American Coffee Song Lyrics

American Coffee by Jenny Hval

My mother came to the city at 21
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?
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 have 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
I was watching La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc while 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 colour 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