This song is about a recurring thought I have. Sometimes, I think about the fact that the key to improving my mental health and well-being isn’t tied to “fixing” something in the physical sense, but really it’s about changing your thinking. In this train of thought, the brain is like hardware and our thoughts are like software. Sometimes I imagine an alternate universe where I’m never seriously anxious or depressed because my brain is wired differently. Starting with this thought, I then considered whether our society follows the same model, and could be “rewritten” if we simply changed our way of thinking.

Since the arrangement is a punk tune, all the instruments are captured via the BOSS interface. The vocals are courtesy of the Zoom recorder.

Lyrics

I think about the ways that my mind works
How I’ve programmed myself for pressure and pain
Then I think about how somebody else
Could turn out different even with the same brain
In some other plane there’s no reason to vent
Straight line happiness, not steadily bent
There I’d have no real reason to complain
My days in the same brain, perfectly content

‘Cause I am of two minds, yeah
I am of two minds
One of them is real, the other I can’t find
‘Cause I am of two minds

I think about the ways our society’s run
How we have all the riches we could possibly need
The inertia drags us lower everyday
All fulfill the contract, we’ve never agreed
All we have to change is the way we think
To stop the spiral, step away from the brink
We’d have to say goodbye to the coldness and greed
If we don’t want our prospects to constantly sink

And I am of two minds…

See the identical canvas and frame
Different art though they started the same

I am of two minds…