Outlaw Blues

Whoops. In my haste to put up a few posts, I have forgotten that my musically connected history has a spiritual side as well. My history just inflated. Backing up a bit, --from LA to San Diego, this post (and the next) describes my first encounter with the mantra “nam myho renge kyo.” The meaning of this mantra has, for me, evolved over the years; no longer is it about the Buddhist sect of it’s origin; rather, it’s about “becoming aware” that existence is not just embedded in the movement from the simple to the complex,-- existence is also embedded in the significance of the emotion/reason dichotomy. Emotion, at the human species level, has the potential to inform reason! More specifically, on this level, it becomes possible to “see the necessary connection” that links freedom, reason, and love with the origin of the universe. Love—the love of freedom, not only evolved our universe, it also evolved the intelligence to determine the difference between the consistency and coherence of events— predictable scientific events, and the emotionally experienced world that embeds these scientific events. Don’t worry if this sounds like gibberish, back when I was handed this mantra it would have sounded like gibberish to me too. Here’s a cut and paste from my other blog that may, or may not, clear up some the confusion:

[Our “time of mind steam of consciousness” is embedded in a physical event. Physical events take place within our perceptual field (sensory experience) and are identified, scrutinized, and categorized within our “time of mind” experience. F. S. Northop says it best when he says, “To be any complete thing is to be not merely an immediately experienced, aesthetically and emotionally felt thing, but also to be what hypothetically conceived and experimentally verified theory designates” (The Meeting Of East And West, p. 450).]


June 22, '69

The zoo, overlooking San Diego, was located high in Balboa
Park. When I left the zoo and walked into the darkening shadows of
the heavily foliated park, I still didn't have a place to sleep. It
was against the law to sleep in the park, but night, in addition to
everything else it brings, also brings invisibility. I stashed my
gear under some bushes and walked down the hill. Once in downtown
San Diego, I planned to window-shop until it was dark enough to
return to the park. I was uncomfortable leaving my belongings
unprotected, but, hey, risk and road-life go hand in hand. What I
expected and what I ended up with were two different things however.

I was standing on the sidewalk, looking through a storefront
window, when behind me a car came to a tire-screeching halt. Before
I knew what was happening, I found myself spread-eagled across the
hood of a parked car. The four storm troopers who pinned me there
had my wallet out of my back pocket before I could utter a word.
After they jerked the bread crusts from my pockets, one of them
angrily threw me down on the cement. Finding bread crusts instead of
dope was a disappointment, I guess. The pig looking at my
identification said, "What are you doing in San Diego?" "I'm
heading up to Santa Cruz to see a friend," I replied. As I was
picking myself up off the sidewalk, the pig who put me there
sarcastically exclaimed, "We don't cater to transits in this town.
If I catch you sleeping where you're not suppose to, I'll personally
see to it that you get permanent lodging compliments of the
city." "Yes sir," I replied. When the city servants got back into
their car, I brushed myself off and checked for bruises.

Walking more briskly now, and not stopping to look in
windows, I managed to get down to the next block before two Asian
ladies accosted me. Well, maybe I wasn't accosted. Nevertheless, two
ladies, after darting out from behind a building, did grab both of
my arms as they said, in broken English, "Do you want learn Buddha?
Do you want learn Buddha?" After I had a chance to look into their
faces (these ladies were probably in their late 50's or early 60's),
I no longer felt threatened. I had no difficulty accepting their
invitation because I had an interest in Eastern religion anyhow. I
even took a course in Asian philosophy back in school. Besides, I
thought I would probably be safer with the ladies than I would be on
the streets of downtown San Diego.

The ladies pulled on my arms and said, "Come, come," as we
walked through the dark alley on our way to their car. I sat between
the ladies, as we drove out of the city. I must admit, riding at
night to an unknown destination with two strangers did frighten me a
little. As a way of coping with the fear, my thoughts turned to what
I knew about Buddhism, and the Buddhist principle of non-violence.
Ah! That did it; my fear subsided.

When we came to a building out in the country we pulled off
the road. We removed our shoes and placed them with the other shoes
that were lined up in neat rows as we entered the rectangular shaped
building's vestibule. The entryway opened into a large, red-carpeted
room. At the far end of the unfurnished room stood a five or six-
foot high shrine. Inside the shrine's open doors hung what looked
like a scroll of rice paper with Asian writing on it. The Asian
ladies took me over to the corner of the room and I was told to
wait. They said a man who could speak English would come and talk
with me. I knelt down and sat back on my knees as the Asian ladies
moved into the center of the room where they began to bow and chant
along with everybody else. As the smell of incense permeated the
room, I watched as forty or fifty Asian people knelt, chanting in a
language I did not know, to an object I did not recognize.
Alienation is to weak a word to describe my feelings as I sat alone
in the corner.

A man dressed in a white shirt and black slacks got up from
where he was worshiping and walked over to where I was sitting. He
asked me, in an accent that was very hard to understand, "Do you
know about Buddhism?" I told him I knew Buddha was a monk who,
around 500 B.C., went looking for enlightenment. I told him
enlightenment was an escape from suffering and eventually Buddha
became enlightened. I told him I had studied Asian religion in
school.

The Asian man looked surprised. He began to tell me about
what was occurring in the room, but it was hard to hear him over the
sound of the chanting. As best as I could make out from what he was
saying, the people in the room were members of a Japanese Buddhist
sect. They were chanting to a Gohonzon, the enshrined object of
worship. When a person chants to this Gohonzon they were supposed to
find happiness and contentment. After this brief introduction, he
asked me if I wanted to join in the worship of Buddha. "Yes," I
replied. He smiled, and then as he got up to leave the room, he
said, "Wait here."

Sunset Strip '69

Walking Down Sunset
June 27, ‘69


When I crawled through Mark’s window, it felt good to be back out on the street again. The sun was shining, and even the exhaust fumes smelled better than Mark’s room. I walked a half-mile or so to the Hollywood freeway. On the hot concrete with my thumb out, traffic noise everywhere, and the sun now less of an ally then when I first hit the street, I began to wonder why there were so few cars using the on-ramp. Just then a car whizzed past me. At the bottom of the ramp, it came to a screeching halt, and reversed back to where I was standing. Just before it reached me, it came to another screeching stop. I wasn’t sure if I needed a ride that bad, but when the driver said, “Get in,” I responded by doing just that. Sitting in the car, I thought to myself, “What the fuck, you only live until you die!” Little did I know how close I was to becoming a prophet.

Looking for words to make an uncomfortable situation more comfortable, I said to the unshaven, skinny, driver, “That was quite a stop.” He looked at me and replied, “That was nothing, watch this!” Without hesitation he pushed the gas peddle to the floorboard and I was thrust back into my seat. There was nothing I could do but hold on tight as the car sped down the ramp and the driver lost control, sending the car into the lamppost that demolished the passenger side of the car. I was bruised and shaken as I climbed out the driver’s side. The little man began running around his car, screaming “My car. My car.” Then, when he realized his large quantity of pills (probably speed) was scattered all over the floor of the car, his screaming turned to obscenities. He then reached into the car and grabbed several bags of marijuana from behind the driver’s seat, and ran up the exit ramp. I also ran up the ramp, but on top, I turned in the opposite direction. After that, I made my way to another on-ramp and hitched a ride back to Hollywood.

On the Strip, one of the few places you could rest without being hassled by the pigs was at a bus stop. I was sitting on a bench when I met a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl from Kentucky. She was being very friendly, and then she asked me to move to the far end of the bench. As it turned out, she, like me, was not waiting for a bus. She was working, and she didn’t want me interfering with her chances of scoring a John. She told me she had been working the streets for about six months and when her pimp ripped her off she began to work bus stops and anyplace else she could attract tricks. She told me, “There’s no glamour in it, but it pays bills, and anyway I’m doing okay, better than most in fact.” As we were talking, she was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, showing a lot of skin. When a car pulled up, and one of the two men in the car stuck his head out the window and asked her if she needed a lift she said, “Sure,” and climbed into the backseat of their car. Before she closed the door she looked at me and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be alright.” She was gone in an instant. It took a lot longer than that before the empty feeling in my gut went away.

Both Mark and Vinny felt guilty about my getting bad dope the night before, so after I met up with them on the Strip, they promised me I would be especially happy with tonight’s dope. Vinny came through when he scored a four-way tab of acid. Mark and Vinny didn’t want to mix the acid with the reds (they were already doing downers), so Vinny handed me the acid, but advised me to do only half. I dropped the whole tab and got off really well. It was constant hallucinations and colors.

My perception was definitely altered, but the people I met on the Strip were unusual by any standards. There was the burned out, longhaired warlock who persisted in putting “double whammies” on everybody who refused to say “Hi” to him. There was the dude dressed in a long black cape with matching wide brim black hat who preached revolution. He told me, “The revolution starts at the Free Church in the morning.” He then opened his cape and I saw his guns, knives and hand grenades strapped to his body. “Weapon’s will be distributed tomorrow,” he said. I didn’t go to the church, nor do I remember hearing anything about a revolution taking place; but maybe it did. There was also a priest who chained himself to a wooden cross and then chained the cross to a lamppost. I was told that for two days he had been without food or water. He was protesting some cruelty, but I don’t remember which cruelty.

Oh, and I don’t want to forget to mention the distraught girl who I somehow helped. She was with another girl who was trying to console the uncontrollably crying girl. When I walked past the two of them the one crying grabbed my arm and reached for my beads. They were my Buddhist prayer beads. Struggling to hold back her tears, she asked me if she could hold my beads. When I handed them to her she clutched them and began chanting, “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.” After she placed the beads back around my neck, she looked up at me, smiled, and kissed me on the cheek. These were just a few of the interesting people I met one night while walking down Hollywood’s Sunset Strip...

...My budget concerns did not restrict the evening's activities. Indeed, my empty pockets necessitated the beginning of a new experience, panhandling. My panhandling experience, however, got off to a rocky start.

The three of us agreed to panhandle until we had dope money. As we were walking to the onramp to begin hitching to Hollywood we came upon a man pushing his stalled car. The three of us jumped in to help. When we got the car to a gas station, the
grateful fellow offered to pay us for our help, but I refused the money. "It is wrong to refuse money if you needed the money for dope," at least that's what Vinny said. Vinny was probably right, but I wouldn't admit it. I guess I got caught up in the knee-jerk response of not expecting a reward for helping someone in need. That
knee-jerk response started a nasty argument between Vinny and I. The argument didn't go away until Mark agreed with me. I guess Mark's Bostonian upbringing got the better of him. Anyway, Vinny backed down and we were off to the Strip to begin panhandling in earnest.

Once on the Strip, we were each on our own. I was very timid at first, but I caught on fast. I was surprised to find the street hippie's generosity was far superior to the thrill-seeking tourist's. There was one lady, however, after giving me a ten-minute lecture on working instead of begging, who donated twenty cents to
the cause. It was Vinny who put the meat in the stew, so to speak, he scored five dollars for making a drug contact for a stranger. Between the three of us we came up with enough money to score three tabs of acid, two barrels of reds (three hits to a barrel) and a gallon of wine.

We dropped the acid first. Walking along the Strip, stoned on acid, was not as much fun as it had been the night before. I guess even Hollywood can get somewhat old. Things changed, however, when we ate the reds. It was a down trip big time. My consciousness got all fuzzy after the reds started coming on. I do remember, though, that the three of us agreed we couldn't remain on the Strip. It was difficult to walk and we did not want to spend the night in jail, so we needed a safe place to trip, and Vinny knew of a place three miles away. Lucky for us we got a quick ride. In the car that picked us up, there were three female hitchhikers already. Vinny got
in the front seat with one girl and Mark and I climbed in the back with the other two. I squeezed in against a very curvaceous blond who, as it turned out, was on her way to the Whisky-A-Go-Go to be with Noel Redding, Jimmy Hendrix's base player. Apparently, she met Redding the night before while he was performing at the Whisky-A-Go-Go. Pressed tightly up against the girl who was about to become a
groupie to one of the world's best known rock bands was, how shall I say, stimulating. The driver of the car cut short my fantasies when he dropped us off at Madison Heights (the Equitable Insurance building); by that time we were all wasted.

Vinny, Mark, and I spent the rest of the night lying on the grass (with some other people who were also using the place for a sanctuary), drinking wine and staying out of trouble. My last memory of the evening was sitting on the ground next to an Oklahoma cowboy. He was wearing a buckskin jacket, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and he
even smelled like horses. He was talking, but I wasn't listening until he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a dirty wrapper filled with something. From his other pocket he pulled out a jack knife and cut into the white, gooey, smelly, substance. He skewered a chunk on the end of his rusty blade, and gleefully offered it to me. He said, in the finest Texas drawl, "Here partner, try some of
this." Unable to stand, ripped on acid, drunk on wine, a strange food thrust under my nose, I opened my mouth and took a it in. An explosive rush of blue cheese hit my taste buds, my first taste of blue cheese. I laid flat on my back as the cheese slide down my throat. That was my last conscious memory. The next morning I found
myself waking up at the foot of Mark's bed. Actually, I awoke in the afternoon and even though I wasn't feeling good, I figured it was time to leave L.A. I didn't think I could survive another night anyway.

Hollywood

In 1968 my good friend Thom and I hitchhiked down to Detroit to see the documentary movie Monterey Pop Festival. Inspired by such a great movie, we walked over to Detroit's version of Hollywood's Sunset Strip. It was dark on Plum Street, and made even darker by the black hippie types that were walking around in their purple bell-bottoms, hats, beads, bells, flowery shirts and the like. After taking in the sights and sounds of "Detroit's Strip," Thom and I ended up at the Greyhound Bus Station where we waited till daybreak before hitching home. A little more than a year later I found myself in repeat mode doing Hollywood's Strip.

Hollywood
June 27, '69

Yesterday, when I finally left Huntington Beach (my first time swimming in the ocean), I got back on the road for L.A. The hitching was good. One ride was with some surf bums in a far out ‘57 Chevy station wagon. My last ride was with this guy who, just before the sunset, took me twenty miles out of his way so he could deliver me smack dab on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.

On the boulevard, the streetlights were coming on as I found myself trying to decide what to do next. There I was, standing on a street corner in Hollywood, the boulevard was beginning to fill with cars and I didn’t have a destination. I lifted my duffle bag to my shoulder, stuffed my sleeping bag under my other arm, and started walking in the direction the sunset bereft twilight. It didn’t matter where I ended up, in the city of legends, I had already arrived.

One block turned into another until I found myself standing in front of the Hollywood Palladium. There were a lot of people on the street waiting to get inside. I stopped to read some of the material hanging on the building when the lady in the ticket booth looked at me and said, “Would you like to hear Arlo Guthrie sing?” “Sure,” I said, as she held out her hand with a free pass in it. She said, “Go around behind the theater, he’s going to give a concert.” I thanked her as I moved through the crowd. I didn’t find the concert, but I did find the back of the theater.

The crowd in front of the theater had gathered as part of a rally to protest the government’s decision to build an Anti Ballistic Missile defense system (the ABM system). Some people were standing in line for tickets to see the celebrities that were scheduled to speak out against the ABM proposal, while others just walked in front of the theater carrying signs of protest to support the event. I guess Arlo was there to add his voice to the protest while, at the same time, entertaining the more financially strapped participants of the rally.

I was sitting on the pavement close to the rear entrance to the Palladium, changing into a clean t-shirt, when a black limousine pulled up. With dirty clothes piled in front of me, and stripped bare to the waist, I watched Jack Lemon and Bill Cosby step out of the limousine; the two of them walked past me on their way to the back entrance of the Palladium. Smoking his huge cigar, Cosby glanced down at me and all I could do was smile. Before I could find a clean shirt to put on, another limo pulled up and out stepped an absolutely gorgeous Raquel Welch. She also walked past me, but she didn’t look down. I just stared as she glided into the Palladium dressed in a beautiful white gown. Soaking up what had just happened, I sat there mesmerized until someone yelled, “Arlo’s not coming.” Not enough people turned out to hear him (or so it was rumored), so he refused to sing. Since there was no concert, the management of the Palladium gave the handful of us who gathered to hear Arlo sing passes to go inside, it was a lucky break for me that he did not sing.

A man dressed in a suit ushered all fifteen or so inappropriately dressed attendees into the upper balcony of the Palladium. We sat in amazement as we looked down upon the celebrities parading across the stage. Jack, Bill, and Raquel were there, as was Andy Williams, James Colburn, Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Carl Riener and many more who I have forgotten. Before it was over, I decided the ABM system was a bad idea too. Since the closest I had ever come to seeing a celebrity was sitting in front of the TV, for me, the whole evening was magical.

It was a beautiful night. Walking down a busy, palm tree lined, Hollywood Boulevard, seemed more like a fairytale than reality. I was walking on air when a car pulled up and this guy leaned over and asked me if I wanted a ride. Of course I said, “Yes.” In his white convertible we cruised Sunset Boulevard, radio blasting, wind blowing my hair, and city lights everywhere. The guy turned out to be the clothes designer for the Mod Squad TV characters. He offered to drop me at the section of the Strip where the hippies hung out.

Walking down the crowded sidewalk, elbow to elbow with Hollywood’s drug addicts and notorious criminals, I knew I had really arrived. Actually, a lot of the people seemed really nice and a few of them even suggested places where I might find somewhere to crash. There were all sorts of people, burned out hippies, pleasure seekers, regular tourists, cycle freaks, and quite a number of indefinable oddballs. Lugging around my belongings took its toll, however. On the perimeter of the Strip, I found a place to rest (if you sit where the people are the Pigs will bust you for loitering). That’s where I met Vinny and Mark.

As I was smoking a cigarette, I heard someone say, “Hey man, what’s happening?” That somebody was Vinny, a bona fide L.A. freak. Almost everybody you met on the Strip was from somewhere other then L.A., not Vinny, he spent his whole life in L.A. He was tall, dark, Jewish, and, part American Indian, but he looked Asian. Mark, his buddy, was my height, squatty, and very friendly. He was in L.A. for the summer and would in the fall return to Boston (where his father was a judge). Mark, like me, was out to experience Hollywood, but unlike me, he was going to do it for the entire summer. He told me that if I didn’t mind sleeping on his floor I could stay at his place back in L.A., but in order to get into his room we would have to sneak through his back window. With a great big smile on my face, I accepted his offer.

Not having to worry about where I was going to sleep, the three of us were ready to get down to business. Vinny’s philosophy of life was, “Do whatever you like, but do it stoned.” With that thought in mind, the three of us went off to score some dope. Well, actually we were off to score dope for me. Vinny and Mark were already tripping on acid. There was always action on the Strip, some good, some not so good. On the spur of the moment, on the Strip, you could always score dope, it’s just that its quality was never known. Vinny scored a hit of acid, but nothing happened after I dropped it. The poetic moment of getting burned on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip was not lost on me. Six months earlier, when I was in San Francisco, I also got burned. That time, the dope came from Height Asbury, the other major world capital for dope. On this day I wouldn’t trip with Mark and Vinny, but I was not about to complain. All in all, it was an incredibly good day.

I'll Follow The Sun

The ‘60’s was a time of revolt, of challenging expectations, regimentation, and the ideas of “the establishment.” This revolt took place on many levels. Typically, it began at the level of rejecting parental values and control. I, for one, refused to see race and racial stereotypes as justification for parental control. In fact, when my parents threatened to stop helping me pay my college expenses unless I moved out of the apartment which I shared with a college buddy, a college buddy who just happened to be black, well, that was the siren call for me to drop out of school and, in the summer of ’69, follow the path of “California Dreaming.”



Huntington Beach
June 22, `69


"Hi. Are you from around here?" she said. I momentarily
stopped kicking the beach sand to see a tanned body in a bikini
smiling up at me from her blanket. "No, just traveling through," I
said, as I kept on walking.

I was hitchhiking up to Los Angeles when
the weather broke. From the car I had been riding in I could see a
beach full of sunbathers. I told the driver I hadn't seen that much
sun since I arrived in California, and I told him I wanted out.

"Where you from?" she said. She had curiosity written all
over her face as she looked at my army duffel bag thrown over my
shoulder. "Michigan," I said, as I caught myself staring into her
innocent eyes. "I'm heading up the coast," I said. The more I looked
at her the more beautiful she became. "Do you mind if I take a load
off?" My butt had already hit the sand and I had one shoe off before
she was able to reply, "What do you do for a living?" I told her I
didn't do anything for a living. I told her that I just find odd
jobs when I need money. As we talked, she made me forget about the
uncertainty and discomfort that led up to this moment. Lighting a
cigarette and rubbing my toes in the warm sand, I told her that I
just got up one morning and started following the sun. When I
reached the West Coast, I turned north and I'm still following the
sun.

She was just what I needed to cheer me up. When the
conversation trailed off a bit, I stuck my cigarette butt in the
sand and said, "Somewhere down the beach there's a spot with my name
on it. That's where I'm going to roll out my sleeping bag and get
some shut eye before the sun sinks any lower." As I walked away, I
glanced back toward the sound of her voice. I could still see her
deep blue eyes when she said, "You are so lucky. I wish I could do
whatever I wanted to." I smiled back at her, turned, and kept on
walking.

18 Again

The phrase “overwhelmed with emotional significance” pretty much sums up my relationships with my first two lovers. When you’re 18 and your girlfriends can legally purchase alcohol, well, that pretty much defines a significant relationship. Jackie was self-supporting. She worked as a beautician and rented her own house. She was far more mature then I could ever hope to be at that age, and she also liked jazz, --a mutually shared interest between us. She listened to a lot of Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson, two vocalists that I would come to appreciate very much! When I enrolled in Community College, our time together was cut short and we eventually went our separate ways. Jackie was more gregarious than I was and boyfriends, for her, were always around the corner. The song that cuts deepest into my memory of Jackie is on Jefferson Airplane’s first album with Grace Slick— Marty Balin’s ballad Comin’ Back To Me.

I met Janie at school. Our relationship lasted a couple years, and again there was no contest as to who was the more mature. The music that brought Janie and I together, the music that made it easy for Janie and I to bond, was mostly penned by Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick. When I was with Janie I could only see the Look Of Love, however, when confronted with the next step—marriage, I could only hear Travelin’ Man by Ricky Nelson. Actually, I think I have a description of the tumultuous tear filled night that erupted when Janie and I called it quits. If I find the piece and it passes muster, I’ll include it here, if not, well, you can expect to see cut and pastes from my journals from here on out anyway—the purpose of which is to emphasize the significance of life’s most meaningful and emotional events.

Black Day In July

1965 marked beginning of the burning of America’s inner cities—Watts, Detroit, Newark, Chicago; race riots and police brutality were rampant during the late sixties. In 1967 I was just a kid oblivious to what was going on around me, but having met a girl at the Music Box—a major hook up place for young people, I was invited by her to come down to Detroit so we could continue our “together time.” Two weeks later, soon after arriving on her doorstep, it became clear that I had misplaced expectations. After an awkward evening, I found myself back on the expressway hitchhiking out of town. Coincidentally, on that same evening, the Detroit riots ignited. Needless to say, the hitchhiking was poor. After 20 hours of putting one foot in front of the other in order to traverse the 170 miles that stood between me and my destination (I managed three short car rides also) I arrived back home at 6 pm Sunday evening extremely tired, hungry and wiser. I’m telling this story because playing at high volume on the radio in the two car rides that I did get, blasted the Nancy Sinatra, Lee Hazlewood song, “Jackson” (actually, I think it’s a Johnny Cash song, but they made it theirs). Were it not for that song (and later that album) I’m not sure I would be telling this story right now. Funny how those types of connections exponentially increase the “fun” (and meaning) in one’s life. And, of course, it was Gordon Lightfoot’s song Black Day In July keeps the memory of the Detroit riots alive.

Rocking Chair

In the classroom of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, emotions were naturally, as well as artificially, stimulated, while tradition and social norms were either ignored or violated. For some, values, all values, were put under the lens of social criticism, while for others, this criticism significantly changed—sometimes destroying—their lives.

Today, as a second option to rocking in my rocking chair (Hoagy Carmichael’s song Rocking Chair made popular by Maria Muldaur comes to mind here), I will blog/write about some of the significant emotional events that propelled me down life’s highway; and further, I will give these emotional events a musical identity. I think (hope) these recollections (memories plucked from my old journals) will be entertaining (sharing them is my entertainment). To begin, here are two thought provoking and complementary ideas concerning both the nature and the potential of life-changing emotional events; the first comes from a psychologist, and the second of which comes form a philosopher/mathematician:

Rationality is grounded in emotion, the emotive content of our environment. That is why the psychologist, Morris Massey, can say, “…by age ten, significant emotional events have already pre-determined who we will be for the rest of our lives.”

In Whitehead’s philosophy, experience reduces to what he calls occasions, and, insofar as occasions conform to their environment, insofar as “self-aim” conforms to its immediate past, there is determinism, but insofar as any entity modifies its response through the subjective element of feeling, there is freedom. Feeling and freedom are codependent for Whitehead and acting on “good feelings” moves the world forward to a better place.