This is a strong, rather handsomely written poem. At first I noticed its length, and that almost made me skip it; but instead, I tried a few lines.... and a continuing savor carried me along to the end. The flower children evolving into entrepeneurs, moneyworshipers, and abettors of wars is the future the prophet correctly foretold. My guess is the poem's prophet is a fictional character made up by the author--the prohet speaks a very elevated english even for one high on pot. Probably nobody at The Woodstock Event had the slightest inklng how opposite their future selves would be those all swaying stoned. Sticking the prophet in is fine with me. I didn't mind before and after being conjoined. No, I wouldn't change a word. What would I say the poem's fundamental message is? Dreams are overtaken by destinies I suppose. It was their destiny to become part of the system because the system writes all the checks, and thus most must rely on it for a halfway comfortable life. Mammon rules here.
Wow, coming from Mr. Merrill, I hope Mr. Leach knows how hard it is to exact such high praise from a demanding poet like yourself (especially for a longer poem). He must have done something right haha.
While I truly appreciate the kind words and insightful comments, I feel I should point out that whether
one actually attended the event, as I did, or even declined to participate in the cultural degeneration which I attempted to portray in the poem, we have all lived within a cultural matrix which was in large part determined by it and related experiences. The unfolding of this cultural paradigm has proceeded with the seeming ineluctablity of a classical tragedy. The character of the devil is, of course, fictional and reflects, in my own experience, the sort of alluring and seductive quality of the spirituality so much in circulation at that time. Nor should my description of this process be misconstrued as pessimism about the future, for even though the spectres of civilizational collapse and world war are clearly looming, I believe that there is much in recent cultural trends that is indeed hopeful. I hope that the kind of collective spiritual introspection that this piece demands can somehow contribute to an awakening of a more positive paradigm. I believe that this website is among the best examples of that process.
I think what I enjoyed most about this poem was it sundercurrent of ambiguity., of doubt.
I didn't attend the gathering, just as years later I doid not get married in one of the Reverend Moon's mass nuptials: I shy away from crowds, for which reason I am hoping to avoid the Last Judgment.
As clouds of pot smoke were gathering over the Catskills, I was naked in NYC, in the embrace of a young lady who was definitely grounded in this dimension. As horns from the street below honked and sirens blamed, the bedroom window flew open, and a squad of firefighters, brandishing axes, pikes, and wrecking bars. Leaped over the bed from the fire escape and ran to the entry door and into the public hall. Later I found out all the commotion had arisen from an inconsequential oven fire elsewhere in the tenement.
That was the only memorable event of my Woodstock long distance brush with enlightment.
I thought it was useful that Leach didn't go for the usual, popular Hollywood plastic devil horn variety of depiction. Technically, the lore suggests that the devil is quite handsome and very charming. He speaks very well, and part of us will find ourselves liking the guy. He knows how to have a good time and is very nimble in conversation. However, if we're present, paying attention and not just relying on the breezy and charming air he exudes, or his impressive store of knowledge, one starts to notice that something is off. As one pushes the metaphysical questions further and starts to imagine the world suggested or implicit in his conceits i.e. what that world would actually look like, we find ourselves pulled into an increasingly strange and alien world--one much darker and sicker than what most people are comfortable contemplating. However, one has to know what questions to ask, otherwise things might remain quite breezy and pleasant. But raise certain questions and then one quickly starts to smell the Sulphur and hear the hooves clopping lool.
I enjoyed the poem for its frequent felicities of diction, but I was not moved by it as philosophical commentary or speculation.
Since late childhood I've been skeptical of Satan as an ethical or metaphysical concept. I find his presence in the West a compromise or abandonment of individual responsibility. If I were going to embrace a Satanic figure I would probably do such from the stance of a Manichaean, eschewing all pretense to any hierarchy of valuation other that that arising out of a free consensus which is grounded more in practical order and convenience than in any noumenal or nebulous Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. I find something like Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments more congenial to "the betterment" of the "human condition" than the salve of a tempter or moral seducer.
I find Job's Satan much more congenial than Old Nick ot Belial or Beelzebub, but I do find the union of pagan mythology with human drives, emotions, and impetus toward excess and imbalance fascinating. In Job's Satan I see one type of embodiment of suffering or Dukkha, but it is no more "evil" than cancer, plague, famine, mass murder, whether the agents and victims be white, fully monetized moghuls or a mottled array of les damnés de la terre.
An attractive, seductive Satan seems no less illusory than an embodiment of wickedness and terror. I speak for myself: I don't think the great chain of being is forged in biology (i.e., a common physiology or evolution) or in metaphysical.( i.e., a soul, a noumenal foundation for eudaimonia, or a synthesis grounded in something we can call practical reason). In my view we are brought together or driven apart by a morally neutral behavioral and environmental flux which, for a variety of reasons, we either value or devalue, applying moral or ethical constructs such as good, bad, virtue, vice, in conformity with layers of rubric such as divine will, utility, fraternity, and so forth. But they are all constructs which may be styled religious, utilitarian, empirically desirable, or simply absurd and nihilistic.
Of course I acknowledge that these rather commonplace attitudes or beliefs of mine may put me somewhere at the fringe of what I've read here, but I make no claim to reciprocity.
I wrote my original comment to express my appreciation -- however naive my understanding may be -- and to avoid engaging whatever might have been it's philosophical merits or positions. I only spout this present logorrhea in response to a comment from a frame of discourse which I had not only not engaged in, but had scrupulously avoided. So, I don't know if my original comment or this one have offended anyone. If so, such was not my intent, even though the good Dominican sisters impressed on me that the pit of hell (which is not part of my belief system) is paved with good intentions. At this point in my life, despite several years of contrary indoctrination, I tend to view philosophy through the lens of Plutarch's Life of Dion.
Very beautiful, as I lived that time also. I have often thought of words, thoughts you expressed. Most I know from those days went all in on material. Oddly, as one alone, I did not follow the money. I followed my heart, made huge errors, but never followed the material, lived mostly week to week, thought many times maybe I did wrong path, now I am 72, I do not regret the non material, I never ever believed their narrative, knew there was more but where? I found it, it truly is Christ, and His non material way.
I too didn't follow the money. Instead I surrendered to a wande, rlust and a series of strong inclinations so that my life seems to have an episodic character.
I followed my tastes, proclivities and propensities to the extent chance permitted. I have always been drawn to the margins and repelled by business, and responses such as those to various facets of life have always been my conductors. I went where my inner winds blew me. I had considerable luck along the way, which was the chief instrument by which my unconventional course turned out relatively decently. My character was always out of alignment with the dominant type, so I think my luck was indeed quite fortunate for me. Those who don't fit in get left out unless they get quite lucky.
I was never a flower child myself, nor ever joined, or traveled with, any crowd, so Woodstock was a news report to me. I always flew solo.
The poem being discussed records how past and future can be entirely at odds, and that's certainly true. History moves like a pendulum. A culture can disappear and quickly be displaced by an opposite one. Individual character follows a much steadier course, with increasing self-knowledge, increasing awareness of who and what one is and to which
kind of mindset one's own bears a general resemblance. Cultural swings result from politics and movements, from a tug-of-war between factions wedded to opposing priorities. And they move in whichever direction the strongest wind is blowing.
I suspect Woodstock and similar events at the time were isolated group phenomena and that the the main dread propelling them was Vietnam. The movements that converged in the 60s, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, anti-war, produced considerable social progress but also helped bring about the regressive period we are now witnessing with considerable consternation. One of the bad results of the silent revolution was that public education took a nosedive, proof positive of which is that someone as sleazy as Tweetums ever got elected and might be again. Jefferson was right about an educated electorate being a prerequsite for democracy. The current electorate would not meet his criteria for "educated." Richard Mitchell is the best background source for understanding American educational decline. Everyone is cheated by the malpractice that has had free rein in American pubic education for many decades now. Language--the only medium of thought, the only means we have of forming thoughts--hasn't been properly taught for a long time. The parrot population has grown larger as a result. If nothing else, Tweetums is a master parrot trainer. He knows they are blind to his deceptions, and that all his birds will keep echoing back whatever false words he puts in their mouths.
I am a product of religious schools, and as a result I am a distinctly unreligious person. Aside from teaching in a state university, I've had no experience with public schools. However, I did design, write and fund education and job training programs for young people whom the rfp process referred to as dropouts. I also met and engaged with ps teachers who more often than not, away from the classroom, spoke of their students with sentiments ranging from disdain to contempt.
I live in a state where the public schools perform very poorly and address the poverty of their achievement by endlessly reinventing the wheel, i.e., substituting new tests for the old and recastung the curricula with the goal of increasing performance. As an example a few years ago math teachers were told to have the students use marbles to learn basic arithmetic. Of course this only increases the inability to grasp abstract paradigms and their applicability to the marble count.
There is a local bumper sticker that encapsulates the philosophy espoused by our governing officials: My football player can beat up your honor student."
Possibly you were born to recognize and reject hypocrisy.
The problem with American public education can be explained in a word: ignorance. For a long time now "teachers" haven't known the subjects they have pretended to teach. The least educated, those who never had any interest in learning when they were pupils themselves, and thus never mastered even the most basic rudiments, were granted absolute monopoly over the teaching profession several decades ago. Those who never learned their subjects--because of lack of interest--are incapable of teaching them of course, possessing zero proficiency in them. Most of them come from the bottom of their classes. Basketball or football interested them more than the proper usage of lie and lay. Graduate Schools of Education should be abolished and teacher certification should be based solely on demonstrable skill in the subjects that need to be taught in the interest of public welfare. People who never had an interest in learning themselves, can hardly be expected to pass on what they never acquired. Total overhaul of American education is necessary but unlikely to occur. Tweetums is only in the running because the US, every one of us, has been swindled by utterly unintelligent educational policy. The blind have been leading the blind and as a result, we are now facing the prospect once again of a total sleaze holding the nation's highest office. Quite disgusting, but quite arguably inevitable. He knows his parrots, and how ignorant they are.
This is a strong, rather handsomely written poem. At first I noticed its length, and that almost made me skip it; but instead, I tried a few lines.... and a continuing savor carried me along to the end. The flower children evolving into entrepeneurs, moneyworshipers, and abettors of wars is the future the prophet correctly foretold. My guess is the poem's prophet is a fictional character made up by the author--the prohet speaks a very elevated english even for one high on pot. Probably nobody at The Woodstock Event had the slightest inklng how opposite their future selves would be those all swaying stoned. Sticking the prophet in is fine with me. I didn't mind before and after being conjoined. No, I wouldn't change a word. What would I say the poem's fundamental message is? Dreams are overtaken by destinies I suppose. It was their destiny to become part of the system because the system writes all the checks, and thus most must rely on it for a halfway comfortable life. Mammon rules here.
Wow, coming from Mr. Merrill, I hope Mr. Leach knows how hard it is to exact such high praise from a demanding poet like yourself (especially for a longer poem). He must have done something right haha.
While I truly appreciate the kind words and insightful comments, I feel I should point out that whether
one actually attended the event, as I did, or even declined to participate in the cultural degeneration which I attempted to portray in the poem, we have all lived within a cultural matrix which was in large part determined by it and related experiences. The unfolding of this cultural paradigm has proceeded with the seeming ineluctablity of a classical tragedy. The character of the devil is, of course, fictional and reflects, in my own experience, the sort of alluring and seductive quality of the spirituality so much in circulation at that time. Nor should my description of this process be misconstrued as pessimism about the future, for even though the spectres of civilizational collapse and world war are clearly looming, I believe that there is much in recent cultural trends that is indeed hopeful. I hope that the kind of collective spiritual introspection that this piece demands can somehow contribute to an awakening of a more positive paradigm. I believe that this website is among the best examples of that process.
I think what I enjoyed most about this poem was it sundercurrent of ambiguity., of doubt.
I didn't attend the gathering, just as years later I doid not get married in one of the Reverend Moon's mass nuptials: I shy away from crowds, for which reason I am hoping to avoid the Last Judgment.
As clouds of pot smoke were gathering over the Catskills, I was naked in NYC, in the embrace of a young lady who was definitely grounded in this dimension. As horns from the street below honked and sirens blamed, the bedroom window flew open, and a squad of firefighters, brandishing axes, pikes, and wrecking bars. Leaped over the bed from the fire escape and ran to the entry door and into the public hall. Later I found out all the commotion had arisen from an inconsequential oven fire elsewhere in the tenement.
That was the only memorable event of my Woodstock long distance brush with enlightment.
I thought it was useful that Leach didn't go for the usual, popular Hollywood plastic devil horn variety of depiction. Technically, the lore suggests that the devil is quite handsome and very charming. He speaks very well, and part of us will find ourselves liking the guy. He knows how to have a good time and is very nimble in conversation. However, if we're present, paying attention and not just relying on the breezy and charming air he exudes, or his impressive store of knowledge, one starts to notice that something is off. As one pushes the metaphysical questions further and starts to imagine the world suggested or implicit in his conceits i.e. what that world would actually look like, we find ourselves pulled into an increasingly strange and alien world--one much darker and sicker than what most people are comfortable contemplating. However, one has to know what questions to ask, otherwise things might remain quite breezy and pleasant. But raise certain questions and then one quickly starts to smell the Sulphur and hear the hooves clopping lool.
I enjoyed the poem for its frequent felicities of diction, but I was not moved by it as philosophical commentary or speculation.
Since late childhood I've been skeptical of Satan as an ethical or metaphysical concept. I find his presence in the West a compromise or abandonment of individual responsibility. If I were going to embrace a Satanic figure I would probably do such from the stance of a Manichaean, eschewing all pretense to any hierarchy of valuation other that that arising out of a free consensus which is grounded more in practical order and convenience than in any noumenal or nebulous Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. I find something like Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments more congenial to "the betterment" of the "human condition" than the salve of a tempter or moral seducer.
I find Job's Satan much more congenial than Old Nick ot Belial or Beelzebub, but I do find the union of pagan mythology with human drives, emotions, and impetus toward excess and imbalance fascinating. In Job's Satan I see one type of embodiment of suffering or Dukkha, but it is no more "evil" than cancer, plague, famine, mass murder, whether the agents and victims be white, fully monetized moghuls or a mottled array of les damnés de la terre.
An attractive, seductive Satan seems no less illusory than an embodiment of wickedness and terror. I speak for myself: I don't think the great chain of being is forged in biology (i.e., a common physiology or evolution) or in metaphysical.( i.e., a soul, a noumenal foundation for eudaimonia, or a synthesis grounded in something we can call practical reason). In my view we are brought together or driven apart by a morally neutral behavioral and environmental flux which, for a variety of reasons, we either value or devalue, applying moral or ethical constructs such as good, bad, virtue, vice, in conformity with layers of rubric such as divine will, utility, fraternity, and so forth. But they are all constructs which may be styled religious, utilitarian, empirically desirable, or simply absurd and nihilistic.
Of course I acknowledge that these rather commonplace attitudes or beliefs of mine may put me somewhere at the fringe of what I've read here, but I make no claim to reciprocity.
I wrote my original comment to express my appreciation -- however naive my understanding may be -- and to avoid engaging whatever might have been it's philosophical merits or positions. I only spout this present logorrhea in response to a comment from a frame of discourse which I had not only not engaged in, but had scrupulously avoided. So, I don't know if my original comment or this one have offended anyone. If so, such was not my intent, even though the good Dominican sisters impressed on me that the pit of hell (which is not part of my belief system) is paved with good intentions. At this point in my life, despite several years of contrary indoctrination, I tend to view philosophy through the lens of Plutarch's Life of Dion.
Very beautiful, as I lived that time also. I have often thought of words, thoughts you expressed. Most I know from those days went all in on material. Oddly, as one alone, I did not follow the money. I followed my heart, made huge errors, but never followed the material, lived mostly week to week, thought many times maybe I did wrong path, now I am 72, I do not regret the non material, I never ever believed their narrative, knew there was more but where? I found it, it truly is Christ, and His non material way.
I too didn't follow the money. Instead I surrendered to a wande, rlust and a series of strong inclinations so that my life seems to have an episodic character.
I followed my tastes, proclivities and propensities to the extent chance permitted. I have always been drawn to the margins and repelled by business, and responses such as those to various facets of life have always been my conductors. I went where my inner winds blew me. I had considerable luck along the way, which was the chief instrument by which my unconventional course turned out relatively decently. My character was always out of alignment with the dominant type, so I think my luck was indeed quite fortunate for me. Those who don't fit in get left out unless they get quite lucky.
I was never a flower child myself, nor ever joined, or traveled with, any crowd, so Woodstock was a news report to me. I always flew solo.
The poem being discussed records how past and future can be entirely at odds, and that's certainly true. History moves like a pendulum. A culture can disappear and quickly be displaced by an opposite one. Individual character follows a much steadier course, with increasing self-knowledge, increasing awareness of who and what one is and to which
kind of mindset one's own bears a general resemblance. Cultural swings result from politics and movements, from a tug-of-war between factions wedded to opposing priorities. And they move in whichever direction the strongest wind is blowing.
I suspect Woodstock and similar events at the time were isolated group phenomena and that the the main dread propelling them was Vietnam. The movements that converged in the 60s, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, anti-war, produced considerable social progress but also helped bring about the regressive period we are now witnessing with considerable consternation. One of the bad results of the silent revolution was that public education took a nosedive, proof positive of which is that someone as sleazy as Tweetums ever got elected and might be again. Jefferson was right about an educated electorate being a prerequsite for democracy. The current electorate would not meet his criteria for "educated." Richard Mitchell is the best background source for understanding American educational decline. Everyone is cheated by the malpractice that has had free rein in American pubic education for many decades now. Language--the only medium of thought, the only means we have of forming thoughts--hasn't been properly taught for a long time. The parrot population has grown larger as a result. If nothing else, Tweetums is a master parrot trainer. He knows they are blind to his deceptions, and that all his birds will keep echoing back whatever false words he puts in their mouths.
Well, time for some Angel's Envy.
I am a product of religious schools, and as a result I am a distinctly unreligious person. Aside from teaching in a state university, I've had no experience with public schools. However, I did design, write and fund education and job training programs for young people whom the rfp process referred to as dropouts. I also met and engaged with ps teachers who more often than not, away from the classroom, spoke of their students with sentiments ranging from disdain to contempt.
I live in a state where the public schools perform very poorly and address the poverty of their achievement by endlessly reinventing the wheel, i.e., substituting new tests for the old and recastung the curricula with the goal of increasing performance. As an example a few years ago math teachers were told to have the students use marbles to learn basic arithmetic. Of course this only increases the inability to grasp abstract paradigms and their applicability to the marble count.
There is a local bumper sticker that encapsulates the philosophy espoused by our governing officials: My football player can beat up your honor student."
Possibly you were born to recognize and reject hypocrisy.
The problem with American public education can be explained in a word: ignorance. For a long time now "teachers" haven't known the subjects they have pretended to teach. The least educated, those who never had any interest in learning when they were pupils themselves, and thus never mastered even the most basic rudiments, were granted absolute monopoly over the teaching profession several decades ago. Those who never learned their subjects--because of lack of interest--are incapable of teaching them of course, possessing zero proficiency in them. Most of them come from the bottom of their classes. Basketball or football interested them more than the proper usage of lie and lay. Graduate Schools of Education should be abolished and teacher certification should be based solely on demonstrable skill in the subjects that need to be taught in the interest of public welfare. People who never had an interest in learning themselves, can hardly be expected to pass on what they never acquired. Total overhaul of American education is necessary but unlikely to occur. Tweetums is only in the running because the US, every one of us, has been swindled by utterly unintelligent educational policy. The blind have been leading the blind and as a result, we are now facing the prospect once again of a total sleaze holding the nation's highest office. Quite disgusting, but quite arguably inevitable. He knows his parrots, and how ignorant they are.