#93 - If Music Be the Food of the Love Generation
In what may be the best novel written about the sixties counterculture, T. C. Boyle's Drop City evokes how much music mattered in the everyday lives of hippies by comparing music to other essential elements: food, blood, air, water.
"Star was in the midst of it all, juggling pots on the range, slicing, chopping, whipping, the music getting up inside her till it was like a whole new circulatory system working in symbiosis with the original one, the one she was born with, and when somebody handed her a joint, she took it and held it to her lips a moment and passed it back again. She sang to herself, hummed, made up lyrics for the tunes that didn't have any. The gravy thickened, the snow faltered." - p. 438
"Music was like food, like water, like air -- that necessary, that essential..." - p. 298
23 May 2006