meshugginah posts

[Doug Millison]

My intention -- perhaps not clear -- was to put Jules' recent reminisences
in the context of sentimental recollection.

I appreciate your post. I was there, too, coming of age in the 60s, and I
have many fond memories of many of the things you mention.

The only thing I might quibble with is "we all KNEW we had a future" --
well, maybe. My youth also includes atomic bomb preparedness drills at
school (what to do in case of a nuclear attack, sort of the Sputnik-era
equivalent to the fire drill, for those who weren't there), and it was
pretty clear to me and my close friends that the bomb meant there may not
be a future at all, a thought that picked up momentum and depth as the
fragility of the eco-system -- and the long run trends working against it
-- became apparent. I also have a pretty clear memory of coming home after
school and finding my mother in tears because news of Kennedy's escalation
of the war in Vietnam meant that I would not escape having to face going to
war.

Regarding "sexual freedom" -- it's impossible to argue that a lot of
progress wasn't made during and since the 60s; it's also clear just how
sexist so many of those noble hippes were; Jules' writing drips of it, of
course.  Likewise for race relations -- lots of progress, although I still
wouldn't take my non-white wife and mixed race child back to live in the
Louisiana town where I spent the first 12 years of my life.

I agree that lower level drug dealers didn't carry guns back then as a
rule, in my experience, but  I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the drugs
back then really WERE a lot mellower and less threatening than now". LSD
was available in doses far stronger than what is generally sold now;
amphetamine was readily available and potent as ever; heroin was becoming
ever-more-present; cocaine was coming on strong.  It's true that people
weren't selling and smoking crack in the streets. Robert Stone's "Dog
Soldiers" sheds an interesting light on the seedier side of the hippie drug
scene. Zappa provides a good correctio, too.

Pynchon does a great job of communicating the goofiness and strangeness of
drugs,  as well as their alienating, paranoiac effects. And he certainly
traces out the multiple influences and manipulations behind events that
could otherwise be recalled through a golden haze of sentimentalit' Pynchon
systematically undercuts the possibility for that type of remembrance by
revealing the many motivations of individuals and institutions involved.
And didn't he write something about a "sentimental surrealist" in Gravity's
Rainbow?

Thanks,
Doug

At 11:33 AM 7/3/97, Greg Montalbano wrote:
>Doug sez:
>
>>There is a tendency to look back fondly on the '60s as a golden age,
>>through a haze of sentimentality.  On the ground, things were grittier than
>>that. Drug dealers as honorable outlaws, hippie youth as noble savages --
>>well, that's certainly one facet of a multi-faceted scene. Compare the
>>Haight in 1967 and 1972, just to pick an arbitrary but useful frame -- from
>>LSD to methamphetamine and heroin, and not very much noble in sight.
>>
>>Sentimentally yours,
>>Doug
>
>Really? I hadn't noticed.
>
>Between the merchandise-hype and the forced-nostalgia media-bullshit, I had
>the feeling that any vestiges of "nostalgia" for that period was pretty
>much dead and buried.  I think the only real reason anyone might feel a
>hazy fondness for that period is the fact that it WAS the time of their youth.
>
>Just as an aside to all the gen-x, gen-y, gen-whatevers on the list who may
>be less than impressed by all the tripe dribbled by us oldsters about that
>time period -- the main difference between then and now, the part that
>makes it all so hard for you to believe, the thing that actually allowed us
>to feel as if we were so happy and free and on the verge of something new
>and different...
>was the fact that we all KNEW we had a future ("future", at that time,
>still being a word and concept with positive connotations);  we were in the
>midst of (or had just passed) very encouraging events involving civil
>rights, sexual equality, (and let's not forget sexual freedom -- you
>wouldn't BELIEVE what that was like), and personal involvement in
>preserving the planet -- anyone who wasn't looking too closely (and why
>would we?  we were young) could easily imagine the trend continuing
>indefinitely.
>However, there were always the less-impassioned, more distanced witnesses
>trying to warn us that it might not be this way (check out, for the record,
>Frank Zappa and the Mothers' WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY -- recorded
>"early in 1967 as the result of some unpleasant premonitions...").
>
>And by the way, the drugs back then really WERE a lot mellower and less
>threatening than now -- few if any of the neighborhood dealers carried
>weapons (or felt the need to! -- I know, it all sounds like science
>fiction...)  ...the point I'm trying to make is that we were coming from a
>very SAFE, SECURE background, with no major threats to our existence other
>than the draft, which in many cases served as an impetus for many of us to
>grow up fast & get extremely creative in our attempts to get out of it.


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com