RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,275
(the Sabeans swooped down and took them)
I noticed a lot of things,
over time - it was always
over time. Some of it was
downright puzzling too. As
naive and 'un-unpulsed' as
I was, it took but a while to
come to the odd realization
that - and this observation
still stands, and still holds
up, today - how most all
of that 'Hippie' culture stuff
that was swarming the area
from the Village to Tompkins
Square and the east Village,
and all the areas around that,
was nothing more than a
crowd and a chronic media
manipulation, BUT one which
had, at its base, a Jewish
pediment. In every aspect -
Tiny Tim to Mark Rudd to
Jerry Rubin and all the rest.
The structure upon which the
'Resistance' and the 'Hippie'
movement/influx, was rooted
more than anything in a Jewish
mother-reaction familial milieu.
As much as it would have been
denied, that was an undeniable
fact. The heat I take on this
point has nothing to do with
anti-Semitism or any of that
crack (these were east-European
Jewish lineages anyway, nothing
to do with Semites, (which simply
means 'sand-dwellers.' Outside
of, perhaps Jones and Boynton
Beaches these people had more
in common with the potato fields
of Long Island that anything of
the Mideast.
-
Part of the stipulation of controlling
a reaction is the activity of both
'denying' it and forbidding it, by
making it a social no-no. So, I can't
even rightly criticize. Such is my
'Freedom' of speech. Moses with
his tablets and radiation burned
face could be no harsher.
-
In any case, all that I kept seeing
was the compartmentalization of
the sentimental and the most-very
traditional family and tribal themes
of a long-lost people, a sort-of
Williamsburg, Bklyn. and immigrant
lower-east-side leftover by which
this next generation of its kids
and children were maturing into
their own starry-eyed and mostly
gentle, effeminate, and cautious
'rebellion.' What a crock that all
was. It could be seen right through.
Mostly what it consisted of was a
gloss that had been put over the
usual communitarian sentiments
of old-world ghetto settlements
and displaced hopes and Rousseau
like dreams of returns to Eden.
In the most gentle manner. As
always occurs, this coin had a
flip side too - in which the gentle
and loving became sexual and
aggressive, in which the Edenic
became exploitative, and by which
all the others aspects were turned
into monetary fissures and hoped
for profit and gain. It soon had
turned filthy/dirty, and any dollop
of traditionalism only manifested
itself in Jewish rituals of return
and observance, by which even
the High Holy Days of old still
took an occasional precedence
to frolic. Most of these kids then
returned home to the traditional
hold of their religious and tribal
reverence for the needed few days,
and then they were right back at it.
To call that earth-shattering and
ground-breaking was a lame joke.
It was merely the traditional and
reverential return to 'Mother,' kept
together by a weird dream-quotient.
-
Society has it that one cannot
say this stuff. But I just did, and
I stand by it. Investigate it for
yourselves, and note all the name
changes and camouflages. Herbert
Khoury, Robert Zimmerman,
'Country Joe' McDonald, et al.
These are a people with nothing
but unction.
-
By the 1970's, along the westside
of lower Manhattan, the Hippies
were gone. The piers that once
heralded the arrivals and departures
of luxury liners and multi-week
junkets to the far-flung isles, had
been abandoned and had become
refuges for transient artists, street
hustlers, criminals, and gay hustlers
(see 'Miasma Arms Hotel'). Soon
enough after that time, even the
word 'Hippie' had lost a definition,
replaces as at was by urban decline,
rampant crime, an AIDS crisis,
and all the culture wars that went
into blooming of that tree of an
old 'good will' that was once
being peddled. 'Angels In
America.' If nothing else, it
made me lo k into what an
'angel' actually was supposed
to have been. A God's winged
messenger, both beatific and, in
the case of Satan, malevolent
as well.
-
Much like Rimbaud - in the
words of Patti Smith - 'tramping
the luminous sewer of his own
circulatory system with all his
marvelous contradictions intact,'
I was, just as much, steadfast
in my ways of observation and
retrieval. As Henry James had
put it - and which I had taken
as another of my watchwords -
'Be one of those upon whom
nothing is lost.' I almost want
to add 'I alone have escaped
to tell you.' [Job, 1:15]
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