Seeing Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ shook me to the core of my being and left me feeling helpless in my mortality. It wasn’t the movie, though, that so moved me.
It was my senior year of high school, and a friend had convinced me to see the film at the local movie theater. Feelings of both reverence and dread overcame me as I thought about The Passion, and its overarching goal at guilt-tripping moviegoers into belief in Christ with scenes of horrific suffering and violence. As I reached for my car keys, I needed to soundtrack the drive to and from the theater with an album that reflected this conflicted spirituality.
The choice was easy: I See a Darkness by Bonnie Prince Billy (a.k.a. Will Oldham).
My Nissan’s CD player swallowed the disc as ink-black rain clouds loomed. Plaintive piano chords marked the opening of “Minor Place,” the tale of a man who has come to grips with his suffering, choosing to bear it with an almost messianic stoicism: “Singing from my little point / And aching in my every joint / I thank the world it will anoint me / If I show it how I hold it.”
The sense of restraint dissipated with the other-worldly bridge of “Nomadic Revery (All Around),” a gothic take on Appalachian folk which seemed to parallel Christ’s suffering: “All the city’s on me / And all they wish to scold me / And lay their hands upon me.” I eased my car into a parking space. I was ready.
After the film ended, I limped out of the theater, pondering images of barbed whips and blood-stained marble. The primeval elements of an Arizonian monsoon awaited outside. Lightning split the sky like hairline fractures through granite. The hair on my arms stood straight as I sat motionless in the driver’s seat. “I See a Darkness” enveloped me like the fast-approaching night, its skeletal structure mirroring the grinning skull of the album’s cover. The more I drove, the closer each bolt hit, as if honing in on my slight sedan.
“Death to Everyone” came on, and I was ready to accept my fate. But then the song changed in tone: “And since we know / An end will come / It makes our living / Fun.”
I stepped out of the car and onto the driveway, realizing that Will Oldham had accomplished in 10 minutes what Mel Gibson failed to do in two hours: explore humanity’s relationship with death while inspiring a greater sense of religiosity.
