Re: Fort Hill

http://www.trussel.com/lyman/forthill.htm 

American Avatar (2) 
Boston, November 1968, [pp 22-33]. 
The Fort Hill Community

by Mel Lyman

The largest community I am aware of is the universe but that is a 
very abstract kind of awareness. The community within that community 
that I am most familiar with is the United States, that is a much 
less abstract kind of awareness. The community within that community 
that I am most aware of is Fort Hill Community, I have to deal with 
that one every day. The community within that community is me, I 
have to deal with that one every moment. So I will start with myself 
and attempt to work back. 
I was born lonely. I reached out for whatever my little hands could 
grasp and I found my mother. What a joy to find a mother in this 
strange wilderness. I learned to walk so I could follow her around 
and I learned to talk so that I could tell her what I want. Then I 
had to leave my mother and go to school. At first I missed her 
terribly but soon I learned that I could relieve my terrible 
loneliness by being with the other children, communicating with 
them, playing with them. That was difficult at first because I was 
afraid they wouldn't like me but soon I learned that I had only to 
try. And so I made friends, we did things together, I was part of a 
community. 

When I was 17 years old I left home and friends and set out into the 
wilderness again. I was alone in the world. I reached out and found 
a wife. We made children. We made friends. We had a community. 

After 6 years I set out into the wilderness again. I didn't know 
what I wanted but I DID know that what I had wasn't enough. I sought 
new friends and new places. 

I yearned to communicate with vast numbers of people. I learned many 
new languages. I became a musician. I now spoke a language that 
allowed me to feel close to perfect strangers. My community was 
growing. 

I travelled around playing music for people for several years. 
Thousands of people enjoyed my music, hundreds felt very close to 
me, and a handful wanted to be near me all the time. They loved me 
and I loved their loving me. Soon we were all living together in the 
same house. At first it was wonderful, I played and sang and 
everybody sang with me. But you can't play music all the time. We 
had to learn to share other things. Some had to earn money, others 
had to cook; many requirements had to be met if we were to continue 
living together. We all had to give things up and that was a 
struggle. We began to see each other clearer and clearer and we saw 
some things we didn't like. It is always hard to tell your friend he 
has bad breath but if you keep it to yourself you will begin to hate 
him and wish he would go away. We began to criticize each other. I 
found that often people were afraid to tell each other what was 
bothering them and would instead come to me with their problem and I 
encouraged them to work it out with the people involved. This 
brought us closer together. Soon a policy of open criticism 
developed and this created a wonderful understanding amongst us. We 
improved each other. Now we all know each other so well that we have 
become as one person. We have a block of houses and we all work 
together on whatever needs to be done at the time. We do not need a 
set of rules to guarantee that everyone does his part because we 
trust each other and we are able to trust each other because we have 
come to KNOW each other. 

Once the basic requirements of survival had been met we were able to 
devote some time to other things. We no longer filled our spare time 
talking to each other because we no longer had anything to talk 
about. We wanted to talk to some new people, we wanted to make new 
friends, we wanted to share what we had. We had something good and 
something can only stay good if it is shared. And so we created a 
newspaper called AVATAR and with it we reached out and made a lot of 
new friends. And new struggles developed, and new resolutions came, 
and we grew. Now we are attempting to speak to people all over the 
United States and if we succeed then we will have to try to reach 
people all over the world. We are still one lonely little person 
reaching out but we are reaching out with many hands. 

We are considered a very unique community but that is only because 
we ARE a community, in every sense of the word. If the United States 
community cooperated as well as we cooperate many of its problems 
would be solved. When people mistrust each other then they work 
against each other and that is a terrible waste of energy but before 
people can trust each other they have to KNOW each other and on a 
nationwide scale that is a gigantic undertaking. To know someone you 
have to first reveal yourself to them to give them the courage to 
reveal themselves to you. Once that kind of communication has been 
established then it is only a matter of time before a feeling of 
trust prevails in the relationship. It is painful to reveal yourself 
to someone because you may have to show them something that neither 
one of you is going to like but that is the only way that it is ever 
going to come out, if you keep it to yourself it will rot inside of 
you. Once it is out you will be closer and that is the most 
rewarding experience in the world, to be close to people. We have 
accomplished a great closeness here on Fort Hill, we can be 
ourselves with each other, what a relief. 

What we have evolved together is a family structure, an ideal 
example of the natural order inherent in the family of man. All men 
are brothers, all women are sisters, all men and women are brothers 
and sisters. But this kind of organic order is not realized 
overnight. People have been learning how to live together on this 
planet ever since there were people and there is no end to this 
process, together we are creating the world and always HAVE been. 
The world we create is a reflection of how we communicate with each 
other and how we communicate with each other is a reflection of how 
conscious we are of ourselves, the more we know about ourselves the 
more we know about others and the more we know the more we have to 
share and sharing is the purpose of communal living. We are here to 
create a world together, the Family is building a home. 

Everything that is true of the Fort Hill Community is true of the 
entire Family of Man. We sleep, eat, work, play and learn more about 
the nature of man. We contain all the virtues and all the weaknesses 
of mankind, we are humanity in microcosm. Everyone who resides 
within this community has lived and experienced widely in the 
greater community, we are not strangers to the world. We have not 
gathered here to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world but 
rather to establish a greater order within that order, an order born 
of willing cooperation and necessary discipline, an order that 
adapts to the needs of the moment. When men live together there must 
be systems to guarantee that all have opportunity to experience and 
develop to the fullest potential and this inner law manifests as man-
made law. Men make laws and laws make governments. Governments set 
out to guarantee freedom and end up RESTRICTING freedom. Then there 
is a conflict and government is changed. Our government is changed 
daily. Not without a struggle for conflict is a necessary step to 
greater understanding but it just doesn't take us very long to 
figure out what's wrong and then DO something about it. Things move 
very quickly around here, we're a fast crowd. 

In order for me to continue writing about the Fort Hill Community 
I'll have to get a little more personal. I have no absolute 
definition of it or anything else. I try to define it in whatever 
terms the situation requires but I never define it to myself at all. 
Definitions are a form of communication, not truths unto themselves. 
My purpose in writing this is to communicate and I feel that I've 
communicated in the language of definitions adequately enough to 
merit a little more freedom, I'm expanding my government, I'm going 
to be a little more creative now. 

Being confined in a concept is necessary up to a point. You must 
live in one place long enough to become completely familiar with all 
its parts. Once you know them you can take them with you and move 
on, on to greater freedom, on to greater creativity, on to greater 
responsibility. Now I must tell you more truth, I must speak from 
loftier heights, I must explore a new area. At first it makes me a 
little dizzy, all these seemingly unlimited possibilities. It's fun, 
it's play, WOW! Oh oh, there IS some kind of order here. The fun's 
over, back to work. I will attempt to communicate this new order. 

There is always an order in life, life is the reflection of that 
order as man is the reflection of God. In every effect there is a 
cause and that cause is always the effect of a GREATER cause. It 
takes a long time to FIND the meaning in our day to day activities 
but in reflection we will always detect the moving finger that 
traced the pattern we have followed, there IS a plan. Every man is 
his own unique part of that plan, every life has a purpose. Lives 
that seemingly were lived with no kind of purpose at all might have 
simply served the purpose of distinguishing purpose by LACK of 
purpose, it all fits together in some crazy way. 

That paragraph was a humdinger, you should go back and read it 
again. I am communicating on a much higher level now don't you 
think. I am beginning to find my balance in this new world I have 
entered, at least I've learned how to WALK here. Once I learn how to 
DANCE here I will be writing poetry. I feel I'm getting a little 
closer to home, I hope some of you are coming with me, it's no fun 
to be home alone. When I'm at home I'm filled with love and 
understanding, in order to SHARE it I must COMMUNICATE it, from my 
pen to your mind and then, hopefully, THROUGH your mind to your 
heart. I only really want to speak to men's hearts but I don't want 
to go around the mind, I don't want to leave it out, I want to go 
through it like a door. The mind truly should be an instrument for 
the heart to express itself through. My heart is all love and my 
mind is how I give it away. I warned you I was going to get a little 
more personal but the more personally I communicate the more deeply 
you are moved. If I can move you deeply enough then there will be a 
communion between us and we will be a community, it makes things so 
much easier when people understand each other, then there is no need 
for tiresome explanations. To understand you must WANT to 
understand, otherwise all you will find in life are your own 
misgivings and doubts. People surround themselves with an invisible 
shield of their own faults and then spend the rest of their lives 
not seeing through it. That is prison. If you cannot see beyond your 
own wall then you cannot see that my door is open. I will not let 
you shut me out, I will leap through my door and tear your wall 
down. You will resist me to the bitter end but I will get through 
because I have nowhere to go but into people. My self is YOUR self. 
I am inside of everybody in this community, we are as one person, 
that is what a community is. We all feel each other as ourself and 
so we all are totally responsible for each other. That is why the 
policy of open criticism, we are criticizing OURSELVES. When 
somebody doesn't do something as well as I know he CAN do it then I 
tell him so because it HURTS me. I expect no more of others than I 
expect of myself, I give my best and I demand that you give YOUR 
best because only then are we giving the BEST! That is what I meant 
by willing cooperation and necessary discipline. It requires a great 
discipline to do your best. We discipline each OTHER. We drive each 
other NUTS! 

And now I am back defining communities again. A community needs a 
leader, someone who best knows the potential of that particular 
group of people and how to bring it into actuality. A guide. I am 
that leader and guide, the father at the head of this family. The 
people who live within this community have come to know me, respect 
me, and trust me; I am all things to all men. Inwardly I am at one 
with God's Will, outwardly I seek to be one with all my children. I 
realize how outrageous these statements appear, if you do not know 
yourself then you cannot possibly know me. The people in this 
community know themselves deeply enough to recognize that I know 
them, that is a comfort and a direction. I know where we're going 
because I know what we are. I lead by example and follow by 
adaptability. I am all things to all men. 

Newcomers to Fort Hill approach me with awe and mixed feelings. They 
invariably have developed some sort of definite concept about who or 
what I am and it always comes as a pleasant surprise to them when 
they discover that I am so easy to get along with. My relationships 
with people are solely dependent on how close they are to 
themselves, the closer they are the more intimate our relationship. 
I do not know any bonds on intimacy, if you do they are yours. All 
life yearns to be one........... --- In Templar-de-
Rosemont <at> yahoogroups.com, "Jon Presco" <braskewitz <at> y...> wrote:
> 
>  
>  
> When I first encountered the people on Fort Hill was the night I
> walked up there in the first snow of the winter. Though I never
> became a member of the Process I did wear a black Bobbie's cape. At
> the Fort Hill tower monument a young man approached me and asked me
> what I was doing there. I asked him the same question. He told me 
he
> was a member of Mel's group and was on patrol. I asked him if he
> carried a gun. When he said "Yes" I laughed at him.
> 
> Jon
> 
> "Friendly Fifty on Fort Hill -- Better Way for People?
> Robert L. Levey, Staff Reporter
> 
> 
> 
> Four wooden buildings - vaguely Victorian and outwardly shabby -
> face the monument of Fort Hill in Roxbury. There is a park and
> patchy grass, but the neighborhood kids litter it with broken
> bottles. The view is the most spectacular that can be found in the
> city below the top of a skyscraper.
> Boston pinwheels around with Fort Hill at the center. That is where
> the 50 or so people in those four houses want to be. They look to
> the stars - in which they have great faith - and they look out from
> that high Roxbury hill with the earnest belief that they have found
> a better way for people to live together - honestly, without fear
> and in friendship.
> 
> Fort Hill is at the center of the city and at the heart of Boston's
> hippie underground.
> 
> Most of the people living there have experimented with mind-
altering
> drugs at some time. They put out an underground newspaper that is
> under attack in Boston and Cambridge as an obscene publication.
> 
> They have forsaken most of the middle-class values to which the
> average person is bound. Few of them are formally married. They
> dress with indifferent informality or eccentric care. They spend
> long nights talking in groups - criticizing each other, probing in
> vivid detail each other's thoughts.
> 
> Anyone is welcome to visit the four houses lining the park on Fort
> Hill, but to stay there you must become part of the communal scene.
> There are no free rides - there is no room for social parasites.
> 
> Jim Kweskin, who has gained considerable fame performing with his
> Jug Band, lives in the end house with his wife Marilyn and their
> child. He explains that "the one thing demanded in this community 
is
> work of some kind. You have to supply something. Either you might
> get a day job and bring in money or you have to work on the paper 
or
> you have to do physical labor fixing up the houses or all of these
> things."
> 
> And there is more to it than that. People who live in the Fort Hill
> community must get along with each other. It has existed for a year
> and a half as an unintended experiment in community living and it
> has become the anchor for Boston's hippie movement.
> 
> 
> ENGINEER
> Next door to Jim is David Gould's [sic: Gude] house. He was a
> recording engineer in New York before coming to Fort Hill with his
> wife Faith and two children. Like everyone in the community, David
> is a deep believer in astrology. As for the community, David says
> everything we do here is just getting to know each other better.
> Whether it's sweeping up the hill or working on the paper. And when
> we've really gotten to know each other, we're going to make the 
most
> beautiful music the world has ever heard."
> 
> Eben Given lives next door in a house where one downstairs room has
> been converted into a main dining room for the community. People
> trickle in at supper time and there is food to eat. There is no
> special plan to the eating arrangements, just as there are no
> specific rules in the community.
> 
> Jesse Benton's house is at the end of the row, set back a strange
> cement and stone fence and a small garden.
> 
> 
> GUIDE
> Mel lives there. Mel Lyman is something like the guide for the Fort
> Hill community. He is about 30, gaunt, with a reedy voice and 
gentle
> manner. Everyone at Fort Hill admires Mel. They talk about him a
> lot . . . about how he has been into and out of all the scenes from
> the West Coast to the East Village. He was into the drug scene 
early
> and then out of it. He still visits New York to see his friend Andy
> Warhol and catch up on the underground movie scene.
> 
> Mel has performed with Jim's Jug Band and he writes for the paper.
> He likes yoga, guitar playing, women, attention and making people 
in
> the Hill community work hard at whatever they choose to do.
> 
> The Fort Hill people regard their uncompromising life-style not so
> much as a rebellion, but rather as an example. Jim says "it's not a
> question of telling people how to live. It's just living our lives
> the way we want to and letting anyone who wants to look - see that
> it can work."
> 
> 
> SPOKESMAN
> But when people come to see what is happening on Fort Hill, they
> often approach with fear in their eyes. Lew Crampton, 27, an Ivy-
> educated East Asian expert, lives across the street in a fourth-
> floor apartment. He has become an eloquent spokesman for Fort Hill
> and keeps bringing people from the "straight world" up to the
> community to meet his friends.
> 
> "We get people coming in here shaking like a leaf," says Crampton.
> The fault for this fearful attitude of strangers rests with the 
news
> media that have interpreted the hippie movement as a roaring drug
> and sex orgy.
> 
> People in the community freely admit that they have used marijuana
> and some of the more potent hallucinogens like LSD.
> 
> They admit the formal act of marriage is generally ignored by
> couples living there. But as Crampton explains, "what is natural up
> here does go, but there isn't the scene of wild, free love where a
> man walks into a roomful of girls and says: 'You, come with me.'"
> 
> Sometimes Fort Hill seems more like a work camp than a hippie
> community. During the Summer the residents became their own
> department of public works. "We fixed up the hill," Jim
> explains. "We bricked up the tower, we cleaned up the area. We cut
> the grass in the park. That's a city responsibility. We are
> maintaining this city park."
> 
> 
> RENOVATING
> They are also gradually renovating the modest buildings in the
> community which were picked up for a couple of thousand dollars
> each.
> 
> And most of the Fort Hill people have something to do with "The
> Avatar" - their controversial underground newspaper. The paper is
> produced with considerable skill and has contained some provocative
> avant-garde writing.
> 
> It has also contained some very frank sex talk and some satirical
> obscenity. During the campaign that Cambridge Mayor Daniel J. Hayes
> launched against the hippies in October, "The Avatar" - which had
> editorial offices in Cambridge - was banned from newsstands there.
> 
> The paper has moved to Rutland st., South End, but Boston police
> raided the premises two weeks ago, made one arrest and confiscated
> 2000 copies of the paper.
> 
> Since the official crackdown on "The Avatar" the paper's editors,
> Wayne Hansen and Brian Keating, have responded with bolder
> obscenity. The paper has included violently obscene attacks on the
> police and a recent issue had a center-fold designed around four
> dirty words.
> 
> 
> RESPONSE
> The editors say they have no particular interest in pursuing the
> obscenity campaign, but that they are harassment from police and
> city officials.
> 
> Most of the paper's legal problem thus far have come from selling 
it
> on the streets. Hundreds of Boston hippies have made a little money
> picking up a stack of the papers at the office and hawking them in
> Harvard sq. or the Charles st. area of Beacon Hill. Many have been
> arrested for peddling obscene literature.
> 
> The Fort Hill people hope to raise enough money to fight the matter
> in the courts.
> 
> But the paper is not an end in itself for the people at Fort Hill.
> They are planning new projects like underground movie-making,
> creating an environmental show, starting a school for the kids who
> live there, forming music groups, making records.
> 
> Lyman say of "The Avatar" - "it's just another experiment. And if
> they stop us from being what we are in that area, we'll just be 
what
> we are in another area."
> 
> 
> MOVEMENT
> The people at Fort Hill have been the hippie route. "The movement 
is
> like a love affair," says Crampton. "You take the first step and
> fall in love with the flowers and bells and buttons. Then you get
> into drugs and after a while you get tired because it's taking you
> nowhere. You start feeding on your own sickness. But it's like
> you're married to it, and you've got to find your way out. You've
> got to understand what you're into (involved in) and then build
> something out of it."
> 
> "We're building a new world," says Crampton with the enthusiasm of
> an apostle. "And we're starting right here." Many members of the
> Fort Hill community talk about leaving to start similar communities
> in other parts of the country.
> 
> 
> PRETENSIONS
> Kweskin says the world they are trying to build is one where they 
do
> not fear their neighbors and where they strip away pretensions 
about
> themselves. "There isn't this getting together in the straight
> world. And they're so afraid for their possessions. They're afraid
> for what they own . . . afraid it's going to be destroyed or hurt."
> 
> The Fort Hill people are the older end of Boston's hippie scene,
> though few of them have reached 30. There are children to bring up
> and property to care for.
> 
> To be sure, they have dropped out of straight society. But Fort 
Hill
> has a substance that most of the superficial hippie scene lacks. 
The
> people there have been through the drug scene and are now trying -
> as a visible underground movement - to make a new kind of life for
> themselves and any others who would join them.
> 
> They know that the outside world looks at them as something to
> fear. "There's a certain fear, built up about us," says
> Kweskin. "People think we're something freaky. They think we're
> always taking LSD and running around with our clothes off."
> 
> But Kweskin thinks the fear runs even deeper, "They're afraid of us
> because an awful lot of people in this world are afraid of love. It
> embarrasses them."

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