Flashback

I miss the 60's. Or, maybe it's who I was in the 60's that I miss. While there was much wrong with my life, decisions I made, and feelings I carried about myself, I also had an energy and idealism that made each day an exciting adventure. I loved the "summer of love" 1967, the music, the clothes, the passion for politics. I was 16 and felt in the middle of it culturally and on the fringes intellectually and politically.

My home, at the time, was a war-zone. It was the last 2 years of my father's drinking and life in the house was far more chaotic and violent than life outside the house. When I walked out the door each day I walked into freedom. Freedom to think, freedom to listen to the music I loved, freedom to go where I wanted to go, freedom to be who I was. I was more afraid for my life at home than I was in the streets. The sense of safety I felt outside my home gave me the confidence to wander and roam and put myself in positions that were not the smartest or safest places to be, but were exciting and stimulating and creative. Yet, as I look back, I was never beaten out in the world, I was never manipulated as much out on the streets as I was at home. I wasn't lied to as much on the streets as I was at home. Outside was a safer place to be even in this unsafe world.

There was a soundtrack to this period of my life. It was alive, vibrant music that had a driving energy and a salve for the pain and rage that plagued me. Sgt. Pepper was released in 1967 and was the first music I heard that had a spiritual element to it that wasn't Judeo-Christian in nature and message. There were snippets of philosophy in Within you, Without you and A Day in the Life, hope in With a Little Help From My Friends, Fixing a Hole and Getting Better, empathy in She's Leaving Home. It was rich in sound and instruments I had never heard in rock and roll and it all just expanded my mind. There was more than just the Beatles that powered me on. I loved the anti-war music of Country Joe and the Fish, the flower power music coming out of San Franciso, Flowers in Your Hair, Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs. I could go on and on. Music was all I had at that time. Music and books. Without them I think I would have died of loneliness.

The 60's were the most painful and most joyous time of my life. It was the last time in my life I felt free from the need for "security," that illusory dream we Americans engage in. Buying into that dream is enslaving. It has enslaved me. But that's another essay on another day. For now, I will always feel warmth and comfort when I listen to the music of the 60's or have memories of the 60's.