Chasing Freedom: Remembering the Sixties

By PAUL HEIDELBERG

CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, by Marquis Whos Who in the World writer Paul Heidelberg, is a novel about life, art and music in San Francisco during The Roaring Sixties.

The novel revolves around life at the San Francisco Art Institute, which the author attended for four years before earning a degree in painting and creative writing (Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead studied at the art institute, and Janis Joplin worked in the school cafeteria before attaining rock star status).

The book, set in The Sixties, which the author considers to have been from about 1965-75, has a painter as female protagonist and a painter and poet as male protagonist.

It includes poetry readings at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Avenue, where Janis Joplin had her first paying job as a singer, and incorporates poetry into prose.

The book includes the authors Theory Of Relativity Of Ping-Pong Balls of people constantly meeting and parting he had formulated while living in Europe.

Other characters who figure into the books progress and conclusion include a sculptor who graduated from art institute in the late 1960s who has an upbeat personality and often ends a sentence with laughter: ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES includes scenes from wild art exhibition openings, to free performances by such musicians as blues great Charlie Musselwhite (in a San Francisco bar) and Dr. John, who led a New Orleans-style musical parade up Columbus Avenue in North Beach.

The book includes scenes in Morocco in 1971, and Essouira Peter, a Yale University graduate who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out, to Barbayanni in 1960s Greece. Barbayanni, Uncle John, lived in the village of Mallia, Crete and wore the black baggy pants, high black goatskin boots and other accoutrements of a proud Cretan the clothing that had been worn by the grandfather of the writer Nikos Kazantzakis. The great Cretan writer is also an important figure in the book.

Another key figure is the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

As author Heidelberg writes in the beginning pages of CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, the book is not merely a remembrance of The Sixties, but it is also a remembrance of all times when artists and others have been Chasing Freedom, as Federico Garcia Lorca did in the 1920s and 1930s.

The novel concludes at a great rock concert in San Francisco.

(The price of the book includes a suitable-for-framing Fine Art Print, the cover illustration, created by using modern computer software to alter a photographic transparency taken at the San Francisco Art Institute during The Sixties.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 15, 2005
• ISBN: 9781462842285

PAUL HEIDELBERG

Paul Heidelberg is a writer, poet and artist, and a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. He has had a writing website since 1998 (www.paulheidelberg.com) that features the prose and poetry work "Paris, Prague and Salzburg: A Remembrance," written in each of those cities with a laptop computer in 1999. Heidelberg’s writing has been published in such magazines and newspapers as "Art & Antiques," "Sports Illustrated," "The Wine News," "Wine Enthusiast," "The Miami Herald," "The Philadelphia Inquirer" and "The Orange County Register."

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

I was listening to Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company the other day, and I tell you, it took me right back to those days.

Hearing Janis’ voice and those great guitar riffs, I was right back in The Sixties, which, by the way, was not from 1960 to 1970. The Sixties was from about 1965 to 1975. Musically speaking, the early 1960s was music by such people as Gene Pitney and Bobby Vinton. The Sixties began with bands like the 13th Floor Elevators and progressed to groups such as Big Brother, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane.

But for any of you who think this is some book for remembrance of that time only—this book is about Chasing Freedom in any age, including the 1930s, the time of a great poet I first learned about back in those San Fran days: Federico Garcia Lorca.

Because of his political views and sexual orientation, Lorca died for his freedom. He died for all those today who enjoy a free lifestyle or who are Chasing Freedom, artistically, or however. More about Lorca later, and how I first learned about him.

Many people who went on to become rock stars started their careers studying art: John Lennon, Mic Jagger, Jerry Garcia, come to mind.

After exposure to The Sixties in Europe, my stateside experiences were in San Francisco—where the whole Freak Out thing began, of course. Those experiences were centered at the citadel of Freaking Out in San Fran—the San Francisco Art Institute.

Garcia studied painting at the art institute, in fact. Janis Joplin was there too, but not studying, but flipping burgers in the cafeteria to make some bread before her rock star days. Soon after arriving in the city, I enrolled at the art institute, initially studying photography and creative writing, but before long switched to painting and creative writing. I used to read my poetry often at the Coffee Gallery café on Grant Avenue, which like the art institute was in an area of town known as North Beach—you got three free glasses of beer or wine for courage, and you needed it as hecklers often razzed the hell out of you. This was before the spoken word was known as such, and reading one’s poetry in public was not so cool.

It was a while after the Beats like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg had read poetry at the Coffee Gallery, and I guess it had been pretty cool then, but if you are a true artist—literary or visual, you don’t do your art because it is cool, you do it because you are compelled to do it.

Anyway, one learns things all the time. Only recently, I learned the location of Janis Joplin’s first paying gig as a singer—the Coffee Gallery. Too much, I thought.

Back to where she used to flip burgers; usually when I think of that cafeteria—besides the great views of the San Francisco Bay and Marin County from its windows and its concrete observation roof—I think of a black guy from Chicago I saw playing a pedal steel guitar, but not in c&w style, but playing the blues, Man, the blues.

So the art institute was a real trip. It was like starting school in the first grade, or the first part of the military when they nearly killed you in basic training—you really had to pay your dues in that place before you were accepted by the other artists or would be artists. Some people were there for a year or two and never were accepted—maybe they were true would be artists, who knows.

So, before I started at the artitoot, a couple of things happened to me that are worth my telling you about, I think.

The first concerns Van the Man—Van Morrison. I was sitting in a café in Matala, Crete, sipping red wine when some French freak put Morrison’s Astral Weeks album on this old portable record player. In those days the only electricity in Matala came from a generator that was shut off each night about ten. Anyway, I start listening to Astral Weeks and I go, Oh, Man. It’s like I am hearing The Modern Jazz Quartet and Miles Davis combined with some nice rock stuff.

So, there I was in San Fran and I heard Van the Man was going to play at Winterland. This was the Fall of 1971—five years before he played there with Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, and many others, with The Band at The Last Waltz—more on that later, too, for sure.

Well, let me say this to Morrison out there, wherever you may be—Man, you just about got me killed, and here is how: I take one of those old green San Francisco busses to the Fillmore District where Winterland was located. Well the Fillmore is the black section of San Fran, but I have always gotten along with black people, back to when I was a kid, so that was no problem, I thought.

I get inside Winterland, am excited as hell about seeing Morrison, and then he comes onstage and says simply:

I’m sorry, I just can’t do it tonight, and turns around and walks offstage. I do not remember who they had to replace him, but there was music of some kind.

So afterwards, I am outside waiting for my bus with about sixty other white folks. A bus pulls up, but it isn’t the number I was looking for, so I don’t get on it. Well, the next thing I know, I am standing there on that street in the Fillmore about 2 a.m. all by myself in front of a Bar-B-Que joint.

I look inside and there is a big black dude who looks like Sonny Liston, but bigger, and he looks right through me, like I am not there. I’m in trouble, I thought. Before I know it, six young black junkies, about sixteen or seventeen—I knew they were junkies by the way they were scratching the veins on the arms the way junkies often do—came up and started hassling me.

The next thing I know they are trying to rob me and I just started swinging my elbows and saying something like, Man, don’t try to rip me off; you think I’m rich or something?

Well, the one who appeared to be the leader said, Aw, let’s go downtown, and as soon as they had arrived on the scene, they were gone. Well, my bus waiting time on that street was over. I remember I just started walking real fast and didn’t look back. I got the hell out of there.

The other story concerns someone who was probably a junkie—he was some young white guy and you won’t believe this.

I had hitchhiked some in Europe and being out there in the city of freedom, San Francisco, I thought, I might as well try to hitch a ride, as I had a long walk across town on some boulevard like Divisadero. I put out my thumb, and before long some guy in an old car stops and says, Hop in, Man.

He roars off and immediately I notice a huge amount of smoke billowing from under the hood—you could barely see out the windshield the smoke was so thick.

So this guy, who may have been a Harvard grad for all I knew, freaks as they were in those days, says rather nonchalantly: Man, do you think I have a problem?

Yeah, Man, I replied. You bet you have a problem. Your engine is on fire. That isn’t from an overheating radiator. Your car is on fire.

Both hands on the wheel, motoring down the road he said, Oh, Shit. What should I do?

I don’t know, Man, but you’d better stop the car and let me out. I’ll just walk, Man.

He kept driving as if he didn’t hear me.

Stop the car, I yelled. I’m getting the hell out of here.

He stopped, and I got out hurriedly. And walked.

I never hitched in San Francisco again.

CHAPTER TWO

About that time, I enrolled at the art institute.

That was a good thing, because that’s where I met Francie. I had gone to San Francisco thinking I would be balling hippie chicks all the time. But that hadn’t been the case. I needed a woman. Plus, I had just about gotten the military out of my system with traveling around after my discharge. It was time to settle down, so to speak, and put my G.I. Bill to use.

The first time I saw Francie was in the orientation class we both had for new students. Our instructor had the unlikely name of Jack Frost—you can’t forget a name like that.

I remember I was talking with a friend I had met a few days earlier who was also in the orientation class. He was a Vietnam Vet with bad burns on his arms from a helicopter accident; he always wore long-sleeved shirts. I never saw his arms.

I met him by asking him about the neat boots he was wearing. My handmade goatskin books from Greece were wearing out. I needed a new pair.

They’re Frye boots, Man, he answered when I had inquired. You’ve got to get a pair.

I did. So I had my Frye boots and jeans. I have thought lately that was sort of a uniform of the Sixties—boots and jeans; and, of course you wore long hair. I had long blond hair I had been growing since I had gotten out of the military.

So I was talking with the guy and looking at the chick, thinking she’s cute. She was short and slender with curly light brown hair. Jack Frost needed someone to move a table, I remember, and the Vietnam Vet and I volunteered. I remembered thinking I am hoping this cute chick notices me.

I didn’t talk to her that day, but in the next orientation class we had together, I found myself sitting next to her on the floor in one of the drawing studios near the entrance to the school, as we watched some avant-garde movie. The art institute was constructed in a Spanish style. It had a nice courtyard with a fountain that never worked just inside the arched entrance at 800 Chestnut Street. You went downstairs to get to the painting studios located in the new wing. The drawing studios were in the old building—they had been in use since the late 1800s.

So I found myself sitting next to her. I really did need a cigarette, so when I asked her for one I wasn’t just trying to put the make on her. That might have been part of it, however.

I just need the cigarette, I have a light, I told her. When I lit the match and held it to light her cigarette, I thought, Man, this chick is cute. She had bright green eyes that I could see in the match’s light. She had nice cheekbones, small, nicely-formed lips, a sexy voice and a cute little nose that reminded me of Marilyn Monroe.

The next time I saw her, we were painting in Studio 3 down the ramp in the new building. We were both out of our classes, painting on our own. She already had a master’s degree in art history and was in some special student status. I was taking one painting course and was getting into the freedom of painting, which is quite the opposite from the tedious darkroom work that is a big part of photography; plus, I had taken fundamental photography courses in the military in my spare time and I knew just about everything the teachers were trying to teach us.

So I was painting at an easel near the entrance to the studio, and she was on the other side of the studio, by a large window where she had plenty of light. She was sort of hidden from view by all the easels and paintings that separated us. We were in the studio alone.

She would back up to take a good look at her painting, which, by the way is a fundamental rule of painting one of my first painting instructors told me: Get back from the damned thing, Paul, he told me. If you stand there with your nose against the canvas, you can’t get a true look at what you are painting. Look at your work from different angles and different distances. That way you can really see what you are doing.

So I would glance over to her painting spot now and then and catch sight of her when she backed up to look at her work.

Finally, I walked over to her to offer her a cigarette to reciprocate for the one I had gotten from her in that orientation class.

Before long we were both sitting on the wooden platform in the studio that was used for the models and objects students would paint from.

I think I began by saying, You don’t choose to be an artist. It’s in your blood. You are compelled to do it. Poets, artists and writers are born, not made. I knew I wanted to write and do art when I was 12, anyway, maybe before.

She was wearing a thick green sweater that had splotches of paint all over it. She told me she was from Florida and that San Francisco’s chilly air bothered her sometimes. I told her I loved it and kept looking into her dark green eyes; they went well with her green sweater. I looked down at her tight blue jeans and her nicely shaped legs and thighs.

Before long we were talking