Musings on Ravens

28th January, 2016

There are different ways in which people prefer to deal with sadness. Some pour their hearts out to their best friends and have a good, long cry. Some lock themselves up in their bathrooms and smoke through the tears. Still others deal with it by focusing on a different kind of pain, more potent and most often brought on by their own hands.

Years of experience with myself has taught my old soul that I deal with sadness best by writing my thoughts down. It brings order to my mind. With every sentence I can feel the uneasiness dissipate and my chest stops quivering from the outpour.

They say music soothes people. It does. Provided you find the right kind of music. To soothe my frenzied thoughts I often play myself a little song. No, I take that back. It’s no little song. It’s a masterpiece of music. The Raven that Refused to Sing by Steven Wilson. The song had been recommended to me by a friend some three years ago. The album art is that of the moon with an expression of fear mingled with sadness depicted in the style of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. That and the eeriness of the song caught my fancy all that time ago.

About six months ago, Deep said to me that he felt that the song could be about me and Liz; me being the sad old man and Liz the sister he lost way too soon. I hadn’t thought about it that way until he had suggested it; I re-watched the video and cried my eyes out.

It’s one of those songs that rises and falls, with valleys and peaks of emotions. And best of all it has a story: the story of a man dealing with depression, fighting it with the memory of his dear departed sister. The Raven represents a ray of hope to the old man. He looks to the Raven for help, hoping it would call across to his sister when the darkness comes to claim him. But the Raven doesn’t co-operate.

Now, to my Potterhead eyes, the sight of the darkness creeping in on the old man like that seemed to oddly resemble the cold chill that Dementors bring. Those damp ole creatures that suck out the happiness from inside you. They make you feel as if the sun will never shine on you again, that all the positivity in the world is gone. Poof. In other words, Depression personified.

I watched the video over and over, listened to the song on loop, drowned myself in it for a time. Soon it became my go to song whenever I felt low. It became a solace to me.

Meanwhile a poem by Edgar Allan Poe had pushed its way out from the depths of my memory in time for Halloween 2015. The poem is one of Poe’s best works, in my opinion. It is called The Raven. I’ve read it with all the devotion of a true fan of the genre that Poe established and defines. The Raven comes rapping at his window one night, perches on his chamber door on being let in and keeps cawing “Nevermore” as it chills Poe’s heart with fear. The Raven tortures the poor scared soul.

In my dreams I often see a raven. It visits me while I’m walking along the memory of an old place or meeting people lost in the past. The raven makes me feel ill at ease. It brings dark forebodings to my sleeping mind; like there is some danger or sorrow awaiting me when I wake up. Whenever I wake up from one of these dreams, it is inevitably a bad day.

Speaking of dreams, Lord Shaper aka Morpheus aka Dream King aka Sandman comes to my mind. In one Sandman issue, towards the end, a lot of Ravens gather in the Dreaming. Matthew, the raven who serves Morpheus, finds himself pulled to the heart of the Dreaming where more of his kind had begun to manifest. He doesn’t want to be there but he has to because by his nature, he must go where his calling truly is. To understand what this means one must know that ravens are scavengers. Wherever there is death and decomposition, thence ravens arrive sooner or later. Matthew had to go to the heart of the Dreaming because it was dying, along with all of its occupants.

When I had read this issue in late November, further fear had gripped me. Why were there ravens in my subconscious? What was dying/dead?