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

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