Making Icons

or What we can learn from folk music in the 1960's

When Robert Zimmerman was 19, he decided he needed a change. In his home state of Minnesota, Zimmerman was known as a mediocre musician—decent, but not memorable—and he wasn’t content with this. He felt he could be great, or at least owed it to himself to try. Scraping as much money as he could together, Zimmerman hopped a bus to New York City to follow a dream only he believed in.

He found his way to Greenwich Village and entrenched himself in the burgeoning folk scene. At the time, folk music was counterculture; the participants considered punks and misguided rebels. But inside was an amazing group of individuals who had come together to form a lattice, a collection of people who drank together, slept together, played together and grew together.

To Zimmerman, it was a revelation. They were in New York City, alive and changing things! He thrived in the Village, a cocoon of communal support that nurtured, not deterred, young talent. Six months after Zimmerman landed in New York, he went back home to Minnesota for a visit. Those same people who said he was mediocre were blown away by his transformation. No longer was he simply a musician—he had become Bob Dylan.

There have been countless examples of extraordinary people coming together in one place to help each other. Just think about the impressionist movement in Paris in the 18th century, psychedelic music in San Francisco in the early 70s, punk in London in the late 70s, hip-hop in Brooklyn in the 80s, even modern literature in in Paris in the 1920s. J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams called themselves “The Inklings.” Did you know Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein regularly met as friends? Read about any moment of intense progress and creation and you will learn the key players all lived near each other, spent time together, inspired one-another and created a lattice of support that was necessary for them to challenge the status quo and introduce new ideas.

In the past, these communities were built around locations. Specific places at specific times became hotbeds for creative creation and cultural change, and they generally followed a similar pattern:

(a) a small group of people find themselves in the same place with the same interests and pursue connected creative ventures (West Village folk scene late 50's)

(b) this group gains a small local following (Folk bars like The Gaslight get more popular)

(c) news spreads of the “mini-movement” and begins to attract people from around the country/world to join (Bob Dylan, Clancy Brothers)

(d) someone in the movement becomes commercial viable (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan goes platinum)

(e) the movement spreads to mainstream. (Folk music enjoys a 5 year period as America’s favorite genre, usurped by British Invasion)

Movements progressed like that, until the internet broke the pattern. Artists, creators, and thinkers no longer need to move to New York or San Francisco to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Communities are springing up less in physical neighborhoods and more within social networks. By simply starting an Instagram or Tumblr account, we have the ability to connect to people all over the world. We’re increasingly utilizing these new platforms for exchanging ideas and fostering a new sort of digital support.

I often wonder what it would be like to sit at a bar with Patti Smith and Andy Warhol, or to sip on tea and listen to Bob Dylan play “Farewell”, or eating oysters and gossiping about Hemmingway’s latest exploits. Mostly when I think about it I get jealous. Jealous that I can’t take every person I respect and admire and make them move into the Lower East Side. I imagine drinking Manhattans late into the night and talking wildly about the future we could build to the only people who would believe it, facing the world together and collectively finding the guts to change it. I’m a sap for that kind of thing.

So, while I lament the loss of physical proximity, I can rejoice in what we do have: digital proximity. I don’t take for granted the ability to open a phone and see friends from all over the world doing amazing things. That platforms like Tumblr and Instagram are actively changing people’s lives, and now the youth of Cincinnati can be apart of the same community as those living in Chinatown. Innovation and creativity have been decentralized, and that makes everyone, regardless of location, equally important in creating change.

So, while we have changed the way communities come together we shouldn’t change the things that make them effective. If we can learn anything from the masters of the past it’s that we need to support, not cut down new talent. It’s that it takes a village to create a Bob Dylan or Patti Smith. It’s that if we scrape together the best parts of ourselves and buy a proverbial bus ticket we just might end up in a new, better world.