Song 93: Nostalgic

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
The smell of rain on hot pavement
That's where it starts
The olfactory bulb has a direct line
To the hippocampus
No switchboard — no secretary — no waiting room
Just: wet concrete
And suddenly I'm seven
And the monsoon is drumming on the tin roof in Huế
And bà ngoại is frying shallots
And the whole century smells like home

They call it a Proustian moment
But Proust had a madeleine
And I have shallots in old oil
And mine is better
Because mine is true
And it didn't need a novel
Just a kitchen and a rain

[Pre-Chorus]
Và tôi yêu nơi đó — and I love that place
Not the coordinates
The coordinates have changed
I love the version that lives
In the temporal lobe
Where the rent is free
And the shallots are always frying
And the rain never stops
And I never leave

[Chorus]
L'amour nostalgique, l'amour nostalgique
The tender ache for a place that only exists in the skull
L'amour nostalgique, l'amour nostalgique
The love for a room the demolition crew can't pull
Because the hippocampus built it
Out of something sturdier than brick
Out of shallots and rain and the specific
Weight of a grandmother's hand
On the back of your neck
When you were small enough
To be held by the whole world

[Verse 2]
I went back once
The street was narrower than I remembered
The brain inflates the geography of childhood
The parahippocampal place cells
Encoded a palace
And delivered a corridor
And the corridor was fine
It was a fine corridor

But the woman selling bánh mì on the corner
Had my grandmother's posture
And for three seconds
The amygdala couldn't tell the difference
Between 2026 and 1989
And those three seconds
Were the most expensive real estate
In my entire nervous system

[Chorus]
L'amour nostalgique, l'amour nostalgique
The tender ache for a place that only exists in the skull
L'amour nostalgique, l'amour nostalgique
The love for a room the demolition crew can't pull
Because the hippocampus built it
Out of something sturdier than brick
Out of shallots and rain
And the whole world
Being small enough to hold

[Bridge]
Nostalgia used to be a diagnosis
The Swiss army doctors named it
For the soldiers who got sick from missing home
Nostos — return
Algos — pain
The pain of returning
To a place that only exists
As a fragrance in a temporal lobe


But I don't think it's pain
I think it's the brain's way of saying
I loved something so completely
That I built a copy
And I keep the lights on
In a building that closed years ago

And the keeping of the lights
Is not grief
It's gratitude
With a slight limp

[Outro]
Bà ơi, con vẫn nhớ
Grandmother — I still remember