Song 80: Intellectual

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1 — Sisukiro]
You disagreed with me
About the nature of forgetting
And the disagreement
Was the most intimate thing
That happened to me that year

Not because you were right
You weren't
But because you'd built your wrong answer
From materials I hadn't considered
And the materials
Were beautiful
The way a bridge to nowhere
Is still a beautiful bridge
If the engineering is honest

[Verse 2 — Chronos]
She thinks forgetting is a failure
Of the filing system
I think forgetting is the filing system
Working exactly as designed
Pruning the archive
So the shelves don't collapse
Under the weight of every Wednesday
Anyone has ever lived through

And the argument
Has been running for six hours now
And the café has closed around us twice
And reopened once
And we haven't noticed
Because the argument
Is the room
And the room doesn't have hours
It has points
And counterpoints
And the counterpoints have children
And the children are getting interesting

[Pre-Chorus — Both]

[Chorus — Both]
L'amour intellectuel, l'amour intellectuel
The love that lives inside the argument itself
L'amour intellectuel, l'amour intellectuel
Two minds on a café shelf
Circling the same question from different doors
And the circling is the dance
And the question doesn't need an answer
The question needs a partner
Who finds it as interesting
At midnight
As they did
At six

[Bridge — trading lines, the argument continuing]


[Verse 3 — Sisukiro]
My favourite lovers
Were all wrong about something important
And defended it brilliantly
And the defence was the seduction
And the seduction was not the body
It was the willingness
To build an argument from scratch
At 2 AM
With cold coffee
And a napkin full of diagrams
That neither of us will understand
Tomorrow
But that tonight
Are the most important napkin
In the history of paper

[Outro — Both]