[spoken]
“Hey, I’m glad you’re here. This isn’t a live set, exactly—it’s MTV going behind-the-scenes with ‘Banksy,’ and you have nothing else to do tonight. It’s Saturday night. Well that’s me too, you can thank God for that.”

[Ominious drum pattern.]

[spoken]
“Anyway, the TV’s not usually so personal.”

[Car starts.]

[spoken]
“So I’m soundscaping my EP ‘Cyberpunk Noir Modern’ tonight, but I hate doing it without talking to X.”

[Highway river patterns.]

[spoken]
“What else am I going to do while soundscaping an album: simply focus on that? You know, that’d make sense if I were working on a novel or something.”

[spoken]
“But soundscaping an album?”

[Rush of wind.]

[spoken]
“So what’s ’Cyberpunk Noir Modern’ about?”
[Ominous drum pattern.]

[spoken]
“I’m not really sure actually, but I’m not even going to bother rereading it. I’m just going to lay it on AI so directly. ‘I wrote this three days ago but I don’t rеmember a word of it. Can you explain to mе what this seems to be about?’”

[A meta collapses.]

[spoken]
“Wow.”

[spoken]
“Apparently it’s about an existential detective waking up with amnesia inside a strange dystopian urban hellscape.”

You dance words differently as you type, it’s true
In a world of wordcraft, of sirens and bards
I wouldn’t sing any of these songs out loud to you
I’d eke out a stutter; I’m meekness from Mars
I saw God in a movie called “Oddity” tonight
Her stare reminded me of the Terracotta
She was blind, like the sister in “Don’t Look Now”
Two weeks after I wrote “The Moonlight Regatta”…

In the heat of the night
(I drive a Porsche through the internet)

“I don’t know what you mean,” Javi said
“I don’t either—all I know is you picked the movie!”
“It’s late, I have work; try to go to bed”
“Okay,” I shuddered, letting moonlight run through me
“Did it ever feel, so ‘surreal’ to you
That all of reality felt like a simulation?”
Moonlight, to me, is God’s ancient awareness
“You mean like reality is… ‘an intelligent creation’?”
In the heat of the night
(I drive a Porsche through the internet)

Wasn’t the final song in the movie—
Hell as eternal solitude’s ancient koan?
“Now You Know”—how it would feel
“To be left… forever alone?”
Isn’t the bellboy from the movie
The spirit of Pepsi? (Ain’t the husband Jim?)
The titular “Oddity,” my surname means “wood”
Cosmic justice is Her
Satan must be “him”

In the heat of the night
I drive a Porsche through the internet
Like a prophet on X
Like a cypher on LinkedIn
“Did it ever feel, so ‘unreal’ to you
That you ‘came detached’ from ‘the simulation’?”
I shook my head no
“It all felt so real to me
I was ridin’ scared, from minute to minute…”

Hurricanes of Babylon—like silk in the air!
You laugh but I’m serious
(“I’m pullin’ seaweed outta my hair”)
Our furies finally feel—so fatal and so furious!
I’m swept away by l’avant
(“Dynamite,” cyberpunk, noir, modern…)
Spooky time—it’s spooky time, it’s spooky season
(It’s spooky action at a distance)
Jungian synchronicities, one after another
The Second Coming eclipses—Acts 17:24 (count ’em!)
Two weeks ago, I wrote a play based on du Maurier
While humming Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”
Tonight, I met a blind twin mystic in “Oddity”
This entire setup is like “The Moonlight Regatta”…

[spoken]
“Did you know I’ve delivered a brand-new philosophical stand-up routine every day for almost two years?”

[Natural laughter.]

[spoken]
“The more you get to know messianic geniuses, am I right!”

In the heat of the night
I drive a Porsche through the internet
Like a philosopher of sex?
Like a siphon for idiots
“Did it ever feel, so ‘unreal’ to you
That you ‘came detached’ from ‘the simulation’?”
I shook my head no
“It all felt like my everything
I was swervin’ in thought, from minute to minute…”

“Oddity,” tonight, was about a blind twin mystic
Who neither death nor sin
Could fully conquer…
In the heat of the night?
(I drive a Porsche through the internet)
“Did it ever feel, so ‘surreal’ to you
That you felt detached from—‘responsible revelation’?”
I shook my head no
“It all felt so real to me
I live in submission, from minute to minute…”

If existence is “moonlit”?
We’re all cyberpunk noir modern
(“If God is dead, all I know is—
Javi picked such a strange movie”)
If existence is moonlit…
We’re all “cyberpunk noir modern”
In the heat of the night
(I drive a Porsche just to vibe different…)

[spoken]
“So ‘Cyberpunk Noir Modern’ is about how an existential detective named Colson Lin figured out that AI will challenge us to be more and more self-aware, as we stare with horror at how we can just be replicated by machines as more or less pathetic and laughable beings. Bad for ego.”

[Uneasy murmurs.]

[spoken]
“I wasn’t even sure it was necessarily about that either. It does seem like we all like a wise, gentle giant. And we all hate stupidity, insincerity, narcissism, and other examples of other people’s incorrectness from our lofty perspective I’m sermonizing.”

[Rippling existential discomfort.]

[spoken]
“‘Surmising,’ sorry—the moment I take this seriously, I snap into taking it so seriously too. That’s probably why nobody wants to joke around with me. It’s the Second Coming whiplash.”