BLACK

Self-imposed Darkness in Man

And now my bitter hands
Turned my world to black,
From what was everything
From the bitter strands
Found across foreign lands
From what was my everything
All that I ever was
and all that I will ever be

And as the love of man
Turned my world to black
I now will the sun
to pass beneath the clouds
as I watch myself and my life…

Fade to black.

In a world shaped by patriarchy, man is taught to believe that power, possession, and status will deliver him to himself. But as time passes, and bitterness develops somewhere along the ascent, beyond acquisition and recognition, he does not arrive at peace, at certainty, or fulfilment as promised through his achievement. And from what was claimed to be everything, the sense of projected worth and acquired love that was always desired transforms into a lived experience of darkness. Not because the love he so desired did not exist, but because, tragically, it always did, and instead was diverted and dismissed in order to preserve a lifetime of truth that was promised, but in fact revealed itself as a lie.

This is the darkness created when the light and love of man is pushed beneath the clouds for what was believed to be everything, yet over a lifetime fails to deliver the very thing that was truly wanted.

He is taught to build, to strive, to take, to hold, to conquer, to become, and in this becoming he is promised meaning. Yet when it is achieved, it does not deliver. It does not bring inner coherence, happiness, or even the quiet experience of peace, of being held within one’s own existence. Instead, it expands into complexity, into pressure, into the endless and enduring requirement for more. More to deliver, more to prove and more to maintain the image that was once constructed but cannot be sustained over the inevitable descent of time.

In a world where love is taught as something external, something to be acquired, performed, and secured, the internal self is never formed as a place where love can live. And so, in a world devoid of meaning, man searches for love as the final proof that something is real, that something still holds truth, that beneath all that has been constructed there remains something capable of being known and held.

And yet, when it comes, it cannot be received.
And so... it is diminished.

And when it cannot be met, received, or held, it is turned away, not as a conscious act of cruelty, but in a quiet and definite dismissal of both self and other, in the subtle and defining closing of the heart and the hand before anything can truly take hold.

As what cannot take hold is questioned, distorted, and reduced into something more tragically familiar, something more degenerated, controlled, something that can exist within the architecture of the patriarchy, and more importantly, neatly within a self that was designed and built to never receive it. And so, as it cannot be understood or made to fit, it is cast away in a final act of departure from the mind, body, and soul, desperately attempting to preserve itself.

What cannot be integrated inevitably becomes suppressed and then actively denied. What cannot be held within the self is perceived as a threat, and therefore is removed so it does not disrupt the reality we have come to believe is true. And so, the denial of love is no longer identified as a limitation of the self bound to a world built on a lie, but is instead interpreted as its tragic absence of light in a dark world that failed to ever offer it.

This is a truth too vast for most to bear, and so the mind resolves it in the only way it can.
The world is turned to black by the belief that love itself never existed.

Not because there is no love or light, but because love, in its light, reveals far too much. It exposes, it blinds with a silent and devastating truth: that what was longed for, and desperately needed, was never found because it was never nurtured and preserved within. Beneath the structures and foundations of a world built upon the belief of nothing, beneath the striving, beneath the endless becoming, there was always something that did not need to be earned or conquered, only preserved and recognised.

And so the sun is willed to fall beneath the clouds.
And in that final act of defiance, darkness is not just experienced, it is chosen.

We have been born into a world of darkness. Here, in the emotional dark ages of humanity, the patriarchy prevails, and for all its promises and self-proclaimed progress, it delivers nothing more than descent. As we collectively witness this slow and quiet fade to black, we are distinctly reminded, through the depths of the experience, that beneath our self-imposed darkness, within the clouds, the sun remains. There is still light, and the hope of a new day for those who come after us, if we have the courage to move back towards it and away from our long-endured experience of night.

And as the love of man turned our world to black,
I now will the sun to emerge from beneath the clouds,
And illuminate everything.
All that ever was,
and all that will ever be…