And now for something completely different . . .

Wednesday night.

OK, now I have to think of something. I always write the title after the post, always. Not tonight though, I just thought it was time for something different and as I've still not finished the next installation of the Archives . . . I wish I had more time to write . . I thought maybe I could write something different. Like what?

How about the Solstice . . . of  '79

I was sixteen, fresh from the cave, when I first heard the word Solstice, I hadn't a clue what it meant and didn't care enough to ask. I'd latched onto a bunch of hippies much older than me; they were off to celebrate this Solstice thing, they asked me if I wanted to go with them to Stonehenge, I had nothing else to do, or say, so I said "OK then" . . . I had no idea where or what Stonehenge was. That didn't worry me. Staying in Oxford without these people worried me . . . So I went. It's not as if they looked after me or anything like that, I just felt safe around them. I gradually moved myself into their squat with my one indian cotton smock that had lasted me throughout my entire pregnancy. I wasn't concerned with clothes, I certainly never thought I could love a peice of clothing . . .  until one of the women at the squat gave me a bag of clothes that no longer fitted her. I thought she was old; she was possibly mid thirties. Sally. In amongst Sally's authentic 60's clothes was a simple, light purple tunic. It was velvet; proper old cotton velvet. Velvet so smooth it looked like silk, moved like water and felt like a catkin to stroke. It reached almost to my knees, I fell in love with it's colour and softness, I wore it everyday. I did sometimes worry what would happen when it wore out.

I sat in the front of the van, rolling conical spliffs, the way I'd been shown; first mixing the tobacco and red leb thoroughly in the mixing bowl, carefully glueing the rizlas together, taking pride in my job. It was my job. A few spliffs later we joined some kind of queue . . . Some kind of queue; truck loads of hippies, old buses full of colour and music. Many just walking towards what looked like an ancient campsite. A community where I would feel totally at home. At peace.

It smelt divine . . . all woodsmoke and warm flapjack, how weed used to smell and lentil daal and patchouli . . . let's not forget the patchouli. They allocated me a corner and a blanket in a big tent . . . canvas, I can smell that too. Warm canvas, musty from storage, but safe. I stayed there for a while.

I never had money and I never seemed to need any. I didn't drink or smoke cigarettes. I could live on three bags of chips with saiusage a week, I suppose I "found" odd coins for food.

I moved to the doorway of the tent and sat watching folk walking by, dancing by . . . I was transfixed. I wanted to stay here, live here. I wondered how long we might be here for. I didn't ask  . . . I knew it could never be long enough. I found my way closer to the stage to listen to some guy playing the guitar; Roy Harper. Again, I was transfixed. Hypnotised. It was beyond anything I'd ever heard. I'm not sure why I accepted the tab of acid that was offered to me, I probably didn't know what to say, so I said yes. I didn't hope it would improve anything; everything was perfect as it was. I think I just didn't think.

Some other guy was on stage now; Steve Hillage* . . . No music yet, as such, just sounds. These sounds seemed to be coming from within me. If they weren't coming from within, they were surely settling within me. The first wave gently picked me up and for what seemed like ten minutes (?) I was no longer a person. I was a ball of something, about a foot and half above the ground. I was sitting on the grass, so roughly chest height . . . soul height. I say a ball of "something" as I didn't know what it was; energy, music, light . . . me. Everything that I was, plus all that I could hear and feel was in, and of, this ball. I was just being this ball and that was it. That was me. I was neither trying to be, or not to be. I just was.

Occasionally, maybe only during the first hour? ten minutes? four hours . . . who knows? but in the early stages of the trip, I would "sink" gently back into being the more "normal" me, in human form, for a few minutes. Like an interval between waves; just as there are intervals between waves. The first few times, I panicked slightly; wondering where "I" (my body) went when I became the ball? Somehow I knew this was just the start and realised that I had no control whatsoever over these "waves" . . .  and must not, at any time, start to think I could steer this. I must go with it and not try to get back until I landed naturally. I knew there was no turning back now.

After a while the intervals faded and I just was the ball, within this ball was the "music" I could hear, although it didn't feel like hearing the music; it was more like being the music.Tasting the music. Zing was the noise that I thought I was, but not a ziiingy zing; not like you'd imagine a zing to be. Not zesty. Not in an onomatopoeic kind of way. Just a constant slow and low zing . . . zing  . . . zing. Amazing.

The final landing was at sunrise, roughly six hours later and it was all beautiful. The sky. The field. That was all of it. I lay in the grass for the whole day . . . unaware of any standing stones, or any Solstice, or any Stonehenge, whatever that was.

I was only aware of the magical aromas, all mingled with, and carried along by, woodsmoke . . .  And the gentle strumming and picking of hundreds of silvery strings . . . And a brand new part of me, the part that was left when the rest disappeared. Hmmm. Zing.

Happy Solstice x

* OK,  just for the record this is the second half of the track that Steve Hillage was playing when I first started riding those waves . . . Just as I left the shore.
Lunar Musick Suite. Part two