I’ve had some people tell me that they think my song “One Way Out” on Ultraviolet Catastrophe is about contemplating suicide. It isn’t. I feel as though I really need to clear this up before it gets out of hand.

The chorus of the song is as follows. “Some nights I don’t sleep much / Instead I think about how / there’s only one way out / whether I’m winning / or if I’m being kept alive by wishful thinking or self pride / it stops with me.”

One Way Out – Full MP3

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I understand how that may be construed as being very dark, and I can see how it would be mistaken for lyrics about contemplating suicide. I am taking this as a lesson in being careful with metaphors because I’ve had two comments so far by people who have a history of paying very close attention to my lyrics and both of them have implied that they thought the song was about suicide.

In fact, the real story behind One Way Out is a positive one. I was feeling very hopeful when I wrote this, and the “one way out” mentioned in the song’s chorus is not suicide, but rather an experimental medical treatment I’ve been involved with and was heavily into at the time I wrote the song. While most things have not helped me become well, this particular treatment is something completely different and offered me a lot of hope. The trouble with the treatment is that it’s very difficult and goes against a lot of conventional wisdom, which often created a lot of drama in my life and resulted in many sleepless nights.

The chorus refers to those sleepless nights where I stayed up wondering if the treatment would really work, or if it was just wishful thinking that made me want to keep going with it. Either way, I knew the cycle of illness had to stop with me, so my children and children’s children would not have to bear the same burden. The song is ultimately about hope, staying alive, and beating the odds.