Blurred Lines I

I'm not a Jung scholar, nor am I a psychoanalyst, but I have very slowly been reading Jung for the last two years, and I have come away with more than a few ideas including that Jung thought dreams (and the subconscious) provided a balance for the conscious. He also believed that the world of dreams is as much reality as what we perceive in our waking hours. I have been reading Jung out of an interest in understanding how humans perceive reality and what constitutes it; I have been naturally (it seems to me) led to this interest as I have sought to understand the world(s) of the ancestors. Take for instance this line from a document I came across years ago, which narrates early African American church history in northwest Mississippi. "He was one of our greatest divines." I gave a short talk last spring in which I considered this word "divine," and how it has been lost from our vocabulary including church jargon. Just the other day, in reading another historic document, I saw it used interchangeably with "seer." Divine is both an adjective, a noun, and a verb, and it means to know or to discern. I suspect that right along with the loss of this word we also have lost faith in the plethora of ways that the ancestors sought and found knowledge. The loss has been a result of scientific, "rational," thinking. I'm sure there are those who believe, and I think I would agree with them, that in adjusting to scientific thinking we have in fact limited our ways of knowing and, in so doing, given away power. Knowledge is power, right? I think Jung would say that certain kinds of thinking, primitive thinking, have not however altogether disappeared from modern humans; they have only gone underground so to speak. And I suspect that if too much is left to the underground, it comes bubbling up either because of overcapacity in our personal underworlds or because some piece of information or knowledge needs to surface to balance out something in the conscious. An example may clarify what I mean. Last spring, I was traveling from Mississippi back to Indiana (I live in both places). Because my car is old, I'd decided to take back roads all the way up, and being that I wasn't in any hurry (school being out for the summer)I decided to stop at every antique or junk store on the way. In one particularly junkie one, a radio was on, and I heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" for the first time. Even as I perused the shop, already certain that I wasn't going to buy anything, I was mentally stopped dead in my tracks by the song. It took me back, to the seventies, I felt. I asked the shop owner, a white man who looked to be in his late twenties, if he liked the song, and I cannot remember his answer though I think it was he who said it was Robin Thicke. The shop owner may have said he liked the song just fine, but he didn't seem especially taken with it whereas I was because, well, I could tell it was having an effect on me. I was being played somehow, emotionally. Honestly, I kind of liked the play even while I also knew that someone, Thicke or someone else, was doing some serious sampling and owed some serious credit. In truth, I felt like something had been stolen, but the first time I heard "Blurred Lines" I could not immediately identify who the artists of influence were. Over the next several months, because I seldom turn on the radio to listen to anything other than NPR and use Pandora's pre-selected oldies stations on my phone and computer, I didn't hear "Blurred Lines" again until Rust College's Founder's Week. Then, it was blared all over campus, heard all over the west side of town, and I refamiliarized myself with it and also realized that it was a hit among blacks. Its groove is just so festive; it's perfect, as I read from one critic, for family reunions. Even the old people ask for it. Perhaps the song rekindles something latent in us, again, something we've let go underground. But then... Two nights ago, I awakened to Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." From time to time (once a month?), I dream of music, usually one particular song. A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that this is how my deceased father communicates with me. My father, born in the '30s, was not much for the Blues. Rather, he loved soul music and R&B, and this is the kind of music I dream most often. The first time I dreamed of music (that I can remember), Daddy played for me "Ouuu child, things are gonna get easier." That song and that time were a real affirmation. Now, when I dream of music I'm always trying to figure out what message my father is sending. Whether or not he is in fact the source of my dreamtime music, whether or not my father is my psychic d.j., I still wonder why a certain song will come to mind without it seems my own conscious control of its emergence. Yet, when I dreamed the other night of Gaye's song from 1977 I knew immediately that my subconscious was providing an answer to a question that I had not consciously asked: who the influences were of Thicke's anthem. I was amazed, amazed at how this answer had surfaced so easily without any hard thinking on my part. I was, however, somewhat concerned with the fact that the process had taken almost six months. Still, I was more interested in the why--why my subconscious felt I needed the information. My answer to this question goes back to what I've already stated of Jung's theory of the subconscious as a balance. It is easy enough for me to reason that the six-month period is proof positive that in the very modern life I lead I am entirely too busy. There is just too much going on in my conscious thoughts from day to day. Back in June when I was rambling through the junk shop, overwhelmed by so many dusty gadgets, I might have discerned the influences then had I wanted to take the time, or had I been relaxed enough to think clearly, or taken the time to stop and sit. But I did not feel I had the time, which is usually my evaluation of my life, and add to this the fact that I was crossing both time and space as I headed north. Some things, would-be thoughts, apparently chose to slip through the time/space gap--one made all the more convenient by the hour I gained between Mississippi and Indiana--until later. The question remains whether the surfacing of "the answer"--one that I may have needed without even realizing it--was neutral or whether it surfaced with intention. I think Jung would say whenever what is in the subconscious surfaces it is with intention. More musing on this in the next post.