Terrasse

Lyrics

[Intro]
(café sounds — spoon against porcelain, sparrows, someone laughing two tables over)
(acoustic guitar in a lazy bossa figure, brushed drums like someone stirring sugar)

[Verse 1]
Tôi ngồi ở ngoài — I'm sitting outside
Because the chairs outside cost four euros more
And what you're paying for is not the chair
But the particular philosophy
Of having nothing to be for

The default mode network finally exhales
Like a woman taking off a beautiful
But complicated dress
And getting into bed

[Pre-Chorus]
(accordion enters, golden)
Và tôi không làm gì cả
Et je ne fais rien du tout
And I am doing nothing — nothing —
In three languages at once
And the nothing has a view

[Chorus]
(building gently — strings join, still lazy, still golden)
Terrasse, terrasse
Bốn euro cho quyền được ngồi yên
Terrasse, terrasse
Four euros for the right to just be seen
The default mode is wandering now
Through rooms I didn't know I'd built
Connecting things that don't belong together
Like a sommelier of guilt and gilt

[Verse 2]
(just voice and acoustic guitar, people-watching)
A man at the next table has a newspaper
He hasn't turned the page in forty-seven minutes
His coffee has gone cold in a way that suggests
He is living in a memory
And the memory has no limits

A woman walks past wearing a coat the colour
Of the feeling you get when you cancel all your plans
Her dog has the expression of someone
Who has accepted the situation
And made peace with his hands

Tôi nhìn họ — I watch them all
Each one a default mode network on legs
The brain at rest is the brain at its most honest
The way the sea is most itself between the waves

[Pre-Chorus]
(accordion and cello, warm)
Và tôi ngồi đây như bà ngoại tôi
The way my grandmother sat in Huế
Watching the Perfume River do nothing
Beautifully — như dòng sông không vội
Like a river with nowhere to be

[Chorus]
(fuller, the afternoon stretching out)
Terrasse, terrasse
Bốn euro cho quyền được ngồi yên
Terrasse, terrasse
Four euros for the right to just be seen
The default mode is wandering now
Through rooms I didn't know I'd built
Connecting things that don't belong together
Like a sommelier of guilt and gilt

[Bridge]
(just voice and a single plucked guitar string between phrases)
Người ta nói rằng — they say
The brain uses more energy at rest
Than when it's solving problems
Isn't that the most French thing
You've ever heard

(gentle pause)

Và tôi hiểu rồi — and now I understand
Ikigai is not the purpose you go hunting for
It's the purpose that finds you
While you're sitting still
Paying four euros for a chair
That faces the door

(strings enter gently)

Mục đích tìm thấy tôi
The purpose found me
While I was doing nothing
In three languages
On a Tuesday
In the sun

[Outro]
(the lazy bossa returns, unhurried)
Terrasse, terrasse
(softly, smiling)
Không có gì — nothing
Rien du tout — nothing
Nothing at all
And it has a view
(sparrows — café sounds — the afternoon goes on)
(guitar plays out, fading like sun moving across a table)