I just finished reading Donovan's new autobiography, and now am starting Timothy Leary's Design for Dying, a book he wrote as he was readying himself for the great adventure of dying. Leary makes an interesting observation about the 60s quest: "In the 1960s, we promiscuously started raising questions about cosmic consciousness and alternative realities and declaring God lost and found: in a pill, a grain of sand, love, an Eric Clapton guitar solo. It wasn't just our naivete that infuriated the 'grown ups.' The big philosophic questions had been long repressed and here we were getting all silly about them. To the conservatives, the questions had been filed away as answered by murky, watered-down, mainstream religious dogma. Understand, the currently powerful reactionary religious passions that we would stir up with our cultural shock tactics had yet to be unleashed. For the 1960s middle-class professional, it was more a case of having a satisfactory schoolbook answer available for that rare instance when the question of God and meaning would happen to come up. And to the Left, such questions were a distraction from issues of material suffering, power dynamic, and inequality." (Timothy Leary, Design for Dying, page 14-15)
In Donovan's book, I found this fascinating story about his meeting with political folk singer Phil Ochs. The setting is 1969 at the height of Donovan's popularity after the release of his Greatest Hits album. He is in California at the end of a tour and one of the Smothers Brothers is throwing a party for him: "Before I returned home, Tom Smothers threw a party for me at Robert Redford's house. The guest list was as long as the press party with more faces. Tom took great delight in playing the 'Barabajagal' single at full volume on the huge sound system, asking his guests who they thought the singer was. Everyone got it wrong. At the height of the excitement the crowds parted for a wild-looking chick with blazing eyes. She stuck her face close to mine. It was Janis Joplin. 'Just wanted to see what you looked like, Donovan!' And she was gone. Janis had gone back to the bedroom where all the musos were hiding from the 'Hollyweird' crowd. At the poolside there was a raffle and the protest singer Phil Ochs won it. Everyone cheered as he went up to the microphone, but he was not pleased. He gave us all a tongue-lashing about Vietnam and the senselessness of Hollywood, this party, me included. Raising the huge basket of fruit he had won, he tossed it into the pool and left in disgust. Of course, he was right, but the party went on regardless. I climbed the rock waterfall high above the party (feeling a little like I also had been thrown away) and plunged into the pool to join the fruit." (Donovan, The Autobiography of Donovan, page 291-292). Not really any comments, except that both portray that tension between the artistic person's spiritual heartfelt and the politically aware motivations. The Donovan book I can readily recommend because I just finished it-- it would even make a great movie or documentary. The Leary book I'm just starting, and it's very thought provoking (Leary on his own death, interesting? DUH!) =-=-=-=- om===-- Nick ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
