intermission

On the streets
kids are experimenting
with the elastic plastic language of hip hop and grime.
Their thoughts are explosions of body and sound
that can’t be pinned down
in tidy rows of text.

it’s the poets, the artists,
and these kids
that will be updating our language
and retuning our sensibilities.

Rave and Woodstock weren’t just recreation. They were vast sensory training grounds where youth experimented with the new modes of awareness emerging at the boundaries of our culture.

For more than half a century we’ve relied on youth to reveal the meaning of our electric environment. Our ability to adapt to cultural change has hinged on youth’s willingness to explore rather than retreat from the psychic violence brought on by new technologies. Youth found shelter in electric music where older generations could only hear noise.

For far too long we’ve dismissed youth culture rather than recognizing and embracing it for what it really is: a vital sensory playground in which the most adaptable members of society probe and make sense of our changing technological environment.

Change grows in the streets
not in the classrooms or the galleries.