What would be an ideal society?

A couple weeks back I received an email from someone who had gotten ahold of a CD or one of our rehearsals. Normally I’d be kind of bummed that a raw rehearsal recording was floating around, but this made me smile. He was really digging the tunes and reading the lyrics online… and he said that the imagery made him imagine stuff and – feel, and think. Wow!

Pretty cool comment for songs that are lots of dreams and visions and not too much heavy heady stuff.  These songs are bits of musical pictures and stories (with an underlying theme of – what? whimsey? ). We play because we love it… each of us loves our instrument and it’s just so much fun to let a song take shape.

And in this culture with it’s strange focus on violence and negative stuff, it’s even more important to “be the change you want to see in the world“.

So I’m thinking, what would I love to see?  More love, more creativity, more humor, more uniqueness.  Let’s imagine…
By love, I suppose “do what you will and harm none” says it all.  Freedom with thoughtful awareness.  Kindness.  A society is best judged by how it treats its most vulnerable beings.

By creativity – what would it be like to live in a society that valued each person’s creativity rather than conformity?  Where artists, writers, musicians were valued for the form they give to the human condition…

By humor – well wouldn’t it be great to live in a society that really encouraged joy, mirth, laughter?  And to quote an old irish saying “blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they will never cease to be amused.”  (People say that rockers are “supposed” to look angry.  Yawn.  No thanks!)

Uniqueness!  You know how bands all copy each other?  A style comes “in” and everybody gets on the copycat train…it’s so sad.  I love to see individuals really BE themselves.  But I suppose we must know ourselves in order to be that.  And our society doesn’t encourage soul searching, does it?  What if it did?

I dream of a culture where people express themselves in their music, their art, their look, whatever.  Yes it could sound cleche, but what about a society like that?

And, well, I am the Dreamer and the Storyteller, aren’t I? 🙂

Then I thought of all the fairy tales and myths that we humans use in our cultures to define ourselves, to convey our values…and how they carry ideas thru time.  And how music can do that.  What energy do we want to put out in our music and have float on thru time?

I’ve gone on too long.  What do YOU think?