It might have been Harry Cohn, a Hollywood director, who said of movies that were allegedly meant to convey a hidden message that “If I want to send a message I’ll write a letter.” It’s a high standard to live up to since we all send messages, whether we want to, or are aware, or not.
That said I agree with Mr Cohn that personally I like to keep such extraneous communications at a minimum. I value direct speech. It might be a reaction to the fact that in my early days I worked with several diagnosed schizophrenics and while the pros had written them off and just want to medicate, get paid and push the patients out the door, I tended to hang around and tried to make sense of the word salads and mega paranoiac verbal concretizations.
Even today, long after the fact I think, “Well maybe the thought knots and magnified delusions were actually mnemonic devices upon which the patients would place their many fears – but then I remember it’s someone else’s problem.
I’m entering this essay through a side door though, as an homage’ to the notion that often a little indirect thinking can go a long way.
The early nineteen seventies were a strange time in several respects. The age of Aquarius was ending, crash landing in fact and subsequently was written off as a demographic blip cause by the baby boom coupled with a few good years for the middle class.
I recall a show in Gaelic Park in the Bronx, by the grateful dead. It was ordinarily a ball park. What was cool is over the stands on some nearby cliffs was a trainyard. It gave a sense of authenticity to some of them travellin tunes. Anyway though we showed up and this before things got to be out of hand with the stockbroker types showing up, and well took acid and the show was over in two and a half hours, respectable, yes, but for people used to seeing the marathons it was problematic because we were all coming to LSD, blazing away as the phrase went, and so a few thousand dead heads hit the streets hooting and hollering, but essentially peaceful.
We went down to the subway where the subway cleaning car was working, with it’s multifold brushes and lights and air horns and that was an unforgettable experience. The point being the Lysergic cocoon had gone and suddenly we were faced with the challenge of doing things.
That happened on a larger scale to the hippie movement. It’s all before my time but apparently freeloaders come in anything they hear about – and who are we to judge who’s who?
Nevertheless there were those, as appear in every era, that wanted to push the envelope a little further. The politically oriented were aided in the fact of the VietNam War which motivated many t want to stop it, but it’s difficult to see any actuall replacements for capitalism in terms of the economic structures.
The was another group however, far smaller, who had been in it for the long run; rather then retard the speed of growth in science and psyche they were all ready to amp it up. Hence the strangeness of the period because people who had seen and experience the variations of perception and mind now started lookin for other avenues, more predictable that didn’t leaven them running down the streets being chased by eight legged dinosaurs. I guy I knew in Baldwin, I forget his name, a Italian American traded in his SG and bought an acoustic guitar and announced to me he was becoming a Druid. Fortunately he said it in such a way that he conveyed to me the recognition of the absurdity of the idea – not that it had no merit – but he was eager to lose the trappings of ethnicity which others are eager to apply.
Furthermore we were like the Israelites coming out of Egypt. The trip across Sinai should take at most a few weeks. It took the Israelites forty years! This is because the Israelites had come out bondage to the Pharoh but still retained the mind set of slavery. They still expected to be told what to do and were willing to trade freedom for security.
So the erstwhile hippies moved into their parents basements and collected records and painted murals on the wall ; convinced that they were somehow different from “The man.”
Before we deride them though lets remember that they were strong enough to keep their self images together.There was just no viable way out. We understood and we still understand that power structure of the technostate is a joke. People of limited goodwill place their operatives in positions of high visibility; shut down all competing voices and then pretend that what we are hearing is the voice of the people. Perhaps that’s so, but which people?
The Jefferson Airplane and in particular Paul Kantner seemed to have the best handle on what was happening in the seventies. Certainly it was the era of the fast growth of the greatful dead with their “wizened old man” schtick – but more is not always better. Kantner was just weird and what it more you could almost see him gazing back at the rest of us as the starship slowly listed off to the heavens.
It was an era with less Peyote and LSD and more DMT and mushrooms, that is to say it was more hallucinogenic and less out of body experiences. And I keep stressing that what was needed was not leaders nor followers but people who could work together.
Consider the survivalists. Here’s another group of people who are thinking in terms of what may be needed if things go to hell. I don’t see holding off a few hundred people with shotguns in order to protect your horde of tuna fish as doable. Far more practical is to pretend the tuna fish does not exist.
That is basically the idea behind the virtual state and what is more , although I think I am relatively safe speaking of it in hypothetical terms as the saying goes, “One doe not challenge the tax system you just go around it.”
I tend to see things in terms of whether they are practical. Would it be practical for instance to establish a barter system, online that could be protected via encryption? It’s easier said then done and remember the people in power have a trump that the powerless are never permitted. They control the law and if they don’t like something they can write a law to stop it.
This is s a pessimistic context, but in a functioning society you would not need to circumvent the law anyway. As to the ultimate decisions as to what actions are justified, that must remain an open question to be answered by whoever has the ability to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment