Otherworldly Music

When I was fourteen, I asked my mom about hippies.

“Mom, were you a hippie in the sixties?”

She didn’t look up from her needlepoint. “What? Of course not.”

“But I thought everyone in the sixties was a hippie,” I said.

She glanced at me, arching her eyebrow. “No, everyone in the sixties was not a hippie. Don’t ask your father a question like that, ok?”

“Did you wear tie-dye?”

“No.”

“Did you like the Beatles?”

“Only when they were mop-tops. I didn’t like what they did later on, especially when that Yoko Ono” (she wrinkled her nose) “showed up and they all grew their hair long and started taking drugs.”

I had no idea who Yoko Ono was, but he/she/it sounded intriguing. “Were your friends hippies?”

She paused in her stitching. “Why are you asking all these questions about hippies?”

“We’re studying the Cultural Revolution in my History class.” I stared at my practical mother in her polyester pantsuit and envisioned her in a patchwork skirt and a wreath of flowers on her head, dancing barefoot in the mud, just like in the documentary we’d watched in class. I watched her needle pull thread through the fabric in the cross-stitching hoop. Perhaps she would have embroidered her bell-bottomed jeans …

“Well, I knew a few Flower Children. They’re different. They never wanted to hurt anyone,” she explained. “They were gentle and loved nature. They believed in love, not like those drug addicts that came later.”

“What happened to the Flower Children?” I asked.

She shrugged. “They grew up, I guess.”

I was silent then, wondering if flowers and love were of no interest to old people.

***

Another question, one that Mom can’t answer, occurred to me today, many years after the Summer of Love faded into the long Autumn of Survival: What names were worshiped then but languish unknown and excluded from today’s teen dreams? Who started it all and died in obscurity? Because it’s probably their ghosts I’m seeing on here on Haight Street, and only artificial tulpas of youthful Grace Slick, now white-haired and plump. Across from me, a mural of Janis Joplin looms over a group of kids in filthy jeans with rope-leashed pit bulls. No flowers in their hair, though a couple have Grandmother’s love beads and imitations of Uncle’s mohawk. They pass around cigarettes, and vodka in Coke bottles. Their vices are cheaper than drugs, which kill the dream more slowly.

America’s collective memory of teen dreams is crammed like an attic, full of ruffled shirts, ‘49 Fords, ramshackle rooms in unwashed bohemia, syringes and rolling papers, leather journals stinking of cigarettes, neon Ganeshes, combat boots under lace, and endless worn sleeping bags on concrete. And in San Francisco, where the grime is layered on streets, I could find, if I was inclined to chip away at it, the remains of flowers much older than I am–organic matter mixed with bum piss and exhaust, composting in concrete cracks.

—————-

The musical inspiration for this came from a kid playing guitar outside the cafe I was in.  Since he wandered off, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite new San Francisco bands, Foreign Cinema.

Photo by Mr. Skeleton.

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Red Rocks: 20,800 A.D.

Inich  crouched against the red monoliths and gazed into the empty enclosure.  It was pockmarked with millennia of use.  He’d heard once that the Dead Ones sang and danced in this enclosure.  Shortly after their arrival, his father had said that this collected and incomprehensible energy of “music” had called Inich’s people to this planet.  They knew it could be harnessed, but had not been able to touch it yet.

In the presence of three tribal elders, Inich had replied that the world could be arranged precisely and eaten with the heart, allowing anyone to touch the strange energy.

“So illogical!” The tribal elders’ words may have been admiring or depreciating.  To them, the bones and manuscripts of the Dead Ones were trifles in comparison to this world’s rich natural wonders.  Whoever they had been, they lost their inheritance and were now inconsequential.  When Inich wandered into their ruins of stone piles and metal beams, he occasionally found artifacts, but they rarely made sense.  He brought home certain stones and metal shards, arranging them on the floor.  His family watched his pursuits nervously, fascinated.  Inich frequently arranged things – words, clothing, food – in inexplicable ways that pleased him, rather than in the most efficient manner.  That’s when his father had spoken to the tribal elders, who seemed uncomfortable with the topic.  However, they explained that children manifested such behavior occasionally.  As long as they always displayed efficiency in public , no harm came from infrequent indulgence.  ”But efficiency comes first,” they cautioned, “not vague personal preference that cannot be justified.”

Inich understood.  His people had created a grand society capable of feats that lesser societies called “magic, and to uphold it, he must follow its rules.  He could do that.  But he came to the Red Rocks when he needed to explore or destroy his own rules.  At the Red Rocks, he felt for vibrations stored in objects, walls, and earth.

Inich was skilled at vibrational interpretation.  It was no magical act, just basic science of the mind.  But the ancient texts indicated that vibrational interpretation was different than “music.”  Music, he understood, drew up the heart into the mind and out through the mouth or the fingers.  It could produce tears with no discernible cause, and lift moods from low to high.  He had tried repeatedly, in solitude, to mix vibrations and produce mood alteration, but all he could do was create frustration at his own failure.  He took this as a small success.  After all, frustration was a mood.

Everyone knew that places held vibrations and the rocks held ages’ worth of music.  The healers could put their fingertips to an object and know who had it last, and which ailments that person suffered.  Easy.  Simple vibrational interpretation, something that every child could do at least a little.  Surely he could do the same here, dredging up the ancient songs and rhythms!  He pressed his palms and forehead against the rough red rock, but no song came.  He concentrated as the sun slowly crossed the sky, but he was not a gifted healer.  Such skills traveled through generations, and his mother had been a mathematician.

At noon, he didn’t bother to wipe away his tears but instead let them flow and mingle with the red dust.  Frustration again.  Was it really a small success, or a simple reaction to the stimulus of failure?  Inich was a skilled meditator and daily opened himself to emptiness and pureness of being.  He did not care for wilder states of mind, and so this outpour of grief and frustration seemed both novel and disturbing. He slumped against  the stones and tried to think, as orderly thought leads to calm behavior.  So he thought about the electrical conductivity of the water that rolled down his cheeks, and recalled that some of the Dead believed water carried other fluid energies.  They claimed that it carried the emotions, song, and visions.

He felt each tear travel down his face and pool in the hollow of his throat.  And with each tear, he heard something indescribable.  In his clear state of mind, each splash of water sent a shock of what could only be music coursing through his bones.  The vibration he knew, of course, but the notes as they were called, created shivers in his belly and tingled up his spine.  The tingling grew greater and more vivid, sending colors spinning into his vision.  He felt song explode from his throat as he tried to mimic words he’d never known before, and beneath the roaring waves of precisely-arranged sound, he sensed he was trying to express something too deep to quantify, something that the words only minimized.  Arranged just precisely, it communicated.  It immersed.  It filled his being.

And he knew he was dying as his brain and body struggled to process what they were not meant to enjoy, yet he didn’t care.  Couldn’t care, no more than one of the Dead could shield their eyes from their angels, only disintegrate in bliss.  With each note, the gray dust of his body mingled with the red dust of the monoliths.

The singer opened his eyes to the stars, fingers strumming his guitar, singing to the first song hunter.

***

Musical Inspiration: The Autumns – Pale Trembles a Gale (remix).  The Autumns are a fine California band, atmospheric, intelligent, and fully capable of rocking out.  Red Rocks refers to the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado, home of many wonderful concerts.  The photo is actually of Pike’s Peak, which is in the vicinity but not the same thing.  I just really loved that photo.

Photo “Sweet America” by Beverly and Pack

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At the corner of 17th Avenue and Broadway, a young man built an oasis into his condominium.  The tall corner window stretches floor to ceiling and a red snapping turtle swims lazily, turning to watch  puzzled passersby.  I peek through the window and see wide fountains and  housebound pools.  Succulent plants  stretch over  stones gathered from creeks, bookcases, and a long-abandoned guitar.  Life explodes in there, its momentum propelling it  under the door frame and through the cracks in the caulking.  It  strikes neighbors and pedestrians  with the urge to stand still and quietly overflow.  Girls walk by, on cell phones and amphetamines.  They  stumble  in their animated conversations, never sure what has shaken them.

Musical Inspiration: A Shoreline Dream – Peel You Open.  No real background to this story, except that I like the band.  They did a great song with Ulrich Schnauss, too.

Image “Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary” from Wikimedia Commons.

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The dream highway ran the narrow strip between the surf and the forest, and we drove alongside a ditch with its invasion of elephantine, doe-eyed marine creatures. I forget the species’ name, but I saw the flicker of their forked trunks under the low-hanging willows and pointed them out to Andy, who whipped his head around to watch them as we passed. The car roof had partially faded away, and we drove with the breeze twisting my hair to the sun. The road to Mt. Kamea was still half-formed, a product of an ancient tribe slaughtered or plagued out of existence. Occasionally the broken tree trunks would slice through the car and I’d shiver. The baby in the backseat squealed in glee, drops of laughter flying into the air and disappearing behind us in a smear of glitter. I chuckled. Babies always find disruption novel.

“What’s under the mountain, Mama?” asked Andy, shaking the baby’s liquid off in distaste.

“The ocean under the earth,” I replied, rounding a curve of glass bricks, the snowy mountain peaks gleaming. I imagined sinking knee deep into the soft, mild snow, and the permafrost covering Kamea forest’s green leaves.

“Can we swim in it?” he asked.

“We can. But we’ll probably dissolve after a few minutes.”

Andy was silent for awhile, toying with the baby’s rattle. In the rearview mirror, I watched his face transform in distraction, from infant to old man. His tiger-stripes were starting to show, darkened by the constant sun-exposure. He finally wormed his way between the bucket seats and turned to face me. “That’s what we want, isn’t it?”

I nodded, listening to his words weave into the the mountain peak’s hum. “It’s what we always want, son.”

***

Musical Inspiration: The Verve’s “Beautiful Mind.”  Seriously one of the most beautiful, chill songs I know that still has vocals.

Photo “Twisted Road” by Mikael Miettinen

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