I think there is more to a fear of the dark than meets the eye. Or, in this case, doesn't. The cold sweat that slickens your palms. The labored breathing. The thickening of your saliva into an ominous dank soup. These are all responses, not to what you can't see, but to what you hope you won't see.
Whatever you are afraid of, whatever you believe could be around the next corner as you fumble like a fawn in bramble against your own muted sense of observation, you simply know that you do not want to encounter it. Even if it were mid-day, or you were partaking in a stroll through a partially lit street at dusk, or cowering in the dead of night during a storm, when you can count on a sudden bolt of lightning to illuminate your way from a distance- whatever lurks out of sight, you can only pray it stays out of sight- and that you, in turn, continue to evade its hungry scanning glare as well.
It's strangely emancipating to admit to one's limits, and even more so when such an admission comes with the realization that it would not benefit you to overcome these limits. Is it better to fear a tiger is before you, only to have one then appear? Or to fear the tiger but pass by it without evidence of its whereabouts, stepping through its hunting grounds onwards to safety? If you have any sense of self-preservation, it has to be the latter.
Life has this timbre more often than not. Every step you take in the world, you are beset by forces you cannot explain or fully rationalize. Social, political, quantum, cosmic, and spiritual- a fog of invisible weights and pullies. Events transpire fates turn, the stars align or disperse- seemingly without explanation. And yet, you continue to move, without full knowledge of what the day will bring. Often better off for not knowing. If you saw all the strings being tugged around you, you'd not just be more likely to trip, you might lose your mind in the web of its convulsive madness.
It is better to view the chaos of the world through a cipher. Like a candlestick in the dark. Enough light to guide you while lending a glimpse of the mystery beyond the golden ring it casts- but not bright enough to draw any unwanted attention- especially from something that wouldn't think twice about invading the faint defenses of your flickering halo. Welsh black magus Asenath Blake can be such aid on her album Tribeckoning Songs. The practicing pagan and one-woman band uses her shrieking vocal presence and inimitable playing style to cast a circle of protection around you in order to permit your passage through a weeping chasm of shivering dread and close encounters with the uncanny.
Her howls are like those of a jackal, cackling incantations so as to bring its prey under the control of a terror-stricken trance, and coax it from its hovel to be devoured. The medieval-sounding synths and winsome grooves speak to the inhospitality of the imperceptible surroundings and the depth of the darkness that shrouds your egress. The frantic drum work bays like a pack of dogs, rushing through the woods in all directions in fulfillment of some malignant quest for their wicked master. And the weird, clean guitar leads act as much as a spell as a direct assault upon whatever senses that are not damped by the lightless acres encircling you in a boundless sea of inky bitterness.
Tribeckoning Songs is your telescoping easement through the disarray of a universe that is principally intolerant to the incursions of your understanding or presence. It will only allow you to see so much, though. Albeit enough to know that beyond its perimeter lies an abyss that would swallow you without a thought and without a trace.
