tThis is a chronicle of Marco Vassi’s wildman experiences during the “revolutionary” nineteen sixties, the notorious age of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll—and quasi-religious cults. A very intelligent and insightful fellow, Vassi (now dead) was apparently also bipolar (manic-depressive)—whether genetically or from drug abuse or both. So he soared to incredible ecstasies and then dove into the paranoid pits of despair—over and over again. He never met an organization he wouldn’t join—briefly. The American Communist Party, Gurdjief’s Work, Scientology, Zen, Frontiers of Science…you name it. Of these he gives illuminating descriptions—especially of the fascistic mentalities of the Communists, the Gurdjief people and the Scientologists (the latter officially declared him an “enemy”).tAs a boy Vassi grew up in Italian East Harlem, which was run by the Mafia with the complicity of the (paid-off) Irish cops. His hard-working but unassimilated parents could scarcely speak English. In fact, virtually all the Italians over thirty hailed from the old country and conversed mainly in their native tongue, whereas their kids all spoke English. Vassi said that as a boy he thought that at some magical adult age he would automatically start speaking in Italian. Raised a Catholic, he was trained by Jesuits and—by his own admission—became addicted to organization and hierarchy. But from the book it is clear that he was also addicted to the quest for a substitute (for Catholicism) absolute, and also to rebellion and anarchy. A confused lad. Bipolar.tAfter college he hung out in New York for awhile and then headed for the magical West Coast, did the San Francisco drug and gay scene with side trips to Oregon and LA, then spent some time in Tucson, then did a little Mexico, then back to San Francisco where he went to work in a mental hospital as staff and ended up (briefly) as patient. To get his mind together he finally returned to his home city New York, and book’s end finds him embarking on a new career—as a pornographer. (“A worthy successor to Henry Miller,” he was later called.)tThis book serves as a good introduction to the hectic counterculture of the Sixties. Though a wildman, unlike many of his compatriots Vassi was articulate and insightful: his left brain functioned at least part of the time. Further, his addiction to joining gave him, in a short time, many remarkable opportunities to observe the dynamics of both startup and established organizations.tHere’s a smattering of Vassi’s observations and insights: t*This was the same problem that has faced every organization that has ever been formed. In the beginning, the bond is the shared vision of its members, but then the organization develops a life and momentum of its own, and the members become subservient to its currents and directions. The group becomes the monster, swallowing its parts.t*America has no space for failures.t*Whoever gave the name ‘gay’ to the homosexual world had a cruel sense of irony. For the gaiety was all superficial, all hysterical. Mostly, there was pain.t*There are no atheists on bad [drug:] trips.t*He talked the way a musician plays, and to listen to him for content was as silly as trying to understand what a musical phrase “means.”t*The principle of try-anything-once was a guiding string through my life.t*As in every other human endeavor, the constitutionally strong, attractive, wealthy, and successful were off in some private corner, having their orgies, while the losers groped around the public places, searching to be found.t*The thing is that there is a way of perceiving existence that has no description in any symbology whatever.t*Between the two extremes of sleepwalking and insanity, there is simple perception, a seeing in innocence.t*Sadly, he still lied in the hope of his dreams, while he missed the stunning beauty of his actual accomplishment.t*My feeling is that life is once around for each of us, and there is something amounting to a sacred trust for each of us to live it most intelligently, most lovingly, most honestly.t*In any given endeavor, consistency is the main rule for success.t*If one can play a role with enough self-assurance, there will always be enough of those who will take complementary submissive postures.t*With all the good times and parties, there was an underlying unhappiness from no one’s having the slightest sense of who he or she was, and covering that ignorance with jargon and drugs and activity.tThe Stoned Apocalypse is a good read. It zips right along and is—in spots—brutally poetic.
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