'Twas In Another Lifetime...

...a world of free-spirited primal-dancing flower children

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

"Happiness runs in a circular motion,

Thought is like a little boat upon the sea."

Donovan Leitch

From the children's round 'Happiness Runs' on Donovans 1969 Barabajagal album.

A Dear Old Friend - Cheryl - Agoura, California 1972Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 - jim otterstrom

Check out those sexy skin-tight hip-huggers and that chicken bone necklace!

Still lookin' fantastic Cheryl!

This was taken just about the time we were all beginning to face the fact that the '60s really were over, but some of us will never give up.

I rediscovered the negatives for the monochrome pictures below in a throwaway box sometime last year, with a bunch of other 'bad' negatives from 35 years ago that somehow never got thrown away.

Instead, they sat around in hot, or cold, leaky storage sheds & attics all these decades, gaining age and character like good vintage wine.

These particular gems were all taken with and old Zeiss Ikon camera I found in a secret compartment hidden beneath the floorboards of a little shack where I once lived in the '60s.

The camera used 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 (medium format) film and took very nice photos when it worked properly, which it rarely did. Something was amiss with the film advance mechanism so the great majority of the pictures came out as partial double exposures, like the sepia-toned photos below and the still-life at the top.

You can easily make out the double exposures in the pictures, which is why the negatives ended up in the junk box. But the passage of time has a way of making junk more valuable and now I consider these to be priceless artifacts.

The two monochrome negatives were so deteriorated from exposure to extreme elements; heat, cold, dust, dirt, abrasion and moisture, that I all I could do was smooth them out in Photoshop enough to make them legible.

The color transparencies above, of Cheryl, and the still-life of the window, were found in a different box. They didn't fare much better over the years, and also required considerable manipulation to get a usable picture. I used Photoshop brush & watercolor effects to cover scratches and age spots in the emulsion.

For me, these images capture a much more hopeful & free-spirited time and place, where money didn't matter because there wasn't any. A simpler time, where life was lived for the joy of it. We had nothing in those days, but we arranged that nothing beautifully, decorating our lives with the cast-off junk of the wasteful world around us.

The distasteful world of war, racism, violence, hate, greed, consumption and competition for the almighty dollar, a world we were attempting to reject.

Our communities, and our very lives, became an experimental art form in search of love, peace, and freedom. And, for awhile, we thought the world was changing, and that we might live out those sweet idealistic lives.

We were mistaken.

To those who weren't fortunate enough to be there, this may look like poverty, but anyone who truly lived & breathed the 1960s counter-culture will recognize something in these photos, and be reminded of how very much we've lost...

...of our innocence, our joy, and our optimism.

During the 35 years since these pictures were taken, every incremental increase in the material wealth & convenience, now being enjoyed by the privileged few of our richer countries, has come at a very great cost to freedom, democracy, human rights, and the natural diversity of Earth.

Billions of human beings suffer needlessly today because of our gluttony, greed, and indifference.

And much more of the planet now resembles a pigsty than a living garden.

~We have literally sold our souls~

Cheryl's Living Room

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

Cheryl's daughter Olwen at the Triunfo Canyon house where they lived for several years. This is the same window in the picture above.

Click here if you haven't seen the 'Grandfather Frog Gets A Ride' photo I took in Olwens room, later on in my Nikon era.

Cheryl's Kitchen

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

So what went wrong with the counter-culture?

Partly, it was our own success...

We were having a hugely positive effect by influencing societal & governmental change, in forcing issues like civil-rights, the Viet Nam War, and the environment to the forefront of public debate.

Our highest values were being strongly represented by the media outlets of TV, magazines, newspapers, and most effectively, FM radio, and, we could hear our own voices resounding in many political speeches of the day.

...and partly it was the naive recklessness of being young.

We were just kids, photogenic, hedonistic, and obviously reveling in our youthful sexuality. So Hippies became the sensational media darlings of the time (somewhat like the Paris Hiltons' and Britney Spears' of today) which sent millions of kids running off to join what was being inaccurately hyped as one big naked love-in of sex & drugs.

And then there were the so-called LSD gurus, lime-light seeking publicity-whores such as Timothy Leary, who especially contributed to the circus-like atmosphere that would overshadow a once creative, democratic, and highly participatory social movement, but I believe these problems could've been overcome with time, experience, and maturity.

Social consciousness, an unabashed passion for life, thumbing our noses at convention, and courageously speaking truth to power was the initial charm of our generation, which also spawned a large back-to-the-land culture.

As the movement grew larger, so did the excesses, until we were becoming caricatures of ourselves. I began to suspect things were unraveling in other ways too, when I started seeing peace signs, gods eyes, and ankhs for sale at big chain stores. Corporate America had discovered there were $$$ to be squeezed out of Hippies after all. We were being commercialized, turned into a commodity for sale.

But, in my opinion, the final death knell of the '60s social movement, our own cultural 9/11, was the infamous Manson Family (They weren't a family---and they certainly weren't flower children---they were a gang of drug-addled thugs who preyed upon Hippies.)

Once this psychopathic ex-convict unleashed his 'family' of mental cases upon the world, the media wasted no time in portraying these depraved violent lunatics as a Hippie family.

The political/corporate establishment---who had been caught way off-guard by the strength and tenacity of our rebellious generation---was all over that like flies on shit, using fear, once again to mold the minds and emotions of the American people.

Hippies instantaneously became monsters, the terrorists of the day and our voices were silenced much like the voices of the few who would call for calm and reason in the revengeful war-mongering aftermath of 9/11.

Fear & hysteria prevailed, and within days of Manson's arrest I could feel the difference in my world.

Where just a few weeks earlier, grandmothers & little children would come up to me chatting and exchanging pleasantries, now, people I encountered in public would cringe and recoil, grabbing hold of their kids, who were sometimes asking if I was part of the Manson Family.

Fear and hatred became palpable, you could almost taste it, like Arab-Americans (or followers of Islam anywhere) certainly must since September of 2001.

There's no limit to the societal damage and hateful destructiveness that can be perpretrated upon the world, simply by making sure people are very afraid...

Ironically, the prototypical flower child troubadour, Donovan, released his Barabajagal album (top photo) on August 11th of 1969, just 5 days before the Manson gang was arrested for their horrific murderous rampage.

It would be Donovans last highly popular album. The vibe had changed, the feeling was gone.

PEACE & LOVE went out of style.

A generations message of Universal Love was recast into one of Universal Fear.

'Tricky Dick' Nixon was the newly elected President, Alvin Tofflers 'Future Shock' was about to be published, and the world was on its way to where it is now.

"What became of the changes we waited for love to bring?
Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?"
Jackson Browne

From 'The Pretender'

(c) 1976 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC

As long as I'm quoting Jackson Browne, here's one of my all time favorite songs, a sort of requiem for the '60s...

Before The Deluge

Some of them were dreamers

And some of them were fools

Who were making plans and thinking of the future

With the energy of the innocent

They were gathering the tools

They would need to make their journey back to nature

While the sand slipped through the opening

And their hands reached for the golden ring

With their hearts they turned to each other's hearts for refuge

In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure

And some of them knew pain

And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered

And on the brave and crazy wings of youth

They went flying around in the rain

And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered

And in the end they traded their tired wings

For the resignation that living brings

And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow

For the glitter and the rouge

And in the moment they were swept before the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high

And let the buildings keep our children dry

Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by

By and by--

When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry

At the way the earth was abused

By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power

And they struggled to protect her from them

Only to be confused

By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour

And when the sand was gone and the time arrived

In the naked dawn

Only a few survived

And in attempts to understand a thing, so simple and so huge

Believed that they were meant to live, after the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high

And let the buildings keep our children dry

Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by

By and by--

When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Jackson Browne

(c) 1974 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC

Postscript-

I am currently reading Naomi Kleins 'The Shock Doctrine - The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism'.

And last night we watched the DVD 'Ralph Nader - An Unreasonable Man'

Very good stuff for those of you who might be wondering 'whatever became of Democracy'?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.

The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - 1903