Aberration
All the little household gods
Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
-- W.H. Auden
It was the heyday of the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco with bands like Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Youngbloods, the Moody Blues, A Beautiful Day, Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, just to name a few making a great impression on me, actually much more than the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. I still recall a first visit to a head shop in an old Victorian house in Palo Alto and seeing the long haired and bearded proprietors the air filled with burning incense, phsycodellic posters on the walls along with tie dyed shirts, hookahs, and all the other accoutrements of a burgeoning counter culture on display. Times were getting even more interesting. Politics and the Vietnam War had not yet impinged on my world though later they would. It was an Alice in Wonderland world, it was a world without cynicism, and it seemed that humanity was moving toward something much better than the 50’s. Revolution was in the air. People were interested in the arts -- music, plays, books, all things creative rather than the same old acceptance of convention that marked the 50’s. Then there was the rising tide of anger against the Vietnam War. People were actually coming out against the war in many parts of the nation and it seemed humanity at last wanted to move beyond our violent bloody past. There was the excitement of unexplored worlds and territories, intellectual thought over the violent and the bestial, there was real hope for better days and a better humanity none of which has come to pass. The 60’s were just an aberration it would seem. Americans have gone back to sleep lulled into a dream of complacency. Even the Iraq War seems to have faded into a grey background as America indulges in another election farce where hopes wane and wax like an errant morning breeze. When this repugnant election between two reptilian candidates crawling out of a primordial swamp with forked tongues flicking in and out in search of power is over reality will return with a vengeance as the war on terror accelerates the long silent fall of what could have been but never really was.
America has become a boring entirely predictable fucked up piece of crap, something I never would have believed in the 60’s even with the Vietnam War. As far as I am concerned anyone who wants it can have it, probably deserves it, and can keep it for all I care. Today anyone who questions authority or the status quo are considered to be fringe lunatics, anyone with an original thought is crazy in this brave new world of zombie-like mediocre conformists.
Below a couple cuts from Quicksilver Messenger Service, Fresh Air and Who do you Love:
Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
-- W.H. Auden
It was the heyday of the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco with bands like Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Youngbloods, the Moody Blues, A Beautiful Day, Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, just to name a few making a great impression on me, actually much more than the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. I still recall a first visit to a head shop in an old Victorian house in Palo Alto and seeing the long haired and bearded proprietors the air filled with burning incense, phsycodellic posters on the walls along with tie dyed shirts, hookahs, and all the other accoutrements of a burgeoning counter culture on display. Times were getting even more interesting. Politics and the Vietnam War had not yet impinged on my world though later they would. It was an Alice in Wonderland world, it was a world without cynicism, and it seemed that humanity was moving toward something much better than the 50’s. Revolution was in the air. People were interested in the arts -- music, plays, books, all things creative rather than the same old acceptance of convention that marked the 50’s. Then there was the rising tide of anger against the Vietnam War. People were actually coming out against the war in many parts of the nation and it seemed humanity at last wanted to move beyond our violent bloody past. There was the excitement of unexplored worlds and territories, intellectual thought over the violent and the bestial, there was real hope for better days and a better humanity none of which has come to pass. The 60’s were just an aberration it would seem. Americans have gone back to sleep lulled into a dream of complacency. Even the Iraq War seems to have faded into a grey background as America indulges in another election farce where hopes wane and wax like an errant morning breeze. When this repugnant election between two reptilian candidates crawling out of a primordial swamp with forked tongues flicking in and out in search of power is over reality will return with a vengeance as the war on terror accelerates the long silent fall of what could have been but never really was.
America has become a boring entirely predictable fucked up piece of crap, something I never would have believed in the 60’s even with the Vietnam War. As far as I am concerned anyone who wants it can have it, probably deserves it, and can keep it for all I care. Today anyone who questions authority or the status quo are considered to be fringe lunatics, anyone with an original thought is crazy in this brave new world of zombie-like mediocre conformists.
Below a couple cuts from Quicksilver Messenger Service, Fresh Air and Who do you Love:
posted by Unknown at 11:23 AM
<< Home