 HE TIPI TOWN tribe numbered seventeen by the time it was decided to make a trek to Tucson, Arizona. The story I recall being told over the months that I lived in Manhattan with this crew was that the movie production which had been suspended by the executive producer of the project would re-commence in Arizona at the film lot used for westerns called "old Tucson." I will tell you right now, the film never
was completed. I was
enthralled by the group mind set of the tipi town tribe. I was pretty much
of a withdrawn loner in high school and didn't pick up on the dynamics of
cliquishness then. In college my associations were determined by the activities
I engaged in - track and the radio station. I had been kept so busy by studies and
these other activities that I never had time to "hang out" - so I was in the dark
when it came to the motivations of people in group situations.At the center of the Tipi town universe was Jeni and Tomahawk, the "UR" couple. It's as if a double star system had formed, which for a while "captured" another double star - Sally and Steve. These in turn "captured" some planetoids of various size. How long does such a gravitational dance last in cosmological time? LOL!!! (It would be nearly an infinitude to mere mortals such as we - yet a "blink in the eye of Brahma") In our
analogy, the system was unstable, and socially incoherent, but for the
strength of a few personalities and the needs of all the members of this crew to
stay fed, clothed, and housed. A functional symbiosis of mutual recognition of
these needs lasted through that winter of exile in our own land as we "walked
proudly in our winter coats" (as a song in the rock Musical HAIR! would
depict it - little did I know at the time that within a year I would be trying
out for that very show, in the Aquarius Theatre, at Sunset and Vine, in
Hollywood!) Besides the very positive influence of Luke upon the entire crew
of Tipi Town Tribe, the arrival of one JACOB ARMANDO PATE - his real name - would
signal the exodus of the group from the city of New York to the wild mountain
times of camping out on Mt. Lemmon North of Tucson, Arizona.Jacob
proudly claimed to be a "mongrel of a human being." I recall he had his own
speech patterns and inflection that I heard with no one else. He would detail 11
ethnic strains in his not to distant parentage. To the extent that my own genealogy
was still rather vague at the time, his pride in his own background struck a
bright contrast to the extreme lack of such revelation in the others - in fact
such personal background talk appeared to be a "taboo" area in the "demi-monde"
we were inhabiting.Jacob was a song-writer with promise. He knew the management of Steve Paul's
"The Scene" at the time. So, Jake hatched a plan. We would conduct a
benefit concert called EXODUS. I don't recall who he bookled to
play. It might have been a band that Tipi Town Tribe was associated with since the
Millbrook/Leary days - "The Group Image" - (The Group Image figures in a
page called DANCING WITH THE
DEAD). Anyway, the night was a mild success.By
this time Jake had taken up with a young heiress to a comic book fortune. (I'm
not making this up...she was quite frank, low key, and nonchalant about this. She
quickly became "one of the crew.") I never knew her last name, so I'm not
revealing the company's name either. The desire of the crew to get to Arizona so
intrigued our fortunate friend that she offered to put the travel expenses of the
3 drive-away cars we had secured on one of her credit accounts. So, in short order
we were wheeling westward.I may
detail my Tipi Town Tribe experiences in deeper degree in the future. Right
now I will only relate the place that Luke played in my life during the spring of
1968. Luke quickly took to camping out in various recesses off the highway that
runs to the top of Mt. Lemmon, which overlooks Tucson. An Air Force Radar
installation was in place by then, so there was a very modern road all ther way to
the summit of the mountain. Three Zen Macrobiotic "freaks" we met would haul a
100 pound sack of organic rice 3 miles up a stream course, ascending 1500 feet in
the trek. Luke and I availed ourselves of their campsite. (Remarkably, half of
that sack would still there when I returned to Tucson the next spring with one of
those 3 "wise guys".) With Luke in that camp, it took on the feel of a hermitage.
Within a few years, the distinction between taking LSD for spiritual "discovery"
and mere partying would become very blurred, and the camp got trashed by
"psychedelic winos". The National Park Service would place the area off-limits as
a result. Would that camp have existed were it not for the military reason for
that road to get constructed? Probably not, but, then again, the stream DID run
all the way down an arroyo to the bowl of the desert, and we might have hiked up
and around the numerous water falls we did find. It was quite a long way from
suburban NJ, that is for sure!I did
not spend a lot of time up in th mountains with Luke. Being down in Tucson
with the Tipi Town crew was still an adventure for me. (I have detailed a day
that I spent making glass beads and then giving them to Presidential primary
hopeful Robert F. Kennedy as he campaigned on the Arizona University campus.) But it wouldn't take long for me to discover the dimming vision of the Tipi Town Tribe against the magnificent backdrop of the southwest. I remember Jeni, the art school drop-out lecturing me about EGO, as if she had the final say in the matter...I would realize it was possible for a person to play
the ego "game" of NO "EGO" after another episode with the Tipi town
cre in New Mexico confirmed some suspicions that arose early in my stay with the
crew in the Lower East Side of Manattan. Once I had been conveyed to Bloomington,
Indiana and was hunkering down into the mid-seventies, I read Thomas Pynchon's
novel V and discovered that the mystery man of American letters had already
skewered a lot of the pretense of the very scenes into which I had unwittingly
stumbled. Frankly, I don't think LSD was solely responsible for much of the
antics we indulged ourselves in, "acid" simply intensified them to a great
extent.A
small number of people were added to the Tipi Town "orbit" - one in particular
had a fascinating plan for a TOY CITY on a plateau south of Tucson, near Mexico.
He was over fifty as I recall, most of us were in our early to mid-twenties. The
plan involved staking a molybdenum claim for a minimg company, in a way that the
Toy City people could claim the surface rights and live, (!), rent free. Some
monet was gathered for that purpose. One of the new people that had accrued to
the Tipi Town group owned a small half-size school bus. Luke went into the
city of Tucson with the fellow, whom I shall call Dirk. Somehow, Dirk ended
up buying some belladonna paste from someone instead! Of course belladonna
can be lethal if very much is ingested, or otherwise introduced into the body.
It is a True hallucinogen, in that what is seen under its influence is what the
person thinks is really happening. a gut instinct has always kept me from
partaking of such things. When the bus returned from Tucson, Luke had an alarming
story to tell. Dirk, the owner and driver of the bus, had not waited until
returning to the tiny cabin near the foot of Mt. Lemmon to take some of the
belladonna. While driving on the Mt. Lemmon highway, he had slumped over the wheel
of his bus. Luckily for the other people on the bus, Luke managed to get control
of the driver's wheel and safely bring the vehicle to a stop at the side of the
road. Shortly afterward, Luke informed me that he was no longer comfortable with
the Tipi Town people. To me there did seem to be a "mission drift" occuring. Luke
informed me that he knew some people in Los Angeles he'd like to visit. I
remembered that I had left the Santa Clara/Santa Cruz mountains friends I'd met
the previous fall fully expecting to return there. So, I enthusiastically agreed
to consult the I Ching oracle. We got an indication that it was high time we
travelled on...As far as I know nothing ever came of the Toy City - it proved
to be a castle in the air - one that evaporated in the shimmering Arizona
sun!Our
hitch-hiking to Los Angeles took us what is now the long way. Up through
the Phoenix area and northwest to Kingman, AZ, where the original Route 66 bent
southwestward. Almost as soon as a ride let us out, late on a Friday afternoon,
we were stopped by a deputy sherriff. The deputy immediately asked if we had bus
fare when we told him we were going to California. That we don't, was our reply.
We had a penny, a dime, and a silver dollar between us, beside a bag of Arizona
oranges we would have had confiscated at the California border. He said well,
boys, gonna have tuh take yuh in...One of those week-end traditions in many big
western states, where the sherriff gets to pocket half the money alotted per
inmate, per day for food...we wouldn't go before the judge until monday morning.
Yet Luke was not daunted by this development at all. Once in the group cell, we
became a hit with the rest of the unfortunates, by asking for our bag of oranges
to distibute among them. Luke simply said he'd take the top bunk, and proceeded
to meditate most of the next two days. Sure was a contrast for me. Both previous
times I'd spent in a county jail, first in Nevada, and then Wyoming, the year
before had been fraught with uncertainty, and fear - yet this time...you know
what? Never been incarcerated since!That
Monday morning, as soon as we told the judge we'd be out of Kingman as fast
as our feet could carry us, he let us go on our Own Recognizance. Even laughed
at the zesty way I said how fast we'd depart. We got out past the city limits
of Kingman and proceeded to get nowhere fast. After a few hours, Luke got a
fire-engine red full length "meditation robe" out of his pack and put it on.
What a sight we must have been. Then he announced he'd changed his mind about
going to L.A. There was a Franciscan monastery he knew of in Missouri. He wanted
to go there, and visit some monks he knew. Yet, he didn't want to go it alone.
I said that I was determined to get back to the Santa Cruz Mountains.He
suggested consulting the I Ching Oracle. The more direct way of getting an
indication from the 64 six-line figures or hexagrams was to toss 3 coins 6 times.
Heads would be the value of 2, and tails the value of 3. One could get 6, 7, 8,
or 9. 7 was a solid line that didn't change. 8 was a broken line that also
remained the same. 6 would be broken becoming solid, and 9 was a solid line
that changed to a broken line. One could get one hexagram with no changing
lines, or any number of changing lines from one to six. In the perspective
of the book the broken lines represent
Yin - Yang, the solid. (These terms are defined on my definitions page)I
remember watching a mile long Sante Fe freight go growling up the grade as we
stood there. Usually people would use 3 pennies, or pfennig, or whatever, but
we had naught but the silver dollar, the dime, and the penny. On the last of the
six tosses, the dime stood on end in the sandy shoulder of the
highway!There
you are, out under the big sky, in a desert-ey terrain trying to get some clue from a millenia old oracle, and the dime doesn't "co-operate"! Luke chortled a laugh I can still hear and said,Temporary insanity, changing to permanent insanity!!" He got
no argument out of me. We even shared a laugh about the four letters
making an acronym for TIPI town tribe. Temporary Insanity -> Permanent Insanity!
I was learning what Steven Gaskins from Monday Night Class fame in San Francisco
would say so well: "Don't let anyone coming down the pike sell you a bill of
goods...if you SURVIVED, it's an initiation!"I got down on my hands and knees and flicked the dime. The hexagram we got out
of this toss was interpretated and accepted as stick to the original plan. We
made it to LA. I stayed with Luke's hosts one day and then travelled on.You can got to a song which got written 20 years after this episode to see how the coin toss got included in Far Too Long, Now, one of nine songs on my first multi-track studio album, From HERE to JUBILEE.  "When I paint my Masterpiece"  ERHAPS, you, my gentle visitor, have heard the Band perform the Bob Dylan song When I Paint My
Masterpiece. Like seemed to be unconcerned about recognition, when he took
to burlap...yes, BURLAP! The last time I saw Luke was a real stroke of
synchronicity! After leaving Los Angeles in the spring of 1968, I did a whole
lot of hitch hiking up and down the west coast of America, including the trip I've
mentioned elsewhere to eastern Washington state. A whole year passed, during which I met the person, a single mother of 17, Jessica, who got me to come to my major locus of living since '69,
Bloomington. In that restless era, I stayed but two months in the spring of
that year, ending up in Colorado, where I heard the rumor of what turned out
to be Woodstock. After spending the winter in Bloomington, I continued
to kick around the country in 1970 and 71. I don't recall if it was 70 or 71
when I was back in Manhattan, where I discovered Samuel Weiser's Book Store.
At the time this "occult topics" publisher had a shop near Cooper Union Square.
On the west side of the square Eighth street begins. On the east side it's
St Mark's Place. Who should I find working there but legendary Luke! I told him
about Bloomington. He chuckled that soft laugh of his, and said "What a small
world! I never told you back in our Lower East Side days, but the Air Force
sent me to Bloomington to study Chinese..." (The way he had told the story before
was that when he discovered he'd be used to interrogate ethnic Chinese in
S. Vietnam sympathetic to the Viet Cong, he managed to have himself reassigned
to physical therapy at the "ranch" in Montana.)Soon,
we were going to a loft in the then still dirt cheap So-ho loft area.
(So-ho for those unfamiliar with Manhattan, means SOuth of HOuston street)
He was working with acrylic paints. What he would do is cover a window pane
of glass with butter. Then energetically put the paint down in vigorous swaths
of movement. Quickly, he'd press burlap against the still wet paint, harder in
various places than others. When the paint dried, he'd simply pull the burlap
off the glass, and Presto! a masterpiece of abstract color with the rough
texture showing through in some places. there were several finished pieces on the
wall. The next time I went by the loft, however, his loft-mate said that Luke
had suddenly up and gone back to Arizona! Left his work behind...I guess the doing
was what mattered for him, not the showing...Within
another year or so, I was back in Tucson. People spoke of wise Luke camped
on the mountain, coming down to Tucson, leaving messages of peace and
reconciliation on buletin boards in the natural food stores. His vision, depth
of insight and gentle way continue to live in me, even though it's been more than
a quarter of a century since I've heard hide or hair of him. Bless you
Luke! |
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