Alicia's unique form of illustration and hand lettering style inspired a multitude of authors and artists after the initial release of Living on the Earth in 1970. After her stay at Wheeler Ranch, Alicia traveled throughout the United States and Hawaii and pursued a variety of interesting projects connected to her passion for artistic creation.
In the second portion of our interview, Alicia and I discuss the relevancy of Living on the Earth in our current day and age, the long-standing influence of the hippie counterculture, and of course, music, the arts and culture.
Living on the Earth is a reference book for making things by hand. Those skills are timeless. It is also a documentation of the Utopian commune movement of the 1960s by an insider, so historians study it. Most universities have it in their libraries.
I also managed to communicate through my drawings the FEELING of being so quiet and so free, living mostly out of doors, without bills to pay, and hierarchies to negotiate. That feeling is easy to forget when one is mired in the struggle to survive in 21st century civilization. This book can call back that feeling.
(Living on the Earth was recently re-released as a thirtieth anniversary, fourth edition with a few updates and additions).
I recently read your inspiring contribution to OccupyWriters.com where you mention the similarities between the Haight Ashbury hippie scene and the recent Occupy Wall Street movements. What do you feel are the most important lifestyle changes advocated by the hippie movement?
The most important lifestyle changes that the hippie movement set in motion, or greatly amplified, are:
environmentalism (including recycling, preservation of natural environment, plants and animals, organic agriculture and the resulting food/cleaning/personal care products), and alternative and preventative medicine modalities (including raw, macrobiotic, vegetarian and vegan diets, yoga, ta'i chi, meditation, massage and other body work, acupuncture, ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy, and hydrotherapies like sauna, sweat lodge, hot springs, and colonic irrigation.)
Hippies also brought to prominence drum circles and neo-primitive ecstatic dancing, couples living together without legally marrying first, spontaneous communal sharing of rides, food, housing, land, childrearing, etc., which formalized into the establishment of communes, free stores, free clinics, free schools, food coops, and community gardens.
Apart from being a best-selling author, you are also an established musician and artist. Who are some of your musical and artistic influences?
My musical influences include John Fahey, Keola Beamer (fingerstyle guitar); Phoebe Snow, Maria Muldaur (folk/blues/jazz singing style); Bob Dorough, Dave Frishberg, Mose Allison, Phoebe Snow, Michael Franks (songwriting, jazz/blues); Incredible String Band, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Keola Beamer, Richard Fariña (songwriting/folk-world music). You can read more about my artistic influences on my website.
Has your creative process shifted throughout the years (i.e. one art form taking more prominence over the other)?
Yes, at different times in my life I tend to express myself in one medium more than the others. For the past 12 years I've been in a period of making CDs and doing music concerts that include storytelling, plus making illustrations for eco businesses in Japan. Before that was an eleven year period of owning a wedding business on Maui, when I did lots of floral design, musical performance, designing party equipment and party set-ups, and designing promotional materials. In the '60s and '70s I made a lot of illustrated books and wrote a lots of songs, but I didn't perform very much.
Have you ever considered writing your autobiography?
I have written several autobiographies. One was a live performance I toured nationally for eight months (75 performances) in 2000 called "Living on the Earth: The Musical." In it, I tell stories from my life about how I came to create Living on the Earth, and what happened after I did. In between each story, I sang/played an original song that related to the previous story. I did a couple of performances of the show in summer 2011 in Colorado.
Last fall I recorded an all-instrumental guitar album called "Living Through Young Eyes," which is tunes I loved and learned between the ages of 0 and 25. I plan to release it this summer.
Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for those who have recently 'left the city life behind' to embark on their 'back to the land' journey?
I suggest that those who are not already conversant in sustainable technology, permaculture/organic gardening, and ecological building construction techniques avail themselves of the many excellent courses on these skills. Two of the first schools to begin offering instruction in these subjects are the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, TN http://www.thefarm.org/etc/, and Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter, OR http://lostvalley.org/.
Many thank you's and gratitude to Alicia for her graciousness with this interview. For Part One of the interview, click here. For more information on Alicia and her latest projects, visit her official website http://www.aliciabaylaurel.com.
To learn more about Wheeler Ranch, visit Wheeler's Ranch: A Photo Album and Home Free Home: A History of Two Open-Door California Communes.
Also, Alicia regularly updates her blog in a sweet, barefoot and frolicking sort of way, with posts dedicated to vegan recipes, health, political issues, arts and culture.
Birds of a feather.
1 comments:
When I went back to university for a victory lap to redo economics and do a TESL, i also spent a lot of my time with a group of neo-hippies (modern day hippie, but my mother argues that hippe strictly=60s and 70s era types) who constructed an alternative living centered commune in the Eastern Townships (went to Bishop's, knew Jim-as everyone knew everyone). I stayed around just because it was so fascinating to see how this community was striving to be so liberated yet still struggling with the influence of social norms in mainstream society, and how the hierarchy of mainstream commmunities was also forming in this community-you had your leaders; those who were glorified for having more knowledge of alterative health and living. Related to this I was also seeing the dominance of one set of values and ways of being useful and worthy as a person come out and shape the behavior of those who were different-more moderate, more deviant, or just unsure.
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