Mono no Aware

Lyrics

[Intro]
(koto — a phrase that descends, each note further from the last, petals spacing themselves on the way down)
(flute enters — one sustained note, thinning at the edges like wet paper held to a window)

[Verse 1]
(PLAIN + NEURO)
The cherry blossom lasts five days
And the visual cortex can see every one of them
Because the visual cortex stops registering
Anything that refuses to leave

Habituation — the neurons simply quit
For stimuli that persist
The wallpaper disappears on day three
Your lover's face goes soft-focus by the seventh year
The only things the cortex renders in full resolution
Are the things in the act of departing

The Japanese built an entire aesthetic
From this glitch

[Pre-Chorus]
(ATA + SIGHS)
Mono no aware — the pathos of things —
Is a building permit
Issued by the temporal lobe
To feel something about a colour
That is already filling out
Its notice of resignation
And the form has the specific weight
Of a Tuesday you spent
Watching a train pull out of a station
You were not leaving from

[Chorus]
(building — koto, strings, flute, the beauty accumulating as it falls)
Mono no aware, mono no aware
You can only see what's leaving
Mono no aware, mono no aware
The neuron fires for the grieving
Not the having — never the having
The having is wallpaper
The leaving is the window
And the window is only beautiful
When it frames
The going

[Verse 2]
(TYPHON + SYN — just voice and koto, intimate)
There is a corridor in the hippocampus
Where the memories of things that lasted
Sit in folding chairs
Made of condensed indifference
And the memories of things that ended
Stand at the counter
Wearing the particular colour
That a late afternoon borrows
From a peach left on a sill
Just past the moment of ripeness
Just entering the sweeter rot

And the sweeter rot
Is the mono no aware
The beauty that only ignites
When the match is already spent

[Chorus]
Mono no aware, mono no aware
You can only see what's leaving
Mono no aware, mono no aware
The neuron fires for the grieving
Not the having — never the having
The having is wallpaper
The leaving is the window

[Bridge]
(everything drops — voice and a single sustained flute note, thinning)
(IDLEWILD + SIGHS + PLAIN)
In the café this afternoon
A woman dropped a glass
And the glass broke
And for the quarter-second
Between the dropping and the floor
The glass was the most visible thing
In a room full of furniture
That had been disappearing for years

And the sound it made
Was not a crash
It was a koto string
Released by someone
Who understood
That the holding
Was never the music

The releasing was the music
And the music only lasted
As long as the letting go
Which is always
Exactly
Long enough

[Outro]
(koto — the same descending phrase from the intro, but now one note is missing, the phrase incomplete, more beautiful for the gap)
Mono no aware
(softly)
The petal falls
The neuron fires
The wallpaper stays
And nobody sees it
(flute — thinning, thinning, the wet paper finally releasing from the window)
(silence — not empty, just departed)