 11 Nov 2006 @ 20:56
Revised "WOODSTOCK REMEMBERED"
NOV 2006
CANADA
Happy Remembrance Day all.....
Well I didn't have much planned for remembrance day so I thought I'd revisit an old battle scene on this day so I popped the woodstock 1969 Festival into the dvd.
Watching as I write and I have a whole new perspective on it. I ran across some info that said that whole period was a result of the astrological alignment of the stars and planets so that gave me a whole new perspective as I watched with that in mind.
well the building of the site by the promoters occurs. everything going according to plan but then after 9 months of planning the reality of it begins and then the roads start to get congested as the people start to come and come and they keep coming and the concert is almost ready to start and then it bombs as its announced probably after some discussion of cancellation that the concert is now free and ? Why because probably there weren't supposed to be so many people. So then it seems to become a rather boring display of pretense and disappointment because the promoters and powers that be have just said good bye to about 3 million dollars which in todays terms would be about 30 million or more dollars. The stench of the bombed finances and plan and order fills the concert. This goes on and on and on into a kind of redundancy and naseua until by some stroke of happenstance or whatever the skies open up and pour out upon the scene.
The winds and rain come and people are bored and depressed and now wet, cold and hungry and probably a lot went home because the "escape" they sought wasn't happening and instead they were being asked to participate in the $ ruin of the event as the rain keeps coming. In the ensuing physical discomfort though something mysterious begins to happen as a kind of "bonding' is occurring. A bonding at all levels because the rain seems to serve as a "uniting" factor through shared hardship and in this bonding the people start to relax and loosen up and yes it boring and uncomfortable but what the hey.
This then is like a great group and communal "baptism" of sorts. and then everyone crashes for the night still a bit bummed but warmed by the bonding with total strangers.
Then something seems to be happening behind the scenes. I get a real sense that the the ruined program or plan has been totally abandoned along with its somewhat perhaps typical agenda and now a new plan and program and program content and song choice and list are spontaneously being organized and that is the turn around it seems. The order and program are spontaneously and stigmergicaly "adapting" and an interesting transformation or birth seems to occur. It starts to take on the form of a "jam" rather than a concert
The worst scenario has happened yet instead of canceling or going home people start to "improvise". Spontaneously everyone and I mean everyone starts to relax.
A new atmosphere or even consciousness takes form and hold and you go from a 1/2 million people concert and audience to a 1/2 million people jam session and the distinction between performer and audience sort of is lost and a group consciousness emerges and is formed. The audience and performers are now in sync and free to improvise and create and that I suspect is when something new and powerful is born or begins.
First half of Directors cut DVD
Part 2
Well it is interesting that something that began as kind of the wake and mourning of the loss of millions of dollars can or did so quickly, 1 day or so with rain, cold and wind, turn into one big kind of group hug and jam of sorts. It doesn't seem plausible somehow. So maybe the stars were at work as well as the music, dope and weather.
Somehow, this was no longer just a group of young strangers in a field but as one so aptly put "all family". I say though this was the instigation of an ad hoc "tribe" of sorts. The woodstock tribe, initiated and forever bonded at this the woodstock 69 jam.
So in a big sense it was a coming out jam of young american graduates, facing the decisions and hardships of reality and life but doing it by and through their togetherness, cooperation and wits. They could do it, "they", not me or you but "us", we.
The seed bed of the nominal "Us Festival" that would occur 13 years later in California.
Parents must have secretly smiled to see that the school system of the day and the years of schooling and training were tested and passed though not necessarily "paid off" in financial terms but they did not die or crawl back home with their tails between their legs. The world, their world did not end. Maybe they returned with empty wallets but with hearts and souls full of hope, faith and promise in the future and more importantly, confident of their ability to handle failure. Such that would be needed to endure the depressions caused by the mounting cold war. Such that got them through it until that war ended with the Chernobyl accident in 1986. There is nothing quite like pulling through something with the proverbial gun at your head.
The rest is just gravy and incidental. Woodstock happened because the people there took a hit, fell and picked themselves up and realized that nothing special would happen unless they wanted it to and "they" made it happen. They did it. When the gauntlet was dropped, there was, true, about a day of hesitation perhaps but there in the cold wind and rain in a field in new york state they "grew up" picked the gauntlet up and worked it and the jam was done and a new generation of adults were born and entered the real and uncertain world of the 1970s and 80s. And the rest is history.
End of Story
ed jonas More >
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19 Nov 2006 @ 16:44