Photo by Travys Owen
Editor’s Note: Valerie June is No Depression’s Spotlight Artist for April 2025. Learn more about her life and new album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, which was released April 11, in this feature.
I just got off the phone with Fiona Prine. I couldn’t have said it better. She was expressing how grateful she is that we have art through any turbulent times we might face. Although I’ve been invited to universities to speak, I’m not an academic. As a cleaning lady for seven years, I relate deeply to service-minded lyrics like, “Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis” or “She came from the land of the cotton, a land that was nearly forgotten by everyone.” Other remarks that resonate with me would be “You’re still chasing that dream” or “Maybe we’ll make it.”
There was a time when I wanted more from the music industry and my creative path. I wanted to make it. I wanted to see my name somewhere big for someone else to say my work mattered. I wanted the prize. Now, I realize the wizardry of just being me. I am a dreamer. I work with mysteries, lightness, darkness, hopes, failures, fears, and wishes. I enjoy the beauty of being an underground artist — known to some and unknown to most. In this place, I’ve learned to access my greatest gifts. We can all strive for massive success, but how do we access our gifts? What are our gifts? How do they lift us? How do they lift the world? How can our gifts be used to shift our attachments to fear and darkness over to a more brightly privileged existence for all living beings? Can life be gentler and sweeter for all? How can we be of service to a brighter world?
There may have been a time when our basic instincts needed to be guided by living in a fearful survival mode, barbarism, or an animalistic nature. As the first humans on earth, we needed to be on guard against predators or tribes that might bring us harm, but today, in many nations, we live in a sliver of time that might allow us to begin to relate to each other on gentler and kinder terms. We are finally at a tiny blink in time when we can begin to breathe and dream new dreams. It sometimes seems like we have been conditioned to expect something bad to happen. This is a time when we can recondition ourselves to more consciously kind ways of being.
How much time is spent planning for a disaster when filling up a weekly calendar? Bad shit just happens. We don’t have to plan it. So, as we seek to explore the possibilities of beauty, there’s no need to worry about losing touch with the darkness. Darkness always has been and always will be. From magnificent cities and towns to carefully thought-out governments and regulations, all human-made reality is created based on how and where we focus our minds, collectively and individually. Everything we’ve created was first someone’s thought.
Often, our attachments to the realities of hardships and challenges keep us perpetuating more thoughts of darkness. While it can seem brutally realistic and practical to focus our attention on the harshness and injustices of our world, it is actually tougher to live with an empathetic and compassionate heart. Looking at the world of darkness and consciously choosing to redirect our energy toward light, joy, and positivity is one of the fiercest things we could ever do.
Living a practice of brightness is hard work that requires gladiator-style heart-work. Injustices and darkness deserve to be observed, but clinging to them for makes them our realities, whereas we can use them as motivation to create something new and beautiful. It takes great courage to see light in a dark world. Some might even call it a foolish way to live. It requires us to soberly face the brutalities that exist with a 20/20 vision of hope on the horizon, only to be proven wrong daily by a world clinging to negativity. Sometimes, I call it “punished for tryin.”
Living brightly will never make the headlines as long as our deep attachment to trauma and disaster reigns, but if we are to create anything other than the same dark experiences, then we’ve got to begin to use our imaginations. We must begin to imagine more global unity. We must start to put more energy into bravely dreaming dreams of hope. We must begin to imagine the world as we wish to create it. They say, “Be careful what you wish for; it may just come true.” Well, I sure as hell hope so if we are collectively wishing and focusing on a joyful and harmonious existence for all living beings.
It is dangerous and wild to live brightly in a dark world. It can feel as if everything is working against you, like you are dodging daggers at every turn, but shine on anyway, you crazy diamond. Fucking shine ON! Though we may have many unanswered questions and may not be able to see how the shift of positivity and joy can truly happen to our planet, shine on.
Our job is not to know how, but to plant positivity in every moment and with every atom of our existence. We have to ask ourselves, are we ready for the world to become more harmonious and beautiful? What makes us so afraid to explore avenues of happiness or joy? Are we okay living with this fear of how sweet things could become and how gentle life on Earth could be, or are we ready to water the seeds of an elevated earth? If we are ready, we must enter a realm of wonder, dreams, and imagination to call it forth. See it, be it!
What can you imagine? What do you wish to see?
As musicians and creatives, we are using our lives to serve others every day. One of my favorite ways to serve creatively is to ask questions. Asking questions can be a secret way of stirring up good trouble and moving people to create positive changes. Asking questions can also be dangerous. I’ve found that as I ask questions, more questions arise. I’ve also found richness in having a load of unanswered questions. The unknown is a place of endless potential.
Here are some of my questions as we navigate living in these times of great turbulence:
- If this were the end of our reign as human beings on Earth, how do we want to leave the planet?
- Do we want to go out with wars and hate?
- Do we want to go out divided and broken?
- How can we be of service in the way we live our lives?
- Who do we admire?
- Do we uplift those who are serving us?
- How can being of service lead to more togetherness?
- How can we use our privileges or advantages to serve all living beings in uplifting ways?
- Are you privileged? Are you successful? Have you made it?
- What does making it mean if we haven’t all made it?
- What is the service of being who you are? In truth, there will never be another YOU.
- What gifts do you have that can serve the wellness of humanity?
- What individual riches can you share with the whole?
- How big does a service need to be for it to be impactful?
- How small can your service be in a world that glorifies capital growth and big things?
- How much beauty can we create from underground or small spaces?
- What is the power of small things? — tThings that are tiny and fairylike?
We are the oracles who tell the future for those generations to come. It might seem spiritual or mystical, but it’s also simplistic, realistic, and logical to know that every action we take — from how we sort our trash to how we engage with those whose views might not align with ours — is a wand we wield far beyond seven generations and into the stratosphere. In this way, our actions are almost infinite. In this way, we live forever. The personal power we each hold is a responsibility. We are accountable for the future.
Journaling Prompt:
I challenge you to ask yourself 5-10 questions around each question in this article. Don’t worry about answering the questions. Just go on the adventure of wondering and asking!
Take this question in the second paragraph:
How can your gifts be used to shift our attachments to fear and darkness over to a more brightly privileged existence for all living beings?
Here are 10 questions that come up around that question:
- Does everyone have a gift?
- Do plants, animals, and elements have gifts?
- What is bright privilege?
- Is bright privilege accessible to everyone?
- From films to songs, why are we so comfortable with stories and headlines of fear and horror?
- What would a world with equally amazing privileges and prizes for all look like? Can we even imagine it?
- While moving through this day, what gifts can I share, and what gifts are being shared with me?
- How do you know when to share a gift?
- Is it safe to share a gift?
- How much energy does it take to share gifts?
These questions could continue for a few more pages. That is one of the gifts of art as a service. As artists, we are able to create safe spaces for people to begin asking questions in a collectively constructive way. We don’t have to have all of the answers, but we can be a portal to inspiring great change through songs, paintings, movements, and more. To me, that is just as powerful as holding up a protest sign. There are many ways to serve and share gifts and they are ALL needed. But, of course every work of service can be used in a way to create sweetness for others if we’re conscious of it! Big or small.
One last question, though: Is it enough to ask questions and when does asking questions begin to solidify into positive shifts and changes?
A Closing Poem
No one is more important
Than me
There was no one before me
There will be no one after me
Because I see ME as WE
And what is done to you
Is done to me
We are the flowers of an eternal tree
We are the roots of an eternity
The wings of a butterfly
And everything we can see
So if I bring harm to you
Then it brings harm to me.
We’ve always been
And we will always be
Through living lives this way
We shall all be free
— Valerie June Hockett
