the summer of love
arrived like a cheap hell's angel movie
out there it was summertime
the panhandle was a green finger
pointing to the golden gate
electric blue skies over Victorian roof tops
Big Sur was a hitch hike away
but the flower children were homeless
and on Haight street love came in a sugar cube
we did not care about the shit on the boo tube
we were living for today
turn on, tune in, drop the hell out
of a world that did not care
but but told you to leave it if you grew your hair
the piper was playing in the park
and the flutes made us dance
the children were cool in Frisco nights
the old poets told stories by the fires of the stars
and the God's eyes shined down in rainbows
we tripped balls in 1967 and did not think
about tomorrow
1967
Re: 1967
(As HST put it.)..that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
Following two world wars and the Bomb's arrival, it's almost like humankind had no choice but to go in a completely different direction...
Re: 1967
I was seventeen in 67' the summer of love was a moment of strange beauty in the middle of the madness of this world we live in, but there is really nothing to compare it to, except
the music suddenly became very creative. It's very difficult to zero in on what forces were converging, because collage students were against the Vietnam war, so we were running around saying make love not war. Some think the three letter agency was behind the flood of LSD to divert us from protesting the war. And maybe that is true but I think there was some kind of psychic shift happening that has to do with cycles of time. Like the poets in the fifties
who were questioning authority and pushing the limits, and the surrealists that cane out of the horrors of world war I, they were a spontaneous happening a reaction to the insanity.
1967 was surrealist, it was on the road, it was Dylan lyrics which was poetry, it was a generation of young people, the first raised on television, it was mysterious forces, a crazy moment that crystallized and a lot of young people ran off to San Francisco looking for the flower power. It would be impossible to imagine the late sixties with out the psychedelic. Just it is now impossible to image what it was like for a seventeen year old teenger
who was taking LSD with his friends in that impossible moment that seemed to come out of nowhere. Even more crazy to write a surreal novel about that moment many years later, like some time traveler.
In 67 we did not have cell phones, a lot of young men were being killed in yet another undeclared war. In my situation I hated high school, my dad worked for an aircraft factory
and was very distant, so by the time I was seventeen I just got caught up in the psychedelic thing. I would have liked it if my dad had something to teach me, but that has not happening
so I tossed myself in the swirl of the times, and I was against being drafted. I doubt that teenagers now even know much about the summer of love, or care. 67' 68' was a shift in the way we saw reality, the LSD was there like magic and it felt magical because it just suddenly was there. I liked Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing and was influenced by it in my writing but Hunter was a journalist not a poet. But in any case I don't know of any poets that wrote a novel about what it was like to take LSD in the late sixties.
I think the main thing of the late sixties, was that we suddenly were saying , peace and love, which was the opposite of war and hate. We were looking for a better world, but did not really know how to make it better, maybe live an alternate life style. But there was so much opposition to "hippies" to long hair, we were told to love it or leave it, love it meaning love your slavery.That situation has not really changed, the sixties was a signal from the depths of time that something needed to change.but like Jim Morrison the singer poet said, strange days had found us and tracked us down.
If I had it to do over again, would I have become a misfit teenager who took to LSD like a fish to water, maybe I would have just tied it a few times and then learned how to paint, and my paintings would be surreal and psychedelic, but I was adrift because nobody in my life was guiding me, I had no real foundation under me, except a roof over my head and some crappy food, this was the society I came into, a stranger dad and no tradition, no teaching of what it means to be a human on this planet, religion just did not really work , I believe that I knew what was right and wrong, but I felt kinda lost as a teenager, I think it was better to take LSD
on the weekends for two years, 67' 68'' then ro be on pharmaceutical drugs every day, but I digress.
The world has become way more complicated since the late sixties, America does not seem like what we thought it was in the fifties, beatniks and politics nothing is new, we appear
to be ever on the verge of nuclear war, a lot of people are trying to get disclosure of the extraterrestrial situation, 9/11 was like the Kennedy assassination a huge project of the shadow government. In the late sixties we were against war and we thought we could change the world. How were we going to change the powers that should not be. They were and are always trying to keep us in the dark, and ignorant. And so it goes...
I made myself into a poet, because I wanted to learn how to speak my mind, whatever my mind was after two years of taking LSD. but I had to deal with the draft, and by the time I got out of that I was never going to be a normal person in society, poetry gives a way to mirror society
and to reflect on our lives no matter if you are some kind of misfit, a hippie, a loner on the lunatic fringe, but I always believed in the power of poetry to tell it like it is, or was, and the book I wrote if not of interest to anyone now because nobody thinks about the late sixties now, but it's the poetry not the history, I did it for the poetry. But as Terence Mckenna liked to quote James Joyce, history is the nightmare I'm trying to awaken up from. I love all those great poets who try to awaken us.
the music suddenly became very creative. It's very difficult to zero in on what forces were converging, because collage students were against the Vietnam war, so we were running around saying make love not war. Some think the three letter agency was behind the flood of LSD to divert us from protesting the war. And maybe that is true but I think there was some kind of psychic shift happening that has to do with cycles of time. Like the poets in the fifties
who were questioning authority and pushing the limits, and the surrealists that cane out of the horrors of world war I, they were a spontaneous happening a reaction to the insanity.
1967 was surrealist, it was on the road, it was Dylan lyrics which was poetry, it was a generation of young people, the first raised on television, it was mysterious forces, a crazy moment that crystallized and a lot of young people ran off to San Francisco looking for the flower power. It would be impossible to imagine the late sixties with out the psychedelic. Just it is now impossible to image what it was like for a seventeen year old teenger
who was taking LSD with his friends in that impossible moment that seemed to come out of nowhere. Even more crazy to write a surreal novel about that moment many years later, like some time traveler.
In 67 we did not have cell phones, a lot of young men were being killed in yet another undeclared war. In my situation I hated high school, my dad worked for an aircraft factory
and was very distant, so by the time I was seventeen I just got caught up in the psychedelic thing. I would have liked it if my dad had something to teach me, but that has not happening
so I tossed myself in the swirl of the times, and I was against being drafted. I doubt that teenagers now even know much about the summer of love, or care. 67' 68' was a shift in the way we saw reality, the LSD was there like magic and it felt magical because it just suddenly was there. I liked Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing and was influenced by it in my writing but Hunter was a journalist not a poet. But in any case I don't know of any poets that wrote a novel about what it was like to take LSD in the late sixties.
I think the main thing of the late sixties, was that we suddenly were saying , peace and love, which was the opposite of war and hate. We were looking for a better world, but did not really know how to make it better, maybe live an alternate life style. But there was so much opposition to "hippies" to long hair, we were told to love it or leave it, love it meaning love your slavery.That situation has not really changed, the sixties was a signal from the depths of time that something needed to change.but like Jim Morrison the singer poet said, strange days had found us and tracked us down.
If I had it to do over again, would I have become a misfit teenager who took to LSD like a fish to water, maybe I would have just tied it a few times and then learned how to paint, and my paintings would be surreal and psychedelic, but I was adrift because nobody in my life was guiding me, I had no real foundation under me, except a roof over my head and some crappy food, this was the society I came into, a stranger dad and no tradition, no teaching of what it means to be a human on this planet, religion just did not really work , I believe that I knew what was right and wrong, but I felt kinda lost as a teenager, I think it was better to take LSD
on the weekends for two years, 67' 68'' then ro be on pharmaceutical drugs every day, but I digress.
The world has become way more complicated since the late sixties, America does not seem like what we thought it was in the fifties, beatniks and politics nothing is new, we appear
to be ever on the verge of nuclear war, a lot of people are trying to get disclosure of the extraterrestrial situation, 9/11 was like the Kennedy assassination a huge project of the shadow government. In the late sixties we were against war and we thought we could change the world. How were we going to change the powers that should not be. They were and are always trying to keep us in the dark, and ignorant. And so it goes...
I made myself into a poet, because I wanted to learn how to speak my mind, whatever my mind was after two years of taking LSD. but I had to deal with the draft, and by the time I got out of that I was never going to be a normal person in society, poetry gives a way to mirror society
and to reflect on our lives no matter if you are some kind of misfit, a hippie, a loner on the lunatic fringe, but I always believed in the power of poetry to tell it like it is, or was, and the book I wrote if not of interest to anyone now because nobody thinks about the late sixties now, but it's the poetry not the history, I did it for the poetry. But as Terence Mckenna liked to quote James Joyce, history is the nightmare I'm trying to awaken up from. I love all those great poets who try to awaken us.
Re: 1967
I was only 6 when that all hit. We actually took a family road trip down to Disneyland in the summer of '67, and stopped in Oakland to visit one of my aunts. My Dad hated the hippies, and called the emerging art of the times "hippie-this and hippie-that." He was ex-Navy, and kind of distant too, but at least Nam had burned itself out by the time I was draft age, so that made it a little easier to deal with.
McKenna's ideas and insights still fascinate me. You're right, the inter-related complexity level of the world has shot exponentially up since 50 years ago; it really is incredible. Where's it all headed?...
McKenna's ideas and insights still fascinate me. You're right, the inter-related complexity level of the world has shot exponentially up since 50 years ago; it really is incredible. Where's it all headed?...
Re: 1967
It is rather weird to remember the late sixties and how much
the people, the slaves that thought America was some kind of great
because there was still some kind of middle class. Weird to remember
back just how much hate was leveled at the hippies. These people
that thought they were living in the land of the free. Yeah free to kill
Indians and Black people, free to make one slave better then another
slave, the house slave and the land slave. Yeah my dad did not say
anything thoughtful about hippies either, the resentment was obvious.
So I became what he resented, because I felt like he failed me, sure
he was a good provider, roof over head and bad food in mouth, but
what was I, just a mouth to feed. I was suppose to just be like him
get a job in a factory and watch television, and never think about anything.
The fact so many people back then hated hippies was because they the hippies
were a sign of the times, the seemed like bums and in some ways they were
but they were not just lazy pot heads, they were a symptom of something
that was wrong with society, a lot of young people felt like the education system
was just here to crank out more cogs in the machine, and then the draft was
making a lot of them into cannon fodder. The LSD came along and it made
a lot of young people think about the reality of the world we live in, a lot
of young people did not want to be just another brick in the wall.
Hippies were really just an extension of beatniks, but the beatniks did not
have LSD, but and so did dads go around saying how much they hated poets.
Did I really want to be a hippie, maybe not, but like I said nobody was there
teaching me anything of value, the church did not, not really, nobody was
showing me anything how to think for myself, how to think about ethics
nobody said to me that slavery was wrong, or that the history books
were full of a heap of lies. Who was I to not just to fit in, and keep my
head down and get a job in the factory, or want to kill people in Nam.
What was a "hippie" really, as if the word says it all.
If we lived in such a wonderful world, if our educations and religions
were so wonderful, then why were we lied to about everything, And
there in lies the rub, most people were gleefully ignorant, as long
as there were jobs and our life style seemed to be progressing, My dad
is a good example of a bumpkin that had a swell job, because the economy
was good after WWII , he moved from Wisconsin when I was three and
got an entry level job in the aircraft industry, My dad kept his job
because he knew his job, but did they ever rise him up the ladder.
And in the end he signed his pension away, because they talked him into it.
The point is the middle class started melting away in the seventies, I doubt
my dad even understood that, he never read any books. Was my dad happy
with his job, I don't think so, but he never talked about it, he just smoked
his cigarettes.
So you see the sixties came and went, people don't point at people with long
hair anymore, and say is it a boy or a girl, I remember people yelling at me when
I hitch hiked in the late sixties and seventies, get a hair cut, let alone love it
or leave it.
the people, the slaves that thought America was some kind of great
because there was still some kind of middle class. Weird to remember
back just how much hate was leveled at the hippies. These people
that thought they were living in the land of the free. Yeah free to kill
Indians and Black people, free to make one slave better then another
slave, the house slave and the land slave. Yeah my dad did not say
anything thoughtful about hippies either, the resentment was obvious.
So I became what he resented, because I felt like he failed me, sure
he was a good provider, roof over head and bad food in mouth, but
what was I, just a mouth to feed. I was suppose to just be like him
get a job in a factory and watch television, and never think about anything.
The fact so many people back then hated hippies was because they the hippies
were a sign of the times, the seemed like bums and in some ways they were
but they were not just lazy pot heads, they were a symptom of something
that was wrong with society, a lot of young people felt like the education system
was just here to crank out more cogs in the machine, and then the draft was
making a lot of them into cannon fodder. The LSD came along and it made
a lot of young people think about the reality of the world we live in, a lot
of young people did not want to be just another brick in the wall.
Hippies were really just an extension of beatniks, but the beatniks did not
have LSD, but and so did dads go around saying how much they hated poets.
Did I really want to be a hippie, maybe not, but like I said nobody was there
teaching me anything of value, the church did not, not really, nobody was
showing me anything how to think for myself, how to think about ethics
nobody said to me that slavery was wrong, or that the history books
were full of a heap of lies. Who was I to not just to fit in, and keep my
head down and get a job in the factory, or want to kill people in Nam.
What was a "hippie" really, as if the word says it all.
If we lived in such a wonderful world, if our educations and religions
were so wonderful, then why were we lied to about everything, And
there in lies the rub, most people were gleefully ignorant, as long
as there were jobs and our life style seemed to be progressing, My dad
is a good example of a bumpkin that had a swell job, because the economy
was good after WWII , he moved from Wisconsin when I was three and
got an entry level job in the aircraft industry, My dad kept his job
because he knew his job, but did they ever rise him up the ladder.
And in the end he signed his pension away, because they talked him into it.
The point is the middle class started melting away in the seventies, I doubt
my dad even understood that, he never read any books. Was my dad happy
with his job, I don't think so, but he never talked about it, he just smoked
his cigarettes.
So you see the sixties came and went, people don't point at people with long
hair anymore, and say is it a boy or a girl, I remember people yelling at me when
I hitch hiked in the late sixties and seventies, get a hair cut, let alone love it
or leave it.
Re: 1967
Funny how Kerouac was a military man in his youth to begin with, and railed (briefly in places) about the mind-boggling new destruction capacity so quickly introduced to earth while the grunts were still endlessly soldiering.
And yet he had a problem with the hippies.
And yet he had a problem with the hippies.
Re: 1967
The hippies had a problem with the hippies, because so many "normal " people could not understand what they were about, did not want to understand, did not try to understand, because they had been dumbed down by the so-called education system. Why were people so afraid of young people that were looking for answers and a better way of life, young people that were questioning the status quo. They did not just pop up out of nowhere like mushrooms they were sons and daughters. They were not aliens from outer space , they were somebody's child, that maybe were trying to breakout of the box we had all been put in.
I think too much is made of Kerouac's supposed dislike of hippies, but in any case he was not a teenager in the late sixties, also he had been a merchant marine. It is fine to question the phenomenon of the hippie counter culture, Kerouac clung to his fifties reality, I think he
wanted to believe that America would always be like father knows best, but down deep inside
I think he saw the hippies as a deep rift in his ideals about mom and apple pie. In any ase he drank himself....
I think too much is made of Kerouac's supposed dislike of hippies, but in any case he was not a teenager in the late sixties, also he had been a merchant marine. It is fine to question the phenomenon of the hippie counter culture, Kerouac clung to his fifties reality, I think he
wanted to believe that America would always be like father knows best, but down deep inside
I think he saw the hippies as a deep rift in his ideals about mom and apple pie. In any ase he drank himself....
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