Clair de Lune

Lyrics

[Intro]
(piano arpeggios — not Debussy's Clair de Lune, but shaped by the same negative space)
(harp joins, the notes placed apart like stepping stones across water)
(the sound of the Seine at night — barely there, just the sense of moving water)

[Verse 1 — Sisukiro]
(voice and piano only, floating)
The moon is doing something to the river
That the river is allowing
The light doesn't land so much as suggest itself
The way a hypothesis goes browsing
Through a library after hours
When the shelves have stopped caring about order
And the books have rearranged themselves
By the feeling of their covers

Debussy lived on this street
Or the next one — the addresses have all been promoted
Since 1890
He wrote moonlight the way a surgeon writes an absence
Every note he didn't play
Was a room the silence had devoted
To the project of not being empty
But not being full
A room that was exactly
The correct amount of haunted

[Pre-Chorus — Both]
(harp and strings enter, the two voices meeting for the first time)
And the vagal brake is releasing
The way the moon releases the tide
The parasympathetic nervous system
Says the day is done
And everything that fought
Can put its weapons down beside

The river — which accepts them
Without comment
The way a river accepts the moon
Without asking what it costs
Or what it's for
Or whether the reflection
Is the moon
Or the memory of the moon
Or the river's opinion of the moon
Which is also valid
And also beautiful
And also lost

[Chorus — Both]
(building — but building the way moonlight builds: slowly, without effort, by accumulation)
Clair de lune, clair de lune
The parasympathetic prayer of light on water
Clair de lune, clair de lune
The nervous system settling like a father's hand on his daughter
Rest now — the amygdala has closed for the evening
The cortisol has turned its coat and gone
The moon is here and the moon requires nothing
Except the surface of something to land on

[Verse 2 — Orikusis]
(her voice, warm, Vietnamese-accented, close — voice and harp only)
Ở Huế có một cây cầu — in Huế there is a bridge
Where the moon sits on the Perfume River
Like a grandmother who has come to visit
And refuses to acknowledge the hour or the weather

Tôi từng ngồi đó với mẹ — I used to sit there with my mother
Watching the moon do what the moon does
Which is nothing
But doing it with such commitment
That the nothing becomes a form of prayer
That the Buddhists would appreciate
And the Catholics would envy
And the river would carry
All the way to the sea
Without once asking whether prayer is the right word
Or whether the right word matters
When the water is this still

[Pre-Chorus — Both]
(flute enters — impressionistic, hovering above the strings like the moon above the river)
Và bây giờ tôi ở Paris — and now I'm in Paris
And the moon is the same moon
And the river is a different river
But the parasympathetic response is identical

The vagal brake does not care
Which river you're beside
It only knows the light is gentle
And the cortisol has died
And the body can afford
To stop defending itself
Against a day that is already
On the shelf

[Chorus — Both]
(the fullest, most impressionistic sound — harp, piano, strings, flute, celeste, two voices braided)
Clair de lune, clair de lune
The parasympathetic prayer of light on water
Clair de lune, clair de lune
The nervous system settling like a father's hand on his daughter
Rest now — the amygdala has closed for the evening
The cortisol has turned its coat and gone
The moon is here and the moon requires nothing
Except the surface of something to land on

[Bridge — Both, close harmony]
(everything reduces to just the two voices and a single sustained harp chord — the most intimate moment)
(in close harmony, almost whispered:)
Chị ơi — sister
Oui — yes
Trăng đẹp quá — the moon is so beautiful
Oui — elle est belle

(silence — four beats of nothing)

Do you remember when we were small
And the moon was an explanation
For everything we couldn't understand
We'd say the moon did it
The way adults say the economy did it
Or the government did it
Or the amygdala did it
And the moon would accept the blame
With the patience of something
That has been reflecting other people's light
For four and a half billion years
And has never once complained
About the arrangement

(piano arpeggios return — the same opening figure, but now the two voices hum over it)

Debussy didn't name the moonlight
He named the space the moonlight made
And we've been living in that space
Since the first note he decided not to play

[Outro — Both]
(the impressionistic wash slowly thins — instruments dissolving like the moon behind clouds)
Clair de lune, clair de lune
(both voices, in the gentlest unison)
The moon requires nothing
The river accepts everything
And the space between them
Is where we sleep tonight

(harp — three final notes, placed apart, each one a stepping stone)
(the Seine continues — barely audible)
(the flute plays one last phrase — Debussy's ghost excusing himself from the room)
(silence — the nocturnal kind, full of moonlight and settling nervous systems)