Blessings, Swami Satchidananda, and L.S.D.'s Cousin

A near miss was avoided for me at the beginning of the Festival itself .......maybe it was divine intervention, good karma, or.... matching robes. Earthlight Theatre is up on stage with Swami Satchidananda who is about to give the opening meditation and blessing..I'm sure you've seen the famous photo of this, we were practicing yogis.....well, we knew an asana (a yoga pose) or two. We were all wearing gold robes with matching gold tie-dye loincloths underneath. The Swami does not have the matching loincloths; just the robe. We were like his little neophytes, his followers, his groupies....his Swam-ettes.

So I'm late and I just come flying down from the back of the audience. A Security guy says "you can't go on...they're already on stage." I'm in disbelief. "What do you mean, I can't go on?, I'm with that group...can't you tell?..I have the same gold robes they have...I have the matching tie-dye loincloths underneath!" I ultimately did get a chance to be a part of this historic blessing and meditation. Some say that Swami Satchidananda "set the vibration for the festival". Earthlight remained connected to that energy through out that summer of love, our subsequent national tour, and off-Broadway run. And of all things, we were partially produced by the same folks that managed the Swami.

By the way this was our second chance at blessing the Woodstock festival. A week before the festival, in a then empty field, Earthlight rehearsed their off-beat show and blessed the space. That very space that would fill up with half a million strong. Yes, we blessed Max Yasgur's farm twice, hallowed ground for the counter culture and sixties generation. I never realized the signifance of this until many years later. Of course, at this first blessing, at the then empty Yasgur's field, we were not under the influence of the Swami this time, but a drug called STP, sounds like transmission fluid to me. It's a drug I had never heard of before or after. I was told "it's a cousin of LSD, only stranger". I personally never did that many drugs. But I always made the most of the drugs I did.

Earthlight Girl

I procrastinated and agonized over the title of this blog. I'm a double Pisces with my moon in Gemini which means I'm very good at procrastinating and agonizing.

I just love the idea of "The Tie-Dyed Diaries." It gives me such a rush. But then I'm easy that way.......that's how we folks from the 60's are. Notice that we're the only generation that says "I'm from the 60's" rather than say "I'm from Boston or L.A."......which is where I'm actually from. Born in Boston and I have lived in LA for the last 40 years. Three weeks after I performed with Earthlight Theatre at the Woodstock Festival in '69 , we bought a bus with the one-thousand dollars we received as payment and moved out to California,
and, of course, we painted the bus with blue and turquoise clouds.

"The Missing Woodstock Stories" refers to the obvious.....and then again "missing" could refer to parts of stories that hippies who were at Woodstock can't remember because it was too long ago, we were too stoned, and we're just too old. You know that cliche slogan, "if you remember the 60's you weren't really there।"

I feel I'm beating this "missing" thing into the ground, but there's no one to stop me. Missing are the people that never made it to Woodstock and had important things to say about it; like Joni Mitchell who wrote the festival's national anthem "Woodstock", and a guy named Ed bicycling on Venice beach last week that I met, who claimed "Woodstock changed the universe."

Lastly, "missing" are those that are no longer with us and have moved on to that great never ending summer of love in the sky. O.K. so, missing also refers to the fact that I'm only represented in Ang Lee's feature film "Taking Woodstock" as "Earthlight girl". Can you imagine... Me? S. Rachel Lovey, veteran actor, stand-up comic & producer, who was honored and roasted at the Friar's Club, elder states person of Woodstock (hell anyone who was at Woodstock is now an elder states person except for the babies that were born there.) is not actually in the movie. I'm missing! The Earthlight Theatre troupe was an integral part of the organization of The Woodstock Festival, and I'm missing?