Lyrics Watch What Is Really Going on - Akira the Don, Alan Watts

Watch What Is Really Going on

You can’t
You know, you can’t eat 10 roasts of beef in one day
Can’t live in six houses at once, can’t drive three Rolls Royces at the same
time
What are you to do?
Watch what is going on
Watch what happens
Nobody ever does this, you know
Nobody ever does this, you know
Watch what is going on
Watch what happens
Nobody ever does this, you know
Nobody ever does this, you know
Well, you just go make more money, put your money back
Invest in something else, it’ll make more
You don’t give a damn how it’s made, so long as they make it
You don’t care if they foul the rivers, put oil fumes throughout the air
everywhere, kill off all the fish
So what?
So long as you see these figures happening, you’re not aware of anything else
So you see, you went out to do a self-improvement thing
Making money, you see, is a measure of improvement, a measure of your economic
worthwhileness
Or at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be, it isn’t anything of the kind
But you went out, in other words, for the status, instead of for the actuality
Watch what is going on
Watch what happens
Nobody ever does this, you know
Nobody ever does this, you know
Watch what is going on
Watch what happens
Nobody ever does this, you know
Nobody ever does this, you know
You do art, you’re a musician
Why do you play music?
The only reason for playing music is to enjoy
If you play music to impress an audience
Read about yourself in the newspaper, you’re not interested in music
So in the same way, why do I come and talk to you?
'Cause I enjoy it
I like the sound of my own voice
I’m interested in what I’m talking about, and I get paid for it
Now, that’s smart in this life
You get paid for what you enjoy
So here’s the situation, you see
The whole idea of self-improvement is a will-o'-the-wisp and a hoax
That’s not what it’s about
Let’s begin where we are
What happens if you know, if you know beyond any shadow of doubt that there is
nothing you can do to be better?
Well, it’s kind of a relief, isn’t it?
You say, «Well, now what will I do?»
Because we are so used to making things better
Leave the world a better place than when you found it sorta thing
I want to be of service to other people, and all these dreadfully hazy ideas
But supposing instead of that, seeing that there isn’t really anything we can
do to improve ourselves or to improve the world, if we realize that that is so,
it gives us a breather, in the course of which we may simply
Watch what is going on
Watch what happens
Nobody ever does this, you know
Nobody ever does this, you know
Watch what is going on
Watch what happens
Nobody ever does this, you know
Nobody ever does this, you know
Therefore, it sounds terribly simple, it sounds so simple that it almost looks
as if it isn’t worth doing
But have you ever just watched?
Watch what’s happening and watch what you are doing by way of reaction to it
Just watch it happen, and don’t be in a hurry
To think you know what it is
In other words, people look, so that’s the external world
Oh?
How do you know?
The whole thing, from a neurological point of view, there’s a happening in your
head
That you think there is something outside the skull is a notion in your nervous
system
That may or may not be, but it’s a notion in your nervous system
You think this is the material world
Well, that’s somebody’s philosophical idea
You think it’s spiritual
That too is somebody’s philosophical idea
This real world is not spiritual
It is not material
The real world is simply…
So could we look at things in that way, without fixing labels and names and
gradations and judgments on everything?
But watch what happens
Watch what we do
But watch what happens
Watch what we do