I found this image of me. It was taken either late 1967 or early 1968. The setting is a pub in Stockholm (which I believe is still there) called Sturehof.
At this time the me-making consisted mostly of attracting and packing in and on as much attention and admiration as possible, as if these invisible little things were good building material for a healthy sense of self (which they are not).
That’s why I learned to recite (I kid you not) the entire twenty or so minutes of Alice’s Restaurant although I only knew (roughly) one word in two of what I was saying.
But this is the sixties, and this is Stockholm, Sweden, a city replete with American Vietnam war draft dodgers, many of whom have rich parents that send them Rolexes and Gibson Banjos and lots of money to pay for their nightly visits to places like Sturehof. And there I’d be, holding forth, Alice’s Restaurant from beginning to end, laughing when others were; for although I had just voiced the funny line—heard it leave my lips—I wasn’t quite sure what the joke was. I mean, who in Sweden at that time had ever come across Thanksgiving anyway? I for sure had not. And what was a bell tower anyway? And then they’d pay for another round and ask me to do it again for those who had just arrived.
Attention and admiration (and beer) indeed. Bolstering.
I liked it though. It was a good life. I had my own apartment, I had a great job, many good friends, a great guitar (which I played reasonably well), a good stereo, a fair album (LP) collection, along with a healthy thirst for answers (to the mysteries of life).
And this young me “knows” that he will never die. It’s not even on the vaguest of horizons. All the time in the world. Lived. Joyfully.
And I look at this image, smoking and beering, and I wonder where, in there, am I? How asleep was I? For I had not woken up yet, still only playing at searching (it was then known as “being deep”), not truly searching—though that was to change within a year—see “Who Am I Really Really”. Not really reading the great philosophers but only learning enough about them to drop their names and main lines (in order to gather attention and admiration). Futile, but fun.
And writing this, over forty years later, I ask myself, what—if anything—would I change, if I were to do it all over again, and the answer (both surprising and not) arrives quickly and unequivocally: Not a thing.
Ulf Wolf