Psychedelic Renaissance
Design: Clint Fisher
In the house I grew up in we had a den, and in this den there was a particular chest, and in this chest were stacks of albums. When I was 10 years old I started going through this chest habitually. I can remember the smell of those albums today and the hours upon hours I used to spend just staring at the covers, back covers, inserts, the records themselves.
MMMM Vinyl...
My parents- being teens in the 60's had a very affluent record collection, among those albums that stood out to me where: The Doors- "The Doors", Santana- "Abraxas" (which was my first exposure to a nude woman, but that's another subject all together- doh!), Buffalo Springfield- "Buffalo Springfield", The Moody Blues- "Question of Balance" and the soundtrack to Woodstock just to name a few. So my exposure to the music of the 60's began very early in my life, I had no idea the impact that it would make on my life to this very day.
Fast Forward
Summer 2007 marked the 40 year anniversary of the "Summer of Love" and here in New York City, the Whitney Museum of American Art held an exhibition entitled "Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era" which I did not see once, or twice, but three times, bringing different friends of mine the second and third visits.
Prior to this exhibit I had been seriously revisiting music from the 60's era and finding a tremendous amount of it that I had never heard before. Dave (a friend of mine) and I were buying different cd's and began exchanging them back and forth anytime one of us got something new. It was amazing the bands that I was uncovering with the help of some fantastic people at amazing record stores here in NYC. In particular, "other music" and "rocket scientist". I highly recommend anyone who is in the city and is a music geek to get your work check cashed and blow it all at these shops.
Psychedelic
Anyone vaguely familiar with the decade of the 1960's will have heard of the term "Psychedelic"— often used in reference to the music of the period. The origin of the word comes from the greek words for "mind" (psyche) and "manifest" (delos). In the same way that drugs became a way to manifest mind altering thoughts and experiences, psychedelic music strove to bring the listener to another dimension through distorted sounds and rhythmic patterns. What I've always found fascinating about the genre is that it's real, organic music made with actual instruments, back when bands were actually bands and musicians knew their instruments (Jimi Hendrix anyone? Yes please, thank you.)
American counterculture at that time was breaking free from the 50's and the conservative constraints that were keeping them down. A tremendous surge of experiential exploration was taking place, and the drugs provided a doorway out of oneself where one could leave behind the cares and embrace the care-free unknown.
It was a time of war and the young generation wanted peace. The love vibe became contagious and fostered a tremendously empowering idea that the world could be changed one hippie at a time. This was not just fuzzy feelings and good intentions, many groups of like minded individuals backed their faith up with works, groups like the Diggers. The Diggers were on the Haight-Ashbury scene in San Francisco. They famously encouraged local shop owners on the Haight to put up posters in their windows asking people to invite policemen to have a meal with them- this during a time when the cops were coming down hard on the area.
The Diggers wanted to show those in power through kindness their intentions to live at peace, and to practice what they preached. They also brought food to the needy declaring:
Free Food: At Oak-Ashbury Panhandle. 4pm everyday. Bring a bowl and a spoon. It's free because it's yours.
— The Diggers
Renaissance
The amount of talent and creativity running rampant during the 1960's was mind blowing, the arts were flourishing and there were scenes everywhere, it was truly a renaissance. A renaissance is a "rebirth" or "revival" marked by times of artistic and intellectual achievement. There are two historically famous renaissance periods in history, the first took place in the 12th century and the second during the 14th -17th centuries. The latter gave birth to two of the most famous renaissance men- Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Like the peace and love movement the renaissance was a cultural movement. It was an aggressive movement in that it dove head first into understanding the true meaning and origins of life. Renaissance men and women embraced Art, Science and Religion as well as Humanism. Most importantly, the people of the renaissance lived daily with the belief that they were experiencing a new age, one that had broken free from the Middle Ages.
Psychedelic Renaissance
What do "mind" and "manifest", "rebirth" or "revival" have to do with us today? I firmly believe that we are on the edge of a psychedelic renaissance right now, and by edge I mean that it's already starting. We need rebirths in our minds and to see the manifestation of revivals in our creative lives. And in my opinion this will take place as we set our minds on the gifts and talents we've been given and we lay them out before God and ask Him to revive them, breathe His life into them. There's a famous 60's slogan— "God is on a trip", I for one, am ready to trip out man.
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Funny that you should make the ideological connection between the psychedelic culture and that of the Renaissance because as a literary scholar and writer I always made this connection myself but never dared to publish my idea, with the exception of a poetry portfolio I had composed for an advanced-level workshop during my undergrad. I was always nervous in presenting the idea of a “psychedelic renaissance” before my colleagues and professors at Cal State Northridge, but now that I know somebody else on the Internet besides myself has considered the similarities I feel much better. The truth is that both the Renaissance of Europe and the Western world of the 1960s involved the production of successful art through the distortion of pre-set “norms,“ but I’m just not sure as to how many literary or musical buffs have actually taken the time to see that the two worlds are more parallel than either group could have imagined, because much of lyrical and poetry theory bleed into each other, or so has been my experience in my academic career when studying lit/poetry theory at the 400 course level.
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