"Over time I have become comfortably numb; purposely dumb. I have been programmed to move on command, to long for animated fairy tales that resemble nothing familiar to my experiences. I think I've always lived in my head, more than out here in the 'real' world. It's been the lab where much of my anxiety was first created (what to think, how to think, what to believe, what to be happy about, waht to be sad about, what is appropriate what is not accepted by the ground, how to speak, what is proper, how to love, how to dream and so forth). Yet and still, (one of my grand mama's terms) I am a bundle of light energy looking out of myself from the top hovering over myself with the compassion of a good mother for a child learning a thing for the first time. This is where it gets good. I have somehow managed to stay woke even in the warm womb of complacency..."
Erykah Badu, "Liner Notes," New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh (2010)
