Berkeley Hippie Revival Project

Would you guys be down to do this? Please let me know:

Google Form

This Friday I WILL be playing music on the corner of Haste and Telegraph.

The concert will have so many damn musicians, so many damn vendors, you won’t even know how to keep yourself composed.

This will be from 4 pm to whenever we get kicked out, so come and have fun!

If you want to sell anything, please respond, and I will get you in contact with the managers as quickly as possible.

The earliest memory I have of playing an instrument is when I was 4. My pre-school teacher brought a drum kit to class, and whether it be faulty memory or early talent, I remember sounding incredible. I didn’t try to play more instruments for many years.

I was chubby in middle school and terrorized by my teachers for tapping on desks. I needed an escape. I searched up how to play drums without any equipment, grabbed a couple markers and some books, and got practicing. 

Holy damn, I couldn’t stop. I loved the vibe of the beat too much. 

I took paint buckets and cut holes into the bottom, placing tape over them to create a drum. I had 3 of these, and I would play at school, at home, and on the street. Every day became hours of me beating a pair of sticks into some plastic; I couldn’t stop.

I eventually purchased a drum set from a friend of mine for 50 dollars after winning a bet. This set followed me from Downtown to South Beach, making me money and bringing me joy. While it was in my room, it was the ultimate expression of myself, getting played to the rhythm of my heart for hours on end.

At the same time, I had a medically manufactured spiritual awakening, driven by the underage consumption of psychedelics. My friends and I decided to eat some fungi at 15, and we became more than ourselves. We were the grass and our laugh, the trees and our passion. The expression of our hearts combined and drifted and exploded into fragments of the ginormous stained glass pane of our youth.

I had found myself through both music and mushrooms. My room and the corner where I had my drum set transformed into a spaceship riding through the never-ending internal representation of myself. Here I am safe.

Last Friday, I tripped hard on Telegraph. I had set up a concert with some friends of mine in front of the Walgreens, and for 6 hours, we had made enough noise to get constant calls to the Berkeley police about us. 

I was passed a slip of paper as we put up the equipment, and by the 2-hour mark, I went primal. I started hollering lyrics at the top of my lungs as I harassed my drumset. I was my sweat, I was the groove, I was the enjoyment and distaste of everyone who could hear. When I would lose myself in the rhythm, I would find myself adrift. To center, I would think of that corner in my room that took me so far. 

The culmination of my self and musical expression has its origins in that little space between my childhood walls, which I made so unquestionably my own through sound.

I am 3100 miles away from that now, but on this new street corner where I jam my heart out, I’m 15 again, and on that same spaceship, with the same dream of being as much of me as I can.

Coming to us from Callie Mae Johnson (MAGIC) (Orange Membrane) is a piece entitled, Purgatory.

I love it when people get personal, especially when I have no context. These wild adventures, tragic failures, epic achievements, and all the ponderings that come with them feel closer to the reader when there is little distraction from the particularities of another’s life.

“There’s pain when I watch your words form,You flinch at my gaze, my mean gaze, and the declaration is lost.”

Purgatory