Written by Suricata Wednesday, 14 October 2009 20:59
Entertainment and the arts will always be the mirror of our collective unconscious, regardless of the type of media used in a particular age in history. Originally, arts were linked to religion almost as a rule. Our forefathers painted, sculpted and wrote epics about their gods, and all the arts people were exposed to had a strong mythical content. Art and spirituality will therefore always be attached to each other regardless of how sacred or profane a particular form of art claims to be.
A human being is nothing without spirituality; spirituality meaning the connection with a world apart from the material, tangible one. Different people refer to it in different ways: Fiction, fantasy, imagination, religion, magic, et cetera. The importance of this “other world” resides on the fact that we, as humans, have within our psyches not only the conscious mind that takes control of everyday life, but also another side of the mind; the one that comes alive when we dream, fantasize and feel emotions. Just as our conscious mind needs to be expressed in daily life, our inner world of dreams and fantasies requires a form of representation to “connect it to the real world”. What does the work in this case is none other than art.
There have always been two kinds of catalysts for collective expression: Artists and clowns. The former express, with refined talent, ideas, images, sensations and emotions taken from the world of the soul and materialize them into art. The latter limit themselves to repeat what’s already been created by others, expanding the artist’s original creation to the most varied public.
Taking a look at the art and performance world of modern times the observer can gather an idea of the collective spiritual state of things. Pop culture has become the most common religion of our times, with superheroes, divas and superstars as distorted replacements of the ancient gods. However, a bad representation of a myth is better than no representation at all.
Music is possibly the purest spiritual expression. Music can’t be held, touched or seen, but it evokes images, textures, tastes and smells, thus bringing our inner senses into play. When the subject listens to a song attentively and with no distractions, he finds himself living a story, entering other worlds and experiencing a set of feelings and sensations, all of which are excited by the sounds he’s receiving.
But many prefer to accompany their music with a performance such as dancing and acting. This is where the clown comes into being. Enacting a song is bringing its images and feelings one step further into the tangible world, and this can either enhance fruitfully the original musical composition or decimate the whole experience putting images in the listener’s mind that could have been richer and more complex otherwise.
It’s evident that pop music overuses clowns. This makes it overly accessible to the general public, while it lacks depth in any sense. The music becomes simple and the imagery that accompanies it grows more complex. The opposite happens with the more refined kinds of music, especially instrumental. The music is extremely rich in content, but it can become too inaccessible for even the most attentive listener. Sometimes we need at least a slight insinuation of what the music means to portray to be able to get the whole experience well.
Metal is a very balanced genre in this sense, leaning more towards the pure art, but allowing a necessary bit of clown to enter the mix to enhance artistic expression. Metal is complex enough to entertain complex minds, and simple enough to be intelligible. It can be playful, but its strong and straightforward nature prevents it from falling into ridicule. The images conveyed by metal are not too abstract or too concrete (which would make them cartoonish).
So, if we part from the premise that images produced by art, and more specifically music, are representations of our unconscious and of the spiritual world, it’s apparent that these images are representations of our gods. In this way music is a religion.
It’s not random that people who listen to the same music think alike. We are naturally drawn to that which reflects our inner world. Our taste in music says more about ourselves than we would think looking at it superficially: It is, without a doubt, a portrait of our souls.
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Subscribe to this comment's feed KHA'NOS said: 
 | Brilliantly composed A very well placed statement on the state of affairs that we find this cluster of continents in during this day and age. The idolatry of pornography in the shape of a cursive D. Brava |
Suricata said:
 | Celebrity gods I know, it's pretty funny. Have you noticed the overly religious speech people use when refering to their music and TV idols?  |
Timothy said:
 | Balance is metal. This was an excellent first article Suricata! Your explanation of putting imagery to music explained something I've always innately felt but couldn't fully voice. Some bands can seem hard or dark based on what they don't show. Other bands can be hard to swallow or too frilly because of how much they try to explain what their music is portraying lyrically or visually. Hah, I also like how you think celebrities are more are less the modern gods as well. That's pretty amusing. |
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