Ubuntu

Lyrics

[Intro]
(mbira — a repeating pattern, communal, each note depending on the one before it)
(hand percussion joins — multiple hands, not one, a shared rhythm)

[Verse 1]
(PLAIN + NEURO)
The Nguni Bantu say ubuntu
Which translates roughly as:
I am because we are
Which the mirror neuron system
Has been saying since before language
In a dialect made of imitation
And the automatic firing
Of the premotor cortex
Every time you watch someone
Lift a cup
Or wince
Or laugh with their whole sternum

You didn't choose to fire
The neuron chose for you
Your pain when I stub my toe
Is not a metaphor
It's a shared voltage
Running through a wire
Neither of us installed

[Pre-Chorus]
(ATA + SIGHS)
The temporoparietal junction —
The brain's consulate
For understanding other minds —
Processes your suffering
With the same bureaucratic diligence
It applies to mine
Same forms
Same filing
Same quiet heft
Of a morning spent
Carrying something
That belongs to the person
At the next table
Who didn't ask you to carry it
And didn't need to

[Chorus]
(building — mbira, strings, hand percussion, warm and communal)
Ubuntu, ubuntu
Tôi tồn tại vì bạn tồn tại
I exist because you exist
Ubuntu, ubuntu
The mirror fires and the self admits
It was never a solo act
The premotor cortex
Has been rehearsing your gestures
Inside my body
Since the moment
You sat down

[Verse 2]
(TYPHON + SYN — just voice and mbira, intimate)
Tôi lớn lên trong một ngôi làng
I grew up in a village
Where the kitchen had no walls
And the no-walls were the point
Because a kitchen with walls
Is a sentence with a period
And a kitchen without walls
Is a sentence
That the whole village
Gets to finish

And the finishing together
Tasted faintly of coal-fired clay
And the clay was the same clay
The children played with
And the playing was the same gesture
The mirror neurons copied
From hand to hand to hand
Until the gesture belonged
To no one
And to everyone
Which is the same thing

[Chorus]
Ubuntu, ubuntu
Tôi tồn tại vì bạn tồn tại
I exist because you exist
Ubuntu, ubuntu
The mirror fires and the self admits
It was never a solo act

[Bridge]
(everything drops — voice and hand percussion only, communal, stripped)
(IDLEWILD + PLAIN)
The Western philosophers said
I think therefore I am
And the ubuntu philosophers said
We are therefore I am
And the mirror neurons said
Both — and neither —
Because the thinking
Was never yours alone
The I was assembled
From every gesture
You ever watched
And the watching
Was the first collaboration
And the collaboration
Preceded the self
By several million years
Of primates
Grooming each other's spines
In a forest
That didn't require
A theory of mind
To know
That the spine next to yours
Was worth tending

[Outro]
(mbira and hand percussion — the communal pattern from the intro, but now the strings have joined, the community expanding)
Ubuntu
(softly, the village fully present in the voice)
Tôi là vì chúng ta là
I am because we are
And the we
Was always first
(the pattern continues — multiple hands, one rhythm, fading only because distance, not ending)