Today is the Winter Solstice, an important day in the calendar, when darkness culminates and the return of light begins.

The darkness has seemed particularly dark this year, so the end of this cycle is welcome. But before moving on I felt like taking a minute (or an hour) to wallow in it. Darkness, after all, is overcome by confronting it, not by avoiding it; in the I Ching, the “young light” emerges only after “darkness is increased by one.”

But of course, being who I am, I couldn’t resist adding some uplift at the end. It may take a while to arrive, but hold on, it’s coming. I recommend listening at dusk with a cocktail in hand, as I am doing at this very moment.

Playlist:

• Farewell Our Ancient Glory  Rev. Jack Drummond
• Darkness  King Khan & the Shrines
• Slippin’ into Darkness  War
• The Werewolf  Paul Simon
• Brain Damage/Eclipse  Pink Floyd
• Hireling Traitor’s Wages  Rev. Jack Drummond
• Beware of Darkness  George Harrison
• Darkness  Leonard Cohen
• Gimme Shelter  The Sisters of Mercy
• Instruments of Darkness (excerpt)  The Art of Noise
• Darkness  Peter Gabriel
• Eulogy and Light  Funkadelic
• The Truth (excerpt)  Handsome Boy Modeling School
• Coffee Cold  Galt McDermott
• Bought and Sold for English Gold  Rev. Jack Drummond & Bill Drummond
• Midnight Sun  David Sylvian
• Loud Cloud Crowd  Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
• Chapter 24  Pink Floyd
• Everybody’s Going to Make It This Time  Funkadelic