There's nothing like a congregation of real acid-heads to change the world, is there? By sounding a chord, singing a song, thinking a thought.

By starting our own nation. . . .

Yes, I was at Woodstock--though in recent years it has become a cliche to make that claim. I had nothing else to do at that point, being three years out of a job. My severance package from Applestock was generous enough that I lived on it well through the 60s, and so, like everyone else, I was there, in the mud, in the landfill refuse sea, making love, not war, tripping my brains out on the dreaded brown acid. At 32, I was nearing the end of my days as aging poster boy for the psychedelic revolution. Oh yes, I came to my senses. But not before suffering through that monster-movie distortion of my own original dream.

I was also at Woodstock '94, by the way. No comment.

I was offered VIP seating at Woodstock '99, the last such slicked up horror show of the old millenium. I didn't go.

All Woodstocks are the same.

All Woodstocks suck.


(from "Epilogue," pg. 281)

Melanie Witherspoon ran the tips of her fingers along the creamy ivory keyboard of her Steinway grand. Black, white, black, white—the abacus of her life—so elemental yet so mysterious, the piano. Like an artifact from some advanced civilization, left on earth for only a few elite mortals to decode and master.

Play, elite mortal!

Her hands assumed their positions, fingers like hungry legs caressing ivory thighs and ebony groins. . . .

She had just enough time for one of those heartbreaking autumnal Chopin waltzes before Russell Parmenter was due to arrive. Damn!—a new liver spot on her right hand, just above the knuckle. Time!

She leaned into the waltz, such a melancholy little thing. Chopin had lived to be exactly her age, poor soul. In a man, it seemed so young, 39. By comparison, she felt poised on the precipice of senility—and hardly taking it cheerfully. She knew the things they called her. Arrogant. Indomitable. Bitch. If they only knew how vulnerable she was—the little flame of her soul, how sensitive it was to the winds of vulgarity. There were some who thought her nothing but a cluster of romantic poses and gestures. Well, she was romantic, damn it, and proud of it, too! Let the little people scoff. She stood tall (6 feet!) for Art, solidly and unequivocally. . . well, up through 1900, anyway, when Art began to lose its mind.

This haunting little Chopin, for instance—it could take on any form of regret. Today it spoke of the unutterable sadness of lives lived and left behind. To be among students only sharpened the hurt. They were puppies, too young to have accumulated a past. Melanie had lived whole lifetimes unknown to the little people of Applestock: winning her spurs in Rome, where men threw flowers at the stage and hailed her as a diva; concertizing in the remotest backwaters of the earth, with the fading Russian violinist Anton Belznikov. . . poor dear Anton, such a fine lover, such an attentive, gentlemanly steed. It was when Anton died in her arms (Bogota), that she took to wearing black, retired, and accepted her first teaching position, at the Juillard Conservatory, where—wouldn’t you know it—not there three weeks and she was burning in a fiery triangle with the conservatory head and the dean of the faculty. Love! So much idiocy in the name of what they called love!

Melanie stopped playing for a moment and lifted all ten of her miraculous digits, letting them flutter lightly across her breasts. Nothing. A deadness there. Well, it was appropriate enough: today she was a warrior. And make no mistake about it: if they wanted war, they would get a war. A war for the very soul of Applestock. . . .

(from "Musicianship or Death," pg. 81)