Le Silence Entre

Lyrics

[Intro]
(silence — real silence, longer than comfortable)
(then: a heartbeat — not a drum, a real heartbeat)
(and in the gap between the beats — a single piano note, placed in the silence the way a stone is placed in a Japanese garden)
(the space around the note is the point)

[Verse 1]
(whispered, almost not singing — voice and piano only, vast reverb)
The silence between the first beat and the second
Is where I live
It's a studio apartment
With the dimensions of a held breath
And the landlord is a feeling
That has not yet decided
What it is

The cardiologists call it diastole
The moment the heart rests between contractions
But rest is the wrong word
The heart is not resting
It is listening
To whether it should beat again
And every time
It decides yes

[Pre-Chorus]
(a single cello note, sustained, like a horizon line)
And that decision
Made seventy times a minute
A hundred thousand times a day
Is the quietest courage I know
And no one has ever once
Said thank you

[Chorus]
(building — but "building" here means: a second piano note joins the first. A second cello note. That's all.)
Le silence entre, le silence entre
The space between the heartbeats where the self resides
Le silence entre, le silence entre
The resting state where the brain's dark energy hides
Not silence as absence
Not silence as void
Silence as the room where everything
Is being quietly employed

[Verse 2]
(voice and string harmonics — crystalline, hovering, ghostly)
Between two notes of music
There is a third thing
That is not a note and not a silence
But the agreement between them to mean something

Debussy knew this
He put more architecture in the space between his notes
Than most composers put in the notes themselves
He built cathedrals out of what he didn't play
And the cathedrals are still standing
In the pauses
In the doorways of the melody
Where the sound excuses itself
And goes outside for air

The resting-state network uses more glucose
Than the brain at work
The silence is more expensive than the noise
And what it's buying
Is the conversation you have with yourself
When you stop performing
For the furniture and the boys

[Pre-Chorus]
(another cello note — now two sustained notes creating an interval, a door opening)
And in that conversation
There are no Sigh-style metaphors
No synesthesia
No concept dressed as color
Just the voice
And the voice
And the space between the voices
Where the truth lives
Like a cat
In a box
That is both open and closed
And the cat doesn't care
About the physics

[Chorus]
(the fullest this song gets — three piano notes, two cellos, voice, vast space between everything)
Le silence entre, le silence entre
The space between the heartbeats where the self resides
Le silence entre, le silence entre
The resting state where the brain's dark energy hides
Not silence as absence
Not silence as void
Silence as the room where everything
Is being quietly employed

[Bridge]
(everything stops except breath and the heartbeat from the intro)

(spoken, not sung, barely above a whisper:)
I counted the silences on this album

Between the songs
Between the verses
Between the words
Between the syllables
Between the letters

And there are more silences than sounds

The album is mostly silence
The way the body is mostly water
The way the universe is mostly dark
The way a conversation is mostly listening

(one piano note — the same one from the intro)

And the dark energy of the brain
The seventy percent of neural activity
That happens when nothing is happening
Is building something in the silence
That the noise will never see

(very long pause — just the heartbeat)

It's building you

The version of you
That exists between the thoughts
The one who was here before the first song
And will be here after the last
The one the silence belongs to

(a single violin harmonic — impossibly high, like a star)

Le silence entre
The silence between
That's where you've been sitting
This whole time

(the heartbeat continues — four more beats)
(then even the heartbeat pauses)
(and in that pause — the deepest silence on the album)
(and in that silence — everything)

[Outro]
(the piano note from the intro returns — but softer now, almost imagined)
(the cello returns — one note, sustained, fading)
Le silence entre
(whispered)
Entre
Entre
(the word dissolving into breath)
(breath dissolving into silence)
(silence holding)
(holding)
(the next sound — whenever it comes — will be Song 66's distant train)
(but for now: nothing)
(and the nothing is full)