II Engendering

The 1960s were—and are remembered as—a splash of color in world culture. They were marked by revolution, celebration of life and love, of “togetherness” in naked expression, in all senses of the term. Psychedelic experimentation and importing of Eastern spiritual philosophy created such an awakening that people were left in such a new and uncharted space that many didn’t know what to do with it. For some, nothing was taboo anymore. Love, peace, planted the seeds of modern multiculturalism, but what do we do when the structure of society, the backbone of everything we have ever known is turned to jelly?

T.C. Boyle refreshes the spirit of the initial flowering of these sentiments in "hippy" culture--a label which I think has come to throw the philosophical baby out with the bathwater. However, an ideology refutes its own weaknesses through the most extreme adherents. In Drop City, Boyle takes us to a nudist hippy commune to face these warts on a sunny nostalgia. In the absence of institutions, we have to create identities for ourselves. Free love was a rejection of institution like marriage, and the discovery of its equally ugly twin. Anarchy isn’t necessarily the idealistic alternative to fascism, but it often takes experience to fully come to terms with this fact.

Pan was in the middle of an elaborate story about a free concert in Central Park and the good and bad drugs he’d done that night…when Sally, the skinny-legged fourteen-year-old runaway in the patched jeans and stretch top cried out. Or she screamed actually. ‘Get off me, you freak!’ she let out in a piping wild adolescent vibrato that shot up the scale like feedback, and Ronnie glanced away from his story to see Lester simultaneously pinning her down and going at her breasts with both hands and the pink slab of his tongue, and Sky Dog—Sky Dog, Mr. Mellow Peace-and-Love himself—stripped to his tanned buttocks and working hard to peel her jeans down the flailing sticks of her legs...He tried to focus, tried to focus, tried to bring up the image of that girl on the floor in the back of the house, but the only thing that came to his mind was a phrase he’d used a thousand times, two truncated monosyllabic words that did nobody or no thing justice at all: Free Love (p32-33).

One of the Eastern traditions which influenced hippy culture was Buddhism. Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, is remembered as a great teacher, but one who only became enlightened because he began in absolute naivety as an Indian prince. In his youth, he witnessed the pain of those outside the gates, and it disturbed him so much that he chose to find the meaning of suffering. First, he took on the suffering he had always been protected from by becoming an ascetic yogi. He and his peers strived to find spiritual release from pain by conquering it. Some refused to sit or lie down for the rest of their lives, others wrestled wild animals or exposed themselves to extreme temperatures regularly to test their resilience. Siddartha starved himself, I believe. But at a certain point, he realized this was not getting him anywhere and realized that life is about balance, not either extreme isolation from or exposure to pain. I believe this is something we have had to deal with in regard to sexuality as well, reflecting on the lessons of the explosive ‘60s.

In forming my identity, I have done a lot of observing, consciously and unconsciously, of my idols. In many ways, I identify with the spirit and ideas characteristic of the ‘60s more than that of my own generation. I’m a musician because of the inspiration I have received from groups like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, but it’s more than the music. I always had an intuitive sense that the incredible impact this artwork had on me was indicative of something in the artist’s personality, something that seemed to be cosmically aligned within them. At least to my taste, it’s as if they reached enlightenment and then expressed their personalities fully through the liberation of whatever wisdom. And so I got into studying their eccentricities, what made them who they were on and off stage. Jimmy Page, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney displayed a wardrobe that bent the rules of masculine clothing. Page would wear velvet pants with long curly hair and frilly Victorian-looking shirts (he also apparently had a taste for wild parties and transsexuals). The Beatles maybe only went so far as wearing colorful Indian garb, but it was also something about the whole Mick Jagger, British rock star effeminacy in mannerisms and the way you cross your legs at the knee.

Was it that they were so masculine, such incredibly wide-appealing sex symbols that they could do whatever they wanted and get away with it? Or was that relaxed ambiguity indicative of some personality trait that was responsible for their fame? At the time I started noticing these things about them, it seemed revolutionary, whereas today it just seems like they were doing whatever felt comfortable and at the same time artistically exciting. Many of us try on different masks in youth to experiment with the line between what is exciting because it’s revolutionary and what simply feels right. But what examples of gender identity do we have for modern generations? A point raised, on those among confused youth of today, is the rise of internet pornography, and how it is a source of sexual education for some. The hyperbolically arousing nature that sells the product sends a skewed message to children wanting to know how it is that adults do this thing called sex. Needless to say, not all who watch pornography assume anything beyond the entertainment value, but the taboo nature of the topic leaves huge empty spaces for a child to make all sorts of assumptions. I can’t claim to know to what extent other children are influenced in the ways I was myself, but this style of spectacle seems to be rampant, indeed a staple of modern popular music and culture. Reality shows of washed up celebrities, music videos about the gangsta lifestyle or frustrations of metal band members, and 24-hour news that preys on sensational but meaningless stories may be sending the wrong messages.

What is it to be human? How do we create identity when so much, if not all of it has already been done before? Warhol seems to be right about the 15 minutes of fame phenomenon, and I feel like it devalues both the stars and the spectators in the process—in a new way, yet similar to “Free Love.” Television has turned into a voyeuristic medium, and our society is the subject. On top of that the subject is now aware of the situation, and it seems to be assumed there is no way out of this and no reason to fight it, so subjects put on airs and play up whatever they think the audience is expecting. The entertainment side of art has almost taken over the entire meaning of the word. I think our gender identities should be formed out of personal taste, but that taste is more than a whimsical thing. If it creates meaning in your life, brings you closer to your deepest dreams, then by all means, be that person! But there should also be a measure of caution in clarifying what our dreams are about, and that reaching your dreams is not characterized by excess, as the Buddha discovered: it is about that middle path between what creates deep meaning and what celebrates it.