Paired 3.5: Mid-Season Outtakes!

We asked Empty Heaven to describe the thought process that went into the writing of "Shadowself":

Jungian psychology purports that every human has a "Shadow Self," an unknown, unconscious side. It's mostly thought of as a receptacle for all of our negative feelings, although it's chaotic nature can often diffuse emotions as we understand them, replacing them with an incomprehensible mush.

When I listen to "Paired," I am reminded that not only do our devices come equipped with a personality (however artificial), we also teach them our own. However, we don't teach them how to be us as we really think we are. We fill them with data points, search history, demands, private notes, and all sorts of other private things. If someone were to try to make a portrait of us based off of our devices, it would be an undoubtedly warped, sadly sterile, and sometimes disturbing one. I know mine would be weird for sure. I believe it's accidentally poetic that they even get little Apple IDs with our name.

"Shadowself" is about having a double, a doppelganger that follows you wherever you go, and it feeds you stressors, insecurity, and endless stimulation...the proverbial "devil on one's shoulder." But, you are slightly to blame, because you taught it everything it knows. I consider this to be the dark side to the concept of "Paired," a very funny and also sweet podcast that I love.

Lyrics:

When I move, so do you

When I deviate, you see through every move i make like i was scripted

You can feel when weight has shifted

When I look away, you disapprove

We are one in the same

We play symmetrical party games

We dance together in the shower

We rise and fall at the same hours

But when I sleep, you interrupt the dream

I built myself a shadowself

and always want to look at them

and when I tell myself I don’t

I spiral and I look again

Am I sick? I am sick

Seeing double and I’m second pick

They hold the things that I have hidden

All the thoughts that are forbidden

To keep their mouth shut, I’ve gotta pay a tithe

Call a priest, call a nun

Call the ghost adventures hosts’s own son

I need an exorcism

I need light without a prism

There’s a schism in my heart and it’s alive

I built myself a shadowself

and always want to look at them

and when I tell myself I don’t

I spiral and I look again

It’s horrible to hold them

and it’s even worse to let them go

It’s horrible to keep from people

even worse to let them know

It’s so hard to have me in my hands

When the night turns its head

The lonely hours reveal what I had said to so and so sometime

it always feels like violent crime

my double will enunciate the words

When I covet the face

of a man I want to have replace my visage in the mirror,

my double draws the image nearer,

and now I have to focus til I’m sure

When I don’t know a thing,

my own double starts to bring the fount of knowledge to my idle hands

My brain retracts, ennui expands

Now knowledge isn’t special anymore

I built myself a shadowself

I taught it when it came to me

I won’t be held responsible

But I oughta be, I oughta be

It’s horrible to hold them

and it’s even worse to let them go

It’s horrible to keep from people

even worse to let them know

It’s so hard to have me in my hands