Hank Williams' Light

I wondered so endless, life filled with sin,
I wouldn't let my dear saviour in,
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night,
And praise the lord, I saw the light!

I saw the light! I saw the light!
No more darkness, no more night,
Now I'm so happy, no sorrow in sight,
Praise the lord! I saw the light!

Hank Williams. Died January 1st, 1953


I walked home drunk. I was more drunk than I thought I was when I'd left the pub. Safe to say that when you're drunk you walk. You walk, and if you're lucky, you think. What do you think about? Unhappy thoughts, for the most part. Ugly thoughts. Wretched thoughts. But you think, and no more. There's no point in describing environmental details. Your environment doesn't occur to you when you're walking home drunk. It doesn't happen to you. So there's no point in going into the usual descriptions of my surroundings at the time; that would be superfluous. My life consists of what happens in it, and what happens in my life depends on what my mood allows. I sit in my room, and that's all that happens. But so much more happens! Thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts go through me. Some pleasant, some less pleasant, all of them involuntary. And so my life happens. It happens, and it will cease from happening when I cease from thinking. When thinking ceases from happening. Thinking happens to me, so much more than sitting in that cheap rocking chair in the corner. So much more than sitting... Ah, but one is always aware of future possibilites, and of those future possibilities as part of a unity of life along with the past and present. But in so far as those thoughts occur to me they happen to me. Life is that which happens to me. On the way home I walk along the quayside. It's a longer route but it raises my spirits. I choose not to walk through the urban shortcut into town. Walking through the quayside fools me into feeling safe, into feeling that there's a nice side to this world. A glaring searchlight is beaming at the quaside with no distinct pattern, like a headless chicken. It gets me, then it gets me again. I'm not running away from you, I want your control. Suddenly I hear the words: I saw the light! I saw the light! No more darkness, no more night. Could it be? I can't be that drunk, though the line between dream and reality is momentarily blurred by surprise and aided by alcohol. Hank is singing! Oh, Hank, you never saw the light any longer than the effect of your pills lasted. And when you sang to me of the light, you showed me even more darkness. The sound of Hank Williams was blowing from a nearby nightclub to the sight of a kaliedoscopic projection alongside the opposite building's wall. Quite why it was playing, I don't know. That scene made no sense, and being drunk certainly didn't help me make any more sense of it. It's his greatest song - jubilant, unrestrained, desperate, submissive, filled with pain, redemptive and pious. All at the same time. Indeed, it is the kind of jubilation and redemption reserved only for the pious. If there was ever a thing worth saying, a sentiment worth expressing, a pain worth crying - don't bother. Hank Williams has said it before. He's said it better than you ever could. The truth of his words is not in their complexity - he was too rough for that. Rough but not crude, as so many mistakenly impute to him. The truth of his words resonates through the unmistakeable pain in his voice. If you don't hear his pain you haven't heard pain in your life. And Hank Williams knew all about pain. Sometimes I think his life consisted of nothing but pain, with every song sung and pill taken being just a momentary respite from his troubles, of which chronic back problems of unimaginable pain was probably the least. Legend has it that Hank used to buy a new guitar every week because he would smash them on opponents heads during fights. His money was spent on pills, alcohol and cheap guitars. Heidegger, don't you know that anxiety doesn't visit you once? Once it visits, it will visit you again and again and again, and each time will be emptier than the last. The beauty of the song, its achievement, is in its ability to communicate to me the pain of life and the transcendant redemption it can offer. Not for me, though. Not for us. We've crossed that line long ago. But maybe, just maybe, I can feel it, just for 3 minutes through the great voice of a great musician. After Hank only silence is worthy. Rest in peace, Hank Williams.