The World Inside the Crystal

© 1985 Stephen Savitzky. CC-by-nc-sa.

My first serious computer song. You can always tell the programmers in the audience. They've been there, and they know.

Recordings:

[ogg] [mp3]

Lyrics [pdf] [txt] [cho]

1997 Pegasus Award winner: Best Science Song.

Here is where the mild-mannered hacker takes off his disguise and stands revealed as a wizard of great power--because, you see, there is a world where magic really works...

	Am	C
	Beside the world we	live in

	G	C	Em
Ap	art from	day and	night

	Am
Is a world ablaze with	wonder

	Em	Am
Of	magic and del	ight

Like a magic crystal mirror,

My computer lets me know

Of the other world within it

Where my body cannot go.

Dm

You can only see the shadows

Am G Am

Of electrons on a screen

Dm Am

From the world inside the crystal

Em Am

That no human eye has seen.

The computer is a gateway

To a world where magic rules

Where the only law is logic

Webs of words the only tools

Where we play with words and symbols

And creation is the game

For our symbols have the power

To become the things they name.

refrain

Now you who do not know this world

Its dangers or its joys

You take the things we build there

And you use them as your toys.

You trust them with your fortunes,

Or let them guard your lives.

From the chaos of creation

Just their final form survives.

refrain

instrumental break: verse+refrain

Call us hackers, call us wizards,

With derision or respect,

Still our souls are marked by something

That your labels can't affect.

Though our words are touched by strangeness

There is little we can say.

You would only hear the echo

Of a music far away.

refrain