He spent years assuming the voices were important. Not voices in the dramatic sense. Just the constant internal panel discussion that accompanies many through adult life. Imaginary interviews. Commentary. They told him why the audience had not applauded enough, why the email had not been answered, why the person across the room looked disappointed. A musician by trade, he was already trained to respect subtle signals. When the mind produced its own cues, he treated them like important musical information. The revelation came during a mediocre practice session. He was playing scales badly and simultaneously listening to his internal committee explain why his career stalled, why lunch had been disappointing, and why offhand remarks from 1997 still required emotional review. Then he stopped. The scales stopped. The thoughts did not. He noticed something obvious and shocking. The voices continued without any assistance from reality. They simply generated content like a radio station funded by anxiety. And yet he had treated them like dispatches from headquarters. He laughed. This offended the voices. They informed him quickly that laughing was avoidance, that perhaps he was regressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now he saw the trick. The voices were not wise. They were not a council of elders. They were interns with access to the microphone. He began experimenting. When a voice announced, \u201cEveryone thinks you failed tonight,\u201d he would ask, \u201cName three people.\u201d Silence. When another declared, \u201cYou have ruined your life,\u201d he asked, \u201cCompared to what data?\u201d Crickets. When one whispered, \u201cThis thought is extremely important,\u201d he would just make tea. The world did not collapse. Music improved slightly, not because the voices disappeared. They remained industrious but lost rank. He no longer confused volume and value. This may be one of the central tasks of adulthood. Realizing inner speech is just weather passing. Some useful, some decorative. Almost none sacred. He still got fooled sometimes. A dramatic thought would arrive in velvet robes, claiming urgency. He would believe it for an hour, maybe a day. Then he would remember. The mind loves costume but it don’t make it royalty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He spent years assuming the voices were important. Not voices in the dramatic sense. Just the constant internal panel discussion that accompanies many through adult life. Imaginary interviews. Commentary. They […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-9479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}