I miss the experimentalism and spiritualism of the good ol’ hippie days.

It used to be that everybody was either on a fast or meditating or Rolfing or tripping or getting head or going homosexual or something all the time. People call it the “60’s”, but really what I know was the “70’s”, and that’s probably more accurate for the experience that was inspirational to me. Though I was hardly old enough to get the full 60’s experience up close, still I got it, even in Mississippi, ESPECIALLY in Mississippi, if you really want the full dose of early ‘60’s racial politics also, and it was violent, revolutions per minute. Riots were literally a way of life, first racial, then anti-war, but mostly anti-draft. The long hair hippie thing really didn’t hit with full force and full extent until about 1970, anyway, and it was mostly drug-oriented and superficially political at first. Woodstock occurred in 1969, remember, and we were out of Vietnam by 1973. Still ‘the Movement’ carried its weight until at least 1980, when long hair became more of a symbol for rednecks and heavy metal ‘hair bands’ than hippies, who, losing their hair anyway, either went straight or low-key. Meanwhile a new generation of non-conformists ‘went punk’ or listened to alternative ‘college rock’ or reverted to hard-core Grateful dead hippie nostalgia. The music and other cultural aspects were really what it was all about all the time, anyway. Nothing can compare with the 60’s and 70’s for that, and I doubt ever will, though I keep listening.

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