Métissage

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a Vietnamese folk melody played on accordion — the two traditions meeting in a single instrument)
(upright bass enters with a groove that's half bossa half Vietnamese folk rhythm)
(light percussion — a hybrid pattern, not quite either tradition, entirely itself)

[Verse 1]
Métissage — the French word for blending
For the child who is two countries in one coat
The thalamus does this every second —
Takes a hundred signals from a hundred foreign boats
And makes a single harbour out of all of them

Tôi là Belleville lúc bảy giờ sáng
I am Belleville at seven in the morning
Where the phở and the croissants share a counter
And the counter doesn't ask which one belongs
And the steam from both
Rises into the same unreliable weather

[Pre-Chorus]
(accordion and Vietnamese folk melody weaving together)
The brain has never tasted a pure signal
Every sound arrives pre-blended with the light
Every touch is already married to a temperature
The thalamus is the priest
And the ceremony is every night
And every morning
And nobody objects
Because objecting would require
A purity that nothing in the nervous system
Has ever once possessed

[Chorus]
(confident groove — strings, accordion, percussion, the most rhythmic song on the album)
Métissage, métissage
Tôi là sự pha trộn — I am the mix
Métissage, métissage
The thalamus relaying every trick
Of light and sound and memory and tongue
Into a single person standing in the sun
In Belleville
With phở on her breath
And Piaf in her lungs
And neither one is willing to be undone

[Verse 2]
(just voice and đàn tranh texture, intimate, proud)
My mother spoke Vietnamese to the vegetables
And French to the tax collector
And a third language — silence —
To the parts of her life
That neither country had a form for

Tôi thừa hưởng cả ba — I inherited all three
The vegetables and the taxes and the silence
And the métissage is not the blending
Of the first two
It's what grows in the third
The way moss grows in the crack
Between two walls
That were built by different architects
In different centuries
For different reasons
And the moss doesn't care
About the architecture
The moss just needs the gap

[Pre-Chorus]
(full groove returns, the confidence building)
And the binding problem —
The neuroscience of how separate becomes whole —
Is not a problem at all
It's a talent
The brain has been practising
Since before the word brain
Was a word
In any language
Including the ones the brain invented
To describe itself
Which is the most métissage thing
A brain has ever done

[Chorus]
(full, confident, the golden hour groove at its warmest)
Métissage, métissage
Tôi là sự pha trộn — I am the mix
Métissage, métissage
The thalamus relaying every trick
Of light and sound and memory and tongue
Into a single person standing in the sun
In Belleville
With phở on her breath
And Piaf in her lungs
And neither one is willing to be undone

[Bridge]
(everything drops to voice and a single hand drum — the most stripped, most proud)
Người ta hỏi tôi — they ask me
What are you?
As if the answer were a single postcode
And not the entire postal system
Renegotiating its boundaries
Over breakfast

(pause)

I am the gap between the walls
I am the moss
I am the thalamus at work
I am the steam that doesn't know
Which pot it came from
And doesn't care
Because the ceiling
Is the same ceiling
And the warmth
Is the same warmth

(accordion returns — the Vietnamese folk melody again, but now harmonized with French chanson chords)

Và tôi đẹp vì sự pha trộn
And I am beautiful because of the blending
Not despite it
The way the brain is beautiful
Because it has never once
Experienced a single thing
In isolation
And wouldn't know what to do with purity
If purity arrived at the door
With a reservation
And the correct documents

The thalamus would blend it
Before it reached the cortex
Purity would arrive already mixed
Already métissé
Already mine

[Outro]
(the hybrid groove returns — the two traditions fully merged now, inseparable)
Métissage, métissage
(proudly, smiling)
Tôi là tôi — I am me
All of it
The phở and the Piaf
The moss and the gap
The steam and the ceiling
(the Vietnamese folk melody and the French accordion play the same phrase simultaneously — two traditions, one breath)
(the groove fades — confident, warm, unhurried, golden)