She Probably Does Not Remember Saying It

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Second year
Amphitheatre Richet
a Tuesday in November
and Professor Marais
held up a cross-section
of the human brain
the way someone holds up
a newborn
not by the weight
but by the implications
Two hundred students
and most of them
were looking at tissue
I was looking at tissue
And then she said the thing
and the tissue
became a city
[Verse 2]
She said
this is not an organ
this is a conversation
between one hundred billion speakers
who have never met
and somehow
they agree
on what your name is
every morning
She said it
the way you say
something you have said
four hundred times
to four hundred rooms
not expecting
this room
to contain the person
who will carry the sentence
out of the building
and into a career
and across twenty-seven years
of waking up at 5 a.m.
to open the conversation
she described
[Pre-Chorus]
I did not know
it was the moment
You never know
it is the moment
The moment
does not announce itself
It wears the same Tuesday
as every other Tuesday
and it holds up a brain
and says a sentence
and you walk out
and take the metro home
and nothing is different
until everything is
[Chorus]
She probably does not remember saying it
It was a Tuesday
in a lecture hall
that seats two hundred
and she had four hundred Tuesdays
in that hall
and I was one face
in one row
on one November afternoon
who heard a sentence
about conversations
between neurons
and decided
that is what I want to do
with my hands
I want to open
the conversation
I want to hold it
the way she held
the cross-section
not by the weight
but by the implications
I want to be inside
the city she described
and I have been
for twenty-seven years
and I have never
sent a letter
thanking her
because the size
of what she gave me
makes a letter
feel like sending a napkin
to cover a cathedral
[Verse 3]
The temporal lobe
is where we store
the voices of the people
who changed us
Not the words precisely
but the frequency
the particular resonance
of a voice
that once said the right thing
at the right angle
to the right
unfinished version of you
Professor Marais
lives in my temporal lobe
in the region
between the voice of my mother
and the sound
of the first patient
who woke up
and remembered their name
She is filed
between origin
and proof
[Bridge]
The prefrontal cortex
is where we plan
where we organize
where we decide
what to become
Mine was twenty years old
in that amphitheatre
Not yet finished developing
which means
she spoke to a brain
that was still
being built
and the sentence
became part of the architecture
This is what teaching is
Speaking to a structure
that is still under construction
and trusting
that the sentence
will find its load-bearing wall
and hold
She did not know
she was laying brick
She was giving
a Tuesday lecture
She was holding up tissue
and describing a city
and one student
in the fourteenth row
took the city home
and has been living in it
since
[Final Chorus]
She probably does not remember saying it
and that is the most generous thing
about teaching
You give a sentence away
on a Tuesday
and the sentence
does not come back
and you do not know
where it went
and twenty-seven years later
it is holding up
an operating theatre
and a career
and a woman
who wakes at five
and opens the conversation
you described
with her hands
Professor Marais
if you are listening
which you are not
because this is a song
in a city
you may have left by now
The sentence held
The city is real
The conversation continues
and my hands
learned their purpose
in your amphitheatre
on a Tuesday
in November
and I have been
a better architect
than correspondent
and I owe you
a cathedral
and all I have
is this