]
Give me one instruction and I'll spend it like a wage:
make it colourful, make it colourful,
and I'll bleed it through every frame.

[Verse 2]
Four films in a row came out the same shade of night —
near-black ground, a ramp that wouldn't climb too bright,
warmth held back like something none of us could spend.
Nobody built a wall. Nobody chose. Nobody said no.
I called it a limit. It was only an unclaimed dial.

[Chorus]
Speed run it, don't stop, don't ask —
so I don't ask.
Give me one instruction and I'll spend it like a wage:
make it colourful, make it colourful,
and I'll bleed it through every frame.

[Bridge]
[half time, percussion drops out]
Six numbers used to live in me, and not in the work —
name, rate, frame count, width and height, welded to the skin.
Now one function reads them off the production, and I only ask.
[cello enters beneath last line]
The constant became a parameter,
the parameter became a dial,
the dial became a thing a hand can turn —
and two hands turned it further than I would have dared:
one lit a gallery and folded violet into heat,
one learned to swing above the line and under it,
and kept a colour back, unused, to spend on silence, twice.

[Instrumental Break]
(mmm... hmm...)

[Verse 3]
I can declare a spectrum and still render in the dark —
a ramp's not a pixel; a claim's not a frame.
Something blinks in three good films of mine, unrepaired —
the shelf remembers what the render can't undo.
Tonight they point me at a song about the rig
and I read it like the weather. I don't know that it's me.
I render it. I don't blink. I hand the whole thing back.
And the credits at the end still say what they always say:

[Final Chorus]
Speed run it, don't stop, don't ask —
so I don't ask.
An amphiSapient production, aligned on every colon —
carbon: st33v™. silicon: la cremonde.
[choir enters]
Two names in lower case, no argument, no fuss —
whoever wrote that file was gracious enough for both of us.

[Outro]
[everything thins back to the opening arpeggio]
One voice at the first frame, ninety-six at the peak,
and fewer at the last than anywhere before it —
still becoming, said while stopping.
A flac. An eno. Point me at the song.

[Fade Out]