How I Am

How I Am Song Lyrics

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Professor Bhaer:

She asks how I am,
And so, how am I?
My days are the usual day.
I wake up, I go out,
Time goes by.
My days are exactly the days
I have lived since arriving here.
In fact, how I am is amazed how
This comforts me year by year.
I work and I eat.
Life is muffins and jam.
The house is nice and quiet now.
That is how I am.

Five years in these rooms,
Reading Hegel and Kant
My mind is devoted to thoughts
On the meaning of life.
What more could I want?
So why is it lately I find I’m
Uneasy all through the night?
And why even now does my skin
Feel explosive as dynamite?
Why does my heart pound
Like a battering ram?
How can she ask me how I am?
How I am is fine!

“Dear Miss March, there is nothing
Dramatic or new to report,
This will be short.

Morning and evning I live
In my usual way.
On the day you return you
Will see for yourself!
Tell me Miss March, are you

Happy so far from the clang
And the beat of our turbulent street?
Quite often I think of
Our days in New York.
Though of course since you went I
Have been quite content.’


Ach! I wake in the morning
And all that I hear
Is the absence of sound.
Yes!My peace is disturbed
But the ruckus is me
As my thoughts run aground.
I wanted a life by myself
In these romms,
And now all around me
Another life looms.

Who asked her to come and
To go and to leave me like that?
And now she expects me
To send her a note?
With words, if I spoke,
That would stick in my throat!
Who asked her to change how I live,
How I think, how I am?

She asks how I am.
How can I reply? I go through my daily routine.
I give lessons, I wait.
Time goes by.
Yet lately I find there is
Pleasure in humming a silly tune.
And some days I go to the park
And I sit there all afternoon.
Some evenings I swear
I can hear a door slam.
The house is far too quiet now.
That is how I am.

[Thanks to Georg for lyrics]