Free Are You Experienced? by Jordan Sonnenblick

Jimi Hendrix, save my uncle, and change my father’s future—hopefully without ceasing to exist.

 
    BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
    FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 1969
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    The next guy to come out onstage was equally amazing, in a completely different way. He was a holy man from Sri Lanka named Swami something, and he gave an invocation. He said two remarkable things. The first was this:
    â€œMusic is a celestial sound and it is the sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations. Sound energy, sound power, is much, much greater than any other power in this world.”
    I was sitting there thinking, Before today I would have thought that was just some kind of semi-random guru baloney. But one chord on an electric guitar actually teleported me, so I guess maybe this guy has a point. I wonder if he knows how right he is?
    Then he told the crowd how historically important they were:
    â€œThe entire world is going to watch this. The entire world is going to know what the American youth can do to the humanity. So, every one of you should be responsible for the success of this festival.”
    I turned to David to see what he thought of this, and almost passed out. He was casually holding a huge hand-rolled marijuana cigarette, and was about to take a massive drag on it. Because, you know, when the entire world is watching, it’s definitely a good idea to show your responsibility by getting high in broad daylight. I wanted Michael to act like a big brother and yell at him, but all he said was, “Hurry up and take your hit, Davey. We all need to get mellow for Sweetwater!”
    So yeah, apparently, “Daddy Michael” wasn’t going to be fulfilling a major disciplinary function this weekend. Granted, tons of people around us were doing the same thing, or passing around bottles of alcohol, or engaging in any number of other legally dubious activities, but I was horrified. This was my dad. I couldn’t believe he was eventually going to grow up and have the nerve to ground me for appearing at a rally for the legalization of pot for terminally ill cancer patients.
    David inhaled a massive lungful of smoke, and held it until I thought his head would explode. Meanwhile, Willow took a dainty little puff, then leaned across and held the joint out to me. “Gabriel, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Where are our manners? We haven’t even offered any, um, flammable refreshments to our guest!”
    â€œUh, n-no thanks,” I stammered. “I’m trying to cut down for, um, track season.” Not that I was a runner, or in fact any type of athlete at all, but it was the first excuse that had flown out of my mouth somehow. I had no plans to try any drugs at Woodstock. I had gotten drunk a couple of times in my friends’ basements and stuff, but I had never tried any kind of drugs before, and—even if I did decide to try them at some point—there was no way my first psychedelic experience was going to be with my own father.
    â€œThat’s cool,” Michael said. “More for us!”
    If there’s anything more depressing than being the designated driver of a picnic blanket, while your own father gets completely wasted beside you, I am unaware of that thing.
    We all eventually lay back on the blankets for a while, just thinking. I was partly wondering about what the guru guy had said about the power of music, and partly trying not to freak out over the drugaholic-teen-dad issue. If the Swami did know that music had power over the universe, did that mean I wasn’t the only person who had ever traveled through time by playing an instrument? I mean, it kind of made sense that I wouldn’t be, when I thought about it. Jimi Hendrix had all kinds of songs about time-and-space travel, and he was just the one person whose guitar had happened to fall into my hands. There were other musicians who had been talking about this back in the 1960s, too, like a jazz guy named