Tonight, the Clown Prince of the Counterculture, Wavy Gravy will celebrate his 70th birthday with a benefit concert for the Seva Foundation at Berkeley Community Auditorium. Mayor Tom Bates has declared the week of 5/14-5/20 as Wavy Gravy Week and we will be serenaded by members of the Grateful Dead and others, including special guests...
Tonight I will travel the short distance to Berkeley, CA (a town I lived in as a child, and a place very special) to celebrate the 70th birthday of a grand old man, or should I say the oldest kid I ever met... For he still bubbles with the enthusiasm and infectious humor of a person very much younger and wiser than I have become.
We will celebrate a life of contribution, a life devoted to being the mirror of humor through which we can see ourselves as we are, and in that reflection see what we could become. This has not been a life led to satisfy the senses of one Hugh Romney, but one led to serve others and work to perfect the soul of one Wavy Gravy.
I have been reading and commenting on some threads over at Alternet, about reclaiming the legacy of the 1960's from the hateful spin doctors of the Right. I was impressed by the article written by Astra Taylor that presages her coming book, especially her point about providing services and contributions to the larger community. I was at once moved to comment, even more so as I read some of the comments by GenX, Y and Zers...and by some of the white knuckled so-called ex-hippies...
I am not a young man anymore, and good riddance... One of the faults of youth, that all fall prey to, is the idea that you are feeling and thinking something new...all yours, never been done and all that...unique and "new". Well, nothing is new, we are still fighting the same damn battles that Socrates fought, that Jesus and Buddha fought and in the larger scope of things, in the struggle for the perfection of existence, for the higher plane of civilization and humanity, that is as it should be.
The 1960's were not about sex 'n drugs and rock and roll, although they were all good...No, the Sixties were about a new awareness of the power and the powerlessness of humanity, as like gods with feet of clay we had lessons to learn if we were to continue to survive on this planet. We had attained the ability to end all life on the Earth, but not the wisdom to deal with that power, nor the foresight and humility to see where it would lead. The unintended consequences of the Industrial Revolution are everywhere we look, from the structure of society, to the shape of our cities, to the health of the biosphere.
No, the 1960's were about alternatives to the onslaught of the corporate world in which we find ourselves unwilling, perhaps unknowing, pawns in a game that can't help but end badly, sooner rather than later at the rate we are going. And the beat goes on...
As with all things still resident in living human memory, they ain't over yet...1960's, if you can label a lifestyle with a decade, still live, just as WWII will not pass until the last person whose life was shaped by it is buried in the ground. Hell, the Great Depression just ended around my house last year with the passing of my grandmother. No longer will we save the all the old Christmas wrapping, and the door knobs will not bulge with rotting rubber bands, saved for "good". Recycle it before it rots!
And so tonight we will gather to celebrate a birthday, but not to just to remember. The past is prologue. Further, not looking back, the windshield is in the front of the bus...Always reaching beyond our grasp with one arm and dragging humanity, kickin' and screamin', toward a better world with the other, knowing that is why we exist.
And were gonna listen to some great music, new and old, acoustic and electric, the poetry of a couple of generations...and we ain't goin' anywhere soon, so get used to it...See we started a discussion about 40 years ago, and the outcome is still up in the air, unless you believe that GWB will get the last word...
NOT!
Yippeee! We go!
RGJ/Dallas112263
If Nobody is not running in 2008, lets get Al Gore...