Dreamcatcher’s GUN – A Letter
Posted: by Sean Gonzalez
Late October was a vicious time for me. It was the assault on myself that I know I needed to do. It was the point where I went lower than before and dug through more to see myself out. Around the same time “Gun” by Dreamcatcher was released. Immediately upon listening I felt something unwind itself deep within me. It felt as if the turmoil was releasing it’s distraught tension and I was finally able to see the side of relief that so many others had been wondering if I would look at. But just seeing it was the beginning. It was like holding a map that shows exactly where you want to be but has no indicators on how to get there or even what direction to start.
“I fucked it up like always,” cries out Chelsea Tyler after the refrains. It’s a dark realization that while you’ve been uncharted and thus unhappy you realize you can start wherever you want and take whatever path you make. Just before that she is opening up a paradox that left me at loss for a good while. “Please don’t let me die alone, I know that I deserve to.” Her cadences are deeply drenched with emotion and knowing, you can hear her pleas pulling at your heart. You – much like her – are trying to figure out exactly why you deserve to be in this state. At first I thought this was strictly an external presence. Immediately after she turns the deserving on it’s head. “Please go leave me all alone, I know I don’t deserve you.”
Wait, what? Now she’s pleading to be alone and thus accepting her fate? What kind of treachery is this? Who in their right mind pulls this type of game. Not only are you crawling in desperation but you’re frustrated enough to tell them to leave you? Is this some witty drama gone wrong?
No. It took me a few months until I realized exactly where Ms. Tyler was coming from. Throughout her warm and airy vocal delivery she is gliding above the ongoing war of yourself vs. yourself and which state of affairs is actually the right one. It’s an assault on not knowing whether you are dead, aware, alive or even happy. You not knowing if you want to be any of those things keep you searching for a comfort that does not exist. Next thing you know you’re frustrated at work, your friends and your lack of urgency to put yourself on that map. You attribute these annoyances as outside forces crushing you but you didn’t realize you were cowering and letting the weight continue to press you down. “I talked to god like I was staring down his gun,” she starts the song off with. It’s this questioning anyone but yourself about why you are the way you are that bypasses all attempts at healing.
What Chelsea is offering to herself is the fact that she both deserves and does not deserve to be in this darkness.
There is plenty to love and plenty to hate about realizing you have the chance to bring joy into your immediate presence. You’re going to struggle. And by that right you should. You’re basically taking your current complacency and shoving it out of the way. You’re finally striving and it’s going to feel like an alien took over your former self. As the self you’ve always loved and wanted to become is going to shed the fears and the anxieties and the crushing blows to the chest that have been holding you in place for so long. That’s where we find Chelsea Tyler in her state of questioning. “If I decided to die would you be broken?”
In a way. I am dying. I am destructive and distracted and hell bent on losing myself. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I’ve started walking forward for once in my life. I put myself on the map and am crawling through every ounce of dirt I have to in order to make it to the goal. Thanks to Dreamcatcher for writing one of the most therapeutic and soul searching songs of 2015. It’s weird how a song comes out and its timing matches your own awareness of searching for help in the least likely place.
