Some people never know. Paul McCartney said that. It was the title of one of his feudal songs with John Lennon which led to Lennon writing "How Do You Sleep?" and Paul in return writing the brilliant "Let Me Roll It." Think about that phrase. There is so much truth in it. Back 20 years ago I was already out about my interest in the Armed Forces (mainly soldiers and Marines) and at the same time I was a long haired wild freak child with a mystical expression who burned incense, listened to such mind frying psychedelic feasts as H.P Lovecraft's amazing first and second albums (especially the first with the haunting and majestic "The White Ship"), and watched war movies. What an odd combination you may say, but through all the changes in my lifestyle the hair may be gone, the times may have passed by and gotten ugly, and I now have for 18 years been an out of the closet homosexual and proud, but I still will listen to freaky strange music and love soldiers and Armed forces.
I have spoken at great lengths with American, British, Scottish, and Canadian servicemen about the drug problem and they hate it with the same passion that I hate it with and we all have seen friends go off into drugs and die from it. Drugs killed the 60s off along with, as I discussed in my last blog, the violent side of the protest movement that took over when the flower power dreams died. Unfortunately, as time has passed now from acid onto heroin kids are starting with that! Disgusting! They take meth amphetamines, heroin, crack, drug "cocktails" and they die. You can't live your life that way at any age, but starting in school or after school it makes no difference sooner or just a little while later you're gonna end up dead. I never liked drugs. In fact acid, mushrooms, all of the drugs that supposedly gave you a "trip" I didn't need because I was already on one! Drugs are for people who have no imagination just as macho violent behavior like the kind that plagues males especially in Amerika of a younger age than me is for stupid nothing people who struggle with insecurity and delusional thinking. Both are a disease. Both could be avoided if people weren't so stupid.
I had to lose my hippy friends because all but one or two went off into heavy use of psychedelics, but listen when I tell ya that music could have been made and those people could have been happy without the drugs which eventually damned the entire thing. When we reached that level of "Drugs are more important than friends who won't take them" in their twisted philosophy I simply got up and left them. I still am proud of what I accomplished in my resilient way of just zoning myself into other ways to get high and I miss burning incense and relaxing. Now I spend my days either out in nature which is a beautiful way to get into a real high and when not doing that I'm in my beautiful house with my beloved family. I was cruel and ignorant to my mother all that time ago in the past and she often has had to deal with too many of my outbursts, but now I value her much more and have a for-the-most-part much better relationship with her. She experienced the 60s. My dad experienced the 60s. I EXPERIENCED THE 60s IN MY OWN TIME CAPSULE!
I could actually go back to the period when music was at its most fertile and things were really odd and out there by the power of imagination and blissing out on odd and out there stuff. I think that what gets into people, in fact I know what gets into people is a kind of cartoon caricature of what the 60s were about and those people will never know just as Paul McCartney so eloquently stated. One of the main reasons why Vietnam was the disaster and tragedy that it was is because a huge amount of the Americans were on drugs during combat. There is a very violent and graphic song about the kind of bloodshed that can lead to by the British band Deep Feeling called "Welcome For A Soldier." The song and that strange one-album-then-disappearance band had written their own prophecy- now almost none of them are alive. It wasn't all that, but with rock and roll and drug intake Vietnam was a very strange and very vicious event in history where it created a huge divide between blind patriotism on one hand and conscious efforts to bring about changes in society on the other. The problem is the same people who were shoving flowers up rifle barrels were shoving drugs into their bodies and minds. I didn't need that. I found highs in being with my mates and I found highs in being imaginative.
As of now I wish I had come out about the gay part of my personality sooner, but when I did come out it was Hell for me. I received death threats. I still get called "Faggot" and get referred to by fat beer bellied scum like the shits at the clinic who beat me up brutally as "that little faggot." Well if you think I'm not tougher than pea brained you I'm actually Iron Man! I continue to deal with hatred and ignorance. I spit in the face of those assholes because I know I'm better than them. In the 60s the gay movement hadn't really begun. In fact, nearly all gay couples kept it hushed and out of sight. It was supposed to be about free love so they called it, but this "free love" wasn't as free as it was said to be. I have had numerous females over the years try to turn me into something I will never be and it's sad to hurt their feelings, but I won't ever be straight. Females have it worse than males even and that is another tragedy of modern society. It isn't exactly modern to have minorities, women, and gays at the bottom of the pecking order, but I've always been about the bloody brooding dark mystical side of stuff and come on strong as the true eccentric I am so for me it's ten times worse in some ways. I would have had to suffer a lot of losses in the 60s and I couldn't have possibly stomached Vietnam. When I first came out about my sexuality it was after knowing I desired the same sex even in childhood days. In the 80s there was a brief ray of hope for gay people as new romantic and glam hard rockers often went for obscure references or even went for blatant androgyny. I was at the height of awareness when music was chock full of good songs and clever little double entendres. Then there was a period of huge insecurity and then I was all of a sudden a very frightened homosexual who knew it, but who was gonna go crazy through faking out that I was straight. A painful time for me that sure turned out to be.
I think about all this talk of "Free love" in the 60s and yeah love should be free, but the 60s were a time of so much innocence that with the innocence came ignorance. I would have wanted to screw soldiers. I would have wanted to screw cops and try to win them over to the right side. I suppose I would have been same old me, but I don't like to use words like "screwing" because if you don't love somebody or even have a real attraction to them there is no point in having a relationship. Free love can mean venereal disease. It can mean a one night stand at best. However, what "free love" really stood for was that the cops could be as disgusting as they were and society could be as blind and idiotic as it was, but the counterculture were gonna be about sharing and giving out positive vibrations. I simply couldn't do that. When I feel something about someone I'm not gonna mask it and I never did mask it at all except my sexual and other private feelings. If I love another man or boy I'll hug him. If I hate him he's gonna have Hell on his front steps beating down his door! So were the 60s not really as concrete as I wanted to believe they were gonna be? No. There was something very true and loving about that time of love fighting hate. It just was done in by the draft and drugs.
The 70s were about something completely different yet not so different from the 60s and the 80s were also another move further out into uncharted territory, but every decade gets done in by something bad and that is the tragic part of a revolutionary lifestyle. I suppose I was done in by none of the above when it came to the usual suspects drugs, drink, sex, but more so I was done in then have through time always rebounded. I don't give in fast or easy. In fact I don't give in period. I never liked even marijuana and I instead preferred playing music, being into my imagination, and watching movies like the colour Richard Thomas version of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT as that is a movie that can make very strange things happen if you zone into it enough. It's a tragic, heartbreaking, very vicious and sad story, but I tell you the whole thing with the hot German Hun uniforms and English accents and complexions is very mind mangling or maybe it was just that I have come to associate that movie with the day I watched it and played "The White Ship" by H.P Lovecraft and that was a real natural trip! Soldiers are a natural trip for me. If people and music and nature can't get you high then you may have the kind of selfish disease that leads to drug use or worse yet violence. I don't believe in drugs or going out, getting drunk, and beating somebody up. That's rubbish. I can trip. I can flip. I can be hip, but I can't be hip to mind and body destroying and decaying substances and behaviors!
I would much rather snuggle up and be warm and loving with a guy than a gal and that is not going to change. I would just plain rather get intimate and spend a lot of time with someone or with animals or with music than act out the kind of nonsensical lifestyle that leads to self-inflicted catastrophe. The 60s could have survived if it hadn't been for the damned drugs, politicians, and the bad cops. I don't think any of the neophyte hippies are worth their weight in anything because all they do is do all the stupid shit, act out all the wrong beliefs, and fake everything to the point I just want to scream at them "YOU ARE DOING EVERYTHING WRONG!!!!!." There are a lot of very hip people out there today, but they aren't the fake people pretending to be something they don't have any true knowledge of. The 60s should be valued for the music, the political uprisings for peace and freedom, and not for the drugs. I feel sad when I think of what happened to two of my best friends and it was a father and son affair with substance abuse. Tragic and terrible. Joc, my very best friend, and I used to have a very loving and close relationship until he followed in the steps of his father and became a junkie. His dad then went back to being a junkie quite some time later whilst Joc was at that time and last I heard in the only gutter second to the abuse-of-power-and-violence-loving gutter heroin addiction. Maybe I am lucky or maybe I'm just different. I'm glad I turned onto soldiers, nature, and music. I can recall all the experiences with soldiers and marines and a few with sailors where we were on something really good and it was not a drug. Nature too I always delve into and that's not a drug. Music is brilliant and music for me is a life force. The advent of things like YouTube is mindblowing. Just avoid substance abuse and throwing your life down the drain and you can have more riches than anyone with pockets bulging full of corruptly earned cookie dough! That you either will learn or you will be one of those people who never knows. (Thank you Sir Paul McCartney for the beautiful words.)
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