#SQUADGOALS (40)
By:
October 4, 2017
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars during 2017, on the subject of our favorite squads.
I would like to join the tribe of hippies, having been too young or timid to run away to the West Coast in ’65 or ’66. I imagined a tribe of musicians, light show artists, poster designers, and hippie comic artists, trekkers and builders of follies, running naked through meadows of flowers.
I’m not talking about hippies gone rabid with the shittiest drugs, or who took ten thousand bad acid trips and hear everything only three minutes later and backwards and inside out. Or tie-dyers that don’t have a vision — and crank out that rainbow unicorn shit. I’m not talking about insufferable disconnected obnoxious performance art, only the good shit. Not the hippies who come straight to your party from the mud pit dripping flakes of geometric dirt off their dicks and tits. Not the window-breakers and bomb-throwers. Not the builders of failed domes with backyards of starving kids — because they didn’t take the pill that enabled the Sexual Revolution — in tents named Pentangle Vagina Sun. (I’m on the fence about swords-and-sorcery hippies, because I do like their van art.) Not the hippies without humility.
I’m talking about a tribe attentive to Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, Ed Sanders, and the forerunner Beat writers. Goers to natural hot springs and mud baths in deserts. Psychotropic space-men and -women exploring how to navigate the under-filtered inner and outer… and arriving back on Earth happy to be mice people. Holders of obscure events in plain sight. Genius tie-dyers. People enjoying being animals, and made sad by the compromises.
Not the hippies who didn’t run away from home.
PS: From Oct. 12 through Nov. 11, the Marlborough Contemporary art gallery will exhibit HIPPIE TRIP, Gary Panter’s fictionalized take on an idealized late-’60s head shop.
#SQUADGOALS: Annie Nocenti on THE WILD BUNCH | Alice Boone on PRETTY LITTLE LIARS | Gordon Dahlquist on BOWIE’S BAND | Rob Wringham on THE HOME GUARD | Jennifer Krasinski on WATERSHIP DOWN RABBITS | Annalee Newitz on ROBIN HOOD’S MERRY PALS | Adrienne Crew on THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP | Mark Kingwell on THE HONG KONG CAVALIERS | Adam McGovern on KAMANDI’S FAMILY | John Overholt on THE CLUB | Greg Rowland on THE VULTURE SQUADRON | Sara Ryan on BETSY, TACY & TIB | Chelsey Johnson on VI ÄR BÄST! | Brian Berger on THE JOHN FORD STOCK COMPANY | Sherri Wasserman on THE WARRIORS | Jessamyn West on FAREYNIKTE PARTIZANER ORGANIZATSYE | Josh Glenn on DADA | Matthew De Abaitua on THE TIME | Mandy Keifetz on THE FOUNDING FATHERS | William Nericcio on ZOOT SUIT PACHUCOS | Deb Chachra on FIREFLY CREW | Matthew Battles on THE ANIMAL FAMILY | Ingrid Schorr on THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS | Joe Alterio on THE USUAL GANG OF IDIOTS | Dan Reines on THE BREAKFAST CLUB | Rob Walker on LES TROIS INSÉPARABLES | Devin McKinney on 1975 RED SOX | Steph Burt on DAMAGE CONTROL | Elina Shatkin on THE HOLOGRAMS | Chris Spurgeon on THE ALKALI METALS | Carl Wilson on NEW YORK SCHOOL POETS | Barbara Bogaev on THE MOD SQUAD | Franklin Bruno on THE AACM | Judith Zissman on THE FUTURIANS | Mimi Zeiger on ARCHIGRAM | Jacob Mikanowski on THE RATBASTARDS | Lynn Peril on THE DALY SISTERS | Anindita Basu Sempere on MEG MURRY’S FAMILY | Libi Rose on THE ENIAC TEAM | Gary Panter on THE TRIBE OF HIPPIES | Peter Doyle on CORNEL WILDE BOYS | Ken Layne on THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG | Molly Wright Steenson on BAUHAUS | Katie Hennessey on BEAT POETS | Mimi Lipson on THE RUNAWAYS | Jordan Ellenberg on BOURBAKI | Michael Campochiaro on THE SUICIDE SQUAD | Deborah Wassertzug on THE BLOODHOUND GANG | Colin Dickey on ACÉPHALE | Douglas Wolk on SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY | David Smay on THE MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF THE OINGO BOINGO | Karinne Keithley Syers on BLACKLIPS PERFORMANCE CULT.
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