Every Room I Have Ever Entered Had a Song Already Playing

Lyrics

[Verse 1 — slow waltz, accordion alone]
The first music was not music
It was Ba ngoai humming
while the rice cooked
a melody with no name
that went nowhere in particular
and arrived everywhere
Ru con ru con
she hummed it like breathing
three notes and a rest
three notes and a rest
the rest was where the rice
listened back
I did not know it was music
until years later
when I heard a cello
play the same three notes
in a concert hall in Lyon
and my body stood up
before my mind
gave permission
[Verse 2 — waltz quickening, clarinet joins]
The second music
was a French pop song
on a cassette
my mother brought back
from a trip I was not told about
I did not speak French
I did not understand a single word
and I danced in the kitchen
for eleven minutes
which was both sides of the tape
My feet understood
before my vocabulary arrived
and that is still true
The body is the first translator
The body does not wait
for subtitles
[Pre-Chorus — tempo lifting, trumpet enters]
Every room I have ever entered
had a song already playing
My mother's kitchen had the cassette
The schoolyard had the girls clapping
The airport had the departure hymn
of footsteps and rolling wheels
and Paris
Paris had everything at once
[Chorus — full band, 132 BPM swing]
I love music the way I love air
which is to say
I forget I love it
until someone takes it away
and then every room
is a room with furniture missing
and every silence
is the wrong kind of silence
and my hands
start conducting
something that is not there
I love music because it is
the only language
that does not require
my accent to be correct
I can sing in French
and the vowels forgive me
I can sing in Vietnamese
and the tones remember me
I can sing in no language at all
and the melody
carries what the words
refused to
[Verse 3 — full band, swinging]
The night I arrived in Paris
I had two suitcases
and no address for the morning
and a cafe on Rue Oberkampf
had its doors open
and a band was playing
something between jazz and argument
and I sat on the pavement
with my luggage
and listened
for forty minutes
and that was my first lease
A man with a trumpet
played a phrase
that sounded like a question
he had been asking for years
and I thought
I have been asking that same question
in a different language
and the trumpet
does not care
which language the question
was born in
[Bridge — pulls back, accordion and clarinet only]
Every part of me responds at once
when the music is right
My fingers move
My spine adjusts
My jaw releases
something it was holding
since the morning
and my eyes close
not to sleep
but to see the sound
more clearly
I cannot explain this
and I do not need to
The grandmother humming
over rice
did not explain it either
She just hummed
and the kitchen
became the first concert hall
I ever attended
and I have been attending
ever since
[Final Chorus — full band, joyful]
I love music the way I love breathing
which is badly
and constantly
and without technique
and with my whole body
and with the body
Ba ngoai gave me
which is the body
that heard the first hum
and has been leaning
toward every sound since
Every room I have entered
had a song already playing
and I have never once
walked out
and I will walk into rooms
for the rest of my life
listening for the song
that is already there
and if the room is silent
I will hum
three notes and a rest
three notes and a rest
and the room
will have its music
and the music
will be hers