E:KO ᛟ HEIR — Before Electricity: A Brief History of Evening

For most of human history, evening meant darkness. Not the soft dusk of cities, but a real, operative dark that decided what could be done and what could wait. Candles were rationed, counted, respected. One for reading if you were lucky; one for a whole family if you weren’t.

This created a different rhythm. Work that needed sight paused; conversations that needed privacy began. Sleep arrived by agreement rather than negotiation. Light didn’t extend the day so much as soften its ending. The flame gathered people because the radius of evening had a centre again.

Electric light gave us safety, productivity, choice. It also flattened our sense of time—midnight behaving like noon, winter pretending to be summer. We gained control and surrendered rhythm. The candle today is a nostalgic technology only in the best sense: not for antique aesthetics, but for the pacing it enforces.

One match brings back a piece of the older contract. When I light, I decide. When I snuff, I stop. The room remembers how to close. The day ends instead of dissolving into blue light. I don’t pretend to live by pre-electric rules. I just borrow their wisdom for an hour and return it when I’m done.