it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness

These words will be, in all likelihood, at least somewhat incoherent. It’s Friday night, and normally at this time I’m enjoying a fine craft beer and watching a movie. Friday night movie night, I call it, and it’s my treat to myself for getting through the work week. But tonight…I have the beer, but I just can’t turn the world off enough to do a movie. Not with the news rolling in about Paris.

Events such as this are sadly too common, and the degree to which they cross our radar depends on where they happen, who they happen to, and our sympathies to both. Paris is hitting me hard because of one the locations of murder—fuck it, it’s a massacre, let’s not mince words—Bataclan, a venue that on this night was hosting a rock concert by The Eagles of Death Metal. As of this writing, there are over 100 dead. I don’t even know what to say to that.

I’ve attended hundreds of concerts in my life. Music is not merely entertainment for me; it is a sacred art and the concert is one of the most transcendent, beautiful expressions of that art. I go to concerts for the same reason some go to church: to find haven, to find a community that accepts me, to escape all of the shit in the world, to touch the divine (which I find in the sound, not the performers.) To transcend the limitations of the earth and body. As corny as it sounds, to expand consciousness through the sheer beauty of sound, volume and vision.

To turn it into a scene of mass murder devastates me in a way I can’t explain. People gathered to hear a band play some tunes and for those people, the world should be a better place while the band is playing. You don’t even need transcendence, sometimes a little escape is just fine. And instead these people got death, injury, or witnessed both rain down on their fellow concertgoers. Their tribe.

I am listening to Metallica as I type this. Part of the reason I am alive to type this is this music. In the darkest hours of my life, many years ago, it pulled me through when I was drowning. It told me there were others out there that knew the score, knew this darkness, but we were a tribe and there was absolutely something worth living for. I’ve seen this band in concert more than any other—13 times, I believe—and every time it was a transcendent, deeply spiritual experience for me. This band means the world to me, and to see them in concert is a very special, personally important experience for me.

There were probably some Eagles of Death Metal fans who felt the same way about them. Many of the rest were simply there to have a good time, to enjoy a few tunes. A concert is both a shared experience and a personal one; there is no experience that is more legit than another. It’s all beautiful, goddammit, and it’s all love. Not murder. Never murder.

The next days will be unbearable as the full details become known and far too many shrill, loud voices will race each other to point fingers, spew hatred and ignorance, and further fan the flames. Some will figure out how to turn tragedy to profit, some will use it to promote their latest book about how the world is unsafe and so we’d better arm ourselves and shoot anything that moves. Many of us—I’d like to think most of us—will feel disgusted, heartbroken and confused. We won’t know how to react because there really is no proper way to react to such a hatred of human life (for those who lost loved ones in this, it will be infinitely worse.) Speaking only for myself, the only one I have a right to speak for, I will struggle between wanting to understand why someone could participate in such a thing and wanting to completely shut off all news and social media. I have no unique perspective, nor do I have anything valuable to contribute to the conversation.

I’m simply someone whose life was saved by music, and who believes that art is a banner under which we can all find acceptance and be part of a tribe, regardless of race, language, or nationality. To love each other. That a few lone individuals were so full of hate and violence that they could take that love, something they, for whatever reason, could not feel themselves and so they therefore extinguished the lives of those that could is something that is so far beyond my comprehension as to be completely alien. I’m left with no words. So I turn to the phrase I hold in my heart at times like these:

It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.