Punk Rock Colleague & Historian and Professional Consultant
Hudley Flipside
The Naked Grace.
These times are asking us to go within. Over the generations we have taken this journey within. By choice, by accident and spiritually. Through drugs, side effects from prescribed medication or by magic.
A song can amplify this reality. A writer can share the experience. Songs filled with lyrics are poetry put to music. The images come forth and touch us. These three songs came to mind today when I was out in the garden pulling tall grass from the rich soil. It all came together. The dark earth holds things. Pulling on the grass and releasing the soil is a forward effort of movement. The dark moist earth has a relationship with our psyches.
I believe that unless we willfully take this inward journey as an individual it will be forced upon us. On a personal level or a generational level is how it goes. Anytime we suppress our shadow, blame others, or spread hate it is bound to a generation. Are we not observing this right now? Songs can help us. I need them like I need flowers in my garden or kitty cats to hug.
Here are three songs that explain this journey variable. From the 1960s Catch the Wind by Donovan is a peaceful song. From 1985 Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo is an amazing song that shares some interesting historical mysteries. Lastly from 1983 The Forbidden Zone by Charged GBH, one dose and you take their hand into a strange journey of a musician’s psyche.
♦Donovan is an unusual songwriter and folk singer that touches upon the light side of our psyche. He reminds us to remember the beauty in life. It is around us and in us if we go looking for it. Our psyches do often look back at us. We can reflect on this soft beauty from time to time.
“When sundown pales the sky
I want to hide a while
Behind your smile
And everywhere I would look, your eyes I’d find.”
♦Oingo Boingo’s song is remarkably interesting and worth listening to intensely. As a young punk back in the late 1970s I had an Oingo Boingo badge on my jacket. I was approached by a couple of punk chicks who mocked me and belittled me for wearing it. A time when the first signs of punk cultism started to show its ugly face.
“I was struck by lighting, walkin’ down the street
I was hit by something last night in my sleep
It’s a dead man’s party who could ask for more
Everybody’s comin’, leave your body at the door
Leave your body and soul at the door.”
“For English occultist Aleister Crowley, who was a painter himself, the artist ranked above the magician on the totem pole of illumination, and he considered poetry and art as precious tools for transforming one’s innermost psychic visions.”
~ Chapter Spencer Kansa, Pg. 92 Wormwood Star, The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron.
♥A wild journey inward to the shadowy psyche is found in the book City Baby from Highgate to Hawaii… Life, and GBH by Ross Lomas.
“This went on for hours. More and more of the same. It was incredibly intense. God and Jimi and Anne Carpenter and the devil and the fucking taxi driver, fighting over my soul right up to the point I passed out in exhaustion.”
~ Pg. 120.
“Take my hand and we’ll explore,
The forbidden zone.
When you’re in your own tree,
But don’t know if anybody’s home.”
Jimi Hendrix was playing guitar while Anne was a nun of salvation, this may show us that his journey was amplified by many elements as a fight for his soul. When the shadow opens to us it is always a powerful trip. Ross is stronger for his experience. A bite like this prepares us for outward tragedies as we are facing today.