"The
feeling
Stevie Nicks
|
Email Address:
|
!
"An
Elysian Field"
A "Gathering of The Tribes," akin to the now famous
'Human Be-In' held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park occurred in Los Angeles during
a small windowpane in time that (at least for the afternoon), brought together
the diverse factions of LA's Underpublic, then living in and around Echo Park,
the Silverlake district, and in what would come to be known as Mondo Hollywood.
The Elysian Fields are located near Dodger Stadium, where today, a good-samaritan
effort is under way to save LA's oldest park - 112 this year - (http://www.echopark.net/).
It was in this scenic local that the colorfully diverse, and ill-documented
"Gathering
Of Tribes" was held, and what follows is my: It Was More That Thirty Years Ago
Today look back upon that somewhat quixotic day in the sun.
At the time, I was living in Orange County near Laguna Beach,
and among my Underpublic associates were the angel-headed surf-empresarios now
referred to as "The Brotherhood of Eternal Love." So, the day before heading
north to play in the Elysian Fields I stopped by to visit my friend 'Jimmy The
Clerk' to pick up a powderbox full of Orange Sunshine party favor. Jimmy
suggested what a trip it would be to be the first Being at the Be-In, so, I took
his comment to heart, and set my alarm clock for 4 am - allowing me plenty of
time to arrive on the Elysian set before anyone else.
I arrived well before dawn, and was infinitely pleased to find
that I was indeed the first quasi-tribe member to light up a joint, and began
wondering about the dew covered grass in the early morning fog until I came upon
an old growth oak. I took this to be the perfect redoubt for my Be-In look-out
post, so, I spread out my Navajo blanket to observe the anticipated Tribal
arrivals. As I sat there contemplating the vast whatever I noticed a
gossamer-like figure strolling in my direction, and waved him over. As he came
closer, I discerned that the gossamer was actually a head-full of
Anglo-electrified hair, and that the Being was body-suited in a full set of
well-worn leathers with a Tibetan shoulder bag slung across his chest. "Whooah!"
said the Being, "I thought for sure I would be the first one here!"
"Hey -
let's call it a draw," I returned, and pulled out my powderbox to offer my new
acquaintance in the fog some Orange Sunshine Love Dust, which he quickly gobble-snorked
with uninhibited Tribal glee - "Whooah!" he refrained.
As we chatted away in the rising dawn, my guest told me that
he wasn't part of the LA set, and had driven down from 'The Haight' to scout
out the Tribal scene in Hollywood. I remarked that I periodically visited 'The
City,' and he gave me his address with a "Whooah! Stop By Anytime
Man!" and
prepared to Be-On his merry way. "On second thought," he added, as he pulled
out a plasmic vial from his Lama bag - "Here man - Whooah! Share this with your
friends," and handed me an ennie-meany little joint before disappearing into
the bushes. "Whooah!" I thought, staring at the paper twig before firing it
up, thinking that I'd be lucky if the ennie-meany thing had enough material to
get me high, much less my "friends." Match lit, I sucked in really hard on the
pin-like object, and nearly consumed the entire thing in one enormous
inhalation. The micro-second the smoke surged its way toward my unprepared brain
I knew I had terribly misjudged my blanket buddy's offering - this was an
ennie-meany joint full of DMT!
When I came back to reality, I was staring up and into the
sunshine faces of a dozen or more Tribal Gatherer's who had formed a rotating
OM circle around me! It was now late morning, and the Gathering Of Tribes had
obviously been underway for some time. I struggled to sit up, and I remember
thinking that being the first "Being" at the Be-In hadn't exactly worked out
the way I had anticipated. Navajo blanketless, I stood up to join the OM circle,
and one of the gathered commented that they thought I would never wake up -
OMMmmm.
The morning incensed into afternoon and a freely formed
diversity ruled the day. Hundreds of smiling Tribe People wondered about the
Elysian Field clad in their beady finery, macrame dresses, proto-tie-dyes, and
loin cloths, as pounding waves of Acid Rock spewed from not-much-of-a stage over
the vibrating heads and into the multicolored foliage. Many of the local groups
played the play that day, including (to the best of my fainted memory), The
Flamin Groovies, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, The Seventh Son, and The West
Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
Folk Singer Barry McGuire was on hand - but, due to the
condition his condition was in, he refrained from singing. Instead, and smack
dab in the middle of the Elysian Field, he covered his barely-clad self, and a
lovely young woman in a blanket (not my donated Navajo), and quite uninhibitedly
made Love-In with her. This is one of the few events that day to make the
national papers - and over the years, the photo documentation of Reverend Barry's
underblanket consummation has been reprinted in numerous publications.
Gypsy Boots, the Mojave Desert Vegemaniac with a blender, and
health food promoter well before his time ran around wearing a suit of animal
pelts, handing out his marvelous 'Energy Bars,' followed by lengthy excerpts
from his never-ending story - quite a guy Gypsy, and his grandiose, emotive
humor is sorely missed in the stoic vegan world of today. Among the many
intriguing characters I met that day was a blind poet-composer by the name of
"Moondog"
(Louis Hardin), dressed in his Viking garb, and who introduced me to a locally
blind group of psychedelic oil painters who had a small gallery near the
Silverlake District, where they exhibited their LSD influenced visions on
canvas. Along with his many avant-compositions, the late Moondog is the madrigal
composer of "All Is Loneliness," slightly revised by Janis Joplin, and
recorded by Big Brother and The Holding Company on their debut album.
By mid-afternoon my powderbox of Orange Sunshine give-away had
long gone into the minds of others, and I danced the dance of dancers gathered
all every which away in the California sun - patchouli oil, frankincense and
marijuana ruled the air - hundreds of watermelons were delivered by the
DiggerFree contingent and a psychedelic water melon toss ensued - the bands
played on into the late afternoon, and all was well and good in the Elysian
Field.
That is, until the Hell Bent For Leather motorcycle gang
Satan's Slaves decided that the Love-In was over! Without warning, the hairy minions
of Beelzebub roared out of the bushes on their screaming hogs, and rode over the
meadow spinning donuts in the sun, causing an immediate Scattering Of The
Tribes. The Beings at hand were panic stricken, and I ran to the shelter of my
Ford Fairlane and locked the doors - it was time to go home.
The AfterNote:
A few weeks later I was in San Francisco, so, I decided to pay
my Elysian DMT donor a visit in The Haight. My fuzzy haired friend was
chipper as ever and perfectly glad to see me, "Whooah!" he said when I told
him about my daze following his departure in the field. We went into his neo-Victorinan
kitchen to get something to drink, and when he opened the refrigerator there sat
a lab tray holding what looked like a hundred or so ampules from Sandoz
Laboratories in Switzerland! "Whooah! Here have a soft drink, we'll drink some
of that later," he gleamed - and then the door bell rang. Before we could get
to the door in tromps a group of wildly dressed long-long-long hairs, and my
friend introduced me. "Hey Hammond meet my friend John Cippolina and The
Quicksilver Messenger Service."
"Whooah!" and the rest is sweetly remembered history.
(C) 2001 Hammond Guthrie
Hammond Guthrie-Writer/nonobjective-abstractionist painter (Vorpal Gallery S.F.) lives in Portland, Oregon-where he recently completed a book of memoirs: AsEverWas (A Self-Descriptive Biopathy) from which the vignette "An Elysian Field" is taken. Over the years, and in various locales around the world, Hammond has been an acquaintance-if not out right co-conspirator-with numerous Beat/Neo-Beat artists and brave experimentalists, including Philo Farnsworth III, son of the man who invented television; Del Close, the late Director of Second City and Committee theaters; "Hube the Cube" Leslie; Allen Ginsberg; William Burroughs; John "Hoppy" Hopkins of the Arts Lab in London; and Jasper Grootvelt, mentor for the Dutch Provo activist group—to name a few. Currently he is at work on a second volume of vignettes: Biopathic Tendencies: (1976-1992). You may write to Hammond at writenow@spiritone.com.