Poetry has always been a way for me to channel my introspections and anxieties into a cryptic cathartic cleanse, a means to streamline my mental rants into a string of rhythmic symbols, and a method to mold my madness into therapeutic self-reflection. Reflecting my subconscious onto my conscience, much like the way an ink blot probes the psyche. Naturally, this is the type of meaningful manifestations I look for in music.
Rappers like Kendrick Lamar and Earl Sweatshirt are the modern-day poets that truly speak to me through their lyrics. These two lyrical geniuses in particular possess themes in their songs that echo that of poems I’ve written in the past. “Mind Cocoon” is based on the concept that our generation is currently going through what I like to call “second puberty” or “20-something syndrome,” in which we experience a metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. In the midst of this transformation is basically quarter-life limbo, in other words the Mind Cocoon.
Kendrick Lamar’s new album To Pimp A Butterfly resonates with the Mind Cocoon philosophy quite nicely. Note the name of the album for starters. The closing track Mortal Man engages the symbol of the caterpillar and the butterfly in a social and political discussion (with Tupac, no less) about social class, racism, and the emergence of your own artistic soul.
These sentiments of transformation were likewise on my Mind Cocoon the summer after Ryne and I graduated college, got engaged and realized we were in for life’s biggest transition thus far. This poem is a product of that realization.
You’re the caterpillar in the jar
That looks up and sees no stars
Only holes to remind you that air
Won’t always be there
And leaves only come once a week
The leftovers set aside for the weak
We take turns scaling slick black walls
No kisses or kind words for those who fall
Just jabs and brawls
And slow heavy crawls
We’re in it for a common goal
Just a part waiting to be whole
Trapped beneath clear cellophane
Was the wait all in vain?
We envisioned something much more crystalline
A cocoon to release the inner mind
But at least we can thank God to be in the shade
Within glass that’s neither convex nor concave
Unable to burn our ambition with rays
Of light too bright, even for summer days
For now, I’m alright
Today, we’re okay
All our friends are caterpillars
But someday, it’ll no longer be that way
Earl Sweatshirt’s new album I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt is about to drop and his single Grief has got those slow heavy crawl vibes my dark soul feed off of. Critics may be asking “why you so depressed and sad all the time?” but Earl just speaks the gloomy truth that most would rather keep veiled. He understands the value of deep thought, the expression of the psyche. On his proclaimed sap-track Chum, Earl gets personal and exposes his psyche—the ancient Greek word that represents the human mind and soul, but also translates to the word butterfly.
This play on words with psyche and butterfly visually manifested itself into the Mind Cocoon butterfly ink blot, connecting the psychology of the Rorschach blot—the Mind—and the symmetric symbolism of the butterfly—the Cocoon. Even further back, this concept emerged from a spoken word piece I wrote in college, Psyche Soars, which expresses the interwoven origins of the Greek Goddess Psyche and the Chinese Philosopher Chuang Tzu’s butterfly dream.
Psyche
Psyche soars
Psyche soars beyond the mountains and the clouds
Emerging from a mind cocoon
Her thoughts echo loud
Rorschach blots of speckled thoughts
Neurons full of neurotic knots
And synaptic light bulbs of a thousand watts
Her wings
Span beyond temple to temple
The human mind, her shrine
Limitless, unbound, sublime
Unconfined to a brain in a vat
Perched on the tip of inception
Only moved by the winds of conscious conception
So sure she was born in the eye of a storm
A brainstorm at that, but is that a fact?
How conscious is she that she's conscious?
Does she string her words like beads on twine
Before they impulsively jump to her mouth from her mind?
To dream you're a butterfly and awake a mere mortal
Which of the two is a clearer portal?
A portal to reality
To realize
That real eyes
May produce real truths
But also real lies
If Chuang Tzu and Eros
Could speak the universal language of dreams
In this symposium, they might seem to agree
With the Chinese philosopher earnestly pondering
A man who only flutters in dreams
And a butterfly that walks on two feet in a nocturnal fantasy
And Eros on the other hand
With his Greek intellect
Would see that a butterfly and Psyche seem to reflect
As there lacks a distinction between awake and asleep
When Psyche means butterfly in the tongue of the Greeks
To dream you're a butterfly and awake a mere mortal
Which of the two is a clearer portal?
Sometimes the sight our retinas provide
Is seen even crisper in the minds eye
A fluttering film strip of a universe projected
Not onto others
But onto insides of eyelids
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