1 post tagged “darkness”
Being a figment, as I am, I'm privy to a lot of events that those of you in the Waking World don't have much of an opportunity to witness. I get to experience people's dreams, fantasies, whimsies, and all manner of phenomena that transpire behind the wall of conscious thought.
I've also participated in some of your darker dreams, what some would call nightmares (incidentally, the 'mare' in the word comes not from female horses, but from an Old English word meaning 'goblin'; it was thought that a nightmare was an evil spirit that caused feelings of suffocation in sleepers).
What's interesting to me is the fascination humans have with darkness. For centuries folk have kept tales of fear and horror alive, passing them down through generations... sometimes in the guise of warnings, other times (especially prevalent in the past hundred years or so) as entertainment.
At any time of the year, one can walk into a bookstore and choose from a vast library of novels, both fiction and non-, dealing with all things horrible and terrifying. Moviegoers flock to the theaters to absorb the latest scary movie. The very news media couches its dispatches in sensational language, guaranteed to frighten the susceptible. Why is there so much darkness in the world of humanity?
Do people tend to feel better about themselves by comparison with those real or imagined characters who meet their ghastly fates in slasher flicks? Is it a means of inoculation, the drinking in of fabricated sorrows to better prepare oneself for the impact of the real thing? Is the spirit of catharsis alive and well, a shared vision in which audiences may immerse themselves to rid their souls of otherwise unrelateable desires?
Perhaps none of these; perhaps all of these. I prefer to think that tasting the forbidden fruits of our darker natures allows us to throw our lighter selves into sharper relief. In a world so filled with banality, with the everyday mundanity of mere existence, we allow ourselves visits to the unlit areas of our psyches to reassure ourselves that things could, in fact, be worse. We are good beings, concerned with love, freedom, and hope. Sometimes the milk of human kindness stagnates and grows sour in the face of so much regularity and sameness. We need to be reminded that we have lives worth living, and opportunities for greatness.
I include myself in that last paragraph. I, too, know the darknesses of my own nature very well. I wasn't always a White Wolf. However, that's a story for another time. Sleep well, little ones.
be a world child
form a circle
before we all
go under
and fade out again
and fade out again
-- "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", Radiohead
