Le BoSS

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a car engine trying to start — not a real car, a warm analogue approximation, almost musical)
(accordion enters on the second try — the engine catches, the waltz begins)
(finger snaps — the dashboard clicking on)

[Verse 1]
You have been driving this body
For how many years now?
Thirty? Forty? Fifty-two?
And you have never once
Looked under the hood

You know the brake — that's the freezing
You know the gas — that's the panic
You know the swerve — that's the Tuesday
When the email came at nine
And your hands did something
Your mouth apologised for at ten

But the dashboard — cher —
The dashboard has been blinking
Since before you learned the word for nervous
And the blinking
Is not the problem
The blinking is the information
And the information
Has been waiting
Very patiently
For you to learn to read

[Pre-Chorus]
(strings enter, warm, the lesson beginning)
Tôi đã lái xe mà không nhìn bảng — I drove without reading the dash
For twenty years
And the twenty years
Left dents
That a mechanic could have caught
At the first flicker
Of the check-engine light
If I'd known
I had a check-engine light

[Chorus]
(full waltz — accordion, strings, finger snaps, swinging and wise)
Le BoSS, le BoSS
The operating system in your bones
Le BoSS, le BoSS
You are not the car — you are the driver
But the driver fell asleep at the wheel
In 1997
And the car has been driving itself
And the self-driving
Was not a feature
It was a survival mode
That forgot to turn off
When the surviving was done

Le BoSS says: wake up
Le BoSS says: check the dash
Le BoSS says: the light was never the enemy
The light was the letter
Your body wrote you
Every morning for a decade
That you filed
Under: later

[Verse 2]
(stripped — just voice and accordion, intimate, the three tools)
The voice knows before you do
Thirty seconds of your morning
And the tremor in the vowel
Tells a truth
Your vocabulary spent all night
Editing out

The voice is the first dashboard reading
The body's daily weather report
Filed before the mind
Has opened the curtains
Or decided what kind of fine
It's going to pretend to be today

(strings enter gently)

And when the reading says: storm —
Not the dramatic kind
The quiet kind
The lying-very-still-while-the-morning-rots kind —
There's a ten-minute rescue
That starts where the body starts
Not where the thinking starts
The body first
Always the body first
Because the body
Was driving
Before the thinking
Had a licence

And the journal — the rewrite —
The moment you catch the story
The anxious voice has been typing
On the keyboard of your week
And you sit down
And you edit
Not the feeling — never the feeling
The narrative
The draft the panic wrote at 3 AM
That the morning
Doesn't have to publish

[Chorus]
Le BoSS, le BoSS
The operating system in your bones
Le BoSS, le BoSS
You are not the car — you are the driver

[Bridge]
(the waltz slows — voice and piano, the 167 hours)
One hundred and sixty-seven hours
Between the sessions
Between the Tuesdays
Between the room where someone listens
And the room where you are alone
With the dashboard
And the blinking
And the story
The panic keeps rewriting

And the BoSS lives
In the one hundred and sixty-seven
Not in the one
The BoSS is the co-pilot
For the hours
When the pilot
Is white-knuckling the wheel
And the co-pilot says:

Check the dash
Read the light
Hear the voice
Feel the body
Rewrite the draft

(accordion returns, warm)

Not because you are broken
You were never broken
The car works — cher — the car works perfectly
The car has been keeping you alive
Through every swerve
Through every freeze
Through every Tuesday

The car is magnificent
The car just needs a driver
Who has read the manual

And the manual
Is the BoSS
And the BoSS
Starts with thirty seconds
Of your voice
In the morning
Telling the truth
Before the truth
Has been edited
For the audience

[Outro]
(the waltz returns — full, warm, the engine running smoothly now)
Le BoSS
(the accent full, warm, the mechanic and the driver in one voice)
Tôi đọc bảng điều khiển bây giờ — I read the dashboard now
The check-engine light
The morning voice
The body first
Always the body first
(accordion plays the waltz out — the engine humming, the dashboard lit, the driver awake)
(finger snaps — four, the system online)