an archive of new years benedictions by John Darnielle
every year I see that people are listening to "This Year" on 12/31 and I think, well, isn't that something. just the best damn thing
bunch of us probably felt ready to quit at multiple points in 2018
gets difficult to stay hopeful
but this is why I can't let the "make it" part eclipse the "if" clause
my father died this past spring
I got some daily physical pain stuff goin on that I don't like to dwell on because plenty of people have it way way worse than me but 2018 had near-daily "brace yourself for the long game on this one, buddy" moments for me, it gets wild and scary
like you're looking into a tunnel whose length you're supposed to walk and you're not sure if your legs are up for it
but guess what
two hours from now, me & everybody reading this, even and especially everybody whose 2018 made mine look like a free unicorn ride, are gonna put another one on the books
every day above ground a good day
this was the 365th good day. you did it. I did it. we will do it again
WE WILL DO IT AGAIN EVEN IF IT'S HARD AND EVEN IF THE MOMENTS OF GRACE SEEM FEW AND FAR BETWEEN. MAY THOSE MOMENTS OF GRACE BREED IN US ALL LIKE BACTERIA, GOOD FRIENDLY BACTERIA THAT KEEPS THE MACHINE RUNNING SMOOTHLY
this concludes the benediction which leaned a little goth this year. sometimes the goth benediction is what's up
may next year's benediction come on the wings of a great dragon appointed to protect our tiny village
in which village I will see you all! /fin
it's time for the benediction
as a former Catholic I relish the quasi-heretical opportunity to be handing out benedictions
but actually
hierarchies have to rely on tradition alone for support, and tradition's only any good when it nurtures
I want to repeat that part because it's important. tradition's only any good when it nurtures
some of us, not naming names but at least one of them looks like me, have been through times when our traditions not only no longer nurtured anything good within us, but were actually our enemies
yet did we continue to observe our traditions, because, you know, at least we had that going for us, right? right right
friends if you're hearing Franklin Bruno's glorious piano riff in your head right now then I thank you for singing "this year" with us 64 or 65 times this year. every time we play it I'm amazed and humbled
so in your honor my prayer for you all tonight is:
may the traditions of this year that no longer nurtured you all die at midnight
may their memory next year and in the years to come be complex and may it grow blurry
may we persevere carrying the banner of those we could not bring with us into the full splendor of our perseverance
I am silent here to remember their names for a moment
may we do them all proud
long live the traditions worth living through
THANK YOU, ALL OF YOU, WHO BREAK OPEN THE AMPULE THAT HOLDS OUR SONG IN YOUR FIRST AID KITS TONIGHT. IT MEANS THE WORLD AND WE HOPE TO BE WORTHY OF IT
/happy new year
I'll tell you a story about new years
when I was 19 one day I woke up and there was a hole in the knee of my jeans and when I got up to walk my hip began clicking with each step, a problem that would continue for years,
and I didn't know how long I had been asleep, which is to say, passed out, knocked out, I had a vague memory of the drugs I'd taken just before vanishing into the darkness but that was it. I spent weeks asking people what day it was calling people up from a pay phone -- "Can you tell me what day it is?" And them, audibly upset, sad, worried: "John, you called and asked me this five minutes ago" "I know but please. I think it will help"
but it didn't help, nothing helped. my brain had taken a hard hit from something somehow. I would leave the apartment to look at the newspaper machine to see what the date was. I thought if I could keep that straight maybe I'd be OK.
March 1986.
Nobody who valued their money would have bet a dollar on me seeing 1987. And yet.
And that was me: lost, confused, desperate, incapable of taking care of myself. And you? x
You're better than I was then, it's nearly a sure thing, trust me
The things that assailed you and all of us in 2020 -- the death and the fear and the loss and the anger --
they will one day be as hard to recollect as which knee I had the scab on for the month following my long blackout
all we have to do is find a way to make the next day happen
because the days add up
it doesn't feel like they will
but they do
and the worst of times, though they may grow more rotten, eventually compost the better ones
And if you're reading this, you did it: you made it down the hall to the pay phone to find out what day it was. you found a quarter in the couch and bought the newspaper and got the date right. small victories count
Small victories count.
And though the vaccine rollout has us all wondering how long it will really be until we can return ourselves to the world
the day's coming, the day's coming
we will wait for that day together and cheer its dawn
this thread is for Howard and Bob, who didn't make it to the end this year
and for you
who
DID. /thread
so I was washing potatoes last night when I got excited
it was just one of those moments, you know. I was getting dinner together and I looked at the ingredients coming together on the counter
and I thought to myself, and said aloud, "Hell yes, I have three potatoes"
living with me means having to develop a robust tolerance for hearing a guy occasionally cry out aloud: saying, for example, "Hell yes, I have three potatoes"
but over and above my everyday state of excitement about the ten trillion small things that ease the path a little -- colors, shades, sounds, flavors, sensations, moods, fleeting thoughts, moments of transcendence when you're very lucky --
I had one of those moments of gratitude to have food. and not just the food but a counter to prep it on and a stove for cooking
but it wasn't just the food and the kitchen and the comforts of home, either
it was me standing at the stove in a house where I'm safe. got here on my own two feet. had a lot of help. plenty of points where I wouldn't have bet on the outcome. now I have three potatoes, you know?
here's the thing
some of you reading this are in houses where you're not safe all the time, and I know it
some of you are day-to-day with any of a thousand different troubles and on any given day you feel like you might buckle
maybe you've felt like that a lot of times over the past couple years. A lot of people have. some people have felt that way who'd had some preparation, and some people have found themselves navigating scary, unfamiliar straits
but if you're reading this right now you managed to make it work. maybe it doesn't feel like it worked all that well, maybe you feel like you're coasting across the goal line with no fuel at all left in the tank,
but here you are
here you are.
having found some way to nourish yourself through it.
look at the calendar, look at the clock. you sustained yourself through this. maybe you got sick, maybe it was real bad. maybe some things got better and maybe they got worse. but give yourself the gift of a long look in the mirror
look at the person hard, uncertain times, in days of sickness everywhere, will see another year
that's the person who will do it again, and to that person, over and over, I say, loud enough for the neighbors to hear,
Hell yes, hell yes, hell yes, hell yes, hell yes
from all of us here at Mountain Goats Central Command a thank you for seeing us through 2021. it was so good to see you in the flesh again. stay safe. trust yourselves. we will see one another through to safer times
this year's New Year's Eve thread is dedicated to that one guy who's mad about people wishing one another happy new year: may he never know why people actually do it
and may the rest of us, collectively, defiantly, never forget it /thread
I do in fact have a story for you this year, too, but I'll tell you at the outset, it's probably gonna land on a note more of contemplative reflection than full-throated affirmation, I'll do what I can
I've talked before about early spring '86 in Portland, a time which I mark as the end of one arc. somewhere in the year or two before that I'd lost my way almost completely. friends saw it and couldn't help;
people who wanted to become friends I kept at arm's length; people who did get close enough got burned, there was no way around it
I did not know whether I wanted to be a good person at all. much of the time my thinking was: to hell with it all, anyway. "unicorn tolerance" is about this important moment in my life: a turning point
everybody who did me kindnesses I didn't deserve in Portland helped. grateful forever.
sometime in the next couple of years I began to relocate the version of me I hadn't succeeded in killing off, and began trying to nurse him back to health. it was a slow process but I found, anyway, the path. still on the path
but for years when I went to Portland, my muscles would tense up, my mood would shift rapidly, my vision narrow like a prey animal making sure he's ready at all times to break from the clearing
year in and year out, when I went to Portland. I'd walk around specifically to let this mood overtake me, to get inside of it, to shake hands with the damaged boy who'd lived there and tell him I could still see him from where I ended up and I'd sob a lot and sleep badly and when I left I'd feel like somebody'd wrung me out like a wet towel & thrown me into a corner of the laundry room
I was in Portland just last month. I did my walks I always do -- down to the corner that was the 2nd-to-last place I ever bought heroin, past other spots with both easier and harder memories than that one --
but this year I noticed: the dread's gone. the fear is absent. less shame, more clarity. what do you know about that.
I can still access those feelings if I want to, or if I need them for anything -- they'll always be accessible to me, but I have moved on from them.
when you have such touchpoints of shame and dread and fear and sadness and regret, you can get addicted to them. they're part of you; you build things in your life in response to them, and then the touchpoints themselves began to feel like lodestars, like cornerstones
they're not cornerstones at all
they're points of departure.
and when you reach a point of departure, when you know your map is finally showing you where the better waters are, well: you take a good look at that jumping-off point, and then you leave it behind
there are multiple applications for this lesson, as I would hope is clear
maybe as one year turns into another you might think, I carry around a lot of rage, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain
be ready for when the moment comes to say to yourself: I don't have to feel that any more unless I want to
there's no promise as to when that moment comes
and universal applicable-to-everybody platitudes are a fool's game I don't play: but generally speaking?
the moment comes.
it could come in a few years, or after a few more, or it may already have arrived and is waiting for midnight, or tomorrow morning, or the middle of next week: whenever you might find the opportunity to say -- it's time.
If it's time, give yourself that gift. the gift of seeing where you are now. of seeing how far it might be from where you used to be, from the place you'd gotten so used to being in.
there probably won't be one of these threads here next year, the writing's on the wall. that's ok, too. I'm around. so are you. that's the point of all this and I hope you can hear it:
So are you. /thread
When you get the reputation of being the guy with the encouraging words on New Year's Eve, it can start to come through as a little pressure -- what if the situation on the ground is worse than usual? what if people are more scared than they usually are, and with cause? what use are good vibes then?
well as you might imagine, because of the way I am hard wired, I think it's good and useful to figure out a way of imagining the light at the end of the tunnel
there's no tunnel, to be clear! nor light! these are metaphors! we could as easily say: the surface above the water; the doorknob in the darkness; the key at the bottom of the junk drawer; and so on, and so on
the use of these metaphors seems limited! strongly limited! when you get through tunnel to the light: what's out there? when you find the key in the drawer: do you actually want to open that door?
but for me this is fact where these ways of describing the world become more, not less, useful and instructive. questions, rightly posed, are about possibilities, not hard stops
"possibilities, not hard stops" -- this is one reason why a recent trend in interviewing on album cycles has been kind of mystifying to me: people will ask me to sort of summarize the song. but that's not how songs work! their job begins where the tidy explanation ends!
hence the occasional usefulness, I'm told, of the phrase "if it kills me" in a song I know people play on new year's eve, for which tradition I am so immensely grateful. Thank you.
it is a contradiction! make it through or get killed: these aren't compatible, are they? but yes in fact they are and we know they are. it's easy to forget but we know.
snakes leave behind whole skins. all manner of flying creatures, not just butterflies, do them one better, whole new selves from wriggling worms. rocks into gems. mystics die to the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. rebirth is the rule, not the stray exception, if we can grasp it
we in this country (and, I'd argue, the world, but I'm not here to argue tonight) are challenged to make of our present situation something better. it's a tall order
but look at yourself, consider your life
you have done it before, squared the smooth circle, navigated the hard corner, slipped through and lived to see another day
together? in solidarity? is there anything we can't do: for those suffering in an increasingly inhuman justice system; for our trans kin targeted by this wretched government; for immigrants scapegoated by the callous and the cruel? for, in and through all this, ourselves?
no tunnel but the tunnel whose contours we identify for the purposes of finding its exit, no light but the one we follow to better times
you are here at the end of a year in which I'll bet you wondered what the point was, at some point
the point is that together we can find a way. the point is that. together.
I wish you, and me, and all of us, strength & solidarity & joy in the new year as we find our way together: which we have done this year already, and will arise tomorrow to do again. /thread