The week after Hutchmoot last year, I did two things: bought a guitar I’d been eyeing up all summer and wrote this song on it. When my wife, Kelsey, went to bed, I was strumming five chords. When she woke up, I had five verses.
Each of the first four verses explores a strategy as old as Eden for avoiding suffering: distraction via decadence, works righteousness, pedestalizing creativity, and the quest to eliminate mystery. When we reach the end of these dead-ends, life often drags us, kicking and screaming, into the darkness.
Then the fifth verse presents another way—not a way out, but a way through.
I’ll give you this spoiler alert: the darkness is not the enemy. The darkness, it turns out, is one of the greatest friends available to us, if only we have the honesty and humility to receive it.
If you want to help me give this song its best shot in the world, then share it with your friends! Add it to a playlist. Sing it around your house. Songs love to be sung and heard.
Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.