from N. Mailer's book "MIAMI & THE SIEGE OF CHICAGO"
&
from Charles E Reisen's novel "PLAYING GUTS BALL"


Had The Horns Of The Huns Ever Had Noise To Compare?

* FESTIVAL OF LIFE *

~ Lincoln Park, Chicago Illinois - Sunday 25, August 1968 ~

by Norman Mailer



      " . . . Lincoln Park on a Sunday afternoon in summer . . . the traffic of the tourists and the curious was great; one had to leave the car six blocks away. Curiosity was contained, however, in the family automobile: the burghers did not come to the park. Young tourists and cruisers were there in number, tough kids, Polish and Irish (not all plainclothesmen) circulating around the edges of the crowd, and in the center of the southern part of Lincoln Park where the Yippies had chosen to assemble on an innocuous greensward undistinguished from similar meadows in many another park, a folk- rock group was playing. It was an orderly crowd. Somewhere between one and two thousand kids and young adults sat on the grass and listened, and another thousand or two thousand, just arrived, or too restless to sit, milled through an outer ring, or worked forward to get a better look. There was no stage - the entrance of a flatbed truck from which the entertainers could have played had not been permitted. So the musicians were half hidden, the public address system - could it work off batteries? - was not particularly clear . For one of the next acts it hardly mattered~a young white singer with a cherubic face, perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty-eight, his hair in one huge puff ball teased out six to nine inches from his head, was taking off on an interplanetary , then galactic, flight of song, halfway between the space music of Sun Ra and "The Flight of the Bumblebee," the singer's head shaking at the climb like the blur of a buzzing fly, his sound an electric caterwauling of power corne out of the wall ( or the line in the grass, or the wet plates in the batteries) and the singer not bending it, but whirling it, burning it, flashing it down some arc of consciousness, the sound screaming up to a climax of vibrations like one rocket blasting out of itself, the force of the noise a vertigo in the cauldrons of inner space - it was the roar of the beast in all nihilism, electric bass and drum driving behind out of their own non-stop to the end of mind. And the reporter, caught in the din - had the horns of the Huns ever had noise to compare? - knew this was some variety of true song for the Hippies and adolescents in the house, in this enclave of grass and open air (luxury apartments of Lake Shore Drive not five football fields away) crescendos of sound as harsh on his ear, ear of a generation which had danced to "Star Dust," as to drive him completely out of the sound, these painted dirty undertwenties were monsters, and yet, sti1l clinging to recognition in the experience, he knew they were a generation which lived in the sound of destruction of all order as he had known it, and worlds of other decomposition as well; there was the sound of mountains crashing in this holocaust of the decibels, hearts bursting, literally bursting, as if this were the sound of death by explosion within, the drums of physiological climax wben the mind was blown, and forces of the future, powerful, characterless, as insane and scalding as waves of lava, came flushing through the urn of all acquired culture and sent the brain like a foundered carcass smashing down a rapids, revolving through a whirl of demons, pool of uproar, discords vibrating, electric crescendo screaming as if at the electro-mechanical climax of the age, and these children like filthy Christians sitting quietly in the grass, applauding politely, whistles and cries of mild approval when the song was done, and the reporter as affected by the sound ( as affected by the recognition of what nihilisms were calmly encountered in such musical storm) as if he had heard it in a room at midnight with painted bodies and kaleidoscopic sights, had a certainty which went through gangs and groups and rabble, tourists and consecrated saints, vestal virgins with finger bells, through the sight of Negroes calmly digging Honkie soul, sullen Negroes showing not impressed, but digging, cool on their fringe (reports to the South Side might later be made ) through even the hint of menace in the bikers, some beaks alien to this music, come to scoff, now watching, hà1f tumed on by noise so near to the transcendencies of some of their own noise when the whine of the gears cohabited with the pot to hang them out there on the highway singing with steel and gasoline, yeah, steel and gasoline exactly equal to flesh plus hate, and blood plus hate; equations were pure while riding the balance of a machine, yes, even the tourists and the college boys who would not necessarily be back contributed nonetheless to the certainty of his mood. There was a mock charade going on, a continuation of that celebration of the Yippie Convention yet to come, when Pigasus, a literal pig, would be put in nomination. Vote Pig in '68, said the Yippie placards, and now up at the stage, music done, they announced another candidate to a ripple of mild gone laughter across the grass, Humphrey Dumpty was the Dame, and a Yippie clown marched through the crowd, a painted egg with legs, "the next President of the United States," and in suite came a march of the delegates through an impromptu aisle from the stage to the rear of the crowd. A clown dressed like a Colorado miner in a fun house came first; followed Miss America with hideous lipsticked plastic tits, stars of rouge on her cheeks; Mayor Daley's political machine - a clown with a big box horizontal to his torso, big infant's spoon at the trough on top of the box, and a green light which went on and off was next; then the featured delegate, the Green Beret, a clown with a toy machine gun, soot, and red grease on his face, an Australian bush hat on his head. Some sort of wax vomit pop-art work crowned the crown. Yes, the certainty was doubled. Just as he had known for one instant at the Republican Gala in Miami Beach that Nelson Rockefeller had no chance of getting the nomination, so he knew now on this cool gray Sunday afternoon in August, chill in the air like the chill of the pale and the bird of fear beginning to nest in the throat, that trouble was coming, serious trouble. The air of Lincoln Park came into the nose with that tender concern which air seemed always ready to offer when danger announced its presence. The reporter took an unhappy look around. Were these odd unkempt children the sort of troops with whom one wished to enter battle?

©1968 Norman Mailer

>>> ROCK & ROLL DOPE #2

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Mail:
Makemyday


Playing Guts Ball

~ Lincoln Park, Chicago Illinois - Sunday 25, August 1968 ~

by Charles E Reisen



   Carl got up the next morning and went down to Lincoln Park with Joey and Clark. It was a different kind of demonstration, more like a big lawn party for hippies. There weren't many straights; no suburban mommy peace groups around, but it was a friendly crowd. The Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club was there, colors sewn on their leather jackets, and jeans with rawhide lacing, and the Detroit band MC 5 sang and strutted through "Kick Out the Jams, Motherfuckers." Carl got handed a wad of "psychedelic burlesque" Yippie money, with Jimi Hendrix in the president's oval, and the mottoes "strip for peace, in LBJ we trust none, only love is legal tender and private".

   Nobody had come around with a bullhorn ordering them to disperse, no warning at all, when Carl noticed the cops massing downfield from the crowd. They charged in a broad front; first Carl was rooted, disbelieving, as huge, snarling cops, shaking their Billy clubs, bore down on him, while his knees turned to jelly. When they came within twenty feet, his schoolyard instincts kicked in, and he ran like hell from the bullies until he could turn around safely. The cops clubbed and chased everybody, hippies, bikers, and musicians, trying to clear the place, but Lincoln Park was big, with room to retreat and regroup. After a while, the cops seemed to be satisfied with just breaking up the big lawn party. Later, they would return to enforce the 11 o'clock curfew in the park. The Yippies had gathered again and were preparing to spend the night; the cops chased them out and through the streets of Old Town.

   By then Carl and his friends were on the El up to Evanston, stinking of tear-gas and getting a wide berth. They had no sleeping bags with them, even if they had wanted to sleep in a park crawling with angry cops.

©2003 by Charles E Reisen

FESTIVAL OF LIFE - CHICAGO 1968

Mail: Makemyday

 

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