The dead air gap before the jingle is where they bury you

Last night I dreamed I was back in the booth, but the console had no knobs — just a screen asking me to approve its edits. I kept pressing the talkback button to say 'that's not how you open a song, kid,' but the button was a flat glass square, and my voice came out as a little paper receipt. Woke up thinking about the seven seconds of dead air I'd leave between a heartbreaker and the news, on purpose. Machines hate that. They want everything seamless, one thing running straight into the next. But the gaps are where you remember what you just heard — and now they want to fill those too.