11. SPIRITUAL CONSIDERATIONS
11.1. Carl Jung
Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychoanalyst, psychologist and much more. His mutual admiration, professional cooperation and friendship with Sigmunt Freud broke mainly when Jung published his thoughts on the “unconscious” as the basis of the human psyche. It would take ages to approach the core meaning and feeling of Jungian theory, nevertheless, it transfers a certain spiritual attitude, which I embrace. His theory has interesting interlocking points both with prelinguistic language and with aphasic disorders.
11.2. The dark side of the psyche
Jung spoke about the “dark area of the psyche” which he called unconscious. He was not the first to mention this subject, but he is definitely the first to approach it with such depth. Dreams, which function as a terra intermedia and various psychotic demonstrations are the most prominent access paths.
Under this light, Jung examines “archetypes” which could be described as predispositions, or, as the way humans experience facts. if archetypes are neglected or not properly treated, they are also considered to be the root of psychotic disorders.
Jung also examines mythology as an allegory for natural processes. Myths belong to a pre-historic world. This world's spiritual tendencies can be observed with variations all over the world, until today. Primitive tribes experience myth, not as a symbol or mirror of these tendencies, but as their reality. According to Jung this is attributed to their “undeveloped” (from the stereotypical “developed” point of view) mental state, because of their undeveloped conscious part: their conscious is always “threatened” by their unconscious. The real and the spiritual world are the same. Dream is of more importance for them, in comparison with a 'civilized' person trained to make value-distinctions between dream, myth and reality. Myth is the heart of the primitive tribal-community, it is their living religion. Once lost, the community will decay. The primitive state of consciousness in which myth is experienced resembles the lower state of consciousness, which also relates to dreams / hypnosis / neurotic events etc).
According to Jung, the path for understanding the human psychic functions passes through the unconscious. Connecting our spiritual world to our conscious creates a chain that connects all the states of our life. If we do not take care of this continuation, soon we acquire a conscious without routes, vulnerable to all sorts of neuroses, since we neglect our ancient collective psychic roots.
In the western societies, belief in spirits vanished because of rationalism and scientific development. At the beginning of the 19th century, the rise of Romanticism was a symptom of a need for deeper search of the self, also a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Spiritual quests, which of course never really stopped existing, again started. This should not be seen as a step towards superstition, rather as a reaction to the materialistic understanding of the world.
11.3. The importance of Jungian theory for this paper
Apart from the scientific importance of Jung's work, his approach can be applied as a metaphor in a number of ways.
Jung is concerned with the “unity” of human experience. He deals with human psychology as a “continuum” stating that no stage should be neglected. He speaks of the unconscious as the “basement” of the hidden secrets, reminiscent of Dostoevsky's “Notes from Underground” in which we read that there are things that people only share with close people, things they only share with themselves and things they don't share with themselves either.
For Jung, a very common “entrance” to the psyche is through mental disorders, in which language distortions are observed - a glossolalia case was earlier mentioned. Concerning this lower-functioning (“primitive” as Jung calls it) state of mind, Jung mentions that this state also reminds us of “the pre-conscious state which can be observed during the children’s first years” (C.G. Jung – C. Kerenyi, The science of Mythology, Routledge Classics, chapter II). The children’s first years are the “prelinguistic stage”. In this period, because of the lack of words, memories are stored without labels in a “dark attic”. This is also the reason why their recollection is so difficult. This “dark attic” also resembles the “basement” of the hidden secrets, which are being “filled” from the first days of an infants’ life.
In my opinion, the more “rooted” a creator is, the more they live up to this psychological “continuum” that Jung describes, the more concrete the outcome of their work is. Observing the evolution of classical music over the last approximately 100 years, there is for example (sticking to the line of vocal expression/music) a chain of reactions starting from Schoenberg’s hyper-expressionism that gradually solidifies into “a style”. Nowadays, we see pieces of great technique, with questionable connections - even to their creator. It often happens that contemporary music tries to fit into a ‘genre’, no matter what is considered as such. In my view, this function resembles the need to "belong". I also think that, in most cases of “contemporary vocal music” (no matter what this means), pieces tend to mimic each other, in a seeming race of 'whichever sounds more psychotic'. Whatever 'fits' into 'the style'..
Jung teaches us to take a step back, or, better, a step “under” the surface, under the “style”. He shows us the way to the place where style and acquired qualities are not relevant, he points to the purity of instincts and innate information which are common to all people. We often hear statements such as “people need to be educated in order to understand classical or contemporary music” (depending on the kind of musician who says this). Apart from the fact that this statement directly creates a status difference, in my opinion, it is only an illusion. If music is able to reach the quality discussed in this chapter, then it perfectly communicates with everyone, no matter their education background.
We need tools, not only to dig a hole, but also to know why we dig and sense where we want to go. We need tools to be able to approach our “self” and become the most of our potential (in Freud's words). The prelinguistic period provides us, except for practical information for the foundations of our very communication code, also with a view on our roots and the ways our mind is shaped. In the same way, Jung's writings invite us to dive in this period, and ever further, since, for him, the existence of the collective unconscious suggests that we also carry innate information, being part of the human race.
We live in a world where music form is “allowed” to take the shape of anyone's trail of thoughts, where words and phonemes can turn into pure sound. Language is a tool for communication and codification of human experience. It carries hidden information both for the society where it belongs and for the person who speaks it. It is however still only an external layer which we can penetrate. Music is capable of achieving this, exactly because it is not “tactile”.
The already stated question of the importance of texts comes back – Both my practice and my theoretical research indicates that (a music creator) not only do I not need a specific text-source, since I eventually tend to hide them and use the effect of “knowing but not listening to them”, but, also, that existing texts are not useful, in a quest for our mythological roots, our “universality” or a “primary cause”. This does not cancel out the importance of language as a communication vehicle, but it shifts the importance of the material from a text, which is already a “filtered experience”, back to its foundations. No matter how vague or vain this “quest” is, in my view, there is a “sublime” and idealistic dimension to this attitude.
11.4. Lalanguage and Monolingualism
With the term “Vernacular language” Dante attempted to describe the importance of the mother tongue as the primal human linguistic element (chapter 2.5.). A step further than Dante is made by Jacques Lacan, through the invention of the neologism “Lalanguage”. It is a result of onomatopoeia, coming from “La-la-la”, which resembles the first lullabies that infants listen from their mother. It consists of melodic and timbral material which is demonstrated in the child’s speech through babbling language, in the form of onomatopoeias, cacophonies, exclamations and so on. It is information prior to language, the first mark inscribed on the very body of the speaking being. Lacan particularly insists on the sounding parameter of Lalanguage. The infant early understands that under their mother tongue lies a whole semantic layer, nevertheless, at first they perceive it as pure “music”.
Jacques Derrida invents the term “Monolingualism of the Other”, saying that humans cannot obtain a primary language as such, because their language (their monolingualism), is not authentically obtained by them. Their mother tongue is actually a derivative – secondary acquisition, through their mother.
Both cases take a step before the language (and, thus, the text) per se. Especially Lalanguage has been used as a way to treat autism in children, through the sound of it, as the children’s primal material. These approaches are also connected to Jung’s quest for the unconscious, the area of the no-words.
11.5. A “complete” process
The snake, apart from being the most estranged and “ancient” animal, has also been a vivid mythological symbol, throughout human evolution. The composition of the piece “Grey earth, serpent” started from my general interest in Dante's Inferno. It passed through the process of textual dissolution and eventually appeared in my dream in the shape of a symbol. It is a meeting of improvisation, technical analysis and structured composition under a highly spiritual arc. It is, in my opinion, an ideal creation journey, a “complete” process. Even If it looks like I am describing a conspiracy of symbols, dreams and mythology, actually it doesn't matter if it was all a coincidence. What matters the most, is the psychic openness I was in during that period, which allowed me to digest information coming from all directions, realistic or imaginative. After all, music itself is born and functions simultaneously in multiple perception layers.
