McGrath --

I would offer the notion that there are two or maybe even three different emotional bands going on at the same time in an individual. The outside level is the social machinery the person has learned to put out -- its automatic, trained. It's where someone says "Fine" from when you ask them how they are, when they're really miserable.

The composite emotional experience of a human being as it is actually being felt, which is often heavily suppressed by those who "live in their heads" or are called "phony" is another and often widely disparate emotional level. A socially cheerful person who is actually terrified creates the kind of dissonance you describe, which grates badly on a sensitive observer because the two are so inconsistent.

I suppose theremay even be a third -- a spiritual emotional level independent of human/body mechanisms. But that is probably a matter of personal philosophy, eh?

Warm regards, and thanks for the wonderful songs,

Amos