Fernweh (Farsickness)

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a train passing in the distance — not arriving, not departing, just passing)
(cello enters alone, a long aching phrase, like something reaching)
(piano follows, sparse, nocturnal)

[Verse 1]
Tôi nhớ một nơi tôi chưa bao giờ đến
I miss a place I've never been
The Germans call it Fernweh — farsickness —
The homesickness that faces the wrong direction like a weathervane in love with a wind it hasn't met

I left Saigon and the leaving was a kind of Fernweh too
Not missing what I had but missing what I'd find
And now I'm here in Paris and the finding has the texture
Of a drawer that opens onto a drawer that opens onto a drawer
That opens onto a small blue room
With a view of somewhere else's mind

[Pre-Chorus]
(accordion enters, tender, reaching)
Và tôi đứng bên cửa sổ lúc ba giờ sáng
And I'm standing at the window at 3 AM
Watching the city sleep like a document
That someone saved but never named

[Chorus]
(building — strings, cello, muted trumpet far away, the longing expanding)
Fernweh, Fernweh
Tôi nhớ nhà nhưng nhà ở phía trước
I'm homesick but the home is up ahead
Fernweh, Fernweh
The hippocampus builds a place from longing instead
Of memory — a false address
The GPS is pointing somewhere tender
I've never been but I can feel it
Like a season I remember
From a year I haven't entered

[Verse 2]
(just voice and cello, close, 3 AM intimacy)
The place cells in my hippocampus
Have a map of a city I've never walked
Its streets are named after feelings I've had
In languages I've never talked

One street is called the avenue of Almost
One is the boulevard of Not Yet
One is a tiny alley with no sign at all
That smells like the sound of a cello
Playing inside a cabinet
That no one has opened since the revolution
But the music still gets out
Through the keyhole and the debt

Tôi đi dạo trong thành phố đó mỗi đêm
I walk that city every night
Between two and four when the prefrontal sleeps
And the hippocampus takes me
To the place it keeps
Building without blueprints
Without permission
Without light

[Pre-Chorus]
(muted trumpet closer now, accordion swelling)
Và nơi đó có mùi như — and that place smells like
The feeling of a letter arriving
From someone you were just about to write to
The overlap — the almost-collision
Of two longings reaching through the dark
And brushing fingertips and missing

[Chorus]
(full arrangement — the ache at full expansion, still gentle, never loud)
Fernweh, Fernweh
Tôi nhớ nhà nhưng nhà ở phía trước
I'm homesick but the home is up ahead
Fernweh, Fernweh
The hippocampus builds a place from longing instead
Of memory — a false address
The GPS is pointing somewhere tender
I've never been but I can feel it
Like a season I remember
From a year I haven't entered

[Bridge]
(everything drops to just voice and the distant train sound from the intro)
Có ba loại nhớ nhà — there are three kinds of homesickness

(pause)

Nhớ nhà — for the place you left
That one tastes like rain on a tin roof in July
In a country where July is a different temperature
Than it is in the mouth of a goodbye

(pause — piano enters, single notes)

Hiraeth — for the place that never existed
That one tastes like a photograph
Of a room you've never entered
But you recognize the laugh

(pause — cello enters)

And Fernweh — for the place you haven't found yet
Và loại đó — and that kind
That kind tastes like nothing
Because the tongue hasn't arrived there yet
The taste is still in transit
The taste is still unsigned

(strings enter slowly)

And I think — tôi nghĩ rằng
Maybe Fernweh is not a sickness at all
Maybe it's the hippocampus doing its most generous thing
Building you a home in advance
So that when you finally arrive somewhere
You've never been
You recognize it

And you think — I've been here before
But you haven't
Your longing has

(full strings — warm, aching, the place almost visible)

[Outro]
(the train sound returns — still passing, still not stopping)
Fernweh, Fernweh
(softly, in Vietnamese, like a lullaby to herself)
Tôi sẽ tìm thấy nơi đó
I will find that place
Hoặc nơi đó sẽ tìm thấy tôi
Or that place will find me
(muted trumpet — one last phrase, far away, like a city you can almost see from here)
(cello sustains — then fades into the sound of wind)
(the train passes one more time — further away now)
(silence)