Written by even*dawn
If I have learned anything as a timekeeper over the years, it is that present day events are networked to a pattern which is recursive. What I mean by recursive is, relative to the variety of events being observed there will be perceived a likeness to individual occurrences, and that likeness can be found elsewhere; as though being repeated after an interval.
The recurrence of this alternating likeness standing out from the intervals between them, gives us the sense of each event fitting in with the structure of the perceivable pattern. What does any of this have to do with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll? In the overall scheme of things, the present day zeitgeist is ripe for an even broader cultural revolution than that which occurred in the age of the sixties and seventies. To consider the far-reaching influences that the ideologies and popular music which surged out from the global-western youth movement – out of response to the calls to end the United States violent attacks upon the Vietnamese – the mark it has left on the expression of human culture (beyond geographically-based customs) is distinct.
Bringing into this consideration that the platforms of media production and distribution during the sixties and seventies was a mere handful of outlets for the songs and messages of the artists of those times – those who did carry out the oracular arts of performing to the surging appetites of popularity’s heights (such as Elvis, The Beatles and Bowie to name a few) are those who remain distinct upon their pedestals, as enduring pop-star idols.
At no particular point after this high-water mark, occurred a diffusing and redistribution of focus away from humanity’s attentions. Evidently less emphasis was made towards the call to rally against the machine of war. The platforms and outlets for the popular music which sprouted out of those earlier Top Hits, youth-craze celebrity crushes – continued on in the form of what is appropriately termed as an industry; the popular music industry to be precise, which to aspiring musicians with stars in their eyes appears as a gleaming pinnacle soaring high over the hills of holly wood.
To be acclaimed as a ‘voice’ of such resounding essence that they as it were capturing the very hearts and minds, and moving the very bodies of the revellers in the artist’s expression; from a myth-poetic perspective those icons of the times are risen out of such high cabler craft, true to their form as to be unique, are rightfully revered – standing in the claim of their creative efforts. However, the machinations of the distribution of media having and adherence to the exploitative and industrious motivation, results in the groomed propulsion of select performers to prominence. In the world media sphere, being ‘iconic’ is not always as wholesome as its guise.
The raw edge to the emergence of analogue recording and wax record imprint carriers (that preceded the multi-pronged media broadcasting platforms that carried on) is that whilst independent music was being performed across the spreading activity of the people – not just protesting student youths but all the people who had a song and a voice and a band with which to play. However it was that the artists who did chance upon the means to distribute their music to the masses and tour their way to stardom – they needed to do so through contracts of agency with the media giants, once an outlet for audio-technology but becoming the very behemoth-beast of late-stage capitalism in its burdens centralisation of power.
Those recording-signing contracts themselves are important to take notice of. Since some of the earliest demands of the consumers of popular music came up for the marketers to meet was in the genre of Motown music. The chance to be a rising start was being granted to the groovy cats, who were black cats at that. If you’ve forgotten what it meant to have been black, in the Deep South of the united states you can reckon it with meaning something like: if you weren’t a slave yourself chances were that your daddy, and your grandaddy were slaves as far as you knew. An unfortunate truth is that in the manner of doing business between white people and black people back then – a music label’s deal to a black-musician at the time could be, to give an example: a deed for which the black slave has been bought out from their white master – to which they render their services to the label and are enumerated with a percentage of royalties as their dues.
What’s that you say – that seems like a bit of a dud deal? Yes, but I kid you not, whether it can be seen as being worth it for an artist (irregardless of race) since the deals formed up from these roots of slavery’s binding – the formal term used for the services of the record label’s contribution to the artistic venture is literally defined as ‘exploitation’.
This first became news to me when, as a back-up vocalist in a hip-hop act with my MC homie Mattriks, when in our Brissy days. Since the history of civil-rights movements had never been my strong point, I took note of the injustices that I could see had been taking place in regards to the deals available to independent musicians seeking a record deal. By the time Mattriks was my actual house-mate homie in the Dandenongs, we’d devised a different way of doing music business. Did I say business? We meant bidness.
Not as a record label, but as an artist services network – The Kinship Collective. My collaborative experimentation into producing the releases that we launched during that last year of the long count (2011) culminated successfully insofar as we all brought together a thirteen act collective – amidst which there were musical mentorships and professional services available as a repertoire of support to produce music, videos and press kits. If worked as a process, but not as a viable earning platform to sustain much of the work requiring promotions. This was before social media had become conjoined with streaming media, so we couldn’t as of then harness the synergistic fruitfulness of networking musicians to further their public influence.
That being said, there is another war that the people – at least the people I concur with – are wanting to end; not just one war, all the wars. Like that which was sparking to life in the sixties and flared bright in the seventies – an indefatigable message is being broadcast by artists, whether they have celebrity status themselves or are bedroom youtubers.
The big if: if there was no more war – then what?
If world peace was declared for once and for all, what would all the businessmen and businesswomen of the military-industrial complex do? After laying down arm, the day after declaring the first lasting peace on earth – what comes next?
That could be when we start discovering how well we might go if we started giving sex drugs and rock’n’roll a go?
Surely the title of th is piece was just for click-bait? I couldn’t possibly be saying I think this bumper-sticker slogan is what will save the day?
Well, no because I have become less prone to believing that what’s going to ‘save the world’ from this war-torn heap could come down to any one particular concept, but in coming at the complex array of factors driving the reoccurrence of militant-factioning: trauma recovery is an active reagent for change. Which is what begets the complication of the matter of warfare – since the impacts of war are irrefutably traumatic, a wicked loop of escalating contexts compound.
Putting aside how achieving this future state where the lessening or ending of ongoing harms may be able to be enacted, once the threat of harm is reduced what follows is a demonstrable need for adequate integration. The somatic lived experiences require time to be processed, and rehabilitation of the physical health as well as recovery of their felt sense of relational safety has to take place in order from the victims of trauma to recover in a substantial way.
I’ll leave it til now to draw the correlation between how and why ‘drugs’ as we’ve known them, can be – when reframed as remedies that enable psychedelic-assisted therapy to take effect. And add to that it is may the highs that the tripped-out cultural icons who said what has been inscribed in our species minds, and over the airwaves – is all I have to sum it up as:
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
– John Lennon
As for sex? Like I said, for substantial recovery from lived experience of trauma to occur, relational safety must be rehabilitated – or in experiences of which no such safety had been provided the formational habilitation of this nervous system state would have to be induced. There’s a far deeper impulse for developing one’s capacity for experiencing relational safety than whether or not you’ll get to be sexually active, nonetheless the likelihood cannot be discounted. Much is hinged on this personal connected each has with their own sexuality, or even within the consideration of what their own sexuality even is.
As serious as I aim about peace and safety, I am giving you some cheek right now.
More seriously though, what I am making myself clear about right here is that Love is the way. And I love all three.