I can’t explain this but last night I had a dream in which Leadbelly appeared with his Stella 12 string guitar. The first thing you should know (if you don’t know it already) is that Leadbelly didn’t look like a musician. He looked like a tough old share cropper who might have been photographed by Walker Evans. He was a big dark man with a richly lined face who would frequently get into trouble in the world of Jim Crow because he could never disguise his fiercely intelligent eyes.
In the dream he was just himself. He strummed that blonde wedding cake guitar and sang for his own protection; sang for his private soul; sang without regard for anyone.
That song was an unearthing: out of the dirt came medicine bottles blue as cobalt;lost dimes; cast away carvings left behind by slaves;shards of a mirror; laces of shoes…
Surely that was a good dream.
In our time when the unconscious has been rendered unfashionable its customary to think of the mind as an amalgam of social forces before which all human beings are nearly helpless. We’re just performing with limited social scripting whatever limited freedom we can achieve. Or else we are properly or inproperly medicated pursuant to the whims of our HMOs.
As I get older I see that Carl Jung’s ideas about the unconscious are more relevant today than they were 80 years ago. Jung who saw that we have universal dreams no matter where we live and regardless of our time on earth. Jung who saw that its possible for human beings to dream the dreams of other human beings.
Man that was some guitar last night.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 