Woodstock

Woodstock was a feeling that no amount of nostalgic reportage can re-evoke. It was more than a party. It was a signal of a major shift: All of us disenfranchised had each other now. Our quiet, isolated disagreement with America was now suddenly proven to be sharable and widespread. This event was a lobbying effort, a mobilization that did nothing less than signal the dissolution of the paths our parents had planned for us. It created that illusion at least. For that August 1969 weekend, we 400,000 strangers joined together in a celebration. The music that brought us there was our religion. It was a religion of privilege. We had this advantage of being able to make the choice to go off and have some fun. We had a loud voice as young people with a lot of energy bonded together ecstatic at the relative safety of peers surrounding us.
   It became a self-conscious moment. As such a big group we realized something extraordinary was going on. We received media reports from the stage of how the world was perceiving us. That attention thrilled us even more. That we were headlines validated our fervor. It didn't matter that the press was calling us hippies in the mud. We were used to being excluded and condescended to. We expected it. What mattered now was that we were front page news. We were visible. It just sunk in as part of the good feelings. We didn't need the world then. We were creating our own. The weekend was working for us. We didn't realize it at the time, but this weekend was a sort of good-bye to innocence. We'd never be able to pull it off again. In that assembly we were inspired and safe. The size of the crowd proved everything we had to say. We were there to worship our gods: Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Sly, Janis. It was a choice we had all made individually in our suburbs and shared with a few friends. Now all those disparate pockets of clandestine devotion had come together. Its impact echoes for nearly thirty years this month.
   Our coming together was a liberation from the boring prospects of responsible behavior intended for us. We'd had enough. We were sensible. We'd been seeing death on the news for too long. That horrible spectacle was lasting long enough for isolated, dissenting voices to begin finding each other and to build into networks of resistance and disobedience. Once we began finding each other, we weren't willing anymore to go off as fuel for some unintelligible war machine. We were too young to care about events on the other side of the world. Until our older brothers and sisters started being shipped off. All I knew of the war then was that my brother was walking circles around B-52s at night and buying silk suits and sapphires at his base's PX.
   Me and my friend's agenda was to not participate. All we wanted to do was listen to our music, smoke weed, drop some acid. Go to college if that was necessary to avoid Vietnam. No harm. And a good choice. We were fortunate that our families were able to afford to send us to college. And the law protected us as a class that could pay, forcing those who couldn't to fight the government's battle. We hadn't figured that out yet. We were so exultant about not being in Vietnam that we had no sympathy for those who were. We figured it was their choice. If they wanted to be killers or if they were unwilling to resist like we were, then Vietnam was their problem.
   Woodstock was a sea of whiteness. Despite the fact that some of the acts were Black and Hispanic, the audience was severely white. We didn't need Elvis anymore to perform Black music for us, but we hadn't yet learned how to integrate the audience. That really wouldn't happen until breakdancing and hiphop made its way into the clubs a decade later. We young white people still held onto our parents' prejudices to a great degree at this point. But we were beginning to shape our own culture and were at the infancy of discarding what had been sanctified since the Eisenhower crewcut era. We all dug Jimi. No problem there. But standing in an audience among other Negroes? We weren't so sure about that. But we were there to learn. We could love Jimi's blackness and his permutation into a black psychedelic musician as we loved Cream and their electrifying of Black music. It made us investigate blues music. It made it all right for us to pursue these interests and to revel in our expansion beyond the defined parameters of acceptable taste. Our appreciation of Black and other traditions (Ravi Shankar, Santana) was a step toward tolerance. We knew peripherally that white guys had gone down to Mississippi to help black folks register to vote. Dylan had sung about civil rights martyrs Medgar Evers and William Zanzinger. We knew it was right to be outraged at injustice. That's what was coming together at Woodstock. We were all sick of a sick authority. We didn't agree about serving the country right or wrong. Our vastness in Bethel gave validation to all our individual disagreement with the bully tactics of stern, alleged authorities out of their minds on power. We coalesced into the biggest support group the nation had ever seen. Just as the March on Washington had made visible the efforts of the disregarded Negro population, Woodstock announced that there was a sizable population of young, mainly white people of voting age who were intent on having their own way. We recognized Nixon's ugliness and wouldn't cower and behave and accept it like our parents. We were getting war casualty reports everyday on the evening news, like box scores. Government sucked and we were together at concerts or on campuses to voice our concern and dissatisfaction. And to rise together to attempt to change it.
   Woodstock was powerful because it was free of politics. it wasn't called to prove anything. It proved something because it was innocent of an agenda. Its message was: peace works. Even Max Yasgur, the farmer whose land the event was on, acknowledged that it was a success at getting that message across.

(unpublished)