Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I think it's the third essay and it's called"Blame It on the Sixties"
it's thesis is that there was maybe a short window when everything was
together, when the "heads" were influential, that by the late Sixties,
the impetus has shifted, when "heads" became" hippies" and teenage
consumerism, or better, psychedliec consumerism reared its ugly
head--that's the essay where I go into the distinction betyween
hipsters, beatnicks, heads, hippies and dopers, where I quote from Kip
Cohen who used to manage the Fillmore East, whre I quote from Patricia
Kennealy (Morrison) about Woodstock.

Speaking about Kelpfer, you talk to him? My how he's risen in the
rcord biz dfood chain. Too bad you didn't talk to Danny Goldberg who's
a survivor if there ever was one.

Sidetrip: I"m amused that The Well has been sold (taken over by)
Salon.com---if they wanted to be New YOrk Magazine/New Yorker under
Tina Brown, they could have done no better than to get involved with
salon.com---they're entirely too hip for me, used to read it, got
turned off by their incessant trendiness, is it just me? I'bve been
tempted to to into that discussion group but I think they'd just yell
at me. As it is, it seems that they're all bored with what I have to
say in my own little area and now they're rabbiting on about this new
piece of gossip---what think you?
  

    
I think you should bring your thoughts re Salon into that discussion
group where it would make some waves.  I don't know Salon from shalom
and have checked into the topic to find out. I'm not illuminated.  As
for the drying up of your topic, it billowed and rampaged along in a
most interesting way, I thought, for a very long time.

Now I remember where I heard that Blaming-it-on-the 60s title--from my
early reading of your convo. Now that I have your book and I'll check
it out myself. 

I'm deep in Media Conference #1679 on the US/NATO bombing. Great
urls.The internet at its best I think.
  

    
I've taken your advice and dropped the big one into that placid little
pond mincing about Salon.com. It should be good for a laugh. Actually
since it's just you and I talking here (it appears) it seems that the
problem with inkwell.vue is that it only has a very, very small
audience if you start reading who's saying what. Which is ok I suppose
but not what I had in mind. Oh well, at least we've had a chance to
chat a bit on line with whoeverinhell else looking in.

I think that whenyou do read TNB, especially "Blaing It on the
Sixties" you'll get this acid rush of presque or deja vu---our books
just about touch in their mmphasis. I just try to cover ehwe aterfront
so to speak and show how that swing period between Woodstock and
Alatmont and the year thereafter changed, and what changed, how culture
became masscult, and what the ramifications of that have been through
the years to having a Teenage Nervous Breakdown which is what we as a
culture are suffering from as we lurch into the next millenium. I've
been reading your book piecemeal, dribs and drabs, paragraphs here and
there and get the picture. As I said, I was never a big Deadhead though
I did meet Mister Jerry at a pivotal time in my life. I guess I was
just an east coast head and I thought of the Dead as being
quintessentially qest coast or more p[eculiarly Bay area. Now I would
have moved to the Bay area in the late Seventies had I not gotten a job
with CBS records in advertising, but that's another story, if I had
moved to the Bay area, I wouldn't be writing you now, that's for sure,
nor would I have written TNB or the novels inbetween. I don[t live my
life as coulda,woulda shoulda. I'm still trying to live in the
"is-ness" of  being, practicing stuff I picked up from Cat's Cradle,
"as it was supposed to happen", know what I mean?
  

    

only twenty five people have visited this morning.  THe past some of the
most prolific posters on the well have visited.  Maybe you are not alone.
Then again, maybe you are.
  

    
you're all alone. No one's reading. Trust me
.
  

    

they will be when you're interviewed, Andrew.
  

    
YOu make it sound like an invitaiton to feed Mike Tyson
  

    
Jesus, Cynthia, you really are just too much for words! Nice piece in
the NY Times, I think I'll not come over to your apartment for a drink.
  

    

You tell everyone here that if they have writer's block they should *Grow up
Already!*  You tell all the well people who have been here for years how
they should view their acquisition by Salon.  I left your own topic, where
you were declaiming your insulting views on feminism, because it's your
topic and you have a right, but please, you want us all to be gape-jawed in
wonderment at your pronouncements?  Think again, suicide boy.
  

    

No, <plum>, you should be _happy_. Read his post again.
  

    
Have I missed something in the Times?
  

    
ditto Cynthia--can you url it?
  

    
I thought of this conference when I saw this article:
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/lsd01.htm
(this will only be there for 7 days).  From the first few paragraphs:

Suit accusing CIA of LSD poisoning comes to an end

Reuters

NEW YORK -- A jury Friday ruled against the estate of an artist who said
he was driven mad by a clubfooted CIA agent who slipped LSD into his drink
in 1952.

In a case involving a dead plaintiff, a dead defendant and a dead judge,
the suit revolved around the activities of the late Sidney Gottlieb, head
of the CIA's Cold War efforts to control the human mind.

...

The case had been waiting for 16 years to go to trial.  If you were on the
jury, looking into the CIA's activities; and the plaintiff, defendant, AND
the judge all died, wouldn't you rule in their favor very quickly?
  

    
YES!  What a find. I'm writing the intro to the paperback right now
and maybe it will find a way in. I didn't know about the clubfoot. 
Central casting.  From all I've read, the story is totally credible.
What's interesting is that CIA folk were all over Europe, especially
Paris, in the early 50s, many hobnobbing with artists and writers (out
of which came the Congress for Cultural Freedom).  This is a social
fact with political implications that you would expect to have turned
up in serious novels and films.  Instead, only the spooks working the
third world beat are the ones who've made it into the literature.
  

    
The clubfoot turned out to be instrumental in helping the artist find
out that this man was CIA.  

Interesting spin in the writing, after fifteen years of the War on
Some Drugs:  "LSD Poisoning"; artist "driven mad" by a single dose.  I
suppose "Artist blames CIA dosing for twenty years of surrealist
paintings" sounds more like something The Onion would write.
  

    
The San Jose Mercury News printed the AP story by Jerry Harkavy about Carol
and "Sweet Chaos".  Nothing new for those following this topic, but a nice
picture of Carol at home. I see we have the same housekeeper...
  

    
Got a URL for that, jberger?
  

    
It's at <http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/svlife/docs/dead9.htm>
  

    
thanks!
  

    
re the clubfoot story: it wouldn't have been a single dose of LSD.
Could have been BZ (see Ch 5 in Sweet Chaos) or DMZ, or if LSD then
laced with god knows what. And you're right. A "single" dose?  
I like the AP story because it shows Coby looking up at me with the
loving eyes that only a dog can muster. 
  

    
By the way, I just read there's a Gothic magazine out of the West
Coast called MK-ULTRA!!
  

    
Bill was one of my hero's too... relating to an earlier thread
His book gave me much insite to NYE shows and one person in particular
always reminding folks not to forget the parsley... :-)

I was teaching CPR to a group of folks for BGP the day his death was
announced.  Several of us drove over to Marin, past his house to pay tribute
to a man, that truly cared about the music.  I think he would be appalled at
the idea of a *new* Filmore in Denver.  While he was a marketeer, up there
with the best of them, I found his scrupples endearing to the fans, and
tried not to make reality too plastic or odd.
  

    
It would be good to get Candace in on this, because of all the people
I talked to about Bill Graham she was the one who had the least
patience for his monomania, or moments of monomania, and his need for
admiration, etc.  But even she seems to feel a real fondness when she
rememebers certain moments thogether, like breaking out the the "stash"
(the confiscated booze) togehter after New Year Eve's shows and
running the night backwards for each other. heir mutual love of "show,"
of shows.
  

    
We could probably get a guest membership for Candace if she'd like to join
us.
  

    
She's busy moving out of that house of hers, so I doubt if she'd sit
down to this right now. I'll mention it next time we talk.Actually she
may be out here in around ten days.
Re Bill Graham, I always thought of him as the r&r counterpart to Joe
Papp--similar strengths, similar weaknesses.  But being in the pop
culture business, he was never taken with the same seriousness.  There
was no Shakespeare in the Park for Bill though he tried as much with
the Lincoln Center shows in the early 70s.  Who was the "talent"? The
WHO?