Detroit has been a stubborn place and does not want to be changed, but as I write now and the sun is shining through my window and the spring is with us, the snow is melting, people are getting together, and there are positive forces at work here that will not be denied. Yes. We can not be stopped, no we can’t, and the sooner the people in power realize our strength the better off they’ll be. Change is in the air, the beautiful people are swarming the streets, travelers are coming home at last, flowers will be blooming everywhere, and all who have eyes to see will tell you it will be beautiful. Yes. And you will believe it when you see it.
The first Detroit Lovefare the last of February showed people what it is like to celebrate together, and that was just the start. Now we can move outside with the weather, into the parks and streets, bodies filled with love and joy, eyes flashing, music vibrating through the city, legions of lovers turning the spirit/ force loose for everyone to share. Yes. Oh it will be beautiful, and everyone will know it, even those who would deny our power. We are just now beginning to feel our strength, and it is a law of nature that a positive force will displace a negative one, love will redeem hate, and the spring will deliver us from this long hard winter. We are here and now, and we can not be stopped.
Plans are being made now for a series of holy celebrations around the city and in the countryside—I hope to bring you the good news in my next column. Tentatively scheduled, if we can get the city’s approval, is a mass Love-In and smoke-in on Belle Isle the last day of April, organized by the 1967 Steering Committee and LEMAR, with music and poetry, flowers and bells, food and dancing, grass and trees, and a thousand or more people all celebrating their existence as the children of love, meet creatures moving in the universe acting in concert here on earth. Everyone is happily invited, and all who come should bring friends, parents, cops, teachers, brothers and sisters, babies and grandfathers, everyone who has cause to celebrate. Eternity is here and now, and it is ours.
Even the mass media is getting hip to us—two weeks ago Robin Tyner of the MC-5 was grilled by four WXYZ-TV newsmen on a Saturday afternoon “Spotlight” show, half an hour, talking about what the newsmen quaintly called “the generation gap.” Tyner did a beautiful job of explaining to them what the revolution is all about—love—and wouldn’t let them hang him up with their reactionary questions. It was really a unique television experience but only the first in what will be a long series of them. We’ve waited a long time for all this to happen, but IT’S HAPPENING! NOW!
The music scene is getting more exciting every day—the MC-5 continues to develop as the most forward “rock” band in the area, expanding the limits of the form and breaking time/space barriers like they weren’t even there. They aren’t. Billie C. and the Sunshine blues band and an Ann Arbor group, the Seventh Seal, are getting more together every time I hear them. And the big news for music freaks is that the American genius pianist/composer CECIL TAYLOR will at last be in Detroit, April 8 and 9, to take part in the second annual Detroit Jazz Conference at WSU-more news of that next issue. Word too that the FNCC at WSU is bringing THE FUGS! to Detroit the 6th of April, which should be really something. Again, more news next time.
Poetess Denise Levertov will be reading in Detroit on the afternoon of march 21, 4:30 p.m., somewhere on the WSU campus. Check the calendar for details. And the major American poet Robert Creeley will be here early in May for a reading—details on that later, as the time nears. Creeley’s new book of poetry, WORDS, is just out from Scribner’s, paperback and hardcover, and I hope for your sake that you’ll pick it up somewhere and let it speak to you.
Lastly, the following message was printed by the Communications Company in San Francisco, written by Richard Brautigan at the big Glide Church happening there, and transcribed here to show you where people out there are at:
LOVE do do now
the energy of our minds has overflowed the capacities of Glide. And so it’s time. Not to stop but to continue, GROW. Engulf the city with our LOVE. As soon as you read this take your tired bodies home…touch, make love. Extend the union we have shared to people you pass on the streets. We know that we can love, we don’t know how much. FIND OUT and realize then, when you love as much as you think you possibly can, that you haven’t gone far enough. GO FARTHER. Share what is inside; yes you love; yes you treasure it… YES YOU CAN LET IT OUT. do do now there is no other way to keep our love alive. ALIVE. ALIVE LOVE. Let the Montgomery St. people know that we are alive, NOT. alive for ourselves or those we are close to; NOT alive to stay high; ALIVE TO LOVE ALL PEOPLE. do do now… ALIVE / and let’s let everyone know WHY