Echo Movement was conceptualized and developed through the course of a few decades. It's the story of a generation paused in self-awareness. The music, itself, is kind of like the exhale after a startling revelation, as well as an "invitation" to move on.
In the wake of our grandparents (the Greatest Generation who ended WWII), our parents (the Baby Boomers who fought in Vietnam and pretty much defined modern culture) and even our older siblings (the Gen-Xers), we, the Echo Generation, kind of wandered away, steeped in apathy, made only worse by a collective case of "The Fuckits." To our elders, managing us was like herding cats. We even smoldered through the wet blankets of Ritilin and Adderall, proving our tenacious ability to simply not care about anything, save video games, music and sports. The other things- education, news, religion, and even certain traditional family values- were antiquated and faulted for not keeping up with the times.
Two of my favorite books, The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Future Shock by Alvin Toffler provoked these thoughts. There is also a great quote from the movie Fight Club that wraps it up well:
We're the middle children of history- no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.
That's a little dark, but captures the frustration of a generation. And frustration easily converts into anxiety.
So we started Echo Movement to remind ourselves and our peers that we actually do have a lot to be proud of, and to start thinking/knowing/believing/feeling that our contributions to the progression of humanity will be marked with flags of revolution.
For starters, for the first time in the history of the world, we have established a true global village through the Internet. The United States was supposed to be the first to carry that honor, bringing people and cultures together geographically. However, the flaw was that the people who moved to The States had to abandon their homeland and adhere to new laws in a new land, and ultimately became "Americanized." And as generations passed, laws and norms became increasingly-destructive to the cultures and traditions carried over. However admirable, that's not a global village as envisioned by the great thinkers...USA is more so a convergence of culture. By that, it is no more unique in cultural diversity (and market exchange) than were the Silk Roads.
The Echo Generation is the first group of people to live above Spaceship Earth (credit Buckminster Fuller); we have transcended physical differences and taken on a new digital form. We have largely disconnected from laws, norms and trends, and can comfortably exist in a place where there is a free-flowing exchange of ideas and information. We have reformed copyright laws, flipped the music industry on its head, and gave a vicious beating to the swine in corporate power (work in progress). We think at the speed of our bandwidth. Those are all great points of pride!
The apathy towards tradition served a valuable purpose in our growth. It unleashed us to explore alternatives without hesitation...to let logic outweigh honor. An ego is like a bag of bricks- all you have to do is put it down.
Yet another great point of pride is the organic movement. A lot of people in our generation have made efforts to consciously monitor their amount of over-processed material intake. This includes food, music, clothing, medicine, transportation and so much more. It's a choice to live healthy. Consequently, we're creating a healthier world, exploring renewable resources and revolutionizing our use of energy.
Echo Movement is a call– an echoing call to everyone in our generation and beyond to salute the past, take pride in the present and embrace the future. We have our own thing going on, and have already secured our history-in-the-making. Selah.
