Dark Is The Night
Blind Willie Johnson had a terrible life. He was born poor and obscure, and died the same way. As a boy (after he informed his father that he wanted to be a preacher and made himself a cigarbox guitar so that he could sing the gospel, both of which are pretty noble impulses for any kid), his stepmother blinded him with lye as payback for Willie's dad beating her because she was seeing another man. Still, he became a preacher, sang and wrote songs and traveled around teaching 'the word'. In 1945, his house burnt to the ground. With nowhere else to go, and being poor and black in the American south and therefore having next to no one give a damn about you, he slept in the ruins during a wet autumn, contracted malarial fever and died. See? His life was just shit.
In 1977 Carl Sagan included Johnson's song "Dark Is The Night" on Voyager 1's golden record because he felt that it summed up the loneliness and longing of an entire species. At some point in 2004, Voyager 1 left our solar system and entered interstellar space.
A blind man lays dying in the damp, smoky ruins of the only thing that was ever his. Perhaps he looks up into a sky that he's forced to remember from childhood and perhaps he asks God why his life turned out so lowly. He'll never know that he created something that will travel farther than his limited understanding can imagine at the time of his death. It will represent his people, his species, and his planet. He will be in the company of those coined as "geniuses". He, like everything else in the universe, was made of stardust, and an idea from his mind now sails back through that same stardust to end up who knows where.
I am having a terrible day - full of doubt and worry and fear of failure. But Blind Willie had it infinitely harder and he's out there in space. I'm not sure that there is a more inspiring story than his.
In 1977 Carl Sagan included Johnson's song "Dark Is The Night" on Voyager 1's golden record because he felt that it summed up the loneliness and longing of an entire species. At some point in 2004, Voyager 1 left our solar system and entered interstellar space.
A blind man lays dying in the damp, smoky ruins of the only thing that was ever his. Perhaps he looks up into a sky that he's forced to remember from childhood and perhaps he asks God why his life turned out so lowly. He'll never know that he created something that will travel farther than his limited understanding can imagine at the time of his death. It will represent his people, his species, and his planet. He will be in the company of those coined as "geniuses". He, like everything else in the universe, was made of stardust, and an idea from his mind now sails back through that same stardust to end up who knows where.
I am having a terrible day - full of doubt and worry and fear of failure. But Blind Willie had it infinitely harder and he's out there in space. I'm not sure that there is a more inspiring story than his.
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