I believe that Intuition is a song about innocence and anxiety of the world the narrator lives in. It came to me during a time when I doubted my ability to “mature” into everyday society and would have to rely heavily on good will from others rather than take my life into my own hands. After graduation, I stayed with my friend Ingrid for far longer than I probably should have, then with my aunt for another few months (I still don’t know what I’d have done without their generosity and I love and thank them both dearly for it). Shortly thereafter, I committed the ultimate sin:
I moved back in with my mother.
Not that I don’t get along with Mom! Far from it; I’m very, very, very lucky to have such a caring and wonderful woman as my mother! My shame was within myself for not making a living on my own after graduation and I was desperate to prove to everyone that I was ready to “grow up” and shape my own reality.
Fortunately, a month had passed until Ingrid informed me of a job in the city that would allow me to afford a cheap apartment in the boroughs. So I stayed with her for another month until Justyn, Josh and I got our acts together and moved to Queens. I was so ecstatic about finally living on my own that I kept singing a parody of the Jeffersons’ theme song for months afterward:
Well we’re moving on up!
To Jackson Heights
To a deluxe apartment
In a building!
Yeah’ we’re moving on up!
To Jackson Heights
Gonna have ourselves a slice
Of apple pie!
And yet despite the space between the person I used to be when I wrote “Intuition” and the person I am now, the song never felt dated, like a relic from a bygone time. Because there’s still that doubt that lingers about how I’ll be able to function in modern society, and how we’ve been raised on what I consider to be misinformation (I hesitate to call it “lies” since I don’t think that there’s any bad intentions behind them; just proper advice to live in a world that, thanks to an ever-accelerating rate of change in society, no longer exists), it became a sort of head-dive into the human psyche. Who doesn’t have these doubts about where their life is going? Who doesn’t, in some odd way, dream of having someone take care of them and protect them from the nasty, unforgiving world outside? Who hasn’t noticed how the world suddenly becomes such a scary place when they’re left to their own devices for the first time?
