There are lots of things that shames me to be a relic of the 60s, one of those people who have ever used beads and bell bottoms, and could for that reason, are piled on so many signs that shaped the spirit of the time of those times. I'm guilty by association with a lot of bad music, a lot of bad ideas, a lot of stupid shit that includes the fact that once devoured greedily the words of Timothy Leary, or among the millions of Americans who they stayed up late to see Tiny Tim marry in the Johnny Carson Show. (If you were among the spectators, perhaps you remember the name of his blushing bride. I do not, but maybe more of their brain cells survived to be wasted to remember that small neuron information.)
If you ask me, I deny that I have used some of the jargon of the time, they insist that "wonderful" or "Out of sight" words had never fallen from my lips. But I cannot be sure, and if there was a movie of me that kept me through a typical week, say, in 1967, it is likely to be found saying "away" or some bit of jargon so lame in his way as most of the things that young people spend round these days, because without thinking as we did then.
I was active in the antiwar movement, and I mention these creds to compensate for dippier things I said, I thought, and I did as a hippie half, I had a full time job, was a solid student, barely made any drugs at all, had long hair that was not too, too long, and actually married my "old lady", a surrender to bourgeois convention that had happened a few years before the hippies invention, particularly by the media communication.
Among other things, I once attended a performance of O Calcutta. On another occasion, I took care of a friend through a fit of paranoia after he smoked pot to what it was, I think, the first time. It was not a very strong material, but in the early days of experimentation with drugs, outlawishness that made us suspect that the "fluff" would burst through our doors as soon as the first puff of marijuana wafted out of the cracks in our doorframe.
I saw the door to a park where children were being carried out, suffering bad trips, while Jim Morrison pranced around in a way that I saw recently on an old clip of YouTube, and looked pretentious and ridiculous from the perspective of a so I could not watch in the afternoon when he was ten feet from me. But, boy, what a fool ass did show himself that day. And recently saw a picture of Bob Dylan taken around the same time. It was on the cover of Rolling Stone, ol 'Zimmy wearing sandals, and he did not look like the icon of the hip most of us had been sold, but as the kind of guy who dweeby usually got beat on their way to the science club.
Although the answers, my friend, is blowing in the wind, I went with the prevailing wind in a lot of things that was blowing our minds in those days, and when I look at some photos of fading of me taken at the time, it does t sadden me to see them disappear. It is no coincidence that the word "young" and the word "stupid" often make company, and I did my share of stupid things.
But one thing I did not ever taste for Sweet Baby James Taylor develops. It was the kind of hippie manque lameness that could curdle my bowels even back then, and his aura has only come to seem Sappier and looser in all the years since. There just was not enough drugs to make me like him. When he sang "Yes, I've seen fire and I've seen rain," the only thing I could think was, “Wow Really, James I also BFD what else you got" And when else I had was "You have a friend, "I gave up on the type. If I had been a diabetic, that song alone would have sent in diabetic shock. It was too syrupy, too soft and tender, too Public Broadcasting approved the version of peace, love and flower power for my taste.
So imagine how disgusting it was for me, now an old man, enormously embarrassing to witness the scene created when John Kerry (another disappointment 60s) Sweet Baby James brought with him to help make up for the absence of United States when all the heads of state were linking arms to show disapproval high level of assholes who kill cartoonists. With Kerry, which is more like Lurch Addams Family every day, stalking aside, James Taylor started singing that old song- "You've Got a Friend" - treacly send a message to the French, who tend to be much more sophisticated in these matters than a dingy old folkie can quite match, especially when you are asked to carry the message of diplomacy in the lyrics of an old tired song that just made everyone in the room, and perhaps the world, seems uncomfortable and embarrassed. In this case, it was as sophisticated and elegant as sending your girlfriend on a mix tape with the hope that the songs on it melt your heart and make you forget that she had faced prom night because he was drinking with your friends.
Back in 1971, John Kerry returned from serving in Vietnam and gave a heartfelt speech, in which he said: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam How to order a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
He still felt like the 60s then. And although I had never heard of John Kerry before I saw such a declaration before a hearing in the war held before a Senate committee, I immediately thought of it as a cultural hero counter, a man who was able to rise above the facile patriotism flowed from memory when most veterinarians of the time tended to be defined as irredeemably opposed to those of us who opposed the war who had been recruited to fight.
During the same point, Kerry also said: "There are all kinds of atrocities, and I have to say, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in fire zones free. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used guns 50 caliber, which granted us and asked to use, they were our only weapon against people. I participated in missions and destroyed in the burning of villages. All this is contrary to the laws of war, this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all this is sorted as a matter of policy established in writing by the government of the United States from the top down. and I think the men who designed these men who designed the free-fire zone, men who asked us, the men who signed outside areas airstrike attack, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter the law that tried Lieutenant [William] Calley, are war criminals. "
When I heard those words, he lumped in with the good, all men and women who had decided were on the same side as I was, I saw the world in the way I did. When he flashed the peace sign to each other at the time, tended to mean something more real, a point of identification that conveys the sense that we were from the same tribe, who had a lot of values that we share, and things they liked and disliked
But like so many things associated with these days, John Kerry did not get along, and moments of courage and grace in that committee would fade into memory when it became just another establishment figure a man not unlike George W. Bush, another called legacy enrolled Ivy League, another rich boy high school who was content to fuck in these institutions used as playgrounds, take Cs of his master, and participate in the work of the network of wealthy children leaving school Ivy League to form the interlocking network of people who continue to own and manage things.
This was the John Kerry who would vote to go to war with Iraq in 2003, and in his atrocious to unseat George W. Bush in 2003 campaign, said: If you do not believe ... Saddam Hussein is a threat with weapons nuclear, then you should not vote for me. "And so many people did not, and lost another rich jerk guy Skull and Bones, down to ignominious defeat with the equally atrocious John Edward. Kerry was disowned by his lack of courage in voting for a war that seems even more wrong, more immoral, more rotten than he had condemned in 1971 when the old boring as he, himself, turned they were sending young men who had once been off to a war that does not have why have never fought.
But mistakes never really impedes progress Men Bush or Kerry class, never reduce their arrogance or limits your options. Kerry became Secretary of State for Obama, a man who would think could stop wars just by having everyone loses interest; he is bored. But it is also quite inefficient, and so brought James Taylor, another moldy oldy emblem of dullness to Paris to sing a song cheesy ass in the air from the 60s to the French bureaucracy. It was unbearable.
But it is only one of a large number of left embarrassed about shit 60s, come again to remind those of us aged just how unbearable at times we were.
