Schopenhauer - "3:16am" by Jhené Aiko

“All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering. Fulfillment brings this to an end; yet for one wish that is fulfilled there remain at least ten that are denied. Further, desiring lasts a long time, demands and requests go on to infinity; fulfillment is short and metered out sparingly. But even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent; the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one; the former is a known delusion, the latter delusion not as yet known. No attained object of willing can give satisfaction that lasts and no longer declines...Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throngs of our desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain happiness or peace.” (pg. 135)

The artist speaks of the other-worldly habitat of her own individual will full of desire and unfulfillment that is ever unsatiated. Her mind is disoriented, floating throughout a place full of the deficiency and suffering that Schopenhauer speaks of, unable to grasp the happiness and peace he believes is only possible in ridding oneself of the individual and self-serving will full of boundless cravings.

“You say ‘take my hand’ and we go, and we go, and I hope that we don’t overdose, cause we don’t, no we don’t, ever know when we have had enough.” She knows that the desires of her will can only transpire with the potentiality of overdosing on the very thing her appetite craves. This same hope (and fear) she experiences that Schopenhauer mentions will eventually be burnt by the object of her desire that satisfies for but a moment. Just as he claims the longevity, or lack thereof, of any object the will achieves will never gratify the longing of the will for an extended period, the artist know that even when she’s had enough of her object, her will still doesn’t know when to cease its labor because all that it knows is how to perpetually want.

“Now my thoughts so cloudy, and my heart’s so crowded with pain, I am so frustrated, like my soul’s been taken away, broken promise of everything that I thought you were, thought you said this would never hurt, that’s what it did, that is all.” Just as Schopenhauer claims, the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one, and the former is a known delusion. Her will has been satisfied by a ‘placeholder’ that disappears and leaves a hole in which a new seed of desire has already been planted.