I See a Darkness

Been listening to a lot of Will Oldham / Palace Brothers / Bonnie "Prince" Billy lately, absolutely astoundingly weird folk/country/blues dude who's been kicking around the Louisville/Chicago indie rock scene for over a decade. He's got a crazy beard, has starred in a bunch of smaller movies, and has strange/weird/sad voice to boot.

Anyways, he's got a song called "I See a Darkness" (on the album of the same name) which blows me away every time I play it. The fact that Johnny Cash covered it on American III only proves its status as a classic. Slow, mordant, explosive, its a spare, haunting little track wherein Will/Billy confesses to a close drinking pal the dark visions threatening the edges of his consciousness. Imagine if Houellebecq was from Memphis, grew up on country and blues standards, and changed his goddamn name every album. Excerpt:

You know I have a love for everyone I know
and you know I have a drive to live, I won't let go
But you see, its opposition comes a-rising up sometimes
And its dreadful imposition comes blacking in my mind
and then I see a darkness....

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "darkness" a lot lately myself as I've started to write my own songs, and can't help but notice that the best ones I come up with are all tragic, geographically-specific love/drinking/disaster songs. Does that make them a pathological/unwanted entry in a world already dripping with negativity and despair? Here's Will on the same topic, from an interview in Free Williamsburg:

FW: I read somewhere that you said that the reason that there is sometime such dark themes in your songs — this darkness, lies and blood and disease, I think you said — is because it is out there in the world and that the songs are a good place for this stuff to be. Do you still believe that?

BPB: Exactly, yeah. It has to go somewhere, it can't just sit inside of people.

FW: Yeah — I mean you look around and it seems like people are constantly trying to figure our where to put all this shit.

Personally I think I'm doing the intuitive service of "balancing" Boulder's annoyingly sunny disposition, its cluelessly self-obsessed white richies running around on designer bikes pursuing the finest in yerba mates as they obsess over their Macs and matrimonies (i'm guilty of at least two of those offenses myself of course). Darkness is there, we may as well acknowledge it, strip it of power, and beautify it, the way one might take out a sabertooth tiger threatening one's life and then stuffing it and hanging it on the wall.

Houellebecq, of course, has something to say on this as well:

Delve into the subjects that no one wants to hear about. The other side of the scenery. Insist upon sickness, agony, ugliness. Speak of death, and of oblivion. Of jealousy, of indifference, of frustration, of the absence of love. Be abject, and you will be true.

[note: i've been bumming lately about the lack of comments on this blog, so if you've read this far at least give me an emoticon, a "word","... something!]