Song 91: Midlife

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
I kissed the wrong people beautifully
For twenty years
The ventral tegmental area
Had the taste of a sommelier
And the judgment of a fire
And I let it order for me
Every time

And now the menu has changed
The dopamine receptors have been renovated
Less nightclub — more restaurant
The kind with one seating
And a chef who doesn't need
Your compliments
To know the sauce is right

[Pre-Chorus]
And the woman in the mirror
Is not the one I planned
She has better lines
Worse knees
And a relationship with gravity
That could best be described as
An ongoing negotiation
In which gravity is winning
But not ungracefully

[Chorus]
L'amour de la mi-vie, l'amour de la mi-vie
The love that shows up after you've stopped looking good for it
L'amour de la mi-vie, l'amour de la mi-vie
The wiser kiss that doesn't need the room to go quiet
I know what I want now
Which took longer than the myelin
Took to wrap my prefrontal cortex
Which is to say
I am finally as smart
As my brain

[Verse 2]
He arrived on a Tuesday
Which is the least romantic day
The serotonin noted his presence
Without the fireworks
More like — the thermostat adjusting
Two degrees warmer
And the two degrees
Were the most articulate thing
A nervous system ever said

I don't need the ventral striatum
To build a carnival anymore
I need it to build a kitchen
Where someone knows
That I take my coffee ridiculous
And doesn't ask why
And the not asking why
Is the sexiest thing
That has ever happened to me
In any decade
And I have tried several

[Pre-Chorus]
And the body is not what it was
The collagen has made other plans
But the body knows things now
The proprioceptors have opinions
And the opinions are correct
And the correct opinions
Are worth more than the collagen
On any market I recognize

[Chorus]
L'amour de la mi-vie, l'amour de la mi-vie
The love that shows up after you've stopped looking good for it
L'amour de la mi-vie, l'amour de la mi-vie
The wiser kiss that doesn't need the room to go quiet
I know what I want now
Which took longer than the myelin
Took to wrap my prefrontal cortex
Which is to say
I am finally as smart
As my brain

[Bridge]
The neuroscience of midlife love
Is that the brain has pruned itself
The synaptic density of twenty
Has been edited down
To the clean architecture of forty-five
Fewer connections
But the ones that remain
Are load-bearing

And the love that fits this architecture
Doesn't rattle in the frame
It just — fits
The way a key fits
That you stopped jiggling years ago
Because you finally learned
The trick is less force
Not more

[Outro]
L'amour de la mi-vie
The trick was less
The trick was always less