September 17, 2007
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Irony, Ambiguity, and Just Plain Weirdness
Today is Ken Kesey’s birthday. Had he not died within two months of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, he would now be 72. His family still runs a creamery (they make Nancy’s yogurt) in Oregon. When I knew Ken, he was living on the old family farm there. Not familiar with his name? Ken has several claims to fame.
He wrote One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, some great American novels in which he mined his own life experiences with great imagination, irony and humor.
He was one of the Merry Pranksters who sought to initiate the Psychedelic Era by traveling around in an old bus, handing out free LSD in the form of electric Kool-Aid. Sometimes, the Pranksters also served up electric watermelon, injected with LSD. I had some of that, one Fourth of July in Eugene.
Ken owed his interest in LSD and his connections with Owsley Stanley, Timothy Leary, and many other members of the psychedelic subculture, to his participation in Project MKULTRA. I am delighted by the irony of such a counterculture hero’s having been produced by a secret Pentagon war project, and of minds and spirits such as Joe McMoneagle, David Morehouse, and Courtney Brown being inspired by the CIA’s secret psychic espionage programs. If ever there has been an incidence of swords accidentally being beaten into plowshares, this is it.
I am no stranger to irony, ambiguity, or weirdness. In my youth, I thought irony and weirdness were the way of the world. Throughout my life, many things such as car wrecks, felony arrests,
broken relationships, illnesses, etc., which would seem to be negative
experiences, have turned out to my advantage. Successes and achievements have a way of turning around and biting me in the butt.It took some time, a lot of experience, and more than just a passing acquaintance with astrology, Tarot, out-of-body travel, psychokinesis, precognition, telepathy and general strangeness, before I realized in a sense deeper than semantics that “weird” means “different”, “unusual”, out of the ordinary. If it was the way of the world, it would not be notable, nor would it be debatable. That it happens to be the way of my world, and that the Universe in its ultimate wisdom has provided me with a map to my own weird reality, are facts that I treasure as much as I treasure every hint and clue I see that suggests that this weirdness is becoming less weird and more common moment by moment.
Hey, Ken– Wherever you are, happy birthday. The world is a duller place without you. Thanks for each and every track, trace, and trail you left behind.
Comments (7)
That bus is still around here somewhere (I’m in Springfield, Oregon). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was showing on a station here over the weekend and action has been taken to preserve an old hospital up in Salem where the movie was partly filmed. Kinda cool.
Weirdness *is* the way of the world. It’s just that so many expect it not to be (for whatever reasons) that it’s unusual for anyone to acknowledge the fact.
Weird is good, different is good. Happy Birthday Ken!
Thanks for the reminder.
Haha, I didn’t ever have to try LSD to know frisbees would leave trails if thrown. I decided I had better never try it. I’d never return.
Blowflies leave multicoloured trails too.
Did Ken Kesey write ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’?
Happy birthday Ken and Happy birthday SuSu.
another icon gone, but not forgotten, i still feel the effects of “the 70′s” from time to time, in fact most of the time,