Psychedelic Grandads Get Rocks Off at ‘Breaking Convention 2013’

Gonzo style

Was it disgusting? Would Mary Whitehouse have had it banned? There were all these lined creepy old men with straggly hair, wispy beards and very few birds dragging around their convention goodie-bags in the grand classically pillared precincts of the Royal Maritime headquarters making up the University of Greenwich in bright sunny broad daylight, outrageous!

Mingling with them and alert to conversations about “Acid”, “Blow”, “The Incredible String Band, Hawkwind, Expanded Consciousness, Psychedelia, the Sixties and Twink” were bright-eyed super-intelligent sparkly young folk, little ditsy pseudo beards, disdain and irony temporarily suspended, pulsing to a new beat they seemed to be enjoying the whole three day binge of re-charged assertion of the importance of new and expanded perspectives. Yup and Wow déjà-vu all over again again in a trance loop.

The middle layer of middle-aged men, the university cream at the centre of this multi-coloured psychedelic trifle-cake were earnest, even seriously unbelievably clever types out on a limb with their beliefs principles motives and hopes, organising with enormous efficiency the multi-disciplinary power of this tremendous cultural shebang, the Dukes, Sessas and Kings of this academic mind opening-blowing carnival.

And the guests! The speakers, Lordy lordy!  There goes the very much ex-drugs Czar Professor extremely learned and politically adroit Dr David Nutt almost hand in hand with horn blowing ‘Silver Machine’ Nik Turner and Muslim garbed soft and gentle Pink Fairies drummer Twink. The two extremes of wild sixties turn on and dance space excess alongside the cerebral measured awareness of the practical applications by clinicians of certain intensively scrutinised and monitored brain altering chemicals in therapy for treating grossly damaged PTSDisorderd soldiers and civilians while arguing for sensible substance risk estimation and control.

This Psychedelic Grandad nearly had a brainstorm, never so stimulated and set free since first loss of body and ego way back in… when was it? Oh yes ’68 I blew my windows out, doors too, and now we can publicly talk intelligently about it, the ineffable and the indescribable sometimes divine, the so much greater potential buried in our minds and brains than is everyday admitted. Folks with exotic African and Amazonian shamanistic psychonaut experience reported back from frightening faraway zones perfectly nearby in time and space. Paradoxical, you bet. You had to be there with synapses flapping gasping like evoluting critters from the ocean that we are dragging up a sunlit beach to the backbeat drone of trance and hypno heard in the ancestral waves and wind of the aeons.

Next one soon please, bigger and better and bugger the Daily Mail and her censorious ilk, Break with Convention Yeah!

Psychedelic Grandad and Breaking Convention contributor Roderick A Read.