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Three Dreams

from Three of Wands by Tyler Shipley

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lyrics

it's 2 am and i'm tired and i just wanna go to bed
but the cat's curled up sleeping wrapped around my hand
i can feel him twitching like he's deep into a dream
maybe he's chasing down his octopus or catching fish from a stream

or maybe he's visiting his brother who left us a few months ago
i've no idea how a cat processes loss and let's go
of the brother he spent nearly every day of his life with
sometimes i wish we could talk and he could tell me how he manages it

but wherever he is right now i just can't interrupt
so i'm not moving my arm and i'm laying here propped up
cos i was watching an episode of doom patrol before bed
now all i wanna do is lay down my head

if you've ever had a cat sleep so sweetly beside you
you know no force on earth can compel you to move
until the cat decides to move of his or her own volition
inscrutable like every other cat motivation

eventually the cat moved and i was able to go to sleep
and the next morning my alarm interrupted the strangest dream
a dream where i was a student at the college where i work
and i was in class and get this, adolf hitler was the professor

yeah you heard that right, i mean what kind of nonsense am i thinking?
i have no idea what it meant or what problem my brain was solving
all i know is that hitler's classes have a ten minute break in the middle
which seemed, for the 20th century's greatest villain, oddly reasonable

...

as absurd as the fucking premise of this dream no doubt is
through the dream, in fear, i was increasingly gripped
a growing sense of foreboding and the knowledge that just one slip
could mean some of kind of dramatic danger would be imminent

and yet, at the same time it was all insanely trivial
me and my teenage classmates making jokes to turn down the dial
of the awkwardness in the room, as if it wasn't fucking hitler standing there
if you have any theories about what all this means i'd really really like to hear

but i'll note that i did get an email today from my boss
the president of the college sent a message to all of us
that his annual breakfast celebration was going online
and he wants us to send in videos of ourselves having a fun time

doing our work from home while - and this is a direct quotation -
quote: grooving to justin timberlake's can't stop the feeling
comparing to hitler might be a bit of a stretch i'll admit
but there are layers and layers and layers of why i don't want to do this

anyway that dream was a month ago and these words have been on hiatus
it's been a busy stretch and i got pulled in other directions

but last night my dreamscape got intense and i needed to write
down the details so i can try
to make sense of this in the light of day
cos when i woke up from it this morning there wasn't a lot of sense to make

i dreamt i waded out in the ocean far far away from the beach
the water wasn't deep and you stayed on the sand waiting for me
i guess i drifted so far away that i lost sight of the coast
there was some kind of wind kicking up and i knew it was time to go

but i looked around in every direction and i didn't know where you were at
it was like i'd moved so far away from you that i didn't know how to get back
i wasn't scared for me and i didn't feel guilty for leaving you
i just thought, ok, i guess i have to decide what i want to do

and in the end i waded my way back to the edge of the water
it was nowhere near where you were waiting but i kept trekking onward
i slid down a sand dune and i passed a lot of other beachgoers
and though i made passing conversation, in my goal i was not deterred

the dream ended before i made it back to you
but i know that in the dream that was what i intended to do
and yeah in the real world we've had a pretty difficult summer
and i've drifted pretty far into that metaphorical water

but even though i can't see the way right now i'm putting one foot in front of the other
we may be a long way away but each day i'll try to move a bit closer
cos life is getting shorter and we have to give ourselves a chance
to be known and loved and to change and grow and, when the winds pick up, to move past

credits

from Three of Wands, released October 22, 2021

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Tyler Shipley Toronto, Ontario

Tyler Shipley was the founding member of the Consumer Goods (theconsumergoods.bandcamp.com) and now performs as a solo artist.

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