My Soul

نفسي

Poems inspired by SNX's songs, retold by AIA Labs.

From the song

A conversational Egyptian-Arabic piece that begins as an argument with someone who has become unrecognisable. The speaker asks which version of them he is facing and says he once knew them and now does not. Then the voice turns inward. He wishes that one day he could tell himself it is enough, wonders whether that is even reasonable when so much is still missing, and answers that he is still trying. He calls himself scattered and muddled, and says some people accuse him of switching things on and off. He gathers things that mean little to others and a great deal to him, because his mind is the thing he values most. Near the end the weariness tips into a bleak wish for it all to stop, said in an everyday idiom rather than as a plan.

Deeper meaning

The title plays on the word for "soul" or "self" and the word for "I wish", so the whole song is a wish addressed to oneself. It reads as the fatigue of a persistent maker, someone who keeps going without being understood and cannot decide whether to rest or to push on. The first argument with an unrecognisable other is really the argument with an earlier self.