The Real Realness Of The Higher Highness

Documentary about a festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in August 1976.

00:00Copy video clip URL Count-in.

00:46Copy video clip URL San Francisco, August 1976. Golden Gate Park. Various hippies wander around park, blowing bubbles, etc.

01:21Copy video clip URL Man hands out copy of his religious philosophy. “We have our own original ideas, we’ve been together for 12 years. We had a commune in Honduras and British Honduras. We’re one of the older communal tribes.” He talks about his religion as a mixture of Daoism and Judaism. He talks about finding “the real realness of the higher highness.”

03:08Copy video clip URL Man juggles in front of stage while others dance.

03:23Copy video clip URL Girl talks about wanting to show a community of many different approaches to community involvement, and “taking responsibility for the planet.”

03:49Copy video clip URL Man shows “save the whales shirt” and another man talks about the Greenpeace Foundation’s origin in protests against nuclear testing, then moving onto saving the whales. Another man talks about Russian whaling process, and taking boats close to the whales so whalers can’t kill them.

05:32Copy video clip URL Man plays instruments and talks about playing music with animals, and communicating with dolphins via a specially invented drum. He says turkeys are “a real trip” and that the really respond to pitch, and how the male turkeys would do a special “turkey dance.” He talks about working with wolves, and singing with them: “If I was at all out of key, they would stop immediately, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. They’d just sulk…” He talks about sitting at the feet of the dominant male wolf for two days and harmonizing with his singing on the fourth of the pitch. “Wolves are the best singers I’ve ever heard.”

08:08Copy video clip URL Man wearing mask over face dances. Others dance along with musicians playing in audience.

08:58Copy video clip URL Woman uses a puppet to introduce people to the audience, and a little girl grabs at the puppet.

09:38Copy video clip URL Woman in gypsy clothes balances on a tightrope strung close to the ground while people watch.

11:22Copy video clip URL Man passes out literature and offers to answer questions about auras and past lives. Another man says, “Basically what we do is teach people how to control their psychic abilities.”

12:38Copy video clip URL Long-haired man in lots of denim dances for the camera and says Americans are into “Sex and drugs… And art forms.” A group of people do spiritual group calisthenics.

14:38Copy video clip URL A woman shows a pamphlet for and describes Eckankar, a spiritual method for avoiding bad vibes and for “soul- and self-realization.”

15:53Copy video clip URL One man tests another man’s beanie. Man introduces himself as president of the “Interstellar Propeller” company, which sells hats, as well as the Nobody for President campaign: “Let Nobody run your life.”

16:51Copy video clip URL Large group of people do breathing exercises. Wavy Gravy talks to the crowd about the Nobody for President campaign.

17:58Copy video clip URL Older man says he is friends of Billy McCarthy, the organizer. He says it was “very upraising” the previous year: “a beautiful thing, heading toward the fulfillment of a very poetic and very inspiring concept of what human rights and human life could be.”

18:43Copy video clip URL People talk to the camera about ideas of “attunement” and other spiritual ideas and energies. Save-the-whales man says that it’s important to not be distracted into thinking everything is alright.

20:17Copy video clip URL Long-haired denim man talks about dancing for a living, performing in “Hair” and “Godspell,” and wanting to move back to New York for the action of it. “San Francisco is too slow for me, too many hippies.” He keeps dancing.

21:22Copy video clip URL Man plays guitar on stage over end credits.

22:27Copy video clip URL End of tape.