I Think I Am Finally Old Enough To Understand "Hair"

[Demeter]

For reference for those even younger:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_%28musical%29

I was merely, truly, a child in the 60's.

I understood the horror of the draft, taking kids too young to die, to inexperienced to survive a war, and shipping them out to an unimaginably foreign land, without their parents' consent, leaving behind their futures; so many never returning, or returning so damaged as to have no future. You don't have to be terribly old to understand death, abuse of power, and the like. You just have to be poor enough to have few or no options to avoid these.

What I didn't understand, perhaps, is that the draft victims understood all too well they were trapped or in danger of entrapment. Those, who could formulate a plan, did, with the help of families, friends, church, whatever.
My brother-in-law, 10 years older than I, ate himself into 4F, and is suffering the consequences to his health, at age 65. Dick Cheney got 4 deferments, although his abuse of his body was much more severe, and he still hasn't died for his sins. Some fled to Canada or Europe, and thus found the Promised Land: anywhere but here.

But other draft-eligibles were conflicted--dazzled by the propaganda, bullied by their local social milieu, or just not quick enough to figure out the score. Too many were getting drunk, or screwed, or drugged up and losing contact with reality just when Reality was far to dangerous to ignore.

Our family never got that far. The draft ended the year before my brother turned eligible. I do not know what my parents thought, or planned, or dreamed or had nightmares about. I do not know if they ever even thought about it, although I would think they did. They were good parents. They certainly didn't discuss their fears around us children.

I would not ask my father now. He is terrified enough by his infirmities. He need not be burdened with fears that didn't come to pass. My brother is estranged from us, but even so, I'm not sure if I'd ask him. I am not into prying and poking people's scar tissue.

But I now understand what Hair is about. Like rats in a cage, seeking whatever comfort they could, the hippies sought to alter their grim reality in any way they could, for as long as possible, in the hopes that the Man would pass over them as 4F or otherwise unusable. (I'm embarrassed it took me this long to figure it out. Passivity, avoidance, escapism isn't my style. I'm much more direct and confrontational. I would have been off to Canada if I had to swim Lake Superior. Or taken up arms, and by opposing, end them.)

And is that not the American way, still?

Do not too many Workers, too many Citizens today seek any relief, no matter how temporary and self-destructive?

Do not families try their best to live a "normal" life, in the midst of a nation coming apart at the seams? Some of them will. It's a big continent, and there are places remote enough that some will escape Big Brother, either in His Corporate drag or Military gear. As the banner said after Kent State: They Cannot Shoot Us All.

The Peace Movement was huge, ponderous and relentless. We need something of that nature again, to take back the government from the GOVERNMENT and the CORPORATIONS and the THINK TANKS and the Self-Styled ELITES.

It took the largest generation in history to make the change. Now it will take all generations, working together.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cliffordu]

2. Bogus posit dude.

You're harshing my mellow.

[Joanne98]

3. It was an "in your face" play. I see it as a "fuck u too" response with was

what was needed for the fuckheads on the right!

I LOVE the song Aquarius BTW!

[Demeter]

6. Thank you, Joanne

I hope someday the schism between Left and Right heals.

[HillbillyBob]

8. Well the right needs to get their shit together

since its their misdeeds that have gotten us in this f in mess.
Frankly they are traitors and criminally insane.
I have been trying to talk some sense to that lot since raygun..IM through talking......
I want nothing to do with them and I hope they all drown in their own evil.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Demeter.

[Demeter]

5. I Appreciate Your Support, Uncle Joe

and frankly, I am frightened by the first string of responses. I feel like I set off a cultural booby trap...

[Uncle Joe]

7. Perhaps

some of those responses were affected by PTSD?

Peace to you,:hi:

[jberryhill]

9. Hair was "about" commercial exploitation of a cultural trend /nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. The take away message: The Peace Movement was huge, ponderous and relentless

RELENTLESS.

Hair was vocalizing the age of change, the Age of Aquarius, the rejection of "the norm" which was swallowing up young men into a meat grinder.
It was "in your face" but peaceful protest AND pointing to a possible better way of life.
( i saw it several times over the course of several years, live.)

the "hippies" were NOT like rats in a cage, avoiding reality. They were also not the entire anti-war movement. People from all walks of life were in the movement.
( did you ever hear of the "yippies?")

As a point of reference, I was 18 and newly married when my groom was sent to Viet Nam as an "adviser" in Dec. of 64.
I was 22 and had two small boys when both my brothers were old enough to be sent to Viet Nam
in the horrible year of 1968.
They all came back physically safe. Never the same emotionally.

I remember 68 as the watershed year, when things seemed to reach the tipping point:


the battle of Khe San and the Tet Offensive on tv for all to see,
and this photo, which really seemed to change how we all felt about the war:

followed by Mai Lai massacre.


Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King were killed.
riots all across the country.
Johnson decided not to run again, when Cronkite came out against the war.
Eugene McCarthy ran against Humphrey, but lost, McCarthy had a huge following.

The Dem convention in Chicago resulted in a huge riot when Daly turned the cops and the National Guard loose on the protesters, even Dan Rather was grabbed and roughed up on national tv
IN the convention hall. Millions of Americans watched it all; Daly's actions served to catalyze many more people.

And Hair opened on Broadway.

68 was the turning point, yet the damn war ground on till 73.

[femrap]

13. Hair....shoulder length or longer.

Dudes growing their hair longer than many women and regarding Peace as a world possibility showed the MIC that this generation of men were getting in touch with their feminine side....AND THAT SCARED THE HELL OUT OF THEM. And it would be stopped at all costs.

I loved guys with long hair...it was sort of a 'unisex' time....same hair styles, same bell bottoms/jeans, same flannel shirts, same love beads. It was the happiest time in my life. The dudes I knew back then were so fucking cool. Kind, open to listening (remember rap sessions?), passionate, aware of current events, politically active and their hair was fucking fabulous. We smoked pot, rarely drank so there was no sloppiness or violence. We were equal. We were the same.

When I see a guy with long hair today (which isn't very often), I always tell him that I like his hair. I'm old and the young dudes seem to appreciate my comments.

At least hats are coming back so the bald dudes (which seems so nazi-ish to me for some reason) can at least wear a fedora.

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. I have encuraged Mr. D. to grow his hair long.

He has a beard/mustache that he keeps nicely trimmed, and several times he has talked about when he wore long hair. Now he is letting it grow out.
Mine, OTOH, is short, I cannot stand to wear long hair, too warm in our hot humid climate.

[femrap]

18. I miss my long hair so much....

a bad perm and it all had to be cut off. And I've tried many times to grow it out but it just doesn't grow like it used to. So, me too....I have really short hair.

I miss pulling it into a ponytail or up in a knot. Now, if my hair looks like crap, I have to wear a hat (hot and then I have hat hair) or I have to put my head in the sink to pat it down. However, I've seen kids today with hair like mine when I wake up....and they paid someone to make it that way.:rofl:

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. Remember when we were embarrassed if we had a hole in our jeans?

Now holy jeans cost a fortune !!!!

[femrap]

22. My grandmother

was so talented....she would stitch my jeans with beautiful designs to cover the holes...she used a feather stitch. They were beautiful. And of course they were bell bottoms that sat on the hips. No one wore designer anything. It was cool to go to second hand stores. I'd get flannel men's shirts at Sears for $2 and wear them as a sweater/jacket over a t-shirt in the winter.

Today's culture is just so fucked up.

[gtar100]

29. And sadly, the conservative meme has taken over our collective memory of that time.

What we should have learned was what all the war protesters were fighting for. Instead, we are fed a million distractions and constantly told to "support our troops" because we owe our freedom to them, which is nothing more than a guilt-trip argument.

Oh how the conservatives, wishing to conserve their values, have destroyed this nation through their short-sightedness and fear of the natural world.

[starroute]

11. You've got it all wrong -- at least about the hippies

The hippie thing began in 1965 at the same time as the anti-war movement but well before the war began to have a major impact on American society.

The hippies were rebelling against an inauthentic, soul-deadening, plastic culture -- not trying to drug themselves into insensibility out of fear of the draft.

By the end of 1967, the hippies were starting to notice that the war was a problem -- which was the point at which you got the Yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon and putting flowers in the barrels of guns and all that. But that was very late in the game, after the original hippie impulse has already become over-publicized and over-commercialized and started to lose its momentum.

Hair debuted off-Broadway in October 1967 -- the same month as the Yippies tried to levitate the Pentagon (during a protest march that broke down into violence) and the Diggers staged the Death of Hippie. All three marked the failure of the original hippie impulse, not its culmination.

If you think you finally "understand" Hair, you probably need to take a second look at the music and culture of 1966-67 and think again.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. My brother got a high number--like they do when they pick jurors for a trial.

I remember the day the letter came, there was quiet anxiety in the house. We all knew he would go if he was called. He opened the letter and saw the number, but still didn't know where he fell in regards to his peers. It was probably the first time I saw my father with a concerned look on his face because he didn't know either. But, it all worked out because they said it was a high number and he probably wouldn't be called.

Thing is, I remember he also went to college. Wasn't there suppose to be a college deferment?

Maybe I'm remembering this all wrong.

How did they draft kids back then? Does anybody remember? I thought there was a lottery.

[hobbit709]

14. 1969 was the first year of the lottery.

My number was 98 and they told everybody below 200 to pack that year in my town. They stopped at 197.

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Did that number apply to all cities?

Did different numbers apply to different cities?

[hobbit709]

16. The number was based on your birthday.

And the order that date was drawn in the lottery. How far up the list each local draft board went depended how many victims they had available.

[Madam Mossfern]

19. Ah yes.

I never considered myself as a "Hippie" although I participated in war protests, was tear gassed, lived the 'alternative' lifestyle...a bit because by 1969 I was in graduate school for my MFA. I was at the Grand Central Station Yip-in where the police utilized their new wedge (or something) formation to throw protesters around like rag dolls. My friends were sent off to Nam to come back damaged, my brother was fortunate enough to have been able to join the Peace Corps. I worked on Eugene McCarthy's campaign.

This was when kids were being sent off to die and they couldn't even vote! The voting age was 21. The musical Hair while celebrating the counter culture of the day ending up killing it by making it mainstream.

[Demeter]

20. There Were Consequences to Being the Largest Generation Ever

Besides the overcrowding and shortages of resources....

1. there were enough people to support all kinds of diversity. It was very difficult to be so "deviant" that you couldn't find a support group. Hippies were just one subsection of the Boom. Flower children another, revolutionaries a third, the reactionaries another, and so forth.

2. the authorities couldn't handle the numbers. Authority, be it moral, educational, religious, political, or brute force, simply couldn't contain the energy and drive, nor direct it, nor suppress it, not divert it. Not until drugs gave them the excuse they were looking for, and still use today.

And there were others that may come to mind, but these were the most significant.

[jtuck004]

23. Kick and Rec n/t

[bemildred]

24. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".

We are getting back to that place, yeah.

[The Wizard]

25. The war was a cog

in the wheel of the War on Poverty. Poor males were exposed to the war/conscription. Consequently, many of the poor went to Vietnam only to return with lots of baggage. PTSD wasn't recognized until 1980, and by that time many veterans had already dropped out or were living on the margins. Many veterans were unable, either physically or emotionally, to start families. This helped reduce a massive population explosion.
So part of the war on poverty was to send reproducing males into an immoral military war of aggression against a nation that never harmed us (sound familiar?)where they'd be killed or wounded or mentally damaged so as to reduce or eliminate their ability or desire to bring children into the world.
And did I mention all the shysters who made bundles of money on the blood sweat and tears of the victims of that corrupt war?
At the time Vietnam was thought to have huge oil reserves off its coast, and the oil oligarchs were concerned Ho Chi Minh would nationalize Vietnam's oil reserve, thus going to war to protect the American oil interests was/is part of American foreign policy.
The peace movement was instrumental in ending the draft, but ending the draft kept the masses from marching in the streets as fewer Americans had/have skin in the game.

[Demeter]

26. Hence Iraq and Afghanistan

both with oil.

[Tansy_Gold]

27. K & R from the old lady with the waist-length pony tail

And I've never seen Hair.

But I was old enough in "the 60s" to remember most of what went on, and what I came away with later on reflection was that there was no one single correct answer. There was no one single absolute meaning. Not to anything. Not for any of us. And that's what came out of the 60s -- at least for me -- was that personal authenticity mattered.

I was never really a hippie, at least not in overt lifestyle, but I guess I always was in spirit. And more so now in my own 60s.


Peace, Demeter,



TG

[Karenina]

30. It must have been '69. The album was our anthem.

Don't remember who was in our posse, there may have ben drugs involved. A "weekend hippie" from Hollis, I was at conservatory and after seeing it stopped straightening my hair. That was a BOLD MOVE at the time. ESPECIALLY where I was.

City jaunts were to the East Village for $5 "seasoned" jeans, then over to the Hassidic textile merchants who, impressed by my communication skills, provided me with a kickass collection of fabrics we'll not see again. Certainly not at those prices. "Die Schwartze is here today! START THE MILLS!!" :rofl: Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end...

What's it all mean Mr. Natural? :rofl:

[jmondine]

28. So, you understand "Hair" now that it's growing out of your nose and ears?

I'm with you, Brother.

[Demeter]

31. Seeing As I Am NOBODY'S Brother

and not growing hair anywhere that a lady should not, i thank you anyway for your support.

Demeter

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

32. I saw "Hair" on Broadway in early 1969.

It was one of those events you don't forget -- it wasn't like anything else out there. I was in college then, and there was a whole different atmosphere, not like now at all. The threat of the draft made the war much more real, and it got people off their butts and into the streets like nothing before or since.

[era veteran]

33. Saw it, off Broadway? 1971 @ Biltmore Theater

I think that is correct. It has been a long time. Got lottery # , low, under 15. the next year. Joined instead & went to Germany. The show is still in my mind.