“On the brave and crazy wings of youth,” Jackson Browne later sang about what, by then, seemed brave and crazy, we set out to try and fulfill the vast promises we collectively imagined.
Sometimes, as Brown also sang, this was political and sometimes it was a journey back to nature. If it seemed daunting, no one was alone. “In [our] hearts [we] turned to each other’s hearts for refuge,” sang Browne with a mournful tinge in “Before the Deluge.” We were all — it was a premise — in this together. In this vision we were already — whether we chose it or not – part of one great family, the family of man. We would affirm this. We would reject the life of the suburban nuclear family. We would reject the “reality” that rejected our “dream.” And we never questioned which was the more powerful. For it was (indisputably! unarguably!) the dream that inspired reality, not the other way around. LSD told us that.
As everyone stood on the edge of the Pacific after the day of the Be-In, watching the sun go down, a single parachutist could be seen skydiving through the air. It was reputed to be Wesley, the Bay Area’s most infamous manufacturer of LSD.
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