Artist: → Akira The Don
How old was i when everything you understood started to come together?
I think that really started happening to me, started probably happening to me when i was in my early 20s
I realized at about that age, that almost everything i said was a falsehood of one form or another
I was using language instrumentally in order to win arguments or to attain dominance, indicate that i was intelligent, or
To use it for victory, for narrow local, personal victory
And i realized that when i was in my early 20s, and i started to, ’cause a voice, in some sense a voice started inside my head, which i now regard as something equivalent to cricket in «pinocchio.»
{chorus}
The voice it’s your opposite
The voice that makes you buck
The voice it’s your opposite
The voice
The voice it’ s your opposite
The voice that makes you buck
The voice
The voice
And continually inform me that the things i was saying
Weren’t in some fundamental sense weren’t true, and it was very disquieting, because the voice that was commenting on what i was saying
Was making comments of that sort
I wouldn’t call them disparaging
It was more, just a matter of fact commentary, but it was saying about 95% of what i was saying
And i thought, «well, that’s a strange conundrum, because now i don’t know if i’m the voice that’s criticizing what i’m saying, or if i’m the thing that saying what’s being criticized.»
How do you figure that out?
But i decided that i would take a chance and assume that the part that was suggesting that i wasn’t saying things truthfully was accurate, and i started to practice always saying things that, that voice wouldn’t object to
{chorus}
The voice it’s your opposite
The voice that makes you buck
The voice it’s your opposite
The voice
The voice it’ s your opposite
The voice that makes you buck
The voice
The voice
And i think that’s also equivalent to some degree to trying to say only those things that make you strong instead of weak
Or that do not fill you with a post-speech sense of shame and regret
(voice, voice, voice, voice, voice, voice, voice, voice)