The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Part 20

"When we were down in Mexico, we learned a lot about waves. We spent six months down there learning about waves. Even in the dark you can feel the waves..."

It's a wrench, that voice, what is it? up to now-a party, a frenzy. All of a sudden it's on a whole other level... of some sort... we can't figure it out. The TV crews are trying to edge up close and jockey for position. Is this where he tells the kids to turn off LSD? ... Which is what-we came for... Waves?

"I believe that man is changing ... in a radical basic way ... The waves are building, and every time they build, they're stronger. Our concept of reality is changing. It's been happening here in San Francisco ... I believe there's a whole new generation of kids. They walk different... I can hear it in the music ... It used to go ... life-death, life-death ... but now it's ... death-life . . . death-life The TV crewmen are trying to hand their microphones to heads near Kesey. They want them to hold them near him to pick up the words better. They implore the heads, they half order them in stage whispers. The heads are disgusted. They just stare at them. Kesey shoots a few whammies their way ... These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and their... positioning... they only want to use you for a little while ... They're punctures in the dirigible, flatulent murmurs in the heart, they're-the TV crews are p.i.s.sed, too. Snotty dope-head kids! ... Coverage is a pain in the a.s.s here in Edge City. Can't do with it, can't do without it-a grand ha.s.sle in the making- "... For a year we've been in the Garden of Eden. Acid opened the door to it. It was the Garden of Eden and Innocence and a ball. Acid opens that door and you enter and you stay awhile ..."

At which precise point-mysteries of the synch! yes-four policemen great dark-blue figures come walking in through the door on the Sixth Street side. The word starts firing around the crowd in the dark: Cops! Cops! ... One last monster raid to finish off the debacle! There is a h.e.l.l of a scurrying in the darkness, bodies. .h.i.tting the walls of the garage, like gigantic fancy-dress rats looking for holes ... Get the h.e.l.l out of here! ... It's the Probation Generation, of course, all the kids who are out on probation under firm admonition not to a.s.sociate with known dope users... they're practically digging through the concrete floor ... The four policemen keep walking in at a slow gait, looking this way and that. Ca.s.sady is on a microphone way behind Kesey now, up on the stage, in fact, beginning to rap about the cops coming in: "Four custom-tailored constables, you understand, looking for pearl heads among the swineherds..."

"The cops are here?" says Kesey. He sounds startled.

"The constabulary cops ..."

"They come in waves, too," says Kesey, "they're a pattern that repeats" ... Yah! ...

By now the cops have just stopped on the edge of the crowd in the darkness, just looking around.

"There's cops and there's policemen," Kesey says. "The cop says, 'Don't do that. That's forbidden and that's all there is to that.' The policeman says, 'You can do that, but if you go too far, you're going to hurt yourself The policeman is the double line in the middle of the road. I'm talking about inside of us."

A spot suddenly comes on, hitting Ca.s.sady in a little cone of light. "It's like Ken once said," says Ca.s.sady. "If you ignore a cop for twenty years, then he's not there any more ..."

"Haw!-Haw!-Haw!"-h.e.l.l's Angels in the corner-the four cops just survey the camp meeting, then start turning around to leave. Ca.s.sady keeps on rapping: "Yes! Violence, you understand .. . There's not going to be any violence here. If we wanted some violence we have some fellows here who could furnish it. .."

"Haw!-Haw!-Yah!-Yagggggh!-A good cop is a dead cop!"

"A good cop is a dead cop!"

But the cops just walk on out, rocking at the same slow gait, brus.h.i.+ng through a clump of h.e.l.l's Angels like they weren't there. The cops are gone, but they punctured the atmosphere again. Kesey tries to build it up, in the same soft tones, but it's tough going. He plunges in with the vision, the vision of Beyond Acid, how he saw the lines of light across the bay in Manzanillo, the line of gra.s.s . . .

"... and I'd smoked some gra.s.s, some Acapulco Gold, as a matter of fact. . ."

Cheers go up in the dark, Acapulco Gold! Oh s.h.i.+t we're esoteric heads and we know the creamiest of all the marijuana. But it's a freaking puncture. Kesey plunges through the whole vision: the line of acid, the circle demanding completion, the little lights across the bay ... It's metaphorical, allegorical, brains are getting messed up left and right... The rock 'n' roll, the frenzy, the TV cameras, the darkness, the cops, and now... this... It keeps ricocheting from level to level. s.h.i.+t! what is Kesey... doing... Finally the line with the hook on it-completing the circle without going all the way. He's telling them the whole thing, but-what is . ..

"We've been going through that door and staying awhile and then going back out through that same door. But until we start going that far . . . and then going beyond . . . we're not going to get anywhere, we're not going to experience anything new . .."

They're uncomfortable, they're stuffing their s.h.i.+rts in and pulling them out, too many rips in the balloon, and brains messed up.. . and the freaking TV jackals stabbing microphones around like tape-recording the hanging of Lenny Bruce- "Let's find out where we are. Let's move it around. Let's dance on it."

The lights come back on, the music starts back up, the color is back, everything starts spinning like a top again. Goldhill is zonked by now. The music flows through his neural ganglia like a flood of relief... Love! Bless, bless! bright lights! The h.e.l.l's Angels are stomping around again, everybody dancing. But that doesn't last long. Kesey is out in the middle of the crowd. People close in around him. The music stops. Kesey looks slightly glazed over but plunging on, like he is determined to seize the whole debacle by the shoulders and shake it into place. He has a chunk of ice. He kisses it, he puts a big chunk in his mouth, he breaks off a chunk and gives it to Ca.s.sady. Ca.s.sady kisses a chunk and then rubs it all over his bare chest. An ice thing ... The TV cameramen and radio reporters are trying to edge in. They're buffeted back. Everything is pitching and rolling. Kesey and Ca.s.sady are sitting on the floor communing over the ice. Pranksters and some other heads are getting into a circle on the floor with Kesey and Ca.s.sady ... the lotus position ... Gary Goldhill sits down with them. He's ready. The kid with the sizzling teeth sits down among them, zonked ... the lotus position ... His back is arched back stiff in the Nehru coat. He's rapt. The pot of pearls boils and boils. They all join hands and close their eyes-a communal circle ... They close their eyes tighter and tighter, waiting for... the energy. It's coming! It's coming! A high-pitched keening noise rises up from the circle ... Do you hear it! ... It's weird ... Half the people looking on are nonplused, they're embarra.s.sed. What is this a Halloween party or a seance and the Holy Rollers? Christ... Albert Morch of Women's Wear Daily says to Caterine Millinaire: "Say! when! met you last night-I didn't know you were the Duke of Bedford's daughter!" ... Got religion! The Angels are restless. They're standing around the edge of the circle. "Hey! Start the music!" ... In the circle, Kesey, Ca.s.sady, and the rest-they're starting to rap back and forth. The kid with the boiling teeth hears the voice. His eyes are still tight shut. He grins and glistens. "A dead towhee," he says, "a rumpled road and a dead towhee." His voice is on the edge of delirium and tears ... or else any moment he is going to break into an insane cackling laugh... "A dead towhee and a rumpled road and lying in the dust, a mistake... a mistake, but it's not important... Making a mistake is not important... it's the context in which the mistake is made ... A rumpled road and a dead towhee and four gasoline stations, white and sterile, refueling tailfins in mid-air for fat men in sungla.s.ses who do not see the rumpled road and the dead towhee ..."

Goldhill sits rapt... Energy waves emanating from everywhere ... Like ... black spirits! ... Kesey & Ca.s.sady-what are they trying to do with his mind ... Got me, trapped me into the Big Wait-for what? an idea? a revelation? love? feeling? breakthrough-into what? or PUT-ON.

They're putting him on! Sucking him in! But-the idea we're waiting for-he can feel it, physically, it's surging through ... He looks deep down inside, to describe it.

PRESQUE vu!

Ma.s.s daemonic hallucination it is! He looks around ... All pitches and rolls...

A CIRCUS OR h.e.l.l.

The tortured and the d.a.m.ned are all around him, the dead-for-good souls ... He gets up radiating Chinese firecrackers from his dragon pajamas and heads for the Sixth Street door but... the Dead and the d.a.m.ned! Faces!

h.e.l.l'S ANGELS.

h.e.l.l's Angels are packed into the corridor leading to the door ready for Ma.s.sACRE.

He turns back into the crowd, sinks into a time warp ... Like his life is an endless tape loop ... Black spirits keep bubbling up out of the most ancient pits of licorice detergent TRAP.

That! Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare and as he chants he becomes... Krishna! ... Christ! ... G.o.d ... And he pops out of the time warp into the silver haze of... The Universal Mind ...

"We almost had it," says Kesey, opening his eyes for the first time. "We would have had it. There's too much noise ..." But it's like the cloud has pa.s.sed.

People are milling around, starting to leave. They're befuddled and embarra.s.sed. What the h.e.l.l kind of party ... The Angels are beginning to leave, the TV crews, Herbert Gold has had enough ... Albert Morch ... It's getting toward three o'clock ... People stare at the stage, but there's no sign of music. Is it over? Are you on the bus? ... in the pudding?

Kesey plunges on. The lights go out again. The wrench is total now. It's a whole other .. . thing ... Kesey moves to the other side of the floor and sits down. The spot hits him. The Pranksters start gathering from all over the garage: Mountain Girl, The Hermit, Babbs, Gretch, Doris Delay, Page, The Ha.s.sler, Ca.s.sady, Black Maria, Zonker, Gut, George Walker, Ram Rod, Stewart Brand, Lois Jennings, all heading toward Kesey. Ha.s.sler has a hand mike and he starts saying in the dark: "Everybody who's with us, everybody who's with us in this thing, move in close. If you're not part of this thing, if you're not with us, then it's time to leave. You can move in close and get into this thing or you can leave, because ... that's what time it is..."

s.h.i.+tfire! that's it-those who were a little spooked by the turn the night is taking are now totally spooked. People heading for the Sixth Street door, flapping and burbling. The Pranksters, meantime, draw in close to Kesey, stepping by people, over people, then settling down, nestling in a circle around Kesey. Others pulling in, through the darkness, toward the cone of light lighting up Kesey's head and back. Kesey looks distraught. He looks up into the light. He has a hand mike. He makes a gesture as if to say, Let them through- "I know these people," he says. "I've been with these people!"

The whole Allegory ... A tableau of the Plains of... The tightest inner circle is packed in around him, then the Prankster outer circle. Then a few of the old Perry Lane crowd. Then various heads who are deep into the pudding, like Goldhill and the Kid with the Boiling Teeth, then rings and rings, the grades of faith . . . plus a few clumps up against the wall, of people with no faith at all, just too stroked out or curious to leave. Finally Ca.s.sady stepping over the hunkered-down, lotused, sitting bodies, heading toward the inner circle ... Kesey looks up at him, then he seems to grow dizzy and sink ... His head rolls...

"Goodbye, Neal!" he says. He looks like he might pa.s.s out. Ca.s.sady pulls closer. Kesey hunches over the microphone.

"They're saying, 'Look at him-the promising novelist... once surrounded by thousands... and now only these few'... But I can-"

-he drops the thought, however. The whole place is quiet and dark, just one small spotlight on Kesey ...

"Get Faye and the kids." Silence. Then a rustle of Faye coming through the clump of people, leading the little girl, Shannon, and the oldest boy, Zane, and carrying the youngest, Jed. They've all been in the nursery section up by the Sixth Street door. One of them is crying, only it is like a scream. That's all you hear in here, it's eerie ... Faye and the kids and Mountain Girl and Suns.h.i.+ne and all the Pranksters in a tight circle with Kesey. They all hold hands and close their eyes. Silence. Then the scream again ARCHETYPICAL! MIND POWER!.

Then a voice from one of the clumps of people by the wall, some girl, with a spondee voice like a Ouija medium: "The-child-is-cry-ing-Do-some-thing-for-the- child-first-"

Kesey says nothing. His eyes are shut tight. The high keening sound rises from the circle with the kid's scream weaving through it. Fantastic mind power crackle-Goldhill registers the energy THEY'RE ALMOST.

But the girl on the other side doesn't let up: "See-a-bout- the-child-A-Child-is-cry-ing-That's-all-that's- hap-pening-A-child-is-cry-ing-and-no-one-is- do-ing-any-thing-a-bout- it-"

ALMOST HAVE IT-PRESQUE vu!

"-Why-is-the-child-cry-ing-Doesn't-an-y-bo-dy- care?-"

FEEL IT! THE VIBRATION LEVEL!.

Kesey looks up. The spot hits him in the face. The Pranksters release hands. The music starts up. The Anonymous Artists of runenca play a rock 'n' roll version of Pomp and Circ.u.mstance with drum flourishes...

THE ACID TEST GRADUATION.

By now the crowd is down to about fifty. The lights come up a little around the stage, but the rest of the garage is dark. Ca.s.sady is up on the stage in front of a microphone. He has on nothing but a pair of khakis hung down on his hips and a mortarboard hat on his head, the kind you graduate in. In one hand he has a whole stack of diplomas. He's wound up like a motorcycle, kicking and twitching and ticking and jerking at the knees, the elbows, the head ... He's off on a dazzling run of words. The Anonymous Artists of America keep rolling away behind him. Every time the little blond girl on the drums gives the drums a good swat, Ca.s.sady stiffens, a spasmodic jerk, as if somebody just kicked him in the small of the back. He's rapping away, he's handing out the diplomas for the Acid Test Graduation. It's coming off after all... now ... when? what the h.e.l.l time is it? Five o'clock in the morning or ... who the h.e.l.l knows... Kesey is in the dimness sunk into the great easy chair. Some of the... graduates are here, Pranksters mainly. They put on black caps and gowns and come bouncing up to the stage and get a diploma from Ca.s.sady ... scrolly convoluted things done by Paul Foster and the G.o.d Rotor....

Gut the h.e.l.l's Angel lets out a whoop and does a little dance as his name is called. Many of the graduates aren't there. The Who Cares Girl...

"The Who Cares Girl," says Ca.s.sady. "Now, the Who Cares Girl couldn't be with us this evening, you understand, had to check in for choir practice in the oat bin two hundred fine voices tuned to a split hair screaming the name of the cowboy known as Ray, you understand, couldn't be with us either-ahem-lost in a Band-Aid factory swabbing the jake seats with A-200 ..."

... and the drums roll and Ca.s.sady stiffens and jerks and twitches and the Pranksters hasten forward, Ha.s.sler, Babbs, Zonker, The Hermit, Mountain Girl, Gretch, Paul Foster, Black Maria, Page, Walker, Hagen, Doris Delay, Roy Seburn, flying up and back in black robes... graduate- into what on the horizon ... as the light of dawn breaks through the crack in the garage door behind the bandstand. Those cold G.o.dd.a.m.n silver slivers... and the light rises in the garage, a c.o.c.kroach orange dimness, and there is perfect silence, the world stroked out this way and that as in ... Lucite . .. And the heat of the day creeps in, and rising out of the funk and the musk and the Rat grease smears-now come the cinches, mites, crab lice, fleas, fruit flies, grubs, weevils, all the microbes and larval ooze-and start writhing and crawling and festering and frying and wriggling and sizzling. The straight world breathes in, coughs, gags, spaghetti trapped in every glottis and flapping in panic ...

Back among the acid heads of San Francisco there were two or three days of post mortems after the collapse of the Prankster Winterland fantasy and the strange night in the garage. A little breast-beating here and there ... Oh, did we give in to Fear and Doubts, which a good head cannot afford, and thereby stop a brave cat from doing his thing... But just as many said, Kesey was out to freak us out or cop out on us, and it was just as well. And then the communal mind, not willing to be anti-freak-out, settled on the cop-out theory of it. Kesey had been just copping out all along, to keep from going to jail. That settled something else, too, the troublesome... souped-up thing the Pranksters were always into, this 400-horsepower takeoff game, this American flag-flying game, this Day-Glo game, this yea-saying game, this dread neon game, this... superhero game, all wired-up and wound up and amplified in the electropastel chrome game gleam. It wasn't the Buddha, not for a moment. Life is s.h.i.+t, said the Buddha, a duress of bad karmas, and satori is pa.s.sive, just lying back and grooving and grokking on the Overmind and leave Teddy Roosevelt out of it. Grace is in a/far country, India by name .. . Oh, the art of living in India, brothers... And so what if there is no plumbing and the streets are dirty, they have mastered the art of living . . .

The Pranksters had cleared all their debris out of the garage before the Calliope Company had moved back in, and they had piled it up in the vacant lot next door and then they headed off to Babbs's old place, the spread, in Santa Cruz. The Prankster debris lay there in the lot, a vast weird junkhead of bits and pieces of costumes and masks and pieces of wood with Day-Glo paint all over them and weird signs painted in Day-Glo on swaths of butcher paper and it lay there writhing like a maniac all day, and at night... it glowed ... A blot on the escutcheon of Harriet Street. The neighbors there, industrious j.a.panese and others, were disadvantaged souls, but they had their pride and they formed a delegation to City Hall to insist on keeping their neighborhood clean. The Mayor's Office saw it as an example of the kind of neighborhood pride that regenerates the City, for if they could instill the good burgher spirit in even so lowly a neighborhood as the Tenderloin ... So the Mayor announced utmost cooperation and it became a regular ceremony, with officials showing up along with the Sanitmen, and the TV crews. And the City pitched in, joining forces with the good neighbors of Harriet Street, in the ceremonial destruction of the weird junk heap-Christ only knew what insane degenerate wino generations had combined to nearly take over this poor forgotten street like jungle rot. The Day-Glo paint sputtered and sizzled to the end . ..

The Calliope Company held an Acid Test in the garage, and Ca.s.sady, wheeling around San Francisco in his latest car, heard about it somehow and showed up that night. He came in the doorway on the Harriet Street side, now marked 69 Harriet Street, after the humor of the times, and he was jerking and kicking at top speed to the unseen Joe Cuba ... He was sailing on speed, as the thirty or forty heads there could tell by the way his eyes jumped around, going tic tac tok tok tok tak toc tac tok tik tik tik tik tik tac tok tac tok tik tik tik tik tik toc tac toc tac toc tac-either that or he was amazed at this Acid Test through and through. There were no lights except the slowest and most fluid light projections, no noise except the most mellifluous hi-fi playing. .. what the fock... sitar? sitar? sitar? ... The garage was scrubbed and chaste and pure with wall hangings of the most meticulous sort, India-print coverlets, delicate and intricate of pure vegetable macrobiotic dyes. A few crystals in the air picked up rays of light one by one like ... jewels... And all the good heads were stroked out most silently, propped up sitting against the walls or stretched out, each grooving on his own private inward thing, receptacles of the Buddha, the All-one invited guest, and the Buddha could have walked in at any moment and felt right at home, 485 B.C. or right now, the ...

.. . dead-a.s.s little gook ... Ca.s.sady can't believe it... He is rapping a mile a minute, but n.o.body picks him up on it. They just stare at him through great amethyst eyes, full of tolerance and pity as his own eyes sprocket and his shoulders bob and weave...

"Hey ! Don't you want to do anything--get it started, you understand-slide it around-"

They just stare at him, peaceful luminescent violet jewel children, smiling like a bunch of freaking nuns, full of peace and tolerance and pity ... as he turns around shaking his head and his shoulders and kicking and flailing disappearing out onto Harriet Street again.

OH CHRIST ANOTHER LITTLE BUD IN THE HEAVES AND Ga.s.sES of the discovery pangs. Her eyes are opened up like morning-glories, her lips are wet and glistening, she smiles like an entranced nun, her teeth are beginning to sizzle ... hold on to the thoracic box. She has her face right up in yours, everybody's, and she is saying, ecstatic with the discovery- "I'm-I'm-I'm-I'm-getting the picture! We're-all here-right? We're all here! We're-he-e-e-e-e-e-ere!" and her hand pans around to take in the Fantasia in-the-beginning cosmos... which is, in fact, only a place known as The Barn, in Scotts Valley, ten miles from Santa Cruz. The Barn is Scotts Valley's first psychedelic nightspot, a great barn, truly, once converted into a theater and now into a psychedelic nightspot run by Leon Taboory, Scotts Valley's first, and last, to hear the grousing from the church down the way and the local constables and townfolk and the local paper, but ne'mind all that. To the little girl it's her first glimpse of Heaven itself, zonked as she is on LSD, her first capsule- "I'm-getting the picture! We're all he-e-e-e-e-ere and we can do anything we want!"

-revealing all this to Doris Delay and Zonker, Doris, like a good old helpful hand, says, "That's right. We're all here and everything's all right and you're fine."

The little bud sinks into a folding chair beside Doris's and gives her a look. "I should be suspicious of you . .."

"The paranoia stage," Doris says to Zonker. I love to tell the story- "... because I'm stoned."

"I know," says Doris. To tell the old, old story-love and glory now playing in your neighborhood for the first run, in Scotts Valley ...

About eighty of the local heads and hipfolk and jazz buffs, etc., in here listening to a jazz trio called The New Dimensions, Dave Molinari, Andrew Shushkoff, and a stocky little guy playing the ba.s.s. The little guy has on a sporty-type hat, wears it while he plays, his signature, you understand, and a pair of Cuban wrap-around sungla.s.ses, although it is dark and appropriately nightclubby, except for some light projections, which makes it... psychedelic ... ah ummmmmm ... and he is kneading and slapping and flummoxing the ba.s.s like the creamy days of Siam Stewart. The New Dimensions-now that's very funny, you know. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters have to smile over that. Kesey and the Pranksters are off to one side of the Barn waiting for their turn to go on, setting up their instruments, the electric guitars and ba.s.ses, Gretch's Hammond organ, Walker's drums, and the G.o.dd.a.m.nedest gleaming heap of wires, dials, amplifiers, speakers, headsets, mikes-testing, testing-The New Dimensions. .. Yeah. The trio is like a throwback to the late 1940s and the early 1950s when jazz was, like, the final form, funky and so fine. Molinari-or is it Shushkoff?-goes into a h.e.l.l of a riff--Oh Christ, remember?-on the piano, with his head dug down deep into the profound soul funky depths of this thing. It's so . . . well, nostalgic . . . Scotts Valley troops into post-World War II hip America . . .

The Pranksters have their own speakers set up all over the barn and Babbs is trying to test the microphones, watching for the needle to jump over the dials... Babbs has on his Day-Glo spirit mask and it glows in the dark, also a Shazam s.h.i.+rt and pants of many stripes and colors and he blows into the microphones, then hums a bit and watches the needles, then keens a bit, then croons a bit, and that's nice, so he tries a little ululation, and that's nicer, and pretty soon he is keening and gooning along with the New Dimensions and his voice sails through their sound like a stoned ghost on the airwaves. Kesey sits on a folding chair in the Control Center testing the headsets. Ca.s.sady has the Rat-tar, now painted an infinite number of colors and totally without strings. Doris Delay plays kindly aunt with the zonked-out little girl who's getting the picture . . .

The New Dimensions finish their set and they're mad as h.e.l.l, of course. What. . . cube was doing that screaming bit, f'r chrissake . . . The three of them come stomping up to the likely suspects, the Pranksters, led by the stocky guy with the hat and sungla.s.ses. He walks up to Babbs and says, "Like, I mean, who's doing all that-"

"Doing what?" says Babbs.

"Like, later, man, don't give me the doing-what bit. You know doing-what, man. I mean like-"

"Was somebody doing something?"

"Like, I mean, that's... later! You know! I mean, it... grates!"

"Oh, you mean that funny noise! I'd say feedback."

"Sure! Feedback!"

"Yeah! Yeah! Right! Right! Right!" Just a parlor sport, this is . . . fella could do it with his left hand. The little guy is furious. He tries to find the words to express his utter loathing.

"Like, man, this f.u.c.k-up bit on somebody else's set-it's so - SQUARE!"

There! he said it! the worst insult he knows! Next, the fire next time-Kesey steps in as the peacemaker: "He wasn't working against you-he was trying to play with you."

The little guy stares at Kesey but doesn't say anything. He just screams it again into the void: "Like, it's so - SQUARE!"

"Yeah! Yeah! Right! Right! Right!" says Babbs. "And there's the guy who did it!" and he points at Cool Breeze, who is sitting at a little table with a candle on it, hunched over a piece of paper, doing some kind of intense meth-like drawing. "There he goes!" says Ca.s.sady, picking up on the thing. "Takes a phantom heart to catch a Cool Breeze, you understand-" and so forth and so on, a shuck, in a word, never trust a Prankster ... And the New Dimensions walk off, disgusted ...

They refuse to play any more and start packing up their instruments, which leaves Taboory, The Barn's manager, in a bind. He can't figure out who the h.e.l.l to alienate. Kesey is a giant... on the other hand, the New Dimensions can play ... But too late for all that. The New Dimensions stomp out, thumbing their noses at the whole scene. The Pranksters wind up for their set. They clamp on their headsets. The headsets are wired up to a variable-lag system. So the Pranksters don't hear what they are playing right now but what they were playing a second ago. They harmonize off themselves, break up all learned progressions, and only they can hear the full... orchestration, a symphony in their cortices, the music of the Prankster ... ah ummmm ... Only the kids in The Barn, can't figure out what's going on... It's like, weird... The Pranksters put on their headsets and pick up their instruments, Kesey on an electric guitar, Page on an electric guitar, also Ha.s.sler, Babbs on an electric ba.s.s, Gretch on the electric organ, George Walker on the drums. They look all ready to go, but nothing happens. They're waiting ... for the... energy ... to build up, to come crackling over the headsets ... the spontaneous burst... but nothing works. Somebody starts and n.o.body else can pick it up and soon it's obvious that none of these crazy-looking people is going to play the instruments, except for the drummer .. . and they're not playing songs, they make it up as they go along . . . the leader, the muscular guy, Kesey, singing: "It's a .. . road map! .. . that ought to have been issued, about how to reach the edge of time ... on a horse who flies in tungsten red . .."

And the guy in the mask on the ba.s.s singing: ". . . floods of screams on the beach in bomby raids of b.l.o.o.d.y rainbows ... It's dark and I lose my vision ..."

Well... the kids start leaving ... what the h.e.l.l...

Babbs belches over a microphone. That gets a laugh. But is it art? Kesey barks like a dog. George Walker says over his microphone: "Where'd that dog go? I heard a... dog!... under my very feet!"

They slough to a halt. Ha.s.sler starts chanting into his microphone, which is wired in only to the headsets... Only Pranksters can hear: "Begin it like we began ... at the beginning... Do it like we did... at the beginning ... In the beginning... in the beginning ..." Chanting over the inner s.p.a.ce network.

But the slump and the slough are total.. /The kids all going in droves now ... Just the Pranksters left... An atmosphere of total tedium ... It's ... all... too ... much ... for mortal- Even Pranksters drifting off... leaving the main floor, going downstairs... Hagen shakes his head. "It's like a wake .. ." It's that burnt-out husk of the dark hours of the morning ... Black Maria finds a mattress in a utility room and lies down .. .Ca.s.sady, not high at all-low, in fact-offers to drive a girl home ... Now it's just Kesey on the electric guitar and Babbs on the electric ba.s.s, them and their head-sets picking up the sound of their instruments and their song in variable lag . . . Taboory himself, the manager, can't take it any more ... "Just shut the door tight when you leave," he tells Kesey, and he takes off... All the lights are out now, just a little glow from the dials of Prankster Control Center ... Kesey and Babbs have their eyes closed, strumming slowly ... alone in the center of the vast gloom of the barn ... The whole world contracts, draws closer and deeper and crawls inside the headsets, ricocheting in variable lag in the small hours, and Kesey sings over his guitar, which tw.a.n.gs and wobbles: "... and every now and then you can hear her blowing smoke rings around a cloud and trying to lace up her shoe .. ."

And Babbs: "... and the message goes out and it breaks out just a little bit but-stops-"

And Kesey: "It's kind of hard, playing cello on a hypodermic needle and using a petrified bat as a bow ..."

And Babbs: "Yes, it's hard working with these materials, without the grins falling off your knees . .."

And Kesey: ".. . and the soldiers think of the lowly fleas..."

And- "... the latrines wade back up around my knees..."

"So let's set here in this dilapidated people hutch and think about the things we've done ..."

"... Yes... down in Mississippi, that b.i.t.c.h girl we diddled in the cotton fields . . ."

"Still. .. you want to catch the first subway to Heaven ..."

"If I can get myself a new set of scales, I'll get my a.s.s off this third rail.. . and so saying, he stood up and retched and looked down on the rail on sparks and long and hairy slavers of various flavors of dark intestinal brown ...".

"... and his teeth fell out by the dozen and Hitler and his infested cousins began to grow in the cellar like a new hybrid corn and the crows wouldn't touch him ..."

"... and up the rail, old True Blue wiped his nose on his uncle's clothes ..."

"I took some pseulobin and one long diddle ..."

"WE BLEW IT!".

"... Ten thousand times or more ..."

"WE BLEW IT!".

". .. so much we can't keep score ..."

"WE BLEW IT!".

"... just when you're beginning to think, 'I'm going to score'..."