Carnet (Notebook)

Lyrics

[Intro]
(the scratch of a pen on paper — real, close)
(a single cello note, sustained like an envelope being opened)
(fingerpicked acoustic guitar, delicate)

[Verse 1]
Tôi viết cho mẹ — I'm writing to my mother
In a notebook the colour of a kept promise
The paper has the weight of something
That knows it will never be mailed
And has made its peace with this

Dear Mẹ — the café has marble tables
That hold the cold the way you held opinions
And my handwriting has become a country
With two dominions
The left hand writes in Vietnamese
The right hand thinks in French
And the pen translates between them
Like a diplomat asleep on a park bench

[Pre-Chorus]
(cello deepens, piano enters)
Và con nhớ mẹ — and I miss you
The way working memory misses
Everything it had to let go of
To make room for what the afternoon insists is
More important

[Chorus]
(building gently — strings, still intimate)
Carnet, carnet
Tôi viết để quên — I write to forget
Carnet, carnet
Je écris pour me souvenir — I write to not forget yet
The notebook is the hippocampus I keep in my bag
The extended mind, the overflow, the draft
Cognitive offloading is a clinical phrase
For the thing my grandmother called craft

[Verse 2]
(just voice and guitar, a letter read aloud)
Dear Bà Ngoại — dear grandmother —
Your balcony in Huế still smells like the feeling
Of a sentence you never finished
I met a woman here who writes in a notebook too
She sits by the window and her pen has the posture
Of someone who has decided truth
Is something you approach from the side
Like a lobster

Chúng tôi không bao giờ nói chuyện
We never speak — we just write in the same room
And that is a kind of conversation
That has the emotional accuracy of a bassoon

[Chorus]
(fuller, the notebook filling up)
Carnet, carnet
Tôi viết để quên — I write to forget
Carnet, carnet
Je écris pour me souvenir — I write to not forget yet
The notebook is the hippocampus I keep in my bag
The extended mind, the overflow, the draft
Cognitive offloading is a clinical phrase
For the thing my grandmother called craft

[Bridge]
(everything drops to just voice — no instruments, just the pen)
Dear Con Gái Tương Lai — dear future daughter —

(long pause — just the pen)

If you find this notebook
In a flea market on a Sunday in Clignancourt
Know that every letter I never sent
Was a letter I was writing
To the version of myself
Who hadn't happened yet

(piano enters, single notes)

Và con là phiên bản đó — and you are that version
Mọi trang giấy đều là một lá thư tình
Every page is a love letter
To the person I was becoming
While I was busy
Writing to the people I had left

[Outro]
(the pen scratch returns, guitar soft)
Carnet, carnet
(whispered, in Vietnamese)
Tôi viết — I write
Tôi nhớ — I remember
Tôi quên — I forget
Tôi viết lại — I write again
(the pen stops — notebook closing softly)
(café sounds return — afternoon continuing)