On the (dark) art/s

I looked through the last seven years worth of my writing last night, and realised that there is literally not a single poem/lyric amongst them that one would describe as "positive" in outlook. Blame it on the fact I grew up listening heavily to Nick Cave and mid 80s Cure records, if you will. (Either that, or that I am severely depressed and/or stuck inside a severe rut with my writing!) I have tried happy lyrics but I do not really know where to start, and they always tend to come out seeming forced, so I guess I have given up for now. I like to think of myself as quite a balanced individual in real life, not least for the fact that I am Libran (if you believe in that shit), so I guess the predilection for "dark" lyric writing is some unconscious (and unwitting) form of therapy (I would never conciously go about it for this purpose - that would be equally forced, never mind pretentious).

I recently read both Prince and Bjork (maybe not the best examples, granted) in interviews saying that they did not think artists should be putting negative shit out in to the world. However, I do not see "dark art" as a glorification of the darkness, but rather an acknowledgement of it. If one does not address the darkness, the darkness sure as hell is going to address them, whether they like it or not, - and usually when they least expect it.

Emotional states are circular, not linear. They are spiraling serpents, and we are not always happy or always sad. I guess my work at this stage is still preoccupied with the inverse phase of a sine wave. But, it does not deny that it has an opposite. My hope is that when it does display itself in my work, in contrast to the negative, it is cast in a more idealistic sense - beauty, and the eternal - and is rendered more powerful and less susceptible to damage than its literal counterpart (viz, happiness in a conventional, materialistic and finite sense) because of this.

Beneath it all, in any event, there is a thread of hope and a reaching toward the stars. As a friend of mine used to say to me jokingly, (while wearing corpse paint and playing in a black/death metal band), "in darkness is found the greater enlightenment".

Great poetry and lyrics explore both the dark night of the soul and the breaking of the dawn, or at least allow the suggestion of both. Substance-less bullshit is something else entirely..