You'd think it would go away after 50 years, but every time I accidentally come across "Light My Fire" I still get a little nauseous.  Probably heard it 1,000 times during our last two years at Beloit.  Between the Doors and Jose Feliciano, my fire of anxiety and depression was definitely lit time after time. A lot of Jefferson Airplane and even Buffalo Springfield still resides in my amygdala, too, in a PTSD-like way. Things were out of control.  Between the draft, the acid political situation, assassinations and open social wounds, maybe it was inevitable that many of us would want to either curl up in the fetal position or escape.   

The good side of all this is that for whatever reasons, my own final year in Beloit turned into a full steam ahead schedule for me-- practice teaching, broadcasting basketball, writing for the Roundtable, publishing a poetry book with Kit Jones, living off campus with Tim Sturm, establishing lifetime friends and learning a few things about resilience and operationalizing optimism. Several of you who will not be named contributed to that resilience in ultimately good ways, I think, through our common adventures and discoverie in 68 and 69. Psychologically and socially challenging times for me, at least, feeling more alive than at any other time before then.  

Facing the draft and knowing several of my friends were taking even more courageous steps than I to live with their own decisions about it, I grappled with conscientious objector status for more than a year and a half.  Filled out my application to be a CO, talked to my parents and counselors and prepared to be the first person ever to apply to apply for CO status at our draft board in Danvillle, Pennsylvania.  Then I waited months and months with Ia status and a lottery number that kept me on the hotseat.  

Then I failed lthe physical but they didn't tell me, and I waited some more.  They notified me three months later that I had to take the physical again but didn't tell me for several more months whether I passed.  Turns out I failed the physical twice and they didn't inform me until, well, they felt like it.  

By December of 69 I had committed to two years of alternative service on the Hospital Ship HOPE...and heard "Light My Fire" many more times in the bowels of the ship moored in Tunisia, Baltimore and Kingston harbor.. Still get the willies, especially when Jim Morrison rises from the dead on vinyl. 

Not all my musical triggers are negative, by the way.  Richie Havens, Luis Bonfa (thank you, Robert Lee Morris), We Five, Ravi Shankar, Stevie Wonder, Four Tops, Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Beatles (Rubber Soul, especially)...that list is very, very much longer.  Anybody else have similar visceral, deep brain musical memories?  

And we can't forget the jukebox standards - Get Off of My Cloud, and We Gotta Get Outta this place!

I remember those tunes well...but the one that called to me was ‘California Dreamin’ - and here I am living in California! 

Folks - one that has stayed with me over the years, and in many places around the globe: It was a balmy spring afternoon, and I was sitting in the Union slurping coffee with Chris Chlupp, Carla Staab, and a couple of other friends.  Chris said, "We need some tunes" and he walked over to the juke box. (Remember that legendary Union juke?)   When the first song he played started,  I remarked to the others, "Hey, that's great!  What is it?"  I was immediately bombarded, almost in unison, with various degrees of good-natured incredulous derision - it was the Beatles' "Hey Jude". That honestly was the first time I ever heard it! 

Throughout the years, wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I can't  hear Hey Jude without being taken back to that sunny, lazy late March afternoon, in the Beloit Student Union, just kickin' it with a few good buds.