The friends of John Michell

IMG_5521Found in a book called Michellany: a John Michell Reader (2010) a list of subscribers. John Michell, whose most famous book was The View Over Atlantis (1969) was an esotericist and a major figure in the development of the counterculture /Earth mysteries movement.
A senior figure from the Hippie era and scion of a wealthy family (Eton, Cambridge, Glastonbury) he had died in 2009 aged 76 and the book was a memorial anthology. Our copy had the small attractive bookplate, showing a bookish owl, of ‘Oz’ publisher, later media tycoon, Felix Dennis (1947 -2014) The lengthy subscriber’s list is worth recording- it brings together the great and the good of bohemian/ eccentric British, mostly upper class, society…

Ahmed Ainsworth, The Lady Ashcombe, Patti Baker, A. D. Bakewell, Michael Balfour, Richard Barnes, David Batterham, Opi Bell, Gerard Belleardt, David Benedictus, Phyllis Benjamin, Mary Berg ,Elizabeth Best, James Birch, Charlotte Black, Sir Peter Blake, Ralph Blum, Jill Bond, Laura and Harry Boothby, Joe Boyd, N. Van Den Branden, Mr and Mrs Michael Briggs, Theadora Brinkman, Paul Broadhurst, Alex Brown, Sir Anthony and Lady Shelagh Montague Brown, Peter Browne, Sally Burgess, Dr Aubrey Burl, Simon Buxton, David Cadman, Joseph Caezza,  Tarquin and Sophie Campbell, Chung Yee Chong, Mrs O.D.H. Claus, Lord and Lady Patrick Conyngham, Prof Pierre and Helene Coustillas, Keith Critchlow, Paul Cullivan, Major General and Mrs Andrew Cumming Bronwen Cunningham, Karen D’Arc, Michael R. Davies, Robert Dudley, Belinda Eade, Mrs V. A. Ehlers, Jacquetta Eliot, Prof Richard England, Ness Eyre, David Fideler,
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Gerald Heard on J.W. Dunne’s Theory of Time

HEARD16Found – the typescript of a review by Gerald Heard of J.W. Dunne’s The Serial Universe (1934). Dunne proposed that our experience of time as linear was an illusion brought about by human consciousness. He argued that past, present and future were continuous in a higher-dimensional reality and only experienced sequentially because of our mental perception of them. He went further, proposing an infinite regress of higher time dimensions inhabited by the conscious observer, which he called “serial time.” In his time Dunne’s work was highly influential, Aldous Huxley (a friend of Gerald Heard) J.P. Priestley and T.S. Eliot all used his ideas in their work. Gerald Heard is sometimes cited as a proto hippie or father of the ‘New Age’ movement. Wikipedia writes: ‘His work was a forerunner of, and influence on, the consciousness development movement that has spread in the Western world since the 1960s.’ He also wrote several still rated supernatural fantasies. This typescript was probably published in a newspaper at the time.

MR. DUNNE'S THEORY
OF TIME

'IMMENSELY IMPORTANT' FOR MAN

The Serial Universe. By J. W. Dunne.
(Faber. 10s. 6d.)

Reviewed by GERALD HEARD

  In pre-Nazi days in Germany there used to be a popular print. It showed one of the great German philosophers walking along the main street of his home town with his manuscript under his arm, on the way to the printers. He keeps close to the wall because down the street's centre dashes that dreaded black travelling carriage inside which can be seen Napoleon, Europe's tyrant, rushing from-one battlefield to another.

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A to Z of Zowie (Hippy Slang)

Found in an old Sunday Observer colour supplement from December 1967 this glossary of (then) very recent hippy and 'underground' slang, apparently known as 'Zowie.' In Britain 'Zowie' is mostly associated with David Bowie's son Zowie Bowie (born 1971) now known as Duncan Jones...For a comprehensive online dictionary of hippy slang check out Skip Stone's Hippy Glossary. Since the Summer of Love some of the words below have entered the language (groovy, happening, trip, vibrations, riff) and some like 'Zowie' itself and 'grey' have had very little currency. Slang authority Eric Partridge imported most of Peter Fryer's glossary into later editions of his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.
A TO Z OF 'ZOWIE' Peter Fryer offers a selective glossary of the Underground.

acid/LSD. Acid-head/one who uses LSD.
be-in/hippy meeting.
bread/money.
bust/police search, raid.
cool/unruffled, admirable (but see groovy); not carrying illegal drugs.
crazy/admirable.
dig/understand. Diggers/idealist hippies undermining capitalist economies by giving away free clothes, washing-machines to needy.
drag/bore, dissapointment.
drop-out/one who opts out of society.
flip/arouse enthusiasm. F. one's wig/lose one's head.
Flower Power/from Flower Children or Beautiful People.
Revolutionary philosophy akin to ideas of Young Liberals, e.g. Make Love Not War. Characteristic: bell.
freak/arouse or share collective enthusiasm (freak-out).
fuzz/police.
gig/single paid performance.
grey/middle-aged, conventionally dressed/minded person (orig. US Negro term for a white).
groove/make good progress, co-operate.
groovy/admirable, sexually attractive.
happening/spontaneous eruption of feeling/ display.
hippy/product of Haight-Ashbury ('Hashbury') dist. of S. Francisco. Anarchic successors to Beat generation. Essential beliefs: protest, legalised drugs, opting out. Not to be confused with plastic hippies/mostly conventional youth who like to dress up at weekend.
hung up/annoyed.
love-in/gathering associated with groovy scene.
mind-blowing/ecstasy producing.
naturals/non-hip people.
plug-in/turn or switch on.
psychedelic/mind-expanding. Psychedelia/drugs, flashing lights, sound, colour, movies, dance – usually experienced simultaneously.
riff/repeated background phrase in music.
scene/Underground, or specific part of it.
stoned/very high on cannabis.
straight/conventional person, one who does not use cannabis.
teeny-bopper/anything from 11–16–average age of record-buying public.
think-in/poetry session, discussion group.
trip/LSD experience.
turned on/(1) accustomed to cannabis. (2) aware.
UFO/(pronounced 'yoofo'). Unlimited Freak Out – a hippy club.
vibrations/atmosphere; reactions, with sexual overtones.
Zowie/a new import from San Francisco, meaning hippy language.

Live poetry 1967 (Pete Roche)

Found - a 1967 Corgi paperback Love, love, love: the new love poetry. It was edited by Pete Roche the subject of a recent jot where he wrote disparagingly of the Cavern Club (1964). Three years later in the height of the Hippie era we find him editing this attractive book with psychedelic covers by Haphash and the Coloured Coat. His introduction celebrates the revival of 'live' poetry - which is still going strong. There follows a poem by him, other contributors included Adrian Henri, Adrian Mitchell, Roger McGough, Carlyle Reedy, Libby Houston, Spike Hawkins, Brian Patten...

… the recent increase in the popularity of poetry readings, particularly among younger people. The success in this respect of the Liverpool poets (all of whom are included here) and of what has been called The Great Liverpool Experiment have already been well documented. But this new interest in oral poetry is by no means confined to Merseyside: the readings organised by Tom Pickard in Newcastle, by Alan Jackson in Edinburgh, by Mike Horovitz and Pete Brown in London and the growing number of readings in other towns and cities throughout the country - all bear witness to the increasing demand for living poetry, poetry that talks to people in the direct and comprehensible way. It is no coincidence that virtually all of the poets in this book, when discussing their work, are quick to stress the value of these live performances. 

And it is this quite novel situation - young poets reading their work to predominantly young audiences - that is giving the poetry of the mid-sixties its distinctive character, is investing it (whatever faults in technique one may find in  individual poems) with a vigour and a feeling for the realities of life that have been absent from English poetry for too long. 

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