The Long Rap

Time Capsule  1970

Can * nois * seur ( kan' us sur' ) n. one competent to render critical judgement on the qualities and merits of cannabis

"The most amazing property of cannabis is its ability to fog the minds of those who do not use it."

Random Tokes: Only in music or sport,  does the spirit of cooperation become sublimely manifest. Sadly, it is rare. Like someone wrote in my first grade report card "does not live up to his potential". Can you imagine? i was six. It seems P.S. 186 used the same scale they use in the NFL. Which brings me to my point:--humanity walks a tightrope between cooperation and competion. It's in our DNA and it is this crucial balance we must find before we eventually fall off the evolutionary ladder.
The Fat Lady is sitting in the cheap seats--a true fan. And she doesn't like losers.

The Long Rap
(The continuing day-by-day log of a 1970 freighter voyage from New York to Tangier)

Okay.
The sea was calmer, but still unsettled enough to keep the stomach queasy.
The lounge was beginning to look like a student union. Young faces into bags that ranged from Early Flower Power to Medical Student Weird. There were three or four loose chicks but few of the thirty odd cats seemed to have eyes. Records by Dylan, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Paco Loco appeared but the ship's box wasn't working.
All opening conversations revealed the same fact--everyone was on an indefinite trip. No one had a specific destination beyond Tangier.
On the tables were books by Hesse (all his works including a volume of his letters to Jung), and a few by Kurt Vonnegut. The older crowd was reading The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Scorpio had a disconcerting talk with a young, Warholish, gay cat named Rand who seemed to be on some sort of extended bummer. Rand asked questions like, "Do you think you're happy? Do you think you could be freaked out?" and the like, at an intense rate, lapsing into frequent paranoid flashes.
Scorpio was careful, treating Rand as he would an an acid head gone wrong, and he seemed to smooth out. Dinner then, continuing as before with Pack and Scorpio spinning out the message--the old days, pre-media packaging. They ran it down from Cambridge '60, San Francisco, Woodstock, Claremont, NYC, London, Greece, Beirut, back to LA.
All the heroes of all the beat trips that ended up as comic beads in the Great Game. That very game that exploded spontaneously in the minds of a thousand Johnny Appleseeds who spread the Word that had finally made a dent in America's beautiful skin. The game as music, made by Pack's special friends: Momma Cass, Fred Neal, Janis, John Sebastian, Jim Kweskin, David Crosby, Ginger Baker, Lennon and on--crossing at the switches with Scorpio's people.The Platonic conversation began to take on the dimensions of a speed marathon accelerating toward some distant meaning.
They drank a little scotch after dinner and included some other faces in the festivities. At first the three young
 men who joined them were dubious--Pack and Scorpio seemed up to no good. Some down home riffs cleared the air. A cat with waist length hair and a full, funky rabbi beard sailed by, a dog at his bare heels, middle period East Village commune: Krishna chapter. The older folks glowered.
The talk came round to guitars and Pack went inside to get his axe. Gene, a burly, bearded dude with the benign look of a social worker joined in. He wasn't actually a caseworker, being late of market research, but he was holding twelve--12 mind you--mouth harps. A youngster named Fred, a member of a group called Honest John, produced a guitar and a man called David, who looked like a rangy verion of the What Me Worry character sat in.
Pack, who plays harp better than guitar, picked up on Gene's harmonies and began to wail, really putting energy into it. Honest Fred, done up stone country in an old suit coat, long rubber boots over his jeans--began some soft riffs behind him. They milled around musically for a half hour, every so often hitting on something then letting it pass. Pack was just laughing, putting on his fellow musicians, blaming them for his bad licks, complaining about the quality of the harps, dipping his harp in a glass of water, slapping it against his thigh and blowing a funky call to fun. David started  playing and singing solo. His chops were nice and when he sang his what-me-worry features became handsome.
Garfunkel shuffled in and everyone discretely put aside his axe and began doing something else.

Next: Garfunkel Speaks

(author's note: At this point everyone has gotten a bird's eye view of travel by freighter at the end of the sixties. Right now we are at page 14 of a 50-page log. Not wishing to bore my few but precious readers with rock gossip and hippy trivia i'm inclined to stop reprinting the ship's log and cut to the chase if you wish. So all of you reading this please send me your Vote--and my next post will reflect your opinion.)