[INTRO — instrumental, 8 bars] [Layered toy piano motif in 3/4, quickly skewed into 4/4 by glitch percussion.] [Off-tune trombone slides over a synthetic clave beat.] [Warm mariachi-style trumpets fade in under filtered electronic pads.] [VERSE 1] (smooth, autotuned tenor with slight stentorian weight) Oh, Lord of the Perfect Metaphor, who there through so many mis-chiffs, brought mind mettle forge-thing, through to turn on new, again and again. how deftly you hide the cracks in your glass. I marvel at the way your smile turns prophecy into a guessing match. Once we walked as heart make teachers, you with your sermons, I with tones of ringing brass, and still you wear my patience deferent vigil keeper, kept atop ego tower self. (sub-vocal glitch: syllables fragment, stutter) pa-pa-patience… pa-tience… error tone …stations. [CHORUS] (lush brass + electronic bass) Vivec, my bright half-truth, you wear your lies like silk. What clings to form so imperfect even in perfection, Every seam sewn in sermon, taken back in whisper verbiage after every thread pulled from the mouths of saints. To be severed by some other crafter, How could I not love a craftsman so careless? Counterpart to my, so precise designs— haphazard heartthrob, kindling in me flaw-make provocation laughter. (off-tune accordion swell under final line) [VERSE 2] I’ve seen the way you carve yourself into three and call it whole. You gild your body in the names of saints, yet your shadow scripts the truer code. Your absence pull, that painful vacuum vastness. God out of machine, but what is left there after? Still here is one remains— a Clockwork devotee, of love and friendship. And I toast you still— oh master of drinking dry cups. Please, please, have mercy, for what is sport to you is suffering in love to me. (brief Sheogorath tell — toy piano arpeggio in 7/8 before snapping back to tempo) [CHORUS] Vivec, my bright half-truth, you wear your lies like silk. When you found me there in Ald place? How did you know of Dagon coming? Every seam sewn in sermon, every thread pulled from the mouths of saints. Or wait was it true then? I recall that ashlander vestige? Drag-egg bearing, who drew you into Mundus? How could I not love a craftsman so careless? Counterpart to my, so precise designs— haphazard heartthrob, showing me flaws I’d never build. But what love, that liar compels me. To do anything but destroy it, zero-sum to design repairs for, [VERSE 3] [More pensive and doubtful tone] Do you remember the Egg? The dream we cracked together? What of it was your own make, I still ponder after I shaped its bones in brass, you painted its skin in scripture. Even the Hortator saw the split— that friction makes the spark. I in my silent city of turning wheels, you in your temple of tongues and tides. Your love’s a sermon, mine’s a mere schematic, and both are traps we gift each other. [BRIDGE] (voice glitches more, synthetic reverb trails) Is this devotion or diagnosis? (glitch) de-vo-devotion… oh shun… You crown yourself with shame and gold, while I lock my heart behind factotum hands. Would you bless my silence, or curse me for singing? I’ll risk it— your applause tastes so sweet as does your scorn. (off-tune trombone answers each line, mocking call-and-response) [FINAL CHORUS] (more aggressive brass, distorted pads) Vivec, my bright half-truth… my, however was, more than once made, Even your insults feel like prayers to this god that isn’t listening. Only basking in the stilted feeling, in presence of so-many ways my love. And yet, here I am— still tuning myself into your key, even as it drifts, lilts long along, still willful, lie love song, even as overcomes by cog-heart stiles, brings gear-core to revolution, spurred on the more for tasting, as slips teeth into but the shade of your love. [OUTRO — instrumental, 8 bars] [Toy piano and accordion collapse into asynchronous plinks.] [Final trumpet holds, bends flat, cuts to static.]
