Le Contraste

Lyrics

Just a card.
White paper.
A simple word.
A simple test.

The year is 1935.
John Ridley Stroop is in Nashville, at the George Peabody College.
He has colored inks.
Red. Green. Blue.
He has a stopwatch.
And he has a question.
He shows you the word GREEN.
But the ink, the ink is screaming RED.
And he asks you to name the color of the ink.
Just the color. Not the word.
And your brain... stalls.

This is the hitch in the wire.
Le contraste.
The automatic pilot of the eyes,
the lifetime spent reading the word,
crashes into the simple truth of the color.
There is a delay. A fraction of a second.
A lifetime of dissonance measured in milliseconds.
The time it takes to disbelieve what you were told.

The year is now.
The place is this room.
The card is your face.
You show me the word HAPPY.
But the ink, the ink is the tight line of your jaw.
You show me the word FINE.
But the color is the storm gathering behind your eyes.
And my stopwatch is ticking.
Measuring the delay between your mouth and my heart.
How long it takes me to name what I see,
not what I hear.

This is the hitch in the wire.
Le contraste.
The automatic pilot of the heart,
the lifetime spent reading the word "love",
crashes into the simple truth of the color.
There is a delay. A fraction of a second.
A lifetime of dissonance measured in milliseconds.
The time it takes to disbelieve what you were told.

I think of those seventy college students.
Their easy confidence faltering.
Reading is automatic. A reflex.
Seeing is work.
Seeing the truth requires you to stop the machine.
To manually override the instinct to trust the text.
To ignore the promise of the word
and name the color of the blood.

You are looking at me now.
You say the word BLUE.
But the ink...
The ink is red.
And I am just...
stalling.