THE NOIREST OF THE NOIR

I was beginning to think that things were getting rather too jolly in this dark corner of the internet. I had begun to let a little light seep into the darkness and make everything a rather silky shade of black whereas, really, blog noir should be of a more brutalist hue. Even a matt black won’t suffice for these purposes. It has too much sheen, far too much potential reflection when the sun glances off its surface at an acute angle, even as all the heat is absorbed and boils everything below it, some light still escapes and that, unfortunately, simply won’t do. The darkness we seek is far deeper than that, far, far blacker. So far beyond black in fact, that black itself should be a far distant memory, or a colour to aspire to. We should be beyond the event horizon, so deep inside the black hole that nothing will escape. Not a light, not a thought, not a dream.

The noirest of the noir if you will.

There were beginning to be signs of exchanges of what could possibly be described as “banter”, evidence of something resembling “interaction” and, for one of the darkest, most unfathomable pits in the wacky world of internet insanity, that simply could not be tolerated. After all, the very definition of “Blog Noir” is that the emphasis should remain firmly upon the “Noir” and less so on the “Blog”.

But fear not, oh you fine and esteemed folk who stumble (presumably accidentally) into this less than cosy nook that I have created for myself to hide in. After the relative jolliness of the recent festivities, the darkness is back upon us, the cold winds are blowing and cutting through us like the blade of a particularly inept and profligate surgeon, the ice storms are rattling against the windows and our knowledge of the blackness in the dark heart of humanity has returned, battered and bruised from its humbling at the hands of an uncaring world, and ready to put on its party hat again.

Black is back, baby, black is back!

We live in a dark and crazy world of murder, suicide, craziness and indiscriminate shooting and bombing. All across the world, people are running for their lives or sitting in dark corners weeping in fear. Closer to home, intense family pressures, or perhaps just plain madness, seems to be driving more and more people to cruelly dispose of their entire families and finally themselves rather than face up to the horrors of situations that could probably be solved with just a little bit of talking and a little bit less selfishness and learning to simply live with less, rather than die with everything. What insanity is it that persuades someone that living with shame or bankruptcy is worse than dying with infamy? What reason can there be in deciding to end your own life violently, but also deciding that your children or your partner should have theirs taken away too...? Is it because you can’t bear to think of what they’ll think of you after you’ve gone...? Or just that you hate the idea of someone else managing to make them happy where you didn’t...? Most of the time it really only comes down to money, or what other people think, and neither of these things should really matter when it comes to matters of life and death.

The madness isn’t restricted to families, either... Recently there seems to have been a glut of people charged with a heinous crime somehow managing to kill themselves before justice can be seen to have been served. I’m sure many will think “good riddance”, but I think that they would be fundamentally wrong about that. Things should never be that simple, they can’t be, and if we are ever to come to any understanding of that underlying rhythm that beats in the dark heart of humanity, we need to be able to find out what it is that makes some of us think “tick” when everyone else thinks that it’s far, far nicer to “tock...”

Hmmm... Well, it is supposed to be “Blog Noir”so even the vaguest mention of the word “nice” is starting to let a glimmer of daylight in...

Can we make this any darker...?

Well, of course we can. The treacle is about to leave the can, the oil slick is about to spill and smother the coast of hopefulness with its smears and stains, the inky blackness of everlasting night is about to fall, and the tar pit of destiny is about to swallow the blackest of hearts. I see a black door and I want to paint it blacker... I see a sketchbook of black paper and I reach for my 100B pencil, but first the page needs darkening. A dark page; the black knight riding a black stallion on a moonless night; the most burnt a piece of toast can be. The lights are off and nobody’s home; a black light on a black night shining darkly against a million coats of the deepest, darkest enamel paint, polished to the deepest, darkest tone that reflects nothing at all. A coating that conceals all and allows nothing to escape, a shade of ebony so deep that it cannot even register on the eye of the person looking through it. It is beyond naming, beyond perception, beyond all imagination, beyond hope, beyond despair, beyond the infinite and far beyond even that... a darkness so deep that even when the last pulse of energy in a cold and empty universe has been dead a hundred billion years, it will still remember the depth of it and try to shudder in fear.

Are we noir enough for you yet...?