Why new voices from the subconscious matter to all of us.
I admire teenagers and young people who rail against every day culture and bring new music and ideas into being. They have access to great expanses of consciousness that is an unappreciated space of cultural change.
The late 1960s hippie culture demonstrated in smelly, flowery, trippy ways that we can enjoy life together, share what we’ve got, have freer love and expansive ideas, and continue to get along just fine. 1968 San Francisco, Woodstock, and many other free-love and civil rights fighting moments were an out-picturing of what had been buried underneath buttoned up, post-World War II semi-Stepford culture. It seems from 1945-1962 or so, our country had fostered orderly conforming into a well-oiled commerce, baby-making machine. After all, our military had done some enormous stuff on the world stage, we had to live up to it, or else face we’d done all that destructo-heroism1 for nothing.
The formula was simple, but it also left lots of people out. It also left out our complicated underworld that begets expression. That span of time was also an exceptionally long run of a culture seeming to hold it all together for the sake of propriety and progress. And when the underbelly of injustice and spirited community finally emerged, it was challenging, dynamic, and truly glorious.
We’ve seen other emergences in music culture since the breakthroughs around Rock and Roll: Punk Rock, Goth, Grunge, and Hip Hop among others. Each of these genres was brought into being by young people, exploring their whole selves and their bitterly critical takes on society and what’s not discussed when being polite. At every turn, the young people prevailed and innovated ways to bring a broader sense of self and society into the light. Music was a clear hallmark of a larger change, and the way it seeped new ideas into mass consciousness.
I wonder what this younger generation will do? I know they are upset about how previous generations are leaving them a terrible ecological, unjust, consumerist mess, and they deserve to be angry. But what they’ve got brewing on the underside, I think, will be glorious. And we need to support them as best we can. As always, youth are the future. Literally. Let them have freedom to develop a culture that supports the future they want.2
I’ve noticed both personally and socially, when the knowledge of who we are is not well represented in society, young people and emergent artists MUST bring new art forms into being. The most moving art and powerful music always comes from genuine places of emotion and passion, and often involve personal depth or pain. The forms are honed by exploratory intellect, craft, and by fun with friends making music and dancing.
‘Album Cover’
Dispatches from the underworld.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl G. Jung
I think there is an unfair association with the ‘dark side’ of ourselves as somehow bad, shameful, or unworthy. As I grown older, I’ve come to know my own dark side as something hidden or private, or maybe aspects of myself I can’t or don’t want to conceptualize – because they defy simple explanation. Our emotional lives are often in this realm, our sexuality, our creativity, and our dreams. As are our traumas, our power, and our art. It’s a paradoxical soup down there, and it’s been stewing our whole lives. Who can make an elevator speech about it? Who would want to?
Awareness is a light. Action is an art.
And yet, we’ve all become aware of – and can often discuss – patterns of behavior that limit us. It is culturally acceptable to say things like “I am triggered by xyz because of my xyz past pattern.” But we are no longer discussing the subconscious here. If we can say something like this, it means our behavioral pattern is fully in the light of day, and can be conceptualized enough to talk about it with others. This is an example of our dark side coming to light. It’s a wholeness journey, and not to overstate the obvious – it’s not easy. I still requires us to work. Really hard work, in really embarrassing ways at times.
And changing a pattern like this, after revealing it, is a huge act of courage.
Ain’t all a shame: expanses in our subconscious
And what about patterns that expand us? Many of these are hidden and private too, or rarely conceptualized. We all have moments of wonder and awe. Maybe from staring at the stars or seeing a leaf, fully, for the first time. We may not want to put those wide-alive moments into words, so they remain in our underbelly too. Poetry, music and art can bring these feelings back, and move us into that space of possibility and openness, and we love it.
We love what makes us feel whole.
Artists are servants to society – they push our awareness past the outer edges of genres or thinking– because they reveal their personal language of what other persons aren’t yet ready to discuss plainly. And this process is done in a creative way, not a destructive one.
Creatives remind us of the infinite space left to explore inside us and around us– including spirited community. And when any given artist brings some of their imperfect underside into light, they support all of us in acknowledging the complicated nature of humanity, and to still love it.
So, to wrap this piece on a wildly hopeful note: the more I see young people, the more I have respect and delight. Because, while a middle-aged me may be fretting about political coups, aging, technology and demise, the young people are focused on love and sex and music and making things work the way they want them to. They have time and impetus to love, and as always, they always find a way to do just that.
And I can’t help but notice, there’s so much more to come to light.
FOOTNOTES
- If I could coin a term, maybe this would be it: destructo-heroism. Defined as the energy of fighting for what’s right that includes killing or burning to the ground people and/or helpful institutions. So even if the fighting IS for a good principle, but the trauma and suffering resulting from the fight is not. Perhaps “standing up” for a cause is a more helpful way to describe. ↩︎
- Arguably, the culture most young people want includes equality for all races, genders, and those who are neuro-divergent. It also includes desire to toss off the debts of the earlier generations, which includes unsustainable costs for higher education, for reasonable health care, and basic privacy and freedoms. I think they know capitalism is rigged against all but a few, and they are done with it. ↩︎
