The Voice

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)