Glastonbury 1971 Episode Two

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It’s likely that this narrative will get a little jumbled up at this point. There are a few reasons for this, principally, I suppose, is that it’s about events that happened 43 years ago, but also because the events that happened were experienced while I, the narrator, was in a state of mind that had been heavily altered by drugs of one kind or another – principally LSD, which, as you probably know tends to muck about with the brain of the person who’s taken it, causing delusions and hallucinations that may or may not have any relationship to what we know as reality.

Despite all that I am sure that herein there is enough of the ‘real’ reality of life (particularly since the subject is that particular event, in that place, and at that time) to stick to the notion that this is a true, non-fictional piece of work, that nevertheless is unbelievable in the context of what is generally known as our shared reality. But there it is – it’s true.

I can’t remember if I spoke to anyone, even to my friend and companion, John, except I do remember talking to the people at the Release drug help charity’s tent, but more of that later. I wandered around those fields all day, if it was a day.

If you’d been following me around with a movie camera you wouldn’t have seen much, mostly just a very stoned 19 year old man walking back and fore across several fields, occasionally pausing to look more closely at something, like the pyramid stage, or suddenly changing direction. You might also have noticed him looking at other people who were in similar states of mind and body as they passed each other on their seemingly random paths. If you’d been able to film very close up you might also have noticed the look in his eye, which was probably not much more than dopey and glazed-over.

But inside, in his head, his mind, his consciousness, his awareness, whatever it is; that creature who experiences, that person who thinks – inside, was in a whole universe, loaded with meaning, and it was important – very important, so important that it was the only thing that mattered in all of time and space, or maybe at least in all of the time and space of our current age, which is two thousand years old, and the next of course, which will be two thousand more. And this is for all humanity remember, not just his tribe.

Ah! The tribe, the ancient tribe. Every two thousand years we meet, we gather at this sacred spot, where all the laylines converge, all the energies engage. And we have a job, our tribe, and we’re not the same as other tribes who have their own jobs to do I guess, but that’s no business of mine. I just have to do my job along with the rest of my tribe – for all humanity, not just for the tribe of me.

Because that’s what it is, it is the Tribe of Me, and every other person who has been called to this place, to do this job – is me. I am them and they are me, and we know it when we pass each other on these fields and look at each other’s faces, and they are all me. The energies have to be rebalanced so that the new age can begin – The Age of Aquarius is dawning. The Age of Pisces is ending, the Tribe that sustained that age has done its work. But the energies are strong at these times, the energies of the Light and the energies of the Not-Light. There has to be balance, the Not-Light must be defeated; of course that’s guaranteed, the Not-Light is always defeated, but that doesn’t mean we can relax, no, the reason that the Not-Light is always defeated is because the Light is unstoppable. We are the light – the Tribe is the Light. There is nothing but The Light.

And that is how it went, the wandering, and the wondering, and the passing of people. Zig-zagging across that ancient landscape, being a part of something that is fundamental, communing with the spirit of Gaia Mama – Mother Earth.

And I was walking through the crowd in front of the pyramid stage and a bunch of people were dancing naked in the mud, slipping and splashing, like reckless toddlers. Someone was on the stage I guess, but I have no recollection of any of the music, apart from two songs: Melanie was singing something, in that sweet, piercing voice of hers, and I saw a double-decker bus flying over the trees at the edge of the field towards the pyramid stage. I also remember Arthur Brown telling me I was going to burn – but more of that later.

The other thing is that there were certain directions I couldn’t walk in, for example I remember walking somewhere behind or to the side of the stage and sort of bumping into a forcefield and having to change my direction until the forcefield let me through at the appropriate point of the compass – I was being made to walk along particular paths, as if I was drawing a pattern, leaving a trail of shed molecules like a glittering line of slug-slime. I had a thought that the forcefield was simply laylines and that I was being particularly sensitive to them because of the acid and the time of year and the mystical nature of the place, but still I went along the path they nudged me along.

Then I started to get freaked out and paranoid, and was unable to rationalise away the fact that everyone else was me, whoever I looked at I was looking at myself, I was everywhere and I was alone. I was freaking out, the trip was going bad. I needed help. Weren’t Release – the Drug help charity – here somewhere? Yes, they would help. I set out to find them.

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