Wrote this for my Personal Essay class, and I kind of like it. Since it reads like a blog post (though no lists, sorry!) and I haven't updated this in SOO long, I thought I'd post it. :-)
I was born in 1989 and consequently never had the opportunity to see Galt McDermott’s cultural phenomenon Hair in its original controversial glory. I had heard ‘Aquarius’ a few times from our local radio station (edited for questionable content, per the tradition in Alabama) and seen snippets of the movie on television (again, edited for content), so I figured I got the gist: hippies and free love and drug trips and peace signs.
I was born in 1989, so I’m a child of the 90’s and early 2000’s. That could mean a lot of things, but I would argue that being a new millennium kid means that you really have nothing of your own. All of the trends have already happened, all the ideas have been thought of, and you’re destined to read books about better times and try to reenact them all the days of your life. It kind of sucks. Still, if as a Y2K child I had to look back in time and choose a decade that I wanted to reenact, the sixties would always be my first choice. I was pegged in high school as the rebel with a thousand causes, from arts in public schools to hunger in America to psychological health care. For me, the sixties were about passion and dedication and standing up for what you believed in. I would trade that a million times for my peers who cared about nothing and were content to recreate fashion statements of earlier times. My discontent with and disapproval of my generation compared to the hippies of the sixties left me ready and willing to embrace Hair when I discovered the musical.
I saw the revival of Hair in Manhattan’s Hirschfield Theatre the summer of 2009 only weeks after the cast won the Tony Award for Best New Revival. But I had already fallen in love with the musical when I first encountered it a few weeks prior to seeing the show. One Friday morning I had woken up before the sun and hailed a taxi up to Central Park to see the cast perform on the television program “Good Morning America.” Armed with my new camera and limited knowledge about the musical, I joined throngs of other twenty-something’s in line. I was there for about 15 minutes before I noticed something unusual: everyone surrounding me was dressed like they were in the musical. There were hemp bracelets and long hair and bell bottom pants everywhere. I thought that seemed a little strange, but then I started listening to the people around me. “Yeah, I saw it for the fourth time last week.” “Gavin didn’t perform last night, I heard he was sick.” “I hope they perform ‘Don’t Put It Down.’ It’s my favorite song.” I realized exactly how in to the musical the group was, and I’ll admit, I felt a little left out of the excitement. Once inside the gates, we waited for at least 2 more hours, and the longer we waited, the more I realized how passionate the anxious crowd was about Hair. There were signs that said “peace now, freedom now, equality now” and “make love, not war.” People were throwing flowers across the crowd. From a distance it would be difficult to distinguish us from real-life protestors; in Alabama we would have been subjected to many-a disapproving glare.
The band began to set up around 7:00. The sun was lazily drifting up behind the stage, and the cameramen were rubbing bleary eyes and smoking cigarettes (interestingly enough, there didn’t seem to be any illegal substances in the crowd, but I may have been unaware due to my general naiveté). The band warmed up, playing notes that sounded like chaos, but I associated with the beginnings of ballets, operas, and selected Bugs Bunny cartoons. And then they played the opening notes to “Aquarius,” arguably the most famous song in the musical.
When the moon is in the seventh house / and Jupiter aligns with Mars / then peace will guide the planet / and love will steer the stars! / This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Aquarius!
The voices around me mingled and swelled as the faux-hippies belted out the lyrics. They weren’t just singing tunelessly. There were harmonies and melodies and the long haired boys beside me sang the male parts while the earnest-looking girls sang the female lines. I was absolutely blown away. It was a completely normal thing for me and my musical theatre buddies to suddenly break out into Broadway show tunes; it seemed like a dream when the entire amphitheatre began to sing along fervently.
The young cast of twenty-five virtually unknown performers came on to the stage at the end of the song and sang along with the crowd. They then performed the opener, and the title song, ‘Hair.’ And I got it. For about 15 minutes, I felt suspended into a world that I had never encountered before. The people on the stage weren’t just newly discovered actors wearing costumes and playing pretend. To me they were real people singing about their pain and love and beliefs and fears. Yes, part of it was Central Park and the added authenticity of performing out of a theatre. And part of it was the fervor of the people around me and their leather headbands and flower pins. But that spring morning, when it started to rain and the green-eyed soprano started leading us in a chant of “hell no, we won’t go!” it could have been 1967. I could have been an anti-Vietnam protestor. I could have burned my true love’s draft card and run away with him to Canada. I could have been the true story of any number of characters from movies and literature.
I saw Hair on June 30th, 2009. I like to say it changed my life, and it sort of did. It gave me a greater understanding of some of the issues with the Vietnam War (somehow none of my history teachers ever quite got around to teaching that). It inspired me to be a bit more active with regard to the hot topics of today, like recycling and global warming and marriage equality. And it definitely changed my wardrobe: I now own more peace signs, hemp necklaces, flowered tunics, and crocheted tops than the most nostalgic flower child. My friends explain my eccentric wardrobe choices (I use eccentric loosely, because in Alabama anything beyond blue jeans and a t-shirt is considered outlandish) by saying “she’s a hippie.” Which I love.
I didn’t know very much about hippies, so once I decided I might like to be one, I started doing my homework. I delved into Jack Kerouac books and the more obscure Beatles songs. What struck me the most was the love that hippies exhibited. I don’t think we (meaning me and my peers) really know how to love. I mean, we know how to love our Michael Kors purses and movie stars and Lost. We don’t know how to love each other. Hippies loved each other and they loved their country and they loved life. My favorite line from Hair is “I believe that now is the time for all good men to believe in love; I believe!” But we don’t. I don’t. Fifty percent divorce rates and a solid division in the county over party lines and constant reminders through the news and social media make it difficult to believe in love. The love we believe in is the love of fairy tales, and when we discover that love is virtually unattainable, we refuse to fight for love. After years of trying to use our heads to guard our hearts, it’s difficult to love in an innocent and earnest way. It may be impossible to love like the hippies.
Despite what my yuppie parents try to lead me to believe, hippies were far from useless rebels and they weren’t looking for excuses to be lazy. They were passionate in the most sincere way; they expected nothing in return from their fellow man except for love. They were often disappointed. The hippies of the sixties loved America, and loved mankind unceasingly. I’m not sure my generation is capable of that. We expect a return, tax, emotional, or otherwise, and we consider gifts from your wallet the one’s worth giving. It’s sad. And I may wear flowers in my hair and flash peace signs when I cross the street, but I am every bit as victim to those flaws as my peers. I’m perfectly willing to get on my soapbox and rant about the sad state of education in America right now, or the incredible amount of people who go hungry every day in a country that proclaims to be the greatest country in the world. But those are just words. I’m not staging a sit in or marching on the capital or doing much of anything outside of giving fifteen dollars twice a year to a cause. I’m just as bad as the generation that I complain so much about because, at the end of the day, I’m not doing anything to help mankind either.
It took my seeing Hair to realize that I really was searching for something that money and success and even philanthropic work cannot give me. I’m terrified that if what I’m looking for is passion and love, I may never find that. Not among my peers. Not in 2010. The lead character in Hair, Claude, closes the first act with the poignant words, “Where do I go / follow my heartbeat? / Where do I go / follow my hand? / Where will they lead me / and will I ever / discover why I live and die?” I couldn’t get those words out of my head for weeks. Because I couldn’t answer those questions. And I was sure that the people around me, despite their plans and their goals and their accomplishments, could truly answer either. We’ve lost a lot in fifty years. We don’t even ask those questions anymore. It’s devastating.
I’m not actually a hippie. I’m a pseudo-hippie at best. I can walk the walk, and talk the talk, and vote democrat, and use reusable grocery bags. But in reality, I understand that I’m playing the role of a hippie, not actually being one. I’m passionate about some things, but I rarely act on them. I am virtually incapable of the self-less attitude of the hippies. I’m blinded by my desire for success. I am crippled by my inability to love. I’ll never be a hippie. I try. And I mostly fail. I hope in time, maybe when I have kids, and a fresh group of actors are performing in the third revival of Hair, they’ll be able to truly believe in, and to have, love.
With love,
<3
No comments:
Post a Comment