Even More Kesey Tributes Page
Thanks to everyone who sent stuff in honor of Kesey.
If it's not on the site yet, it soon will be...Rick
From Patricia by way of IntrepidTrips.com
I remember driving up to the Hog Farm a few weeks after Jerry
died......there was Further II complete with Kesey, Leary and assorted
Pranksters....what a weekend it was....with cannons being shot off, the
crew dressed as Wizard of Oz characters, Leary carrying on about all
sorts of things, and Ken Kesey overseeing the festivities....my daughter
came with me on that trip and she is now 16 and remembers the event
well....I'm glad she got a chance to be there, and I feel the same for
myself.....he was an amazing spirit. We were all lucky for being a
part....whether close at hand or a little further out in the great
circle.....Thank you Ken!!!
From Phillip by way of IntrepidTrips.com
To all of those ralated to Ken Kesey in one way or
another:
I'm not anyone especially famous, and I am only 25
years old so I never got to experience the Acid tests,
but in my life I have studied much about the
revolution and read a few of his books. I wanted to
say that deep inside my heart I believe in the
psychedelic principles of man and that the merry
pranksters hit the hammer on the nail when they pushed
waves of cosmic good vibes that have reverberated and
will continue to reverberate throughout my life.
Ken Kesey once wrote about jail in his book "Demon
Box" and until I had read that, I thought that I was
alone in my perceptions. Many of his creative endevors
have surfaced throughout society. In fact, "one flew
over the Cookoos Nest" was a requirement for H.S.
English. This blows my mind.
I would like to say thank you Ken and may heaven be
as infinitely beautiful as you have taught me to see
this planet and my own inner space.
True thanx from a personal stranger,
From Josh by way of IntrepidTrips.com
Ken Kesey, 1935-2001
"William Tell has stretched his bow 'till it won't stretch no furthur more..."
It's Saturday, November 11, 2001. It may be a cliché, but at the moment,
I'm listening to probably my favorite Grateful Dead cut, that being "Dark
Star" on the old red "Live Dead" album. I'm waiting for the part where the
lead guitar has always made me think of a dolphin.
It starts at 7:15 in, the dolphin swimming swiftly and smoothly straight
up, its tail waving, its whole body flexing, that anthropomorphic dolphin
smile flashing, accompanied by undersea dopplered grinds and roars of
world-wide whales, bubbles trailing everywhere. The shades of sea green get
lighter and brighter, seaweed flutters, an undeniable rush carries us up,
up, up, faster and higher every second, the light's getting brighter, we
can't stop it, we don't _want_ to stop it!
Shapes of clouds waver overhead and hallucinated seawater sunlight dapples
all around us, that dolphin just keeps climbing, and at 8:03 it breaks
_through_ the ocean's surface and _keeps_on_going!_ Smiling.
So wrap the dolphin in white light and a red beret for one of the good
guys, who could've been a media monster, but really would rather have just
milked cows.The dolphin's not about to stop climbing, or vanish into the
stars. It's diffused, instead, all around us, like a ripple in still water
when there is no pebble tossed or wind to blow. Take a deep breath. It may
be stronger than patchouli, but it won't do you no harm.
The Beat, hippie, freak, counter-culture, New Left trip has pervaded
Western culture, in the last thirty-some years, a whole lot more than most
people give it credit for. Not surprising. Most people's understanding of
things is pretty superficial. If all the tie-dye, day-glo, and paisley has
faded some, it's not because they've gone away.
What they've done is soak in, let's say like LSD into a sheet of blotter
paper. They've soaked in in some ways that were expected and in lots of
other ways that weren't. The ways that weren't expected are important,
because they indicate that something actual has been going on in the real
world, which does have its unexpected ways with everything true.
You can all think of good examples. Young men can see gentleness and
non-competitiveness as strength, now. Young women can feel complete without
having to nab a husband ASAP. Responsible-investment brokers abound.
Racists aren't as funny and down-home as they used to be. Health care
involves diet, exercise, attitude. More foolishness fools less people. Even
Detroit's big, gas-guzzling, shiny black SUVs, in their self-contained, go
anywhere, "On The Road" way, are nuclear-family recapitulations of that big
old Prankster bus.
Ken Kesey was a writer of how-to books. Everybody knows the stance to take
toward the Big Nurses in our lives now, and knows the price, thanks to him.
Everybody knows Chief Broom's job, before he takes off across the lawn, out
of reach of the Combine.
Kesey had the softest, peacefulest voice I think I've ever heard. He wrote
once on the subject of liquor, methamphetamine, heroin, some destructive
drug or other and said something along the lines of "Anybody can go down
and out. We're aiming at _up_ and out..." That's the difference that makes
a difference.
I don't have any windowpane to taste nor even a tie-dye t-shirt to don
tonight, but still, I'm feeling pretty unreconstructed right now,
unreconstructed and in touch with the family, even if some of them will
steal the face right off your head. Peace. Thanks, Ken
From ArTcH by way of IntrepidTrips.com
I have just heard about the sad loss of Ken Kesey. I would just like
to send his family my condolences. I am very proud to have met him on
a couple of occasions.
I will cherish the time that I last saw him, sat at the end of the
bus, shortly after the eclipse in Cornwall. As I said goodbye I
passed him a totally blank business card and said "If you ever need
to contact me, here is my card.......". As I walked away, Ken seemed
genuinely perplexed, the last words I heard him say were: "It's
blank, it's totally blank !".
A bizarre but cherished memory.......... I just thought I'd write to
reminisce one last time.
From Jason by way of IntrepidTrips.com
I don't have much in the way of words to express how
over the years Kesey and the Pranksters in general
have given me a beacon light thru this little maze,
but I can say that I was crushed upon hearing the
news. I went outside andcried with the clear night sky
and smoked one when I realized that somewhere in those
stars he was welcomed by all of the other preacers of
love that we've lost in the past. And that, somewhere
up there, Jerry's a-strummin' staring out the window,
Tim's preaching to no one in particular, and now Kesey
watches with a smile as Cassady rambles like a madman,
steering that sucker thru the cosmos.
Furthur on, Ken...furthur on.
From Ron by way of IntrepidTrips.com
events
like the
loss
of one so
alive
remind us
of when
all
seemed possible
and the need to
live
there
always.
From Michael by way of IntrepidTrips.com
I 'got on the bus' in 1984 when I started to
see the Grateful Dead. It is cool how that expression was adopted because
of the Pranksters journey. It became the Grateful Deads metaphor for the
journey of life. 'The bus came by and I got on, that's when it all
began.". And of course they mention "Cowboy Neal" being at the wheel of the
bus to nevernever land.
My wife and I both think "Cucoos Nest" was both a magnificent movie and a
very moving story. It is a shame that the world is loosing so many of it's
most powerful and noble people. The loss my family and I have gone through
this year is immense. I am a victim of the WTC attack in NY. My younger
brother worked for Cantor-Fitzgerald and was on the 105th floor of tower 1
at the time of the attack. He was lost, and they have not found a trace of
him. My family has a urn full of WTC ashes to remember him by. I was unable
to attend his memorial because I live in the SF Bay Area and am now afraid
of flying. Just months before my brothers untimely demise my mother lost
her mother after a many year decline into Alzheimers. Her father died the
year before that.
Mr. Kesey was a brave thinker, something to admire about him. There are not
many brave thinkers in the world today, and his journeys are the stuff of
legend. He has influenced a generation of brave thinkers. As I was growing
up in the late 70's to mid 80's I was inspired by the desire to 'tune in,
turn on, and drop out'.
Just know that the love he created will not be destroyed. We must keep his
memory alive...
From John by way of IntrepidTrips.com
A fine man has passed but his influence will not. I don't know which is my
fondest memory, being on the bus that was parked in front of my store in
Berkeley (Wavy would remember it) when he was leaving for D.C. or at the New
Years show when he had the slide whistle & was looking for people turning
green so he could save them from spontaniously combusting. Just 2 of many.
Ken is my role model for aging and character. I will miss his presence on
this earth...
From Emma-Jane by way of IntrepidTrips.com
Sending out kind thoughts from my little corner of Cambridge, England
in the direction of Ken
Babbs, the rest of the Pranksters and all of Kesey's family and friends.
My husband Paul and I came to see Kesey and you, Babbs, at a
talk/signing at Tower Records in
London back in August 1998. I asked Ken something about 'Sometimes a
Great Notion', which I'd
brought for him to sign. Figuring that about three-quarters of Kesey
went into Hank and a quarter
of him into Lee, I really wanted to talk to him about my sympathy for
the latter brother, but I
voiced a question and it sounded inane, so I left it alone, realising
that since he had written
this book 35 years before it must be past history for him, he whose
energy was always going into
new activities and new happenings, and he was there because he wanted
to enthuse about all kinds
of current things like 'ban the bullet' and the planned bus trip with
Channel 4. Well, however my
question about 'Notion' came out amid the general chaos of the
signing, Kesey answered it with
that wonderful kind of good-natured crabbiness of his, simultaneously
signing my book to me in
purple felt-tip pen and rubberstamping pictures of trees and rain all
over the inside front
cover. I remember thinking as he went mental with the stamp, my god,
what's the man doing?? but
when later I opened it up to see what kind of a mess he'd made, he'd
known what he was doing in
his apparently childish glee: it was beautiful, a perfect tribute to
the story and, now, an even
more precious memento of Ken himself. Paul and I also caught the
Pranksters in the Where's Merlin
show in Brixton in 1999, and came up onstage to dance around the bus.
After the show, some of us
waited outside for Kesey and he came out and sat on the cold ground
and signed for people.
We'll miss him, is all I'm trying to say. But in lots of little and
not so little ways, he's
really still around.
From Paul by way of IntrepidTrips.com
Mas Adentro! y Adalante!
or, all that glitters is not glitter
~ for Ken Kesey, both here and gone
We heard the fact, and the rumor,
that you had passed, that we would gather
at the Mainstage meadow of the Country Fair, noon Sunday.
It was an extreme example of hippie time.
By three we had our legs under us ~
over a hundred souls strong. You were on all lips.
We just kept doing the next thing ~ arranging the food,
fetching potable water, moving the huge trestle table
in under the Mainstage canopy when the Heavens opened up.
We lit our candles, burned a little sage, arranged the offerings
as an altar, ate, commiserated, and finally some music started up.
Two guitars, some primitive percussion, but we were all there.
Samba, salsa, r&b, rock, raga, chant ~ Amazing Grace and May the Circle.
The Sun re-emerged and approached the Western horizon.
We gathered up the offerings and brought them to the Jerry Garcia tree.
I proposed you as Lane County's all-time leading citizen.
There was no dissent. People re-lit candles, arranged crystals,
driftwood, flowers, flowers, flowers ~ with love and love and love.
I filled an offered glass pipe with three kinds of bud
and stashed it behind the framed photo of you in a silver lame jump
suit.
I tucked in some pure and righteous potato vodka that someone had
brought and left.
You were the best, man, the best of the best.
Blessed, cursed, blessed, you forged ahead ~
mas, further, further in, mas adentro ~ further, further on, adalante.
May you have free access to all of the love your companeras and
companeros, both
here and gone all have for you. May you find your source, your next
heading, your own star home. May you go well now and always, and may the
fires you set glow on & on.
From Aman by way of IntrepidTrips.com
"Cap'n Ameriken, where you gone?," said incredulously
by the throng.
"Yonder past the stoop, old fir tree standing slanted
in the yard, under all that peacock poop."
"Wouldn't you rather be lifted and gilded, atop a fat
stump that last year's logger fell, upon some
mountaintop above the sun, carved from granite rock, a
bronze bull elk trumpeting, something...?"
"No, thanks, son. Just sweet spring water from the
tap and a feather for my cap." Wry, satisfied smile.
Life well lived. (Oh yes, a hero, too.)
From Kathy by way of IntrepidTrips.com
When Kesey came out to Springfield High to address the student body, he
stood up on the stage before hundreds of hopeful teenage faces. From his
pocket he pulled a worn piece of paper with a poem copied on it in his own
handwriting. He said he had carried it in his wallet since he attended high
school at Springfield High in the 50's, Yeat's The Song of Wandering Aengus,
a poem assigned by his English teacher. He read the poem dramatically,
beautifully, to that young audience, and they fell totally silent moved by
the passion in his voice. Since then, everytime I teach Kesey's writings, I
include this poem as one of his influences. To me, to many of us at
Springfield High, we, of course, think of him as the Wandering Aengus, who
now has finally gone to pluck those silver apples of the moon and golden
apples of the sun.
From Werner by way of IntrepidTrips.com
one month ago I wrote a short essay on Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters
and the American counterculture of the sixsties for a booklet that was
issued for a group of German theater actors who performed "One Flew Over
the Cookoo´s Nest" here in in my hometown. The stageplay was a
collaboration between these German actors and a theater group in Kosovo,
a part of former Yugoslavia. They are at this time performing the
stageplay together in Prishtina, Kosovo. The Director of this co-project
believed that Kesey´s novel and Wasserman´s stageplay reflected the
trauma of the recent war in Kosovo perfectly and that performing "One
Flew Over the Cookoo´s Nest" could possibly be helpful in finding a way
out of this.
I don´t believe that novels and theater plays have that power. But I
think what Kesey and You Ken Babbs and all the Merry Pranksters lived
and created with your friends in the sixties, unconscious or
superconscious, had it´s positive effect on modern western history and
will have it in future. In Aribic there are two words for knowledge:
´Ilm´ and ´Marifa´. `Ilm´ means ´knowledge that one has got from written
words´, learning from books the experience of the ones who lived before
you and their tradition. `Marifa`is the knowledge from mystic
experience, knowing something because you know its trueness from your
own personal experience. For me Kesey representet a man of `Ilm`and
`Marifa`.
I hoped to see and hear Kesey somewhere - maybe Amsterdam - in the near
future.
Now I have to remember him and I will.
Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning
From Kathryn, on behalf of Mahrie too, by way of IntrepidTrips.com
Way Back When
my daughter was 10 and Ken was collaborating with the Portland Symphony
to present Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear,
I brought my daughter into the big city from our rural farm community
near Aurora to see the performance and to see Ken Kesey.
When the concert master appears, violin tucked under his arm, to take his
seat and the audience applauds little miss Mahrie leans over to me and in a
stage whisper asks:
"Is that Ken Kesey?"
"No, honey, you wait, he'll be on in a while."
The conductor appears and again, Mahrie asks:
"Is that Ken Kesey?"
"No, sweetie. I tell you what: When Ken Kesey walks out onto the stage, you
won't have to ask me, you'll know."
"How will I know?"
"I don't know how, but I'm sure we'll recognize him."
The first half of the concert proceeds, followed by intermission, followed by
the re-appearance of concert master and conductor.
At long last, onto the stage emerges -- larger than life, in full tails,
a GIANT bear head with a jaunty top hat perched on high --
a . . . presence. He swaggers out onto the stage.
Mahrie, with a HUGE smile on her face turns to me, nods emphatically and
says:
"Now THAT'S Ken Kesey!!!"
Ken thanks the parents in the audience for bringing our children to see
classical music. He tells us he is glad that we can introduce our children
to entertainment beyond TV and Nintendo.
Attentive as ever, Mahrie again leans over to me and asks:
"Mama, what's Nintendo?"
In that moment was affirmation that in my stumbling-through-parenthood,
I was probably doing some things right.
Mahrie is now a junior at Carleton College in Minnesota where she continues
to think for herself and to gracefully and with certainty walk forward to
embrace her future and her role in this world.
We spoke of Ken at this, his passing, and remembered the concert, glimpses of
pranksters at the Oregon Country Fair and seeing him pilot Further through
the throngs at the Further Festival in Veneta.
He touched our lives and we want you to know it.
With much love for all who loved him.
From John by way of IntrepidTrips.com
Looking at 50, and the passing of a stranger who had a profound effect on my
life. Kesey (and Babbs, and the rest) provided the blueprint for living life
based on pursuit of dreams, heart, and passion (rather than the all mighty
greenback). I've worked for change, rescued refugees, served people living
with HIV, raised millions of dollars for charities, helped save the lives of
countless people who will never know my name. And thinking back, I realize
that it all started with the notion espoused by a wrestler with an angelic
gift of gab that you could really become the hero of your own movie. Do we
ever really know what affect we have on others?. Did Kesey ever really grasp
what impact his down-home quest had on the lives of all those goofy kids
looking for a dream, a hero, a direction? I think he probably did, had a
good laugh about it, and went on with the business of living his own life.
Once, many years ago, at the height of a bad drug run that had me thinking I
might actually be Jesus, I called Kesey (he didn't know me from Adam but had
had the courage to give out his home phone number at a Peoples' Party rally
at the University of Delaware!). Despite Faye's protestations that he was
sick and shouldn't be disturbed, Ken came to the phone and very patiently
listened to my ravings for a few minutes. He then suggested that like him, I
needed to get some sleep. "After all, I'm a farmer and need to get some
rest." In the final analysis, perhaps that's what Ken really was - a farmer -
a grower of dreams. I wish him well, think kindly with sympathy of those he
left behind, and hope the rest he's in for proves to be as good as he
deserves. We will all miss him.
From Marissa by way of IntrepidTrips.com
this is soo sad, i just learned today that kesey has passed, transcended
above us..
now he is a legend, a deceased writer of soul and spirit
i will give my children his work, and everyone else's work that contributed
to the journey and he will live forever in their hearts, as he already does
in so many. Maybe i'm just rambling, although speaking from the heart. i was
so happy when you guys wrote back to me before, giving me advice about my bad
trip, that it just filled me up with that feeling i get when i dance. It
starts in your fingertips and runs through your whole body, up into your
lungs and you breath deep filling them with that essence of joy that makes a
grin spread wide across your face. Now he's gone, and its really quite a
shock, which it must be to those who were really close to him. I feel as if
his writing, and all of your experiences were a part of my life, a part of my
growing up and coming into my own. I'm just glad i had a chance to tell him
how i really felt before this. i remember how he told me to keep the corners
of my mouth up, i thought it was really poetic.
love light and everlasting joy
From Jim by way of IntrepidTrips.com
I had waited some 35 years to see if any of the footage from the acid
test at the fillmore and the long shoremens hall would every see the
light of day. I am heartened by the fact that something has been done
with the history of untold times.
I was extremely saddened by the news of Ken's death. During 1965 I lived
for a short time with the Dead and was close enough to all the events to
know that following Ken's arrest for grass and faking his suicide that
he was in fact moving to a higher level of CNN type media coverage of
his own doing. I graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1966 and was
introduced to the Dead when they were the Warlocks playing at Magoo's
pizza palor on Santa Cruz Ave in Menlo Park.
He will forever stand as an original American writer of and for the
people and did for words what Jerry Garcia did for notes. He will be
missed beyond those he touched and his passing has left the planet a
little less for those who journey on!
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