Component Exploration: Wren’s Art

Song Disorganized by Wren

(Verse 1)
Can you come over tonight?
I want to hold you one more time
Just don’t look into my eyes
Or leave before saying goodbye

I want to be good to you
Not this scared mess
I know I don’t feel right
But I don’t feel less

(Chorus 1)
So tell me that you hate me
So I know that you love me
Tell me that you need me
And I’ll run away

I wish that it was easy
For me to believe
That someone could stay

(Verse 2)
I told you I was alright
Just got something on my mind
See, we haven’t had our first fight
When will you leave me behind

I know I’m paranoid
I know that things are fine
But I’ve trusted before
Naive and fully in denial

(Chorus 2)
So tell me that you love me
And I’ll know that you hate me
Tell me you don’t need me
And I’ll always stay

I wish that it was easy
For me to believe
That I’m worth the wait

(Bridge)
I want to love you
I want to trust you love me too
But I can’t need you
No, no, no, no

(Chorus 3)
So tell me that you hate me
So I know that you love me
Tell me you don’t need me
So I’ll always stay

I wish that it was easy
For me to believe
That someone could stay

That someone could stay

Wren (they/them) – Artist’s Statement and Reflections

I am Syrian first and foremost um I guess my family is all from Syria my dad came here in the 90s. I work as a Palestinian cook most of the time.

And my art is really focused on trauma art. It’s really talking about symptoms and just bringing realism to it. I personally have a lot of mental health stuff. I personally identify as mad because I don’t fit any diagnosis neatly. The closest DSM diagnosis would be DID. I mean DID is definitely something that’s a little bit harder to recognize the symptoms of at a young age. So it [was] a lot of dissociative amnesia and confusion and identity crises until I was about 19 when we realized oh there’s five of us and – that makes a lot more sense.

But yeah, I’ve always known that I had been experiencing madness from a young age, I had hallucinations, suicidal tendencies. I started using drugs at a very young age. I’m now almost four years sober and I’m really proud of that. But I did start using opiates regularly from when I was 16. That was just how I coped at the time.

Honestly, that has just been the past couple years just really figuring out who in my life was here, because they wanted to be and because they valued me and understood my experience and whatever versus the people that were a bit too just interested in me. You know I have an interesting background, you know – the opiate addicted former cult kid. Everyone wants to talk to that person, but that gets old really quickly. You know, finding people that aren’t fetishizing any part of my experience and are just on my level has been game changing.

This song was a bit of an experiment for me. I have always written directly about my oppressions and traumas, usually showing anger, remorse, or other loud emotions. This is the first time I decided just to write a love song.

I knew it would not be a typical love song because I have never found those comforting. Having a disorganized attachment style means I never respond correctly to how people treat me. I mistake aggression for love and love for abuse. This is something I am actively working on in therapy, so I’m at the point where I’m fully aware that I’m only becoming disregulated because of my attachment style, but I am not able to prevent those reactions yet.

This song differs from my usual work because there is a vulnerability I haven’t been able to show before. Admitting that I want to love and be loved is something I couldn’t do a year ago. I just wanted to write cute shit, I don’t know, ha-ha.

I basically put the finishing touches on it today. I’m definitely still working on the musicality of it. It’s more of a country song than I was anticipating, I don’t do that usually, but you know, it happened. It’s here, I’ve written a country song. I’m going to have to lean into it. I’m kind of combining two ramble poems that I’ve written over the last year. I guess, one being when I was in a very toxic relationship, about a year ago, and this was mutually toxic. It got to a certain point, she had a very preoccupied attachment style and with my more reactive disorganized attachment style it was just bad all the way through. But yeah, I’m finding myself in a very healthy relationship now, especially with this idea of me going far away for a job and there being a lot of support instead of guilt behind that. It is a new experience. So this is kind of like combining those feelings and kind of just describing disorganized attachment, at the same time.

I would ideally want people to just connect with it and feel those emotions and try to go through that ride with me. Just take every verse as it comes and feel the images going through. Music, for me, was always about finding representation, and this is a side of love that people don’t talk about as much. It’s always talked about as either things are perfect or you’re a bitch. This is me going like: “My brain is broken, and I really want to love you.” Definitely today was the first time that I was actually playing it out loud trying to get the key right and stuff. I knew my roommates could hear me and at points I was like: “Oh that’s a vulnerable lyric I hope they didn’t hear that.” Definitely at points. In the second verse: “We haven’t had our first fight, when will you leave me behind?” And that verse is just me going through my own circular thinking. I hope people follow that cycle, I guess. The ends of those cycles I don’t typically share with people, because I know they’re unhealthy and I know that I shouldn’t reinforce them.

Yeah, there’s you know there’s two versions of the chorus – one that’s: “Tell me that you love me, so I know you hate me”. Because it’s equally true. And yeah, different settings like you know just talking about you know we haven’t had our first fight versus the other verse just like: “Can you come over tonight, I want to hold you” and then going back into the paranoid thoughts.

This is definitely a joint project with me and Valen (he/him). Saff (she/they) has not had any romantic experiences yet, she’s pretty new, we’re letting them figure that out later. This is definitely reflecting on both mine and Valen’s experience. We both lean a little bit on the opposite ends of disorganized where I’m a bit more on the preoccupied side, he’s a bit more on the avoidant. He is a protector so of course he is. I’m surprised honestly that he started the song off because it is much less angry, then something he would do. You know at this point he’s more looking at our current partner and at the situation we’re in now, and just wanting to improve. You know as much as his anger kept us safe in a lot of different circumstances, he struggles too in not using it day to day. I know he feels no anger towards our current partner, you know they’re just a ball of sunshine. Yeah, no he’s definitely usually very much on the screaming punk side so a country song is definitely a surprise.