Cats
Through
a red light-bulb haze of smoky hash filled rooms came the flower
power children, their Monterrey floppy hippy- hats, Che Guevara
berets, and Carnarby street garb. An acid queen's dream but different
crazy cats were found on at New York's Scene.
Andy
Warhol, the exploding plastic inevitable, Nico, Velvet Underground
transvestites, cross- dressers, androgyny, Venus in furs at The
Factory, homosexuals, bohemians, pretentious East coast New Yorkers
on heroin with silver telephones talking to God, Greenwich village.
Beatles,
John & Yoko, Maharishi, India, Stones, the Pipes of Pan at
Jajoka, Dylan, Hendrix Cherokee Bold as Love cosmic guitar and Ravi
Shanker's psychedelic sitar, Moroccan snake charmers glide on a magic
carpet ride. Tibetan prayer-flags, Grateful Dead, “Anthem of the
Sun”, pan-handling on Haight Ashbury and “be-ins, happin-ins”, and "fuck-ins" at Frisco's Golden Gate park, Timothy Leary, the
“Politics of Ecstasy” trips and pills and thrills and standing by
old open sash window sills.
Woodstock,
star-spangled banner, Krishna, gurus, vegetarianism, Salvador Dali
prints, foreign film festivals, mantras, Kundalini, tie-dyed shirts,
Roman sandals, long hair, beards, chanting beads and hemp seeds,
Indian water bongs, nude swims, mud-bathing, Cairo's opium dens,
brass gongs on Persian rugs, Doctor Owlsley's purple haze, oriental
incense burning frangipani fragrances and cats on LSD, Venice Beach
California and Amsterdam's Vondel Park.
Heated
coffee bar political debates over Italian cappuccinos, Marxism, the
Weather- underground, counter-culture middle class North American
kids rage war against western consumerism. Berkeley university
student radicalism, mind-expanionism, Black Panthers, Bobby Seal,
Huey P Newton, the ghost of Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, Martin Luther
King, Malcolm X, JFK, civil rights, and blacks and whites, Kent
state, Ohio, Nixon, Watergate tapes, Vietnam, My Lai massacre,
Saigon, draft-dodgers, Hanoi Jane, Watts riots, murder, pandemonium and armageddon on blood-stained US streets, Morrison's Dionysianism and Huxley's
“Doors of Perception”- this is the End my only friend.
Sexual
revolution, the pill, beat generation bookshops, Kerouac's “On the
Road”, Bulkowski, Henry Miller, Ginsburg's “Howl”, William
Borrough's “Naked Lunch” freaks, kool -aid acid tests, rainbow
painted school buses and no fusses go West to East coast and back,
dolly daggers, stoned crazy chicks, feminism, Gloria Steinman, Apollo
moon -landing, and a giant step for mankind, 1969.
Altamont
speedway, hells angels, satanic Stones, Sonny Barger, the day the
music died, Manson and the Family at the Barker Ranch, Death
valley, the end of the decade that was the sixties, '…the dream is over.' (Lennon)
N Thomas
Wow! What a lot of ground covered yet so much I wish we didn't have to remember. Does that make me a coward? I am not the ostrich burying her head in the sand, my thoughts are hoping some lessons have been learned and will profit the future.
ReplyDeleteI was at Art College in UK in that decade so it brought it all back...young people were so passionate about their belief for a better world..I can't help feeling that we live in a time of pallid disinterest in the issues troubling the world only having time for their own self interest...I really enjoyed this Neville....
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