60s Night at Wildacres

Inside the Jack Kerouac beat, where the music and haze was as natural as a birdsong and fog, the current generation took a step back or perhaps into a time warp where modern tie-dyed shirts, peace signs, “Love you, mans”, go-go boots and mini-skirts were pulled from bins or purchased for this particular dance.

It was 60s night at the Wildacres Writing Workshop.

Bongs and joints, demonstrations and chants, nipples and dirt were missing from the mix and the authenticity was blown when, at one point I believe, the electric slide was a dance choice. (Although, in its own right, watching hippies boogie, woogie, woogie was quite entertaining).

In particular was one man (perhaps wearing his original sixties gear) with long hair down to the middle of his back, a beard to match and his own song rolling through his bones – which caused his eyes to droop to slits and his quarter-sized lenses to smudge – who swayed to his own beat; the Byrds or Grateful Dead humming a tune while the tin roof rusted on the Love Shack for everyone else.

An Afro-wearing ex-pastor – who, two nights previous, danced to the beat of his own i-pod while the other attendees of the impromptu dance party sat dejected on the sidelines – paused with his hands in the air, waiting for the beat between “tin roof” and “rusted!” and bobbed his head and body to the rhythm of the chorus.

Dancing beside him was a Girl in a red-bandana and a beaded rock-and-roll necklace who was as grateful to be smiling on that dance floor as she was to have given birth to her two beautiful children. She had solidified her friendship with the Afro-wearing ex-pastor when she informed him that his i-pod two nights previous had shit the bed.

Her interest in wearing his Afro resulted in a quick game plan to dance beside someone as sexily as an Afro-wearing ex-pastor and a Girl wearing a red-bandana could. They conspired and the Byrds-induced Swayer with the long hair and smudged glasses was their chosen one.

They shook their hips, jumped to the beat and waved their arms inside the swarm of other dancers who were doing the same. They moved toward the Swayer, into and through a week of dialogue, critiques, rough drafts, Chekhov, a few reflections of their loved ones (she with a memory of her brother doing the corn cob dance at her wedding, him remembering the tenderness of his mother’s smile), thisness, readings and applauses, criticism and praise, and into pockets of new friends, old friends and friends that were OLD old friends creating a vortex of energy that pushed them closer and closer and closer to the Byrds-induced Swayer.

Before any physical contact had been made, a well-versed man of prose (whose eyes held the velvet warmth of a Werther’s original), stood outside the vortex of bobbing heads and jumping Jacks and watched as the swirl blew the man down.

He was caused to exclaim: “My hippie went down hard!”

Indeed, the hippie had gone down hard. He sat splayed on the ground looking up at the Afro-wearing ex-pastor and the Girl in the red-bandana with a question of “What’d you do that for, Man?”

The Afro-wearing ex-pastor and the Girl in the red bandana locked eyes that reflected a vision of them bent and holding their sides in laughter. They extended their hands, heaving the hippie back to his feet whereby Nights in White Satin began playing in his head.

In tempo with their plan, the girl pulled the red bandana from her head and slipped on the afro, while the ex-pastor did the opposite.

Their heads sprang into the air; they caught eyes and jumped, shook their heads and hips, waved their hands and arms, and resumed dancing around the swaying hippie who had gone down.

Hard.