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When you get the reputation of being the guy with the encouraging words on New Year's Eve, it can start to come through as a little pressure -- what if the situation on the ground is worse than usual? what if people are more scared than they usually are, and with cause? what use are good vibes then?

well as you might imagine, because of the way I am hard wired, I think it's good and useful to figure out a way of imagining the light at the end of the tunnel

there's no tunnel, to be clear! nor light! these are metaphors! we could as easily say: the surface above the water; the doorknob in the darkness; the key at the bottom of the junk drawer; and so on, and so on

the use of these metaphors seems limited! strongly limited! when you get through tunnel to the light: what's out there? when you find the key in the drawer: do you actually want to open that door?

but for me this is fact where these ways of describing the world become more, not less, useful and instructive. questions, rightly posed, are about possibilities, not hard stops

"possibilities, not hard stops" -- this is one reason why a recent trend in interviewing on album cycles has been kind of mystifying to me: people will ask me to sort of summarize the song. but that's not how songs work! their job begins where the tidy explanation ends!

hence the occasional usefulness, I'm told, of the phrase "if it kills me" in a song I know people play on new year's eve, for which tradition I am so immensely grateful. Thank you.

it is a contradiction! make it through or get killed: these aren't compatible, are they? but yes in fact they are and we know they are. it's easy to forget but we know.

snakes leave behind whole skins. all manner of flying creatures, not just butterflies, do them one better, whole new selves from wriggling worms. rocks into gems. mystics die to the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. rebirth is the rule, not the stray exception, if we can grasp it

we in this country (and, I'd argue, the world, but I'm not here to argue tonight) are challenged to make of our present situation something better. it's a tall order

but look at yourself, consider your life

you have done it before, squared the smooth circle, navigated the hard corner, slipped through and lived to see another day

together? in solidarity? is there anything we can't do: for those suffering in an increasingly inhuman justice system; for our trans kin targeted by this wretched government; for immigrants scapegoated by the callous and the cruel? for, in and through all this, ourselves?

no tunnel but the tunnel whose contours we identify for the purposes of finding its exit, no light but the one we follow to better times

you are here at the end of a year in which I'll bet you wondered what the point was, at some point

the point is that together we can find a way. the point is that. together.