‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and the Metacrisis

One of the things I’ve struggled with is - how to talk about the metacrisis with people who’ve never heard the word before.

And so I offer this video [it’s much better than the dumb clickbait-y title, I promise]. It’s a breakdown of Queen’s epic, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and offers an insight into the various elements that make up the song.

After watching it, I was talking to my Dad - a musician - and I realised it gave me a way to talk about the metacrisis in a language he’d immediately understand:

“If you only think about climate, that’s like only listening to the lead guitar - you’re ignoring the bass and drums. Those are like the underlying paradigms - things like our sense of individualism, or obsession with growth. You could maybe see the vocals - the obvious bits - as social media. Each of those separate parts might be interesting on their own, but they only make complete sense when you hear them in relation to each other - when you listen to the whole song.”

This is obviously only a first step, but maybe it helps reveal the systemic nature of the predicament - and perhaps opens the door to further questions. “What do you mean by ‘sense of individualism’ then?” - if you’re trying to identify the bass guitar or snare drum in a song, first of all, you need to know what those instruments sound like.

And once you’ve learned how to recognise the different elements, they become a lot more obvious - it’s hard to ‘unsee’ them. [After watching the breakdown video of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, does the whole song sound different to you?].

I’ve made the mistake of trying to ram the metacrisis down the throat of everyone I meet [you can probably guess how that went!]. I now find it much more useful to ‘meet people where they are at’ … and perhaps this idea helps me meet them in a way that makes sense to them, whether that’s through music, sport, food, or something else.