The Wickedest Game

"There are no characters in this story and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters."

                                                             - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Hello, friends.  Welcome back to Amid Night Suns.  I hope you all managed to shut out the sound of drums off in the distance for a while and were able to have an enjoyable Easter – or at the very least I hope you managed to steal a few essential bright hours with your families and friends.  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about death and resurrection, as it’s just that time of year.  I recently lost my job and my flat within the same week, so things have been rather chaotic for me.  But, I feel like these personal changes are the micro-expressions of larger macro-cyclical shifts.  Timing, coincidence and synchronicity have always been a rather stunning feature of my life.  I’ve found that the best course of action is usually to surf the wave of such interconnection to the best of my ability.

As anyone who pays close attention to the kinds of themes and topics I explore with this blog will be well aware, I have an interest in all things Gothic, hidden or suppressed.  It’s not merely an aesthetic preference for darker forms of art, because away from this blog my tastes are wide and varied.  But Amid Night Suns has a very particular purpose.  I have a mission statement that I have never wavered from since I started this blog seven years ago.  Part of this mission is to uplift and engage my peers and any passers-by who stumble upon this virtual space – this little corner of radiant darkness illuminated by an ageless star.  Nobody has to agree with or even like the words I write here, or the video-editing projects I present.  This blog is a personal art project, a creative expression space.  But it is intended as far more than that.  If I could encapsulate the purpose of Amid Night Suns into one word, that word would be service.  For me, trying to be of service to your friends and loved ones and people in general – without expectation of reward or acknowledgement – is one of the highest callings that a human being can undertake.  I fail at this service far too often, but I suppose that’s because my sights are set so high and like many artists I am my own worst critic.  This blog doesn’t really have much going for it in the obvious sense.  I have less than a hundred people who follow my work at Amid Night Suns, and probably only a handful of those follow with any regularity.  So why bother?  Because I believe service isn’t just about the number of people that can be reached.  It’s also about the strength and quality of that service for the people who are within your sphere of influence.  To engage or inspire or entertain someone with thoughtful prose or a piece of art is nothing to be belittled or ignored.  In my own life there have been many instances where the modest work of others –shared in a spirit of sincerity and hope – has literally saved my life, or else lifted me up out of my lowest points.  These small victories of the human soul and spirit are nothing to be sniffed at.  Because it’s these small flickering lights across lives and times that collectively shine as bright as the sun.  No man or woman is an island, and no god or spirit either.  Context is inescapable, and as such the seeking of nuance is filled with liberating potential.

It’s for this very reason that the wickedest among us want the human race as contextually illiterate as possible.  It’s why the predator-elites that seek dominion of our realm wish to make nuance and subtlety a kind of anathema.  Critical-thinking becomes fake news, warmongering and hunting-parties become ‘liberations’.  This kind of Orwellian manipulation of language is new to none of us, but its impact is far greater than we usually consider – especially in a reality that seems at least partially to operate in linguistic terms.  In large part we speak and think and write and imagine the world into existence, at least at a cultural level.  The wicked know this.  At the very highest levels of power there is only ever one war raging.  The War of Imagination.  In this fluidic realm where fiction meets fact and perception has more than just one dimension the wickedest among us seek to sanitise and normalise this endless, hideous war.  But war, especially in its heaviest and most physical expression, is never sane.  It is trauma and horror and restless dead.  Because any fool can blithely say they don’t believe in monsters – until they arrive.  There are legions of restless dead who know first-hand of these darker truths. It’s for this reason that spiritual Light is so important, so essential to the psychological health of the human race.

War is horror. It’s nothing to be cheered, or taken lightly.  The wicked know this, which is why they count on us to not understand, or to turn away in shell-shocked bewilderment.  War is ugly, brutal and inhumane.  Most people don’t have the stomach to stare it in the eye, which is why they would rather couch it in euphemism.  Don’t let these predator elites use their psychological and social avatars to ghost-write the most intimate moments of your lives.  Don’t unwittingly build a dark throne for killers, rapists and warlords within the innermost sanctum of your mind.  Reach for love, always.  Reach for nuance, subtlety, mutual affection…and never be afraid to speak the truth in sea of lies.  The game is wicked, but we as a collective of sane and loving individuals are not.  We all seek the light, whether we call it that or not.  But I’m all too aware just how painful and terrifying such seeking can be, especially when darkness and chaos threatens to erupt around us at any moment.  But we are at a point in the year now where we collectively observe and honour the resurrection of the light.  It never truly dies.  We carry it with us, bittersweet at times but always there.  It’s the very thing that allows life, and the appreciation of that life.   It’s this appreciation and contextual agility that makes us real, makes us characters in the stories of our lives.  Revel in that appreciation and agility, and share it with your kith and kin.  Now more than ever.

The Wickedest Game from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.