Lyrics What Would You Be, What Would You Do? - Akira the Don

What Would You Be, What Would You Do?

If you’re feeling heroic and you want to do something for the world
And you want to expand what you understand
You poke your head through what you know and you take a look at the,
at whatever structure is out there
And to me this is a re-creation of the Daoist Yin-Yang symbol
You know, with the white paisley here and that’s what you know the dark paisley
serpent’s there and the right place to be is right on the line between them
Put one foot where you understand, that gives you security, but it’s kinda dull
because hey you know everything that’s going on there and that isn’t what
people are like, they don’t want just security
Dostoyevsky said, I love this, if you gave people everything they wanted,
they had nothing to eat but cake and nothing to do but sit in warm pools and
busy themselves with the continuation of the species
The first thing they would do, well maybe after the first week, was go kind of
half insane and smash everything up just so that something that they didn’t
expect would happen
So that they’d have something interesting to do
And it’s so right because the utopian notion that if you just had all the
material stuff you wanted that you
You’d be
What would you be?
What would you do?
Well what would you be?
What would you do?
You’d just sit on the couch and watch TV
I mean you’d be, I don’t know what
You’d be cutting yourself just for entertainment in no time flat
You know, and that’s the sort of thing that people do
So we’re not adapted for security and utopia
We’re adapted for a certain amount of security
Because you know we are vulnerable
But mostly we want to have one foot out where we don’t know what the hell is
going on
Because that’s where you’re alert and alive and tense and with it
I believe this and I believe it actually has something to do with the
hemispheric structure of the physiology of your brain
The right hemisphere looks roughly adapted to what you don’t know and the left
hemisphere is adapted to the world that you do know
And the right place for you to be is halfway between them
You can tell that, that’s what’s so cool
What would you be?
What would you do?
We’re not adapted for security and utopia
Well what would you be?
What would you do?
Mostly we want to have one foot out where we don’t know what the hell is going
on
What would you be?
And you want to be out there in the unknown enough so that you keep updating
yourself
Well what would you be?
What would you do?
That’s where you’re alert and alive
This tells you that this is actually reality that’s manifesting itself to you
You know that sense of active engagement you have in the world when things are
working well for you
You know, where you’re where you should be at the right time
You’re alert and on top of things and engaged and you don’t have much of a
sense of time and the sense of the tragedy of life sort of recedes
That’s when you’ve got one foot where it’s secure and one foot out in the
unknown
And your brain signals to you that you’re in the right place by making what
you’re doing meaningful
That sense of meaning is actually a neurophysiological signal that you’ve got
the forces of the cosmos properly balanced in your being at that moment
And that’s why it feels so good
What else could it possibly be?
What would you be?
What would you do?
We’re not adapted for security and utopia
Well what would you be?
What would you do?
Mostly we want to have one foot out where we don’t know what the hell is going
on
What would you be?
And you want to be out there in the unknown enough so that you keep updating
yourself
Well what would you be?
What would you do?
That’s where you’re alert and alive
You know that because that’s where you are when you’re having a really
interesting conversation with someone
Or you’re gripped by a book
Or you’re really into a movie
Or maybe something that you do
As a, you know apart from your work
Or maybe even in your work
You’re into it and that’s because you are in the right place at the right time
and your whole nervous system is signalling that to you
And I would say that’s the sort of place that you should be all the time
That’s the recreation of paradise on earth
It’s something like it
Because you are in the right place at the right time when that is happening