Woodstock Sayings And Quotes

They met at Woodstock, and their love lasted a lifetime. Heartbroken but determined he calls on his two best friends to help him return to where it all began. One last roadtrip. One last chance to say Good-bye, Emily

I had just returned to Woodstock from the Midwest - from my father's funeral. The previous week had left me drained. I had gone back to the town of my early years in a way I could never have imagined - to see my father laid to rest. Now there would be no way to say what I was never capable of saying before. Growing up, the cultural and generational differences had been insurmountable - nothing but the sound of voices, colorless unnatural speech. My father, who was plain speaking and straight talking had said, 'Isn't an artist a fellow who paints?' when told by one of my teachers that his son had the nature of an artist. It seemed I'd always been chasing after something that moved - a car, a bird, a blowing leaf - anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not the vaguest notion of the broken world I was living in, what society could do with you.

Stand in front of this fantastic machine, my friend, and for just 99¢ your likeness will appear, two hundred feet tall, on a screen above downtown Las Vegas. Ninety-nine cents more for a voice message. “Say whatever you want, fella. They’ll hear you, don’t worry about that. Remember you’ll be two hundred feet tall.” Jesus Christ. I could see myself lying in bed in the Mint Hotel, half-asleep and staring idly out the window, when suddenly a vicious nazi drunkard appears two hundred feet tall in the midnight sky, screaming gibberish at the world: “Woodstock Über Alles!” We will close the drapes tonight. A thing like that could send a drug person careening around the room like a ping-pong ball. Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip—the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.

Fifteen years ago, the cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote of Jimi's performance of our national anthem as "his great NO to the war, to racism, to whatever you or he might think of and want gone. But then that discord shattered, and for more than four and a half long, complex minutes Hendrix pursued each invisible crack in a vessel that had once been whole, feeling out and exploring and testing himself and his music against anguish, rage, fear, hate, love offered, and love refused. When he finished, he had created an anthem that could never be summed up and that would never come to rest. In the end it was a great YES, both a threat and a beckoning, an invitation to America to match its danger, glamour, and freedom." ... In late 1969, Jimi Hendrix wrote a poem celebrating Woodstock, saying with words what his music had in August: "500,000 halos outshined the mud and history. We washed and drank in God's tears of joy. And for once, and for everyone, the truth was not still a mystery.

As I watch from the stage, I see more and more people wandering away. Jimi notices too, and says, “You can leave if you want to. We’re just jamming, that’s all. You can leave, or you can clap.” He looks up at the streaks of sun pouring through the clouds — some of the first rays we’ve seen in a while. “The sky church is still here, as you can see,” he murmurs.

It was the uniform of a time and place, of a nearly extinct species—the belligerent middle-American redneck who had fought in Korea, come back with his faith unshaken, and then watched the 1960s unfold the way he might watch his house burn down. There had never been any Summer of Love for Arthur Schuler. He had no interest in Civil Rights, hippies or liberals—or Democrats for that matter. I heard him say once that it might have worked out very well if we had indeed brought all the planes back from Vietnam, just in time to napalm the Woodstock festival.      But the man had lived. He had been an orphan of the Great Depression and seen the country and the world. He had made his way, been a barroom fighter and—he hinted—a womanizer at some distant point in the twentieth century, and had come away with an instinct for life, for the things that people do and their base and predictable motivations.  We

he asked them. “Too long. Don’t be such a stranger. Stop by if you’re in our neighborhood. We would love to sit and chat. We can talk about the good old days and we got lots of pictures and stories from Tuscany.” “Will do. Enjoy the evening.” Jack turned and was face to face with their daughter, Patti. “Hi, Jack,” she whispered. “Great to see you again,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “It was so good to talk with you the other day. It meant a lot to see you.” He watched her as she started to walk away and turned to him and say, “I wanted to let you know that after we talked I gave my husband a phone call. Eric and I decided to get back together. We’ve shared a lot of history, and we’re at least going to give it one last try to see if we can make it work. Thanks for everything, Jack. Bye.” She kissed him on the cheek. Jack saw Hope walking across the floor. “She’s pretty. Who was that?” glancing at Patti walk away. “An old and dear friend. Both Charley and I had a crush on her when we were younger. I’ll introduce you to her and her mom and dad later. You’ll like her.” More people filed inside to an already full hall. Soon it was standing room only. Jack turned to Hope and whispered, “I can’t believe this. We’ve had over twenty businesses make donations to the veterans’ fund to help support job training and for overseas servicemen’s wives and families. We also got money from the Yankee Bookshop, the Woodstock Inn, the Billings Farm Museum, the bank, and Bentleys Restaurant. They all donated money.” “That’s great,” she said excitedly. “And we’ve received over thirty new membership requests for the Veterans Post and that’s just yesterday. This is better than I ever expected. And four companies have committed to hiring more vets locally, including King Arthur Flour Company. They’re planning to build a new distribution center just west of town. I can’t believe all of this is happening.” “You should,” Hope said. “I remember you sat down right over there at that table and laid out what you wanted to see happen and you kept working on it until it did. I’m so proud of you.” He hugged her close and kissed her. He never wanted to let her go. The distinct fragrance of fresh balsam, pine, and holly filled

It’s true what they say, that death unites us, pulls us together, though I see beyond this primal unity and think that perhaps we pull each other closer to check that we are who we say we are. We are all trying to work out what went so horribly wrong. The