starting April 12th
http://www.dead.net/...
I had my first experience of Joseph Campbell when at 19, I read his "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" in 1974. That year I attended my first of over 75 Grateful Dead concerts. A few years ago I read this from Campbell, and it rang in words as true as it had in my heart that night.
" I had had my first rock and roll experience at a performance of The Grateful Dead in Oakland (in 1986, he was 82 years old).... Rock music had always seemed a bore to me, but I can tell you, at that concert, I found eight thousand people standing in mild rapture for five hours while these boys let loose everything on the stage. The place was just a mansion of dance. And I thought, "Holy God! Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!" The principal theme of my talk was the wonderful innocence and the marvel of life when it recognizes itself in harmony with all the others. Everyone is somehow or other at one with everybody else. And my final theme was that this is the world’s only of answer to the atom bomb. The atom bomb is based on differentiation: I-and-not-that-guy-over-there. Divisiveness is socially based. It has nothing to do with nature at all. It is a contrivance and here, suddenly, it fell apart."
J. Campbell, "the Mythic Dimension" Harper Collins, p. 152, 1993.
"I was carried away in rapture. And so I am a Deadhead now."
"The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work" edited by Phil Cousineau, Element books, p.221, 1999.
From that night in 1974, my philosophy has been to dance and as I move feel the rhythm and unity of the Universe, and I have been delighted that message was what Campbell felt too. And will be a Deadhead ‘til I die.
My motto is Campbell’s, and every true Deadhead's..... "Follow your bliss."
"When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with."
- Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"