I recall back in 1964 while attending the Berkeley Folk Festival, winding up at a post-concert party with a small group of Berkeley folk singers whom I didn't really know all that well. About four songs into the session, the pot came out and a joint was being passed around the room. Not into that sort of thing, I passed.

I noticed as the night wore on that people's singing and playing got sloppier and sloppier as still more joints made the rounds (you could almost get high on second hand smoke). Almost all of these people were aspiring to concert careers or singing across the bay at the Hungry i. But nobody was doing much of anything to bring it about.

They kept telling each other things like, "Man, you've never played that well before! Cool!" And everyone else nodding in bleary-eyed agreement. When actually, they were playing wrong chords, stumbling over the words, and oftentimes singing off-pitch. Yet THEY were convinced that they were singing better than they ever had.

That, I think, explained their lack of ambition, despite their desire for singing careers. A few tokes, and they had their own personal Carnegie Hall inside their own heads!

Yeah, I can understand how someone can become a "visionary artist" after enough "bier."

Don Firth