Jay - though you and I are of different generations and cultural backgrounds, I find your experiences and remembrance of them, to be insightful and entertaining. I have no experience with drug use having grown up in a very conservative rural community and then spending my adult life in the military with our frequent random drug testing. My naïve, twenty-something self would inevitably have been judgmental and condescending. Fortunately, I have matured a bit since those days and am able to appreciate and value each individual's story, no matter how different from my own it might be. Thanks for taking us on this wild and trippy ride. I enjoyed it immensely.
Matthew, you might find it interesting to know that just a couple of years before the events of this story, I still sometimes imagined becoming a marine. Among the many cultural elements that shaped me in life were patriotic and Hollywood themes of wartime valor and sacrifice. At the same time, while I was raised in a liberal immigrant family, NYC in those years (and still) had many traditional, working-class neighborhoods of conservative values, and the kinds of tensions you suggested existed within the city, as they did all over the country. You and I both know that among the profound values of literature is the exposure it provides to difference and the humane growth it can foster because of the exposure. Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
Everybody remember that B12 and B6 in a megadose of about a gram? Will relieve anybody of the cycling anxiety that a trip with a cortisol heavy fear burden entails. That is also a necessary supplement if you down a bottle of wine every other day like me. Here is a sober trip as a bonus. At the end of the Portable Gertryde Stein, writing from near the Normandy beaches, 1943, she writes in Kerouac style. Nice, and trippy yeah?
I was with you on the field of memory, Jay (Arnie?), wishing I could have seen Blind Faith. You found your way home from a long, strange trip. Happy birthday!
It was a long, strange trip and I did finally find my way home. You put it well, Rona. About Blind Faith, like a lot of illusions, behind the playing, they were pretty dysfunctional as a band and didn't come to enjoy playing together that much, whatever was projected onto them. As for "Arnie," my friend is too old to cause him any identity confusion at this point in his life, so I stick with Jay. :)
Great trip down your memory lane, including the bad trip. I am grateful that stories of bad trips and reading Castaneda and Huxley my senior year in high school, kept me away from acid. I remember Huxley surmised in Doors of Perception that, and I paraphrase, what the normal person sees through the eyes of mescaline, the artist sees naturally on their own. I decided that being an artist already gave me a different view of the world.
I quite agree, Pamela. Before my bad -- really, horrific -- trip, all of mine had been marvelous. And transitory. No profound insight stayed with me past coming down and slowly returning to my unaltered state, and that was a common experience. Despite Castaneda and Huxley and Leary and the rest, I never witnessed anyone impressively changed by hallucinogens -- spiritually or in wisdom - to equal what natural processes can produce through a variety of pursuits and ways of being. There is a 1980ish film by Ken Russell, *Altered States*, with William Hurt, that tackles this very issue directly and concludes that no experimental pursuit of its protagonist can deliver a spiritual experience for him greater than his final acquired capacity to feel and receive profound love.
I had no idea that I would take such interest in neutral B-mesons, so thank you for putting the lesson in English major terms. I loved the way the story grew to that conjunction of physics, philosophy, Shakespeare, and memoir. Beautifully told. What a remarkable memory. I say this as I listen to the 1969 recording you provided for "Can't find my way home." "Gonna do another song off the album" reminds me how young Winwood, Clapton, et al were, too. Even for celebrities, the future was unseeable. Lovely two-part tale.
Thanks so much, Tara. In my undergraduate days at City College of New York, they had a physics concepts class, for those who didn't have the math, that was informally known as "physics for poets." That's the class I took. I've followed along ever since. (My grand neice is set to enter graduate school in astrophysics. She has the math.)
Your insight about Winwood and the rest is right on :) I think. They were young. The young had captured the national cultural conversation - with some good results, to be sure. It didn't change the reality that they were young, inexperienced, and often naive. The same is true today, I think.
What a trip! I've always wondered what it would be like to escape the strictures of your own mind. Thanks for taking me along on this journey.
Thanks for coming along, David. As you read, travels beyond the strictures of one's own mind, like all travels, can be good and bad.
Jay - though you and I are of different generations and cultural backgrounds, I find your experiences and remembrance of them, to be insightful and entertaining. I have no experience with drug use having grown up in a very conservative rural community and then spending my adult life in the military with our frequent random drug testing. My naïve, twenty-something self would inevitably have been judgmental and condescending. Fortunately, I have matured a bit since those days and am able to appreciate and value each individual's story, no matter how different from my own it might be. Thanks for taking us on this wild and trippy ride. I enjoyed it immensely.
Matthew, you might find it interesting to know that just a couple of years before the events of this story, I still sometimes imagined becoming a marine. Among the many cultural elements that shaped me in life were patriotic and Hollywood themes of wartime valor and sacrifice. At the same time, while I was raised in a liberal immigrant family, NYC in those years (and still) had many traditional, working-class neighborhoods of conservative values, and the kinds of tensions you suggested existed within the city, as they did all over the country. You and I both know that among the profound values of literature is the exposure it provides to difference and the humane growth it can foster because of the exposure. Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
Everybody remember that B12 and B6 in a megadose of about a gram? Will relieve anybody of the cycling anxiety that a trip with a cortisol heavy fear burden entails. That is also a necessary supplement if you down a bottle of wine every other day like me. Here is a sober trip as a bonus. At the end of the Portable Gertryde Stein, writing from near the Normandy beaches, 1943, she writes in Kerouac style. Nice, and trippy yeah?
Bit of a trip just reading about it, but I had the itinerary, so.
Amazing story. Reminds me of how I smoked my first weed age of 11 at the Santa Barbara County Bowl... and went from there.
I always enjoy putting people back in touch with their formative experiences! Thanks so much for reading.
I was with you on the field of memory, Jay (Arnie?), wishing I could have seen Blind Faith. You found your way home from a long, strange trip. Happy birthday!
It was a long, strange trip and I did finally find my way home. You put it well, Rona. About Blind Faith, like a lot of illusions, behind the playing, they were pretty dysfunctional as a band and didn't come to enjoy playing together that much, whatever was projected onto them. As for "Arnie," my friend is too old to cause him any identity confusion at this point in his life, so I stick with Jay. :)
Great trip down your memory lane, including the bad trip. I am grateful that stories of bad trips and reading Castaneda and Huxley my senior year in high school, kept me away from acid. I remember Huxley surmised in Doors of Perception that, and I paraphrase, what the normal person sees through the eyes of mescaline, the artist sees naturally on their own. I decided that being an artist already gave me a different view of the world.
I quite agree, Pamela. Before my bad -- really, horrific -- trip, all of mine had been marvelous. And transitory. No profound insight stayed with me past coming down and slowly returning to my unaltered state, and that was a common experience. Despite Castaneda and Huxley and Leary and the rest, I never witnessed anyone impressively changed by hallucinogens -- spiritually or in wisdom - to equal what natural processes can produce through a variety of pursuits and ways of being. There is a 1980ish film by Ken Russell, *Altered States*, with William Hurt, that tackles this very issue directly and concludes that no experimental pursuit of its protagonist can deliver a spiritual experience for him greater than his final acquired capacity to feel and receive profound love.
I had no idea that I would take such interest in neutral B-mesons, so thank you for putting the lesson in English major terms. I loved the way the story grew to that conjunction of physics, philosophy, Shakespeare, and memoir. Beautifully told. What a remarkable memory. I say this as I listen to the 1969 recording you provided for "Can't find my way home." "Gonna do another song off the album" reminds me how young Winwood, Clapton, et al were, too. Even for celebrities, the future was unseeable. Lovely two-part tale.
Thanks so much, Tara. In my undergraduate days at City College of New York, they had a physics concepts class, for those who didn't have the math, that was informally known as "physics for poets." That's the class I took. I've followed along ever since. (My grand neice is set to enter graduate school in astrophysics. She has the math.)
Your insight about Winwood and the rest is right on :) I think. They were young. The young had captured the national cultural conversation - with some good results, to be sure. It didn't change the reality that they were young, inexperienced, and often naive. The same is true today, I think.
Haha! I had that physics class at Gonzaga! :-) The prof was wonderfully dramatic, angular, and expressive - perfect for the class.
"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven"
What a great essay, Jay. How well you capture a certain moment of cultural change. Bravo!
The apt quotation, Jeffrey, of course. Yes, that was the idea. Thank you.
And I still don't know what I'm looking for....The girl holding that Silver plane could help^^
Ah, yes -- that disappearing girl.
Meanwhile go throw up, On the road again by Canned Heat^^Play it extra loud.