You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Question: What do you do when something doesn’t work?
Answer: Fix it.
Q: And what if it still won’t work?
A: You throw it in the trash.
Q: But what if it’s not a thing but a person?
A: You fire ’em.
Q: But what if they’re one of the family?
A: Now the situation gets difficult. Really difficult.
Whenever I come across a blog that begins as an apology for not posting lately or even being on hiatus for a few months, several thoughts spring to mind.
The first is simply that there’s no need to apologize. We’re not short of reading material here in the WordPress network, for sure. Nobody’s holding you to those deadlines, and we’d certainly rather have you back with something good to report than to have you mindlessly keyboarding.
The second thought, though, has me reflecting on my own approach to blogging. Rather than constantly being fed by current activity, the Red Barn and its sisters draw on my deep files of writing and, more recently, photography. That’s allowed me to plan ahead and schedule their release in a timely manner, sometimes even spiraling pieces from decades ago and now.
But now that has me wondering. Is that cheating?
Or is it just another example of the maxim, “Age and cunning will beat youth and ability every time”?
In moving around over my adult years as I have, I’ll probably never know the destinies of many of the individuals who’ve shared my life at crucial points. In many cases, even their last names slip away.
But I’ve recently learned of how things turned out for one small circle. It produced two women attorneys (one a federal prosecutor), an OBGYN female doctor, a food wholesale executive now turned United Way director, a technical support field manager, a retired six-figure systems analyst … for starters.
Looking at the service club logo behind one of them in a news story photo, it’s difficult to explain how far we’ve come in the decades since the early ’70s. Hippie, eh?
But from what I hear, some of them still like to party.
A misunderstanding of the “turn on, tune in, drop out” motto popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966 likely blinded most of us to the extent to which the hippie movement was rooted in college campuses. That is, the “drop out” part was assumed to mean quitting one’s studies, even though Leary later insisted he meant it as a discovery of one’s unique nature and self-reliance, a mission that should have been central to the college experience itself.
Revisiting the era as it blossomed in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I see how much of its energy came from college students and the circles they supported – musicians, artisans and craftspeople, small-scale entrepreneurs of all stripes, social activists, dealers. Not just students, either, but hip young faculty and their families – all overlapping.
Essentially, it meant dropping a lot of old assumptions and embracing new experiences and values.
The reality, then, is that relatively few hippies dropped out of college, at least over the long haul. Talk all you want about Gypsies or vagabonds, few hippies stayed out on the road for long. Most remained grounded right in the center of the action.
“You’re more of a poet,” one of my favorite authors mentioned over coffee.
Huh? I had, after all, found publishers for two of my novels but none of my collections of poetry. So what if both novels were out of print, right?
Back in high school, when the writing bug hit me, I envisioned successfully working in fiction, poetry, theater, and journalism – successfully and famously, at that. That was way back before I discovered the reality of just how specialized each field can be, even before we get into the micro-subcategories, or how much rarified knowledge is required to navigate them professionally. Or how much competition there is across the board.
A first I felt my friend’s comment as a gentle reproach. There is always so much more to master, after all, as I tell myself after encountering another moving example of fine craftsmanship and deep insight.
As I returned to his comment, though, I picked up on another angle, the one that reflects a particular author’s sensibilities. He has me realizing that my basic outlook is as a poet, and that I carry that over into my novels.
Recently, another friend and I were discussing what we’d been reading, and he brought up Jim Harrison’s novels. He’d just finished seven in sequence. “He’s also a fine poet,” I said. But now, as I return to my bookshelves, I see an argument that Harrison is a novelist first, an outlook he carries over into the poems.
This is not to say that a writer has to be pigeonholed or can’t move among forms. After all, I could present a long list of fine poets whose essays I treasure. Many of them, as I noted in the Talking Money series at my Chicken Farmer I Still Love You blog, address the decidedly down-to-earth issues of income, budgeting, labor, possessions, time, wealth, and community.
Detailing what would place a writer in the poet category or else in the novelist line could provide an interesting roundtable discussion all its own. We’ll leave that for another time.
I will, however, suggest it arises in a state of mind – of seeing the world and of relating to those around us. And, I will add, I find myself far from writing or revising poetry when I’m working on a novel, simply because the fiction generates or relies upon another state of mind, even if the prose that results has poetic qualities.
Dear Reader: Are you aware that this is a social protest novel? Have you delineated the symbolism running through construction? Can you guess the antecedent novels that most influenced the Author in his quest of the Muse? What form will his next opus assume? Will he learn from his mistakes? Does he even perceive them? Will he renounce writing? Who will turn this into his next movie? What music will be selected to amplify it?
Please clip and mail to the Author. Your comments are always appreciated.
Thank you.
The Author.
~*~
To learn more about my novels, go to my page at Smashwords.com.
Another of the festering wounds of the ’60s and ’70s is the matter of illicit drug use. It wasn’t just hippies, actually, not once the troops in Vietnam turned to it, too.
It’s a troubling legacy on many fronts. For one thing, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world – much of it regarding drug traffic. In other words, there’s a demand for the product, and if you believe in a free market, maybe you need to listen.
I won’t go into the history of banning many of the substances that are now verboten, even if it suggests a political tradeoff in repealing the Prohibition. But the basis of declaring the substances illegal appears to have been made on reasons other than the ones officially proclaimed. Let’s be honest about tobacco and alcohol, including their ability to be taxed, in contrast anything you might be able to grow on your own. (This, let me add, is coming from a former homebrewer.)
On the other hand, the widespread, frequent use of mind-altering substances among the young – and I’m including tobacco, alcohol, and activity-inhibiting legal prescriptions – leaves me deeply concerned.
That extends to the parents who give their kids pot … or even allow them to sell it at school.
That, in turn, points to a divergence between hippies and stoners.
Faced with a decision on the legalization of marijuana, I’m not entirely sure how I’d vote. But I do know the current policy isn’t working – and is doomed to continuing failure.
Why can’t we have a frank discussion on the issue … without all the hubris?
We’ve already looked at music and literature from the hippie era, but now I’m wondering about movies. Yes, there were some that played straight into the stereotypes. Peter Sellars’ The Guru would head my list there.
But there were also others that took the issues and era seriously, even when they were comedies. Not all of them, I should emphasize, come from the ’60s or ’70s.
For a starter Top Ten list, let me propose:
Maybe The Graduate, Swept Away, 10, or Hippie Masala belong on the list. But it’s your turn to weigh in, savvy viewers that you are. What other nominees do you propose?
Sometimes as I listen during an open mic, especially (and oh how I hate that spelling!), I find myself focusing on a particular reader’s moralizing and editorializing or cliche or heavy reliance on simile rather than metaphor, and that soon sends me into a disturbing zone.
What happens is that I begin editing heavily with an imaginary thick black marker, striking through all of the offending words and phrases, and pretty soon I’m tuning into only to the blackened blocks in the air and tuning out everything else.
Admittedly, I edit myself heavily, and this is a central step in the creation of many of my own works. Admittedly, too, I’m projecting myself onto the poor writer onstage. Admittedly, in particular, I’m forgetting to be humble and open here, star that I might imagine myself to be.
Does anyone else experience anything similar?
In drawing on the hippie era, I realize how many different strands there were to the movement. Mine happened to lead into a yoga ashram, and though we were drug-free and celibate, we were also at the crossroads of a lot of the hippie action.
All of that’s reflected in my Hippie Trails novels.
As I ponder the era, I also realize DL’s journey in those pages could just as easily turned toward underground violence, had he joined one of the cells of bombers targeting military research operations in frustration, and that version of the story probably would have had commercial publishing cachet. But to me, it would have been dishonest.
More meaningful to my vision is the comment by Mari (River Mama 5) to an earlier posting here:
Amazing how many different views there are. … Hippies to me were quite different. To me, it gave birth to great changes in our society. … I am quite thankful for … the back to the land movement and the Calvary Chapels churches that came to exist during this time. I came to know Jesus Christ in one of them.
They also pioneered living a simpler life … showing compassion to others. Taking care of this gift that is our planet. The “hippies” in America, were great artisans. As a weaver, quilter, and knitter, I look back at this time and find myself inspired by the way creativity roamed free among this way of living.
This is the side I wish to nourish and celebrate. And thank you, Mari and all the others, for sharing.
Jnana's Red Barn 