Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

Ken Kesey:
On the way back, I was driving across country in a big old nice station wagon with a couple of my buddies, nibbling on cactus. As we were driving along, Kennedy began to be killed. [news reports stream in] Everywhere you went, you looked in people's eyes and they all felt the same thing. It wasn't just sadness, it was a loss of an innocence; the loss of the idea that; always the good is going to prevail. There's no way to even nearly depict the pain and the feeling of crisis. The thing that all of us sort of feel when it's real dark.

Ken Kesey:
What it meant, was that everybody had to consider a new way for things to be. Don't you know that we're all one? The deeper I got into it, the more I realized it was a different force working. The only big mistake we made, as a force, was thinking for a while that we were going to win. We developed vested interests in the victory to come. We begin to parcel off into little groups, whether it's feminism or politics. For money, religion, whatever it is; everybody is jumping up and down in front of it. Until nobody can see it clear anymore. There's something about what we're doing; is that we're meant to lose, every time. You make these forays, you write these books and you perform this music; but the big juggernaut of civilization continues, and you get kind of brushed to the side. But, I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead, knowing that society's not going to understand it. Not even caring, 'cause they're having a good time.