Dax Dives Into the Psychological Anguish of Prolonged Self-Neglect on “I Can’t Breathe”

Dax roams about his living space prowling with a tortured conscience in the video for “I Can’t Breathe.” A lightly flangered guitar figure, like a sample out of a song by The Cure, runs in the background giving the song a dreamlike quality but Dax’s commanding vocals keeps you centered on the psychological agony at the heart of the song. He articulates with emotionally gritty poetry the struggle of someone who had to grind hard to get to where he thought he wanted to be in a place he thought he wanted to be, in this case Los Angeles, only to have achieved so much but at the cost of things you had before any level of professional success that you took for granted and the self-neglect and the lack of self-maintenance it took to climb to what it was you assumed embodied your deepest aspirations. The image in the video of Dax writing in a notebook in blood, soaking the pages is the perfect symbol for that process. As a creative person or any kind of professional you accept sacrifices and lay so much of yourself out there and often at the end of the day you have nothing left for yourself and long term it leaves you feeling empty and desperate even if you are to the outside world a success. That hollowing out to the very strands of your psyche is how we lose a lot of people in the world even when we think they should probably be happy or satisfied with their lives. But it is that inner life that you dip into reaching for ambitious goals thinking its an endless well when it simply isn’t. Dax beautifully and evocatively expresses that terrible headspace throughout the song. And in doing so casts it into a shape with which one might actually get a handle and find a way out of it. Watch the video for “I Can’t Breathe” on YouTube and connect with Dax at the links below.