ABSTRACT
This chapter covers a colorful, but destabilizing, time in Beckett’s young life, as his family was swept along by the cultural revolution occurring as the 1960s came to a close. Beckett’s unique adolescence—experiencing cultural change at a close range—is examined in the context of Beckett as a developing artist. While still a teenager, he traveled with the Hog Farm, a communal group whose journeys took them to Woodstock and the chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. His early connection to the culture of underground comics, light shows, rock posters, and psychedelic visual culture is considered. The raising of a totem pole, acquired from British Columbia, is a spectacle documented by filmmaker Eric Saarinen and attended by the Kwakiutl native, who carved the pole, and by an assortment of colorful personalities and artists, including singer Michelle Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas, whose her older sister, Russell Ann Gilliam, looked after Beckett’s younger siblings. Beckett met kindred spirit and future collaborator James Gore and was inspired by Gore’s animations. In the summer of 1968, Beckett took time away from traveling to attend Antioch College.
