Darkness in the World Today

I've often pondered what place my art has in today's world. As we grow more tolerant and even more violent at the same time.  A world that wants to forget the darkness by bringing it tolerably into the light.  The road to the light is lined with shadows,  people seem to forget that.  As the world moves closer and closer to equality, the groups still fighting for their fair share are getting more and more vocal, more and more aggressive, and we all look the other way.  So where do people who see the stories in that violence, in that human darkness, who dare to write about them fit?

No one wants to say it, but we are more relevant now than ever.  As I'm writing this, I'm watching Deliverance for the first time.  This is horror at it's absolute finest. My heart beat so powerfully I could hear it as if it was pounding directly into my sternum. No movie or book has elicited that response in me before. Ever.

Why, as these men are arguing do I feel such a powerful tug, as if I am a part of their struggle? I say it is because the darkness that we seek to obliterate by being so open with ourselves and each other is finally finding a home. It's ok to be just twisted enough that people know you are, and no one thinks twice about it. We make it part of the norm, and the evil that lives inside us becomes our neighbor, hiding in plain sight. Camouflaged in a way it never has been before.

So those of us that still see it, we voices of night and dark and terror and truth, we must speak out, and loudly. We must remind people of what lurks beneath the surface. We must stave off complacency in the world, feed the paranoia that is the taut string helping us survive.  We tellers of tales have that power. By exposing the monsters withing, we arm ourselves and our readers to face the monsters without.

And just for fun: