Good Thing Now: Good Vibrations

If you've lived in America for more than five minutes,  I feel like it's almost impossible to NOT know the song Good Vibrations. When I was growing up it seemed like every 5th song on the radio was something by the Beach Boys. 

Though I've always liked the song, I'd never really thought about how acoustically complex it really is. This short video does a nice job of  highlighting some of the inspiration and process behind possibly the most iconic pop song of the 20th century. 

Brian Wilson shifted off this plain on June 11, just a few days shy of his 83 birthday. He was was by all accounts a musical genius and his approach to creating this song marks a major shift in how music was produced. 

A large part of his process for Good Vibrations was to record snippets that he called ‘feels’—little bits of music from his mind in the moment. Hearing this got me thinking about Wilson’s Human Design. Listening to how he created hundreds of these fragments over the course of several months is a perfect expression of his Emotional Authority.

Are you part of the 50% of humanity with Emotional Authority? Find out here.

This Authority comes with a mechanical wave that is always up or down and generally doesn’t ever feel 100% certain. As an Emotional Being, Wilson must have had an inner knowing that his emotions contained wisdom and capturing the feelings in the moment was somehow important to the process.

These ‘feels’ became the many little pieces that he cut up, duplicated and stitched together like an auditory quilt. That is not at all how music was being made at the time. But with his 1/3 Profile, he was the consummate experimenter and probably always needed to try out new ways of doing things so he could see for himself.

This energy carries a lot of trial and error and mistake making. As hinted at in the video, there can be a lot of conditioning around it. The world we’ve created doesn’t see mistakes as generative and I’m guessing the constant feedback from the world that he might be a fuck up really got into his open Head and Ajna creating all sorts of doubt, anxiety and depression.

Want to talk about your own open Head and Ajna? Let’s chat.

But through it all, he seemed to remain true to his deeply Individual drive to create from his unique, higher self. This is a great example of listening to our body’s inner wisdom despite the noise from the outside world. Not only that, he seemed to have a deep intuition that the constant fluctuation in his emotions and moods were something to pay attention to and to work with instead of against.

This glimpse into how the creative process can unfold is a reminder that a key element is often time. Wilson pushed against every industry ‘standard’ and gave himself time to feel through his emotional wave and use that energy to fuel his nascent creative direction. We tend to believe that genius comes in flashes, but the reality is that it's the slow, persistent work that fills out the vision.

I hope your week is filled with all sorts of good vibes. 

Get out there and be the YOUest!

PS: There have been some really good vibes in our little lunch & learn. Embrace the Chaos is a space for us to decompress from the pressures of the world and share what's on our minds with some fellow travelers. Drop-in on Wednesdays any time between Noon and 1 EST.

PPS: Did you miss last week's story about Kongō Gumi? It's an amazing Japanese company that has been in business since the year 578. 

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USING HUMAN DESIGN TO EXPAND