I’m blown away. These lyrics (below) are exactly what I was wrestling with as a teen, suffocating from anxiety. I felt trapped and wondered if free will maybe didn’t exist at all.

Like Wyatt says, I believed: “Had I been free, I could have chosen not to be me.”

I never consciously listened to lyrics growing up, but I always am surprised when relistening, how closely the themes of my favorite music harmonized with my emotional landscape.

Free Will and Testament - Robert Wyatt, 1997

Given free will but within certain limitations,

I cannot will myself to limitless mutations,

I cannot know what I would be if I were not me,

I can only guess me.

So when I say that I know me, how can I know that?

What kind of spider understands arachnophobia?

I have my senses and my sense of having senses.

Do I guide them? Or they me?

The weight of dust exceeds the weight of settled objects.

What can it mean, such gravity without a centre?

Is there freedom to un-be?

Is there freedom from will-to-be?

Sheer momentum makes us act this way or that way.

We just invent or just assume a motivation.

I would disperse, be disconnected. Is this possible?

What are soldiers without a foe?

Be in the air, but not be air, be in the no air.

Be on the loose, neither compacted nor suspended.

Neither born nor left to die.

Had I been free, I could have chosen not to be me.

Demented forces push me madly round a treadmill.

Demented forces push me madly round a treadmill.

Let me off please, I am so tired.

Let me off please, I am so very tired.