The Chinese for Everything Bad (Tamade)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
In this cramped classroom on the coast,
July 12, 2017, humidity at 28 degrees Celsius,
sweat beads on my forehead as I grip the bamboo calligraphy brush.
The ink drips onto rice paper, black as Li Bai's restless heart.
Tamade, I say, first tone high and level,
like the moon he drank under in 701.
But anger flattens it, Bouba notes,
prosody turning sharp, no curve left.

[Chorus]
Tamade for the spilled tea,
tamade for the cracked porcelain cup,
half-full of cold jasmine, scent clinging like soy sauce from the alley stall.
Four tones collapse when the vendor shouts at noon,
his voice a bark, flattening the third into nothing.
Bouba, with your handheld recorder,
capture this: the neuroscience of rage,
curves gone straight.

[Verse 2]
Li Bai might have muttered it,
restless in 762, wind fierce,
but the Pleco Dictionary, 2020 edition,
says it's 'his mother's,' raw frustration.
I practice: tamade de ma de,
adding the rhyme to soften,
mock anger in a child's game.
The plastic tone chart on the wall,
arrows pointing up, down, flat,
but emotion erases them.

[Bridge]
The unnamed vendor in Chinatown,
steaming baozi half-eaten on my napkin,
pork filling warm, he shouts it,
reason lost to the gaps in record.
Elderly tutor, never named,
whispered it first, taboo unwritten.
Bouba, analyze the crack in my voice,
third tone breaking on the recorder's tinny play.

[Verse 3]
Wang and Xu, Journal of Phonetics, 2011,
tone sandhi in emotional prosody,
anger flattens Mandarin's music.
I dip the brush again,
ink tang mixing with musty books,
sunlight harsh through dusty window.
Tamade for everything bad,
from restless hearts to cold tea.

[Outro]
Bouba nods, notes the prosody,
tones flattened, lesson done.