I am feeling unmotivated today. I have been meaning to fill-out that essay/intro that I had a previous post related to, however, other things are occupying my mind.
A list of tasks for myself:
Define Escapism
Forms of Escapism (that i want to deal with)
How it influences children's games etc.
Daydreaming
Revolutions (freedom)
Cold war etc. -culture that influences Escapism
Metal music
How architecture can be Escapism
As well as the Essay/intro previously mentioned
The Dream
.
Immersed in darkness, my eyes begin to adjust and the glow of numerous deep and expansive tunnels begins to materialize. The vast field of shafts extends as far as the eye can see, disappearing in the distance. Walking along the paths between the bottomless pits creates a sense of vertigo as I walk deeper and deeper into their expanse. To my right is a looming darkness, a ‘nothing’. It seems to be growing and takes on a weight that begins to grow; it eventually throws me off balance and I fall down into one of the tunnels.
As I fall I realize that not only does the tunnel go on forever, I realize that people inhabit the walls of these tunnels. Soon I am saved and placed in one of the cells. As I try again and again to get back out, I continue to fall and be saved over and over. Eventually, however, I am brought into the area of darkness that had pushed me into the hole. There is a bright light now, and a man standing there.
He then asks me, “Why are you trying to escape?”
.
My dream ends. I awaken.
.
While attempting to create a physical representation of the imagined, I have discovered that in recreating, comes perfecting. Colours change and new realization of the image of the dream-world come to reality. As if in memory, the mind wanders to create the image. The colours flow and move to create the atmosphere imagined. For example, the bright light out of the darkness happened to be yellow, and so was her dress as I remember it, however I also remembered her dress contrasting the background, and green therefore felt like the right colour. Once I used it, I felt that this was in my dream. This seemed exactly how I had imagined it, but to describe it, is a different experience than to create it physically.
To demonstrate that I was falling, I had to create a sense of emotion, because in the dream I did not see myself falling. I felt it. This is why there is an image of a naked woman falling, this helps demonstrate the emotion.
Within the real world there is a sense of the ‘finite’, and in this dream, the world imagined is infinite. The horizon stretches on forever; I know and accept that it will never end. The tunnels have no ends. My attempts to escape could continue forever. Why then do I continue to try to escape?
“Escapism is the mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an “escape” from the perceived unpleasant aspects of daily stress.” There are both positive, as well as negative strains of thought towards escapism. On the one hand, it is considered healthy and beneficial to one’s health, in order to relieve stress, and allow for, as well as encourage, creativity. However on the other hand, especially when taken to extremes, escapism has negative connotations. It is often looked upon as the inability to cope with the realities of the everyday world.
Escapism is closely tied to nearly every aspect of our culture. Our culture provides the reality and context of our everyday lives, and this is often what many unknowingly seek to escape. We have sought many ways to create alternate worlds in which we live for a time. Escapism has many forms; amongst these are the obvious, such as fiction literature, sports, video games and other similar activities. There are also less straight forward forms, such as revolts and revolutionary movements, religion, numerous art forms, drugs, and music.
Amongst each form seems to be a positive and a negative. For example, in escapism literature it is not uncommon for dystopias to be created as opposed to utopias. Is it easier to imagine the lack of any hope as opposed to imagining having everything? Or is escapism the synthesis of the ‘opposite’ of the world which we are apart?
Another dynamic is whether escapism is to be producing something or being absorbed by what is produced. For example, watching sports as opposed to playing sports; playing an instrument as opposed to listening to music; leading a revolt as opposed to following; and the list continues.
My thesis will investigate how architecture can become a form of Escapism. It will explore the creation of architecture as well as the experience of architecture. It will also test the positive side of the Escapism as well as the negative side. It will reveal new questions dealing with aspects of escapism and the creative world we live in both physically and mentally.
Adolph Rickenbacker invented the electric guitar in 1931. Before this, heavy metal did not exist. The electric guitar is the backbone of heavy metal. Debates continue, though most consider groups such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple to be the first Heavy Metal bands. From there the style evolved and branched into the numerous subgenres. Within some genres the guitar is quiet and mellow, however most are loud, powerful, speedy and aggressive.
To discuss heavy metal, we must first look at its roots, and its roots cannot be viewed without analyzing their origins as well as the political circumstances, which shaped the public image. We must begin by looking at rock music and its origins. ‘Country folk’ music was a part of American culture since the early days of the Republic; it was derived from English drinking songs, Celtic folk music, German popular music, and proto-gospel singing of Scottish immigrants. This history was gradually forgotten as new populations came to power replacing the old. The members of society who wanted to advance American popular music as an artform were not of the original Northern European population and were not disposed to thinking kindly of them. Advertising celebrated novelty and uniqueness in order to replace the ‘traditional and boring’ ways of doing things, and this ‘image over function’ shaped the character of America. Thus blues, as solely an African-American artform, is a myth, and Celtic, English, and American folk influences on rock and blues were denied. Blues is therefore and aesthetic, as opposed to musical, variation on the English, Scottish, Irish, and German folk music that became a standardized art perspective. Following this was a re-introduction of country music, which had less drumming than the original German waltz and popular music bands.
Blues-Country then became ‘rock’ in the 1930s-1950s mainly due to technology, with the invention of the electric guitar, and other advances in portability, recording equipment, and microphones. “Rock ‘n’ Roll” was the marketing standard, and soon became “rock” as it was consumed by the mainstream.
As America expanded, fought a civil war, freed slaves, and accepted immigrants, unification became of high importance. It was and era of populism, that is, the pandering of society to the population for the common goal to become socially equal. The aforementioned marketing of image-based music genres was in part based on this populism of the era, as were certain movements in Architecture, such as FLW’s prairie style, as an ‘architectural style for America’.
Individualism is the pursuit of individual rather than common or collective interests, also referred to as egoism. Decisions and values of the individual are therefore considered most important. This opposes populism however, grew parallel to it. The United States marketed the slogan “land of the free” in order to justify the nuclear engagement against “totalitarian” empires. In this capitalistic liberal democracy, art tends to follow the trends of each era. More than any other force, the stylistic aspects of rock’n’roll were shaped by individualism. This is because under individualism, all art is seen as equal, thus if it appeals to one due to sentimental or visual reasons, it becomes more important than any meaning it may be trying to convey.
The “Beat generation” is a term used to describe a group of writers who came into prominence in the 1950s. Central elements of the Beat culture they wrote about included a rejection of mainstream values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality. By the end of 1950’s the Beats faded, they were statistically insignificant except in academia, which meant that teachers of the 1960s were well versed and taught it to students from age 13 on. As a result, the youth coming of age in 1965 burst into full flower as a Counterculture.
Rock music of the 1950s was wholesome and focused largely on puppy love, those who felt left out ventured to rebellious and alienated themes. A number of bands such as Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who improvised in varying forms ranging from crude, arty, or technique oriented variations, generating music that was on par with the jazz and big band-acts of the time. As creative use of distortion and dissonance continued, most bands focused on peace and love, until the first dark rock band appeared: the Doors. The Doors brought a “Nietzsche-inspired morbid subconscious psychedelia” to rock music. The influences of these bands saturated public consciousness, rock was a developing artform, and by 1969, hard rock (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple) and proto-metal (Black Sabbath) simultaneously occurred. These bands developed the distorted, power-chord based, technical music from King Crimson.
Black Sabbath picked up where the Doors left off; they surged forward with a new sound, the sound of horror, and a similar morbid, occult and negative lyrical outlook similar to the Doors. They combined progressive rock with electric blues; it almost exclusively used power chords, bassier distortion, and narrative song structures creating a new sound. It was a shock, but more shocking was its success; it homed in on something that the worldwide audience found relevant and appealing.
Black Sabbath sought to express the experience of horror and truth thus avoiding the rigid morality of rock bands around them. Though the band collapsed by 1978, the formula for Heavy Metal had been established.
Faith in previous ideologies faded in the postwar era; between the cold war and failures in Vietnam, people began to look to technological futurism. The 1970s were a futuristic decade, the future and technology were to be the savior in place of ideologies, and the industrial revolution then became its own value system. The optimism of futurism soon faded at the turn of the eighties, as the reality of subservience set in. Pragmatism of gaining money and power soon took hold. Dissidents arose; paranoia against the industrial society began to rise. Heavy metal declared that the world had become obsessed with its own power and political moral attitudes, and had forgotten that human life is finite. Heavy metal gained mass appeal, and momentum; certain subgenres became a new style that embraced death, evil, and nothingness, channeling the thermonuclear fears of the previous metal generation into certainty of existential fate.
