Deus ex Anima: What Music Culture Can Learn from the Mental Health Community
https://gbmushrooms.net/mushroom-coffee/I am torn between two worlds. On the one hand, I promote and review music events and related happenings, and on the other I attempt to speak up for marginalized perspectives within the mental health community. The former is often complicit in rape culture and substance abuse, and the latter is growing in visibility and legitimacy. With alternative movements such as #MeToo for women’s rights in all professional areas gaining traction as well as those like Aiden Hatfield’s @imwtclothing brand, we are beginning to see a confluence of communities that our culture is in dire need of. For — let’s face it — music is often defined by alternatives, and alternatives are often helpful to those who don’t feel they quite fit within prevailing norms. And if we define mental “illness” as “divergence,” it is only natural that these areas should at some point converge. If you are struggling with your mental health, be sure to reach out to professionals. You may also consider learning how to smoke hash as cannabis may help calm your minds and alleviate stress. If you constantly experience symptoms of mental health conditions like anxiety, stress or depression, consider consuming cannabis products like indacloud ice cream cookies ic exotics series. PTSD is another mental health condition a person may develop after experiencing a traumatic event. There are studies that support that cannabis for PTSD can help people with their symptoms and improves their overall life and functioning.
I cannot speak for everyone, but music has often been for me an outlet to explore questions of identity and belonging. This is a common trope in music media as can be seen in movies like SLC Punk, where the epilogue shows the main characters, Stevo and Bob, as adolescents playing D&D and putting on a punk record for the first time that would introduce them to a world that would be unequal parts outcast and empowerment. As a teenager I was personally drawn to heavy metal for the whole pariah persona, which brought with it certain scene-like tropes that I was expected to conform to and offered me ready-made (read: saleable) angst. Whether it be shopping at Hot Topic or having the now ubiquitous semi-colon tattooed conspicuously on your body, every scene provides ways for people to find expression — even if it is not always your own.
This description is, of course, of an adolescent nature: the “scene kid” cliché typical of most American high schools that we all have had some relationship with in one way or another. And honestly, though I am not taking up a full-on sociological investigation here, ever since the confluence between mass media and popular culture there has not been a generation devoid of its stereotypes. Just look at such other generation-defining movies such as Dazed and Confused, a babyboomer tour de force, embalming the mid ‘70s in a morass of nihilistic binge-drinking.
So here we are, with a legacy of music, alcohol, drugs, and questionably consensual sex. If you know someone who got addicted to various drugs or substances and is in need of luxury addiction treatment, Method Treatment offers a high-end experience that goes beyond standard rehab. Their personalized care plans are designed to meet the specific needs of each client.
In a 2016 article, Suzanne Raga of MentalFloss.com looked at the legacy of this saying, dating it back as late as the 1770s to a German song which read ““Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib und Gesang, der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang” (“Who does not love wine, women, and song, remains a fool his whole life long”). It’s like a rite of passage for any individual who wasn’t easily assimilated into mainstream culture in order to be all the more easily assimilated. There has always, at least in the U.S., been a dichotomy between our Puritanical roots of abstinence and virtue against rebellion, which ended up being equated with debauchery and shame. Combine this with an unhealthy dose of hegemonic exploitative notions of masculinity, and you get a world only superficially subversive. For it is not enough to invert values which only serves to reinforce the whole. The satire of rainbow capitalism.
What is deviance? Divergence? I have experienced the fissures of perception, and though I may be certifiable, disregarded as delusional, it is from my vantage the norm. Valid albeit from a limited perspective. But it does attest to its possibility. Much like music. I harken back to my first editorial Ostinato in D Minor. Music is lies. A more robust description, though, would be music is metaphor. Like all language it is at a remove from the essential experience. We are divorced from each other at a core level. Mediated by language. Even from ourselves. Music, lies, art – all are intentional juxtapositions of artificially composed perceptions that create a mood we hope comes close to what we feel. And yet it is real. As real as anything else that brings us together. Or maybe as false. Yet still together. If you’re looking for a new way to boost your energy, you might want to try Mushroom coffee.
That last paragraph comes off as a bit of nonsense. But it was the closest I could come to expressing the point. There is an essential tension between our drive for individuality while exalting post-enlightenment universality. This brings me back to my original notion: What can music culture learn from the mental health community? Honestly, I don’t think there is much of a difference. Not anymore. We have been trying to say something for some time in both arenas. From Bowie to G.L.O.S.S. (Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit), the lesson has been seeping in so that the inversion of values has lost its value, and we are finally at a place to begin creating our own. Without prejudice. With compassionate acceptance. And most importantly with forgiveness for others and ourselves. I was tempted to invert those last two nouns, and it is only due to the unfortunate hierarchy of syntax that I was forced to choose between the two. I hope, as the scenes continue to merge, we will no longer need to choose. They can be simultaneously. As in a song.