Tag: Boho

HIPPIE, HIPSTER, OR WHAT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 12 Comments

An identity debate is raging in some corners over who is or isn’t a hippie versus a hipster. It goes back in part, I suppose, to the defining line between hippie and beatnik, even though I could point to many points where they blur together.

For me, the bigger question invokes the world of those individuals who don’t feel at home in the mainstream but rather gravitate in a bohemian direction. Yes, there have always been those who go out of their way to look the part of the movement … and those who just are. With hippies versus hipsters, I might draw a line in a person’s stance when it comes to non-violence and equality and the like, but there were always degrees when it came down to specific instances. These days, in my reexamination of the hippie movement, I keep arguing that hippies came – and still come – in many varieties.

That’s part of the reason I find myself smiling when I hear the theme for the local arts and technology charter school’s prom: Victorian Steampunk.

Sounds cool to me. And like a lot of fun. Besides, it really is a sweet group.

Sure beats ours back in the mid ’60s.

The hippie era, I might add, had a thing for Victorian style anyway. Even if we didn’t put clocks in our stovepipe hats.

 

LITERATURE ACCOMPANYING THE HIPPIE EXPERIENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 25 Comments

A shelf of books was often part of the hippie scene, and I suppose many of the novelists and poets were technically beatniks, but they shaped our journey as well. I think, especially, of Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Richard Farina, and Gurney Norman, as well as the German Herman Hesse of an earlier era, and Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Test Acid Test. There were also many non-fiction works of influence, including the Whole Earth Catalog, and the Lama Foundation’s Be Here Now.

Which authors and volumes would you add to the shelf if you were trying to give a fuller picture of the experience?

I suspect there are some fine reads that need to be recovered, and blatant self-promotion is also welcome.

This book swap’s open!

SPIRITUAL ENCOUNTERS FROM THE HIPPIE ERA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Nowhere do we see a bigger before-and-after contrast of the hippie impact than when looking at mainstream religion in America.

The idealized smiling family of father and sons in suits and ties and mother and daughters in their hats, dresses, and heels – maybe even with gloves – was once a common image with the church and steeple in the background. But that has become a rarity, and even at funerals and weddings the dress is likely to be casual. Intact families are a minority – weekends are often custody matters – and going to church or temple is a low priority.

Before we blame it all on hippies, we need to look at other influences from recent decades, including the elimination of blue laws, and the expansion of weekend job demands and children’s soccer leagues and the like.

Still, I see a few glimmers where the hunger many hippies felt for a spiritual connection has taken hold.

First is the practice of meditation, which is no longer considered exotic. Even health providers are urging people to turn to it daily, maybe not as a religious pursuit but at least for letting go of some of the daily stress.

Second, yoga studios are everywhere. It may not be with the strong spiritual teaching I feel is essential, but it is another way of opening ourselves to inner awareness and peace.

Third is a recognition of the feminine side of the holy, including the Jewish and Christian traditions. For that matter, think of all the women pastors and rabbis now found across the continent. Others will point to Native American, Wiccan, and other teachings with feminine components that now proliferate.

Fourth is a sense that faith is not an obligation, to be performed as a social requirement, but rather a relationship that includes hands-on, sensory experience. As the axiom went, “If it feels good, do it,” extends to religion this way.

As a fifth facet, I’ll point to outdoors encounters with their Transcendentalist streak. God, as you’ll be reminded, can be felt keenly when you’re close to nature.

Look closely and you can see the hippie influence working. There’s a desire for community and caring, on one hand. And the mega-churches with their rock-concert emotions, on the other, as well as the praise songs with their repetitions function more like Hindu chanting (kirtan) than the motets and hymns of Christian tradition.

But there are also examples of shoots gone astray. I keep thinking of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple and its cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, especially.

As we kept watch in the ashram, the warning was this: “You’re on a false trip.” No matter how exciting it might have felt at the moment, there was always the danger of ego-based excitement rather than a deepening surrender to the Holy One.

For me, then, the most crucial part of the legacy is in having a circle of others committed to the practice, to encourage one another and keep each of us on course, as best we can. This form of discipleship is rather communal, actually – and far from what I saw growing up in the pastor-and-sheep model.

So what are your spiritual encounters these days? And how’s the “inner hippie” responding?

SOUNDS FROM THE HIPPIE ERA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 16 Comments

For many, as we’ve already noted, the hippie experience revolved around its music. Just think of Woodstock and the many ways it was the explosion that spread the movement across America and the globe.

Each of us likely has a musician or band we most identify with the era. Maybe it’s tracing the Beatles in their evolution to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and beyond, including the individual paths after the breakup, or the Rolling Stones or, of course, the Grateful Dead.

I think, too, of Crosby, Stills, and Nash whenever I turn to the jam sessions depicted in my Hippie Drum novel.

Personally, it’s Sly and the Family Stone, Jethro Tull, and the Incredible String Band who most embody the hippie sound in my ear. Maybe with Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, and Leo Kotke or Leon Redbone thrown in. Whatever happened to those folks around me who introduced these musicians, anyway?

Whether you were there or came along much later, there are probably a few favorites of your own. Were they at Woodstock? Did anyone else even know of them? What memories do they stir up? Please fire away in the comments section here!

I’m hoping we got that list of top musicians started yesterday. But there’s more than a list to consider. Get busy. Fire away. And we’ll listen.

WHAT KIND OF HIPPIE WERE YOU? OR ARE YOU TODAY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 15 Comments

Maybe it was a New York Times Op-Ed piece at the time that pointed out six or more levels of maturity or psychological development in the adult population, and then saw hippies as falling into three of them. One may have been second from the bottom, that is, just going along for the ride, while the other two were closer to the top, probably reflecting the appeal the movement had for many college students and graduates and/or social activists (think antiwar/anti-draft, for starters). I found it interesting there was a gap in the middle.

I suspect this is one of the reasons it’s difficult to define “hippie” clearly – we covered a wide spectrum of individuals and motivations. Just listen to the argument today over “hip,” “hipster,” and “hippie” for something similar. These days, I’m leaning more toward something along the lines of the “boho” term that would embrace beatnik and hippie as continuations of a stream of counterculture, but that’s still in embryo as far as my thinking.

What I am curious about today is how we’ve grown and matured along the way. On one hand, Robert Bly’s Iron John took aim at the “soft male,” the sensitive hippie guy, who now needed to gain some inner strength and responsibility. 

On another, I recall reading the singles ads back when I was searching and coming across more than one self-proclaimed mid-40s “flower child” who was still clueless and passive, and my reacting, “It’s time to grow up,” even as I intuitively backed away. And that was two decades ago.

But it does seem to me there’s a wide stream of individuals continuing in that Bohemian mode. In my case, I’m still a poet and writer who’s moved into the radical Christian tradition called Quaker. And I have a beard, not that it’s necessary.

As for the rest of you, ‘fess up. The comments section is open!

WHAT IF THERE HAD BEEN NO VIETNAM ENGAGEMENT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Oh, if John Lennon had only penned this one! Just imagine, what if there had been no Vietnam engagement?

What if John Kennedy had not been assassinated and had been free to curtail or even dismantle the CIA?

What if the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower had warned of just a few years earlier had not been called into high gear for yet another round of (highly profitable) business? Would it have been brought under control and reduced greatly, with all of the investment directed elsewhere?

What if the Red-baiting bluff had been called and we’d instead seen Vietnam as a civil war rather than a Communist intrusion into the “free world”?

There would have been no lingering black cloud over America like the one that continues to fester. Even without the antiwar movement, I suspect, the nation would have been bitterly divided by the fiasco that ensued in Southeast Asia.

Would our economy have been unencumbered to grow the way Japan’s did at the time we were saddled with the costs of fighting or the accompanying steep inflation? Or the costs we’re continuing to pay in debt interest and veterans’ benefits?

And, oh yes, maybe there would have been no Hippie Trails novels, either.

Just imagine. And then add a comment on your vision. Music optional.

THIS SECRET SOCIETY OF READERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

One of the more baffling questions for just about any author, I suspect, is the one that asks, “Who are your readers?”

Yes, I know about genres and their core audiences – Chick Lit, aimed at unmarried females in their 20s; Romance, middle-age women; Sci-Fi, geeky males; Young Adult, well, it’s self-explanatory. I even know that commercial radio programmers could target their listenership to hit an average, say, of 24.7-year-old women in the office.

For a poet, though, or the novelist working outside common genres, this question becomes more problematic. I can imagine those I hope will find the work appealing, but the reactions often turn up elsewhere. I’m thinking of a writer who hoped her work would speak to her friends, only to hear them say, “I don’t read books,” as if it’s a badge of honor. (Oh, for shame!)

What that suggests is that rather than expecting a boffo bestseller, we writers might envision a much smaller-scale enterprise – connecting with readers one-on-one, as an underground understanding. Let it be private and personal, then. Our own quiet conversation.

Whether my Hippie Trails novels find their appeal more for those who lived through the era or among younger readers undergoing similar searching is still taking shape. I would hope both. But I am enjoying the feedback I’m receiving, from wherever.

It’s not the big-business Manhattan operation I once dreamed of or the San Francisco counterculture success, either. But here we are, connecting, in our own little underground society. Little do the others know what they’re missing now, do they?

WHAT A YEAR THIS HAS BEEN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

While this was the year I officially retired, what really happened has me once again (or should I say finally?) wearing my novelist’s cap, with four ebooks published at Smashwords since May and more planned ahead. What a relief it is to see these in public at last, rather than sitting forever in filing cabinets in the face of an increasingly difficult traditional book publishing industry. (Hooray for the ebook upstarts!)

The first half of the year included a rash of poetry acceptances in literary journals around the world, including three in India. In fact, in sheer numbers, it was my best year ever, even before I had three presses accept poetry chapbooks for their offerings. (Please stay tuned.) That’s always an honor and something of a breakthrough for me.

On a lower note (pardon the pun), I joined the baritone section of the Boston-based Revels Singers – performing with Ciarin Nagel of the Three Irish Tenors in June and Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary in September – on top of the choir’s weekly workouts in Watertown. Apart from the rush-hour part of the commute, it’s been a heavenly experience.

I can also claim some pride in my major contribution to the garden efforts – the many black bags of seaweed gleaned from Kittery Point, Maine. Rachel was especially impressed by the way the mixture repelled our notorious garden slugs, even before we got to its impact as a high-quality fertilizer. More will be on the way.

And, yes, I’m still Quakering madly.

Did I say retired? A better description is that I changed careers. At last.

And looking ahead, as we open new calendars, this hope: May we all have a happy and prosperous New Year!

SCARF ‘ROUND THE NECK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

At the first college I attended, nearly all of the writers wore scarves. I don’t think it was a conscious decision to create a group identity, but the school, small as it was, had an excellent writing program. As a commuter campus, we wound up hanging out in what was called a cafeteria, not that I recall a real food line. But the round table (as a roundtable, at that) was open, and maybe the scarves were initially just a way of finding a circle of kindred spirits.

In a way, the strip of cloth may have served like those reminders of guilds and monastic orders of ancient times and their echo in modern clerical and academic vestments. We weren’t yet hippies, with all of their expressive sartorial flair, but it was on the horizon. Think of it as a badge of self-identity and distinction.

In the years since, as I’ve come to appreciate the way scarves can add a layer of comfort through a northern winter, I keep recalling that circle and our aspirations. A few went on to earn literary recognition, but some of the others were also immensely talented and yet have vanished from sight.

Come to think of it, so have many of my own favorite scarves – especially the ones my new stepdaughters latched onto when they came into the picture.

Any way I look at it, a scarf still beats a necktie as an item of apparel. Remind me to wear one next time I pose for the back-of-the-book jacket portrait.

Oh, here we are, back to those aspirations, aren’t we?