Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.
Madeline L’Engle
We’re two weeks into Britain’s lockdown and my children’s home schooling experiment. This week, the 9-year old’s maths work involved measuring just about every piece of furniture in her bedroom, a task that was probably intended as a fun activity, but which turned into an almost obsessive project of measuring, calculating and scaling. At least it offered a momentary respite from my other obsession: the news.
Yes, I fear I am slowly going mad. I’ve reached a point where no amount of humorous videos on Twitter and Facebook help keep my spirits up. Instead, I’ve taken to watching disaster films, starting with the two obvious ones; Outbreak and Contagion.
Under normal circumstances, I am a self-confessed bookworm and earlier in the week I started reading a critically acclaimed family saga that had all the requisite ingredients to hold the reader’s attention, but half-way through I gave up. I need something darker.
Having never read a single Stephen King book I am thinking that his 1978 novel, The Stand, might be an appropriate introduction to his writings; it’s a 900 page-long fantasy novel about a viral pandemic that wreaks havoc on the world.
As for my choice of music these days, it’s got to be Leonard Cohen’s album You Want It Darker, released weeks before his death in 2016. The title song is nothing short of a lyrical and literary masterpiece and listening to an 82-year old Cohen talk-singing it is balm for the soul:
If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
There’s a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
They’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame
If you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
Hineni
Hineni, hineni
Hineni
Born Whole 