And there is the accumulated wisdom of the ages. I've dipped into that pool often. As the Grateful Dead once sang: "take what you need and you leave the rest." You have all the holy books and mumbo-jumbo. You have late stage Capitalism and Secularism. You have the Scientific Age. You have Pop Culture.
You have the towering influences & touchstones: Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Sigur Ros, U2, Dali Lama, MLK, Buddha, Mandela, ZEN, Jesus, Miles Davis, Wm Blake, John Coltrane, Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Melville, Wm. Shakespeare, Joseph Heller's "Catch-22," Bukowski (the road of excess), Kerouac, Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Bresson, Vince Lombardi, FDR, RFK, Michael Jordan, r&r, drugs, meditation, sobriety, discipline, goofing off.
Everything counts. Everything is important. Holy.
The events: JFK/RFK/MLK assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, Iraq & Afghanistan Wars, Torture Regime, the 24/7, - the always on, never fails to horrify, can you believe this shit, Terror-Dome.
A Revolution in the Head...
Yes, indeed. "You are the authority." - Philip K. Dick
It's a bit intimidating. You decide. Think for Yourself. It's all up to you. You come on the scene in the middle of the film. You don't know how it all started, you don't have a clue how it will all end. You have to make instant decisions every day. You have no idea if you are doing the right thing. You are just living. Day to day. You may be the authority, but you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know if what you do know is worth knowing. All your knowledge is partial, arbitrary, contradictory. Hey what's going on in your head?!
It's not easy being Green. An incredible opportunity, a bone-crushing responsibility. A free mind in a wild world. Wow.
