Prankster History Project

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 Melissa Baswell Reagle When I first heard the news of Ken Kesey's passing, all I could do was cry and cry... until my husband pointed out the Alice in Wonderland blotter art hanging on the wall in front of me, Kesey huge signature gleaming it's glittery, shining, silver light right into my eyes. Then I started to laugh, as if it were all another prank. How could I even cry with something so vivid and beautiful just staring at me like that? We drove to Louisville to see Phil & Friends that night. It was very intense. Phil dedicated the show to Ken, and hearing 'The Other One' into 'Cryptical' was almost too much to bear. I wasn't even born when the Pranksters took that first bus trip to New York. In fact, it was almost 10 years that I entered this reality. But I cannot express how much Kesey and the Pranksters changed my life (thanks to my really cool father, who taught me about the Acid Tests and 'Spit in the Ocean' and the Grateful Dead while I was still pretty darn young). In the spring of 1997, I was visiting my parents in Chicago, when the Pranksters were stopping through on their way to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction. I was 23 and feeling a huge desire to hang out with them. Zane was kind enough to tell me where they were staying, and my friend and I went to pay them a visit. We called up to their room and Babbs answered the phone. He and Kesey were hilarious and joked with me for atleast 20 minutes. How many people would stay on the phone with a random girl harassing them in their hotel room at all, much less for over 20 minutes? Then Moutain Girl arrived, and she was full of hugs and kindness. It was all I needed to reaffirm my love for this amazing troupe of incredible souls. So... Mr. Kesey... Thank you for helping me open the doors that quite possibly would have remained locked without your help and shining energy. I know that when I have children, I will pass down to them the same love for pranks and goofs that my father did for me. May you new trip be as beautiful as the last. Rest in Peace and Much Love, From Rebekah Perry 'I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.'--Ken Kesey, as recorded by Tom Wolfe in 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.' What happens to a lightning rod when it dies? Is it struck by one last clap of realizing electric shock? Does it feel itself disintegrate? This isn't acid--it's Death. Does it make itself known, or is it only comprehended as the final trip? And once the rod is crashed down deep into its arms, where does he go? When he finally at last meets Cosmo face to face? What is their little tete-a-tete about? I'm the seismograph, but I remain. I can't get dibs on this one. It's lightning for him to meet and greet alone. And we're left. ----RIP, another seismograph 'You can kill me if you want, but I might resist a little.' --Trowa Barton From Terry Reynolds In high school and university in Canada I found out about Ken Kesey, first through Wolfe's Acid Test book, then through Kesey's own work. At first, I identified with the sheer love of life and fun which oozed from ther Prankster lifestyle, but as I kept reading Kesey's articles in Rolling Stone and other magazines, and reflected on his gentle, compassionate and decent observations about humanity and life, I came to realize that Kesey's life and works were an inspiration not just to love life, but to be an example, a beacon for how people should behave. I didn't read Sailor's song until I took a year off work and traveled the world with my wife and two young children and I instantly re-connected again with the decency of this man. I followed on the web site with great heart and amusement the Further adventures to England, and whenever I've wanted a pick me up, I have turned to the page. After Sept 11 this year, I went to the site, because I wanted to know what Kesey would say. His decent and pragmatic suggestion to go bear witness and to bring sewing machines to help Afgan refugees earn some coin sewing scarves and gloves for export to the US was great. I was determined to e mail this fine man, and let him know what a positive role model and influence he has been on my life and I wanted to thank him. I always hesitated, becasue I did not want to bother Kesey with another totla stranger with nothing new to say! Well now, Mr. Kesey, I hope you can look on these tribute pages and realize that you have inspired so many of us to try to be better people. Do what you can to make the next life even more wondrous. From David Fitzpatrick In 1967 in the Warrnambool public library I found a copy of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. It confirmed something that had been rumbling beneath my feet for some time.That something I never quite captured.It was perhaps uniquely American. What I did capture was an ethics. I remember at high school a discussion on social theory. Working class kids were getting into Australian Universities for the first time on bonded scholarships.The bondedness referred to a period of compulsory teaching in the "bush", the widely dispersed rural communities, of which Warrnambool was one.The teachers were very disoriented, and defensively left. I argued that we should live like the hippies, and the reponse from my teacher was an aghast-"What!-a society based on love!". I thought her very unsubtle. I knew that the techtonic rumblings I was picking up suggested strategies we were all just beginning to dream of. I knew she was fighting her own recognition of this. And these intuitions remained entwined with the strange rumours from the States to form a hidden pulse and stream that guided me through many adventures in an equally turbulent sixties Australia. For too long now my hippie ethic has curdled into a very belated leftism, a kind of bleak existential marxism. But I think Kesey grasped the real point-love is a terrible and wearying discipline. But it alone is truly subversive-ideology however well thought out is a refuge from life. Reading this webpage has been very sad for me. Sad, certainly because Kesey is dead; but sad also because I can see what a terrible betrayal of my own ideals, the chilly,if not chilling atmosphere of the last few years, has tempted me to. I wonder what happens when you follow the stream to the end-I suppose it is as joyful as it is wearying; and I know that joy and weariness, just as I know the deep despair and revolt that beckons from the recognition that the stream goes on to death, not Utopia. Thanks Ken, for having the wisdom to follow it all the way home. And thank God you had the talent to tell us all,in all the many ways you did, how to do it, and why, and whence. Love and Peace From James O'Reilly I was living up on the North Coast of Ireland on the Antrim Coast. We had been to a Stone Circle called Beaghmore in the Sperrin Mountains for the last Solar Eclipse, a soul we meet there told us that Kesey and the Pranksters were over doing a tour and were due to come to the Giants Causway. The legends of the Pranksters have influenced us greatly as we try daily to change the Political situtation in which we found ourselves born into (our summer of love didn't happen until '92) and we found the best way to do this was through what the mass media call Rave culture. Since - and i dred using the word, drug culture has grown, many youth's have had experiences which has turned them away from the gun, I firmily believe this is part of the reason for the 'Peace Process'. Youths out partying together don't really kill each other. I'm part of a collective of artists called Force 10 (on account of the Atlantic winds that batter us daily along the shores on which we live, and love - please visit us at www.the-session.com) At the time the Pranksters were supposed to come, we decided that we would try to steal the bus to ransom it for funding for a soundsystem - we thought Ken would have appreciated the prank. However the Irish sense of time is quite different to that of the rest of mankind and we got our dates wrong, missed the Pranksters and never got to realise our prank. We did however have a beautiful day tripping the day we landed to the Causway to see the Pranksters, as I'm sure you will remember it is a very magical place. God bless Ken Kesey, Further indeed. From Drago Robléz November 17th The Intrepid Traveler has begun his real journey, and this world mourns while the next one rejoices. Look to the heavens in the eastern night sky! They say it's the Leonid meteor showers, but, deep down inside, we know it's just Keez crankin' up the thundermachine and making a grand entrance by shakin' up the locals and challengin' the Cosmic establishment. Give 'em hell up there, Keez, and thanks for the bit of heaven you inspired down here. pic "I've been thinking of death a lot, and I am amazed by its inevitability, frightened, as we all are, of the totally unknown, and yet feel a long sleep is somehow earned by those of us who live on the edge." - Jack Pollock "I always knew looking back on my tears would make me laugh but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry." - anonymous "Never trust a prankster", Ken, but a generation trusted you and got on the bus. Thanks. Bon Voyage, our friend: "It's the truth even if it didn't happen." - Ken Kesey Deadlegs.com "Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes. Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis. Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion. Shall we go, you and I while we can Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds? Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter. Glass hand dissolving to ice petal flowers revolving. Lady in velvet recedes in the nights of goodbye. Shall we go, you and I while we can Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?" - The Dead, "Dark Star" From Nigel The news of Kesey's death has been difficult to get my head around, for sure. For me, like so many others, it has been hard, sad, bad news. But it is so. Me, I am an Englishman living in the county in which I was born. I'm 48 years old, my 2 sons are post teenage living away from home, I hold down regular full time work, and I pay my house mortgage instalments on time. So what would I know of Ken Kesey: big-time author and so-called godfather of the 1960's psychedelic SF scene? Well, back in the day I took the drugs and I heard the music. I read the books, the music papers, the newspaper interviews. I hung out with longhaired people and went to free music festivals. In 1971/2 I travelled round Europe in an old van, ending up living on the Cornish cliffs for a year. In 1975/6 I took the overland hippie trail through Afghanistan, India and Nepal and right on down to Australia. I became a freak and a nature-lover. I came home, still only 22 years old. Worked sporadically in undemanding manual jobs, lived in a low-rent big old house with a dozen other single, sociable guys and rode a fast, shiny Honda 750 motorbike. I had fun. Then in 1978 my love announced she was pregnant. I spent 3 days on speed thinking about this. I decided that abortion was out of the question. I sold that bike, took a full time job, we got married and bought a dilapidated house in which to raise a family. It didn’t stop me still using the weed. I just learned to control myself. (I took my last Class A drug in 1987). Over the years I tracked down Garage Sale and loved Demon Box when it came out. Saw the occasional Kesey magazine interview. As my family grew up, so did I. And I was back on big, fast, shiny Honda motorbikes by 1991. In 1994 I read in a newspaper that Ken Kesey was doing something in London before an audience. I went along. OK, it was a different Ken that night; Ken Babbs in fact, but the subject matter was Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters on their 1964 bus odyssey. Flash! It was instant enlightenment. All my adult life I've been picking up psychic fallout and here are the people that started it all. On the way out I picked up some flyers and there was one for Key-Z Productions. By coincidence we had a trip planned to US 3 days later and part of it was to hire a car and drive from SF up to Portland. We drove through Pleasant Hill on the way up. I mean just cruised slowly through - cool and respectful-like, for this is special country because special people live there, right? And I hooked up with Zane Kesey on the phone from Portland and on the way back called in on him at his Eugene place and loaded up with books, and oh wow, signed by the authors and all! So I read On The Bus and The Further Enquiry and The Sailor Song and The Last Go-Round. And then I reread Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion. For now I understood the importance of this man and his family. Then suddenly the Intrepid Trips website was there. Now I could read the Kens (Kesey & Babbs) in the raw. And photographs too! Suddenly I was like a neighbour sharing their adventures or just plain everyday on the farm things just as soon as they did them. And it got better! They brought Further II to England. It was a hot August day in 1999 when I rode the bike down to Brighton seafront, Southern England. There a crowd encircled The Bus. And there was Kesey, the man himself. I stared and I thrilled to it all. I was among literary figures of mythic proportions. I knew it. They knew it. Here is good old Babbs. There is intriguing Mountain Girl. There goes beautiful Candice. Look, I am no slavering sycophant. I mean, hey, these are regular family people like me. So I let it just blow my mind…and I got on the bus and thanked them for coming to England. A week or so later I head up to London with some of my family for a front-row surreal show at Brixton Academy. There is loud rock music, the bus is on stage, and the Pranksters are cavorting. We sing Gloria at the tops of our voices. They pull a prank. Kesey talks of love and of his lost son. We groove to Love Potion No 9. It was great and man was I lucky to be there. And still it got better. They posted their adventures round the UK daily on the website and even replied to my emails. It was like I was sharing in their search for Merlin. Actually I was surprised Merlin did not reveal himself to them (but I guess that's a different story, eh, Pranksters?) But it just kept on getting better. The Search For a Cool Place part 1 video arrived. And then part 2! The Merry Prankster History Project website appeared, and you know I have to accept that these Pranksters have taken a place in my heart. And then Kesey died…. And I am going to miss him. A whole lot, in fact. In Demon Box Kesey marvelled at how often he stumbled up avenues only to find Neil Cassady's footprints already there. Well I say the same about Kesey, only much more so. I am continually in awe at the length, width, depth and sheer intensity of his vision. He knew a lot of stuff and he communicated some of it to the world. And some of it I can really connect to. It's as simple as that. And tomorrow or next year or whenever, I may learn something and realise that Kesey has already been there and written about it. I guess in the end the essence of it is to do with spirit, and for me he will live on forever because of that. It was 9pm here when the memorial started in Eugene last week. I sat around trying to pick up vibes. After a couple of hours I went outside and looked at the clear starlit night. I live on a hill and that night was a good night for stars. I looked up at them and started to meditate to Kesey. Suddenly a bright light lit up a house porch a small distance away. I guess a cat tripped the security light! I recomposed myself, looked up to the Milky Way and tried again. Suddenly there was a rumble of sound down the hill. A party firework probably. Huh, Guy Fawkes Night has only just passed here. So I tried a third time. Suddenly the tree next to me shook as a large Bramley apple let go it's hold and crashed through the branches to thud heavily on the ground. I considered this. Yeah, that's portent enough I decided and headed back inside. So, adieu Ken Kesey! Rest in peace. You are the guvnor, the godfather, the greatest. And I'm gutted. Oh, and Kesey (er, excuse me while I light up this spliff), thank you…. From MamaBaboo There was openness, joy and extended reality. There was elitism, hierarchy, and conformity to the bizarre. All occurred with love and harmony and competitiveness and politics. If we are to learn from that time we must acknowledge what we were in order to move forward into who we now are and who we want to be. From Barbara I never knew Ken Kesey...and yet I did. I read, I participated, his spirit moved me back then, and it moves me today. I took him in throug my skin, through my hair, my long, long hair. We were one and never knew it. I couldn't be at the MacDonald theatre -- don't even know where it is. But on the cosmic plane, that I forget about all too often now, deeply embedded in the corporate scene as I have come to think I must be... but on the cosmic plane Kesey and I know each other well. I never spoke to the man, but I read, and I read and I read about him. A beautiful joyful light has moved out of this world, into the next.... to another long strange trip. Thank you Mr. Kesey. From Lisa Used to sit up with Ken in his palapa above Gringo Gulch when he was "hiding out"....hot and thick with electricity...he told stories and I listened. Black Maria turned me on to Garcia Lorca's "verde te quiero verde". I was 18 and in love with Steve Lambrecht(?). Whatever happened to him? I'm a glass artist now, living in Palm Beach County. I'm sure Ken died the way he lived....boldly. There will never be a one like him. From Marlin Just wanted to relay a dream I had a week or so ago. I was on some kind of ranch, when I started having car trouble. Here comes Ken with this big round hat on, it looked straw like, domed, with a big pea green ring around it, with a brown leather vest and white shirt. He offered to help fix my car(77 grand fury), and said he had a team of mechanics up on the hill, and to take it up to the barn. I said thanks, and off he went. He looked very happy, and I'm sure he is in a good place. From Marlin More tribute pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 Page URL: http://pranksterweb.org/index.htm © Copyright 2001, Rick Dodgson Webmaster: Rick Dodgson Revised: November/28/2001