I don't have much to offer this week I’m afraid. I’m grieving for the loss of one of my oldest friends, a fixture of my youth and a cherished being in my life. Nearly everyone I grew up with either knew, or knew about this person. The resounding wails of sadness erupting from people whose names I haven’t thought about in ages are making their way to my ears.
I don’t have enough hands to count the number of pivotal life experiences I shared with my friend Chris. First time sneaking out of my parents house. First time living away from home. First time taking LSD, and far too many other drugs to name here.
I am who I am because of him. I miss him dearly. And, I knew this day would come.
I hope to honor him in a more complete way at some point in the future, but for now I simply don’t have it in me to conjure some poignant or useful piece of prose.
All week I’ve been wrestling with the cultural compulsion to somehow be of use. I’m not bedridden with tears, or melting down on the phone with friends. My grief doesn't seem to work that way. I almost wish it did. Instead, I’m just contemplating the wind in some quiet stillness, watching nature wrap her arms around me and this thrumming world.
All that is to say that this week, I’m elsewhere.
Grief does not play by the rules of modern culture. And it is for that very reason that I have a deep reverence for it. Grief offers up a refreshing fuck you to the manic hustle of capitalism. Grief compels us to shut it all down, placing our cultivated identities and plans on the altar of the great beyond.
Grief, the great shatterer, the great equalizer, the great deepener. Thank you.
It’s the 4th of July today. And again, I am met with the ironic juxtaposition of “celebrating” something which by now feels like a hollow facade. Given the nightmarish state of the current American political system, especially in the wake of last week’s utterly bizarre presidential debate, forgive me if I’m not inspired. I feel like an angsty 15 year old, horrified at the high school assembly where well-developed children sculpted like Olympic gods attempt to stoke some fervent star-spangled emotion called “team spirit.”
There’s something grotesque about all of this. I’m not feeling it. And I never did.
I’m nauseated by the spectacle of American culture, this mass delusion that equates sports teams and fireworks with some coherent sense of identity. This is the sweetness we crave from real belonging sold back to us as high-fructose corn-syrup. And it’s making us sick.
I’m no longer able to feel any sense of pride or real belonging in this Imperial nation-state we call the “United” States. My initiation into the American political landscape started with the stolen election of George W. Bush, followed by a calamitous, illegal war in Iraq. Corruption and lies is all I’ve ever known here. The mythology of my homeland has mutated into something that no longer serves life and liberty, but consumes and controls it.
America the carcinogen. America the addicted. America the scavenger. America the bloated. America the ravenous. America the con man. America the racist. America the smallpox blanket. America the war criminal.
Hunter S. Thompson went to Las Vegas to hunt down any last tattered scraps of the American Dream and found a schmaltzy neon-lit nightmare instead. His reflections on the America he found in the desert, languishing in the wake of the political and cultural enthusiasm of the 1960’s, ring as true today as they did when he wrote them in a Vegas hotel room with all manner of molecules sloshing through his bloodstream.
“There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
That wave of promise, that possibility of real social change that I imagine seemed so attainable during those days, is long gone. Our era feels marked by a level of dystopian absurdity that is evolving faster than anyone can keep up with. The stakes feel higher than they’ve ever been before. Thanks internet.
But if you know where to look there are still pools of hope, small refuges of feral humanity that remain.
My gaze is fixed on a mossy patch of forest that I’ll be heading to in several days, where an almost geriatric event called the “Oregon Country Fair,” will take place, as it's done for over half a century. And this year, I desperately need the recharge.
The land itself, which archeological evidence confirms has been populated for nearly 10,000 years, practically hums. Moss-heavy oaks and gigantic maples form a canopy of dappled sun that warms the seasonally-flooded pathways. Skeleton wooden structures slowly begin to come to life with hand-crafted, brightly colored humanity. And a small city arises from the dirt, where it will return once again.
Once upon a time, a group of LSD-fueled rag-tags, down-home yogurt makers, motorcycle vagabonds, and hermetic artisans got together in the woods outside of Eugene, Oregon to raise some money for their kids’ alternative school. Pretty soon, Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead got involved. Hippies have been flocking there ever since.
The Fair (as it's known) is the beating heart of American counterculture. Burning Man would not exist without it, nor would the West Coast’s psychedelic-inspired “festival culture.” This event is a living ancestor, a singular expression of alternative weirdness and worldviews, a kaleidoscopic, trickster being that changed my entire reality when I first wandered into those woods as a wide-eyed teenager. For three days out of the year, it is one of the largest towns in Oregon.
It is one of the few communities that I have seen stay true to the values of the political and culture movements of the 1960’s. I feel them embodied in the elders of the Fair as they sit in their booths or meander down paths they’ve known for longer than I’ve been alive. There is a reason the Fair has been on the FBI watch list for decades: its dangerous.
Communities like that threaten the American establishment because they present an alternative to the prescribed cultural narratives of American identity. It’s a hub for those who don’t belong. Are there occasional outlaws or eccentrics? You bet. Still, to me, its a sacred place.
Apart from the land and the Indigenous history of this continent, the only “America” that I can feel good about celebrating lives at the Oregon Country Fair. It’s not because of the drugs (though they help.) It’s because the Fair is the only place I have ever been that is a functioning village. Both elders and children are equally welcome. Art for art’s sake is placed at high value. Community is not a dreamy ideal, but a lived experience. Decisions are made that take into account the land, the community, the values of their origins, and the future generations that will hopefully carry on these weird, wild ways of being forward.
That is the only America I want to live in. I’ve been wanting to leave the pep rally since the moment I got in. I don’t belong there.
Thank god I found somewhere I do.
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I was introduced to you through the psychedelics today podcast and just pre-ordered your book. My father left this realm around the same time as Chris but 4 years ago and to follow were other relatives and my cat. I understand grief and the pain. Please know, and keep this within your pained filled heart… that with darkness there is light. Magical universal energies, messages, opportunities will come through for you. Ask for signs, Chris, will deliver. Sending healing to your heart.
Despite your self consciousness, you offered exactly what I needed. I’m also in the midst of deep grief, and the absurdity of the celebrations this week (which I, begrudgingly, help facilitate with my cover band) was particularly poignant. You gave voice to much of what I felt, and for that, I’m grateful.