Memories. We’d get high waiting for the bus. Then we’d arrive and go into the woods and smoke more before homeroom. By first period – I was totally cruisin’…. Then, there was lunch and they would let us into an area by the cafeteria to smoke cigarettes and we would run off to the woods and smoke something else. That meant the afternoon was hazy and the ride home utterly unimpressive. We would sing Beatles songs on the bus and drive the driver completely batshit insane. Stoned teenagers singing “Happiness is a warm gun” on a crowded sweaty schoolbus in New Jersey. YEAH BABY!
The driver would accelerate and go over a short bridge at speed. We would all go flying. We would complain. He was just “aaaaaaaa SHEDDEP ya punks! Now simmer down!” Once we asked “Hey mister bus driver – ya mind if we smoke?” And he said “Hell – I don’t care if you burn.”
Finally home, I would grab some food and go to the library to work for a few hours. Mindless stuff – shelving books, straightening the shelves. Once that was done, I’d hang in the downstairs kids section and do my homework or read. *A lot*. I read everything. I burned through the tiny philosophy section quickly. And all the art books – they had all the Time Life great artist series and a surprising number of pretty decent books – one had the Futurist Manifestos. I learned to look for that from the cover of “No Pussyfooting” by Fripp and Eno – it’s one of the books on the bookshelf.
The library had a huge collection of very meh literature. The massive collection of mystery novels they had. Barbara Cartland was the bane of my existence. Prolific and popular. Every day at least a few of those had to be reshelved.
If I wasn’t working that day, I’d be over at Phil’s getting baked in the birdcages. His dad raised prize winning parrots and other beautiful colourful birds. Or hanging out in the laundry room at the Roosevelt Motel with Mark and James and Dave listening to Yes and precisely arguing over the lyrics. Like Jesuitical precision. Nuclear quantum physics level nonsense. Or we’d sing along to Genesis songs, one after the other. Or we’d eat acid and listen to Firesign Theatre. It’s just this little chromium switch here…
Aaaaaahhhhh – the 1970s….
Remember when wage slavery, ecological destruction, rampant sexism and racism, and clueless stupidity was all we had to deal with? Now we STILL have all that AND THE FUCKING PLAGUE. AND A NIT WIT GAME SHOW HOST FOR PRESIDENT.
But we have the interwebs – a window to ridicule and a vector of accusation.
On that note, some Quiet Sun from 1974:
I’m looking in my little black book of European logic
Still I can’t make head or tail of it.
If I could only read between the lines,
Think of all the treasures I might find!
Learn the secret of trance and levitation,
Liberate my soul in six easy lessons.
Meanwhile I’ll stay at home,
and listen to Schönberg in the bath.
And leave you to the geometry of my laugh,
To which you’re welcome if it helps you at all.
To get your rocks off and have a ball.
Never let it be thought that we have nothing to share –
We drink the same water and we breathe the same air.
Deep down inside we need each other just the same –
You need me to laugh at and I need you to blame.
novalark 