After I published this I visited my friend Brian. He talked about how dark it is when you're staying in bothies up in the Highlands of Scotland, & he reminded me how sometimes city people totally freak out about awe-inspiring darkness and quietness & demand to be taken back to civilisation. That made me remember the time my friend's posh English girlfriend lost her mind at a New Years party in the far North: a bush doof adjacent to some 60 acres of native forest. She had never been out of the city, I guess, & the majestical Aotearovian wilderness freaked her out so much she ran away into the night. (There may have been drugs involved, who knows...) We were all quite worried, because she seemed not to understand that we were in the middle of a lot of bush & it was a bloody long way to anywhere: a person could get lost pretty easily. Anyway, the next morning she was found in a ditch not too far away, physically unharmed but mentally unhinged.
That old photo under the moonlight! Agree totally on the dark, obviously. Wellington seems a very dark city to me, as they go. But I've never climbed one of its hills in the dark. I ought to.
This electricity thing--it's so compelling to say fuck all this, it cuts us off from the REAL, which it does, mostly, except this is real right now as I type on this screen? As you say above. The dilemma, always. Maybe we just need some dark caves to go play in from time to time. Is that enough? Gonna have to be.
Yes. we're super lucky in Aotearoa to live adjacent to some pretty dark places. It's easy enough to get somewhere with very little light pollution. I think day to day it's as simple as remembering to choose low light in the house sometimes, candlelit dinners or standing lamps instead of overheads. You could create a Powell Hut-like experience at home!
I have similar thoughts towards the darkness and was lucky enough to grow up in the West Australian wheatbelt, the closest town 30km away. After dinner, if the weather was fine and skies were clear, the whole family would lay out on the trampoline and star gaze and spot satellites (and these days even the satellites are another pollution). The milky way was like a cloud, it was so bright.
These days I've chosen to live in a place with a crazy density of people, our house is a little off the main road and we turn all the lights off when we hit the sack, but the light pollution from cities nearby is incredible. When they added pointless street lights to our unnamed road I considered breaking them, no one sensible is out after dark (haha).
Occasionally, on one of my early morning wake ups I'll look up and be happy to see more stars, but they're unfamiliar to me and remind me instantly that I'm not from here.
Bro, I can't tell you how often I fantasise about shooting out streetlights. (Maybe a slingshot would do it...) See also: super bright lights attached to people's house that never turn off. The streetlights around the coast sometimes go out & I bloody love it when that happens. It was one time a few years back when I was walking around the darkened coast that I really felt nightself strongly for the first time in years. I was like... Ooooh... It's a whole other animal
Haha do you guys also have the term “bogan”? I was gonna say it’s so bogan of us to be talking about shooting out streetlights (and road signs).
One time here I accidentally blew the street electrical transformer at 11pm on a hot summer’s night. While I was waiting out on the road for the electrical company people to arrive I was watching all the neighbours out on the street hanging about and talking, their kids riding their bikes in dark, I didn’t feel so bad about blowing up the transformer then, haha.
I imagine that’s what it was like back in the days before electrical fans and aircon, lots of short naps in the summer heat, more time up and about at the coolest (not really) part of the evening. Lots of darkness.
Unfortunately, thanks to the invention of solar powered spotlights and someone’s idea of “security” out in the boondocks, we now have our neighbour’s horse field illuminated at all times of the night. I don’t know how people can think more lights means more security. Thinking like a burglar, I’d be like right on, no need to suspiciously carry around a torch! I’m hoping the solar powered lights are built like anything these days; made to fail as soon as warranty has passed.
We do have bogans, many people call me one because of being from West Auckland ha ha.
I guess the problem of light pollution is a 'commons' problem. One person does something in a a neighbourhood & it affects everyone else. The interesting thing to me is how light is often taken to be a universal good, darkness as scary. That idea of more light as more safe. Like when the streetlights went out & I was like hooray!! Other people were on the community page fearfully talking about crime & stuff... Sure those things are always possible but to me it's so benign here... Pretty sure there's no gang of robbers lurking in the shadows guys!
A friend of mine that lives in somewhat of a jungle in Thailand was theorizing why a lot of indigenous cultures have lots of bad spirits that dwell in the jungle and he thinks it was a way to push people out of the forest dwelling subsistence mode of living and encourage them to take up more civilized agricultural ways of living. Here in the Philippines, even my wife, will still excuse herself to the spirits “Tabi tabi po” when she’s walking through wilder parts of our property so as not to disturb or anger the spirits. There a whole plethora of bad spirits here that come out here at night, ghouls that disguise themselves as crying helpless babies and then suck your blood, maybe this is also a way to keep us fearful of the dark and see it as less civilized, pushing us toward the light and more modern electrified ways of living
It’d be interesting to understand where people’s real fear of something like the dark comes from, whether it’s some subtle cultural messaging, actual personal experiences of bad things happening in the dark, the media …
Do you know the artist Lynda Barry? She is half Filipina & tells about how her Grandma used to terrorise them with as kids with stories of the Aswang, some kind of vampire dog...
The name sounds familiar, but I don’t recognize her work. Yes! All these “superstitions” are still so common here, it’s a strange mix of heavy Catholicism mixed with all these indigenous spirits!
Great work. Yeh the unbeaten path... its the way
After I published this I visited my friend Brian. He talked about how dark it is when you're staying in bothies up in the Highlands of Scotland, & he reminded me how sometimes city people totally freak out about awe-inspiring darkness and quietness & demand to be taken back to civilisation. That made me remember the time my friend's posh English girlfriend lost her mind at a New Years party in the far North: a bush doof adjacent to some 60 acres of native forest. She had never been out of the city, I guess, & the majestical Aotearovian wilderness freaked her out so much she ran away into the night. (There may have been drugs involved, who knows...) We were all quite worried, because she seemed not to understand that we were in the middle of a lot of bush & it was a bloody long way to anywhere: a person could get lost pretty easily. Anyway, the next morning she was found in a ditch not too far away, physically unharmed but mentally unhinged.
That old photo under the moonlight! Agree totally on the dark, obviously. Wellington seems a very dark city to me, as they go. But I've never climbed one of its hills in the dark. I ought to.
This electricity thing--it's so compelling to say fuck all this, it cuts us off from the REAL, which it does, mostly, except this is real right now as I type on this screen? As you say above. The dilemma, always. Maybe we just need some dark caves to go play in from time to time. Is that enough? Gonna have to be.
Yes. we're super lucky in Aotearoa to live adjacent to some pretty dark places. It's easy enough to get somewhere with very little light pollution. I think day to day it's as simple as remembering to choose low light in the house sometimes, candlelit dinners or standing lamps instead of overheads. You could create a Powell Hut-like experience at home!
Wonderful as always.
I have similar thoughts towards the darkness and was lucky enough to grow up in the West Australian wheatbelt, the closest town 30km away. After dinner, if the weather was fine and skies were clear, the whole family would lay out on the trampoline and star gaze and spot satellites (and these days even the satellites are another pollution). The milky way was like a cloud, it was so bright.
These days I've chosen to live in a place with a crazy density of people, our house is a little off the main road and we turn all the lights off when we hit the sack, but the light pollution from cities nearby is incredible. When they added pointless street lights to our unnamed road I considered breaking them, no one sensible is out after dark (haha).
Occasionally, on one of my early morning wake ups I'll look up and be happy to see more stars, but they're unfamiliar to me and remind me instantly that I'm not from here.
Bro, I can't tell you how often I fantasise about shooting out streetlights. (Maybe a slingshot would do it...) See also: super bright lights attached to people's house that never turn off. The streetlights around the coast sometimes go out & I bloody love it when that happens. It was one time a few years back when I was walking around the darkened coast that I really felt nightself strongly for the first time in years. I was like... Ooooh... It's a whole other animal
Haha do you guys also have the term “bogan”? I was gonna say it’s so bogan of us to be talking about shooting out streetlights (and road signs).
One time here I accidentally blew the street electrical transformer at 11pm on a hot summer’s night. While I was waiting out on the road for the electrical company people to arrive I was watching all the neighbours out on the street hanging about and talking, their kids riding their bikes in dark, I didn’t feel so bad about blowing up the transformer then, haha.
I imagine that’s what it was like back in the days before electrical fans and aircon, lots of short naps in the summer heat, more time up and about at the coolest (not really) part of the evening. Lots of darkness.
Unfortunately, thanks to the invention of solar powered spotlights and someone’s idea of “security” out in the boondocks, we now have our neighbour’s horse field illuminated at all times of the night. I don’t know how people can think more lights means more security. Thinking like a burglar, I’d be like right on, no need to suspiciously carry around a torch! I’m hoping the solar powered lights are built like anything these days; made to fail as soon as warranty has passed.
We do have bogans, many people call me one because of being from West Auckland ha ha.
I guess the problem of light pollution is a 'commons' problem. One person does something in a a neighbourhood & it affects everyone else. The interesting thing to me is how light is often taken to be a universal good, darkness as scary. That idea of more light as more safe. Like when the streetlights went out & I was like hooray!! Other people were on the community page fearfully talking about crime & stuff... Sure those things are always possible but to me it's so benign here... Pretty sure there's no gang of robbers lurking in the shadows guys!
A friend of mine that lives in somewhat of a jungle in Thailand was theorizing why a lot of indigenous cultures have lots of bad spirits that dwell in the jungle and he thinks it was a way to push people out of the forest dwelling subsistence mode of living and encourage them to take up more civilized agricultural ways of living. Here in the Philippines, even my wife, will still excuse herself to the spirits “Tabi tabi po” when she’s walking through wilder parts of our property so as not to disturb or anger the spirits. There a whole plethora of bad spirits here that come out here at night, ghouls that disguise themselves as crying helpless babies and then suck your blood, maybe this is also a way to keep us fearful of the dark and see it as less civilized, pushing us toward the light and more modern electrified ways of living
It’d be interesting to understand where people’s real fear of something like the dark comes from, whether it’s some subtle cultural messaging, actual personal experiences of bad things happening in the dark, the media …
Do you know the artist Lynda Barry? She is half Filipina & tells about how her Grandma used to terrorise them with as kids with stories of the Aswang, some kind of vampire dog...
https://drawnandquarterly.com/video/lynda-barry-accessing-imaginary/
The name sounds familiar, but I don’t recognize her work. Yes! All these “superstitions” are still so common here, it’s a strange mix of heavy Catholicism mixed with all these indigenous spirits!