Mémoire Involontaire

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a teacup placed on a saucer — ceramic on ceramic)
(piano arpeggios — swirling, Debussy-like, as if the notes are remembering themselves)
(harp — a single glissando, like a door being opened fast)

[Verse 1]
The olfactory bulb is the only sense
That doesn't knock before it enters
It bypasses the thalamus entirely
And arrives at the amygdala
With the directness of a woman
Who has walked into the wrong funeral
And realized it's hers

I smelled something on the Rue Mouffetard today
Between the cheese shop and the rain
And the smell had the dimensions
Of a kitchen I haven't stood in
Since the century before this one
When the linoleum was green
And my mother's hands
Were still the largest things I'd ever seen

[Pre-Chorus]
(strings enter — swirling, key shifting, the memory taking over)
Proust called this mémoire involontaire
The memory you didn't choose to open
The trapdoor in the floor of the present
That drops you thirty years
Without a rope or a permission slip
Or a return ticket
And the landing
Has the softness of something
That has been waiting for you
Patiently
In the dark

[Chorus]
(building — full swirl, harp, strings, piano, the most impressionistic sound)
Mémoire involontaire, mémoire involontaire
The smell bypasses everything the mind has built
Mémoire involontaire, mémoire involontaire
It walks past the thalamus without guilt
And the amygdala opens like a window
That was painted shut for twenty years
And the air that comes through
Is 1994
And the light in 1994
Was different
And the different is what the tears are for

[Verse 2]
(just voice and piano, close, confessional)
He dipped the madeleine in linden tea
And what came back was not the taste
But the entire village of Combray
Rising like a stage set from the cup

The neuroscience is almost romantic
The olfactory nerve sends its signal
Straight to the limbic system
No editing, no moderation
No prefrontal review
Just the raw footage
Arriving in the emotional brain
Before the thinking brain
Has time to put its trousers on

And the raw footage is always more true
Than the version the cortex would have approved
Because the cortex would have cropped the photo
And the uncropped version
Has your mother's elbow in the corner
And the elbow
Is the reason
You're crying

[Pre-Chorus]
(harp glissando again — another trapdoor opening)
And I can't control which smell will do it
Last week it was a specific quality of diesel
And I was nine years old
On a school bus
With a knee that had the landscape
Of a Tuesday in October
When falling down
Was still something the ground
Could apologize for

[Chorus]
(full, aching, the memory at full flood)
Mémoire involontaire, mémoire involontaire
The smell bypasses everything the mind has built
Mémoire involontaire, mémoire involontaire
It walks past the thalamus without guilt
And the amygdala opens like a window
That was painted shut for twenty years
And the air that comes through
Is 1994
And the light in 1994
Was different
And the different is what the tears are for

[Bridge]
(everything drops — just voice and the sound of rain on a café awning)
The madeleine is not the point
The madeleine is never the point
The point is the involuntary

The memory you chose to keep
Is a portrait hanging on a wall
The memory the smell brings back
Is the thing behind the wall
That the portrait was covering

(one piano note — long decay)

And behind the wall
Is a room
And in the room
Is a woman
And the woman is setting a table
For someone who isn't coming anymore
But the table is set anyway
Because the setting of the table
Was never about the arrival
It was about the belief
That the arrival was possible

And the smell
Of linden and butter and rain
Is the key to that room
And the key was never lost
It was just filed
In the only cabinet
The cortex can't reach

(strings enter — warm, enormous, the memory completing itself)

And the cortex can't reach it
Because the cortex would ask
Whether it's useful
And the limbic system knows
That usefulness
Was never the question

[Outro]
(the swirl returns — but softer now, settling, the memory dissolving back into the present)
Mémoire involontaire
(softly, returning to the café, to now)
The smell has passed
The kitchen is gone
The linoleum is gone
The hands are gone
But the room behind the wall
Is still set
And still waiting
(piano — the arpeggios from the intro, but slower now, gentler)
(the teacup on the saucer again — the same sound from the opening)
(the present has returned)
(but it's wearing 1994's light)