Lyrics I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum) - Lou Reed, Blind Boys of Alabama

I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum)

Under the intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes
I have felt the full knowledge
And force of their expression
And yet been unable to possess it And have felt it leave me As so many other things have left
The letter half-read
The bottle half-drunk
Finding
Finding in the commonest objects of the universe
A circle of analogies
Of metaphors
Ooohhh
For that expression
Which has been willfully
withheld from me The access to the inner soul denied
I wanna know, ooohhh
I wanna know
I wanna know, oh I wanna know
In consideration
In consideration of the faculties and impulses
Of the human soul
Of the human soul
In consideration
Of our arrogance
Of our arrogance
Our radical, primitive irreducible arrogance of reason
We have all overlooked the propensity
We saw no need for it The paradoxical something which we may call perverseness
Perverseness
Through its promptings we act without
Comprehensible object
We act for the reason we should not
We act for the reason we should not
For certain minds this is absolutely irre-, irre-
irresistible
irresistible
The conviction of the wrong
Or impolicy of an action
Is often the unconquerable force
The unconquerable force
It is a primitive impulse
It is a primitive impulse
Primitive impulse
The overwhelming tendency
The overwhelming tendency to do Wrong for the wrong’s sake
To do wrong for the wrong’s sake
We persist in acts
Because we feel that we should not persist in them
Because we feel we, feel we should not persist, per-, persist in them, ah Ooohhh
So I wanna kn