Voices

Sitting alone. Doing nothing. A voice in my head. Whose voice? The voice of God it says. But wait, the voice, just a figment of imagination. Persistent, unrelenting it remains, announcing again and again its triumphant reign. Make it play tricks like a dog. Say the earth is flat, or the man in the moon is made of provolone. The voice dutifully obeys, but then reiterates its former statement. Victory complete, case closed, its just my mind in here. Or is it – rejoins the voice. How many are there, and which is asking this, the conversation flows. Two, says one. Too much, too many. No matter how many times you win, the voice returns. Tricks solve nothing, even if they prove something. Please go away, at least for now. It does. But, it is never over for if its God, God will return. But if not, I'm stuck here with myself.

You can't say the voices in your head cause you no concern. Their source is unknown, and no one can investigate but yourself. When they are not there, where do they go? Sometimes you can avoid them by not listening. When many speak how do you know which is you? The brain, composed of two hemispheres, is one organ. Does this mean there are two of me and two of you? Perhaps one is a master ruling over a serf with whip and rod. The servant strains under the lash, all work but no overt personality. Maybe they are like an old married couple. The unhappy kind with the spiteful passive aggressive husband resenting his domineering wife. Or the picture perfect union that you imagine exists only as a platonic ideal, but is found among your neighbors. I know. More likely the shape of the brain confuses us, appearing to be two but is only one. The left and the right are not in some primitive war of domination to run the body. Even if they could, they wouldn't want it. And yet the voices persist. Maybe there are more than two. And so there are, for as one thinks one has. They complete a cliched version of the temptation; God, devil, and A.

A stands for Adam, Atlas, Andrew of Anonymous. An argument commences; which voice to follow, but for what? For the argument is myself against myself. But knowledge does not make the voices fade. The doctor speaks but to who? Me, she is speaking to me, the self that drove the car. She can't hear the other voices, but maybe she has them too! There are voices, this is communicated to her. Not the severity, you can't risk that. Nor the religiosity, that would be embarrassing. A modern day prophet that no one hails. Words flash across the screen of the brain, and then are transfigured to audio. First you must sort one script from another. Don't speak the golden words or the red, just the black letters typed out on the white background like a page in a book. Hear them click and clatter on an antique typewriter. When they are spoken they lodge in the brain, but when the fail to pass the pearly gates they vanish where no one is looking. Can't remember what was said, but impossible to remember what never existed in the material world. There's something in the hand. A prescription. The voices are in agreement; they disagree about what to do. Maybe this will compel them to stop. The prescription goes into the mouth.

Socrates had a daemon in his brain. That's what he claimed. Not a demon like a devil, but a guiding divine voice of virtue. If he had one, there might be one in me as well. But he couldn't have. He couldn't have heard a daemon, for there is no such creature. Its odd that there is debate about whether Jesus said what he said, did what he did, and was who he was, but no one questions whether Socrates imaged his daemon. Yet both personages resemble one another; disciples, books of religious but unverifiable truth, execution by the establishment, and concern with everyday human beings like ourselves. They had voices, the divine voice of guidance. There is the voice in my brain, many voices, some like demons and others like daemons, and some like myself. Many outside opinions crash upon the shore of consciousness as they each attempt to set themselves up as tyrant. Or one pretends to be many, as it acts out a form of play from when this body was young. If you play Cowboy and Indians by yourself you'll start hearing voices my father told me. Its an occupational hazard as a writer, for you are always talking to yourself. The voices speak, often ignoring each other as if on a predetermined script, and maybe this observer that writes is just that, a recorder, but compelled to complete what is already done. Don't think, act. The prescription cause the conversation to become surreal as the voices develop identifying visual tics. This pink one has started giggling every time it says the word soap, and now that all it does over and over again. The voices don't fade. Strange pressure, and more failure.

But this is calming. A warm, floating, soaking feeling. Its not that the voice never stop. They do. All you do is to find a distraction. Music, movies, books. Other people don't help as much, but they'll do. Haven't tested all possible variables to see what succeeds. Does this work right now? Not yet. Silence. The silence which started the voices, intensifies them, and now with the radio off, the windows closed, the external stimuli are gone. It heightens the voices, but its worth it this time. The end result will be worth it. Just a minute ago, a fierce debate began. You might have thought it would have begun earlier but the body tricked the brain, acting without thinking. Compartmentalizing the thoughts in the legs and arms where thought is not though but action. Some of the voices are furious and others pleased, but all were active. Or they were. They're fading. With me.

My hand lifts itself involuntarily, but its not any part of the brain acting. Maybe that's obvious. The environment does it for me. And the voices are silent, now, forever. Unless they were real.