Upon a Time in Woodstock

NO STARS THAT NIGHT over our outdoor city, and we, a half million of us, sat fitfully up in our amphitheater turned bog, hearing singers : and guitars below but not really listen_ ing. Behind the stage, across a country road, a field stretched out, the fence around it laced with a string of red Christmas tree bulbs—our own, private constellation. The lights, blurred by rain, glowed eerily and took our attention, because sound was there too, a whipping whine, much louder than the music. A spotlight shot its bright cone earthward, a visible sign of something hovering, blowing up wet grass, and then, finally, touching ground. Many in our _ city—who knows why?—suddenly broke into applause. One young man, half-high on mari_ juana, offered a stoned reading of the scene: “You see, the Martians an- -nounced they would pay earth a visit, and all these people came out to greet them, and some bands got together to play a few songs of welcome.” Far. Out. But then the scene, like other scenes invited wild | during those three days, interpretations. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair fit no one’s expectations, and we groped to give it form and purpose—and continued groping until the end. True, the focus, the eal interest of S the weekend was not this landing on the ae helipad. But then—and this created our – confusion—neither was it the music, the ‘single attraction that had lured one of every seventy Americans from fifteen to – 25 to an isolated New York farm. So many came to listen that we over_ whelmed the performers, however well some of them played. Our cars, our __ tents and ourselves improvised a city, twenty-second largest in the United ‘States, and the fact of this city, its _ weather, its privations, its confusion and its civility, dominated our senses. We shared a formless experience, one we had not prepared for, and it gratified immensely. _ There are, really, only three groups of people who disapproved our pleasure. First, and justifiably, the farmers and townspeople of upstate New York, who did not engineer their own inconvenience. Our improvised city, without enough land, shelter, food, warmth or – Sanitation to sustain itself, took over – their roads, parked its cars on their _ lawns, pitched its tents in their fields, tustled their crops, stole their fenceposts for firewood, used their creeks as garbage dumps and latrines. We wronged them. Eight thousand of us hung around on Monday to clean up, make amends. The Left, too, hated the Fair, what it was supposed to be and what it actually was. The idea of holding it was an affront, a fantastic wager that the revolution of youth is far less political than cultural. Eight, maybe ten thousand people swept into Chicago last summer to see Hubert Humphrey and Richard Daley. Nowhere, New York, offered Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and the promoters needed 200,000 — customers to break even on their investment. When the bet paid off too handsomely (our overlarge crowd broke down the gates, the ushers never sold or collected tickets, the promoters lost more than $1 million), and, swelled to city size, we transformed ourselves from an audience for music into participants in a muddy void, we filled that void not with rebellion and angry talk but with drugs and quiet friendship. Our un involvement, our frivolity maddened the Left. We did not even collect pennies for SANE. Some locals, the Left—and then many ordinary Americans disliked us too. Our city’s drugs were illegal. Its citizens un kempt. And, worst of all, the city was a mob, the nemesis of all purposeful men, all believers in American individualism. But it was not planned that way. Most of us by far had come for music, to enjoy a one-to-one relation- ; ship with the stage, not to be lost ina muddy commune. Else why would we — have chosen Woodstock? There have been other festivals this summer, and hundreds of “be-ins,’’ but none drew close to our half million. None offered : so many fine musicians. : We became a mob, but only because | our extreme disorientation, our fear of being trapped there, the pleas to share, be cool, it’s the only way to make it, forced a collective consciousness upon us. What made us a mob made us good, too, because our fears and needs | pushed the limits of togetherness be- , yond our city of peers, to the gracious and generous police and townspeople. The worst of us learned that cops and rednecks are more angel than pig. : O UR CITY DEPENDED on them, and : they on us. We behaved well so that the squares could help us survive. Doctors healed wounds, treated __ illnesses, smoothed out rough “trips.” Police” helicopters flew in our food, flew out our sick. Farmers shared their produce. , And the promoters, after having made the one gigantic mistake of conceiving the idea of Woodstock, spared no & — pense to make us less comical even when they knew we had robbed them of their profit. The few very hip ones among ¥ came away from it all positively glowing. Had not the rest of us failed to find purpose in being there, had not We. simply existed communally, and yet enjoyed it? It seemed to some that the _ ideal hippie, killed in San Francisco by methadrine and angry politics, had been reborn, and in such numbers that he might survive, multiply, maybe even prevail. – But that—the root of the individualists’ fear—is making too much of Wood_ stock. It was only a moment of glorious – innocence, and such moments happen only by accident, and then not often. – Had everyone known we would be a city, there would have been more toilets, more food, more tents, more water, more comfort generally. And therefore less confusion and fear, less need to band together and be good. Had the __ East Coast known there would be a com_ plete electrical failure on November 9, _ 1965, workers would have stayed at – home, housewives would have stockpiled canned foods and candles, and no puzzled, gay and loving people would have flooded downtown streets. And these accidental bursts of aimless solidarity do not last forever. America take heart. By Sunday afternoon, most of us had abandoned Woodstock, eager for a return to form, purpose and individuality. The same thousands who waved gaily from their cars, hardly creeping away from the mudpile, were driving furiously and honking horns by the time they got back to New York City.