Why be “bleak” when you could be “Blake”?

It’s a wonderful quote.

The line was included in a letter written by the musician John Balance, leader of the cult band Coil, to a friend.

What he was referring to was that four hundred years before, even being poor and unknown, William Blake never stopped embracing creativity, imagination, and artistic expression.

In all his works, whether drawings, paintings or writings, the poet always chose inspiration and creativity over despair and darkness and, although always mysterious, this led him to create some of the most beautiful poems in the English language.

What’s impressive is that he also conducted himself in the same way in his personal life. There’s a famous anecdote that says that, already homeless and in a wheelchair, Blake told a child who approached him: “I hope someday you’ll be as happy as I am.”

He wasn’t being ironic. It was simply that the incredible force of his imagination was filled with the joy of light.

“I hope someday you’ll be as happy as I am.” William Blake.

Sometimes we can feel disoriented about the attitude we need to adopt to solve certain problems. When it comes to the issues we must face as humanity, due to their magnitude, it becomes particularly confusing; the world can sometimes seem like such a bleak place that often appears to require a response that is equally so.

But, as they say, fire was never put out with fire.

Isn’t it clear that we need a different vibe, an attitude of lightness and vitality that contrasts with the worlds problems, even though the solutions it carries may be serious.?

Wouldn’t this be the way to approach challenges so that we can make the search for and implementation of solutions an everyday thing, something we look forward to instead of just being an obligation?

There must be different ways to try to improve the world that do not only appeal to our sadness or merely to our compassion.

And if there aren’t any, we certainly need to invent one.

And now, a bit of poetry, by a human called William Blake.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?