The End Is the Beginning Is the End

From Batman to Billy Corgan – at this time of long, dark nights we can find peace by embracing the natural cycles that all beings live within.

“Hmm, maybe buying a pro-wrestling company was a bad move.”

Is it bright where you are?
Have the people changed?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
And in your darkest hour
I hold secrets' flame
We can watch the world devoured in its pain

So sang the famously angsty Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman Billy Corgan in this stomper of a track from 1997, originally released on the Batman & Robin soundtrack, and later slowed-down and re-titled in the 2008 trailer to The Watchmen.

Billy was one of my rockstar idols as a dreamy, sensitive teenager; a skinny, alien-looking guy with a snarling vocal and a penchant for petty pronouncements. One of the things I liked about him was that he seemed perfectly happy being himself, complete with all the awkwardness and self-righteous pretension that came along with leading one of the most famous and imaginative bands in the world at that time. I mean, you have to be pretty damn comfortable with yourself to title your magnum opus double album, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.

There was something attractive about Señor Corgan’s natural embrace of the outsider spirit, the underdog, the unconventional kid who was never going to simply fit into the system he grew up in without causing somewhat of a stir. To say that he continued that idiosyncratic path would be an understatement. Billy has made some wonderfully bizarre decisions over the years, such as starting a tea shop, buying a pro-wrestling franchise, doing adverts for a Chicago furniture store, and creating an 8-hour long ambient synth interpretation of Herman Hesse’s Siddartha.

People who are unapologetically themselves are incredibly inspiring, on that I hope we can agree. Of course, we all grow up with the conditioning of our cultural surroundings draped across our shoulders, which to some degree I doubt we can never fully escape, yet the act of being true to ourselves is still a noble trait I strive to incorporate on a daily basis as I move into this fourth decade of my life.

An approach I find immensely helpful in this respect, is to remember the animal part of my humanness. In today’s hyper-connected society, it is all too easy to forget that the (sometimes) intelligent, self-aware human with a world of information at their fingertips is also an ancient animal with a brain, a nervous system, and a body built by slowly evolving inside of cycles inside of cycles inside of cycles.

This animal part of our genetics has lived within the mind-blowingly vast epochs of nature for millennia. More visible of course are the constant movements of the Sun, the Moon, the tides, the seasons, the migration patterns of animals, the births and deaths of causes, ideas, and of our ancestors. Somewhere within all these layers of evolution, we still recall the best times to hunt, to gather, to feast, and to rest. It might seem a little crazy to the detached anthropocentric mind, but we are a part of the natural world too and we are ruled by the same cycles as every other living being.

In December in the Northern hemisphere, the daylight hours are few and darkness is ever-present, right there under the surface of the day. Many folk still harbour fears of the dark, perhaps informed by childhood nightmares, ghost stories, or possibly some ancestral memory of the struggles we endured before the advent of heated homes, on-demand lighting, and cookers. Quite understandably, part of us hopes never to have to confront that fear again. We scour the internet for winter sun destinations. We dream of the coming spring, and the sense of renewed hope the first glimpse of wildflowers can bring. But we must be patient. We cannot shortcut the cycles. When we do, I would argue we lose something that can only be gained by going in and through.

I now enjoy getting comfortable with the darkness. Making friends with it. Sinking slowly into it like you would a bubble bath or a warm bed. This implies a certain kind of submission; a letting go, which can make us feel incredibly vulnerable. For the dark is the unknown, and the unknown is death. Befriending the darkness is, in a way, dying to ourselves, as we always have and always will, over and over again.

At this time of the Solstice, when daylight hours are shortest, I find myself naturally slowing down, remembering the importance of not-doing so much, changing pace, adapting my daily habits. We can tune into these rhythms by going to bed earlier, sleeping for longer, rising earlier, eating seasonally appropriate foods. Life isn’t meant to be lived at the relentless speed of internet data. Like the Batman himself, in winter more than any other time we are given the chance to embrace the darkness of night, the fertile ground of deep rest.

Instead of looking for the light outside us, we adapt by bringing the light inside. We decorate our houses with candles, keep things gently sparkling with fairy lights, stoke up the burner, perhaps all to remind ourselves of that oh-so-important fire our distant ancestors once slept around. A reminder too, that we carry embers of the small wonders of the year into this time of hibernation. These memories help us through the depths of winter, and into the dawning of another go on this cosmic merry-go-round. Embracing the deep dark, going slow, diving into the void – this is the place where we can forgive ourselves and forgive others, where new ideas are born, where smell, sound, and touch are more easily stimulated and where, crucially, our potent inner vision becomes ripe for activation.

What will you dream of in this time of darkness?