Provenance (Nyquist-Shannon Theorem)

Original words & music: Dietrick Hardwick Song written: 2026 Creative direction & production: Dietrick Hardwick Al-assisted performance & production: 2026 Performing artist: The End of Works © 2026 Dietrick Hardwick - Words & Music All rights reserved. The moral rights of the author are asserted. Provenance (Nyquist-Shannon Theorem) [Spoken] There was a voice upon the wire. Or something that resembled one. We knew the path the signal traveled. We never knew what had begun. I found a name without a witness A photograph without a face A thousand copies of a moment With no account of time or place The reels were turning in the darkness The meters swore the sound was there I pulled a melody from silence And heard a stranger in the air And every layer I uncovered Revealed another hidden seam Was I restoring what was broken Or manufacturing the dream? Trace the signal home Through the static, through the years Every copy bears a fingerprint Every absence leaves a seam But the map is not the country And the source is not the proof We can know where it came from And still not know the truth Nyquist marked the boundary Shannon measured what survives A world reduced to information That somehow keeps a voice alive Beyond the necessary threshold A bounded waveform may return But frequencies beyond the capture Leave us lessons we can’t learn And every perfect reconstruction Is faithful only to its frame The truth may live beyond the spectrum Outside the numbers and the name I could invent the missing pieces And make the broken picture whole But who appointed me the witness? Who entrusted me the soul? Trace the signal home Through the static, through the years Every copy bears a fingerprint Every absence leaves a seam But the map is not the country And the source is not the proof We can know where it came from And still not know the truth There is a mercy in the silence There is a dignity in doubt Not every gap requires an answer Not every ghost must be drawn out They told me fill the missing frame They told me make the singer whole But a lovely lie in perfect pitch Is still a theft of someone’s soul Between the witness and the veil The glass remembers every hand What we preserve is not the whole Of what no witness understands [Spoken] Who held the microphone? Who chose what not to keep? Who called the noise irrelevant? Who gave the silence leave to speak? [Voice One] You reconstructed the signal. [Voice Two] But who reconstructed the witness? Interveil. I’ve held the masters in my hands I’ve seen the copies multiplied I’ve watched the borrowed truth become A thing the world could not deny But I will not invent a memory I will not counterfeit a name Where evidence has reached its ending I will not manufacture flame Trace the signal home Through the static, through the years Every copy bears a fingerprint Every absence leaves a seam And the map is not the country And the source is not the proof We can know where it came from And still not know the truth What was captured may be carried What was lost must have its place I can tell you how it traveled I cannot give the silence a face Preserve the signal. Do not invent the source.