What Floats My Boat

by E. Alan Meece
by Eric Meece, Feb.4-5, 2023
My Band of Writers essays
prompt: what floats your boat

It was October 1965. I saw a strange light outside my window here in San Jose. From then on, I got more curious than ever before. I just turned 16, and I was questioning what I had believed was true, that mathematics was ultimate and science was the way. Up until then, my obsessions had been astronomy, science, math, music and nature. But I was not admired for being one of the smartest kids in the class. Some of the macho, arrogant Boomers of the in-crowd excluded me as some kind of sissy or geek. I wasn’t that, really. Maybe they were jealous. But I could not handle them and I was not intimidating to them at all.

But music and nature did reveal beauty to me, and I wondered what it was. Dumb matter could not explain it. Math could not explain it, and anyway it couldn’t encompass infinity; all measurement is inaccurate. So what explained it?

On June 26, 1966, I went to the local theater and saw "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming". I stayed for a western and a skateboard film. As I walked home I felt lightness in my step. I didn’t know it then, but something was shifting in me and in the world. My Dad had built a clubhouse from the crate that the transmitter for his radio station had come in, and he and my brother Gordon had built a second story on top of it. That night I stayed in the second story and brought my radio. Boy was I amazed at what I heard. I was concerned that all my favorite songs had failed to make it, and I wondered if another favorite would come along. Then Petula Clark came on, and it arrived: I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love . I was so happy that my favorite song had arrived that I was suddenly in bliss, and it was so grand and uplifting that I was lifted up too. A few previous favorite songs were just as good or even better, perhaps, but I had never been so blissed out. And another song had arrived too a week or two before that I was considering, and its lyrics said "I opened my heart to the whole universe, and I found it was loving". It was called 5D Fifth Dimension by The Byrds , and I was especially taken with its sound. On my July 2 weekly list of my favorites it was number one, and I put Petula at #2. A song hadn’t ever before debuted on my list that high unless I already knew it. The following week it was #1.

But even as these songs about love were getting me high, the answer to my question came. Beauty is love. And I truly was opening to love, and I was feeling it coming down on me, like ethereal rain or sunshine. It was the turning point in my life, and the great discovery that was to open up many more, in the next 9 months especially, and ever since. And I had never experienced such beauty before as I did in those days. To express it had been my long-unrealized goal. But-- others, I found out, were expressing it for me.

I didn’t think at first that the movie I saw on June 26 lived up to the hype. It was just like what Petula said in her song that she didn’t like her new love much when they first met. But soon I discovered that the images of the film stuck with me, including the scenes of its filmed location, and it soon melded together with my vision of love. The bright spirit of the film was amazing. The hilarious frantic paranoia had an awakening, kaleidescopic energy and a happy ending with happy music and a message of peace ( see trailer ). The Russians loved it too. In the movie their submarine had got stuck on a rock on Martha’s Vinyard island and the sailors needed to borrow or steal a motorboat to pull the sub off the rock. But the Cold War was still raging. The Russians were soon spotted, and the "crazy" Americans thought this was a new invasion . Dodging their feisty antics, the Russians stole a boat from the harbor , and then they got lost. The sub had already freed itself, but the captain thought the others who got lost were captured, so he threatened the town at the harbor. Boy was he mad! And so was the town sheriff about the boat theft! But then Kolchen, one of the Russian sailors still in the town, rescued a local boy who got stuck while watching the commotion from a roof, and all was well. The guys in the stolen boat came back, and the Americans escorted the Russians out to sea to stave off the US airforce. A few years later I decided that the shifting frantic, episodic moods, scenes and sequences in the movie were similar to what is portrayed in late-19th century Russian composer Borodin’s Polovetsian Dances , which had become a favorite classical music piece of mine, and the "Strangers in Paradise" theme from it was like when Kolchen struck up a loving friendship with calm, smart American young lady Alyson Palmer on the resort island (really Mendocino) . And Kolchen said "I wish not to hate anybody!"

Actually, the movie was filmed in Mendocino CA. (picture by Jef Poskanzer https://www.flickr.com/photos/37996593020@N01- originally posted to Flickr https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flickr as Mendocino https://www.flickr.com/photos/37996593020@N01/245594408 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en So at my urging, in August 1966 our family went there, which had already been a favorite place of Mom’s we had visited before. We wanted to go there and act out some of the scenes, like sneaking up on the church. We stayed at the Mendocino Hotel for $10 (just try to do that now!). As I walked under the nearby water tower, Petula came on the radio there with her previous record It’s a Sign of the Times. It sure was, more than I knew yet! (The tower was like a big urn in the sky providing water for the town). What an amazing connection!

Then we went over to Clear Lake for a boat ride. I don’t know if my parents had the boats in the movie in mind, and I don’t know if I was acting out what the Russians did or not, but at night I went out to the motel’s pier and climbed into a rowboat tied to it and went out by myself. It was so peaceful and I felt connected, and a couple of lovers were on the next pier too. It was a key Awakening moment for me. I didn’t think I stole the boat, actually; it seemed like it was owned by the motel, and available. But boy, was my Dad mad! I don’t know how he found out, but I guess he was worried it was unsafe for me to go out alone on the lake at night. An amazing thing to me as I look back on it is that I had just got my driver’s license, and yet he let me drive the family on the coastal highway and the Oakland freeway. He trusted me for that, but not to row a boat on a quiet lake by myself for a little while! During our family boat ride earlier that day, I had bragged to my brother Ted that maybe I could jump out for a swim. I was feeling strong and bravado that Summer, and I had looked in the mirror at the Mendocino Hotel and thought I was looking good. And most of the kids were soon treating me better at school too. The clicks and in-crowds were breaking down. Hippies were appearing, and were part of our youth group here at San Jose UU too. Boomers were becoming flower children from this time on.

Even before our trip to Mendocino, where they were showing the movie too, The Beatles had come out with "Revolver" and it featured We all live in a Yellow Submarine , like the one the Russians had, and also the first and greatest mystic-psychedelic song Tomorrow Never Knows that said "relax and float downstream" and "love is all and love is everyone." According to the PBS documentary Soundbreaking: Painting with Sound it changed music forever, and it put the Awakening in the music for us all to hear. John Lennon said about the song, quote, "We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, and we were part of it, and we went somewhere." The song proved that my vision was not just mine, it was Here, There and Everywhere as The Beatles sang. They and others were expressing my vision too.

As I sat looking out at the sky from the clubhouse, I said to myself, "there’s something in the air." Then in the next Fall in 1967 my astronomy hobby became astrology. What a switch! As I learned the meaning of the signs and the planets, I correctly guessed where everything was in my astrology chart before looking it up. And as if that were not enough to amaze me, I asked myself what the planets were doing that could explain the Awakening that was happening. What were the signs of the times? I thought a conjunction among the 3 outer planets must be going on, and I saw that Uranus and Pluto were aligned. These three planets were supposed to represent transcendent experiences, revolutions and discoveries. Then I asked myself, when was the energy highest? I was dumbfounded. I looked it up, and I saw that the exact conjunction had occurred on June 30, 1966, at the height of my awakening experience when I felt something in the air.

In April 1966, "Rain" was recorded by The Beatles right after "Tomorrow Never Knows", on which John explained that when rain and sun are coming down on us, the weather’s fine. That month Uranus and Pluto were also aligned, but were moving backwards relative to the Earth’s motion. Appropriately this was reflected in "Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" by the first-ever taped-backward recorded sounds on a record, as stated in the Soundbreaking documentary (see link above). This was the second alignment of those two planets. The first forward one was in October 1965 when I first "saw the light", and the final forward alignment was the one in June that defined the next 135 years until the next one. I later discovered that ALL of the outer 5 planets, including Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter, had with Uranus and Pluto as the grounding two planets formed the approximate shape of a peace symbol in the sky for the only time ever between June 1966 and March 1967. And on November 12, all the other planets joined this formation during a solar eclipse aligned with Neptune and Venus, the planets of love.

In 1970 Peter Townshend produced a song called Something in the Air , and wrote for his unfinished rock opera "Lifehouse" Let's see freedom in the air! I already knew he was expressing my vision in his music, but then in 1973 Quadrophenia came out, featuring the story set in Summer 1965 of a disillusioned young mod-scene follower named Jimmy. I explained the story in my previous BOW essay, but suffice to say that in my favorite song from this rock opera, Doctor Jimmy and Mister Jim , he was so mad and felt so hopeless over the mod scene letting him down that he stole a motorboat and headed out to a rock in Brighton Bay. He said it must be better to be plain-ordinary mad; he was quadrophenic! And boy, was he mad! But feeling bravado too! He had a breakdown on the boat, and then a breakthrough. Jimmy said others would talk behind his back about this theft, but that he was boldly off the beaten track, and would take on anyone. But in the most transcendent moment in rock music history, on the boat he heard music from heaven, which made Quadrophenia my favorite album and the track my all time #2, and then on the rock he reconciled his 4 warring personalities and asked Love to rain down on him and reign over him . Note that the story in this opera and its pictures came with the album in liner notes and in a separate booklet see boat-stealing scene here; the lyrics alone don't provide all the details about Jimmy stealing the boat, although in some live performances he explains this before performing the song . Every comment I have seen online ignores the main scene and the main point of the story; that Jimmy had unknowingly embarked on a spiritual journey, and the moment of life-changing musical awakening came while he was on the boat. The movie ignores it too. So I copied this portion of the Quadrophenia story from the album liner notes and pasted it here . Quadrophenia was written by Peter Townshend.

I don't know if Pete knew it, but in 1967 great black soul-singer Otis Redding was proud of his new song Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay. His character had nothing to live for, so he went to San Francisco like a lot of young folks that year and found peace just watching the ships roll in and out. It was peaceful, like it was for me at Clear Lake. Jimmy had found a new peace too after having been let down by everything, just sittin' on the rock in the bay. Otis was actually sitting out on a houseboat in San Francisco Bay at Sausalito when he started writing the song. This #1 record (and #1 on my weekly lists too) rolled over America like a great tide early in the exuberant and tragic year 1968, but Otis had already died in a plane crash. Jimmy's boat rolled away too and we don't know what happened to him. Dr. King saw a vision of the promised land, but didn't get there with us.

Peter and The Who expressed my vision for me. And that vision has been what floats my boat. This saying is a metaphor for what makes us happy, makes life worthwhile and provides our purpose or direction. The boat symbol in the 3 main experiences in my story shows them as part of my purpose and are connected to the larger culture and its purpose too.

Here at First UU San Jose I recently wrote the reflection Where My Curiosity Led Me for a service, and Diana Mecum (also of Band of Writers) wrote one for it too. She is a mathematician, and I wrote that I had come full circle and realized by then that numbers DO express beauty. I wrote in a previous BOW essay on May 4th, 2019 about the number 54, and here I am again in 2023 on February 4th and 5th writing about beauty. It seems that although numbers can’t really measure the world as we usually think, rational proportion expresses harmony that is beyond measurement. And 54 is the basic number of music. In the footnotes to this essay I may say more again too! I have chosen "coming full circle" as the prompt for our next Band of Writers meeting. See Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, p.29 and the Bernstein clip about the evolution of music.

Love Floats Your Boat Reflection for UU service based on this BOW essay

More on The Who's masterpiece Quadrophenia

Exigesis

My central discovery in What Floats my Boat was beauty itself-- that beauty is love. And somehow then, it was guiding my spiritual adventure that made up the story. And what makes it so beautiful, besides what I felt, was the connections. I don’t know if my story conveys any of the feelings I felt in the months and years following my discovery and awakening vision in late June, 1966. But I hope people can see it in the movie, and hear it in the music of those who expressed my vision for me.

A big keyword there is connections. The same symbols appeared in the three main elements of my story: the movie, my 1966 vacation experience, and The Who’s Quadrophenia climax. Borrowing or stealing and floating in a boat. People who were poorly-adjusted or crazy. Someone mad about the theft, or during it. The rock, and the submarine. Love, and reconciliation. A beautiful town on the coast. Something in the air. The important role of music. And the signs of the times. The boats played the central role in the 3 stories. They "float me". Synchronicities and connections are real, and they guide us and float us. The more you look for them, the more you find. And they are blissful. Even today I keep finding these symbolic connections about these times!

Carl Jung wrote about how our dreams and personal experiences can be reflected in the outer world. They are symbols, or omens. James Redfield wrote about how they led a seeker to the Celestine Prophecy discovery. Symbols within can be reflected without and lead us on in our spiritual adventures. In this they confirmed the validity of my discovery, and the significance of the time they happened. Because of them I have felt less alienated since then. I am a part of what is unfolding for all of us.

The first principle of hermeticism is "as above, so below; as within, so without." My awakening vision was part of a collective experience felt by many people simultaneously, primarily among my generation, first-wave Boomers, as in John Phillips’s song "San Francisco:" All across the nation, such a strange vibration. That’s why I felt something in the air. Wittingly or not, Bob Dylan had prophecized this in his most famous song, "the answer is blowing in the wind," and of course Pete Townshend confirmed it later. When something is on the verge of consciousness, we say "something is in the air", said Carl Jung (Man and His Symbols p.25). What I was experiencing in 1966 was the Awakening that shifted society then, and is still its hope of glory. And as I have said, people of other (usually older) generations that I knew also experienced a spiritual awakening at the same time. And John and George of The Beatles mentioned it in their reflections of how Revolver and Tomorrow Never Knows (with its "revolving speaker") came to be. I didn’t know where the album title "Revolver" came from before seeing this clip. Speaking of this collective experience in 1966 that my vision and awakening was part of, John said our generation was on a ship, and we were part of it, and George Harrison said "There was a great upsurge of energy and consciousness, and so there was a lot of excitement on the street; there was a lot of people tryin' to go on the same trip together."

At least at this time and place, what I was experiencing myself was a transformation that the world and society was experiencing too. I was attuned and aligned, and "the stars aligned". It was "a sign of the times", just as the song under the Mendocino water tower said. June 26 or 27 is the day when the Sun is on my Ascendant. And as I predicted before looking it up, Uranus and Pluto aligned exactly on June 30, 1966 on my Nadir degree, the place of the soul in the horoscope. Both positions are related to the Summer Solstice on June 21. The Nadir is the beginning of the "4th House" and June 21 is the beginning of the 4th sign. On June 26 the Sun is in its 5th degree of the 4th sign. The numbers 5 and 4 again! Perhaps this is why I have organized Summer Solstice celebrations. At one of these when I was 54, I discovered its connection to my favorite music, on which I learned to play the organ, Bach's Toccata in F BWV 540, with its two canons twirling in opposite directions for 54 bars each that represent the seasonal cycle. See my essay on Toccata in F And discovering that the planets aligned on the exact day of my Awakening prompted me to write and publish my two books on the "Horoscope" of our "New" times. See https://philosopherswheel.com/transcendentaltrinity.html and especially the section SOMETHING IN THE AIR- AND THE SKY!

What I discovered was that I am connected. What is within me is a microcosm of the world without me. What the Russians (who now have become our enemies again, unfortunately) and Americans learned, what Jimmy learned, and what I learned, is that despite all our maladjustments and conflicts, I and all of us are connected to the universe through love, just as The Beatles, the Byrds and Petula Clark taught us that magic summer of 1966. And the story of Jimmy’s revelation is set only 1 year earlier in 1965. The times, as Bob Dylan sang, were ‘a changin'

My awakening was the nation’s and the world’s awakening. And the world’s awakening was mine. That’s what the connections between my life and those who expressed my vision for me represent: I am not separate. My liberation is society’s liberation. There was something in the air. And the meaning of this is that the vision and the awakening of the sixties is right and valuable, in spite of any of its shortcomings, and it’s still right. The song that Pete produced by Thunderclap Newman later in 1970 said it. "There’s something in the air. We have got to get it together sooner or later, because the Revolution’s here. And you know that it’s right!" As I felt the "rain" of love coming down on me at the end of June 1966, just like Roger said Jimmy felt in Quadrophenia’s climax "only love can bring the rain that falls like tears from on high", I sent it out and gave it back, and I felt I was sending it to the world. The New Thought church I was going to later in circa 2010, just two blocks away from our house where I lived in 1966, at 1540 Hicks Ave. (which used to be where my childhood girlfriend Crystal lived; and remember Toccata in F is BWV 540-1), taught me a song that said , "I send my love over the mountains, and over the sea, and it returns to me" (written by Karen Drucker ) That’s what I did in June 1966, and it did. I felt I helped cause the Awakening. It came through me and many others, and the Awakening is itself the message, and the meaning. And the "proof" of this collective vision is that others expressed the same vision that I expressed and experienced, as the symbolism of the boat floating and the other connections showed, and that’s what they mean. We’re all in the same boat. It’s in the movie, it’s in the rock opera, it’s in all the cultural creations that I and others have created since then that in no way would have existed without that awakening time in 1966.

The heart of this transformation is the beauty I experienced in the following months and years. Everyone has their favorite music and movies that probably aren’t the same as mine. But I can point and link to mine, and I feel that if others listen they can hear my vision too. I want my bliss and beatitude to be others’ too. I want it shared. The beauty is the message, and it represents sensitivity. It can come to us if we are sensitive and let it come. As Alan Watts said, "sensitivity isn’t the pitch" of the dominant male American culture and its paradigms and models. It is about being a tough guy and being realistic. This toughness has its place, and sixties awakening culture itself often produced some new versions of being tough. Born to Be Wild for example. (used in the Awakening-type movie "Easy Rider"). In America, men feel they need to show they are tough because they aren’t quite sure they are really men, as Watts put it. But if you have confidence in yourself as you are, you don’t have to put on that show. Our culture lacked sensitivity. But those who took LSD in 1966 had it revealed to them how beautiful and wonderous life and the world is. That’s what I discovered too by myself in my "contact high" in late June 1966. I had not fully appreciated and experienced the world’s beauty until then. How wonderous the sky is, for instance. Just as Jimmy said on the rock when he asked Love to bring the rain. See all the love in the sky, and it will reflect in your eye, as Curt Boettcher’s and Lee Mallory’s Millennium group said . See more about these artists at https://philosopherswheel.com/melee.htm

Our Awakening brought sensitivity to the USA for the first time. The whole history of LSD (or "Acid") and the counter-culture goes beyond the scope of this essay about my own connections. Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test recounts much of it, including Ken Kesey’s invention described by the title, and the hippie "New Life" and its presence among our UU Liberal Religious Youth groups. A wave of "heads" in universities tripped out starting in late 1965, and Kesey’s first Acid Tests happened at his La Honda home in 1964 and in San Jose CA in Dec. 1965 with music by the Grateful Dead, and in the Trips Festival or "gathering of heads" (supposedly an Acid Test without the Acid) in San Francisco in January 1966 they went public and created the multi-media participatory concerts with light shows that flourished from then on. Meanwhile in New York the Greenwich Village club scene nurtured hundreds of pioneering performers like Fred Neil, Dino Valenti, Joni Mitchell, Dave Van Ronk-- and Bob Dylan. His song about the mystical effects of music called Mr. Tambourine Man in 1964 was picked up and covered by The Byrds in early 1965 with a huge hit record of early folk-rock music which first sent Boomer youth on their "magic swirling ship". The Beatles in 1964 had inspired many young people to form bands "in their garage," and in 1966 they started to go psychedelic, led by Jefferson Airplane’s extensive tours around the San Francisco Bay Area, by San Jose group Count Five with their national June 1966 hit Psychotic Reaction, using fuzz guitars and harmonicas to great effect , by the 13th Floor Elevator group from Texas, by a large group of bands in New England, and by other groups all over the world. The Yardbirds from the UK helped pioneer what later became acid rock and launched the careers of famous electric guitarists, starting with an album that may be the source of the 1990s term "rave." We got our own copy thanks to the same label that sent us the Donovan album referred to below, and Gordon loved it. Psychedelic poster art that publicized the concerts spawned a rich culture in the visual arts. The 50th anniversary of the San Francisco Summer of Love of 1967 exhibited the artists who created this genre between 1966 and 1969. The Human Be-in in San Francisco on January 14, 1967 opened in many places a series of "love-ins" (named after the 1960 "sit ins" by black youth that disrupted segregated restaurants) that continued for decades as Grateful Dead-head concerts, Rainbow Gatherings, and other music festivals starting in Monterey CA and Woodstock NY (entitled the "Aquarian Exhibition"). Promoting peace, love and community, and being present with others, it was also part of the protest movements of the sixties, most notably against the US War in Vietnam. The large marches against the war began soon afterward in April.

Our culture had not been like Europe’s and Asia’s and even some of the global South’s cultures, where every building, every street and every village is filled with wondrous, delicate, elaborate carvings and paintings. Traditions of dances and rituals in elaborate costumes abound. Religious and spiritual visions and expansive feelings of life are expressed through arts in these other cultures, and in music of great depth and quality. But in our largely Protestant country, churches are like offices and courtrooms. Men dress like funeral directors. We can’t be bothered with decorations; our architects say "form follows function" and they build glass boxes because they are cheaper to build that way. Until 1966, our nation was about taming the frontier, suppressing the indigenous, and conquering space. The great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer, says Watts; not floating on boats downstream, or out to rocks to see the meaning of within. Our greatest white pop and rock singers in the 1950s and early 1960s were macho-men. The girls loved them. Our culture had taught us to cut ourselves off from a hostile world as separate aliens, and the guys had to be tough and help conquer the world or be outcast as sissies.

But we don’t have to conquer the world; we can also be sensitive and let it come to us. Sensitivity is MY pitch. Since our Awakening, which is my awakening, and everyone’s, in 1966; now, and forever, more sensitivity is being expressed. I told my friend Tom back in the 1980s at our meeting in the same room where Band of Writers meets today, that a great project our culture needs to do is paint murals on our buildings. My vision has come to pass! Just walk around our downtown San Jose. In the following years after 1966 public art has had a revival and recently is reviving some declined town economies . In the documentary about sound-making that showed how Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles from 1966 expressed the Awakening and changed what music is, Brian Eno was one of the commentators. He was the creator of the ambient music genre, along with others, and gave it that name. He thereby showed the debt he owed to the Awakening and its new music in 1966. Ambient Music reached a crowning glory years later in an almost-unknown music piece by Andrew Lahiff called Silver Droplets (2009) that still expresses my manifold vision today very well. I can play it and still experience it. You can connect with other great composers in the ambient tradition who carried forward the Awakening here on my site about my radio and internet program on which I shared and promoted this genre.

From June 1966 on, during and after the release of 5D Fifth Dimension and I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love set off the Awakening explosion and its new music, other outstanding songs were made in 1966 that also expressed my vision for me and others and further evoked it for us. In June 1966 Country Joe McDonald and The Fish created the early version of their psychedelic music and passed it around among the hippies, and I first heard it in January 1967 here at our church down where its office is now, at a Liberal Religious Youth conference which was a virtual love-in, and two guys from Berkeley where Joe lived stayed overnight at our house and told of their many delights and new freedoms. When the album came out that very month, the potent and ecstatic Section 43, one of the tracks, became my #1 favorite for a while, and still is #9 all-time. Rumor has it that the title refers to a law against LSD, but I’m not sure about that since it was not illegal until October, 1966. The Beatles also in June 1966 put out "Yesterday and Today" in America, on which 3 tracks from the British version of Revolver were the "today" part. Revolver itself with Tomorrow Never Knows and Here There and Everywhere was released on August 5th. The latter song became a #1 favorite on my weekly list and is still ranked highly on my all-time list , and the psychedelic one that changed music is now #5 on that list. The Fifth Dimension Byrds album whose title track awakened me also came out that Summer and included David Crosby’s mystical song What’s Happening? , and also their March 1966 single hit masterpiece Eight Miles High , often cited as the first psychedelic song, but was really mostly about an airplane trip and was primarily influenced by John Coltrane. We were lucky to receive a copy of Donovan’s "Sunshine Superman" album because its label also sent classical records for Dad’s radio station, and the title track was the #1 hit during our Mendocino trip and was Gordon’s favorite. It also featured Season of the Witch, future theme song for my Bewitched Music programs and the line from "The Fat Angel", fly trans-love airways, and a great, celestial flowing song about the lady goddess who weaves all the skies. Then Lee Mallory’s That’s the Way it’s Gonna Be appeared, in which he and Our Productions’ Curt Boettcher portrayed the Awakening so vividly that it dominated my turntable for a least 4 years afterward. Note that the version performed by its songwriters included the line though you say, my ship will not reach the shore .

The great Awakening songs just kept coming that Summer and Fall of 1966 as if flowing forth in a flood, and they were bringing some more boats too. Judy Collins transformed Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne into a spell-binding vision of love by the river. The lyrics include these that synchronize with my story: "you can hear the boats go by" "you know that she's half-crazy" "Jesus was a sailor (who) spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower" "The Sun pours down like honey on our Lady of the harbor". In Fall 1966 Fred Neil recorded his search for peace when all hate is gone through communing with the dolphins in the sea , and also his signature 60’s song about himself skipping over the ocean in his sailboat on a summer breeze that became a hit by Nilssen and the theme from Oscar-winning escapist film "Midnight Cowboy" in 1969. Jesse Colin Young and his group The Youngbloods recorded a gently-spectacular version of Fred’s friend Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti)’s signature sixties peace and love anthem Get Together ("smile on your brother, try to love one-another right now"), also a big hit 3 years later in 1969. See my other Band of Writers essays about Fred Neil and Powers/Valenti https://philosopherswheel.com/dino%20and%20paul%20and%20pooneil.html . https://philosopherswheel.com/roundtableescape.html

There’s more. San Francisco psychedelic hippie group Jefferson Airplane, whom Donovan had also mentioned as a trans-love airways flight, and who had put out their first album in the Spring of 1966 that included the same song (as "Let’s Get Together") by Powers, in November recorded their 2nd album-classic "Surrealistic Pillow" in which Grace Slick said in spine-tingling vocals that I need Somebody to Love and advised us in White Rabbit to "feed your head." Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys had been partly inspired by The Beatles’ Dec.1965 Rubber Soul album and their 1966 Revolver album and by Lee Mallory/Curt Boettcher’s That’s the Way it’s Gonna Be to make experimental, studio-enhanced music too on their Pet Sounds album, and released the expensive, elaborate #1 hit and critically-acclaimed song Good Vibrations featuring the theramin sound in October. Whereupon The Beatles were immediately inspired in turn by the "Boys" to start recording their vastly-influential, magically-awakening-infused Sgt. Pepper album. Lately I remembered that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds from that album featured the words "picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine dreams and marmalaid skies". The "clean-cut" group Every Mother's Son recorded the charming and popular Come on Down to My Boat in 1967, a great example of the pop-psychedelic organ sound so prevalent in these times.

By the way, the lead track on the "haunting", artistic and subtle but not yet psychedelic Rubber Soul album was "Drive My Car". When I first got my license and drove a car on my own in Summer 1966 and turned on the radio, that was the song that came on. The best track on the album was Michelle, which Paul McCartney later played for President Obama and his wife Michelle at The White House.

Even the popular blues-rock group The Rolling Stones got into the act in the UK too in 1966 by infusing their hit song Paint It Black with exotic Asian rhythms and sounds (perhaps inspired by George Harrison’s forays there). Besides George’s Revolver song Love You To, the Byrds’ Eight Miles High, and Donovan’s Three King Fishers on his Sunshine Superman album, the Hollies (also UK) also contributed to this so-called "raga rock" Asian/Indian-influenced trend in 1966 on their great, exotic song Bus Stop released in June, written by Graham Gouldman, and featuring a guitar that sounded like a sitar. I once mentioned to Ted that since he met his wife at a bus stop, he was duplicating this song’s narrative. Graham Nash of The Hollies later joined with Crosby and Stills. Pink Floyd (also UK) invented cosmic psychedelic space music in 1966, first playing it live for several months at clubs in London, by taking a blues theme by the rock group "Love" and sending us into Interstellar Overdrive. The Stones took up the quest on their next album, and they were followed by Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in Berlin (Tangerine Dream took their name from the Sgt.Pepper song I quoted above) in the early 1970s. Schulze’s influential cosmic rock Totem piece was also raga rock, along with dozens of other genres in which it partook. I felt that it was a "picture" of The Awakening culture, which was truly trans-oceanic as The Beatles and Donovan had already proven, and as The Who would take to its ultimate expression.

Later on, as I tried to share my vision by sharing the work of those who expressed it for me, I actually met a few of these sensitive, inspired musicians who were part of the larger culture. In the 1980s and 90s I invited Country Joe McDonald to perform "Section 43" and other songs of his at the New Age Renaissance Fair I produced. He even admired my physical fitness in a very hands-on way. Lee Mallory’s friend told him I had put his 1966 song That’s the Way It’s Gonna Be as #7 on my all-time list, and so Lee called me and I invited him to perform the song on my Mystic Music radio program. He invited me in turn to come up to San Francisco where he now lived and hear him perform it at a hip venue along with his musical friends. See https://philosopherswheel.com/melee.htm. I may not have met John Lennon or Roger (Jim) McGuinn, but I met many prominent New Age and counter-culture leaders, almost as if I had become like Forrest Gump, the character who actually met famous people that reflected his own life and even started movements. And Forrest found a new career on a shrimping boat. Forrest Gump is the most famous example in movies of the "as above, so below; as within, so without" principle that my floating boat and the other symbols represent.

Did the sensitivity expressed in the Mendocino-based vivid and lively imagery of The Russians Are Coming get expressed more often in movies after 1966? Well, certainly Forrest Gump, with its symbol of the feather as destiny and chance as one, did so. In a much quieter way, so did My Dinner with Andre . But just as Roger Daltrey of The Who said that multi-tracking experiments that started with Tomorrow Never Knows got to be too indulgent sometimes, so in movies the technical fireworks of special effects since Star Wars in 1977 certainly are. Expressing the hero’s journey myth in that and other epic films since then was certainly a step up though. The "indulgent" excesses remind us about how far sensitivity still needs to grow in our culture. Yet grown it has, to some extent, in some special and unusual ways. In architecture, for example, the glass boxes have given way in some outstanding examples to more inventive and creative styles. Guys no longer dress as funeral directors so often, even at Microsoft. Native and world cultures have revived, most notably in my life by an early-1969-released song which created the best uplifting high I had experienced since June 1966, when jazz artist Jim Pepper joined some psychedelic rock and blues artists to create and perform a hit song based on his native-american chanting and peyote culture, Witchi Tai To. The song’s "water spirit springing around my head" remind us to keep the spirit alive, as my later radio slogan partly based on this song said. It was the most-requested song on my show. Ambient and space music continue too on the cultural fringe, including as the mainstay of my radio show, also creating great awakening experiences of a more contemplative and spiritual kind. Computers may have sapped the life out of our pop music and movies, and too often the new types of macho predominate in rock, but cyber arts can be quite delicate and soul-revealing.

The new sensitivity of the sixties also extended to social justice and how we treat each other and the Earth and its oceans. The war on poverty and the movements against prejudice liberated millions. In speeches that had the eloquence and inspiring cadences and rhythms of a great symphony, Martin Luther King Jr. called for all peoples to join hands in non-violent movements toward brotherhood. Black Power emerged as a tactic after a dynamic March Against Fear on June 26, 1966, and National Organization for Women was founded on June 30. Environmentalism was launched in the mid-1960s at San Francisco Bay and Santa Barbara and promoted by the massive Earth Day demonstrations. Shows like Laugh-In and All in the Family, and of course the cult-classic The Prisoner, brought the new sensibility to television.

The questioning of science and math and revival of intuition and esoteric traditions in new age, neo-pagan and human potential movements, psycho-cybernetics, and sensitivity trainings, some of which I promoted and participated in, grew strongly for a while, as did questioning of out-of-date prejudices and authorities. Another San Francisco music group, Sly & the Family Stone, invented funk music and put out a classic song in 1968 called Everyday People that said "I am no better, and neither are you. We are all the same whatever we do", and "different strokes for different strokes" which became a slogan on Laugh In. The term "strokes" which means support we all seek from others since birth and childhood came from the top 1966 best-seller Games People Play by Eric Berne, first published in 1964. It was part of learning to be authentic and heal dysfunctional childhood relationships with parents, and the book founded TA (Transactional Analysis) aka "I’m OK, You’re OK" which was immensely popular and liberating but is now largely forgotten. Another pop song from 1969 called Games People Play by Joe South celebrated this and other 1966 awakenings. Post-modern philosophy, which emerged in 1966, also struck against hierarchy and arbitrary standards.

But reaction has accompanied progress since 1966. Reagan was elected California governor that year with the goal of suppressing the counter-culture, and he went on to impose neo-liberal trickle-down economics on the nation and the world as USA president in 1980. Big money has thereby been allowed to take over our lives See https://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html. Poverty, inequality and prejudice have made major comebacks since then, as have some tepid revivals by Democrats of the new sensitivity to injustice. Now in 2023, being 1966-style "awake" is called "woke" and has become a term of abuse, as the reactionaries seek in their "culture war" to re-impose racism, misogyny and homophobia on society, and attack the trans-gender people who first appeared in 1966.

Meanwhile, not only has much of the new "romantic" adventure beyond stultifying rationality been reversed and ignored recently by many pro-science younger people (like wikipedia editors), this reversal also has allowed runaway virtual and fake AI (artificial intelligence) substitutes for life and reality to flourish, backed by rampantly-expanding corporate machines and oligarchies. The new romanticism has had its own dark side too. Without the standards of modern science and reason to restrain them, some people have embraced dangerous and deadly cults and misinformation, which AI and the internet itself has also facilitated. The post-modern attack on standards became a new excuse for mediocrity and insensitivity. Drugs and sex taken too far and families or communities broken up by all the liberating trends were sometimes destructive. The religious right upheld ancient superstition again and deployed it for the political culture war. The New Age and counter-culture were sometimes too commercial and gullible. Education and critical thinking have suffered some declines. Conspiracy theory still claims as fact that covert powers are behind real or supposed disasters and threats, but with no actual facts and only speculation, lies and guilt by association to back its claims. This culture is cultish too, appealing to those who feel alienated and want tribal support. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. But its war on truth has become a dire threat to civilization, as election denial seeks to impose autocrats upon us, as denials of the science of vaccines and covid hoax theories like "Plandemic" ruin our health and keep pandemics going, and as denial of climate change, or attributing it to chemtrails, threaten our life support systems. For more on conspiracy theory, see this essay and its many links to sources of information.

Like so much else both healthy and hurtful that got going in the time of the magical awakening, modern conspiracy theory culture hails from 1966 in Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment that attacked the Warren Commission and launched JFK assassination conspiracy theory. Majorities of the people have believed it, including me for a while, but alas, none of it is based on fact. Conspiracy theory culture started out as part of the quest to question outdated authorities and narratives, such as the Cold War military-industrial complex and its secret government agencies, which seems laudable in itself. But how this purported purpose of the conspiracy culture has developed has led us astray. The JFK conspiracy theory, the granddaddy of others that followed, became a negative expression of the trend to embrace the irrational and substitute fantasy for it, though only one of many. We still need science to establish claims and confirm regularities of observation. But the relapse into fantasy continued, as conspiracy theory scams became outrageous beyond belief. Other such bogus theories like claims that the government is spraying poisonous elements on us from airplanes (chemtrails) and that "9-11 was an inside job" were added to conspiracy culture, until it went so far as to accuse Democrats of operating child sex trafficking and claiming gun massacres were staged by "crisis actors" to support the gun control we actually so sorely need. Surely the stubborn opposition to this need, supported by such dangerous nonsense, is the ultimate denial of the new sensitivity. The gun control movement itself, though, is also a positive legacy of the sixties, having been originally spurred by the same assassinations that spawned conspiracy theory.

Wallace disagreed with Andre's understanding of synchronicity at their "dinner", saying it was regressive and anti-rational too. Indeed, it can be like "connecting the dots" as conspiracy theorists do, but without supporting bogus factual claims of secret human or ET powers behind them. Many times, synchronicities like the ones I mention in this essay are merely poetic allusions. They sound good, but what do they mean? But other times they point to a higher and larger intelligence guiding our lives, and to our own potentials of which we are not yet conscious. They remind us that human beings are not just individuals isolated from what's going on around and within them. Synchronicities may not be logical proofs, and they all must be looked at to see how "miraculous" they actually are. But when they are, they tell us this larger truth we need to know today that we are connected to the whole process of life and the cosmos. In this essay I have told of synchronicities between my personal Awakening in 1966 and that of the larger culture. Of course there are many others about other experiences of mine and of other people and at other times.

Since the Awakening contrary consequences, reactions, reversals, opposite trends, and "sleepenings" as I call them continue. In the mid-1980s the Boomer bullies returned to my life too, and many who I know became arrogant and self-satisfied again, and I have often not handled them well again either. Not that I just gave in to them this time around, maybe the opposite; but many times it didn't work out anyway. But I had some success, at least for a while, sharing those who have expressed my awakening vision, through promoting events, broadcasting programs, publishing books, and performing music by others. And I have created some of my own music and art as well. I told more about the awakening and the subsequent pathways I followed in "My Story" which I posted to my facebook timeline sometime before July 1, 2021.

But in the face of the reaction, we ignore the real Awakening of circa 1966 in all its varied aspects at our peril. And there’s still a bit more to say here about my Awakening and its connections to others I have met. A friend of mine Ron Lampi aspires to be a recognized visionary poet and prophet of the New Age and has published The New Age Vision book and dozens of pamphlets and poems .He heard the "melody" of the new vision in the sixties and came to Santa Cruz CA from Detroit. Like me, and Pete Townshend’s Jimmy character, Ron has felt alienated from a lot of mainstream culture. Partly because of this, sadly, he has also embraced and promoted conspiracy theory, most concerningly by denying covid 19 as a "multi-media fear campaign" and knocking vaccines. He has not considered very well the information I send him about conspiracy culture, and our communication as of now in 2023 is sparse. Fortunately however, he has stopped promoting this culture for now, to avoid "polarization", and has continued his work as a visionary poet. I mention him here because he has in some ways expressed my vision for me, just as the more-famous examples I mention here have done. When I experienced love flooding into me in late June 1966, it felt similar to what Ron describes as "the Sun experience" in its radiance.

I also want to give plaudits to two other important figures I worked with in 1975, Frank Pucelik and Leslie Cameron Bandler, who were co-creators of what became known and widely-practiced as neuro-linguistic programming therapy or NLP. Leslie later married one of the two authors of the main NLP textbook, The Structure of Magic. I mention them because Frank conducted a hypnotherapy dream interpretation session with me, somewhere in fact close to Lampi’s house north of UC Santa Cruz or near Felton CA, and the experience was revelatory. At the end what resulted was that I felt "bright spirit" rising up in me. I felt that this was the same "sun experience" of love and bliss I got in June 1966 being made known again to me, as if it had been deposited in me before and was released again.

Ron’s new-age vision experience came in about 1980 or 1982. The symbol for Aquarius, the constellation which is his symbol for the New Age, is a man holding an urn pouring water out for humanity. In his vision this man became the (originally-Greek) goddess Psyche, and the urn became a fountain, and at its core below was The Sun, represented by Leo the opposite complementary constellation ruled by The Sun. This also was reflected in a famous song, just as my vision was also reflected in sixties and 70s songs, but for him it was a song from earlier in time than his vision. This song is of course this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius coupled with Let the Sun Shine In , as performed in this 1969 #1 hit version by the Fifth Dimension group. Comment on the video:

Grammichal
"I saw them in person in my home town of Seattle in 1969! "Let the sunshine in." My boyfriend and I were so excited after hearing the song go on and on and on we jumped straight into a fountain outside the Colosseum."

Lampi now feels that Psyche is a deity he can call on, although he also refers to this as "the higher Self", similar to Jung’s idea. The Fifth Dimension group also performed what I think was a greater but less-well-known song in 1967, another all-time favorite of mine entitled Paper Cup, written by another Jimmy, Mr. Webb. The way the paper cup was described made it yet another boat song, because the narrator was said to be riding inside it in a gutter, having before been in a refrigerator. Well, whatever floats you, I guess! But the zen-like lyrics to this brilliantly-melodic, very uplifting and blissed-out song from inside a paper cup seemed to have been inspired by a lecture by Alan Watts, who was making the point that the beatific vision of light and ultimate reality can even be seen in an old paper cup. Watts lived on a houseboat at Sausalito on San Francisco Bay.

In 1980-1982 society in The West the reactionary trends to the sixties’ sensitivities were coming to the fore, but also authors who put them in more-definite literary and other more-concrete forms, just as Lampi’s vision does. Whereas mine and those who experienced "my" vision simultaneously were more vague and encompassing feelings and imagery, and this was directly linked with that of millions of other people as its symbols confirmed to me, Lampi’s version was mostly his own, and he is one of its few prophets, apparently. Nevertheless, we share the significance of water, the sun and astrology.

Ron Lampi also promotes the place where his vision occurred, the coast of Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay. He communed with the Bay much like Jimmy did in Quadrophenia, and in fact one beach near Santa Cruz is named New Brighton after the original English one in The Who’s opera. Brighton is to London as New Brighton is to the San Francisco Bay Area, especially to San Jose where I live, in both cases going south to the beach. Another link I share with Lampi’s vision is that the logo created in 1982 for my New Age Renaissance Fair, at which Lampi later spoke, replaced the Man holding the urn in the Aquarius symbol with a goddess image. And remember the water tower I stood under in Mendocino in August 1966, like a big Aquarian urn or fountain in the sky, just as "A Sign of the Times" by the great lady singer Petula Clark who had awakened me came on the radio.

One of Lampi’s themes is that human evolution is now focused on the California coast, as I also stated in my first book; and he celebrates Santa Cruz as the specific place on this coast instead of Mendocino. This also represents that we are living on "the edge" (of the ocean), which means edgy or in danger as well as on the edge of transformation to something better. We don’t know which will happen yet. When the Russians, or Jimmy, or myself, or Fred Neil went out into the water on a boat to where the Sun keeps shining through the pouring rain, we were going out on the edge, taking a risk, rebelling, or going against normal expected behavior. So this in some way we must have the courage or bravado to do, if we hope to emerge from this perilous time to reach a new age. Don’t let The White Ship leave us on the shore again (referring to the great H.P. Lovecraft group’s classic song from 1967). And like Jimmy did, we need to call upon Love and its rain and its shiny hot "bright spirit" above and within us to reach integration.

I am glad that in MY experience in 1980, in the Lifespring program, I discovered how this experience is centered in my heart chakra, which is more than a physical organ, but the guiding center of our being in which I can contact that love and authenticity. It is a true fountain of love within us that we can contact at any time. It is a rudder for our boat. Learning the chakras was a major step forward for the Awakening, for me and for all of us, if we take the time to examine our consciousness within our body and feel these centers and the abilities they offer. I also discovered myself that each of the chakras (except the second) corresponds to an indentation outside of our bodies along the spinal axis. That helps me to contact them. And, above all, we need to remember that this Love is found by remembering the sensitivity we have discovered since 1966. The new bright spirit is rising and shining forth.

As Jimmy said, "Is it Me, for a moment? The stars are falling. The heat is rising, the past is calling" https://youtu.be/F-IGw2m6I-M?t=380 And from the singer Portugal The Man we more-recently have heard: "I’m a rebel just for kicks now. I’ve been feeling it since 1966, now. Might be over now, but I Feel It Still "

What floats your boat? What gives you life? For me, it was in the movie and the music and their boats like the one I floated in, and in the music in between 5D and Lifehouse/Quadrophenia. This life cannot be described, only experienced. It’s the life-giving beauty and its love that is felt and which we can share. So, what is your story? Which beauty and love floats your boat? Is it the cosmic connection of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music? Or as John Sebastian asked, do you believe in magic? Then "go and listen." Or as Joseph Campbell said, "follow your bliss". Or Jefferson Airplane: "go ride the music" and see the sun rising in the morning from the Wooden Ships . Comments on this video:

b Mukherjee
A whole new dimension that captures the feelings of the age. And Grace Slick's soaring take offs. Everything gels to create a masterpiece. Have listened to it so many times and come out inspired to feel rebellious.

keep smilin
late sixties to the early seventies, a renaissance of passion, originality, freedom of thought, musical genius..never to be surpassed in my lifetime

Epilogue: The Awakening-- A New Day and a New Way for us

1966 truly was a turning point. We can’t go back. We can’t fill up the hole that the psychedelic and mystic awakening tore through our culture and society. Its calls to liberation still reverberate in all our affairs. We went beyond old barriers of race, gender, economic class, sexuality, religion, science, fashions, wars, stereotypes, and outworn patterns, images and ideals, and we experienced a new vision of peace, love, spirit, beauty and awakening life and imagination.

But we still don’t really know yet if the sixties was a permanent turning point. We don’t know if our ship will reach the shore. History will say. Previous liberations are unfinished too, just as Kenneth Clark Said. Clark created the first extensive documentary series, about western civilization, and he was followed by many more such filmmakers on many subjects. Many of these have been shown on public television in the US and UK. Our unique, expanding knowledge of the past in our own times, as chronicled so often today in documentaries and books, show us that the "past" is still "calling." Our Awakening was not the first one. We have had others even in America, as William Strauss and Neil Howe documented in their books Generations and The Fourth Turning. https://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/timelines/turnings.html . And other Awakenings continue to reverberate from the past into the present from all over the world and from many past ages.Great religions, arts and esoteric traditions are calling us to resurrect and revise them as needed to nourish our wisdom.

The romantic movement from the late 18th century to the mid 19th century, spreading in time from Europe to America, has particular resonance to the sixties awakening. And its drive for democracy and freedom is still needed and is being felt strongly in many countries today, as the tyrants still rule in many places. In his Civilization series of 1968, Kenneth Clark told about how the romantic movement and the French Revolution were only the start of a voyage we are still on, and how the romantic poets and artists were obsessed with the ocean. Once more upon the water, wherever it leads! Then he showed how artists like Turner and Gericault, composers like Beethoven and poets like Lord Byron took us out on the waves amid perils and disasters on ships at sea, and wrote of the sublime feeling of being a part of these larger forces of Nature and Being. Maybe people didn’t have rock music to ride to then, but they had painters and writers. Clark said that after all the repeated cycles of failure of the liberations and hopes of the romantic era from the French Revolution to his time in 1968, modern humanity was still in search of a soul. The sublime music of The Who including Won’t Get Fooled Again and Jimmy’s adventures in Quadrophenia are romantic, are echoes of Beethoven, and could even be soundtracks for Clark’s documentary, as well as for our own stories. But the discoveries and re-discoveries we have made since 1966 are the way to this new soul for humanity. We have found it. Through music, chakras, sensitivity, symbols, synchronicity, and new methods of personal and political liberation, we feel and feed on the Love that guides us in our times. They will float our boat toward the new day. It depends on what we decide; whether we admit, learn, accept and continue to progress and create the new ways or not. It depends on how we vote, and on what we each support, enjoy, create, work for and advocate. It’s up to us. We can be aware and progressive, or we can be deceived reactionaries. It’s OUR new world to create, or an old world to settle for. Our new love and sensitivity, sharper and deeper than ever before, ever more-beautiful and revelatory, can still float our boat in the new directions we need to go. We can keep our new consciousness and sensitivity alive, or let it fade away. Let’s keep it growing. Launched and sailing since the sixties, it carries us forward with this past that calls us and the future that beckons us; now, and always.

The Awakening that was mine, but also the world's, that got going in 1966 and surrounding years continues to be the hope of the world. Even as many of the people awakened in 1966 and surrounding years have passed on, and I myself being no longer a spring chicken, our work lives on for those willing and able to give it attention. The Awakening was only a beginning of what we want to feel forever, but it was only just the start-- both in the world, and in my life too, as we seek its full expression and develop sensible balances between feelings and reason, science and intuition, sun and rain. I see comments on videos of the songs from the Awakening era like Keep smilin's above that say those times will never come again. But they will. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but just as Awakenings still reverberate from the distant past, and still influence us, so will ours, and so does ours today, because we feel it still, and another will come when the right times come around again.

Other Essays by Eric Meece about music and connections between it and other music and things...

Band of Writers essays: (most recent first)

Coming Full Circle by E Alan Meece

It's Me for a Moment (of thefts and revelations)

The Essay of Dino and Paul and Pooneil

Something Changed, All Spilled Out

What happened to the alien in Justin Bieber's Backpack?

From the First to the Fifth and Back

Round Table Escape

Fly Away: The Who and Our Generations

What You Put On A Yellow Submarine

Inscrutible Alchemy