American Coffee - Jenny Hval

Lyrics by：Jenny Hval

Composed by：Jenny Hval

My mother came to the city at twenty-one

And had no choice but to drive to work

She said I cried in the car every day until I didn't

And when she had me the midwife

Looked her in the eye and said Poor baby you're so scared

I guess I was born anyway

What is a home but the place you'll be dying

And what's far away but places to lose yourself

Myself I had the choice

I left for Northbridge fitzroy Astoria anywhere but home

I moved in with a group of nurses in Collingwood

They looked me in the eye and said A concept is a brick

It can be used to build a courthouse of reason

Or it can be thrown through the window

Who would I've been if I'd never gone there

And who is she who faces her fears

I panic behind the wheel I have sworn to drive again this year

I was taught how but I never taught myself to believe

Or to run or cook or care or even love

All the normal things I went away

I don't know them I went away

I wonder who I'd been if I never got to go

Get a fine arts degree and American coffee

With irrelevant quotes from French philosophy

And we'd meet in the climax of a clever sci-fi movie

But that would just be but that would just be be stupid

I give you that time at the cinematheque

Give you that time

I was watching La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc

While I was having a UTI

I stared into Jeanne's face suffering in black and white

I'm sure I saw her wink at me

Then I peed blood in the lobby bathroom

The blood color seemed so insanely alive

Too alive too alive to be just mine

And I felt I crossed paths with a version of me

A concept you could say but not she who stayed behind

She who quit everything music and identity

Just left a little blood behind and a fever for me to share

There is no courthouse here and no window no bricks are thrown

But underneath underneath us underneath underneath us

The floor tiles wow and flutter

They wow and flutter

In this moment in this moment she has quit