Vagotomie

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a single sustained note — like a wire being held taut)
(sparse piano, cold, precise — a tango rhythm underneath, barely there)

[Verse 1 — Chronos]
The surgeon had hands
That moved with the politeness
Of someone cancelling a subscription
You didn't know you'd signed up for

He said: we're going to cut the wanderer
The way someone might say
We're going to remove the wallpaper
Upstairs

But the wanderer
Is not wallpaper
The wanderer is the longest conversation
The body has with itself —
From the base of the thinking
All the way down
To where the digesting lives
A thread of gossip
That has been running
Since before the body
Had a name for gut feeling
And the gut feeling
Was the original language
And the surgeon
Was about to cut
The telephone line

[Verse 2 — Orikusis]
(her voice — warm against his cold)
Mais le nerf vague, c'est la voix du corps
Cắt nó đi — và cơ thể sẽ im lặng
The wanderer is how the body says: I'm here
Cut it
And the belly stops calling the head
And the head stops knowing
What the belly needs
And the two of them
Sit in the same house
Like tenants
Who share a kitchen
But no longer speak
And the kitchen
Fills with the specific temperature
Of a silence
That used to be a conversation

[Chorus — Both]
(building — tango pulse, strings tightening)
Vagotomie, vagotomie
The wanderer cut, the gossip thread severed
Vagotomie, vagotomie
The body's oldest telephone
Disconnected
With the bedside manner
Of a landlord
Serving an eviction notice
To a conversation
That had been paying rent
For a hundred thousand years
And never missed a payment
And the payment
Was the feeling in your stomach
That knew something
Before your head
Had opened the envelope

[Bridge — Both]
(everything drops — just two voices, the tango gone)
(Chronos:) I've watched them cut it
A hundred thousand times
Across centuries
And every time
The body looks surprised
As if the belly
Expected the head to intervene
And the head
Was reading something else

(Orikusis:) Và mỗi lần — and every time
Something in the kitchen goes quiet
And the quiet
Is not peace
The quiet
Is the sound of a house
Where someone
Has unplugged the phone
And the phone
Was the only one
Who remembered the number
Of the person
Who knew how to fix the boiler

[Outro]
(the sustained note from the intro returns — but now it fades, the wire going slack)
Vagotomie
(both voices, one cold one warm, converging)
The wanderer
The gossip
The oldest conversation
(the wire releases — silence — the disconnection complete)