What does psychedelia mean to you?

My mental archetype of "psychedelic music" is basically Cream's Disraeli Gears.

My mental archetype of psychedelia, in general, is the work of Alex Grey.

But to me, personally, I think that in most cases, it hinges on having been inspired by psychedelic experiences, or by personal experiences or philosophies that share characteristics with psychedelic experiences, but which were not ultimately derived from the use of any hallucinogenic compounds.

This can span across genres. I think of Tool as being quite psychedelic, though in terms of style and music genre, it's not something you can easily lump into a category with Cream or Pink Floyd.

There's a certain je ne sais quoi to it, which I cannot really articulate very well. I'm not really much of a "music person," and I usually just lurk here.

But there's something about it, something aesthetic and intuitive that's hard to distill into a linguistic form, due to certain limitations inherent in language itself.

Psychedelic music is something that captures and embodies something that you cannot really fully harness in straightforward sentences. The psychedelic experience does not translate well into language. It's like trying to shove a large mass down too small a funnel.

Visual art and poetry are capable of this as well. Prose is a poor tool for it.

/r/LetsTalkMusic Thread