NEOMARXIST

Love that Pic Namaste!!

It's funny, although all that movement was way before my time I get a fuzzy, warm Kinda feeling whenever I hear, see music/images/sub-culture from that period (late 60's early 70's), even though I wasn't obviously there. I don't know something about that period of time just resonates with me. I guess it's because a lot of my musical influences are from around that time and my guitar idols; Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Gilmour, Iommi.

It's funny because of all the drugs that were consumed it was the legal one (alcohol) which really caused the many problems and ended a lot of lives prematurely.
I have always found that to be the case with my experience of drugs and booze. I used drugs regularly but always felt that I could see through them, whereas the booze always seemed to grab me by the B*llocks. I'm glad I have experienced many psychedelic trips and can only imagine how great it must have been to have been experiencing them with 1000's of others whilst tripping in the universal vibe of peace, Love and happiness (whilst it lasted).

coffeenut

I watched that special, too. Thought I'd heard it all....but I learned a lot. It really was a moment in time, wasn't it. Don't think we'll ever come close to having something else quite like it again. We were all so innocent (or maybe dumb is a better word!)....compared to kids now, I think.

Love the thread. Thanks!

Mark75

That's awesome... Didn't hang up the phone so much in those days

Mark

CAPTAINZING2000

hope, this link hasn't been used

Woodstock 40: Headliners Then & Now - GetBack

Hevyn

Captain, thanks for that link - some good trivia. I didn't know about that site - there's alot to see on there.

CAPTAINZING2000

I've aged pretty well considering.

Course, most all the people that, played had 8 to 10 years on me at least !!

Zencat

Sugah

I do identify with the culture, era, lifestyle, although I only a year old forty years ago. I'm the youngest of seven kids, and like everything else in those days, "culture" took a little longer to make it to Central Pennsylvania. I remember the early seventies (better than any time in the 80s!), being taken along to parties with my sisters who got stuck babysitting me. I remember the joints being passed in front of my face, the girls sitting for hours brushing my hair and making me daisy chains, watching folks sitting in the corner, seemingly fascinated with their magical hands (I didn't discover "trails" till later on). And always, the music.

I chased it myself in the form of Rainbow Gatherings and psychedelic drugs. I studied religion and philosophy, though I can't say I ever achieved anything more than an intellectual understanding. I was clogging my channels. I knew even then that it was transitory. I couldn't open my eyes and see until I could open my eyes and see -- if that makes sense.

If by "surrendering everything else" you mean the idea of universal love and peace, the first thing that had to go for me was the idea of short cuts. Watch t.v. -- any channel, any night of the week and see how many chemical short cuts are offered. Take a pill if you're sad, have trouble paying attention, have trouble getting it up and keeping it up.... I'm not saying that some folks don't need medication -- but if the pharmaceutical industry had its way, we'd all be taking chemical short cuts. And if we have a quick way out of these human frailties, why shouldn't we think we have a quick way into transcendent spiritual states, too?

I've found there are no short cuts. It began for me with little trusting steps, and with consistent forward momentum, those steps build upon each other. Peace and Love can be experienced -- but there's no magic pill for it.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Dee74

I have a lot of heroes from this era, but I can't honestly say I tried to emulate them in drug use. I used for many other personal reasons.

Most of my heroes from the Woodstock era are either dead, or totally reformed characters now.

I wasn't there but it seems to me there was a lot of innocence and, basically, foolishness back then - I think everyone thinks they'll live forever when they're in their twenties - we all know different now.

D

coffeenut

Like Dee said, I too had personalities from this era that I truly admired. The music was so amazing. My favorite character was Janis. I was 10 when Woodstock happened, so I really wasn't into the drug scene at all. All I knew is that girl could sing! Damn!

After her death I read a book about her. She basically hated herself. She was a girl from Texas....shunned and/or humiliated in school (because of her looks, she felt). Do you remember the interview she did w/Cavett when she went to her high school reunion...'they laughed me out of school...and out of the state, now I'm going home'.

The point that I'm taking my time to getting at...is that I could have been Janis. High school.....teen years (even early elementary) can either make you or break you. So many of us are finding our way on our own, and use substances to 'help'.

I still have no clue where I'm going here...or even why I'm posting. I guess I'm trying to say that I'm so grateful for my sobriety. Crawling out of that crap, when others still struggle makes me embrace this forum even more. We don't have to end up like Janis or Jimi.....we just gotta reach out...and mean it.

Wow....I think I'm done.

Mark75

Coffeenut...I read that book too... I have no idea where it is now... I learned to sing and play "Janis" from that book, a song that Country Joe McDonald wrote for her... in three quarter time...

Into my life on waves of electrical sounds, and flashing lights she came...

Sugah... I ran into a Rainbow gathering in the wilds of West Virginia while me and my family were on a whitewater canoe camping trip about 4 or 5 years ago... I let my teenage kids interact some with the less threatening members of the bunch (while under my watchful eye of course...).... My kids were struck by the adults being so self centered... they felt sorry for the kids, left on their own... While the parents got stoned and talked about freedom.... There was a threatening, anarchist feel to them... certainly not peace and love...

I am sure my license plate is in a database somewhere... there were some national forest rangers around with very unhappy looks on their faces...

Kris Kristofferson wrote it, but Janis made it a hit... From me and Bobby McGee... Seems appropriate...

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose...

Thanx Guys...

Mark

Sugah

Whelp, I lost my post.

My first gathering was in '87 in North Carolina (I was nineteen), and my last was in '99 in Ridgeway, PA. Marked difference in the prevailing attitudes and atmosphere. Anyone under the age of fifty seemed only to be there to get high and get loose for the week. Or, maybe it was just me, wanting something more at thirty-one than I did at nineteen.

These days when I hear "welcome home," I hope it's someone talking from my front porch.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Mark75

Actually, as I remember it was not an actual gathering, but a scouting party, doing some advance work for the full Rainbow Gathering later that summer. We met some of the "leadership".. Somebody, grey wolf, something like that... Anyway, I just asked my daughter what she remembered, she was 14 or 15. While my brother and I were getting the canoes packed and ready for the trip, she sat on a bridge in the morning with a guy well over 50. He spoke of practicing one's freedom. He said that she should tell her parents to do the same....

Freedom... hmmm.

We had a good talk about that later that night around the campfire. I was glad to have met them, though I was happier to be with my own family and the safety of our love. I felt free enough.

Meaningful memories Sugah, thanx...

Mark

Sugah

I don't remember Grey Wolf, but I did become friends with White Hat, one of the elders. In '99, the man was seventy-five if he was a day. I sat in three or four drum circles with him, and I danced with him some in the main circle -- a year and a half before I lost the ability to do so. He told me "it" was dying and seemed very sad to see "it" go. I guess if you didn't already know what "it" was, he felt you were beyond understanding, so I just let him talk.

This guy had lived off the grid most of his life. I don't know about you, but that's not the kind of freedom I'm looking for. I still have enough of an ego that I'd like to have a system in which I can make some kind of difference. Our world is so complex and some of the issues we face seem so insurmountable, it's hard to pick a place to start, or even know how to pick a place to start. Today, my best decision was to get up and face the world clean and sober. Everything after that -- speaking to a few other human beings, some with problems to share, others with joys; spending time with my children talking about the limits, or seeming lack of limits of the human body; pickling eighteen pints of peppers picked hours before from my garden; hauling in another mess of beans to freeze tomorrow; contemplating my mother's advancing age and declining health; and amazingly, packing some porch-sitting, dual-meditation time in there with my husband -- springs from that decision. I don't know how much good I brought to the world today, or how much difference there will be in the life of anyone I tried to help today, but I don't think I screwed anything up much. As cool as the world looked through psychedelic eyes, as fun as it was to hug and dance with strangers, express love for the sake of love, I think I'll stick to the way I'm doing things now.

Thanks for letting me ramble....

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Mark75

No, thank you.

"It" has always been dying, that's the point.

The peak of summer, and the shadows already get longer, the flowers as soon as they blossom are already slightly withered on the edges... the collective memory of Woodstock already forty years old...

Maybe I'm getting over my head here with the metaphor thing, but... Bob Dylan said it very well...

"He not busy being born is busy dying..."

or, as Bill W. says...

"Our problems, we think, are of our own making..."

Hope that made sense...

I'll have to ask my brother, we met a lot of the elders there... I remember a person with "white" in the name, who knows... I do remember thinking that they were not a happy group and, it seemed, they were busy dying...

I stopped acid decades ago... but I have to admit, I have a view of the world I would not have had otherwise.

I can't imagine being any more free than I am right now, nor, would I want to be. I have a choice, and, I am free to make the right one...

Nice talking with you!

Mark

Gypsy Feet

I lost my post last night

I don't see it as black and white/good or bad. My entire adult life I used, but I also helped, learned, taught, nurtured, needed, gave, grew, shared, stumbled, triumphed, laughed, cried and loved. I wouldn't change a thing about the 28 years prior to finding sobriety, or the 14 years prior to finding chemical oblivion. I'd be afraid of not being where I am.

Take away addiction and we lose so much beautiful creativity and passion, to steep a price for me.

I love where I am right now, and I am grateful for every step along the way

Mark75

Serenity

Mark