I think that's something inherent to programming. It's not even the only field to have this "problem" - screenplays are written on paper but watched on a stage. Movies are that, but with yet another level of indirection.
Another thing I considered was that, instead of the lisp, you'd have a math-y language and compose everything together. This has the added benefit that it compiles easily to GPU code. So like a chroma key thing would be a function that chooses one buffer over the other based on pixel color. You the compose that with other functions to create a frame. An APL-like language could be amazing here.
I feel like there's _a lot_ of potential here.