Love fifty years ago

A dispatch from bewilderness

Fifty years ago, I saw the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Quicksilver Messenger Service at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium, both in San Francisco. It was during the Summer of Love.

Speaking of fifty years, in July 2017, five decades after the fact, 200 academics, gathered in Golden Gate Park to try to figure out what Hippies were all about. Thank God for academics.

It was also the 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone and the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, which was held in the Park on the Summer Solstice. A free concert featured surviving members of Jefferson Airplane.

Corporate and civic sponsors included the somewhat curious mix of American Express, Love Not Haight, the San Francisco Giants, The San Francisco Symphony, and the How Weird Street Faire.

Fifty years ago, we didn’t have cellphones, selfies, Swiffers, Skype, SnapChat or search engines. We also didn't have Artificial Intelligence, didn’t toggle between browser tabs, and did the writing ourselves for publications printed on paper, which were called magazines.

FWIW (which means For What It’s Worth, in case you don’t know because you’re as old as I am), I freelanced at Rolling Stone on and off for years.  That was before pink

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

hair, puffers, earbuds, headphones, and information architects. And way before my brain damaged debut.

Although I ghost wrote a few books before under names not my own, this is my first book with both my new brain and my own name. The brain was delivered in an instant by a drunk with a truck. Way faster than even Amazon drones.

The story takes place in my head. My new head. And captures the upheavals, aftermaths, key events and trends of the last few minutes. If you’re old enough, you may relate to that. As in you arrive at the fridge, but don’t know why. Then try to remember what you forgot.

Or you try something new. Like eating lunch, for example. You start by seeing the activity of eating with fresh eyes, as if you don’t know what to expect. You don’t. You really look at the food, the bowl, the spoon, and don’t know what they’re called. Or what they’re for.

Time and space dissolve, slide from first person to second, as pre- and post-truck, unspool present and past. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know the language, the country, the constellation. You are not what you contained, included, saw, heard. You are not direction, correction, intention, dimension. You contain nothing. You are not you. But other than that, everything’s fine.