The Racket #23 : THE DARK

Sep 27

Sep 27 The Racket #23 : THE DARK

SEPTEMBER 27 - ADOBE BOOKS - 7PM

Darker than we thought.

Let us start by saying that we sleep with our feet tucked beneath the sheets. Not because we're cold mind you, but because we've spent too many sleepless nights worrying what long-nailed finger might creep out from shadows beneath our beds and run along our sole. Similarly, we don't leave the closet door open once we're under the covers, because who knows what stirs in there once our eyes are closed. We are quite scared of the darkness at the top of the stairs, the unknown quantity of the space behind a shower curtain, the inky black between the trees.

We are, by any definition, scared of the dark. And we'd say that's a good thing.

It isn't that we consider ourselves paranoid (most of the time) or sensitive to unruly fear. That isn't it all. Instead, we've spent years of our lives in the throes of our imaginations, building worlds where none existed. We've engaged too many hours with people we've spun out of thin air.

In the dark we don't see emptiness, we see a canvas. We see a void that could be infinitely populated by, well, anything. The space at the top of the stairs is a great home for a ghoul with an axe. The cuff of a shirt in the blackness of a closet, well, that could be the dirty white curls of a killer's lengthy beard. And sometimes, maybe too many times, the dark behind an open door is just that, darkness that could lead to an innumerable number of possibilities, some terrifying, some beautiful, some only imagined once and then forgotten in the drift towards sleep.

The dark is scary because it as potent a breeding ground for our over-excited brains as anything else. So yes, we are scared of the dark. And it rules.