Friday, August 14, 2009

Are You Experienced?


Credit: John Dominis./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Get In Where You Fit In

A scruffy young man perches with his guitar.

At Woodstock, wrote LIFE, the hippies created "dwellings of every description - geodosic domes covered with plastic, tepees, lean-tos tossed together with dead branches and straps of clothing, and even a tree house."



I was growing up in an ultra-conservative South Africa at the time, where longhairs were vilified and sometimes beaten-up and their heads shaved ... we were envious of the perceived 'freedoms' that Americans and Europeans enjoyed.

When the movie arrived, many went to see it tripping ... Freaks would defiantly light-up joints during the show ...

... but, when you cut through all the hype - wherever you were in the world then, whether you did drugs or not, the thread that bound us together was the MUSIC ... it still binds us today ...

Music is our common shared Experience.






If you can just get your mind together
Uh-then come on across to me
We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea
But first, are you experienced?

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful


.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, it was the music. I am 55 and it was not only the music but the fundamental emotions that the music evoked in all of us...and as you say, STILL evokes in us. Music (and certain sounds) can reach us in places that words can't even touch (not that many of the words weren't equally as powerful). Music cuts us to the quick and leaves and indelible imprint that can be triggered decades later when we once again hear a certain song or sound. Music is one of the most powerful forms of imprinting... a bit like smell.

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